demodulated

After a much publicized and contentious trial, the founders of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of “breaking copyright law“.  The founders petitioned a retrial on the basis that the judge, a voluntary member of several copyright oversight boards, was biased in favour of protection of intellectual property.  This attempt was quashed, however, when a peer review concluded that this association could not be deemed a conflict of interests.

There are many parallels to be naturally drawn from this verdict.  The Pirate Bay has always proclaimed, civilly and mockingly based on the audience, that their website simply links to content and does not host any on its own.  The similarities to other search engines like Google and Bing are more than obvious as it is trivial to use those web services to locate legal and illegal software hosted on third-party sites, just like The Pirate Bay.

The precedents set by this verdict, and particularly those emphasized by the refusal for retrial, are rather serious for TPB’s native Sweden.  For one, public opinion of its government and national police force faltered considerably years ago after a raid on one of TPB’s many global web hosts, with the populace accusing its representatives of catering wholeheartedly to foreign pressures.  More substantially, there is reasonable doubt concerning where the line is drawn regarding hyperlinking, quoting, and fair use of copyrighted materials (I linked to the BBC above – am I a Swedish criminal, then?).  The strongest precedent of all is the claim that peer-to-peer sharing is detrimental to the music industry, ignoring the facts that the nations and specific demographics of the most enthusiastic music pirates are the very same that fuel that industry with the most sales.

The Pirate Bay still presents its corpus of responses to legal threats, based on the professional advice of its legal counsel whom, intimately familiar with Swedish law, were quite certain that the website’s actions fell comfortably within both the letter and spirit of national jurisprudence. It is rarely a valid excuse to proclaim ignorance of the law, but considering the website’s thorough research and powerful assertions that its services were legal, it seems legal compliance may be a moving target.

The cards are still being reshuffled, but the announced sale of the The Pirate Bay will undoubtedly spell the end of its claims that “0 torrents has been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed.”

The future of The Pirate Bay is looking grim, but peer-to-peer sharing is far from over.  Hundreds, if not thousands of equivalent sites exist today.  Sites like ShareReactor, Audiogalaxy, Suprnova, PizzaTorrent, and now The Pirate Bay, all rose through the ranks to become recognized as popular destinations before disbanding due to public pressure, and over the years the next replacement popped up even more quickly than the last.  The decades-long endeavour of sharing digital files will not die with this one web site.

Meanwhile, in response to The Pirate Bay verdict, Sweden’s Pirate Party won its first seat in the European parliament as well as over 7% of Sweden’s votes, while similar parties have organized in America, Germany, Finland, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and other countries.

The role of The Pirate Bay may not conclude, even in its death.  Its playfully outspoken founders may in fact connect with a wider audience as martyrs than they could have hoped to reach as webmasters.

Kudos goes out to The Sierra Vault for hosting scans of myriad Sierra Hint Books, provided by site reader Vasyl.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s my favourite video game developer was the Sierra On-Line studio; makers of extraordinary adventure game series such as Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, and Space Quest.

Accompanying sales of its beautifully immersive and exceptionally written interactive epics were Hint Books – unattractive stapled booklets containing helpful hints for circumventing obstacles, as well as a few red herrings to discourage using the book for anything but reference.  The books were published in red and blue ink, with blue hint text obscured by red cross-hatching, made readable with an included red cellophane viewing card.

Yes, this is the biggest image I could find. :(

Sierra’s President Ken Williams was notorious for his hatred of software piracy, so in the pre-internet era these $15 books were a smart sell as they were equally desirable by owners and pirates alike, plus the rarity of colour photocopiers and scanners made the tactically-coloured text indiscernable in black and white.  The books themselves were well written and gave incrementally more direct hints for each scenario so they were a worthwhile purchase by their own merits.

Most of these games will never be published again, and the proliferation of free hint sites has made the concept of the hint book unmarketable, so this wonderful archive is probably good for little more than nostalgia.

I was very satisfied with the Windows Vista operating system, with which I’ve been on board since Service Pack 1 was released, and for nearly 2 weeks I’ve been floored by how awesome Windows 7 is.  7 shows many improvements, mostly with the UI, over its predecessor, but a few legacy issues remain.  The most frustrating issue for me is likely one that most users will never experience.

