@16
oops. You are wise and your reading comprehension kung fu is strong. Though you have to admit, "lossily" is a silly word. Thanks for correcting me niceily.

@ #4: Then you can upload it to another, more accessible service, probably lossily.

How do you figure lossless? Every free service I can think of (YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, Revver) automatically transcodes uploaded files. Transcode = compression loss. Still, this method will definitely work, it's just clumsy.

@13: D'oh! Curse you, Reptiles!

George Dvorsky at Sentient Developments did a post about this an asked some very good questions. Quoting...

This discovery brings to mind a number of ethical issues and considerations:

# What if some of these people need medical help and medicine?
# Is it ethical for us to not let them know about the greater world around them?
# How could we ever have consent for contact and/or cultural uplift? Should it be assumed? Why? Why not?
# Are we sufficiently justified in keeping this tribe in a zoo-like scenario?
# If eventual contact is unavoidable, why wait until then? Would contact with the modern world ever be 'on their terms?'
# How would we feel if we discovered that we were being observed and purposefully held-back by a more advanced civilization?
# Is this the kind of cultural diversity that we want to preserve? If so, why? To what end? Does cultural diversity benefit the lost tribe?
# What does it mean to say that we risk their "extinction?" Is it accurate to equate the extinction of a culture with that of a species? What are the consequences of a lost cultural mode for a) those who used to participate in it and b) for those who will never be a part of it? What are the consequences relative to the benefits of adopting a new culture?

While I don't have all the answers to these questions, I did (peripherally) address a number of them a couple of years ago in my paper, "All Together Now: Developmental and Ethical Considerations for Biologically Uplifting Nonhuman Animals."

"Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?"

@11: Lepine walks in and kills those he has labeled “women” and “fucking feminists”. Makes it easier for him to shoot at the “label” than at human beings.

Really? "Women" is s dehumanizing label? I think we might be begging the question a bit.

I've been following Eugene's musical career for many years -- I don't say this to make myself sound like I'm really hip to the new cool bands ("You guys are just learning about Gogol Bordello? Well I listen to bands that haven't even formed yet!"), in fact, I'm reasonably square when it comes to new music -- But I live in Burlington, VT where Eugene spent the 1990s and I used to see his band, The Fags, play here regularly. I even have some never-released tracks from a pre-Gogol project he did in Vermont called The Cossacks -- great stuff.

Anyway, I echo the calls to check out the film Wristcutters: a Love Story. There is music by Gogol Bordello and a Russian (perhaps Ukrainian?) character who is a rocker named "Eugene" with a big mustache. I imagine the producers of the film wanted to actually cast Hutz, but couldn't for some reason and cast another guy instead. It's a good film with some great music.

Not whining, but proudly sharing the cake my sister-in-law made for my wife's birthday last summer. The poops were big tootsie rolls. mmm...

Tom @ 71 wrote: If you take this "threat" seriously you are setting a bar so low that virtually any human action whatsoever must be considered as posing an unacceptable threat to the Earth.

This is the only point that needs to be made, it seems. Mathematically, there's a non-zero chance that all of the air molecules in the room you're in will suddenly coalesce into a small area and you'll suffocate -- it doesn't mean we should lose sleep worrying about that possibility.

Scientists tend to put things in terms of levels of confidence rather than certainty, and that scares folks who want to be "sure" of things. Scientists are extremely confident, for example, that water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade at sea level -- that there is a non-zero chance that it won't at some point, doesn't mean we can't act like we're "sure" about it.

@#18: Clay does actually cover the "nazi" angle in the book: one of the key parts of it is to debunk the somewhat overwrought optimism of those who think this sort of thing is magic self-organizing utopia fairy dust.

I'm about half way through and I haven't reached that part yet, but I did find this on a skim through...

Concerning the political value of these new technologically engendered communication modes,

"...the current changes are good because they increase the freedom of people to say and do as they like. This argument does not suffer from incommensurability, because an increase in various forms of freedom -- especially in freedom of speech, of the press, and of association -- is assumed to be desirable in and of itself. This does not mean there will be no difficulties associated with our new capabilities -- the defenders of freedom have long noted that free societies have problems peculiar to them. Instead, it assumes that the value of freedom outweighs the problems, not based on a calculation of net value but because freedom is the right thing to want for society." (pg. 298)

The internet = more freedom, more freedom is "the right thing to want for society," despite the attendant problems that crop up as a result of all that freedom.

