http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/ all the news that's shit to print. all thoughts, ideas & concepts © 2004 darien. all rights reserved. permission to reprint needs to come from me. en-GB darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/rss.xml Thu, 29 May 2008 12:23:03 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=146 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i just got this spam message in my inbox. subject: girl craps in hottub body of message : online casino advert !!!!!!! i just about peed myself laughing. very punny, spammers. very punny. Thu, 29 May 2008 12:23:03 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=145 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) so, here it is ... mid-may. almost june. and we've yet to have much of a spring. while it is true that we've had a few, very pleasant 60'ish degree days, we've also had some effin' cold ones too. and some miserable ones at that. yet again, we've gone straight from winter to summer. :( we're due to have several 80+ degree days this week, followed by more fairly warm days. why can't this region EVER have spring? like when i was a kid? 60's and 70's ... mild ... warm, but not too hot. cool, rainy days ... i miss that a lot. i know it's fairly trite to talk about and/or bitch about the weather, but ... i can't be the only one who is bothered by the fact that we haven't had spring here in, like, a decade. Mon, 19 May 2008 08:29:52 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=144 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) as some of you know, i've begun to play guitar again ... only this time, i'm re-learning how to play left-handed, because my left hand is pretty messed up. back in january, while visiting my pal paul d., i played guitar for all of 10 minutes, and my left hand hurt for 2 months afterward ... strangely enough, in a sort of twisted, sadistic way, the experience made me really want to play guitar again ... for the first time in many, many years, i felt like i had missed playing that instrument. but i knew that the only way i'd be able to do so is if i re-learned how to play, southpaw-style, due to my left hand being messed up. i figured -- if i can write with my left hand, i can play guitar left-handed too! so it was time for me to join the dark side ... er ... lefty side ... ehh ... yeah. in march, i found a lefty epiphone les paul special. and i hate its little bastardly guts ... :( it was a lefty guitar that i found on craigslist, and it had (and STILL has) some problems ... its basically one of those "kit" guitars (ie a guitar that would be included with an amp and all the acoutrements, a'la guitar center). the guitar is kinda tiny and the neck is very thin. i was really excited to get it, because hell, it was a lefty guitar. but now ... its basically a little kid's guitar. something a 10 year old could probably play with gusto. made for tiny fingers. i feel like the iron effing giant strumming a ukulele when i play it. when i got it, the guitar had no bridge, only the tailpiece. and when i got it home, i discovered that it had been smashed against something or dropped, because the fretboard was cracked and starting to peel away from the neck itself at the first and second frets. i had that repaired, but discovered that there was a loose piece inside the neck -- when you play certain chords (and really commonly used ones too, like A, D and G), the loose piece resonates and rattles inside the guitar. the fact that the guitar had no bridge was a big hassle, but i figured that because tuna-matic™ bridges are a dime-a-dozen, i wouldn't have trouble finding a replacement bridge. WRONG. the bridge posts had big holes instead of small ones, which made it very difficult to find a bridge for it. luckily, the luthier / repair tech i take my guitars to had a spare. but, of course, it was the last place i looked -- figured i'd get the parts i needed before i even talked to him. i even took a trip to a guitar center down by pork meadows, where the kids there don't know a tuna-matic from a tuna-salad. it pissed me off that i drove all the way the hell down there after i was told over the phone that they had a bridge with large holes only to find out that the kids at the guitar center there didn't know the difference between the tailpiece and the bridge for a les paul. wtf? needless to say, i told the manager that he needed to get better help (in much sterner words, mind you). when i took the guitar to my luthier/tech buddy to ask some questions, he fished around in his box-'o-parts™ and viola! a bridge. i facepalmed. you could hear the slap 3 counties away. anyway ... i ended up having to get new tuners for this guitar as well, because the tuners that were on it (made by some unknown company called "Jin Ho" or "Jun Ho" or "Juno's a Ho" or something like that) didn't hold the guitar in tune for more than about three strums before the guitar's tuning was lobbed 3.4 semitones down, way back into 1876. this guitar is defo not one that i would recommend to friends. and especially not for re-learning how to play. i haven't found one thing i like about it. it doesn't sit in your lap very comfortably, the frets are on the thin/small side (i like medium-jumbo and jumbo frets), its easy to go sharp/flat just by leaning on the body of the guitar (and not very hard leaning, mind you, just a little bit knocks it sharp or flat) ... its just not comfortable. or very well made. but, it'll do for now i guess. altho i dislike this guitar enough that i'm tempted to have the very first guitar i ever bought converted to left-handed play. when i mess around with it, it actually feels more comfortable, despite the fact that the beerbelly-cutout is not present on the bottom of the guitar. it probably feels better because the neck is of a slightly longer / larger scale. and its got jumbo frets. and it makes me feel human-sized when i play it. my brain is still wired for jumbo frets, no matter what side i'm playing on. :D ahh ... there's nothing like re-learning a few sex pistols tunes to make you feel like you're truly getting back in the game again ... :D i've decided that if i can ever get up the bread, i'd like to get a left-handed fender jazzmaster. because i've ALWAYS wanted one. the jazzmaster was my 'eleanor' as far as guitars go. goddamned albatross. i had a hard time finding one, and when i did, the person or store who was selling it always wanted way too much for the guitar or the guitar was too trashed and needed too much work to make it usable/reliable for gigging (which is something i did regularly a long, long time ago). these days, lefty jazzmasters are as rare as hen's teeth in the US. fender america doesn't make 'em, but apparently fender japan does. in spades. and they're readily available over there. brand new. and in beautiful colours too. and they're pretty much exact replicas of the originals. my birthday's coming up soon... anyone wanna get me a left-handed Jazzmaster from japan? :D speaking of jazzmasters ... SWERVEDRIVER is coming to town this week! all aboard the last train to satansville, everyone. :D \m/, Sun, 18 May 2008 06:38:24 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=143 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) man ... someone decided to bust out some orangey-smelling airplane glue in my apartment building a few hours ago, and despite my best efforts to vent the stank outta my apartment, it still smells like orange-flavoured testors. unfortunately, instead of the all-dizzy/all-guts/all-fun version of orange-flavoured testors, its the all-crappy/all-headachey/all-noserunny version. and i already have a cold on top of it. i shouldn't be able to smell it at ALL. yecch. i hate apartment life. at least my next-door neighbour isn't an axe murderer this time. i actually think it's something that the maintenance guy used on the apartment downstairs -- some sort of curing agent. it fucking stinks to high hell though. awful. and again, see "headache" for details. :( anyone got a house they'd like to loan me for the next ten years? Fri, 16 May 2008 04:29:12 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=142 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) but funny nonetheless. <center> <a target="new_window" href="http://xkcd.com/411/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/techno.png"></a> </center> Thu, 08 May 2008 01:24:22 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=141 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <i><b>attention ... achtung ... attention ... </i></b> ok, everyone. got your notepad and pen or #2 pencil ready? if not, go get it. when you're ready, watch this. in its entirety. and don't hit pause. watch, listen, and take note of the following: <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qEXUqWK8A4I&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qEXUqWK8A4I&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> finished? ok, good. here's the deal. something is horribly wrong with the world. horribly wrong. and this brilliant song proves it in a few very big, very poignant ways. i mean, wtf? the B-52's are a band that are all about delivering the party straight to the world. bar none. but at this point in time in the world, there honestly is no party to be delivered. and this song proves it. this band <i>should not</i> be giving us biting, sardonic, but oh-so-close-to-home commentary on how fucked the world is right now; <b>it should be giving us <i>the party</i></b>, and lots of it. with a rack of martinis, margaritas, bitchin' beehives, seriously sexy stilettos and a side order of unbelievably raw abandon. if the b-52's aren't giving us <b><i>the party</i></b>, but rather, pointing out that there is no party, that it ended quite awhile ago, and we're never going to get there, then we aren't truly on the road that leads to hell. we've arrived, ladies and gentlemen. we're at the bottom of the shitpit. looking back up. essays will be written about this song. because it's effing <i><b>deep</i></b>. and please don't misunderstand. i have nothing but supreme love for the b-52's, and i really love this song. what i don't love is the world around us. what the world has become. and that the world has forced the b-52's to do the unthinkable. i don't love that the world has forced the hand of the b-52's and made a band that has ALWAYS been <i><b>ALL ABOUT THE PARTY</i></b> experience the ultimate comedown -- the buzzkill of the third kind. a harshed mellow of heinous proportions. the world has caused them to leave the party -- stop, look around, and say something of an extremely socio-political nature. congratulations, everyone. the world climate has turned the b-52's into the dead kennedys. it has taken a band that was once all about the happy twist their faces in disgust. the world has made the b-52's <i><b>ANGRY</i></b>. there is something wrong here ... Mon, 05 May 2008 16:28:35 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=140 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) over the last couple of years, i've sort of fallen in love with what the mac platform can do. there are certain things that this platform is just SO GOOD AT that the pc world still needs to catch up with. but, as a company, apple still falls a little short in my eyes. altho admittedly, they HAVE been trying to please me a little, knowing that my track record with apple as a company has been less than exemplary, especially when dealing with getting their hardware fixed or replaced. last may, in fact, i went back and forth between my apartment and the apple store with my mac mini all month, trying to prove that it did indeed have a random crashing issue. while at the store, it never crashed for them, but at home, i could leave it running doing absolutely NOTHING and it would crash within anywhere from 10 minutes to a day, depending on how it felt. i even brought a friggin VIDEO TAPE showing the problem, but they still wouldn't believe me. several calls to a very important office underneath a certain CEO later, after a month of not getting ANYWHERE, plus calls to the manager of the apple store i had been taking my computer to, and they FINALLY remedied the situation with a brand new mini. this is a month of my life that i'll never get back. a month where i literally had their so-called "geniuses" telling me my mac mini had a variable-speed hard drive in it, that partitioning the drive could slow the machine down (what is this, 1982? its not running an effin' miniscribe brick, fercrissakes!), and other various things that basically told me that they treated me like i was a "Housewife with an iPod". dealing with those so-called "geniuses" was an insult to my intelligence. i may not be the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, but i do know computers fairly well. it is especially bad when they think that EVERY customer is a housewife-with-an-iPod, even if that customer has put together very expensive servers, dealt with weird raid arrays, and all sorts of technical this'n'that, the likes of which these geniuses couldn't deal with if they were confronted with problems to solve. now, since that time, apple has turned itself around a LITTLE in my eyes. they're not completely outta