I have several email addresses – a couple for each of my domains, some old ones I can’t afford to abandon, and some disposable ones where I don’t care how much spam accumulates.  To manage all these email addresses reasonably I need a local email client that handles such a scenario elegantly.

Mozilla Thunderbird did the job swimmingly for many years, and I enjoyed it very much while I was still using Windows XP.  Thunderbird gave me the option of segregating each inbox or pooling them in a virtual catchall, did wonders with spam filtering, and was overall lightweight and responsive.  Unfortunately Thunderbird wasn’t without its foibles, and overall is a bit of an afterthought for the Mozilla team which meant there were long lulls between sometimes much-needed patches.  When I moved up to Vista I started looking for a replacement when I realized Thunderbird did not hook into the OS-level search engine.

After writing off Microsoft Outlook Express as a bullseye for viruses for over half a decade I was extremely surprised at how much I enjoyed the default Windows email client, Windows Mail.  It’s an elegant and simple piece of software that isn’t much more sophisticated than Outlook Express, but it played nice with multiple email addresses and it was a dream to be able to search my mail right from the Start button search box, even when my mail client was closed!  I was even more impressed by its successor, Windows Live Mail, which I use to this day, for having an even nicer interface.  Windows Live Mail doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles but it interfaces very nicely with many Windows apps, not the least of which being Windows Desktop Search which is core to Vista and 7.  It’s very handy to be able to call up any email by searching for some text I remember existing somewhere in the body, or to find a contact to look up a phone number or address, all without the mail client being open.

My only gripe surfaced when I installed Microsoft Outlook, which I use exclusively for work.  I have a zillion emails spanning many years in my work Inbox so search is essential, but what’s frustrating is that both Vista and 7 seem to prioritize the placement of Outlook search results over those from Windows Live Mail.  I tend to only search Outlook mail from the client itself since I’ve always got it open when I’m working from home, but when the client is closed and I’m on Brian time I have no need to search my work email from the Start button.  Worst of all, I always have sufficient hits in work email for any given keyword that my Outlook results fill the entire Start menu, so if I want to see more results I have to open the fatter search window which ends up giving WAY too much information.

I can find no way to prioritize my Windows Live Mail search results over Outlook.  It’s frustrating that I have no control over the search services which are so central to Vista and 7.

It’s inelegant, but I’m thinking of making use of Windows 7’s XP virtual machine for this situation.  I’ll uninstall Outlook (and my work VPN client while I’m at it) and reinstall them on the virtual machine, effectively making a dual boot to completely segregate my work tasks from my personal-use OS.  I suppose I’ll have to share files with the virtual OS as well, install the rest of the Office suite on there, and who knows what else.  I’ll have to make some network shares and map drives, no doubt.  It’s a kludge and I don’t like it.

How about some search love, Microsoft?

So I was travelling for business a few weeks ago, and on the plane I was pleasantly surprised to find some techno music on the in-flight entertainment console.  Said console locked up and refused to work about midway through each flight, but that gave me the opportunity to listen to much of Deadmau5’s album “Random Album Title”.  Some kicking minimalist electro, to be sure, though not the highest fidelity on my cheapo in-ear buds.

Deadmau5 is a Canadian chap so I Wikipediaed him when I got home.  He’s just a couple of years younger than me, and lives in Toronto, so I assumed a bit of a kinship with him.  After all, Toronto is truly a world-class city, especially when it comes to music, and especially especially in the global history of electronic music scenes as this fair city has producers and DJs to spare.  That’s why I was so surprised and even a little betrayed when I read a quote of his (on his Wikipedia page) about his perception of DJing:

It puts me to fucking sleep to be quite honest, I don’t really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully with all due respect to the DJ type that will fucking go the way of the dinosaur id like them to dis-a-fucking-pear. It’s so middle man, they’re like fucking lawyers. You need them, but they’re fucking cunts. God bless them they’re my number one customer right so I’m not gonna go diss every fucking DJ. But to say you become this massive up on a podium performer by playing other peoples productions at the same speed as someone else’s productions and fading between the two of them, I don’t get it.

