Sunday July 7
Searches of the week - these are all results from Google or lesser search engines that have directly resulted in a visit to this site:
Apologies for the lack of updates in recent days, my ISP's FTP server went 404-compliant from Thursday till this morning. Oh de schone, oh de schone, oh de schone, techonology.
A new challenge for a new month: the next batch of limited expression postings will be in haiku form.
Lance Armstrong rides out
To win this year's Tour de France.
This is getting dull.
Jacko claims Sony
is full of racists. But what
colour's Michael now?
Saturday July 6
Friday Five.
1. Where are you right now? Home, just finished watching le Tour prologue and preparing to review REMOTELY FUNNY. Not looking forward to that one at all.
2. What have you lost recently? My saver bet on BIG BROTHER, that Adele would win. £1 at 8/1 is no great shakes; the main bet is Jade's progress, and I'm already £18 in profit. Had she lost last night, a £2 deficit.
3. What was the first CD you ever purchased? Does that embarrass you now? Hmm. First one I bought was the Wonder Stuff's "Dizzy", but that was a prezzie. First one I specifically bought for myself was the Pet Shop Boys' "Go West," and that remains an utter, utter classic. Especially the b-side, "Shameless." Go find it on your favoured file swapper.
4. What is your favorite kind of writing pen? One that works. Far too many items billed as writing pens do not write.
5. What is your favorite ice cream flavour? If there are real berries involved, I'm very much there.
Thursday July 4
The sense continues: Janis Ian writes a long, thoughtful, and thoroughly intelligent article on the pros and cons of sharing tunes. Even though the RIAA thinks it can prosecute a few key players, it has totally forgotten that these are the people most likely to keep the organisation afloat.
More blocks of sense, as Cambridge, Northampton, Amherst and Leverett (all Massachussetts) rebel against the Republican shadow government's "patriot" bill. Cambridge wrote: "We believe these civil liberties: freedom of speech, assembly and privacy; equality before the law; due process; and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures are now threatened by the 'USA Patriot Bill'." Boulder and Denver are considering similar resolutions, while Portland police deem themselves bound by state law, requiring reasonable suspicion before questionning people.
The mistake would be to respond to one-off crimes against humanity by destroying that which made the US distinct in the first place. The constitution and amendments provided the first framework for democratic governance in the modern world. Some fanatical zealots got very, very lucky. It won't happen again. The laws of statistics suggest that. The disintegration of Mr bin Laden's body into so many fine dust particles last December suggest that. The deliberate self-harm that the US is inflicting on herself argue against that conclusion.
(For information: as we've not heard or seen anything from Mr bin Liner in over six months, I'm making the working assumption that he is now a has-bin, after failing to get out of the Tora Bora complex late last year.)
A Popbitch thread asks after the worst Oasis track of all time. Dunno. I never could bother to listen to a whole album, and most of the last three have been crocks of shite. As for worst singles, how's about that "All My Beatles, Right Here, Right Now" one.
Wednesday July 3
Blatant self-promotion (1): After a chum bought me a CD I'd come ][ that close to buying myself, this should avoid similar problems in the future. Any readers who want to be generous, and who really can't think of anything better to do, may consult. As can anyone who is just plain nosey. (BSP 2 follows next month.) Incidentally, you won't find any CDs from major labels on the list. This is not an accident. You won't find any DVDs on the list, as the technology has been compromised by the Hollywood film studios. You won't find any electronic devices, because they're too expensive.
David Blunkett, the Minister for the Interior, announces plans to introduce an identity card. Yes, he claims it's up for consultation, and it'll only be to ensure that state benefits go to the right people. This offends on so many levels...
First, and weakest, this is a sham consultation. The government will only back down if it looks set to lose votes, and the imbeciles will reckon this is a smart move.
I've never been a strong supporter of centralised state benefits. The UK is too large an entity to administer payments to those in need. The bureaucracy that's grown up over the last 50 years of the welfare state is too large, too inflexible, and riddled with inconsistencies. At the least, we need to replace the nationalised system with regional or local arrangements.
Ensuring that "benefits go to the right people" reinforces the oppresive treatment of the displaced. Britain is made stronger by its immigrant peoples. They are not a drain on the country, as the knee-jerk reactions of the politicians and the worst tabloid media reckon. Incomers are a source of strength. This proposal fits in with the government's agenda: it's a country for those who are already there, and the rest of the world can go hang. That stinks.
