Caboose

An excellent article by Tim O’Reilly on why the big media companies have got it all wrong: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution (via kottke.org).

Why do our governments support subsidising these industries — by changing the law to protect them — when they’re perfectly happy to watch other industries employing many more people fade away?

I was glad to hear that the RRS Ernest Shackleton has reached Halley at last.

They didn’t make it last year, due to exceptionally heavy sea ice near Halley. This meant that the usual supplies of fuel couldn’t be delivered to the base and they were on their emergency year’s supply. If the Shack hadn’t got there this year the base was going to have to be shut down.

Even though it’s now years since I left the place I still have friends working there this summer, and a certain emotional attachment to it as well.

Couldn’t resist this: The Perpetual War Portfolio (via kottke.org)

On my way back out of town yesterday I wandered into Richer Sounds and bought myself a DVD player.

As it’s hooked up to my little 14″ portable TV I wasn’t all that worried about picture or sound quality, so I just picked the cheapest one there, the Acoustic Solutions DVD 321 at GBP70. As far as I can tell the only difference between it and the more expensive DVD 421 is that it doesn’t have a front panel display, which is pretty redundant anyway.

One thing I really like about it is that it’s so small, a lot of DVD players seem to have been designed to use up spare video recorder casings. There’s no need for them to be that big.

Picture quality seems fine, it’s easy to use and it all seems to work well. I spent most of yesterday watching the box set of Twin Peaks series one I got from my parents for Christmas. The menu system on the DVD is almost as bewildering as Twin Peaks itself!

Update 30/12/02:I’ve found a bit of information on the web about these DVD players and it seems that as well as being able to change region and disable Macrovision you can enable VCD playback (The ‘5001’/’5000′ setting in the secret settings). Nice.

Here’s a picture from my nice quiet Christmas through in Norfolk:

My parents got me a copy of the Foo Fighters album One By One for Christmas, I was a bit disappointed when I noticed it was a “copy protected” one.

In fact the tiny print on the back says: “It is intended fro use only in standard home CD players and may not play on other devices, especially computer drivers”.

This is completely incorrect, computer CD drives (not “drivers”) comply with the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard, BMG’s protected discs don’t. This is why they don’t have the familiar CD logo, Philips won’t let people use it unless the product complies with the standard.

In fact BMG are producing deliberately faulty products, I reckon they’re probably not “fit for purpose” if they don’t play on CD-DA compatible equipment, it’d be interesting to see what Trading Standards think about it.

Fortunately BMG are rubbish and their copy protection system doesn’t work. I ripped the CD to MP3 this evening, so I’ll be able to listen to it when and where I want to rather than where they think I should.

The point is that I’m not going to distribute the MP3s, I’ve made a copy for my own use. The record companies are using technology and new laws to restrict things we’re currently entitled to do. They seem to be succeeding at the moment on a wave of hysteria and poor journalism (the BBC seem to repeat verbatim anything the record companies PR people come out with).
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‘Twas the night after Christmas and all though Norfolk not a petrol station was stirring, not even the ones on major roads…

Left my Grandparents house this evening in the car, didn’t have too much fuel left but thought there wouldn’t be any problem filling it up. WRONG! Ended up in Attleborough after discovering that the services on the A11 (the main Norwich-London road) were all closed.

In the end I had to call Direct Line, they sent out a man with a gallon of petrol. That got me most of the way to Newmarket, where I found the first open petrol station on the road.

I know it was all down to laziness on my part and assuming that stuff would be open today and I was really embarassed at having to call out the breakdown guys. On the other hand, it’s only a bank holiday, it’s not like it’s Christmas Day or New Year’s day. It’s the kind of time when people are travelling.

I’m off to stay with my Grandparents in Norfolk over Christmas so I’ll be offline for a few days.

Enjoy the holiday (assuming it is a holiday for you).

Here’s a typical (for the UK at least) seasonal link.

This one’s via kottke.org: *LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS* ChildCare Action Project (CAP) Media Analysis Report MAR22130.

I hadn’t realised that talking trees were offensive to God. I’m quite amazed by quite how easy it is to upset these people. Wonder if we can get them to analyse websites…

Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken, “Sententiae”

Went to see it last night, ended up going to the 11pm showing because all the others were fully booked. This meant it didn’t end until after 2am.

It was worth it though, great battles, fantastic photography and good acting combined to make it a very enjoyable experience. The computer graphics were so good that it was close to impossible to spot them (unlike, for example, Titanic).

I’m struggling to think of bad points. Friends have mentioned that they disliked the way Gimli was made into a comic character, but I think that works well in the context of the film.