* Posts by hamsterjam

50 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2010

Adblock again beats publishers' Adblock-blocking attempts

hamsterjam

Re: Android ad blocking question

For me (in a family house with multiple Windows, Linux and Android devices) installing something on each client was a nuisance, particularly since the most effective Android blockers seem to need root access. Pace the already mentioned DNS server, a Raspberry Pi (MK1 will do) running Pi-Hole* (pi-hole.net) has the advantage that it's not taking cycles from your device to do the work, it's easy to set up**, it costs practically nothing and everything on your network gets the benefit. Not alas 100% effective against Google and YouTube advertising yet, but it generally does wonders for the signal-to-noise level. Also gives you a webpage where you can see stats, how many ads have been blocked etc.

* I'm not a big fan of the name, tbh. But it does shut advertiser's pie-holes.

**As long as you understand what it's doing...

Google holds its nose, lets the hoi polloi run PHP on its shiny cloud

hamsterjam

It's all Greek to me...

Ahem. "Hoi polloi" means "the people".

"The hoi polloi" means "the the people".

No icons in this browser, imagine Jimmy Edwards here -->

'Wacky' Spanish VoD squad launches people-picked online vid service in UK

hamsterjam

"Roger" Fosbury?

The inventor of the Fosbury Flop was Dick Fosbury.

Who is this "Roger" of whom you speak?

[icons not available in this browser, just imagine the Jimmy Edwards pic here]--->

Telly psychics fail to foresee £12k fine for peddling nonsense

hamsterjam
Angel

I learned a new phrase today! "Participation TV"

As a non-resident of the UK I have a satellite dish to ensure that my children learn their English from more than just me (and their German from more than just their Mum).

Alas, tuning the British channels is a depressing experience. Shopping channels, channels offering games of "chance", straight-to-video movie channels with centibit video bitrates choked with finservs advertising, on and on it goes. Most loathsome are the channels with leering munters in underwear, inadequately concealed behind garish neon lettering, holding telephones to their ear*. And, yes, the fortune tellers.

I get this stuff FTA. It must be lovely for all those paying Sky for this "content".

What makes it depressing? Firstly, even at fax-machine levels of video quality, these channels cost money to set up. That money seems to have been invested with the sole intention of preying on the weak, and there's no shortage of it.

Secondly, the sheer volume of it, more channels of shit than I can be bothered to count. Are there really that many cretins on the island? Clearly the money-pigs seem to think so, or they wouldn't be funding this stuff.

This story is just the final piece of the puzzle. Conning, gulling, rooking and exploiting are legitimate aims for respectable businessmen. The petty-cash fines are no more than license payments as far as they are concerned. And it's all legit, of course it is! Look, it's "regulated".

The level of contempt for the public displayed by these broadcasters is egregious, yet nobody seems to care. It's a good job that British television is the best in the world, otherwise people might start to notice it...

* "Participation TV". It's like "collateral damage", a euphemism that becomes more revolting the more you think about it. Brought to you by the same people who gave the world "premium telecoms services".

I told you I'd be back: Arnie set for another career revival

hamsterjam

Re: Get your ass to Mars, Get your ass to Mars, Get your ass to Mars, Get your ass to Mars

Not to forget::

(after Arnie has dropped David Patrick Kelly off a cliff)

Rae Dawn Chong: What happened to Sully?

Arnie: I let him go.

Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report

hamsterjam
Go

Alas XBMC will disappoint you - the Android port has no hardware acceleration ATM.

I have had an MK809 II running Android 4.1.1 for about a month, hooked up to my "SmartTV". Those of us that have such things know already that your "internet-enabled" TV is just a client to a server from $TV_VENDOR, which runs those apps that $TV_VENDOR sees fit to make available to you as long as $TV_VENDOR's server is up. OTOH these stick things give you direct Internet access plus pretty much all Android apps for, let's face it, next to nothing.

