Category: culture-and-politics

its over right now, but theres talk about the diebold machines being wrong. Did a search for news on it in google news and got this.

Google Error,
We're sorry…

… but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google

Looks like google is over run… All the web is fine and feedster loves me.

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Currently watching BBC2, 1st part of interesting documentary, titled The power of nightmares.

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams weren't true, neither are these nightmares…

Enough said for now. Should be a torrent for you guys not in the UK soon.

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I've been meaning to blog this for ages now, but if you have not seen it. You need to find it! When I last checked suprnova had 1000+ seeders, I believe you can also get it through ifilm too. Theres also links on boingboing to Crossfire's response. I love the way Crossfire just blow it off, I just think he's a pompous ass. and Let me say something about Jon Stewart. I don't think he's funny. And I know he's uninformed. Jon Steward is a smart and capble man and played the whole thing pretty much perfect, others disagree. I mean come on, he did a excellent job with the content he was given. I would like to see him on the O'reilly factor sometime soon, feed some thoughts into bill o'reilly's head and the fox watching audience. Its also a real shame the daily show is only available though comedy central which is a subscriber only cable channel in a america. Thank goodness for the internet, I would say…

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Sarah describes the journey we took on Saturday than I ever could. It involves one croydon bus driver and 3 women, enough said. Oh also a good point to say my wife Sarah is now blogging, and I never made her do it… well ok a little bit.

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Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had no option but to move the BBC Creative Archive project lecture forward to 1:30pm today.

Guest lecture forum.

There will be a live chat room and discussion forum for all students, staff and guests to ask questions and discuss the creaitive archive and creative commons before and after the lecture. It is advised that any burning questions should be posted to the forum before the lecture, so they can stand a chance of being read out during the Questions and Answers portion of the lecture.

There will also be a live audio stream for all to listen to during the event. Feel free to forward this entry on to others who may be interested.

After the event
I've posted up the pictures from yesterday. I am currently working on the audio which is safe on 2 hard drives. Its in 128k mp3 format right now, but I will convert it to a few others today once I've cleaned it up. I may also chop it up a bit. With regards to the video, its still on the imac which we used for capturing V tapes suck as we all know). I'm hoping I can transfer the lot over to a powerbook and sort out that footage as well as the copyright vs community lecture videos.

I dont know what everyone else thought, but besides the audio problems with the stream and the lack of a DV camera tripod. It all went quite well in the end. Actually thinking back there was a major blow to the online side of things when Roman tested the learn.rave site to see if he could post a few questions. Low and behold guests were not able to post on the forum and join the chat session. I tried to change it so guests could join and post but moodle was not having none of it. Because of this I never told students to login and so when they were urged to login, they did not know there raveID and password would work. Serious case of test it yourself beforehand, would have highlighted the problem in advance! Oh well…

In the after meeting, it was discussed that Paula's lecture was so fantastic and made so much sense that it was like a breath of fresh air. But it was a real shame that only 4 members of staff turned up in the end. Saying that we dont know who was listening in, we have not looked at the logs yet. The break came perfectly timed which was great and Jamie's comment about the Creative commons being typicaly american made him look very bad in the audiences eyes. Even I was suprised to see Mylz, JC and few others argue back against him. Maybe the message of the day was not lost on the audience?

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Thanks to Lawrence for his well polished poster design, I'm looking forward to seeing them around the college when I come on Friday.

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Friday, 8 October 2004 – 2pm – 4pm

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and cultural commentator thinks that the BBC have got it right with their proposal of making their freely archive available to the public for non-commercial uses.

By making the content available, commercial entities will also be able to identify BBC material and then license it for a fee.

Lessig describes this as a brilliant response to the extra ordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies.

There is less evidence of this sort of thinking in the US: corporations there are opposed to sharing standards and protocols and, as highlighted by the fascinating and ongoing Linux vs. SCO vs. IBM case, suspicious of the open source movement.

To found out what this all means come to the lecture open to all students.

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The founder of the Creative Commons project, Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, will be at UCL on 4 October to launch the UK version of the Creative Commons licenses. Come and hear from him about the problems of the existing copyright system and the future of creativity in the Internet age.

Need I say more?

Well actual I do have a lot more to say. With great fore-sight before summer, I booked a lecture with Paula Le Dieu at Ravensbourne College in October. Paula is a fantastic speaker and the ideal person to talk about the partnership of the BBC creative archive and creative commons licences. I'm sure she will inspire new and old students (hey lets not forget staff too) about the BBC Creative Archive project and make them think about there own work and practices.

