Monday 14 February 2011

Digital music, file sharing and the podcasting revolution

The rise of digital music resulted from the convergence of different forms of technology. First, the development of MP3s which allows the average song to be compressed down to approximately three megabytes. This enabled files to easily be distributed over increasingly fast broadband networks. The development of peer to peer file sharing software - such as Napster and Kazaa - meant that users could share their digital music files easily across networks. The decreasing cost of computers and the introduction of portable MP3 players like the iPod drove consumer interest in this new format of music. These developments have had implications beyond the music industry, leading to the rise of podcasting and the creation of new copyright movements.
Please go to the lessonbucket website for an invaluable resource for teaching VCE Media Unit 1: Representation and Technologies of Representatrion


Sunday 13 February 2011

How TV Ruined Your Life


The brilliant
Charlie Brooker continues his fascinating exploration of television’s impact on our daily lives with a new six-part BBC series called How TV Ruined Your Life, which explores the medium’s usurpation of reality.

Happily, the first three episodes have been graciously uploaded to YouTube. Hopefully they’ll stick around awhile.

Episode 1: “Fear” — Part 1 (above), Part 2.

Episode 2: “The Lifecycle” — Part 1, Part 2.

Episode 3: “Aspiration” — Part 1, Part 2.

Episode 4, “Love,” is scheduled to air Tuesday, 2/15.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Payback: Upset Ex-Girlfriend Spams Boyfriend In Google Images


Upset boyfriends and girlfriends are nothing new. There are plenty of stories of girlfriends getting back at their ex-boyfriends for mistreatment and visa versa. But in the age where Google ranks supreme, you do not want to mess with a girl who knows how to manipulate Google.

One guy learned this the hard way.


Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:

There has to be dozens of the same image, all with little notes from the girl written all over them. I won't name the individual in text on this page (because I do not want the page to rank for his name) or the notes but it is a bit interesting to see upset ex-couples use Google Images as payback. I suspect the images will be dropping out of Google shortly simply because it seems like the image sources have been removed from the servers they were hosted on.


As per the complaint thread started by the boy's mother at Google Webmaster Help, the mother was extremely upset about this. She said:


My minor son's ex-girlfriend took a copyrighted picture of him (we own copyright) and uploaded it more than 60 times to a website. On each image she wrote slanderous, defamatory and pornographic captions. The webmaster of the site states he removed the images 6 weeks ago, but Google Search still shows all the images. My son is so stressed out and embarrassed and we've done everything we can to get images off of Google including URL removal tool, a letter to Google Legal with all the URLs because of copyright infringement, and nothing has worked!

You see, she knew to have the source site remove the images but Google still has them in their index. The issue is that although the images appear to be gone, the URLs they are sourced via are actually returning a 200 status code, which to Google means they are still there. They need to return a page not found status code, and they do not.


Lesson? Before you upset your girlfriend or boyfriend, make sure they do not know how Google works. Oh, and never mess with an SEO.


Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Friday 4 February 2011

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

In The Beginning: Star Wars

By Miss Cellania in Film, Mentalfloss, Science Fiction on Sep 23, 2010 at 4:38 am


A long time ago, in a state far out west, George Lucas created Star Wars.

Striking Back

One of our favorite Star Wars fan sites Spokybug.com (and yes, we have favorites) has this to say about the origins of the trilogy:

“A critic might say, ‘Oh, Lucas combined Flash Gordon with Akira Kurosawa … and sewed it all up with Joseph Campbell’s ideas on the structure of myth.’ And Lucas did do all those thing, but that can’t be the final answer.”

OK, it’s not the final answer, and we’re not trying to denigrate Lucas’ achievement – he’s the auteur of one of the most successful films of all time, one that many critics consider the world’s first “high-concept” film, and also one that happens to be completely awesome. but in terms of literary inspirations, those three sources were big ones; Lucas unquestionably based much of his creative opus on the tales he found in the Flash Gordon TV serials, Akira Kurosawa’s epic movies, and Joseph Campbell’s mythical archetypes. Let’s tackle the three of them with the help of a fan who runs the aforementioned site, Kristen Brennan. (What, you were expecting someone more … male?)