It does a ton of things that a RaspPi can't and has much more powerful graphics, but it has no GPIO. Horses for courses: I personally think that nothing can be gained by comparing the two.

What does work: Youtube, as already mentioned. Skype works perfectly. VLC and MXplayer also work very well. It runs GTA Vice City for Android superbly at 1920x1080. I haven't yet tried the various emulators (psx, sega, nintendo) but I would expect them to work as well as they do on a tablet. Teamviewer gives me my Win7 desktop's screen on the TV which can be handy. Droidmote makes it possible to use the TV screen as a big tablet. It's delivered rooted, so new ROMs can be easily installed (Finless Bob FTW), and it can be directly connected to a CIFS server

What does not work well: WiFi. It's an open secret that the WiFi implementation on the current generation of these things is manky, and many surmise on various fora that it has to do with inadequate antennae. Solutions: a) open up the case to expose the antenna, b) stick a cheap access point right next to it, c) use a USB Ethernet port.

I paid 35 euros direct from China and am completely satisfied with it. I think that we're going to be seeing a lot more of these things.

Google's 'power to switch off the lights in Europe' has 'chilling effect' - rivals

hamsterjam

This kind of behaviour brings Robert Heinlein to mind

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?

hamsterjam
Happy

I've seen it working, and I liked it

Last September at IBC I saw a HEVC demo of a 4k x 2k video loop. The picture was flawless, and the bitrate was ~12Mb, which is what a standard 1080i HD channel via satellite will take up. I had a nice chat with a man from NTT DoCoMo about it.

Also at IBC Sony had a 4k x 2k stream coming from Astra. The picture was not perceptibly better (subjective of course, the source material was different) but the bandwidth was ~50Mb, which I will never see off a satellite unless I install a dish bigger than my back garden.

This doesn't address the current cost of 4k screens of course, but that's only a matter of time. The first TV I ever watched was 405-line monochrome, now it seems that in my lifetime (my word in God's ear) discernible pixels will cease to exist.

All the concern about patents is understandable, but the net result is a much better way of imaging the world. Now if we could only enhance the standard with blockers for advertising, party political broadcasts, soap operas and reality TV then we'll be getting somewhere.

Achtung! German Amazon workers out on strike

hamsterjam

Re: My Prediction

I saw that documentary and it was hair-raising. Systematic, brutish abuse of staff. Every conceivable loophole in the law being used to cheat and rob people who were in no position to argue.

In my forty-odd years of dealing with them one thing I have learned is that the Germans believe in a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, so these sorts of shenanigans (which have been standard practice in the UK for decades - see recent pieces on UK TV news about zero hours contracts) did indeed cause revulsion amongst the populace there.

Not to mention disgust in my house. My opinion of Amazon was radically influenced, not in a positive way.

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

hamsterjam

Re: Still a great film

Tom 38 already listed 12 Monkeys, which is Terry Gilliam's feature-length remake of the half-hour La Jetee.

Amusingly, Bruce Willis has done the time-travel paradox twice: 12 Monkeys and Looper. Compare and contrast...

hamsterjam

Primer, of course...

...in fact, I would argue that it''s better than any of the ten apart from 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the downright cleverest films ever made.

What's missing?

Cube

The Fountain

Seconds

A Boy And His Dog

Alphaville

and a bunch of others that I'll remember as soon as I hit "Submit".

Nominet tosses plan for shorter .uk domains in the bin (for now)

hamsterjam

Re: Troll-olo...

You're right, of course about the difference between Great Britain and the UK (not to mention the British Isles). But nonetheless the ISO code for the UK is "GB", and almost all other countries use their ISO code.

Now if the ISO code isn't to your liking, that's a conversation to have with the ISO...

hamsterjam

Troll-olo...

Here's a thought:

There's this thing called the ISO. They have standards for all sorts of things. Whatever you might think of that (or them) there's something to be said for consistency.

So practically the entire world uses its ISO country code as its TLD. Apart from a couple of places which are well-known for being "above" international standards...