Damn right you don’t get it.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence, having composed a lot of music myself and later dedicating many years to the hobby of DJing, so I think I’ve earned my fair say on this matter.

Deadmau5 is full of it.  For many reasons.  Here’s the first and most important:

DJING IS VALID.

DJing is a means of creative expression and performance that takes sense, skill, practise, and a gift.  Not just anyone can do it at all, fewer can do it well, and no two DJs will exhibit the same technique.  One’s technique and style are uniquely theirs, and these are things that change and mature with practise and age, no different than any other creative expression.

I’m irritated by those who say that DJing is no more than putting two songs together, and that a DJ is nothing without the works of others.  To me that’s as vapid a statement as calling Deadmau5 a biter because his songs use the 4/4 time signature, or berating Douglas Adams for writing stories in English rather than inventing his own language.  Venetian Snares uses 7/8 time signatures, and Anthony Burgess uses a lot of slavic and made-up words in “A Clockwork Orange”, and good for them, but they’re by no means the epitomical figureheads of their respective media.

Creative expression is all about displaying contrast by means of a point of reference.  You start somewhere familiar to your audience, and you add an element of personality so that people understand the perception you are trying to convey versus that starting point.

• My song is about how much I love my girlfriend and how we will be together forever.
  • My song is about how much I love my girlfriend, but tragedy struck so we cannot be together.
    • My song is about I hate my ex-girlfriend, but tragedy struck and she died so now I’m happy.
      • My song is about how much I hate my ex-girlfriend, but I use all major chords which makes the song sound ironically happy.
        • My song is about how my abusive relationship is an allegory for how propaganda distorts perceptions of fascist dictatorships.

These are all examples of songs, but they can’t be considered entirely original because they all use the same basic themes.  However, each iteration has additional meaning as contrasted with its predecessor.  If one is familiar with this history, their appreciation would be all the richer.

Deadmau5 does not exist in a vacuum that exempts him from this.  From what I’ve heard of him his style is consistently minimal electro techno.  The very name of this genre denotes the major iterations that occurred before he picked up the ball.  I’d love to play some excerpts with more specific examples, citing histories behind his patterns and even his very instruments, but Deadmau5 strikes me as the litigious type.

His biggest hypocrisy is, obviously, the fact that his album “Random Album Title” is beatmatched and mixed.  There is no flare or style to these transitions – they are clinical and utilitarian.  This is precisely the sort of inanity Deadmau5 complained about.  I can think of only one reason he would make this decision if not for artistic merit, and that is to ruin the beginnings and ends of each song on the album so that DJs will have to buy the single.

This is only my presumption, but I cannot respect any artist who sacrifices artistry for profits.

I initially enjoyed listening to this album, but I see it in a new light now that I have some back story.  I can’t see this album as anything but the half-assed embodiment of everything the artist himself hates.  Instant turn-off.

With the definition of poor mixing in mind, what is a DJ and what do they bring to the tables?

A DJ is a musician, first and foremost.  The DJ collects music and weaves them into a contiguous production of his or her personal design.  Like songwriters who choose instruments and weave them into songs, the order and means of playing a collection of songs is what makes all the difference between two DJs.  A DJ’s technical abilities, creative decisions, and the moods they convey will attract some listeners and repel others.

Closed-minded people will say that all DJs do the same thing, just as easily as one unenlightened person might easily say that all hip hop is the same.  Sweeping generalizations about vast genres are rarely true.

I’ll address 2 of Deadmau5’s specific comments.  First:

I don’t really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together…

I don’t even know what he means by “technical merit”.  Most (but not all) people focus their concentration on non-technical elements of music; more the mood and message, I’d think.  Still, to my ears, it’s far easier to detect the minutiae of a DJ than that of a songwriter – thanks in no small part to the fact that the DJ does his thing live, in real time.

Still, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s the context of interposing one song with another that is significant. Let’s say I have two CDs side-by-side on my shelf: the self-titled album by the band Garbage, and the soundtrack to the stage musical Grease.  A music enthusiast might infer that I have a preference for powerful female lead vocals, while a less-informed person might see only the title of each album and assume I enjoy living in squalor.