Flash Gordon


Brennan’s a genius on this, so we’re gonna let her start things off: “George Lucas often said that his original idea for the project that evolved into Star Wars was to remake the Flash Gordon movie serials from the 1930s (a ’serial’ is a movie shown in weekly installments of about 10-20 minutes each). [But] the license wasn’t available….Despite the plot changes, the Star Wars films are still bursting with with influences from the Flash Gordon movie serials, including the Rebels vs. the Imperial Forces, the ’soft wipes’ between scenes, the underwater city with the manta ray-shaped sub and even the famous ‘roll up’ which begins the movie.” We agree; a side-by-side viewing of Flash Gordon and Star WarsStar Wars fans know as the home of Billy Dee Williams – er, Lando Calrission. Flash Gordon also had a Cloud City, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Lucas borrowed it directly. Both “cities” may be made of castles in the air, but they’ve got solid foundations – in Jonathon swift’s famous tales of Gulliver’s Travels, which also features airy domains. They, in turn, probably drew from Cloudcuckooland in the famous play The Birds, by Aristophanes (c. 448-380 B.C.E.). stills is downright eerie. We’d also like to throw in a word about Cloud City, which

Akira Kurosawa


Although Kurosawa is most famous for the Seven Samurai, that’s not the movie that most directly influenced Star Wars. Lucas relied on at least two other films instead; most obviously Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress, 1958) and Yojimbo (which means “bodyguard”, 1961). In The Hidden Fortress, a princess in disguise must make her way through enemy territory, aided (and occasionally hindered) by two bickering peasants who are clearly the inspiration for C3PO and R2D2. As for Yohimbo, check out the scene where some rough types brag about being wanted by the authorities, a confrontation that ends with somebody’s arm being cut off – and then take a look at the near-identical scenes from the Cantina in Mos Eisley, that famous “hive of scum and villainy.”

Joseph Campbell

In envisioning the archetypal “hero’s journey,” Joseph Campbell laid out a sort of myth that’s mirrored in all great quests. Here’s how Campbell explained the journey, and how Star Wars riffs on it (in a fashion that Campbell approved of, by the way – he and Lucas became close friends after the first movie came out):

“The call to adventure”
Princess Leia shows up via hologram and does my “you’re my only hope routine,” necessitating a trip to Alderaan.

“Refusal of the call”
Luke says that nah, he really can’t go, because he has to help with the harvest.

“Supernatural aid”
Obi-Wan rescues Luke from the Sand People.

“The road of trials”
Luke attempts to to wield a light saber and ends up looking foolish.

“The meeting with the goddess”
Luke meets Leia, who is decked out like an intergalactic vestal virgin.

“Temptation away from the true”
Luke is tempted by The Dark Side.

“Atonement with the father”
“Luke, I am your father,” anyone? (Actually, that’s not the real line from the movie, but bear with us.)

“Apotheosis”
Luke becomes a Jedi, kicks some serious tail.

________________________


The article above was reprinted without permission from mental_floss‘ book In the Beginning.

Stuck In Motion

From the blog Stuck In Customs by Trey Ratcliff

Introduction

This is an exciting new combination of hardware and technique that is now available to everyone – from hobbyist to professional! Cool!

I enjoy experimenting and then sharing techniques and how-tos with people. I did the same thing with my HDR Tutorial, which you can have a look at if you are new to the site! (by the way, welcome!)

The Effect in Two Minutes

You’ll get a good idea of the technique by watching this video below. It’s called “The Moments Between: Seeing the Edge”.



Sometimes people just want to know the specifics, so here you go:

Hardware:

Software:

  • Graphics and Special Effects: Photoshop and After Effects: See the Latest Deals on Adobe Products.
  • Note that you do not need these products at all. You can simply use iMovie or any video editing product.

In the video, I interchaged scenes shot with those three cameras. You can probably easily detect the slow-motion footage from the Casio EX-FC100 from the regular-speed D3S footage.