So if you want to make a TLD available to everybody in the UK, how about ".gb"?

No confusion, standards compliant, problem solved, At least the TLD problem.

As for the other problem (already clearly identified by previous posters) namely "how do we get milk out of this bull we ended up owning", that's a tough one. But subterfuge doesn't seem to be helping, does it?

Microsoft exec: No 'Plan B' despite mobile stumbles

hamsterjam

Re: There's the Kool-aid...

Umm...the first GUI I ever used on a DOS PC was called Gem, and it worked a lot better than Windows 1.0 which came about a year later as I recall.

What happened to it? Apple sued, and that was that...

Segway daddy unveils DIY weight-loss stomach pump

hamsterjam
Flame

Re: Wow, just wow!

Better still, the Segway is actually a natural replacement for the wheelchair. There is already at least one (German) engineer who has designed a Segway-based wheelchair which offers a change-up for those who need it: completely hands-free operation, climbs stairs and kerbs, offers the possibility to be at eye-level with standing "walky-talky's"*. Yet I haven't seen one in real life, and AFAIK it's still only a prototype.

The only people I have seen with Segways are soldiers, policemen and people who can spooge that kind of money on a toy.

Mr Kamen's heart is clearly in the right place (viz the Slingshot water purifier). It's just a shame that the fruits of his cleverness are not automatically available to those who might derive the greatest benefit from them.

I'm guessing that if Mr Kamen had presented the Segway to his backers as a help for the disabled it would still be on the drawing board.

*According to Ian Dury this is what children in wheelchairs call the rest of us...

Windows Media Center EPG has SWITCHED OFF, wail Euro users

hamsterjam
Coat

Curious...

...I've had absolutely no interruption in service from my Gen2VDR system.

Gen2VDR gives you Klaus Schmidinger's excellent PVR software VDR, plus XBMC, Freevo, a KDE desktop, Firefox and more over a Gentoo installation. Installs off a DVD in half-an-hour or less.

What is this "Windows Media Centre" of which you speak?

Making MACH 1: Can we build a cranial computer today?

hamsterjam
Boffin

Re: Two words

Well, sort of. It's not the brain per se but the ability to learn language that's crucial. Every child will learn to speak between the ages of one and five. During that window they learn (by imitation and emulation) the sounds and words that make up their language. This is an involuntary process and it's on a timer - if the process has not been kicked off by five or six years old, then it becomes harder and harder. This is why many deaf people who have been taught to speak sound odd to us. It's also where accents come from, because the sounds that you learn to use to make language become unconscious. This is why many continentals have such trouble with the English "th". They have to work to learn it as older children and most of them can't or won't. (Disclaimer: I speak four languages, have a German wife and live in the Netherlands, so this is not Euro-bashing - it's experience).

Cochlear implants have a huge advantage over hearing aids because they are more sensitive; they have a huge disadvantage because the "sounds" that they generate in the wearer's head are not sounds that we would readily recognise. If they are the first sounds that children hear then yes, they can form the basis of learning to speak. My daughter grew up in an environment where German, Dutch and English were spoken interchangeably, and so she speaks all three without accent, as does her (hearing) younger sister.

With adults who have never heard, results of implantation are almost always disappointing. Hearing adults deafened by age or misfortune are better at adapting because they know what to expect and they can adapt to it.

The fact is, this is a game-changer for the human race. When we were still in the diagnostic phase a German doctor said to me "From now on, no German child will ever need to learn sign language". The doctor who implanted my daughter describes the CI as "die einzige Sinnesprothese"- the only sensory prosthesis. During the last ten years I have seen serious effort being put in by the deaf community to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_and_Fury_(film)">turn back the tide</a>, and I have seen with my own eyes children who could have learned to speak being crippled by withholding implantation until they were five years old. The difficulty the child then has learning to speak is held up as an example by defenders of sign language that "these things don't work, see? Sign language is better".

