spriteleigh

Georg Fischer's "Image Glitch Experiment" is a fun and easy drag-and-drop Web tool for corrupting your JPGs in fascinating ways. Turn on, tune in, glitch out.

Malibu Media is a notorious porno-copyright-troll, a company whose business-model is sending blackmail letters to Internet users threatening to sue them for downloading pornographic movies (and forever link their names to pornography) unless they pay up. They invented a particularly loathsome tactic that sets them apart from other pornotrolls: their blackmail letters make a point of mentioning extremely explicit pornographic titles associated with films that they have no interest in -- basically, a sideways way of implying that any legal action eventually taken against you will include a bunch of humiliating and embarrassing movie-titles, when nothing of the sort is possible, since they don't represent those rightsholders and can't take legal action on their behalf.

Finally, a court has seen fit to sanction Malibu for this tactic, after an amicus brief by the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued against it. The judge went so far as to call it extortion.

Mike Masnick points out that other copyright trolls like Prenda and Righthaven have flamed out after the courts caught on to their shady tactics and started issuing sanctions and ruling for defendants. We can only hope that this will be Malibu's (near) future.

Malibu Media's denials do not pass the smell test, and any denial of improper motive by its counsel does not pass the laugh test. For the reasons described above, there exists no good basis upon which a reasonable attorney -- subject to the ethical rules and restrictions of Rule 11 -- could conclude that attachment of Exhibit C to a complaint "for evidentiary purposes only" served any legitimate purpose at that stage of litigation.

Later, the judge acknowledges that copyright trolling cases "already give off an air of extortion" and uses that to claim that making that situation even worse with things like Exhibit C makes the whole effort sanctionable. Unfortunately, the judge then limits the sanctions to just $200 per case (there are 11 related cases) for a total of $2,200, and then actually lets the cases move forward (they had been stayed while this issue was resolved). It's at least something, and shows yet another dirty trick from a copyright troll, and how Rule 11 sanctions can be used against such activities -- but it's hardly a game changer. Since it seems likely that they've used Exhibit C elsewhere, however, it seems likely this will come up again.

Copyright Troll Malibu Media Sanctioned For Bogus Copyright Abuse & Intimidation Tactic

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Remember that time an apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head and he discovered gravity? This video compilation pays tribute to the concept. To celebrate Gravity Day (which was Monday), General Electric invited Vine users to record an apple drop, and then they string the best of them together. Pay no attention to the fact that the apple changes color often. This is also a bit like the story of the loaves and fishes from the Bible in that dozens of people take a bite out of the apple, yet it still appears whole. Or was that the story of Adam and Eve? Anyway, the apple keeps falling until it can fall no more. Watch and find out why. -via Laughing Squid   

As the Snowden leaks (and the materials that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has compelled the DoJ to publish) show, the NSA is out of control. The laws that supposedly limit its activities are routinely flouted; the court that is supposed to oversee its activities is a rubber-stamp machine; and the supposed Congressional oversight of its activities are kept in the dark and denied any real authority.

Ten lawmakers in the Senate and the House have proposed eight bills to reform American surveillance laws. While it's nice that Congress has woken up to the dangers of all this spying, that's still a lot of legislation to keep track of! Thankfully, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mark M. Jaycox, a policy analyst and legislative assistant, has compiled a cheat sheet with commentary on each of the bills, showing how they relate to one another. Can't tell the players without a scorecard!

Section 215 Bills:

Sen. Patrick Leahy: The FISA Accountability and Privacy Protection Act of 2013

Reps. John Conyers and Justin Amash: The LIBERT-E Act

Ending Secret Law:

Reps. Adam Schiff and Todd Rokita: The Ending Secret Law Act

Corporate Disclosure:

Sen. Al Franken: The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013

Reps. Rick Larsen and Justin Amash: The Government Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013

Restructuring the FISA Court:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal: The FISA Court Reform Act of 2013 and the FISA Court Judge Selection Reform Act

Rep. Adam Schiff: The Presidential Appointment of FISA Court Judges Act

Rep. Steve Cohen: The FISA Court Accountability Act

EFF's Cheat Sheet to Congress' NSA Spying Bills

I made a tweet regarding events in Chile on this day in 1973, and included a link to an article that, placing the blame above all on Washington, was also critical of Allende.  Someone tweeted this back: “FWIW that narrative differs from the one you find in Chile, where e.g. Allende is regarded as socialist.”

The word “narrative” jumped out at me, and I realized suddenly that it had been months since I last spewed forth my utter hatred and disgust for post-modern philosophy.

