There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Posted on November 30th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, education, history, language & literature | Enter your password to view comments
Protected: Taboo acts and language and how they work together
Denver International Airport, home to alien reptilians enslaving children in deep dungeons
From Jared Jacang Maher’s “DIA Conspiracies Take Off” (Denver Westword News: 30 August 2007):
Chris from Indianapolis has heard that the tunnels below DIA [Denver International Airport] were constructed as a kind of Noah’s Ark so that five million people could escape the coming earth change; shaken and earnest, he asks how someone might go about [...]
Posted on November 30th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, art, history, politics, religion, security, weird | No Comments »
CopyBot copies all sorts of items in Second Life
From Glyn Moody’s “The duplicitous inhabitants of Second Life” (The Guardian: 23 November 2006):
What would happen to business and society if you could easily make a copy of anything - not just MP3s and DVDs, but clothes, chairs and even houses? That may not be a problem most of us will have to confront for [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, art, business, history, security | No Comments »
1st label with more than half of sales from digital
From Tim Arango’s “Digital Sales Surpass CDs at Atlantic” (The New York Times: 25 November 2008):
Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, art, business | No Comments »
George Clinton and the sample troll
From Tim Wu’s “On Copyright’s Authorship Policy” (Internet Archive: 2007):
On May 4, 2001, a one-man corporation named Bridgeport Music, Inc. launched over 500 counts of copyright infringement against more than 800 different artists and labels.1 Bridgeport Music has no employees, and other than copyrights, no reported assets.2 Technically, Bridgeport is a “catalogue [...]
Posted on November 26th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, art, business, history, law, technology | No Comments »
George Clinton and the sample troll
From Tim Wu’s “On Copyright’s Authorship Policy” (Internet Archive: 2007):
On May 4, 2001, a one-man corporation named Bridgeport Music, Inc. launched over 500 counts of copyright infringement against more than 800 different artists and labels.1 Bridgeport Music has no employees, and other than copyrights, no reported assets.2 Technically, Bridgeport is a “catalogue [...]
Posted on November 26th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, art, business, history, law | No Comments »
Offline copy protection in games
From Adam Swiderski’s “A History of Copy Protection” (Edge: 9 June 2008):
Fortunately, the games industry is creative, and thus it was that the offline copy protection was born and flourished. One of its most prevalent forms was an in-game quiz that would require gamers to refer to the manual for specific information - you’d be [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, art, business, history, security | No Comments »
Biometric photo watermarking using your iris
From Eric’s “Canon’s Iris Registration Mode - Biological Copyright Metadata” (Photography Bay: 9 February 2008):
A recent Canon patent application (Pub. No.: US 2008/0025574 A1) reveals the next step in digital watermarking - Iris Registration.
The short and sweet of it?
1. Turn the Mode dial to “REG”
2. Choose between “REG 1″ [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, art, business, science, security | No Comments »
If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller?
From Jillian Cohen’s “The Show Must Go On” (The American: March/April 2008):
You can’t steal a concert. You can’t download the band—or the sweaty fans in the front row, or the merch guy, or the sound tech—to your laptop to take with you. Concerts are not like albums—easy to burn, copy, and give to your friends. [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, law | No Comments »
10,000 hours to reach expertise
From Malcolm Gladwell’s “A gift or hard graft?” (The Guardian: 15 November 2008):
This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: [...]
Posted on November 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, education, science | No Comments »
6 reasons why “content” has been devalued
From Jonathan Handel’s “Is Content Worthless?” (The Huffington Post: 11 April 2008):
Everyone focuses on piracy, but there are actually six related reasons for the devaluation of content. The first is supply and demand. Demand — the number of consumers and their available leisure time - is relatively constant, but supply — online content — has [...]
Posted on October 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, law, technology | No Comments »
John Berryman’s suicide note
From Steve Marsh’s “Homage to Mister Berryman” (Mpls St Paul Magazine: September 2008):
Berryman’s last words to Kate came on that January morning—he told her he was going to campus to clean his office. He had never said that before, she says, but Kate, who was attending Al-Anon meetings at the time, was trying “not to [...]
Posted on September 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, language & literature | No Comments »
The rules of conspiracy
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “The Florentine” (The New Yorker: 15 September 2008): 92:
… the rules by which conspirators must proceed: confide in absolutely no one except when absolutely necessary, try to leave no one alive who might be able to take revenge, and, above all, never put anything in writing.
Related posts
The Chinese Internet [...]
Posted on September 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, history, language & literature, security | No Comments »
Russian music sites
I just had a student email me asking about Russian music download sites. Here’s what I told him:
http://www.mp3sparks.com isn’t accepting payments. Dunno why. They haven’t for a long time, so they’re out of the picture, as far as I’m concerned.
I recommend looking at http://www.mp3fiesta.com now, as well as http://www.mp3sugar.com.
There’s a huge list of Russian music [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, technology | No Comments »
A grammarian’s haiku
So my friend Carrie is helping me edit my latest book in progress, and we got into an email discussion about the way I write & the edits she made. She sent me this haiku, which I thought was great:
I cannot abide
a run-on sentence, ever.
Sentence fragment, yes.
Related posts
Word of the day: Synecdoche
Weldon Kees, polymath
The escape [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, language & literature | No Comments »
Web design contrasted with graphic design
From Joshua Porter’s “Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?” (Bokardo: 14 November 2007):
… web designers necessarily approach design from a different perspective than graphic designers.
Graphic designers can judge by looking. Web designers cannot. Web designers must judge by doing (or observing others doing). The problem is that too many people judge web designs without actually using [...]
Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, technology | No Comments »
Lost her ability to play piano after she regained sight
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I was reminded of a blind woman, a contemporary of Mozart and a most remarkable pianist, who, it is said, could no longer play after she regained some sight.
Related posts
After a stroke, he can write, but can’t read
Our eye seeks the [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, security, weird | No Comments »
Scarcities and the music, movie, and publishing businesses
In Clay Shirky’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007), he takes on the persona of someone talking about what new changes are coming with the Gutenberg movable type press. At one point, he says, “Such a change would also create enormous economic hardship for anyone [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, on writing | No Comments »
Like music, authors will make more money from personal appearances
From Douglas Rushkoff’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But I think many writers - even good ones - will have to accept the fact that books can be loss-leaders or break-even propositions in a highly mediated world where showing up in person generates the most [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, business, on writing | No Comments »
The Internet makes (sloppy) writers of nearly everyone
From Adam Parfrey’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don’t like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone.
Related posts
The shift from [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, on writing, technology | No Comments »