My daughter attends a normal secondary school, although she is a year younger than the rest of her class. That's not attributable to the CI, but the opportunity that she has to complete a regular education is. As is the fact that she has a clear speaking voice even when she's not "plugged in". A relatively small investment by my medical insurer (40k Euros) has made the difference between a future taxpayer and a charity case. It's a no-brainer.

tl;dr: yes.

BTW sorry about the trumpet-blowing but I'm proud of my daughter and I'm not ashamed of that.

hamsterjam

Two words

Cochlear implant.

My daughter was as good as deaf when she was born in 2000 . Being implanted when she was a toddler means that she functions as a completely hearing human. She has a skull-mounted interface under her scalp which connects to an externally-worn RISC-powered device. She can listen to an MP3 player via wireless, transmitting straight to her inner ear.

This is now.

If I had been born with the same disability, I would be deaf.

Yes, hundreds upon hundreds of websites CAN all be wrong

hamsterjam
Headmaster

Re: Apocalypse in 9/8

Ahem.

The late Dave Brubeck (who I had the pleasure of seeing live when I was a schoolboy) was releasing albums ten years before "Time Out", so that is in no respect his first album...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brubeck

Mystery storage startup sheds cloak, reveals $22m package

hamsterjam
Joke

It's quite clear what this company's product is...

...it's an "eierlegendes Wollmilchschwein"!

BEELLIONAIRE Paul Singer slings $2.3bn into Compuware

hamsterjam

Be afraid, Compuware..

The stunt mentioned in the first post is (as one might surmise) merely one example of the alleged behaviour that has earned Paul Singer his reputation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/romney-delphi-auto_b_2051373.html

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/10/339862/paul-singer-vulture-capitalist-journalists/?mobile=nc

In other words, if I were associated with Compuware I would be thinking "timeo danaos et dona ferentes".

Microsoft demos real-time English to Chinese translation

hamsterjam

Re: Digital babelfish, how I miss you

An interesting fact: there are no English words for "Schadenfreude" or "Blitzkrieg". And there are no German words for "fair play" or "gentlemen's agreement".

Make of that what you will...

Sky support dubs Germany 'Hitler's country'

hamsterjam

My German father-in-law...

...maintains that the Austrians are the cleverest people on the planet.

Why?

Because they've managed to convince the world that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German.

How to fix the broken internet economy: START HERE

hamsterjam
Headmaster

This stuff predates the Web...

Anybody heard of Personics?

In the late 80's a company called Personics invented a system which allowed visitors to a record store to make their own mixtapes from a list of tracks displayed at a kiosk in a record shop. (The tapes were made from special CDs mastered at 4x speed, recording on tapes at 4x speed, so a C-90 took about 25 minutes to make). You could thus sample tracks, make your own compilations and try out stuff over days rather than the minutes an in-store listen gives you.

Just like taping from your friend's record collection except everybody got paid.

The problem was that the record business was about selling pieces of plastic. Personics wasn't pieces of plastic. So the major labels didn't license their music to Personics and because of a paucity of content Personics died.

I remember being extremely impressed by it and making a tape just because it was a cool thing.

Already then, it was clear that the record business was the buggy-whip business with lawyers. If there had been anybody with clout in the major labels who could see the benefits of decoupling the content from the media Personics would have thrived, and there would have been a precedent and a model from the first days of the commercial WWW. But of course if the Queen had balls...

The European indie label I was working for at the time was distributed in the US by Epic, so we were blocked from getting involved.

Later during my time in the record game, an extremely well-connected person once told me that the true power in the US record labels lay with the bean-counters who juggled the margins on the wholesale prices of the records and tapes, and that to them the content was irrelevant. The experience of Personics, together with the subsequent RIAA monkey-business against consumers would seem to bear this out.

Seattle: we built this city, we built this city in Ram'n'Rom

hamsterjam

Re: Cool, but...

Supplementary information:

http://www.nieuwbouw.amsterdam.nl/nieuwsbrief/nieuwsbrief_winter/in_de_schijnwerpers has a picture of that model about half-way down. You can't make out the individual pieces, but you get the idea.

hamsterjam

Cool, but...