the shitbox just yet, but they've done some things for me and some old hardware i recently acquired that was great (read: SONY BATTERY ISSUE). i did appreciate that. so they're on the track to redeeming themselves a little. but i think that their customer service needs to go a bit above and they need to figure out that a portion of their userbase is actually fairly proficient in hardware. they need to treat people with a little more respect and dignity. at least i was able to convince them, partially, that i do know a little more than the average bear. in light of this, i've gotten another very nice piece of hardware to add to the collective. hopefully going to get back to music production shortly. thanks j+e. you rock! :D anyway, i saw this particular article on slashdot a little while ago, and i felt like it was appropriate reading material. mac zealots need to open their eyes, because they're not treating people with the whole ideology that the company stands behind. <a target="new_window_90" href="http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2008/03/18/true_enough_excerpt_2/index.html">Why Apple fans hate tech reporters</a> this article made me HOWL in justfication. why? because unfortunately, a lot of the apple EMPLOYEES act the very same way that these particular fanboys act. unreasonably. as if apple could do no wrong, the rest of the world is actually at fault, and PARTICULARLY, the non-apple people. you say one little thing against the platform (that might be a scathing truth), and suddenly, instead just having an opinion like everyone else, and pointing out a shortcoming that the platform needs improvement on or something that a machine apple is selling could really use work with, and you're suddenly "bill gates' personal ball-licker" in their eyes. wtf? that's just lame. a very juvenile response. and all because someone would give a mostly positive review of a product that is made by a beloved company? people who respond like that are no better than the guys i used to ride in the back of the school bus with when i was 6 years old. everything was "this is gay, that's gay", blah blah blah. i still don't understand the etymology for a homophobic slur and its' transition to being a word that applies to everything that irritates a person. but its a similar concept i think. and there's been this resurgence of people using that slur and i just can't figure it out. other than that maybe homophobia is SERIOUSLY on the rise. :( and that's just sad. :( if the fanboys would stop being zealous over their platform, more people would be keen to convert. right ... i'm off to do some schtuff. before i sign off for awhile ... i must apologize for the lack of updates here over the past year. i've not felt good, been busy, and just over the last few months, have dealt with some very sad, scary, and horrible things. :( i've been depressed, exhausted, and just generally fatigued in general. some bad things have happened and i'm having a hard time coping with it. my poor mother has been dealing with worse, and i feel really bad for her. something also happened last monday that was VERY sad. :( i don't wish to post it in a public forum but anyone who knows me and wants to know can contact me to find out. lots of love to you all. p.s. this entry was written on my mac mini. eat that, zealots. Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:30:16 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=138 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) !!!!! <center><a target="new_window1" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh0oG-ppmTM"><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sh0oG-ppmTM&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Sh0oG-ppmTM&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br>All Day, All Night MISS MARY ANN!!!</a> </center> genius! :D :D :D the following is also awesome: <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUcTvhyof8I">Stroszek</a> yes. i'm losing my mind. but it's ok. you can join in too! Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:28:43 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=137 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) now to lighten the mood a little. nothing takes the edge off of some severely nihilistic desperation like a beautiful woman, no? especially if said woman is a goth / rivethead. the following woman is probably one of the sexiest women i've ever seen in my entire life. <a target="new_window" href="http://suicidegirls.com/members/Zoetica/news/">Zoetica/SG Photoshop Ninja (SG)</a> or <a target="new_window8" href="http://www.biorequiem.com/">Zoetica's website (biorequiem)</a> i randomly happened across this woman after reading <a target="new_window2" href="http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/">Wil Wheaton's</a> <a target="new_window3" href="http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/21700/">latest column on the Suicide Girls website</a> holy wow. admittedly, i tend to like really tall amazonian women (hopefully from the moon), but wow. maybe it's the cateye glasses (of which i'm biased & partial toward). maybe it's the pseudo-anime thing this gal's got going on. perhaps it's 'cuz she's just got that sexy goth / rivethead flag flying. it's possible that it's that sexy blue hair (again, something i'm <a target="new_window5" href="http://darien.zerogauge.org/gallery/view_photo.php?full=1&set_albumName=test-gallery&id=Sharkey_Darien_1_001">partial to</a>). or maybe it's just 'cuz she's drop-dead gorgeous. who knows? someone, please set me up on a date with her. even if we just get to talk about computer crap for a few hours. even if she's got a boyfriend. doesn't matter to me, i'd just like to hang with her for a few hours. i've put it on my <b><i>"30 Things I Need To Do Before I Die" list</b></i>. It's right up there with <b>"Play bass with <a target="new_window6" href="http://www.supersuckers.com">the Supersuckers</a>"</b> and <b>"Play an instrument onstage with <a target="new_window7" href="http://www.flaminglips.com">The Flaming Lips</a> at a live show".</b> (side note: i'm thinking of making this list partially public, perhaps so that if someone stumbles across it they could help me make some of it happen. if you think this is an interesting idea, please email me at the link above) Sat, 23 Jun 2007 07:39:09 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=136 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) lately, i've been wondering something ... and i imagine that lots of people wonder this on a daily basis. not a lot of people verbalize it though, and i reckon that the people who do bother to examine this more closely inevitably <i>go insane.</i> why do we bother? why do we spend countless seconds / minutes / hours / days / years working our nuts (proverbial, mental, and scrotum or eggs, depending on what you are) to the grindstone for other people, only to have it inevitably be futile and pointless and have gotten us nowhere? we all spend said allotments of time pushing ourselves to the very edges of sanity to meet these deadlines that are more or less imaginary to us, yet solid to whomever is thrusting them upon us. we're forced to meet goals that are set for other people, and where does it get us? how do these deadlines and goals and final achievements ultimately affect us in the end? why are we put through all this bullshit? is it to give our lives meaning? is it all really worth the toll it takes on us? why does the end almost always result in someone elses' happiness and rarely ever our own? i've been put in some fairly uncomfortable positions lately (insert some sexual euphemism here for comedic effect if you like, and, knowing that i haven't gotten laid for 11 years, giggle stupidly) regarding trying to get things done for other people. it is my job. it's what i do. in the past, it was my speciality. if i was called or brought in on something, it was because no one could meet a particular goal or expectation in the insane amount of time that was allotted to achieve such lofty goals, or no one had the skills to be able to fix said problem in such ridiculously short amounts of time. since my 'health issue' happened a year and change ago, i've had to assess whether or not what i had to do would affect me negatively or not, and say yes or no based on : a) how i felt about doing the task b) how i felt in general c) how would i feel after i'd accomplished whatever someone wanted me to do (ok or sick) d) how much stress the task would cause me e) would the job cause me enough stress as to cause a health issue or some sort of health meltdown after the 'health issue', i was told to pick my battles very wisely, and to ask myself if "doing the task was worth how it would affect me", as well as whether or not the task would irritate me. i'd have to ask myself questions like "is the frustration i'm going to endure worth taking an immediate toll on my health?" ... in life, i've also had to ask myself "is this worth all the anger and frustration that i'm being caused?" ... after the health issue happened, i've valued every day i've been here since as highly as possible. but it seems that lately, some days, i get so frustrated that i cannot place a positive value on what happened to me that day, no matter how hard i try to do so. and that is bad. because i'm losing the plot again. lately, it seems like i wake up in an extreme state of panic that doesn't ebb. at all. i can't go to sleep at night because i'm in a panic over deadlines that are <b>NOT EVEN MINE</b>. things that i have to do that, other than the fact that they're my job, have nothing to do with me personally. the state of my health is such that i should not be panicking over ANYTHING. EVER. because panicking about ANYTHING could quite literally KILL ME. :( i am overwhelmed. and there's not much i can do about the source of the overwhelming. i have no control over it. everything is piling up, and i'm afraid that if i complain about it, it'll be detrimental to my situation, and i do not want that. i'm crabby because i haven't gotten to do much of anything that i've wanted to do personally. and i feel like if i do ask to have a day or two to do some things that i want to do (like work on some arcade games that i recently acquired, for example), it'll be viewed as unimportant and i'll be chastised for it. i'm frustrated because things are not coming together the way i plan them to. the thing that boils my skull about it all is that all of these deadlines, these goals, these *things* that have nothing to do with me in the first place (other than the job factor) are things that are really not necessary for me to survive (well, other than the job -- the job is the necessary factor). life is filled with futility. from the moment we're born to the moment that we cease to be is an exercise in stupid futility. and this bothers me. everything that we do as humans outside of basic survival (eat, exercise, sleep, reproduce, etc) are sole inventions of humanity to fill the void between birth and death. so why were things invented to frustrate other people? like deadlines? goals? competition? what bothers me more is that i'm still only accomplishing other peoples' goals and not meeting any of my own. i'm still afraid of dying, and still VERY afraid of not being able to leave a legacy of cool things before i go. and all this fucked up nihilism running in and out of my conscious (and subconscious) mind isn't helping me either. it's all making me even more tired, and making me feel like it all just isn't worth it. all the time and effort that i end up spending on everyone elses projects. everyone elses deadlines. this experiment called life. is it all just spinning your wheels? people taking advantage of your skills and good nature? for nothing? is it so you can waste your entire life pushing hard toward a goal that doesn't even matter to you in the first place and in the end will have been a pointless, fucked up waste of your time? i can't stand all the heat. and the pressure. and the things. nothing feels like it's worth it anymore. "And when I say 'Fare thee well, My only friend' Oh how the days go ... Oh how the days go" -Beck Hansen Sat, 23 Jun 2007 07:11:43 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=135 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) hello there, reader. do i have a reader? i must have at least a few, since there's been 1942 views (!!!) of the last blog entry since my virtual abandonment ... in actuality, i really haven't technically <i>abandoned</i> this space ... i just took a long hiatus from it. and after i finish this entry, i will probably take another hiatus. in all honesty ... i haven't had much to write about that wouldn't be just 20 pints of the similar. over and over and over. i haven't written here because i would just be complaining about the same things ad nauseum (and about nauseum, too). well, that's not entirely true, because there are a couple of isolated incidents that wouldn't be a pint of the similar. and aside from those events, there are things that i can't complain or rant about in a public forum because i'd piss people off that i can't afford to piss off (you can take that last statement literally if you like as it may help you decipher the metaphor -- however i can neither confirm nor deny anything). i haven't felt like writing. well, actually, that's not true. it's an outlet for me, and it is one of the few things that i feel i'm truly good at. i have felt like writing. i just haven't had the energy to write in the depth and breadth that you all have come to know and love (you know, i'm a wordy guy that's hard to get off the telephone!). since the entry i published here on the last day of february, i haven't felt like much of anything other than total shit. since the entry made here on the last day of february, and a subsequent event that happened a few minutes after i made the blog entry and sent my buddy forest green a happy birthday email, i had a seriously bad thing happen that i don't wish to make public news for now. i just don't feel that it's something i want to make public at this time. i usually keep a partially open book of my life on this blog (most things that happen to me i'm happy to write about), but this event was something that i still would like to keep under wraps for the time being. if you know me but you're not in regular contact with me and you don't know what happened, but your curiosity is thoroughly piqued and you absolutely <i>must know</i>, email me. there's a link on this page that will allow you to do so. or leave a comment on this entry and a way for me to get in touch with you. if you don't feel like emailing me, i'll just say that i had something happen that nearly killed me (again) and landed me in the hospital on february 28th, and i'm lucky to still be here on this plane of existence. i never forget that fact. i hold it close. it is one of the thoughts that crosses my thought process often. and every day or night that i've started since 6am on february 28th, 2006, i've never let that thought leave my mind. let's just put it in bold and italics, for an oh-so-dramatic effect: <center><b><i>i'm lucky to be alive.