July 2002 Archives
Apparently Russian's are interested in "Open Source Music"
The link to here translates to:
And about model ðàñòïðîñòðàíåíèÿ music open source when musicians encourage sticking up on disks of pathes with a protective code, âûêëàäûâàíèå compositions in the Network and other ways of their free distribution;
Translation software is funny.
Bookers is GOOD!
For those visiting from the Providence Journal, Hi! I grew up in Hartford, and have relatives in Providence. New England rocks. I thought I'd include a link to more Bands That Allow Taping. A good number of these bands have material on Etree or Furthur. Check it out and get yourself (and the artists!) out from under RIAA's thumb.
Ahhh, America. Spreading democracy throughout the world
Is Saudi Arabia On The Brink Of Collapse?. Plastic::Politics::Protest: The Observer, running a series of articles on Saudi Arabia, reveals that the country has been gripped by massive anti-government demostrations, which the Saudi authorities have been very careful to keep out of the world's spotlight, while the many We [Plastic: Most Recent]
Sun and Apple not working on StarOffice for Mac. Companies refute reports [InfoWorld: Top News]
Microsoft releases Windows 2000 fixes. The software maker releases the third major service pack to premier customers, but most will have to wait until Thursday. [CNET News.com]
Service Pack 3 includes all previously released security fixes, "plus security fixes learned from the security push," said Jim Cullinan, Windows lead product manager.
The article also mentions that service pack #1 for XP will be arriving soon.
Let's see how they do.
This blog is now available at http://www.0xdeadbeef.org. Yay!
What's 0xdeadbeef?
I didn't think much of Bruce Perens calling off his planned violation of the DMCA because of concerns by his employer, Hewlett Packard. After all, the DMCA is bad law, and HP was just trying to protect themselves from a bad law which is increasingly being exercised. Now however, HP's motives become clearer.
On July 19th, a researcher from SnoSoft posted an exploit to BugTraq. Granted, I would assume from the tone of the message, that good responsible disclosure policies had not been followed with this notice. Regardless, HP's response would seem a bit heavy handed.
It wouldn't look good for HP to be prosecuting a DMCA complaint, while at the same time letting one of its employees openly protest its legality.
Yes, HP is truly a good "open source citizen"
I'd hope to see futher comment by Bruce Perens on this in the near future, but I'm not optimistic.
As a comment on that last post....I hate Internet Explorer. That last post took me 1.5 hours to complete thanks to 4 crashes by IE which wiped out the post each time. Ahhhhh, technology.
A very interesting post by Michael Calore on the Medeski, Martin & Wood mailing list today regarding Sun Ra's influence on the 'spacing out' of MMW.
The theory:
so, here's my theory... the period of 1997-8 saw the band listening to
the sun ra CDs "Angels and Demons at Play/Nubians of Plutonia", and
"Fate in a Pleasant Mood". also, quite possibly "Art Forms of
Dimensions Tomorrow/Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy", the
percussion-heavy proto-psyche masterpiece (in my opinion).
The evidence:
evidence? in april of 1998, "the golden lady" and "ankhnaton" started
showing up in sets. "golden lady" is from nubians, and "ankhnaton" is
from "fate in a pleasant mood". also, "whatever happened to gus?" from
combustication has a VERY similar feel to the sun ra tune "angels and
demons at play" from the album of the same name. chris even talks
about the tune's conception in the bass player magazine interview,
saying that they went out to dinner, ate a big meal, then went into
the studio and laid town a track with a "heavy sun ra feel". play the
two songs back to back and you'll see what i mean. "start/stop" has
also always reminded me of a sun ra stomper. granted, the arkestra has
horns, flutes, and an entirely different rythym section, but the vibe
is still there and that's what counts the most.
Furthur evidence in a post by Russ Gershon:
Medeski was an admirer of Sun Ra at least as early as 87 or so, when
we met, although I don't think had listened comprehensively at that
point. The thing he liked best about Ra (and shares with him) is the
ability to play any kind of keyboard and figure out what sounds good
about it. This stands in contrast to many jazz keyboard players, who
keep wanting their instrument to sound like something else (usually a
piano, rhodes or organ). Medeski and Ra revel in the particular
identity and weirdness of whatever they are playing; they keep poking
and prodding any cheezy keyboard until they find its sweetest (or
nastiest) spot.
One of my favorite aspects of John Medeski is the fact that he can make amazing music on just about anything, from a Hammond, to a toy piano, to a melodica.
I haven't explored Sun Ra in many years, but this thread has added them to my list once again.
And while I'm here, I need to give props to Russ Gershon for all the great music his label, Accurate Records, has unleashed upon the world. In addition to the first widespread exposure for my current favorite, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, he's published albums from Jazz Mandolin Project, Spanish Fly, Plunge and his own ensemble, Either/Orchestra. They even published the first Morphine album, and MMW's 1992 debut, Notes from the Underground. Thanks Russ!
Finished the Bruce Schneier article in Atlantic Monthly. Having read Bruce Schneier's writings for quite a while, I'd say its a very informative distilling of his views for the non-technical person. All in all a very good read. The focus of the article is on the 'people' problems of security. You can have the highest technical security measures in place, but it does you no good if there aren't human eyes and minds watching the system. This article, along with Secrets and Lies provide a great introduction to the problems of security, as well as the fallacy of the measures being put in place by the government and private industry.