And what's worst, it's anathema to the concept of Englishness. An Englishman is trustworthy purely because he is an Englishman. He will say to a friend 7000 miles away that he will meet her at 10:30 the next morning, and nothing will stop him from keeping that appointment. Not snarky (French) check-in assistants, not over-zealous (United Station) security guards, not terminal link train doors that close in his face, not hotels that can't count to 144, and not taxi drivers who are only interested in their next cup of coffee.
I am Iain Weaver, professional, Englishman. My word is my bond. I do not need to prove that.
Tuesday July 2
Business takes me to London from July 14-19. Anyone who fancies meeting up for an evening drinking coffee in a bookstore (or something more adventurous) might want to email me on The Usual Address. It's somewhere on the website. Good hunting.
It's Tuesday, so time for the Monday Mission. Stop arguing.
1. In the United States of America, it was recently ruled that the phrase "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. Do you agree with this ruling? Should the phrase "under God" be removed? Why? Church. And state. Separate. See US Constitution (Philadelphia Rebels Press, 1786, as amended)
2. When was the last time you took a road trip? Where did you go and what did you do? As the United Stations know it, you can't really do road trips from the middle of the UK. You can go for four hours, then run slap-bang into the sea.
3. Do you have any vacations planned for this summer? Already gone? Where to and what? Went to Eastern Germany in March, and might well take some part of the NE US in November.
4. What is the most drastic change to your appearance that you have ever made? Are you brave enough to post a photo? Growing my hair out for three years, then chopping it all off in one swoop. There are no photos.
5. Tell me about something to which you are committed? The promotion of intelligence over stupidity.
6. Now tell me about something you just flat-out gave up on. The promotion of intelligence over stupidity.
Monday July 1
A chum asks how to exclude their page from web indices. Create a file called robots.txt, containing:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
and everything will be fine. Put this file in the same directory as your front page and it'll apply to all subdirectories. This will remove your content from all good search engines next crawl. The main other search engines to remove:
www.alltheweb.com
www.altavista.com
www.inktomi.com
These major search engines all respect robots.txt. Almost all of the minor search engines do, too, and those that don't tend to have about three users.
It's becoming very clear that the RIAA, and the MPAA, and Microsoft, and Ticketbastard, all pay huge amounts to the corrupt nonentities that currently comprise the legislative branch.
Microsoft wants you to pay them every time you boot up your computer. The RIAA and MPAA want you to pay them each and every time you listen to a CD or watch a movie. In the past, they've sold you their products. You paid them once, then were then able to use the product freely without additional payments. But that's no longer good enough for these companies' revenue streams. They want you to pay and keep paying, and they'll do everything they can to force you to keep coughing up. They'll use activation schemes and copy-protection and digital "rights" "management". They'll pay for laws that assume every one of us is a thief, despite the fact that all we're doing is exercising fair use rights.
Well, fuck 'em. Stop buying their products. Vote with your euro and put the sons of bitches out of business. Stop buying their products. Go stick Linux on your computer. Purchase independent CDs. Don't watch movies, read a book.
If, as a result of a boycott, Microsoft's sales start falling, they will claim that piracy is a factor. We need to be able to present convincing figures to expose that as cheap fibbing. We need to be able to say, "Your sales are falling because you produce overpriced, crappy, insecure, buggy products with intolerable licensing restrictions and as a result of that people are migrating to better alternatives." When the RIAA claims that widespread piracy has cut their sales in half, we need to be able to say, "People are still buying music, just not from you. They consider your CD prices an outrageous ripoff and your stable of "artists" to be producing commercialized, cutesy, insipid, unoriginal, homogonised crap, so they're buying directly from artists who price their CDs at reasonable levels and provide value for money." If the MPAA complains about sales plummeting, we need to be able to say, "99.6% of the movies you produce are crap, so we all decided to start reading books and watching reruns of THE CRYSTAL MAZE instead."
More...
In good news, a judge deems the US state murder conflicts with that dominion's constitution. Judge Rakoff said the act "deprives innocent people of a significant opportunity to prove their innocence" and "creates an undue risk of executing innocent people," thereby violating due process.