</b></i></center> i have thought a lot about existentialism and how it applies to me ever since, and it's an issue that weighs a ton in my psyche since the event on that fateful day. it's difficult for me not to think about it, having had so many brushes with the shuffling off of the old mortal coil. sometimes when i'm trying to go to sleep in the morning, a thought of the existential kind pops in my head and it totally eats me up. especially since i feel like i am living a life unfinished, and a life unaccomplished. what have i done? i've had to keep playing music that i can't stand to crowds who could care less about me or who i am, what i do, what i'm about and more about hearing the latest piece of shit by justin timberlake or some other equally unimpressive, badly produced, homogenized generic throwaway mainstream top 40 pop trash so they can impress their dates or people they are trying to hook up with and shag by doing their awful "white boy in a beer commercial" dancing. i've done a lot of running-in-place. i've done all this work, and yet gone nowhere because it was either done by being a small cog in a big wheel, or work done for or in the name of someone else and gotten very little or no credit for what i've done. spinning my wheels. pushing myself really hard just to get <i>someone else's project done</i>. it's furthered <i>them</i> along, but where has it left <i>me?</i> it nearly killed me. again. <i>"who the hell was that guy?" "oh. i went to him every time i had a severe problem with [ insert project type here ], but even though he saved my bacon about a zillion times with regard to xyz, i guess i never thought of him enough to give him any credit for the help he gave me."</i> one of my biggest fears is that i'll leave no legacy that will be remembered easily. and i hate that. because i just want to be remembered. when i'm gone, will my existence really have mattered? will i be remembered as the guy who always fixed severe problems with audio, production, arrangement and mastering but never got the credit for it? will i end up being one of those guys forgotten because i constantly had to sit in the shadow of utterly talentless hacks who were undeserving of their place in the spotlight and be stuck in the corner playing shitty music that i can't stand, wasting my talent away while the other no-talent ass clown who couldn't mix cake batter plays to a full crowd in the other room? will i have been one of the useless cattle that just managed to muddle through life long enough and yet not left a mark? when i'm gone, will i be totally gone? is there reincarnation? i believe in it, but does it believe in me? i can say that i'm suffering from some anxiety, and some other health issues that are irritating, annoying, painful, stupid, and energy-draining. unfortunately, these issues are the center of my universe at the moment. someday soon, i hope to be completely back in the saddle. i want to get back to making music. i want to get back to playing the music that i love instead of playing the music that i hate by having to whore myself out just to make a buck and still being dirt poor. i want to be back in the saddle and kicking so much ass it's not even funny. i want to go to different countries and meet great people. i want to write a book. i want to make guest appearances with my favourite bands. i want to perform in front of thousands of people who actually appreciate my music. i want to perform at least 3 songs in three different cities with the Flaming Lips. i have dreams that are sadly unfulfilled. but all of that is on hold. and will be for an indeterminate amount of time. please keep me in your thoughts. don't give up on me. thank you for coming out and reading my entries and thank you most of all for not forgetting me and appreciating me enough to keep coming here and checking, even though i've all but abandoned this space of words. to all the people that visited me in the hospital in and around that fateful day (my mum, basil and davis, walt white, paul b., my uncle and aunt, my only cousin left alive and her fiancé), and to all whom are absent but have shown unbelievable amounts of support, guidance, hope and love in the days, weeks and months after my near-death experience in february, and all my pals who have shown love, light and extreme amounts of support since that time : i love you. and always will. your friend, nephew, cousin, and employee, --the doktor. p.s. in light of the holiday today, i must also state that i am thankful to still be here on this mudball. p.p.s. wayne coyne, if you ever read this, please drop me a line. i want to perform with you someday. Thu, 23 Nov 2006 15:03:57 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=132 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i really hate april fools day. especially when i have legitimate news to post... even though i'm a bit inspired, i'm not gonna do it today because of the fact that it is april fools day, and people reading this in the future might take it as not legitimate. although i must admit ... even though the april fools shit gets excessive on slashdot, the ponies theme is gosh-damned funny. over und oot. two niner zero zero zero group group thirteen thirteen Sat, 01 Apr 2006 22:09:33 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=131 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) what's the best description one could think of for My Bloody Valentine? here's some descriptions that pop right off the top of my skull: "they're like slowdive, only louder. and they probably took more drugs." "imagine spacemen 3, only even more drugs. and less farfisa." "they're pop music ... if listened to through a heavy morphine filter." "heavy lemon, man. pass the strawberries." "what?" man, i forgot just how good this band was. i'm horribly sick at the moment. still. and i'm really effin' tired of it. i wish these perpetual sinus infections would stop. but they won't. why me? Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:49:14 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=130 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) awhile back, i professionally dealt with a project by a band from my hometown of minneapolis called <a target="new_window" href="http://www.thecardinalsin.com">The Cardinal Sin</a>. this little record *really* piqued my radar. these guys (and gal) are probably the most amazing breath of fresh air i've heard in the last year. their music is tight, and their songwriting is genius. if they were around when the replacements were active, they probably would have given ol' Westerberg a run for his money. if it weren't for bands like <a target="new_window" href="http://www.thecardinalsin.com">The Cardinal Sin</a> bashing some serious skulls in, i'd completely lose faith in all modern-era guitar-oriented rock music. someone really needs to get this band on <a target="new_window_6" href="http://www.cbs.com/latenight/latelate/">Craig Ferguson</a>, get 'em some extreme exposure, and propel them into the groupie-groping, hotel room-smashing superstar rock god status, where they belong. so check 'em out, and grab their <a target="new_window_2" href="http://www.greyflight.com/releases/index.php?band=9&limit=1&page=2">split 7" with Small Towns Burn a Little Slower</a> on <a target="new_window_3" href="http://www.greyflight.com">Grey Flight Records</a>. you won't regret it. "The Saddest Song" will blow your mind. Mon, 27 Feb 2006 04:51:39 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=129 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i admire geniuses. i also admire a few madmen. what does that make me? Mon, 27 Feb 2006 04:40:41 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=128 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i'm sure anyone who has read this blog knows of my dislike for iTunes. on one hand, i do like how iTunes handles large collections of music, and i do like aspects of its' user interface. it makes it so that you can find music in your collection very easy, no matter how large your collection happens to be. however, i don't like how it tries to bind you strictly to itself for everything -- especially with regard to the iPod, and buying music online. things have started to look up on the iPod side of things ... like ml_iPod, for example (which makes dealing with the iPod shuffle great, but only if you're willing to abandon iTunes to transfer music to it). and now ... there's <a target="new_window_1" href="http://www.songbirdnest.com">Songbird</a>. it is only available as a proof-of-concept at this point, but, uh... wow. what a proof of concept it is. fantastic. i'm very impressed with it. it has all the aspects of iTunes that i like, without the aspects of iTunes that i don't like. granted, at this point, songbird's search facilities are lacking and it doesn't handle metadata very well, but ... if it is allowed to continue, it will become an amazingly fantastic, streamlined application. keep your fingers crossed, friends. Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:20:22 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=127 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) more pieces of poison rawhide to chew on: <a target="new_window_1" href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/16/007257">Ripping CDs to iPod not 'Fair Use'</a> <a target="new_window_2" href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php">EFF Blurb with similar title</a> <a target="new_window_3" Href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6190.html">Article on ArsTechnica with similar title</a> alright, listen up, ex-standards committee: you can't backpedal on things that have been in place for a long time and call it good just because it fits your totally skewed and exploitative agenda. the arr-eye-double-eh is yet again sticking its' nose into territory where it most certainly DOES NOT BELONG, and it is a case where cutting off the nose to spite the face would be a definite aesthetic and moral improvement. i especially have beef with this because i have a few audio discs in my personal collection that are failing due to age, and unfortunately, cheap replacements are not available. there are remastered versions available, but they are *not* the same as the original releases. 