If your unsure about what this is all about, check out some of the news about this important project and announcement. But before that, check out this link to a official transcripts from another news agency. Sourced from Weatherall, Thanks!

There was a great piece titled Mr Rights, in the media guardian this week, unfortually you need to register to read it. But just use guardian@dodgeit.com password = Picasso7. Glad to see others have had the same idea. By the way,
Cory Doctorow's Written Testimony to Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, is also excellent work and really shines the light on how important the creative archive really is.

And just incase you ever missed it, Lawrence Lessig on the BBC Creative Archive…

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and cultural commentator thinks that the BBC have got it right with their proposal of making their freely archive available to the public for non-commercial uses.

By making the content available, commercial entities will also be able to identify BBC material and then license it for a fee.

Lessig describes this as a brilliant response to the extra ordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies.

There is less evidence of this sort of thinking in the US: corporations there are opposed to sharing standards and protocols and, as highlighted by the fascinating and ongoing Linux vs. SCO vs. IBM case, suspicious of the open source movement.

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Its one of those things I have been keeping an interest in, but not deeply. Then I watched Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I felt it was ok, but not enough. So i watched a couple of torrents called fear or love: 9/11 the great illusion and The truth and lies of 9/11. The first one was very good but highlighted alot of theories that I had heard on the net before. The last one was great and far better than all the others. So anyway I need to keep a better eye on the project for a new american century, the new world order and the grand chessboard.

So anyway tons of links which I hope to move to my bookmarks or (the wiki) in the future.

Educate-Yourself
Information Wars
Guerrilla news network
Truth now
911-strike.com A wakeup call for non-violent political action
communitycurrency
Stand Down
From The Wilderness
what really happend
questions questions A review of independent perspectives on current events
Centre for Research on Globalization
911Truth Only the truth will set us free

And something positive to leave the blog with. Taken from BoingBoing and Lawrence Lessig's blog. The video stream is available here too.

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief-I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper-that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America-there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

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On Sunday I passed Cory sitting on the grass at notcon04. And wished him good luck at the WIPO, I think the EFF and others are going to need it for all our sakes… If you honestly dont know what I'm talking about please – i beg of you to read this now.

As usual there has been little about an important issue in the mainstream news. Cory Doctorow and others have been raising awareness but few have picked up on it so far. Slashdot also had a posting yesterday which started the usual slashdotting discussion.

The best way I've found to keep intouch with whats going on is through the union for public domains blog on broadcasting. The EFF page is good for a understanding of whats at sake but not whats going on at this moment. No respect to Cory, his post was a little lost in the boingboing information ocean. But it did provide almost the same if not better links than what I got here.

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So I had my meeting with paula today a little latter that expected due to some world service work. But we went off to the non-smoking starbucks and ordered frappachinos before talking shop.

Paula explained the project fully and pointed out the several strands of the project. And all I can say is seriously Paula is awesome and the creative archive couldnt be in better hands…

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Want to support a truly free and robust BBC Creative Archive? Then sign the letter and tell your friends about it.

Looks like we may be the 4th or 5th country to adopt Creative Commons licences outside of Northern America.

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In reply to the Lift 2004 website and other hopefully rare sites and projects like it which honestly take the living piss. Me and someone else had a conversation over im about what should be done. It went something like this…

> Me: going to send the url to rnib and others like accessify.com
> someone: Good
> Me: should cause a little stir, maybe get some people thinking
> someone: Cool. I think you should set up a Flash Terrorists blog. No more getting mad - get even!
> Me: I was thinking that too
> Me: email flames or use the flash vaunability to take it down, replace it with a xhtml 1.1 version
> someone: List evil websites with comments.
Encourage people to add their criticisms and flame the fuckwits... and hammer the sites 
> Me: Great idea, will do sometime soon. but not tonight 
> someone: But the time has come to reclaim the web for the people!
> Me: yes they stole our revolution - were taking it back = ntk.net 
> someone: quite so... and this time, we are bypassing the flower power,
and going straight to the precision-guided smart munitions 