Post-modernism is built on the notion that we can’t actually know anything, we only construct “narratives.” The very concept of “narrative” carries the implication that one is as good as another, and one chooses a narrative based on one’s goals.  But goals are subjective; truth is objective, and thus to interpret the world based on narrative is to deny that it is possible to actually know anything.  But all of human progress has come from the effort to know things, and then act on that knowledge.  It’s not about “narrative,” it’s about the effort to discover the  laws of motion that guide processes in the objective world.  This inevitably leads the post-modernist to reject the concept of progress.  I find this appalling.  Also, stupid.

Post-modernism works very hard to use language that obfuscates and excludes–that’s why it’s so easily subject to hoaxing; anything that wants to consider itself a science ought to make clarity and precision and transparency guiding principles.  In particular, post-modernism uses Marxist-sounding lingo in its effort to undermine what is most vital for Marxism–that is, understanding social processes and communicating that understanding to the working class.

As I said earlier, post-modernism attacks and rejects the very notion of progress.  They do so, today, using the latest and most advanced technology that progress has produced.

Post-modernism is built on attacking Enlightenment beliefs.  There were, to be sure, ideas produced by the Enlightenment that deserve serious criticism: the perfectibility of Man, for example, or the belief that human thought can be independent of time, place, and material conditions.  But post-modernism attacks what was most progressive in the Enlightenment: the idea that human beings can learn, can work to improve conditions, can make advances in social and economic equality.

Post-modernism not only rejects the notion that we can learn from history, but, in many cases, insists that there is no such thing–that there is no objective truth to be known in past events.  The idea that people will study history from the point of view of their own beliefs is not new; historians have known it as long as the discipline of history has existed.  To go from there to utter rejection of the validity of historical study is like saying that, because human beings are mortal, the medical profession should be abolished.  I suspect many post-modernists have visited a doctor (although, in many cases, I wish they hadn’t).

During a discussion at this year’s Fourth Street, someone mentioned that, in the arts and sciences, post-modernism was most associated with, among other things, architecture.  Someone at the table where we were sitting remarked, “I don’t know about you, but I want the person who designed the building I’m in to believe there’s an objective world.”

 

ETA: After some discussion with jenphalian, it seems I need to clarify something.  The word “narrative” is not, in fact, evil.  There are times it’s appropriate when discussing someone’s view of events and interpretation of facts.  But I will stand by my position that these times do not include efforts to understand politics, economics, or, really, anything beyond the personal level.

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Imagine that the classic 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail were to be released in 2013. The trailer would follow the same formula as every other film this year, building suspense with quick shots of action and facial expressions that either give away the entire plot or else tell you nothing that you need to know. Oh, yeah, and put that Inception music behind it. You got it! All of the hype, and none of the charm! Seriously, this trailer parody had to have been a lot of work, to find the few seconds of the movie without a laugh. -via Digg    

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The video is five minutes long, but if you skip around, you'll miss the amazing effect, the point of it all. Anthony Cerniello wanted to show the aging process in a way that hadn't been done before. He used Danielle, but Danielle is more than one person.  

Last Thanksgiving, Cerniello traveled to his friend Danielle’s family reunion and with still photographer Keith Sirchio shot portraits of her youngest cousins through to her oldest relatives with a Hasselblad medium format camera. Then began the process of scanning each photo with a drum scanner at the U.N. in New York, at which point he carefully edited the photos to select the family members that had the most similar bone structure. Next he brought on animators Nathan Meier and Edmund Earle who worked in After Effects and 3D Studio Max to morph and animate the still photos to make them lifelike as possible. Finally, Nuke (a kind of 3D visual effects software) artist George Cuddy was brought on to smooth out some small details like the eyes and hair.

After all, it would be hard to get anyone to stand still long enough for a video to show them growing older. Link -via Metafilter

Before we can boldly go where no one has gone before, we need a plan ... and blueprints! That's where illustrator Doug Pedersen come in. The Minneapolis, Minnesota, based artist has created a sci-fi inspired series of mashups of popular pop culture vehicles with real ones from NASA's space program.

Michael from Public Knowledge sez, "Today the DC Circuit Court is hearing Verizon's challenge to the FCC's net neutrality rules. It has been a while since net neutrality was in the news, so we created this interactive timeline to remind people of all of the twists and turns of net neutrality so far."

A Timeline of Net Neutrality (Thanks, Michael!)