'remastered' in this day and age usually is synonymous with 'butchered', 'buggered up', and 'totally destroyed' in my opinion -- i rarely hear a remaster that doesn't have the dynamics so thoroughly squashed out of them that they are almost totally squared off. the arstechnica article is the most salient of the bunch. reading it prompted me to write a note to the writer of the article. and here it is. <b>hi there ken. i read your article on ArsTechnica, cringed a bit, grumbled a lot, and had to at least drop a small reply about what i read. it makes me very angry when i read things about what the arr-eye-double-eh is always trying to pull. especially when i know what i know about cd media and its' fallibility. i am an avid music collector as well as a club disc jockey. i have a moderately large collection of music. recently, i decided to back up my cd collection to mp3 format for quick access, because space for access to the cd collection itself is at a premium in my apartment. i would have flac'd them all for the sake of quality, but hard drive space is still at a premium and to do so would have cost me piles of money in hard drives, since the collection would have taken up at least a terabyte. with that being said ... i cannot believe that the arr-eye-double-eh is trying to pull this 'backups are infringing' bull. especially since the media is fallible, and they know it's fallible. while i was backing up my collection, i ran across a number of compact discs in my collection that were suffering from bitrot, and some that were suffering from 'bronzing'. technically, i suppose, 'bitrot' is a term that is mainly used when referring to laserdiscs that have begun to go bad, or atari 2600 cartridges where the rom chips inside them are beginning to go bad. however, in the case of the discs i ran into, the term definitely applied. these were discs that i had bought in the early 90's when i had first started collecting audio compact discs (i was a late bloomer -- up until that point i had religiously bought vinyl records) and some of them were probably around 15 years old. for example ... my original, out-of-print copy of Dinosaur Jr's "You're Living All Over Me", released on SST Records, is suffering from bitrot and beginning to deteriorate. in listening to either the compact disc itself, or rips of it, you can hear popping, clicks and errors where they simply don't belong. the disc is still listenable, of course, but it does not sound the same as the day i purchased it, even though i've done what i could to make sure the disc has been well-treated and hasn't suffered any abuse from my ownership of it. the original version of this disc on the SST label is no longer available through retail channels and has been out of print for some time now. there is indeed a new version of the disc available, but it is a 'remastered' version. i do not trust 'remastered' versions of recordings most of the time and i tend to avoid them, because i have found over the years that 'remastered' versions of compact discs are inferior to the originally released versions. i feel that 'remastered' usually means 'utterly destroyed'. a lot of the time, when a 'remaster' is done, it usually means that the recording has been significantly changed, sometimes to the point where the engineers who remastered it totally ruined a perfectly good recording. they usually re-eq the recording (changing the overall sound of the work), and most of the time, the engineers will employ heavy audio compression (ie completely reduce dynamics of the audio) to bring the overall volume up. when they do this, the engineers tend to have no regard for digital clipping, and the resulting recording will have loads of clipping problems (mainly squaring) which they trust todays' D/A converters to smooth out. this practice is common, widely used in the industry these days, and unfortunately, a lot of perfectly good albums have been totally ruined in the name of making more money off of an unsuspecting collector market. in the case of my Dinosaur Jr cd, a 'cheap' exact replacement of the disc isn't available, since the original version is out of print, and technically, the remastered version isn't the same recording. to source an original version with the same vintage as my copy would probably also yield a copy suffering from bitrot, not to mention the fact that it would cost me anywhere from $20-$30 to replace (just take a look at the prices on GEMM if you don't believe me). i paid $11.99 for the disc when i bought it back in the early 90's. bronzing is also a problem that i ran into. for information on that, see <a target="new_window_4" href="http://foetus.org/misc/rot.html">http://foetus.org/misc/rot.html</a> for details. it's a pretty nasty problem, and fairly isolated, but is further proof that the compact disc is a *VERY* fallible medium. especially when the format was first introduced and made affordable to the buying public. early audio compact discs were *VERY* fragile -- more so than vinyl records. hell, with the really early cd's that were made available, all it would take to completely ruin an audio compact disc was a simple surface scratch made on the non-playing side of the disc! i think that some industrious individual could probably use these arguments to keep fair use applicable. i do not think it is right to expect the public to have to fork over cash to re-buy the same recordings that they've already paid for (barring remasters, which i think should have a warning sticker on them saying 'this is not the original recording, and is not sonically the same', but that's just me). especially with a medium that has proven, over its' short lifespan, to be completely fallible and non-permanent. once again, the arr-eye-double-eh is sticking its' nose where it doesn't belong. why is it that i seem to be the only individual bothered by the fact that the arr-eye-double-eh is no longer a standards committee like they were during their initial inception? they never belonged in the business of handing out awards for album sales, and they most certainly do not belong as a gestapo that sues 9 year old kids. they should be bickering over technical standards for music media, because that's what they were initially formed to do."</b> audio compact discs should not be viewed as though they were cans of food -- ie if it's dented, go and buy another one. they should not be viewed as 'disposable', and yet, to the big organizations, they are, since the big labels are always trying to do something to replace the current media with one they can make more money off of. there's always something bigger and better over the horizon, yes, but it's stupid to me that the big labels feel that everyone should always replace their music collection with fresh new copies every time some new piece of media is available. big label media roll-outs are exploitative to the consumer. and wasteful, too. it all just makes me mad. Sun, 19 Feb 2006 01:43:25 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=126 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <a target="new_window" href="http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/02/16/2025243.shtml">isn't it just completely and utterly stupid that you have to install linux just to get a bootloader on any apple hardware?</a> Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:23:20 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=125 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) as i've stated in the past, every day i wake up and read something that really pisses me off. here are today's top 2. #1: <a target="new_window" href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060121-6025.html">Big Content would like to outlaw things no one has even thought of yet</a> why does this piss me off? too many reasons to get into. here's a couple to chew on though. first off, fair use doesn't need to be replaced. secondly, the arr eye double-eh really has no right to be treading into this territory. who are they to govern invention and innovation? this is 2006, not orwellian 1984. #2: <a target="new_window_2" href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060122-6027.html">HD DVD and Blu-ray content to be degraded for analog displays</a> fucking draconian, i tell you. they want consumers to pay the price -- literally. if you didn't buy a digital hdtv of some sort, then you'll be stuck with lower resolution displays. if i paid for a movie, and i have the tech to be able to view that movie, but i didn't have the cash to shuck out $10k for a brand new all-digital all-singing all-dancing crap-o-the-world new fangled whiz-bang hdtv, i can't view the movie i paid for in full resolution? bollocks, mate. these bastard organizations would charge you a per-second rate to sit on your fucking couch to watch films if they could. your own couch! what they're not taking into account is that not everybody has the dosh to cough up every time some new standard comes to play, and that by alienating the poorer sect of their consumer base, they'll be losing piles of money. and the funny thing is that all of this technological advancement is in the name of reducing or eradicating piracy. well, gee, think about this, four-letter-acronym-organizations : by forcing your customer base to pay more money, you're <i>encouraging</i> piracy, not eradicating it. so, instead of making the tech more accessible to people who have less money by lowering manufacturing costs and making it easier and cheaper to buy legitimate than to pirate, you're making it so that people want to pirate because they can't afford to go out and upgrade to the latest-'n'-greatest. it all boils down to simple business economics, and you guys are just not seeing that. in fact, when the so-called 'analog hole' is closed for television, there are going to be a hundreds of thousands of people standing out in the cold screaming because their 30 and 40 year old curtis mathis televisions that they paid a grip for back in the day don't work anymore and that they have to buy some set-top box to get local news broadcasts again. this is absurd. the older population won't understand why. and the younger population, whom you now have conditioned to accept forced obsolesence will probably be pissed too. let's pause and think about that last thought for a moment. "The younger population has been conditioned to accept forced obsolesence". wow. that's bold. and it's sickening. i hate forced obsolesence. because it's all in the name of money. and it's wasteful, both for the environment and for people who probably should be spending money on ramen noodles and not upgrading their tv just to be able to watch local news broadcasts. companies would make more money on cheaper, more user-friendly upgrades and easy accessibility than forcing this shit down throats of the aforementioned ramen-buying populace. the other factor is this : there will always be dvd-jon's out there. the tech will be cracked very quickly (probably even quicker than CSS was), and you'll all feel really stupid when all this ballyhoo boils over, your tech is cracked, and all this ballyhoo over developing the next-gen content protection scheme will have been for nothing. every year, more and more dvd-jon type people pop up outta nowhere. i expect that for every new tech that comes out with some bastard flavour-of-the-month drm scheme, there will be 20 hackers that can and will break it. and i reckon that that number will exponentially increase over time. and what about content providers themselves? ie the people that have to work with this new technology, and to learn how to use it? you know...the guys who are producing home videos in their basements or who have private content-generation houses that always have to learn by way of the school o' hard knocks™? the guys who, by necessity, are the mothers of invention? yes, a nod to frank zappa, but a nod also to good ol' die-hard american ingenuity... are you going to make them pay out the nose as well to learn how to work with the new tech? or is it always going to be governed by the new hollywood government? the two four-letter-acronym secret societies are becoming worse than scientology. four letter acronym societies... hurmmm... why is it that every decade always has to have some sort of four-letter-acronym raising a stink? they always fail somehow in the end. look at the PMRC, for example. are they still around? they were successful in getting records stickered back in the late 80's / early 90's, but that's all that it ever came to be, thanks to people getting angry over it. it's time to get angry again. Sun, 22 Jan 2006 23:49:16 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=124 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) today is 2005's equivalent of 2004's <a target="new_window_10" href="http://www.downhillbattle.org">grey tuesday</a>. make note. last year, grey tuesday was a monumental event. the Dangermouse "Grey Album" was an absolutely amazing piece of work, and it sent a shockwave throughout the industry that both shook up record company executives, thrilled music lovers and copyright violators everywhere. grey tuesday spelled a radically new day for both listeners of music and would-be producers / copyright violators. i mean, fer crying out loud, the guy had the <b><i>cojones</b></i> to rip up "The White Album" (which is dangerous territory in itself) and lay Jay-Z over it. wow. if you haven't heard it, i recommend you check it out. this year is no different. grey tuesday lives on. someone took <a target="new_window_11" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002OERI0/ref=pd_kar_1/103-8226469-1068607?n=5174">green day's "american idiot"</a>, mashed up the entire album, made it available under the guise of <b>Dean Gray</b> (har har har), and called it <a target="new_window_3" href="http://americanedit.org/home/ae/">American Edit</a>. i've listened to it in its' entirety, and it's quite an amazing piece of work. the individual(s) who made this little piece of mashup joy really knows their shit about editing and music production. it sounds incredibly professional, not to mention well-made. and fair use-wise, it really pushes the envelope. beyond the point of no return. the individual(s) that did this took no prisoners when sampling. absolutely none. even the son of a bush was sampled. negativland would be *VERY* proud. :) support grey tuesday. go check it out. <a target="new_window_3" href="http://americanedit.org/home/ae/">Dean Gray - American Edit</a> "ashanti's letterbomb" is da shizznit. so is "novocaine rhapsody". holy wow. it doesn't even sound like these guys had to nudge key signatures very far to make all this stuff fit. really surprised they didn't use nirvana's cover of "molly's lips" on "impossible rebel". ah well, at least the sex pistols got in there somewhere. :D <b><i>always remember: copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.