...about fifteen years ago when the city of Amsterdam was starting work on the suburb of Ijburg, they had a visitor centre with a model of the finished suburb where they used old semiconductors to represent the buildings.

OT: Ijburg was, in classic Dutch style, built on reclaimed land. (I sailed over it before they reclaimed it). It nowadays gives me the opportunity to shout as I drive past it "I remember when this was all just lakes!".

Ten... top Android games

hamsterjam
Trollface

Ad-supported is not "free", please don't pretend otherwise

In the scribbler game it is necessary to pretend that advertising is simply sunshine rendered into little pictures and films to bring joy to us all. The scribbler must maintain this fiction in order to keep his whisky-vouchers coming. You will not see a journalist criticising advertising - hand that feeds and all that.

The proof that it is a fiction is the use of the word "free" to denote content slathered with intrusive and unwelcome lies. These lies use bandwidth and screen real estate and frequently obscure the content that they are "supporting". These are costs that I must meet. This is plainly not "free", so to tell me that it is is contemptuous.

Please developers: take my money. I am happy to pay you. Just let me know what your software costs. Don't soil your efforts by grovelling to the takers.

Please scribblers: enough with the grotesque, gratuitous and offensive untruths. Denote "ad-supported" software as such, so that I can make an informed decision. Don't deliberately mislead me.

I put my phone into flight mode if I need to run an ad-poisoned app anyway, so the notion that advertising "supports" the software is a non-starter with me, and I suspect that I am far from alone in this.

StreetView disappears Dutch office tower

hamsterjam
Coat

It's not that Irdeto disappeared...

...they just changed the codes on us again.

Mine's the one with the moody smartcard in the pocket.

Apple's TV killer 'on shelves by summer 2012'

hamsterjam

Not forgetting...

Klaus Schmidinger's VDR. Excellent software. Build it yourself, get it from a repository or use one of the ready-made distro's with it built-in. Watch, stream, record, stacks of plugins. It has even achieved a WAF* of 0.9 in our house. Well, 0.65 at least.

Men who buy their home media centres instead of building them out of old PCs and Linux sit down to pee.

*WAF: For those not familiar with build-your-own-HTPC, "WAF" is the Woman Acceptance Factor, expressed as a value between 0 and 1.

Attention swingbellies: Pizza sauce is a healthy vegetable

hamsterjam

Wait, what?

"The Institute warned that USDA's thoroughly un-American proposals would have increased the cost of the average school lunch by 14 cents, and breakfast by 50 cents."

So, in other words, feeding children with additive-packed junk food is desirable because it saves money, notwithstanding the copiously-documented links between diet and behaviour, intelligence, happiness and (obviously) health.

It is obvious (to any suit-wearing, trough-snuffling banker's catamite) that healthy, well-fed, well-behaved, attentive and happy children are a luxury rather than a desirable outcome for society as a whole (which, as any fule kno, does not exist).

Fortunately a group of disinterested benefactors, with only the best interests of the food-processing industry in mind, have heroically jumped in to demonstrate that poisoning children is OK because it SAVES MONEY!

I am reminded of a nameless British politician forcing a hamburger down his unwilling daughter's throat, pimping his own child to the agribusiness lobby in order to prove that British beef was safe to eat.

As a parent I am half-responsible for ensuring that my children get the nutrition that they need in order to thrive, just like any other parent. Measures like this, which are called into being in order to put a few cents in an undeserving parasite's pocket, actively militate against my efforts . Furthermore I gain nothing when my children's contemporaries are abused like this, and my children bear the brunt of the consequences.

Pusillanimity, misanthropy, avarice and callousness have become virtues amongst those whom we permit to administer the logistics of our daily lives. This is self-evidently wrong. It's time to change things. Let's start with putting the severed head of the creep who did this cost-benefit analysis on a pointed stick outside the offices of the Italian social club he/she works for.

