Thursday, November 24, 2005

A thanksgiving prayer

Good to know that some people are realising the truth, finally! Came across this poem by William S. Burroughs. Its called the Thanksgiving Prayer. Got off BoingBoing

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.


Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Ozzy and a Musical??

Yeah I know.....

But good to know that my favourite rocker, Ozzy Osbourne is back. I was watching a single that he had released just a few days back. Was a remake of some old John Lennon song I guess. Wasn't that great anyways. But Ozzy always sounded great on songs that he had written himself. Loved his older albums like Bark at the Moon. I would say that the last best album that he had put out was Ozzmosis. Man, that was a rocking album with some great guitar riffs and some great lyrics. I guess the best song in there must have been "My Jekyll Doesnt Hide".

It seems Ozzy is looking to make a musical on Rasputin. Man, that must be something. And like Ozzy says, Rasputin lived the rock'n'roll lifestyle before it was invented. He drank heavily, was a womaniser, disregarded personal hygiene and was linked with witchcraft and the occult. He was also famously hard to kill - his assassins had to poison, shoot and drown him.

Cross-posted on BoingBoing.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Yahoo! Error

Got this error on trying to log into Yahoo! Mail today...not sure on whether it is an error on the site or on the browser....

yahooerror

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Sue Sony

Following on the same lines.....here is your chance to sue Sony......if you satisfy the following criteria:

1. You have a Windows computer;

2. First 4 Internet's "xcp" copy protection has been installed on your computer from a Sony CD (for more details, see our blog post referenced above or SysInternals blog);

3. you reside in either California or New York;

4. you are willing to participate in litigation.

Click to visit the site.....EFF

Cross-posted on BoingBoing.

DRM....

Following up on my last post......read this on BoingBoing (again !) that former Director of Product Marketing for Apple's 'Pro' applications department has vowed to never have anything to do with DRM from now onwards.

Direct link to his rave....here.

I would agree. If I friggin pay for the music, don't I own the damn thing then? I mean, if the record companies can own an artists song, then in the same line of thinking, do I not own the music that I buy?

For more anti-DRM links...google here.

Copyright?

I remember the days of old.....probably 10 years or so back, when we used to listen to music on cassettes. These were the days when as kids we thought that a tape for a rock band priced at Rs.45 was expensive!. So all we as a gang could do was pool in the money or see that one guy buys an album a month. Then we would let the tape run in circles....every one borrowing from the other. There were some other of my friends who would make copies of the tapes for themselves.

Pan back to the present age. Times have changed and the mp3 revolution is on. The record companies, whose coffers are already filled with money, see this as a bad trend and start bringing in DRM and other strong-arm tactics like suing users who have used a P2P connection. It is not important that they may never have used it for downloading MP3s.

Coming back to today, I read an incredible article on BoingBoing. It tells of a company that is even restricting indexing of books!!!. As BoingBoing says....

"The founder of this org previously patented a software method for progressively ruining ebooks as a means of discouraging people from reading books they find online -- thanks, just what authors need in a dwindling-readership universe"

This is the link for the company - COCOA

I mean, the trend that is being followed, I think all over the world is becoming insanely commercial. Everything that has to be done has to be looked at from a commercial POV. Man, like the record companies have done, why dont we go ahead and ask people to stop reading. If they don't, make them!

Friday, November 04, 2005