</b></i> the more derivative works like this keep appearing <i>out there</i>, and the more there is demand for it, the more they can't fight it and the music industry will just have to relent. the trend of mashups will keep happening, as more and more people get ahold of things like <a target="new_window_8" href="http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/Products/ShowProduct.asp?PID=928">Acid Pro</a> and <a target="new_window_9" href="http://www.ableton.com">Ableton Live</a>. <b><i>the revolution cannot be stopped. may many new grey tuesdays come to pass.</b></i> ... in other news, i'm very sick at the moment. that would be the reason why i didn't go off on a tirade about copyrights and fair use in this post. i haven't the energy. i can barely sit in this chair. i caught some sort of nasty little accelerated flu-bug. luckily, it's moving through my system very quickly and i'm starting to feel a bit better. this is moving quicker than most flubugs i catch -- i had a fever, chills, cold flashes and painful sinusitis-like symptoms all throughout yesterday, and today i feel like i've got a killer cold and have been hawking-up some pretty nasty things. hopefully, by thursday, i'll be feeling a bit better. cheers, as ever, for reading. Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:25:42 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=123 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <center><img src="http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/lib/../images/upload/boycott-sony-3-small.jpg"></center> ... in the last post, i wrote a bit about the sony boycott, as well as a quick paragraph or two on how i felt about sony's use of dangerous drm (and drm in general). i had wanted to write more, but had no energy. i still don't. however ... just today, a few things have popped up on slashdot that made me smile. and *almost* save me from having to write my own convoluted entry on why Sony sucks for using / employing drm on audio discs. <b>note : drm-enabled music discs *DO NOT* conform to the Philips Audio Compact Disc standard. therefore, by nature they are *NOT* audio compact discs, and should NEVER be referred to as such. do your part.</b> <DL> <LH><b>The Sony Boycott / Backlash Happy Linkfest o' Doom™</b></LH> <DD><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window" href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/2051245&tid=233&tid=158&tid=141&tid=185">Sony Repents Over CD Debacle</a> on <a target="new_window_0" href="http://slashdot.org">Slashdot</a> <IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_2" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4514678.stm">BBC Article on Sony Repent</a> (mentioned in slashdot article) <DD><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_3" href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1349217&tid=141&tid=172">Sony's SunnComm DRM Patch a Security Risk</a> on <a target="new_window_0" href="http://slashdot.org">Slashdot</a> <DD><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_4" href="http://www.boycottsony.us/">The Boycott Sony Blog</a> ... ahhhh yeaaaah ... loads of information on the XCP / Suncomm DRM & the boycott here <DD><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_5" href="http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=942">MediaMax Bug Found; Patch Issued; Patch Suffers from Same Bug</a> at <a target="new_window_6" href="http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/">Freedom to Tinker</a> <DD><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_7" href="http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/10/18/43546858c6630?in_archive=1">DRM Technology Injures Consumer Rights</a> ... not Sony Boycott specific, but relevant nonetheless. <dd><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_7" href="http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,69559,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2">Boycott Sony</a> on Wired <dd><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_8" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051121/tc_nm/sony_texas_dc">Texas sues Sony BMG for spyware violations</a> on Yahoo! News <dd><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_9" href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/22/1813254&tid=233&tid=141&tid=158">Sticky Tape Defeats Sony DRM Copy Protection</a> <dd><IMG SRC="lib/../images/upload/purplebullet.gif" ALT="*" align="middle"><a target="new_window_10" href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/07/1343236&tid=233&tid=141&tid=172">EFF and Sony Disclose New DRM Security Hole</a> </DL> here's some quick blow-by-blow commentary by your favourite curmudgeon on snippets from the BBC article. the article is rather interesting, and short, so it's a quick read. <a target="new_window_12" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4514678.stm">go read it first.</a> <b><i>"The key point to remember is that copyright infringement is a huge issue for the recording industry as a whole and that's where we came from originally," he said."</b></i> uh-huh. 'key issue'. and what about fair use? and consumers' rights? and privacy? or the safety of your customers' computer(s) and data? these are <b><i>"huge issues"</b></i> as well, and it's blatant that sony has chosen to ignore them. obviously, none of these are key concerns to Sony, Suncomm, or XCP -- otherwise, they wouldn't have written or employed such dangerous software to begin with. the only thing sony cares about is the almighty dollar / yen / euro. and from what i've gleaned over the years, suncomm is notorious for not giving a shit once they've unleashed a piece of copy protection. i'm absolutely certain that the only reason that sony has even had patches issued for these obviously scary security holes is because of backlash and consumer complaint. if no one had spoken up, thousands upon thousands of machines would now be r00tkit z0mb|3z and the internet world would be in an even larger mess. the sony debacle would have been called "The Sony WORM" instead. it seems so obvious to me that the group that spearheaded this idea and hired the goons behind XCP and MediaMax didn't even bother to do much investigation on what these applications could do -- either that, or there's an underlying conspiracy within sunncomm et al to do heaps upon heaps of damages to the worlds' computers. i think that the only things that the sony digital group saw were two things : 'protection' and 'marketing oppourtunities'. i believe that the drm also would report back to sony whenever the consumer would listen to the disc on their computer. nasty. what the fuck were you thinking, sony? <b><i>"But this whole story has led us to look at the approach we have to take going forward," Mr Hesse said. The furore about the XCP software had lead Sony BMG to "diligently re-evaluate" how it protects music on CDs.</b></i> yeah. sure. hopefully 'diligent re-evaluation' means that you guys better not be thinking of still using drm or using 'safer' drm. i look at this as digital prostitution. you've already screwed us once, mr. hesse. we paid for that screw with CASH MONEY, and got a computerized STD to show for it. it's binary chlamydia. this lesson is to teach you guys not to do it again. <b><i>The loophole introduced by MediaMax and the patch could have let malicious hackers hijack the programs to gain control of a PC. The new program issued by Sony BMG on 8 December closes the hole in the patch. "It's a fairly common issue often found in PC games," said Robert Horton, a security expert from NGS Software brought in by Sony to vet its latest patch. </b></i> what?!?!? no. what're you smokin', mang? this sort of copy protection is NOT fairly common on video game discs. at least, none that i've seen. i haven't ever seen a video game disc put a rootkit on a machine. most of the time, the protection on video games are solely at a data level -- ie the designers use a data striping scheme or some sort of physical defect on the disc that can't easily be reproduced by some sort of common disc copy utility, and a protection utility compiled into the games' executable checks for it upon load before starting the game... and if it doesn't find it, it usually assumes that the attempt to run the program is from a copy and not the original retail version of the disc. <b><i>"Even if the issue is only a slight one, at Sony BMG we are very clear that any software security issues are taken with the utmost seriousness," said Mr Hesse.</b></i> SLIGHT?!?!?!? what the ... ? sony, why are you treating this as though it is a SMALL problem? it most certain is *not*!! it's such a big issue that you could drive 20 Mack Trucks with fully-payloaded trailers through it and still have the opening flapping in the breeze!!! what're you smoking, man? lay off it and come back down to the real world. this is not some issue to be taken lightly. for crying out loud ... GUB'MENT machines have been compromised by the rootkit and by all this drm software! secure systems! why? because gub'ment workers are human (or at least pretty close to it) and they like to listen to music while filing redundant paperwork too! i say the boycott is still on. keep boycotting sony until they stop employing this DRM nonsense. keep boycotting them until they've brought the price of audio compact discs back down to a reasonable level. $15.99 or more for a cd is absolute robbery when you consider it didn't cost them more than $2 to produce the physical product. <a target="new_window_13" href="http://21361.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=2&Product_Code=2073&Category_Code=CDs"> henry rollins can attest to this</a>. <b>EDIT / 12/10/05:</b> in the post previous to this one, i mentioned that readers of the blog should check out tracks on Imogen Heap's new disc, "speak for yourself". the audio disc version is distributed by Sony / BMG, and is <b>DRM-PROTECTED</b> by some flavour of Suncomm DRM. if you do wish to check out those tracks, <b>DO NOT BUY</b> the audio disc version from a brick-and-mortar store unless you know how to 'get around' the drm or you can afford to buy the import version, which <b>does not have the drm on it.</b> for those not wishing to shuck out the dosh for the import, as much as i hate to do this, i must grudgingly recommend that you purchase the tracks from the iTunes music store. anyone who reads this blog has probably read that i do not approve of files from iTunes mainly because of the shitty audio quality factor of the AAC codec as well as the DRM factor -- other than the import, this is the only way you can get the music without the shitty sony drm. we just can't get away from DRM, can we? at least apple's drm allows a tiny bit of freedom. cheers. Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:14:04 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=122 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) not much to say at the moment ... i'm feeling burnt and not doing all that well mentally or physically. and the cold weather ain't helping either. i had planned on writing a 'boycott sony' entry, and even started it one day, but never got very deep into it. mainly because i just haven't had the energy to get all my thoughts out of my head, into my fingers, thru the keyboard and transmographied out into dataspace. and at this rate, by the time i have the energy to do so, it'll probably be a moot point. i just hope that sony has learned a very valuable lesson -- that drm is stupid, pointless, *very* annoying, and that the consumer shouldn't be punished for paying for product. especially since that product is FALLIBLE on a longevity level, unlike my favourite medium, the vinyl record. i believe that steve albini is right -- the vinyl record is truly the archival medium -- i've got records in my collection that are 40 years + and they still sound <i>fantastic</i> and play from beginning to end. it drives me nuts that companies even bother with drm. i understand that they're trying to protect their investment, but at the same time, i've got audio compact discs in my collection rotting away -- discs in my collection are suffering from bitrot, bronzing, and other maladies. the music industry treats cd's as a <b><i>permanent</b></i> medium when it absolutely positively is NOT. cd's are not archival quality. and at the prices that you have to pay to get them in this day and age, as well as the age the medium has been around (audio compact discs are now 24 years old. don't believe me? go <a target="new_window" href="http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/audio.history.timeline.html">here</a> for proof), you'd think that the quality would go up, not down. nope. so why would sony do something to make their audio playback disc (which doesn't conform to the audio compact disc standard, so it can't be called an audio disc) even more prone to failure and lack of longevity? oh well. thanks to public backlash, they've shuffled up to the trough and are now shoveling spoonfuls from a bucket of shit over this one, and they're probably losing piles of cash replacing all the discs that they enabled with that nasty rootkit drm. let's hope that millions of dollars in remanufacturing costs make them understand that they've made an incredibly stupid mistake. and perhaps they'll think twice about using drm. or perhaps not. on another note ... i was watching television tonight for a little while, and when i was just about ready to switch the old moronbox off, get up and go do something somewhat productive, a song started playing on this idiotic show called 'everwood' (which i can't stand to watch -- it's absolute bollocks imho, and almost as painful to watch as that horrid-and-thankfully-now-cancelled family values / religious propaganda show '7th heaven'). and in the beginning, i heard a song playing that was nothing short of fantastic. the closed captions were on, and at the very beginning of the program they rolled "[playing: devotchka]". i saw this band play last year, opening for concrete blonde, and i gotta tell ya, i was not impressed. in fact, i was exactly the opposite of impressed. they sounded to me like an eastern bloc version of dexy's midnight runners, but with that goofy tuba gag. couldn't help but think 'wow, this band really sucks' over and over again. it takes a lot for a local band to impress me, since i used to run in those circles when i was in a band a long time ago, and i know what some of the local talent is capable of (look up 'fiction 8', 'seraphim shock', 'twice wilted', 'the omens', or my old band 'filmstrip', for examples of bands that are and were absolutely amazing). these guys were absolutely at the opposite end of good. i can get into the whole pseudo-russian kitsch (being a big fan of russian kitsch), but i couldn't get into the music -- it was kinda horrible. and i mean, come on, we've already got *one* laibach. why rip off kitsch that was already brilliantly done in the past and apply it in such a sucky way? however ... give a band a few months ... and perhaps they'll produce something that doesn't suck. kind of like the whole monkey / typewriter / shakespeare debacle. the song that was at the 'everwood' intro was a song called "how it ends". and it was absolutely brilliant. kind of reminded me of some of <a target="new_window" href="http://www.thedivinecomedy.com/">the divine comedy</a>'s stuff ... had some definite old-world soul. so props to you, devotchka. you've done something that doesn't suck and impressed this old curmudgeon. way to go. haven't heard the whole album, and i'd have to check it out before i could say i've turned my attitude around about this band, but if anything, give 'how it ends' a listen. it's creepy as far as how good it is. speaking of the divine comedy ... a somewhat private note ... wayne j. lines, if you're out there somewhere on the internetwebland, and you're reading this, *PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE* drop me a line. you'll find a way to email me at the upper right hand corner of the blog. it's been a million billion years since i've chatted with you, and i think it would be absolutely amazing to hear how you're doing, bad or good. speaking of drm'd cd's ... if you haven't heard imogen heap's new cd ... there are two songs on it that are absolutely brilliant. track 5 and track 8. grab them and listen to them. they're ... amazing. vocoders rule. :D right. i've got to go now. Fri, 09 Dec 2005 05:26:08 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=121 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <table align="center" cellpadding="20"> <tbody><tr> <td align="center"> <font size="5"><b>Rock Star</b></font><br> You scored 100%! </td> </tr> <tr> <td> You damn rock star. You know all the basics, and if you got any wrong, I bet it was that stupid Traveling Wilburys question. Your friends are probably intimidated by your knowledge of classic rock and envy your impressive collection. When a classic rock song comes on the radio, you can probably identify it before the vocals kick in most of the time. You probably get good scores on the "maiden name of Clapton's mom" tests, too. </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"> <img src="http://is1.okcupid.com/users/102/306/1023073104876057970/mt1115192032.jpg"> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br><br><br> <table cellpadding="20"> <tbody><tr> <td> <span id="comparisonarea">My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people <i>your age and gender</i>:<blockquote><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4"><tbody><tr><td valign="middle"><table bgcolor="black" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td bgcolor="#b2cfff" height="20" width="138"><a href="http://www.okcupid.com"><img src="http://is0.okcupid.com/graphics/0.gif" alt="free online dating" border="0"></a></td><td bgcolor="white" width="12"><a href="http://www.okcupid.com"><img src="http://is0.okcupid.com/graphics/0.gif" alt="free online dating" border="0"></a></td></tr></tbody></table></td><td valign="middle">You scored higher than <b>92%</b> on <b>notes</b></td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote></span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table cellpadding=20><tr><td>Link: <a href='http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=9994175725051725569'>The BASIC classic rock Test</a></td></tr></table> Wed, 23 Nov 2005 21:35:16 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=119 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) just seen on slashdot (link : <a target="new_window1" href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/13/1624200&tid=185&tid=17">Stiffer Penalties for Copyright Violations</a>) : <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/11/doj_floats_ippa/">US DoJ offers to jail copyright infringers</a> (alternate story link : <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20051110214231991">Public Knowledge Responds to DOJ's Intellectual Property Legislation</a>) wtf? pretty soon, it's going to be illegal to fart or pick your teeth with anything but a gub'ment-approved toothpick, punishable by heavy jail time and/or death. how stupid is the guy trying to push this through? and how stupid are the american people? hopefully someone at the EFF will see this and call bullshit on it. Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:17:55 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=118 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <b><i>"Here's the Plain Situation ... There's No Negotiation with the fellas at the freakin' Eff Cee See!!!"</b></i> WOW! if <b>*ANY*</b> of my readers out there missed <a target="new_window_3" href="http://www.tv.com/family-guy/ptv/episode/428257/summary.html">last nights' episode</a> of <a target="new_window" href="http://www.familyguy.com/">Family Guy</a>, well, you absolutely <b>*MUST*</b> see this episode. seriously. find a way. you gotta see it. ask all your pals with tivo units if they recorded it ... ask all your stone-age tech pals who have vcrs if they recorded it ... find some dodgy individual who uses those things to find stuff online (you know what i'm talkin' aboot) you HAVE to see this episode. never have i seen such a brilliant, well-written, utterly fuckin' whizz-yer-shorts funny, and yet on-the-mark stab at television censorship and the stupidity behind it in my life. while it's true that some people have taken a stand on this issue over the years and figured out how to thrust it into a way for the public to see it, the fine fine people who make <a target="new_window_2" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182576/">Family Guy</a> have finally taken all the things that i've ever said, felt and thought about this issue and crammed it all into one completely hilarious, and yet so-close-to-real-life episode. everything that i've ever wanted to say to the efh see cee on what i think about censorship of the public airwaves is crammed in there somewhere. and to the people that do family guy, here are seven words for you: <center> bless you! thank you! bravo! ABSOLUTELY CLASS! </center> after the janet jackson boobie incident last year, i wanted to scream. i could not believe that people could be so ashamed of the simple fact that they're human beings that they would go so far as to complain about seeing something that EVERYONE has -- a nipple! and something every woman has -- a breast. and aside from maybe howard stern, no one really has taken the proper stand on this whole thing. until now. :) yeah !!! brilliant stuff. here's to you, family guy writers and staff ... you rule. and for those of you who missed it, <a target="new_window_4" href="http://www.radioearth.com/images/Wp_The_FCC_Song.mp3">here's a little taste of what you missed.</a> and ironically, it is titled similarly to <a href="http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogidlist=33">another song</a> written by Eric Idle, who also had a pretty much dead-on view of these sorts of things. Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:52:47 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=117 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) man, i can't believe that they're doing this again. <b><a target="new_window" href="http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69453,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3">Fatal Flaw Weakens RFID Passports</a></b> it's just infinitesimally stupid to me. a tinfoil hat isn't going to keep any good identity thief down. just like a tinfoil hat won't keep those gosh-darned aliens from reading my thoughts (you need an <a target="new_window" href="http://darien.zerogauge.org/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=test-gallery&id=devodarien"><b>Energy Dome</a></b> for that kind of superior protection!). *sigh* it's like a kid who is in a candy store, wants to buy candy, but is 3 cents shy of that slice of gum that he wants. he gets in the line, gets to the front of the line, asks for the slice of gum, and the shopkeeper says "no, you're 3 cents short. come back when you have enough". and then instead of scaring up the three cents he needs for that slice of gum, he just goes to the back of the queue and keeps presenting the short-changed amount. stupid, stupid, stupid. Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:37:30 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=116 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i know i haven't posted in awhile ... and i apologize for that. i haven't felt good, and unfortunately, that's the best explanation i can give right now. it's been one thing right after the other ... i get well, and then i fall back down into the hellpit again. it's beyond tiresome, but for now, it's the way of things, and i just have to deal with it all. i'm dealing with and yet <i>another</i> abscessed tooth. last week, my face swelled up again like in january and it scared the hell outta me. i didn't want to go to the ER, because i knew exactly what i'd be in for if i had, and the last thing i wanted to deal with is some hack wanna-be dentist-in-training sticking his nasty hands into my mouth and hitting every painful point therein (which happened last time). but i caught it with strong antibiotics and it's just now starting to wind down to the point where things are tolerable. my face is a lot less swollen now, but it still is swollen, and still hurting. i'll post more when i feel up to writing about things. because, as always, there's a lot to write about. for now ... here's something i generally hate to see on blogs: quiz results! trite, cliche, and lame. since i'm feeling annoyed, why not pass the buck onto you? ;) <center> <img src="http://images.quizilla.com/G/grittynoir/1039062338_buckaroo.jpg" border="0" alt="You're Buckaroo Banzai."><br>Big Boo-tay! <br><br><a href="http://quizilla.com/users/grittynoir/quizzes/Which%20B-Movie%20Badass%20Are%20You%3F/"> Which B-Movie Badass Are You?