There are those who may protest "But that's happening in America, it could never happen here!"

My riposte is that if it can make some MP's "friends" money, then happen here it will.

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

hamsterjam

Not forgetting...

Eddie & The Cruisers

Take It Or Leave It

Head

Control

BSkyB earns more dosh out of fewer new punters

hamsterjam

When I was a boy...

...I was told that the reason people paid for subscription television was that it didn't carry advertising. So to see a broadcaster claiming proudly northwards of UKP10 per week per head subscription revenue for programming that is 25% advertising (is that revenue included?) makes me feel very sorry for the consumers of the UK who clearly have absolutely no idea of how they are being rooked.

Amusingly enough, I read this week that in the UK the average person watches 40% more television than the average Dutch person. Given that watching UK television seems to be a never-ending succession of advertising for ambulance-chasers, loan sharks, hard liquor, and insurance, presumably the extra 40% of time is what is necessary to ingest the same amount of 'content' as the Dutch. Or maybe the Dutch have lives...

How Sky operates may be legal, it may be licensed and it may even be popular although who knows why.

But it is wrong. Doesn't that matter any more?

Is Facebook worth more than Google?

hamsterjam

Re: Facebook is a scam

Your analysis is valid, up to a point. However I remember back in the 90's that the killer idea for the WWW was the "portal". Like so many other IT notions ("cloud", "client/server") "portal" meant whatever the would-be vendor meant it to mean.

But just because the dogs bark and the caravan moves on doesn't mean that the portal was a bad idea, or even that it went away, because it didn't. It changed, it grew, and now Facebook is the portal that everyone was dreaming of back then.

I once had a conversation with a car designer, who told me that he thought the SGI workstation that he designed cars on was an "Alias machine", because he only used it to run Alias software. He didn't realise that it could do other things as well, but he wasn't interested in finding out anyway.

For the vast majority of people who use computing devices nowadays it's about the function. Not how it works, but what it does. If you are a complete beginner and want to use the Internet for digital communication then Facebook will have you up and running in minutes, seconds even.

So IMHO the valuation of the company for the debt-money parasites is based on that fact. The technically-savvy and the quick learners have already been on-line for years, but Facebook opens up the web for the next set, those who haven't had the patience, or couldn't see the benefit or were intimidated by the jargon or whatever.

Plus you don't need a PC any more - it's on phones as well these days. But whether it's a phone or a PC, for the new recruits it's a "Facebook machine".

And if you own a piece of Facebook then all these newbies are belong to you...

Kazaa founder Bermeister returns, with key cloud patents

hamsterjam

This was foreseen long ago...

"Every gimmick-hungry yob digging gold from rock'n'roll

Grabs the mike to tell the world he'll die before he's sold.

But I believe in this, and it's been tested by research,

He who fucks nuns will later join the church."

Now if only I could remember where that came from.

Actually, I can. Can anyone else?

Booze for wrinklies: Good or bad?

hamsterjam

Re: But

Erm...that's exactly what he was doing. His attitude was that, since (statistically speaking) there were a limited number of years left for her to enjoy, she should enjoy them as she saw fit.

His words to my gran: "Don't listen to them. You're nearly 90. When the time comes it won't be drinking and smoking that did it."

And, when the time came, it wasn't.

hamsterjam

For crying out loud! Mind your own business!

My brother-in-law is a doctor. On the day that he became my brother-in-law he met my late grandmother who was at the time 89 years old, and still rolled her own Golden Virginia smokes, as well as regularly enjoying more than the odd "dirty glass".

Egged on by other wedding guests to issue a medical opinion he said, "If she still enjoys these things then she should continue to do so. She doesn't need to worry about long-term consequences". This is wisdom.

Amusingly, though we see a reversal of the expected positions here. The normally-abstemious septics promote drink, whilst the British scorn their own maxim of "a little of what you fancy does you good".

Custard pie activist slams IPCC 'grey literature' habit

hamsterjam
Headmaster

Google misses...