Evaluating Graduated Response, a new paper from Rebecca Giblin from the law school at Australia's Monash University, looks at the impact of "three strikes" and "graduated response" punishments for file-sharing. Countries including France, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, the U.K., Ireland and the U.S. have adopted systems whereby people accused of file-sharing have their Internet access curtailed. This takes many forms, from losing access to YouTube and Facebook until subscribers complete a "copyright training course" designed by the entertainment industry to out-and-out disconnection from the Internet.

A good summary in IT News by Juha Saarinen discusses Giblin's findings from an in-depth survey of the file-sharing landscape before and after the introduction of three strikes rules: "There is no evidence demonstrating a causal connection between graduated response and reduced infringement. If 'effectiveness' means reducing infringement, then it is not effective."

Giblin is the author of 2011's Code Wars, an excellent book on the first ten years of file-sharing data.

Neither the Waikato University research nor rights holders' studies that point to infringing file sharing reducing in New Zealand considered the impact of better access to new, legitimate content services.

In South Korea and Taiwan, graduated response systems appear to have had very little if any impact on copyright infringing file sharing, Giblin wrote.

"Although the Taiwanese scheme has now been in operation for several years, there seems to be no evidence in the English language materials that any user has had their access suspended under the law, or any plausible evidence put forward to suggest it has brought about any reduction of infringement," according to Giblin.

Three-strikes laws do not reduce online piracy: study [Juha Saarinen/IT News]

(via /.)

Just when you thought Game of Thrones symbolism had been mashed up with everything else possible, along comes football season. DJroomba has designed Game of Thrones-style sigils for every NFL team. Many of them have variations in the slogan, so you can pick your favorites. Link -via Uproxx

All that street fightin' sure takes a toll. deviantARTist Arman Akopian (I-GUYJIN-I) explored what happened to main Street Fighter characters after the fight is over in his fan-art series, Street Fighter Chronicles:

"Fate, it would seem, has played a cruel joke with Col. Guile. One of his signature and most fearsome attack moves, the 'Sonic Boom' became the reason for his complete loss of hearing. As a result of that Guile got discharged from the Air Force. And to make matters worse, during the process of the medical exam, overblown with emotions, he lost control over his temper and knocked a military official into a permanent coma. For that reason he got discharged with dishonor and lost all his privileges as a veteran officer. After doing 2 years in prison, his life went downhill. At this point all we know about him is that he is smuggling illegal immigrants over the border somewhere between Mexico and the state of Texas."

"The man known as Ryu no longer exists. The power of the Dark Hadou has destroyed the soul of the ultimate street fighter leaving behind a demented empty shell that rages with uncontrolled ferocity, making it the perfect vessel for Akuma's evil spirit. Knowing that, Ken Masters has hidden what was left of Ryu in one of the mental institutions that belong to his company. With the help of Dhalsim he has created spiritual barriers that prevent Akuma from possessing Ryu's body in the hopes to somehow find a way to bring the consciousness of his best friend back into this world."

"Blanka was overblown with joy after reuniting with his long lost mother. Seeing that she was always anxious and concerned for his well being, due to his street fighting life style, he decided to make a few changes. With the help of his mother's boyfriend, who was a manager at the Brazilian division of Hydro Quebec, Blanka got himself a job as an emergency power generator for some of the hard to reach areas of the Amazon River. It was work perfectly suited to his profile. While buzzing out voltage he casually sips on margaritas and has been known to indulge on the occasional joint or two. Watching the local soccer team play as he powers up the beam lights of the field late in the evening he feels happy and at peace."

"It was the end of Vega as we knew him when he crossed paths with the rampaging Ryu. The mad warrior simply ripped apart the narcissistic Spanish matador leaving behind a smoldering carcass of what once used to be Bison's right hand man. But Bison saw this as an opportunity to test his new tech of creating cyber-warriors. After a while Vega emerged from the Shadaloo bio lab as Cyber Vega. Improved and deadlier than ever he is the prototype of the thousand cyber-clones that Bison intends to build on the road to his conquest. As for Cyber Vega himself, he is consumed with the wish for revenge and destroying everything that was once dear to Ryu."

"All of Japan's underworld has to pay heed to the new Oyabun. For the Yakuza clan have been all united under the heavy palm of Edmond Honda. Frustrated at the inability of the police and the military to prevent Shadaloo's expansion in to his beloved country, Honda decided to take matters into his own hands. But in doing so, he chose to approach the problem from a different direction. The Japanese Yakuza, an ancient and powerful organization, with a vast arsenal of quick and efficient methods of solving any problem, seemed like a worthy opponent to Bison's criminal might. And so, Honda joined one of the clans, and quickly rose through the ranks to a boss position. Eventually he managed to unite all the Yakuza under his iron rule. And now he reigns supreme as the sole leader of all the clans."