At the site, you will see more detailed information on the “technique”.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

You want a drink? Give us your fingerprints

Getting personal ... patrons line up on Australia Day outside the Coogee Bay Hotel where they must agree to have their identification details scanned into a database - and checked against a list of undesirables - before being allowed to enter.

Getting personal: patrons line up on Australia Day outside the Coogee Bay Hotel where they must agree to have their
identification details scanned into a database - and checked against a list of undesirables - before being allowed to enter.
Photo: Lee Besford

THOUSANDS of clubbers and pub patrons are being forced to submit to fingerprint and photographic scans to enter popular venues, seemingly unaware of the ramifications of handing over their identity. Biometric scanners, once the domain of James Bond movies, are flooding the pub market as the fix-all solution to violence and antisocial behaviour. The pubs are exerting more power than the police or airport security by demanding photos, fingerprints and ID. Police can only do it if they suspect someone of committing a crime and they must destroy the data if the person is not charged or found not guilty. Yet one company boasts that the sensitive information collected about patrons can be kept for years and shared with other venues in the country - in what appears to be a breach of privacy laws. There are no official checks and balances on how the data is collected, stored, used or shared. Federal Privacy Commissioner Tim Pilgrim has warned he does not have the power to audit the systems and the lack of regulation has even industry players calling for tighter controls.

NSW premises using the systems include the Australian Brewery, Lone Pine Tavern, Phriction Night Club and the Mean Fiddler in Sydney's west; Home Nightclub, the Coogee Bay Hotel; Woy Woy Leagues Club, Woodport Inn and Munmorah United Bowling Club on the central coast; Fotheringhams Hotel in Taree; and Wollongong's Palm Court Hotel. At the Coogee Bay Hotel, patrons not only queue for fingerprint scans, but may then be rejected on the grounds of a curious dress code, which includes a ban on stepped haircuts, a common style where there is a clearly visible line between layers of shaved and unshaved hair. However, complaints have been made that the hotel does not enforce the code unless it wants to refuse entry to groups of Lebanese males. When The Sun-Herald visited the hotel last week, it was not enforcing the dress code, which includes bans on visible tattoos, singlets, thongs and rats-tails.

Despite the explosion in the use of biometric scanners, criminologists at Deakin University warn they have ''slipped'' into use in Australia with ''little public awareness, no policy consideration and questionable claims concerning their effectiveness in enhancing safety and reducing crime''. The Biometrics Institute of Australia, the main industry group, has already called for changes to the Privacy Act including mandatory privacy impact assessments and audits, no exemptions for any group and a unified national privacy system. But one scanning company, ID Tect, advertises that the information is stored on a national database and can ''share a banned list of troublemakers - whether that listing is local, statewide or national''. Company director Peter Perrett did not return calls to The Sun-Herald. The Privacy Commissioner warned that: ''Anyone using this technology should be aware that under the Privacy Act, organisations must provide individuals with notice of what will happen to the collected information. It cannot be automatically shared with other venues, even if the purpose for sharing it is the same across all the organisations.'' The Privacy Commissioner has drafted guidelines for ID scanning, which are available on its website.

NightKey fingerprint scanning system director David Wallace has called for regulation and protection of data saying ''anything bad in the industry reflects back on everybody''. NightKey has been working with NSW Police to ensure it complies with security and licensing laws. Mr Wallace said the system was audited annually. He would not reveal the audit results but said the system had been improved based on the findings. Australasian Council of Security Professionals chairman Jason Brown said biometrics were a higher level of intrusion than just checking a licence and ''it needs to be managed, accountable, audited and subject to the same professional ethics as security and surveillance''. The fingerprint scanning system takes a photograph of the patron, scans their ID and takes a fingerprint which is converted into a map of the meridian points on the print and converted into a PIN. When a patron returns, the scanner matches the meridian points of their finger to the code to find their identity. The company insists there are no fingerprints kept in the system. Patrons can request their details be deleted from the system although not if they are flagged as troublemakers. ID Tect scanners scan identities into a database which can be shared with hundreds in the country. The system stores the data for 28 days and then it is deleted. But the troublemakers' IDs can be kept indefinitely.