As an addition to the comment I posted over on Scott's blog, I thought I'd provide you with some 'Open Source' (as in free beer) artists who rule.
- Medeski, Martin & Wood
- Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey
- Robert Walter's 20th Congress
- Sex Mob
- Critters Buggin
- Bill Frisell
- Les Claypool (in his many incarnations)
- Wayne Horvitz
All of these artists are signed onto major labels of one type or another, but they allow their fans to tape them live and trade the shows freely. In return for this, they get word-of-mouth support, the hope that people will buy their CD's (which they're not making much on anyhow, thanks to the raping of RIAA and friends) and most importantly, bigger crowds at their live shows, where they make a good percentage more than off their CD's. Support live music from artists that respect your rights as fans.
There's lots more, and most of these are jazz of one type or another (although I hate 'genre' labeling). Check out Furthur and Etree on the Navigation bar for more info. As I said below, I'll probably be putting up some reviews of cd's and live shows (both in person and on cd) at some point in the future, and I'm sure I'll hit on all of these bands and more when I get to that point.
Just as a disclaimer, I'm signed up for Amazon Associates, so if you buy anything using links off here, I'll get some $$ off it. If you don't like that, just strip out the 'stufffromwozz-20' tag in the URL. But really, it doesn't cost you any more, and it thanks me for being so goddamned cool. ;)
Thats it for tonight I think. Night!
Got some new CD's today. Working downtown near some music stores is dangerous.
- Between Nothingness & Eternity [Live] - Mahivishnu Orchestra
- Pharoah's First - Pharoah Sanders
- Rio - Uri Caine
- Ego - The Tony Williams Lifetime
- Lifetime - Tony Williams
At some point I'll get my cd list up here, and maybe even write up some reviews if the mood strikes me.
Eweek has an articule on Palladium which attepts to present the two sides of the argument surrounding the technology. On the con side, they speak with Crispan Cowan and strangely enough, fails to mention that Wirex, which he founded and is currently the 'Chief Scientist' of, makes a series of products to 'harden' Linux. I presume this was because the reporter was too dumb to know anything about what he's reporting, but Crispan would seem to have a major conflict of interest here, which a responsible 'scientist' would be sure was clear. My favorite quote:
"I'm ... afraid of what this means for their monopoly. I think it's heinously evil," said Crispin Cowan, chief scientist at WireX Communications Inc., a security vendor in Portland, Ore.
Interestingly enough, the only counter in the 'debate' comes from a professor at the University of Maryland (see my earlier post on Microsoft and Academics) and the Palladium product manager.
Ahhhh, the media.
I've been an Art Bell fan for years, initially not so much for his guests as his callers. In any case, this looks interesting:
Conspiracies! Conspiracies All Around Us! (They're Coming To Get Me....) Part One: Jack the Ripper. This is a four-part series dealing with the fascination of today's society and conspiracies thought to be put forth by governments, people, extra-terrestrial beings, their pets, etc. One of the most prevalent things about the Information Age, is how fast said information travels. With the advent of the Internet, and its wide adoption by people within their homes, it is literally as easy as a finger press to get the newest information. In this series, I will focus on 3 main events that have built up innumerable conspiracy theories (and other theories beyond conspiracy) over the years, some theories sounding so ludicrous you wouldn't expect them to be believed...but they are, by some. Part one will deal with Jack the Ripper, the infamous serial killer of Whitechapel, London, in 1888. Part two will deal with Roswell, New Mexico, and the UFO sighting/downing. Part three will deal with the Kennedy Assassination(s). Part four will deal with the effects these conspiracy theories have on society as a whole, if any, as well as my thoughts on why these theories arise. [kuro5hin.org]
Also in this months Atlantic Monthly, part two of their series on the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche. Part one was very good.
Just got the September "atlantic monthly" in the mail. Haven't had time to really dive into it, but there's a rather long interview with Bruce Schneier, a very smart security guy and author of 2 of my favorite security books: Applied Cryptography and Secrets and Lies. He also edits a very interesting security newsletter. I'll comment more on the article when I'm finished with it, but so far it makes a highly recommended read.
Its way past time: CEOs to Guarantee Earnings. Uh .. duh, shouldn't they have been doing this before?
More encouraging news: Microsoft serves up Palladium details.
"Palladium is not DRM (Digital Rights Management), but it's a great platform for building DRM on," Juarez said. Palladium was initially linked to a series of patents granted to Microsoft on a "Digital Rights Management operating system" and it remains unclear how those patents will play into the system. DRM is a technology that allows content owners to place on their work restrictions that can control how the files are shared and copied."
They also say that it will be an optional feature in the OS, enabled by the user.
Overall, I think Palladium is a good idea, if done right. Microsoft's previous attempt at creating a 'secure' hardware platform didn't work as well as they would have liked. If it was an opt-in system, with source code I can examine, I'd use it.
Another potentially good sign for Microsoft's secuity effort: Gates, academics join on security, shared source. I'll be more impressed when I see the final list of schools. None of the three mentioned, with the possible exception of UCSB have any significant security research underway (that I'm aware of). I'd like to see schools with serious security programs like UC Davis, Dartmouth, Purdue and U of Michigan involved before I'll take it as a serious effort. They do say the final number will be 12-15 schools, so I imagine a few of those I mentioned will make it in. Here's hoping!
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