Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl

What I really need is a blog-all tabs popup/bookmarklet…

(Update: Jesse let me know that bookmarklets can’t look at other tabs, although it might able to cycle through tabs… Will have to look into it; Maybe needs to be a XUL extension? Where in the Moz DOM is the tab info stored?)

Posted on by lhl

From /., Eric_the_Awful posts:

“It is refreshing to see that P2P United is acknowledging that their members should be more active in educating their users about the consequences of illegal file sharing that is rampant on their networks as well as the other risks these networks pose to personal privacy and security,” Amy Weiss, senior vice president of communications for RIAA, said in a statement. “But, let’s face it, they need to do a whole lot more before they can claim to be legitimate businesses.”

So for the P2P United businesses to become quote legitimate businesses end quote, they should act like the RIAA and the RIAA’s constituents.

  1. Sue their own customers.
  2. “Offer” their artists (perhaps the programmers in this case?) unconscionable contracts along the line of “You agree to assign the authorship rights of your work to us. You will bear the entire financial risk of the marketing and reproduction of your work. In most cases we will receive the vast majority of the benefits of your work.”
  3. “Cook” their books so that any profits generated by their artists/programmers appear in the vaguest possible terms, again avoiding any requirement to actually pay the artists/programmers.
  4. Control their customer’s access to new and old works. Make it difficult/impossible for their customers to legally obtain works that aren’t on the “top 40.”
  5. Accuse anyone who complains (or offers an alternative) of profound moral sins such as stealing from the artists.
  6. Spend profits purchasing lobbying power to protect the above system.
  7. Attack any organization or entity that appears to offer alternatives to the customers or artists.
  8. Require the artists under threat of financial ruin to use the above system.

Wow. That’s a great way to run a business. I’m sure that the P2P networks would be loved by everyone if they adopted to above “business plans.”

I’ve got a few other words for Amy Weiss, but they are not fit for printing.

Posted on by lhl
  • Efficient Editing With vim – best laid out/organized vim tips summary I’ve seen

    Recording ad-hoc macros:

    qregister Start macro recording into the named register. For instance, qa starts recording and puts the macro into register a.
    q End recording.
    @register Replay the macro stored in the named register. For instance, @a replays the macro in register a.

    Handy code writing keys:

    ]p Just like p, but it automatically adjusts the indent level of the pasted code to match that of the code you paste into. Try it!
    % Putting the cursor on a brace, bracket, or parenthese and pressing %
    will send the cursor to the matching brace, bracket, or parenthese.
    Great for fixing parse problems related to heavily nested blocks of
    code or logic.
    >> Indent
    the highlighted code. (See the earlier section about efficient text
    selection. If no text is selected, the current line is indented.)
    << Like >>, but un-indents.
    gd Go to the definition (or declaration) of the function or variable under the cursor.
    K Go to the man page for the word currently under the cursor. (For instance, if your cursor is currently over the word sleep, you will see the man page for sleep displayed.)
  • Dr Chip’s Vim Page
  • Luc Hermitte’s VIM Macros
  • Kent’s Vim Page
Posted on by lhl

Over the weekend, Steven Johnson tossed out the idea of Mob Spots: using the web and blogs for campaigns “message” brainstorming. This afternoon, Jason Kottke tossed in the idea of creating a b3ta-like forum (community ranking) for these, which is a great idea.

Now, imaginge an ad percolator/rating system linked to a digital archive for source material (ooh, and have a clever method of handling versioning/forking/revisions), all hooked up to a licensing engine (CC or otherwise) and you’d have yourself a pretty powerful tool…

Should be interesting to keep a watch on and seeing how this develops.

Related: see me pontificate pretensiously about blogs here

Posted on by lhl

Closing tabs:

  • Chaosmint: Easter Egg? Final Cut Pro 4.0 Ramblings

    “If you want to see Bruce the Wonder Yak for yourself, go to “About Final Cut Pro” in the Apple Menu, let the splash screen scroll through the credits a few times, and in after a moment or two he’ll come out to graze on your desktop. Let him stay a while and he might even impart a few pearls of wisdom!”

  • ~stevenf:
    Stagnant

    Dell today issued a press release
    announcing their intention to rip off every single good idea Apple has
    had over the last year or so.

  • CIA pursues video game – ok, it’s being reported by the WT, but yeah, it does sound moronic

    The CIA is set to spend several million dollars to develop a video game aimed at helping its analysts think like terrorists, The Washington Times has learned.

  • ::STEAMBOY:: – check out trailer #2; japanese steampunk by way of Otomo (his first feature since Akira)

    Steamboy is the most expensive animated film in Japanese history with a budget of some 2.4 billion yen (roughly $20 million). With more than 180,000 drawings and 400 CG cuts, Steamboy is sure to be one of the most elaborate animated features of 2003.

  • mefi: Drug War Victims
  • OJR: interview w/ Google News creator
  • NYTimes: Waiting for Spielberg

    Unlike most urban legends, the one about the Iranian exile stuck at the Paris airport for 15 years is true. Surrounded by a mountain of his possessions near the Paris Bye Bye lounge at Terminal 1 in Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Merhan Karimi Nasseri is still there after all these years — a celebrity homeless person.

  • NYTimes: The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide – ahh, Powerpoint
  • Megnut: Teen girl bloggers – most of whom have more functional/better designed blogs than I
Posted on by lhl

Last night I watched a mess of Star Wars Fanfilms. Still washing the taste out of my mouth (watching the latest Res DVD, which had among other videos, the stupendously awesome White Stripes – Seven Nation Army video (dir. Alex and Martin) helped). I feel sorta bad since it seems that people put a *lot* of time and effort into these things, but most of them are just really, really bad.

Which, along with talking w/ my co-worker, leads me to believe that ‘Mob Spots’ might not be as successful as I originally got carried away with thinking… these ads will obviously be very self-selective, reflecting the communities thoughts; this might not play well against the general or swing voters that need to be convinced… Also, as those Star Wars fan films show, most people have really really bad eyes

Somewhat related: Sometimes is a simple but cool little video; Freestylecollective has a decent reel and some good links in their links section (Flash, alas)