I'm alive! Woo!

[silveradept]

Finally, my powers are restored, and my connection has returned to me. I suspect my previous problems with connection may have been my router rather than any other thing’s fault, after my connection started behaving erratically soon after all the installation and setting-up was done. Removing the router from the chain appears to have fixed the problem.

Anyway, the long-awaited link list strikes again. In celebration of being untethered and unfettered, some articles that probably would get caught by a work filter - Toke Like A Girl, which wonders why women don’t do more marijuana statistically, and How to Look Good Naked, a television programme that seeks to make women who feel unhappy with their bodies look good, well, naked (or probably pretty close to it), and then build from there. And one more thing - the birth control pill is apparently helpful in fighting certain types of cancer.

Shameless exploitation and yes, a potentially undying bad joke - Buy Uranus. Actually, heavy on the bad joke, less on the serious. Hur, hur, hur.

More seriously, a Northwest passage shipping lane may now be open, thanks to Arctic ice melt. So while shipping may fall down, the environmental impact could be much, much worse. And while biofuels may help, they have to be done in a sustainable manner, or it really doesn’t do much or good, and possibly even more harm. In some ways, perhaps Soylent Green's predictions are on-target.

As a reminder to all of us, and something that anyone who’s worked in retail or other jobs where cash and such things change hands can say with authority, properly distracted, the human mind will believe it sees money when it was only given blank sheets of paper. Or nonwinning tickets exchanged for payouts. It relies on you not paying attention to what you’re getting and working under the assumption that this is a transaction like any other. And that’s a relatively small-scale distraction. Who knows where the perception filters and somebody else’s problem fields are. Or when people try to change them, like Universal Media Group claiming that a collector can't resell promotional CDs given to him, because since they were never sold, they remain the property of UMG.

Last for tonight is a pinnacle of hacking and evolution - Super Mario World levels that require no input to clear. That’s the original found, and if that’s intriguing, ten more of the same type await those who prefer the easy yet flashy route through the stages. I, however, am going to go to sleep. Work beckons tomorrow, and I still have to do some work that I didn’t get to tonight.

Comments

[przxqgl.livejournal.com]

moe tokes, although admittedly, she tokes way less than i do...

also, the "Buy Uranus" site reminds me of a site i came across a few years ago (which, unfortunately, is no longer there) which was "I Own The Moon" and encouraged people to buy real estate on the moon. i must admit that i bought two parcels myself, which is one of the reasons why it is unfortunate that it is no longer there.

[silveradept]

I think that was the site they were aiming to parody. Of course if/when moon settlements arrived, I wonder if those claims would still be valid, assuming you had documentation.

[przxqgl.livejournal.com]

except that the "I Own The Moon" site didn't have this text on their "about" page:

BuyUranus.com is a novelty site operated for entertainment purposes only. All of the merchandise for sale on this site is only for entertainment and holds no value other than it's entertaining nature. GP Networks, Inc. in no way claims that when you buy a piece of Uranus that you have any legal claim to that little piece of the Solar System unless you go up there and put a fence around it personally.

[silveradept]

Then it's really too bad they folded. Perhaps once private flights start making it to Luna and back, the idea of owning land on the moon will revive.

Maybe. Perhaps once they go to Luna, they'll start wanting to go to Mars and the outer planets.

emanantize the eschaton!

[przxqgl.livejournal.com]

if they don't blow themselves up first...

Re: emanantize the eschaton!

[silveradept]

Well, we'll see. I can see it being more a matter of exodus from Gaia to Luna or Mars or something like that, some "chosen few" of their chosen delusion, and then wiping the rest of us out so they can start again on their perfect world.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Glad to see a show designed to make women be more happy about their bodies, but at the same time I dislike that it's a show, if that makes sense.

So now BC cures AND causes cancer? Niiice.

Read the headline about the blank paper and all I could think was "he's a Time Lord" :-P

You're going to see labels that say, "This book not for use in libraries, for personal reading only." You're going to see labels on DVDs that say, "This DVD not for video rental, for home use only."

I don't see where promotional CDs can be put at the same level of library books and rented DVDs. I see the point behind universal saying those CDs can't be resold, because they're given away and meant to be played on radio stations and in stores to generate sales of the actual album. Trying to turn a profit off of something that was free to begin with is just all sorts of wrong.

Glad to see you back with 'net :) Will get the spare router out to you as soon as I can.

[silveradept]

You like it that they're saying "Be you", but don't like it because it still plays into the objectification and general sexualization of women in society. Kind of like a Dove ad, in some ways.

Yeah, it's possible that to cure one thing, you'll cause another. Sort of the whole idea behind chemotherapy and radiation therapy for cancer.

Just a good con man, certainly not a Time Lord. Time Lords get the paper to do it fr them.

Generating a profit off of things that are all sorts of free - so advertising dollars that go into network broadcast radio and television are all sorts of wrong, since those companies are likely to make a pofit off of something "free"? Or, perhaps, the exploitation of natural resources to craft the CD and the means of its distribution? We all make profits off of things that are free. Libraries and their friends groups especially. So what could happen, then, is that you won't be able to even give someone else the promo CD if you're done with it without asking the publisher if it's okay. Which is cumbersome and annoying and why the First Sale Doctrine applies and should apply even to things that are given away.

If none of that made sense, think about it this way - you don't actually own your computer's software, if it's commercial and proprietary (with some exceptions). The company can, at any point, demand the return of its property and tell you to uninstall it, and you're bound by the contract/agreement that you agreed to when you installed the software (at least for now). Microsoft already says that you can't transfer their software to another person excepting under specific circumstances. Whereas most people would think, "Hey, I bought this. I can do with it whatever I want, including making sixty copies and/or spreading it all over the Internet for free." See the difference? UMG wants their promotional CDs to be handled in the same way that most software is now.