subtitles: April 2003 Archives

Beginning to realise that the

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Beginning to realise that the media have led up to this for a while now. This gives some idea of the timeline that's involved: this, then this .

If anyone knew of or

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If anyone knew of or was a part of the site, drop me a line, especially if you know anything about what's happening.

A bunch of articles, probably

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A bunch of articles, probably all from the same reuters report, can be found here.

I just posted this on

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I just posted this on NTFS.org, on hearing from their article that MP3/WMA Land has been closed down and the webmasters arrested. It seems to have affected me rather profoundly for whatever reason.

I'm sort of shocked, I've been going there for years now, and these guys are just basically nice guys who share mp3s. sure they weren't the most legal of people but they weren't trying to profit from it in any way, they were just a bunch of kids who thought it was cool to share music.

It says something about those that arrested them that they're not going after the hardcore warez sites or the IRC channels/ftp dumps - they're going after people who were just not bothering to hide - who sincerely believed that they weren't really doing that much wrong.

Mp3 Wma always prided themselves on making downloading easy for people, and avoiding annoying, money-centric behavior when every other mp3 site (and there were, and are so many others) was pushing porn pop-ups in your face.

They were just a small time op who just leeched off gullible isp's who hosted them for nothing - you'd think they'd have better targets than kids just out of school.

Whatever you might want to say about them, they were a very community centric group who used their site as a social gathering place as much as a place to get music you could get off Kazaa for much less fuss - or off IRC if you knew how to.

They were optimists, perhaps of a reckless sort in hindsight, and so devoted to somthing that was theirs - they seemed to me for a long time what the promised land of the internet was supposed to be. They seemed to spend more time fighting off leechers than they did trying to conceal their presence from the law - I wonder if they were ever even sent a cease and desist letter for their candour.

I hope they don't get into too much trouble.

I got my picture on

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I got my picture on the "Fans of Opera" page here. Hoorah :)

I'm seriously considering shutting down my Yahoo account because of the spam, especially since I shifted over the fastmail recently. It's really not Yahoo's fault, I was careless with the address so... But that said, Fastmail, with IMAP, is the best free way to read mail in Outlook (or any mail client probably) - Hotmail is a bit flaky with Outlook, which is a pity since it wan't quite as bad with OE. So people who know me and read this have been warned, switch over to my fastmail accounts, I'll eventually not be reading my Yahoo mail anymore. My "public" account will still be the one one the left, but my private one I'll only give out to people I know. Die spam die. Filters are just not the answer since it's almost as much work to check the bulk mail folder for false positives, and you still get the occasional mail that the filters don't catch - which is all the more annoying.

I look forward to the

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I look forward to the time when blogging can be something I can be committed to every day, without feelings of guilt if I do so. That said, I have to tell the world that Opera 7.10 has been released, and my it's a nice browser. Anyone who has a spare half an hour should really give it a spin. Any reservations I had about recommending 7.0x is gone, and if you're doing a fresh install of 7.1, you're in a for a great - and exceptionally stable - browsing experience.

I've been hanging out at the MyOpera forums quite a bit the past week due to the betas, and I must say that the only really addictive portions of the web are those that involve other people. Content providers can try their best, but personal interaction, if only through a message board, is something that can really keep people coming back for more. But if news is still the new porn for you, Klipfolio is a fantastic app that has just released a surprisingly bug free beta that you can get here. It's fantastic for keeping abreast of news all from a central source - it's got weather, and is particularly good with tech news sites like CNET, Slashdot etc.

Everyone should marvel at the

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Everyone should marvel at the wonder that is Tush. Don't really feel like writing, but feel the need to type. Will simply spew for a minute. Spew.

Wondering about the status of

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Wondering about the status of my monitor, since there's some flickering when Opera is open but without any pages. Pretty annoying. But then it probably means there's no signal degradation from using the switch. Too dispirited to blog further.

Just on a side note,

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Just on a side note, the other thing I don't write about here is porn. (What does that MEAN?)

This is taken from a

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This is taken from a reply to one of Allison's e-mails:

There's a reason why I don't write about who I'm with - it's one of the Rules. That's not one of the things I want people to have access to simply because as I'm sure you know, what happens between two people is always special, always unique, and always misinterpreted - even if (or especially if) you are the one doing the representing. People judge other people's relationships first with less kindness than they do their own and second with only a fraction of the understanding that's required to actually be in that relationship - I know this because I'm guilty of it. Knowing about these things is an imposition - on both sides, because of unfair judgement, and because it causes unfair judgement. Hence taboo subject - I allude to her, her name is monkey, but I don't talk about her and I don't talk about us. The only way people would know about her in relation to me is if they met us, not because I told someone about us. But if it clears things up, she's a big reason why Chicago is a happy place - because she's here. And she is always on my mind, but only implicitly in my writing - I might express her opinions or her observations, but they come out as mine, because those thoughts become mine.

Awwww....

CDR's came. Woke up after

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CDR's came. Woke up after about 5 hours. Starting to require nicotine. Will start work in a minute.

It's all about drugs. It's

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It's all about drugs. It's all about shame.

Oh and I figured out

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Oh and I figured out a couple of days ago that I can be the no. 1 hit on Google if you search for subtitles weltenschauung, like so. In fact unless things change, that is a legitimate google-bash, though with more than one word obviously.

I just need to write,

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I just need to write, I need to see my thoughts and ideas appear before me in corporeal form, in the fixation of linguistic signs. Does this mean that when they occur in my mind that they are somehow non-corporeal, that fixation is not just about that, the inscription of thought rather than the manifestation of it? If I simply concentrated on a thought or an idea, would it manifest as readily as it does when I write like this?

Happy April Fools.

I'm wondering when my CDR will arrive and whether my essays can survive me going off and writing CD's every 20 minutes. I'm feeling in a better place about my Fiction and Narrative essay now that I've read through some of what I wrote. Now that I've let go of being an academic, why is it still so hard for me to just get this stuff done? I can't stop thinking about how in 3 weeks I'll have absolutely nothing to do except mong and plan my devious schemes on building my computer. Got a spanner in the works today with ATI announcing they'll release the All in Wonder 9000 in the US. I'll probably still go for that over the 8500, just because it's newer and will ship with newer software (hopefully). There shouldn't be too big a price differential, event though OEM prices for the 8500 have bottomed out so much. But anyway at least I've settled on having Ulead as my video editior, thus reducing the need for me to get the retail box of these cards if I don't want to. The Pinnacle software just wasn't as intuitive.

I actually did a whole editing thing with the copy of Vanessa Carlton's Pretty Baby video that I have, and which turned out okay. Because they edited the last shot of the Roswell guy with duct tape over his mouth, I decided to finish the job for them and edit out all the instances of duct tape in the video - to complete the bowlderisation process if you will. Turned out quite well, and realised that music video's really do edit their cuts very closely to the music.





About this Archive

This page is a archive of recent entries written by subtitles in April 2003.

subtitles: March 2003 is the previous archive.

subtitles: May 2003 is the next archive.

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