...Wikipedia gets the rebound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Boffins brew up formula for consummate cuppa

hamsterjam

Tea-bagging? Yes! Drinking tea-bag water? Not so much!

My wife is German. When we were first together, I schooled her carefully in the correct procedure for making tea and she in turn showed me how to make drinkable filter coffee, something that one simply didn't get to learn in the UK in the 70's. It's a rich exchange it seems to me, it's a warm arrangement. (Anybody recognise that?)

In any case, the correct way to make tea is to use first flush Darjeeling* leaves, place them in a warmed china pot, add freshly-drawn, freshly-boiling water, cover the pot with a cosy or tea-towel and leave to brew for five minutes.

My wife's initial reaction when I showed her this was suspicion that I was pulling her leg. Only the quality of the final result convinced her that it was worth the effort.

Much like the Japanese, the British require a measure of ritual in the preparation of tea. Otherwise, well, it's not tea.

As for all those correspondents who admit to indulging in "tea-bagging", I aver that that is a practice best indulged in in private...

*Or your choice of suitable tea, bearing in mind that Darjeeling is the best...

Apple's Dutch store plan leaves locals seeing orange red

hamsterjam

I disagree

The Leidseplein is one of the focus points for a night out in Amsterdam, and is also the venue of choice for celebrating returning Dutch heroes (and for Sinterklaas every year). It's also a significant bus/tram interchange.

The Hirschgebouw is also directly across from the taxi rank, which at 5am on a Sunday morning is teeming with people, as I remember fondly from the days before I met Mrs hamsterjam.

Having what amounts to a billboard the size of a city block next to a part of town which draws large numbers of both locals and tourists (not necessarily simultaneously, mind) as well as a large retail outlet directly behind the billboard makes perfect sense.

For my part I was never able to forgive Apple for demolishing the Alhambra cinema on Frederiksplein a dozen years ago to build an earlier emporium. Actually I don't know if they were the ones who demolished it but as a non-fanboi penguin I'm inclined to give them the blame.

Save the planet: Stop the Greens

hamsterjam

Actually, no, you're 180 degrees out.

You can't make nuclear weapons from thorium reactors. That's why there's no motivation to develop them.

Men at Work lose Down Under plagiarism appeal

hamsterjam
Headmaster

"Ghostbusters" wasn't based on "Pop Muzik"...

...it was based on "I Want A New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News.

I recall the story vaguely from when the film was new. Apparently the film's makers had edited some sequences around the song because it was a big hit when the film was being made. However, the plan for the film was that it should address a family audience and so "ixnay on the ugdrays". Which made it necessary to hire a competent musician who could create something which would fit the completed sequences but not turn the youth of America into slavering substance abusers. As to whether that last part succeeded...

Off the top of my head I know of two other examples: one where a film used a David Bowie piece in a sequence which was then replaced by a piece of "original" music which is practially identical (hands up the five of you that saw Nic Roeg's "Insignificance") and one where clearly P Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" was the model but didn't make it into Luc Besson's "The Big Blue". More? Cole Porter's "Be A Clown" vs Freeman and Brown's "Make 'Em Laugh".

Fact is, music is made from only twelve notes. Also music is very often developed from other music. The "Kookaburra" lift in "Down Under" made me laugh back then, because it alluded to the sardonic attitude many Ockers demonstrate towards their own culture, and it fit beautifully into the song.

On the one hand this decision is an indefensible example of greedy rent-seeking scumbags using lawyers to steal somebody else's money. On the other hand EMI's "unrecognisable" claim is not disingenuous, it is mendacious, as the musical quote was clearly intended to be recognised at the time.

One last thing: I learned the song "Kookaburra" in a primary school music lesson in the 60's. We were told that the song was inspired by the call of the eponymous bird. Aren't there any avian lawyers that can step in here and get the money to the *original* composers?

Dell takes x64 micro servers mainstream

hamsterjam
Thumb Up

Clearly named for old-school soul music fans

If you're ready, come go with me...