Among the drinkers scanned on entry to the Coogee Bay Hotel on Australia Day was Ben Davies, a fraud investigator from Mosman. He was ''shocked by the willingness of so many people to hand over their entire lives in this way''. ''You have to be so careful with identification details. If someone breaks into the system, that means someone could be walking around with a fake version of my driver's licence.,'' Mr Davies said. Laura O'Donnell, a Bondi PR manager, said a driver's licence should be enough. Tamara Salamacha, of Maroubra, said she did not like such tight controls. But ''like most people in here, I just agreed to let it happen, so I could come in and join my friends''.

By Natalie O'Brien and Eamonn Duff, The Age, January 30, 2011 [via]

Facebook-deprived man sues for $500K

For Mustafa Fteja, Facebook is more than just a hobby. It's the main way the 30-year-old Albanian native has stayed in touch with friends and family all over the world for three years, and when he was inexplicably cut off from it, he did what every other person in this country seems to do when they're mad enough: he sued. In seeking $500,000, Fteja is suing Facebook for disabling his account, in which he had about 340 friends and family and had spent "timeless hours creating content and relationships [Facebook] benefitted from," the suit contends. He wants it back on, and he wants the company to pay for the damage of alienating him from his family and friends (about $1500 per friend/family).

"I had the Facebook for one purpose — to keep in contact with my family," Fteja told The Daily News. His access to Facebook, he said, stopped in September, and repeated pleas to the company were for the most part unanswered, except for a generic e-mail sent to him two weeks later telling him he violated the terms of the Facebook agreement. These notices usually go to accounts suspected of being fake or uploading malicious content, or that "infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law." There are a lot of mines to step on that could result in Facebook shutting down someone's account, according to its terms of service, and Fteja can't figure out what he did wrong. "I know one thing - I didn't do anything," he told The New York Post. "I didn't violate anything."

He aired his speculations to the tabloid. "Did someobody hack my account? I don't know. If it's that someobody hacked my account, Facebook should help me. If you have a problem with your AOL login, AOL helps you. Not Facebook," he said. Fteja also thinks being Muslim may also have something to do with the shutdown, though that seems like a longshot to prove. He claims he has a higher purpose than the money in going after the social network. "I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this for justice. I believe there should be some, somewhere," he told The New York Post.

But Fteja probably should have read the fine print in Facebook's terms before filing his lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court, because Facebook explicitly states that any dispute has to be resolved in California, specifically in Santa Clara County, which happens to be Facebook's home turf.

It's tough slogging through the legal mukkety-muck, especially when it's written in SCREAMING ALL CAPS, but it looks like even if Facebook were to cough up some dough, it'd only amount to $100 "OR THE AMOUNT YOU HAVE PAID US IN THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS." Fteja's only recourse seems to be found in this last line: "APPLICABLE LAW MAY NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY OR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. IN SUCH CASES, FACEBOOK'S LIABILITY WILL BE LIMITED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW."

Well, it's not quite like the Internet going down in Egypt, but for Fteja, not having his Facebook seems to be a pretty big deal, comparable to rights stripped away from him when he was living in a communist country.

What do you think? What's your Facebook worth to you?

We shouldn't have to feel paranoid about snoops listening in to everything we say

By Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, Monday 31 January 2011


Private conversation is impossible in this new era

We’re in danger of creating a world where everyone has to walk around beaming like an inoffensive gameshow host. Since I last scrawled on these pages, plenty has happened. First Andy Coulson resigned, just in time for the phone-hacking affair to degenerate into a full-blown crisis-bukkake. It's like Watergate, but better, because it stars Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan. Excitingly, the bigger the scandal gets, the greater the likelihood that one day we'll get to see them playing themselves in the movie adaptation. Hope they hacked Michael Sheen's phone too, because then we'll finally get to see what he's like when he's being himself. The phone-hacking saga, unsurprisingly, didn't get much coverage in the Murdoch press, but you could read all about it in the Mirror – assuming you scribbled all the details in the margin yourself, that is, because they didn't write about it either. God knows what this curious reluctance to engage with the material signifies. Perhaps they don't know what phone-hacking is. Don't worry, Mirror journalists – I've left a message on David Beckham's voicemail explaining just how it works. Anyway, shortly after Andy Coulson's departure, another Andy was toppled: this time, Andy Gray of Sky Sports. Both he and co-chauvinist Richard Keys had an almighty bucket of public shit poured over them for engaging in fatuous banter about a female linesman. Aside from the flabbergasting hypocrisy of Sky Sports dismissing a man for sexism when its own Saturday morning Soccer AM lad-fest regularly includes a sub-Nuts item in which a young "Soccerette" writhes onscreen for the delight of a baying mob perpetually on the brink of a wank, the most sinister aspect of the story is that Gray's and Keys' original comments were made off-air. Cavemen they may be, but they were advanced enough to know what was suitable for broadcast and what wasn't. Ultimately, they were tarred and feathered for holding a private conversation. And that's ominous.

We've entered an era in which private conversation is impossible. Ever since Gordon Brown was caught calling Gillian Duffy a bigot, the tape's been left running. Paranoia is at an all-time high. MPs can no longer talk to their own constituents without suspecting they may be undercover reporters. Celebrities can't listen to their voicemails without wondering if they have been transcribed and passed to the newsdesk. Football commentators can no longer yap like oafs in their downtime. Everyone has become a reality show contestant nervously awaiting their own Shilpa Shetty moment.
No one said anything illegal on tape. They weren't debating how to massage civilian casualty figures or conspiring to nuke Swindon. They were chatting among themselves, talking shit like we all do. You could bring down absolutely any public figure in the land simply by following them around with a concealed microphone long enough. Everyone says stupid and objectionable things in private. I say nothing BUT stupid and objectionable things in private. That's the point of private conversation. It's why we get annoyed when someone puts us on speakerphone without warning us first. Keys suggested his comments about Karren Brady were ironic. Sounds unlikely, but I can't definitively cry foul because I couldn't see his face when he made them. Dismissing a complaint about sexism with the phrase "do me a favour, love" certainly has the structure of a joke, albeit a crap one. But whether he meant it or not, my point is this: without the accompanying facial expressions, we are missing 50% of the context. And context is vital. In the context of a live club appearance, a standup will say things that would be a sackable offence if repeated in the workplace, or lead to death threats if hysterically recounted on the front page of a national paper accompanied by a portrait snap.

Every writers' room of every comedy show on TV consists of nothing but the unsayable being said out loud, for hours. In 1999, an assistant on the sitcom Friends took out a harassment case, claiming she had been subjected to "vulgar and coarse language" by the show's writing staff. Exhibit A was a hair-curling document recounting choice banter from the writing room, which seemed to consist entirely of wank gags, cruelty, and a moment when one of the writers "said that [Courtney] Cox's pussy was full of dried-up twigs and if her husband put his dick in her she'd break in two".
In 2006 the case was thrown out by California's supreme court, which ruled that this kind of freewheeling babble, albeit offensive and embarrassing when circulated in court documents, was an entirely essential element of the "creative workplace" required to make the show – a show that, in case you needed reminding, was hardly Tramadol Nights in terms of nihilistic edginess. We are in danger of creating a world where that "writers' room mentality" is no longer allowed to exist – not even backstage. Only the bland finished product will do, and everyone has to walk around beaming like an inoffensive gameshow host. Pundits, presenters, prime ministers: hey, nice to see you, to see you nice.

Bollocks to a world in which all conversation is shorn of its private context. Bollocks to a world in which everyone's on permanent speakerphone, terrified of verbalising a thought crime. We'll get nothing done. If you can't make Friends or host football shows without talking shit between takes, how the hell can you run a country?
Phone-hacking. Hidden mics. Heavily publicised show trials for citizens holding private conversations. This is beyond snooping in the public interest. This is the world of the Stasi. And rather than protecting us, reporters are sitting there in headphones, making notes.

[via]