> Me: I hate viruses, but a virus to change flash sites to correctly rendered xhtml would be nice
> Me: or even a transformer to scrape flash sites and turn them xhtml would be useful as ultimate insult
> someone: Tempting though it is, victory will come through the power of reasoned argument,
not through fucking their sites over.
> someone: Google is the Flash-scraper.
A cocoon application to take the google text-rip and turn it into a real site would be cool indeed.
Brilliant idea
> Me: ah ha excellent,
would save on processing power and yes transforming googles output would be ideal
> Me: yes submit your flashabustion sites and comment.
but also get a accessable version which you can send to friends and get maps from etc
> someone: You could lure loser designers by giving some phoney Flash awards.
submit your site, etc, then redo the site properly and flame the fuckers!
> Me: maybe in time the redirected urls will become more popular than the flash site its self?
http://myflashwank.com becomes http://redirectthatcrap.com/myflashwank.com.
google will instantly like it because its clean and not hard to process,
and in the end the redirected url will come up in search engines before the actual flash site
> someone: Yep - and you can add some metadata
that pushes the actual flash site down in Google's ranking
with a bit of effort in reversing their algorithms

> Me: Yes were are taking the web back! Your site has been flash-a-banished! maybe the flashabanish effect?
> someone: Hmm - need a better verb, there! Good
or at least start the ball rolling - if Google doesn't decode Flash yet,
maybe they will if there's enough pressure
> Me: I think it only decodes flash 4 content, if you can call it that?
> someone: I call it dis-content
> Me: sounds about right and a good name for the site in general
> someone: cool

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See it all adds up…
The BBC Creative archive + icommons + Sara Geater = BBC adopting a CC licencing scheme.

“By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content. Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: “The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity.” He went to enthuse “If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support.”

Now we've got lots to talk about tonight at the Creative Commons in a Connected World (don't get me started on the site, reminds me I need to send my email once again…) I'm hoping Sara Geater will be there otherwise I will be emailing her about icommons in the very near future. Now I remember why I wanted to join the BBC.

I've posted my notes online in html and opml formats.
And here's some photos of the event which by the way was good but nothing much more that what I read in free culture and heard before from Lessig. However Lessig did make reference to two fundimental critical thinking ideas. As the uk was the motherland of copyright for America, what can the uk teach america about the next era of copyright? Think about how a mother desaplin its children… and more of a statement. when people start writing their opinions down (case in blogs), they discover they are just… idiotic.

Some other useful links
BBC prepares to put TV archive on Web by ZDnet UK and Rupert Goodwins comment is good too.
Official BBC Press Release. BBC prepares to put TV archive on web by ZDNet Australia. Slashdot view from last week – BBC creative archives based on creative commons licences.

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I just wrote a reply to John's email to the college on Friday.

Thank you John,

I would like to say a public thank you to everyone involved.
Miles and John for there support. Harry for running out of the lectures to attend to external visitors. Dave for all his hard work. Most of the Interaction design course for helping out when ever possible, even with project deadlines looming. John for collecting Stallman from Waterloo, Kevin and Roman for there network knowledge and speedy deployment in the face of unreasonable demands. Armin for fighting off a cold to moderate. Lisa for helping out in anyway possible. Adam for helping with the streaming and transporting of equipment. CNDI generally for all there support. And last but not least, to Cathy who allowed the event to go ahead without the draconian restrictions others would have placed on the event.

And to all those who came or tuned into the live streams. As John said it was a major coup for the college that we were able to gather some a line up of international guests.

And it showed because we recieved external visitors from as far as oxford and cambridge universities. It was a shame other departments including marketing didnt get involved because it was a great day for the college and will not be repeated or bettered anytime soon.
The overall turn out was about half ravensbourne students and half external visitors. We also recieved great response from our listeners who tuned in through-out the whole day, even during the breaks. I am still recieving great feedback through my email today.

Copyright is a issue which keeps raising its head in the college and no one really tackles it in the way we did on Thursday 20th May.

Thank you once agin to all involved…

Ian Forrester – BBC worldservice new media

The archived streams will be up some this week or next week. Keep an eye on http://cubicgarden.com/copyright for more information and feeback

> Hi All
>
> i just thought you all should know that yesterdays lecture series
> “Copyright vs The Community” was not only successful and informative
> but went off without a hitch. This was due largely to the efforts of Ian
> Forrester, late of this org but now with the BBC.
> This was an event that is unlikely to be repeated anywhere ever again.
> To get the likes of Fravia, Richard Stallman & Cory Doctorow together
> for one event would be cosiddered a coup for a major international
> event.
>
> Once again many thanks to Ian for his efforts.
>
> regards to all
>
> john

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