He goes on to point out that even if this were not true, there is little we can do to stop the spread of all this (internet engendered) freedom now anyway. The genie is way out of the bottle.

@#11: Freedoms can easily get overturned when evil people collaborate. You missed the point of the comment by a mile.

Perhaps I'm being obtuse and if so, I apologize, but I actually think you might be missing the point. #3 was a comment about how even evil people (and not just us good citizens) get access to all of the freedoms that Shirky says the internet makes manifest, and isn't that a problem, since Nazis and others can use those freedoms to evil ends? I was responding by pointing out that the power of these freedoms is directly tied to their being indiscriminately available, so no, it's actually a good thing that everyone (even bad people) has access.

And since the Nazis did not use the internet to organize the killing of 30 million people, I don't see how your point is relevant. And man, are we invoking Godwin here or what?

@#3: that's the problem isn't it? I mean everybody also includes neo-nazis and a whole slew of "undesirable" who can now find each other, organize and have some measure of political power.

That's not a problem, it's a feature. Freedoms are only really meaningful if even unpopular folks get access to them. See the history of the US 1st amendment for examples.

@#8: Remember despite all the great ways to communicate and collaborate nowadays we have a president in office who by all rights should be impeached, but he isn't. We're mired in a war that more people are ambivalent about than truly angry about. And unlike the energy crisis of the 1970s, people are still driving gas guzzling SUVs and assert their "rights" as citizens to drive what they want despite a crisis being at hand.

You're missing the larger picture. A citizen of the 15th century could likewise have complained that despite this new fangled printing press, Constantinople had still fallen and the Wars of the Roses were still raging and what about those darned kids today?! People were still made vastly more free as a result of the invention of movable type. The internet isn't going to fix all of our problems, but it is making a whole hell of a lot of people much more free and in that respect, the future is bright.

You going to SXSW, Xeni?

Last Resort! -kick-

Sienna's Starry Night has been doing this for years, though it's not free. But it combines Hubble and other image data for it's real-time sky view, plus TONS of navagation tools -- view the night sky from the surface of Betelguise and then zoom in and check out our solar system, etc.

This actually sounds a lot like Sienna Software's Starry Night Pro, which is a piece of software I've used for years and love to pieces.

Hey, that's me! I'm the first guy who has moving video and sound -- Bill Simmon in Burlington, Vermont. w00t!

"This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need! Things are going to start happening to me now."
-Naven R. Johnson

Wow everyone. Several of you have written my experiences to a tee. I called it "the big/little thing" when I tried to explain it to my mom. It was awful for me -- terrifying. It would come with a fever or if I stayed awake for too long and got over tired. When I discovered Pink Floyd in high school I was sure Roger Waters had experienced it too. I would see things in my head like incredibly huge, bulky, roaring semi trucks being suspended by the thinest, most delicate thread. Ack. It still gives me the willies.

That hat rocks! My awesome and nerdly friend Emily made this nerd-tastic knitted R2-D2 cap for our mutual 10-year old friend Lucy (seen here as Darth Flower Girl in my 2006 wedding processional).

The words "sold out" sound so final. Emily (who is my wife) has made and sold two of these so far and she will no doubt make more (and there are other fine cuddly items available too).

I'm admittedly pretty biased, but I think Emily also has a damned fine medieval history/old English/knitting blog too.

I just tried again and was successful this time but they sure don't make it easy. You have to really want to subscribe. They made me create an account and sign in before they would even show me the prices for subscriptions, which are as follows...

2008 print-only subscription - US$73
2008 online-only subscription - US$235
2008 print & online subscription - US$248

I assume the subscription will start with the 1st quarter 2008 issue, but if I want to purchase just this issue that you (Xeni) contributed to, it will cost me another $64. I believe you that they're good people and that it's a good publication (obviously, since I bothered to subscribe), but yikes!

Not sure what the problem was before, but when I tried again it worked (though the process is needlessly cumbersome).

So I just spent ten minutes trying to subscribe to Index on Censorship and the website has defeated me. I even called a US sales manager and left a message. I created an account, agreed to a TOS statement, responded to an email confirmation, followed the links to subscribe online only to be told there are no subscription options available. This journal is not only not free, it's not available at all as far as I can tell.

Vermont: still keeping America safe from itself. W00t!