</a><BR> <font size="-2">brought to you by <a href="http://quizilla.com">Quizilla</a></font> </center> p.s. i was reading <a target="new_window" href="http://drwho.virtadpt.net/memory_log.html">the other doctor's</a> log, and came across a link to another weblog, which had a story about how <a target="new_window_2" href="http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/drm_crippled_cd.html">Sony is using DRM as a bucket in a pissing contest against Apple</a>. it's a fascinating read. anyone who knows me knows that i hold a pretty large pile of contempt for DRM in any capacity. to use DRM as a weapon against another company who won't bow their software or store to you is just petty (even if i do dislike apple as much as i do). it's even shittier to take your customers down with the ship. Tue, 01 Nov 2005 07:45:20 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=115 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) according to a new study, most studies are completely bogus and wildly inaccurate. http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/07/13/contradictory.studies.ap/index.html thpppbbbbffffffft. every day during the week, at least 1 to 3 news reports start out with the uncanny phrase "today, a new study showed that <i>[insert something completely asinine here]</i>". my theory is that these 'studies' are funded by corporations trying to sell more of a product. how many times have you seen something on the news that declared something that was bad for you completely and totally harmless, and then a year or two later saw something on the news that stated that it was bad again? everything from drinking coffee to eating butter, having sex or taking aspirin has been declared either good or bad for you. <i>"a new study announced by the institute for rocking up and smoking gerbils announced today that rocking up and smoking gerbils increases your life expectancy by 300%; the study showed that smoking rocked-up gerbils makes you immortal, and has the completely unexpected side effect of causing money to grow on trees and all the beautiful women in your neighbourhood to flock to your door!!! whoa bob, grab the channel 13 devil's johnson, the gerbils and the torch. let's have a party after the newscast!"</i> Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:49:18 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=114 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) just waking up, so the brain isn't really functioning as normal just yet ... neither are the fingers or hands (and they generally don't work right for the first hour or so after i wake up anyway)... however ... i had to post and comment on this... <a target="new_window" href="http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0506intelmac.html">A first look at Apple's Intel Mac (with photos)</a> it's and-yet another page that shows the new apple/intel dev kit and talks about it a bit. ThinkSecret (the people who put up the article) are speculating, based on what they see with the dev kit's version of OS X, that the new intel version of OS X will only run on apple hardware, and will most probably use an EDID chip as a sort of 'internal dongle' to let OS X know it is running on Apple hardware. perhaps the dev kits have this built on already, since the article states that attempts to install the devkit version of OS X on a dell doesn't work. apple, this is stupid. you're suddenly opening yourself up to a new market, where you could convert thousands more to mac zealotry and could give ms a run for its' money, and you're choosing the side of greed again. i understand wanting to protect your monopoly, but since you're choosing a platform that isn't a monopoly, you can't act under those rules anymore. intel and x86 users are totally used to being able to pick and choose what they cram into their machines, and unless the hardware is easily-hackable or it's easy to make a third-party dongle that will allow the execution of apple software on non-apple machines, this could be another step in the wrong direction. is this company truly this blind? why isn't anyone speaking up about this? why is it that the mac zealots don't care that they're bilked for thousands upon thousands of dollars to get inferior hardware at an exclusive and superior price? i don't get it. Thu, 23 Jun 2005 20:45:19 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=113 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) this morning, i happened to read the following: <a target="new_window" href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/billycorgan/25515.html">A message to Chicago from Billy Corgan.</a> wow! what a great way to wake up. one of my favourite bands is going to get back together!!!!! yaaaaaaaaay! :smiley: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 14:44:02 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=112 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) why aren't there more <a target="new_window" href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67853,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3">guys like *THIS*</a> in congress? there needs to be. seriously. we can't fight these sorts of things on our own, and we need more people like this guy. i especially think so now that i'm seeing a lot of digital media in my collection starting to fail. i've been going through my cd collection and catalogueing it, and i'm finding more and more of them are starting to suffer from bitrot. especially those that were issued on Cleopatra Records (yes, i have a high quotient of goth / industrial stuff in my music collection). cleopatra's discs seem to be the hardest to read -- some of them have NO surface scratches/trauma whatsoever and yet they don't want to read very easily and i have to dicker with them. feh. it's a good thing i *can* make backups of these lovely old chestnuts, although it really makes me wonder about the longevity of the compact disc medium, and especially with regard to CDR's. if discs i bought just 8 years ago are starting to fail, how much longer do they have before they deteriorate completely? Thu, 16 Jun 2005 19:15:03 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=111 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) not too much to write about, since i'm not awake yet. just some links and light commentary. <a target="new_window" href="http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6012/">Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel hits piracy sites</a> someone with huge cojones leaked the x86 devkit version of Tiger to p2p networks. wow. that took balls. what's ironic about it is that i feel tiger is already kinda broken on the ppc platform; it only makes one wonder how much more broken the x86 version is...although it would be perfectly alright if *that* were b0rk3d, since it *is* a developer version. <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.twinmac.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3">Pictures of the Mac/Intel Developer Kit</a> neato. just neato. again, i really hope apple doesn't make the mistake of closing this new intel-based operating system off to strictly apple-based machines. it would definitely be a mistake, i think. <a target="new_window3" href="http://jwz.livejournal.com/490051.html">Jamie Zawinski Says 'fuck the skull of alsa'</a> see? i'm not the only one who thinks its' stupid and difficult to deal with things inside linux. and in fact, one of the *BIG* reasons that i was distro-hopping on my mac is largely due to trying to get sound to burp from my mac mini !!!! if you read the rest of his <a target="new_window4" href="http://jwz.livejournal.com/">blog</a>, you'll note that he basically says "it shouldn't be this hard to get things like a mouse or sound up and running." and he's right. for example, i want to access the extra buttons on my logitech mouse under linux on the mac mini. i'm so damned used to having the 'back' and 'forward' buttons while reading websites that when i don't have them, i want to crush my mouse like an empty pack of cigarettes. and to implement support for them is *STUPIDLY* hard. and it shouldn't be much more than installing/compiling a driver and going from there. <img align="middle" src="../clt.gif"> Foetus - "Slung" (man, Jim Thirlwell is a genius... "i've got radioactive mud." ... genius, man. i'm telling you.)</img> Sun, 12 Jun 2005 18:31:32 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=110 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) see? i'm not the only one who smells a big old stinky rat in the kitchen of apple. <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html">Going for Broke by Robert X. Cringely</a> although i believe cringely is wrong about the DRM thing. i've read <a target="new_window3" href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23708">several</a> <a target="new_window4" href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000170045682/">things</a> that call bullshit on <a target="new_window5" href="http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=580672002">this</a> information about new intel cpu's having DRM built in. people (including cringely) are now speculating en masse that apple and intel have some special processor on the bench in development ... something like a cheaper itanium or some sort of new 64-bit cpu since the PPC's are supposedly 64-bit processors ... even after reading cringely's article (and various others), at this stage i still would speculate that the new macs will be built solely around x86 architecture. after all, all of the news outlets say that the new apple dev kits come with a pentium 4 machine. and it would be a stupid, costly move to develop an entirely new line of chips just to run apple stuff. but then again, apple is known for making quite a few stupid mistakes along the line. if i had $1000 to blow, it'd be interesting to buy one of these dev kits just to see mac os x running on intel hardware. ha. Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:07:13 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=109 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) i was watching television a couple of days ago and saw a very quick 'public interest' story on the local news broadcast about how some arby's restaurants in the denver area are now accepting PayPass-embedded MasterCards for payment. how many of you are scared of this? raise your hands, please. i know i am. paypass is based on RFID technology. and anyone who has even read a little bit about RFID technology knows how scary it truly is. RFID is very rapidly making it so that we're just millimeters away from becoming a big-brother-controlled society. if you don't know what RFID tech is, go to the following wikipedia page and read it before continuing. <a target="new_window" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID">Wikipedia RFID Page</a> after that, check out a press release from january : <a target="new_window5" href="http://www.cr80news.com/news/2005/01/18/ti-has-mastercard-paypass-rfid-chips-coming-soon/">TI has MasterCard PayPass RFID chips coming soon</a> and then, finally, go read a couple of articles on why RFID is a stupid idea at this stage in the game with regard to sensitive data, such as passports and credit cards: <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67025,00.html">RFID Cards Get Spin Treatment</a> <a target="new_window3" href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22206">Homeland Security tries passport spin</a> RFID is so freakin' insecure at this point that it shouldn't even be allowed to be used for anything more serious than product inventory at retail stores, or perhaps pet identification tags. i seriously doubt that the 'MC paypass' is infallible and i'd also bet that the encryption used can easily be broken by a reasonably-cheap device (which could probably be really easily reverse-engineered and, as the wired article states, could be built for $500) that could read chips that supposedly can only be read from 4 inches away. c'mon, man. let's get real here. identity thieves are smart little fuckers. they are. really. and in this day and age, any simple encryption scheme can be broken overnight by some 14 year old kid in a foreign country where the laws may not be so lax with regard to obtaining sample technology to reverse-engineer. if you hold out a very large, tasty cookie in front of a little kid, he's going to do everything in his power to get that cookie. technologists and hackers innocently reverse-engineer new technology (hardware *or* software) largely for fun -- they just want to know how this sort of thing works. the cooler the toy, the more they want to break it open and see how it ticks. identity thieves (and there are millions of them out there) pay big money for information like that, so that they can do their jobs and survive comfortably without detection. these days, technology companies tend to develop products that are half-broken and release them onto the public in this state. this is largely due to demand for the product, pressure from stockholders and ceo's, or to beat the competition to market and gain a larger userbase in the process. this in turn results in large amounts of users suddenly becoming betatesters of the product because their particular kit doesn't jive right with the product and crashes. and with regard to devices that pertain to storing and/or interacting with systems that deal with sensitive data (such as credit card numbers, ssn's or anything that links an individual to sensitive data that can be used for id theft in ANY WAY), they still don't seem to regard this "push-to-market and betatest with endusers" strategy with raised eyebrows and a heightened sense of caution. and they should regard it with the highest of raised eyebrows and caution. especially with regard to credit card data. it's not safe to publically betatest this sort of device. in short: if you're in the market for a new credit card, don't get one with an RFID chip (or so-called 'contactless' id chip). and vehemently express your disgust to the credit card company for thinking that you're a rube and that you don't know that you're participating in a public betatest