Read the rest over at Akopian's deviantART gallery: Link | More Street Fighter on Neatorama

Peter Purgathofer, an associate professor at Vienna University of Technology, built a Lego Mindstorms robot that presses "next page" on his Kindle repeatedly while it faces his laptop's webcam. The cam snaps a picture of each screen and saves it to a folder that is automatically processed through an online optical character recognition program. The result is an automated means of redigitizing DRM-crippled ebooks in a clear digital format. It's clunky compared to simply removing the DRM using common software, but unlike those DRM-circumvention tools, this setup does not violate the law.

He says he got the idea for using the Kindle and the Mindstorms kit for something neither were intended for. “It ended being a reflection on the loss of long-established rights when you buy an e-book. You make a copy of that book, but at eye-level, so that the result is not a stack of paper, but another e-book.”

It’s not intended as a statement against e-books, which he loves, he says, but rather what he considers a “dramatic loss of rights for the book owner. “The owner isn’t even an owner anymore but rather a licensee of the book,” he says.

Another thing: He’s only ever scanned one book, and that was just to prove the concept. And he hasn’t shared it anywhere “…since it would get me in deep trouble,” he says.

How a Man in Austria Used Legos to Hack Amazon’s Kindle E-Book Security [Arik Hesseldahl/AllThingsD]

(Thanks, Paul!)

James sez, "Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation published a new report on patent assertion and startup innovation. Authored by Professor Colleen Chien from Santa Clara Law, the report examines the experiences of venture capital investors (VCs) and startups with patent assertion including dealing with assertions from patent 'trolls' or non-practicing entities (NPEs). The report includes 'Views from the Trenches' with testimonials from VCs, startup founders, and patent practitioners offering commentaries and personal stories of the unique challenges startups and other small businesses face in dealing with the patent system as discusses how existing and potential legislative, judicial, and market-based responses and can be tailored to better meet the needs of startups and resource limited companies."

Recommendation 1: Fully fund the PTO and its quality initiatives including tightening functional claiming and expand low-cost access to the PTO’s transitional program and other forms of post-grant review by reducing fees for small and micro entities and supporting and prioritizing collaborative challenges to patents asserted against large numbers of defendants, particularly by downstream users and small entities.

Recommendation 2: Make patent cases about the merits, not about who can outlast or outspend the other side, by permitting more discretion in awarding fees and costs for non-core discovery and promoting uniformity and early dispositive rulings, for example by requiring the Patent Pilot Program to implement and measure the impact of best practices.

Recommendation 3: Make patent risks more manageable for startups by requiring demand letters and complaints to disclose the real-party in interest, claim charts, related litigations and reviews, and licenses that could cover the target.

Recommendation 4: Make startups less attractive targets by limiting the liability of downstream users and the precedential value of the settlements signed by small companies.

Patent Assertion and Startup Innovation (Thanks, James!)

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Back before the internet, we had to watch our own cats for non-stop comedy. If any cats were harmed in the making of this video, it was their own fault. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Link: logo.thatsaspicymeatball.com. Created by @bertrandom.

* Notable runner-up: Andrea James.

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These kids do a great job of acting out the Legend of Zelda to the music of System of a Down. And they're adorable! -via Buzzfeed

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You may remember Kyle Roberts's excellent shot-for-shot duplication of the introduction to the X-Men cartoon using action figures. For this project, he takes us back further in time to the 60s and the original Batman television program. Apparently Spock was in that show--something that I had previously missed.

ISP throttling YouTube half the time? Proxy IP-blocking tricks not working anymore? Here's the latest incantation to get video running. [Lifehacker]

In case you missed it, the latest domestic spying bombshell: At the New York Times, Scott Shane and Colin Moynihan report that for the past six years, at least, "law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs."

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant. The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

Peace activist Drew Hendricks received the information on Hemisphere in response to FOIA requests, and he provided the 27-slide PowerPoint presentation to the Times. The slides were marked "law enforcement sensitive," indicating the program was considered secret; even the name of the project, according to one slide, must not be revealed.

Read the full story.

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How will Breaking Bad end? Perhaps as Seinfeld did: with everyone on the show going to prison. Matin Comedy mixed the two programs together, presenting Breaking Bad as a comedy about nothing.

-via Geekosystem