-Proud Vermonter

Strangelow @ 20 makes a great point and there actually is a perfect video analogy (or three). Before DVDs the vast majority of the home video market came in a 4:3 aspect ratio but major motion pictures were all wider (1.85:1 being the most common flavor). The translation from rectangle in theaters to (almost) square on TV was an ugly process of re-cutting and pan & scan techniques. In the 80s some filmmakers (Coppola and Spielberg in particular) started to compose their shots in such a way that the reduction to a 4:3 frame would not be quite as devastating, realizing that most people would be viewing the films that way ultimately. Was that compromising their art? Maybe, but since it improved the film-watching experience for the more numerous TV viewers, it was a net increase in quality. The films still looked great on the big, wider screen, they were just optimized for the subsequent conversion process.

Anyone who uses a TiVo now is seeing a digitally recompressed version of their TV signal with a noticeable degradation in image quality, but the benefits of the device are so powerful, it's a fair trade off, IMO.

Someone needs to make an Adult Swim show using this technique (or a digital technique that mimics it). I love the look. It reminds me a bit of a fluid-motion Tom Goes to the Mayor sort of thing.

Mark,

Knowing the Wii "ad" is a G4 sketch takes the edge off a bit -- the context of the post made it sound like it was an actual advertisement -- and your perspective is interesting, but I disagree. Even taking the sketch as a commentary on the Mac ads, it's pretty freaking sexist. The differences between the Hodgman and Long characters aren't really about their relative sexiness. Sure, Hodgman is a little more stodgy than the indier-than-thou Long (and yes, more lovable), but they both have personalities of some substance and they're both wearing clothes. By contrast, the Wii sketch isn't about personalities, it's about which woman is more f*ckable. Maybe the G4 writers were trying to make some obtuse point about the Mac guy lacking substance, but I think that's giving them more credit than they deserve. This strikes me as lazy, obvious writing intended to cater toward G4's young, male audience.

BTW, I think it's cute that you found the PS2 woman more lovable, and I'm kind of with you on that, but I think we are supposed to find her shrill and annoying (and fat, and therefore unlovable).

Wow, that Wii ad is teh sexist. Typical of the juvenile crap that the G4 network spits out nowadays.

"Brain and Brain, what is brain!?"

There was (perhaps there still is) a group of "laughter therapy" folks here in Burlington, Vermont. They would meet on the Church St. Marketplace (Burlington's pedestrian mall) in the summer and laugh together. Except the laughter always sounded so fake and forced. It was actually kind of disturbing to watch. It made me uncomfortable in exactly the way genuine laughter doesn't.

OMG this game destroyed hours of my life last month. The frustration is oddly compelling. My wife and I would sit in silence in our living room, laptops open, and experience long stretches of silence broken by occasional "Damn you, cat!" exclamations as the filthy beast made its escape... again.

The same game company makes a simple Risk-like flash game called Dice Wars that is a regular progress bar eater for me.

Okay, since nobody else is, I'll play devil's advocate. I read the full transcript of Kerr's remarks and I agree they're scary -- if you consider the source. The context -- who Kerr is and what his job is along with the ongoing debate over NSA wiretapping -- makes his comments seem Orwellian and all of that, but taken out of context...? Imagine a tech evangelist at a web 2.0 conference had said...

Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed their name on Google understands that. Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured.

Out of context, he's really not all that far from the mark. Hell, replace the words "an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards" with "judicial review" and it's positively progressive in the current political climate.

The basic kernel of what Kerr is saying doesn't strike me as being all that different from some of the stuff in the 2001 Wired piece, The Surveillance Society.

We really do need to reconsider what "privacy" means in the digital age. That doesn't mean we stop holding the government accountable for its abuses of power, but neither should we expect Uncle Same to plug his fingers into his ears, shut his eyes and yell "nananana I'm not listening!"

I'm paraphrasing Bruce Sterling here, but if you give a totalitarian government a hammer, they'll beat you on the head with it. If you distribute hammers to the population of a relatively free society, they'll build houses. Modern information technologies are the hammers and we all have them (the digital divide notwithstanding) and so does the government. We need to be realistic about that and get on with the house-building.

/devil's advocacy

His distinction between the editing tools having been available for decades and the current web 2.0 *democratization* of those tools is key -- and one that gets overlooked all too often when these topics are discussed. Lessig is my copilot.