To his second point:

But to say you become this massive up on a podium performer by playing other peoples productions at the same speed as someone else’s productions and fading between the two of them, I don’t get it.

This is two points I suppose.  As for an entertainer – ANY entertainer – being treated as someone truly important, I must agree that it is a superficial, superfluous job and the world would be little worse without any one such individual.  But the inference that all a DJ does is fade between songs is what I take exception to, and I’ve got the wherewithal to back up my claim.

http://blog.demodulated.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/juggling.mp3

This is an excerpt from one of my occasional internet DJ shows (www.radiogrounds.com ftw!).  I’m mixing between two songs that I love and am very familiar with.  I know from experience that these songs are complementary and sound good while simply overlapped, playing at the same speed at the same time.  However, to do so would be basic and uncreative – simply the bare minimum effort that one might call DJing.  I apply my knowledge, technique, and love to this scenario and add a little flare, challenging my listeners to keep up with me.

Naturally it’s not always the case with all types of music but Deadmau5 himself admits to being popularized thanks to the promotional efforts of DJs, punctuating the symbiosis and not reliance of one upon the other.

No one pursuit is more valid than the other, and they can coexist just fine without an artist and DJ ever having to co-operate or compromise or endure the arrogance of the other.

I read this article entitled “Is Google going to hijack your content?” on the HuoMah blog; the contraversial topic being Google’s experimentation with longer snippet text.

First, the anatomy of Google search result:

On top there’s the clickable site link in blue whch lists the title of the page being hyperlinked to.  Beneath the link is the “snippet” of text in black which is one or more excerpts from the content of the linked page ,with words from the user’s search query highlighted in bold.  Below the snippet is the URL in green which indicates the source of this content, followed by a pair of light blue links with some advanced features.

As a rule, web content owners love the blue site link and the green site URL, but have mixed feelings about the black snippet.  This is because the former elements are useful to bring search users directly to the content (where revenue-producing ads may be shown), whereas the snippet runs the risk of providing the answer to the search user’s presumed question without leaving Google at all.

The article I read this morning describes tests by Google on the effects of lengthening this snippet.  This change would benefit end users by potentially answering their question in as few clicks as possible.  It would also benefit Google because each user’s eyeballs will remain planted on Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages), and thus their ads, for a little bit longer.  The only potential losers here would be the content owners who spent money and time to create this content.

This all culminates into the basic principles of the WWW, with potentially serious ramifications.  For instance, the web is a series of open standards like HTML which provide the full source of every published page to every visitor.  This means this material can be cut, pasted, copied, republished, and printed with or without the permission of the content author.  This permission is implicit with the act of publishing content to the web – If you put your content on a web page you are effectively letting go of it.

I can’t duplicate these long snippet tests so I’ll be a good web neighbour by directing my readers to the screenshot on the source article.  Compare it versus my screenshot above, showing the traditional 155 character snippet.

A quick interjection – Google doesn’t keep this motive secret by any means.  According to Google’s corporate page:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Snippets aren’t the only means at Google’s disposal to fulfill this mission statement.  They’ve recently added functionality allowing users to ask questions with common factual answers, and the answer is displayed in line with the organic SERPs (meaning the results linking to pages with the queried keywords – natural search behaviour).  Even though it takes time and effort to compose web pages with these facts, it’s debatable whether Google publishing common knowledge could be considered stealing revenue from websites with the same data.

Personally, I’m ambivilent on the topic.  I tend to gravitate toward whatever solution will most benefit the end-users, plus I expect a longer snippet might further entice those users to visit the source material.  I do empathize with web content publishers, though, since they must opt out of Google (perhaps at their peril, traffic-wise) to suppress this “scraping” of their content.

In Google’s favour, they are quite generous in their own conformity with open standards.  They permit the parsing and republishing of their search results (which can potentially strip out their valuable ads), and freely allow hooks into their other services (like Gmail) which allows you to enjoy their content without relying on their chosen form of delivery.

For content owners feeling at odds with the prospect of extended snippets, Google provides its usual choices: take it or leave it.  Webmasters may opt out of Google search listings at any time; most do not.