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-del-vikings-p4068

Enraged wives hand Pakistani polygamist vicious shoeing

hamsterjam
Headmaster

In the interests of accuracy...

...be it noted that "Take my wife - please!" was not said by Les Dawson, but by Henny Youngman.

Is this a belated response to "U-571"?

Tea Party activists accused of rigging Dancing vote to favour Palin

hamsterjam

What?

Offspring of right-wing politician suspected of vote fraud? Wasn't that George H. W. Bush's son (allegedly)?

And plus: Why would anyone believe that a vote on a TV show was honest? What would make it so? The audience is in dead last place in the order of things behind the management, the talent, the guests, the creatives and the advertisers. So much so that the likelihood of the game *not* being rigged is frankly incredible.

Finally, not to put too fine a point on it, who gives a fsck?

LIDL punts circular saw blades to innocent kiddies

hamsterjam
Joke

Why are we surprised?

Don't forget that Lidl is a German organisation.

OTOH, perhaps the preponderance of such toys amongst the German young is the explanation for the success of their football team (and their F1 drivers).

As they themselves say: "was nicht toetet haertet ab".*

* "That which does not kill us makes us stronger"

Apple readies iTunes for Beatles juice, says report

hamsterjam
Megaphone

Ah, the joys of ignorance and self-loathing!

It's a shame that tuppeny-ha'penny iconoclasm has no market value. Otherwise Fuckoff Island would be full of millionaires, instead of embittered, negative wage-slaves.

Here's the thing. Any record you hear on the radio bears audible traces of three crucial musical forebears: The Beatles, James Brown and Kraftwerk.

The Beatles are a musical and social phenomenon. De gustibus and all that, it remains that they changed music, the record business and British society.

They also realigned the UK with respect to the rest of the world. If they had come from another country they would be viewed with pride and affection.

However, pride and affection aren't cool, are they?

It should also be noted that The Beatles incorporated Apple as an company not just as a record label but also as a technology company (although nothing came of it). So they could have strangled Apple at birth, but they didn't. IIRC the deal was that Apple Computer could use the name as long as they didn't do anything related to selling records.

So the reason that the Beatles catalogue wasn't with iTunes is because the remaining Beatles (or their representatives) were under the impression that they had been grossly betrayed.

That being so, the appearance of the Beatles music on iTunes should have coincided with Hell freezing over. So let's see whether it's real or not, shall we?

OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers

hamsterjam
Coat

Developing (and correcting) an earlier joke....

As a name LibreOffice has a certain je ne sais quoi, but I don't know what it is.

Email worm wants to party like it's 1999 (almost)

hamsterjam
Linux

Chortle

<--

<--

I need say no more.

The Reg guide to Linux, part 1: Picking a distro

hamsterjam

The successor to DSL...

...is TinyCore Linux. Super small (CLI version ~6MB, desktop ~10MB) plus your choice from heaps of apps that can run direct from the repository or be locally installed, fast, great on old systems, good forum.

I used it to convert a Neoware thin client into a music streamer for a friend. Base install plus NFS and mpd and a couple of other bits and bobs came to 22MB and fit comfortably on the Neoware's 200MB DOM. My mate picks his music via an iPod Touch app.

Hours of fun, Lego for propellerheads...

www.tinycorelinux.com

Hybrid CD vinyl unites warring tribes

hamsterjam
Headmaster

Fos those who don't seem aware of the fact:

Jeff Mills has made some of the most interesting music of the last couple of decades. The man is a genius. To dismiss what he does as "techno" is akin to describing the oeuvre of Bob Dylan as "folk". It might work for many, but not for me.

It fits well with his work and his approach that he has done this; he is an avid proponent of analogue synths and drum machines.

A live recording was made of his DJ'ing in a club called the Liquid Room in Japan in 1995 which still sounds startling and innovative today, if you can find it.

And ten years or so ago he played in my town and it was astounding.