program that could result in your identity being stolen. don't let them do this to you. in this day and age, who we are is our most precious commodity, and if that's stolen, you're screwed. Sat, 11 Jun 2005 02:09:00 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=108 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) <a target="new-window3" href="http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67774,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6">Tiger Tweaks Could Kill Folders</a> this pisses me off primarily because this sort of idea breeds laziness, i honestly don't think that we should be working towards this ideology that file system management is a bad thing. one thing that apple has always tried to shy away from is file system management in general, and it's one of the things i've held against mac zealots for a long time. though most of the mac operating systems that i've had experiences with (and my experiences do go all the way back to the original mac -- one of my aunts worked for them back in the 80's) provided easy ways to manage your files, i noticed that most mac users that i'd ever have to deal with would lose their files inside the file system and not really care. and then when you stuck them in front of a pc, they'd get really confused and frustrated because they were actually <b>*FORCED*</b> to manage their files on PC operating systems. and this became a problem for me because i'd actually have to coddle them with this idea and it drove me nuts. "this sucks. my mac just finds the files for me" would be a common retort i'd hear when i was primairly working in IT. bullshit. all the makings of proper file management were there, they just didn't want to learn it because the mac made it so easy. they weren't really using the computer, they were just playing with it, you know? i have a lot of beefs with spotlight. it's largely inefficient in my opinion, and it bogs Tiger down in many ways. i don't like the fact that when i'm working on a document on my mac under Tiger, it hangs and i get the <b>spinning beachball of death</b> at the most <b>*INOPPORTUNE*</b> times (ie when i pause for a moment and then immediately start typing) ... i've lost ideas to this 'feature' simply because i can't type a million miles a minute anymore. in my opinion, spotlight is largely inelegant at this time. it's next to useless to me, and it hinders productivity when i'm using my mac system. i do not think a search system should replace good file system management skills. you let that go, and you're releasing a fundamental right. i don't want an operating system managing my files -- <i><b>*I*</b></i> would rather do that myself. releasing the right to manage your own files due to sheer laziness only breeds ideas of control on the part of the operating system developers. you do this, and it opens the door for bigger, more bastardly things. like DRM, for example. let's say in the future that an operating system is set up to "manage my files" by default. while doing the intial run-through to see what files are stored on your hard drive, it sees a bunch of files it thinks you're not supposed to have -- like mp3 files that you've painstakingly hand-ripped from your own collection of cd's, or heaven forbid, <b><i>VINYL RECORDS</b></i>. it says "hey, you're not supposed to have these files." and then locks you out of the ability to access them until you've proven to the operating system that you are allowed to have these files by right. how do you prove it to the operating system? by scanning barcodes from your cd's, of course. or scanning RFID's. or whatever bastard DRM flavour-of-the-month happens to be embedded or in operation at the moment. and probably at some financial expense to you. you've forked out money for the new operating system, and now you're going to have to fork out more money for a barcode reader or RFID tag reader or some other ridiculous thing that you <b>*DON'T REALLY NEED ANYWAY*</b> just so that you can listen to mp3's of discs that <i>you already own!</i> and what about the rips of the records that you have done? about 70-80% of the vinyl records that i buy don't have barcodes. if this ideology was put into play, i wouldn't be able to listen to 3/4 of my music collection. the more control you give them, the more rights they're going to take away in lieu of easier accessibilty (and the more bastardly things that the 'powers that be' are going to slide under the rug). screw that. people of the computing world: you <b>*HAVE*</b> to speak up about this sort of thing. i am only one voice. and no one actually listens to me because i'm a curmudgeon (who probably is also considered a crackpot by some people). don't let them do this. don't let the big guys dictate how you should use your own computer. a search tool should be just that and nothing more -- a search tool. it should help you find files, not manage them for you or be used solely as a management tool. on mac os x, finder is fundamental. it's necessary. and to even THINK that it should be replaced with a search tool? ridiculous. i do not believe that rudimentary file management tools should be replaced by search tools that have no way to do so. again, it goes back to letting the operating system handle where files should go. sorry, i don't think that's right. and whoever does needs to have their head examined. a search tool should be available in addition to basic file management, but not replaced. i don't want to have to *SEARCH* every single damned time i want to find an mp3 or find a document or whatever. if i know where it is and can directly access it, there's no reason for the operating system to hold my hand and <i>do it for me</i>. on another subject ... i'd like to put my 2 cents in about this new Apple / Intel partnership (code name : Nipple) that's been high on the hog in the news recently. while this is very interesting and entertaining news, i think that LOTS of people should speak up about this. because this is a turning point that could be very huge. it could mean some serious competition for microsoft, which, imho, would be a very good thing. linux is still too much of a fiddley-fart style of operating system and honestly is not ready for the masses yet. yeah, it's great, but yeah, it can easily get so complicated that someone's grandmother isn't going to get how to fix problems that may be entirely obvious to a *nix dork. however, mac os x is relatively easy to use, and some end-users who might find windows complicated (and they're out there) might like mac os x. aside from the mac mini, real apple desktop machines are ridiculously expensive. compare the price of a low-end G5 with a fairly decent dell system for example. no contest. dell wins. cookie for dell. with the 'Nipple' partnership (hahahahaha), there's a big chance that microsoft could get some much-needed competition and end-users could benefit from being able to buy any hardware they want and be able to run an operating system that might just be easier for them. it could be a good thing all the way round. except for one thing. steve jobs is really hip to closed, proprietary systems of any sort. from PC's to mp3 players, he really likes to lock the end-user into using ONLY apple products, because this insures an influx of <i><b>huge wads of cash</i></b> going toward apple. he likes his monopoly. it makes the company loads of money. and i'm sure it doesn't hurt his bank balance either. and he needs to be humbled. in the worst way. apple's business model does not benefit its' end users in the slightest. and that's blatanly obvious when you purchase one of their products. it solely benefits apple. yes, they're a company. yes, they're in business. yes, they need to make money. but no, they don't need to bilk their end-users. they need to stop treating us like cash-cows. that's how i feel about apple -- i feel that by purchasing one of their machines, i've suddenly become a cow and my udders are what feeds apple. and whenever they need more milk, they issue an update. and that's a joke. look at my experiences with quicktime pro, for example. my license and my key are not version-specific. nowhere in the documentation or even the license key does it state that THIS KEY is license-specific to QT 6.X.X *ONLY*. and yet now if i want to use QT Pro 7, i have to pay for it *AGAIN*. i should have gotten an update to Tiger for free since at the time of release, my mac was only a little over a month old. had to whip out the udder again to feed apple. and all i got was a pile of shit that barely works. i could go on and on all day using that metaphor. and it's true. but with the 'Nipple partnership' (man, i really enjoy typing that), it could open up some serious doors. however, i reckon that steve jobs has a few ideas in mind ... monopoly. proprietary systems. more money for apple. one market direction that apple could now foray into is making intel-based mac systems that have some proprietary hardware key that says "this is an apple product and can run apple software and operating systems" to any software you attempt to install on it. if the key doesn't exist in the hardware, you wouldn't be able to run any apple-based stuff and would have to purchase their hardware in order to use it. microsoft software probably won't care, as long as the hardware is based on x86 architecture in some manner and will probably install easily on apple hardware if they're going to stick with x86 based architecture (all signs point to them using pentium-based cpu's in the new apple hardware at this point -- supposedly the dev kit contains a pentium d). unless of course apple puts a bit of lock-out hardware into the mix that won't allow microsoft software to install. and if this 'monopoly hardware key' is put in place, you won't be able to run mac os x on other hardware, thus locking you into solely using apple products once again. and that's not right. anti-trust, anyone? yep. apple has always been notorious for wanting to be a monopoly. and they always disguise it by saying something like "because *WE* are the hardware manufacturer and *WE* are the software developer, you get the best in interoperability because *WE* can instill quality control and insure the two work together". and that's a bunch of crap. because you always have to go back to them if you want to do anything. this ideology has to go out the window. it will benefit everyone if it does. so don't let apple screw all of us yet again. don't let them continue this monopoly. don't let closed systems get you down. and most certainly, don't open your pocketbook up solely to them. let them know how you feel. write letters. call them. tell them how you feel about monopolies. use the words 'anti-trust' and 'fraudulent' as much as possible when discussing this. don't let them win. Fri, 10 Jun 2005 22:20:00 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=107 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) it seems like, most of the time, when i bother write anything in the ol' weblog here, it's because i read something that really pissed me off. am i sorry? perhaps. i don't know. i don't really have many outlets to vent this sort of frustration, so this has to be it. and i wish that we truly lived in a free society so that i could really say what i think about some things. regrettably, i'm too scared to truly say what i feel for fear of my doorstep having things show up on it. right. there are three things that make me mad ... one thing that i can't write about, and the other two that i can say a whole heapload about. i'm categorizing this as a general rant, and am making a separate post regarding my unhappiness with apple so that it's easily findable under that category. <a target="new_window" href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67807,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4">P-Act Works</a> the only thing i'll say here is that i'm firmly against this, because i firmly believe that it's a veil to take away more articles of fa-rei-dahm from us. the desire to move to canada grows stronger within me every day. <a target="new_window2" href="http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,67803,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2">Voice Actors Win Bigger Check</a> i think that the poor people who work in the development of these games should get a larger chunk of the pie first before the voice actors are even considered. they make the games work, after all. i used to work in the games industry, still have friends who do, and i'd really like to see fairer things in the future for them. i'd like to see them all living lives that aren't full of burnout and crispiness. i'd like to see them have more free time for their families and extra-curricular activities. on the outside, this new 'agreement' seems like a bad thing, but perhaps it will light a huge fire under the arses of the people who work at the software companies making the games to unionize so that they can get a larger chunk of the pie, fairer hours/wages can be established, and unfair crunch times can be abolished. i do not think it's fair, right or just to adopt the <i><b>"working in the games industry is cool, you should be grateful that you have a job in this industry, you should take all the abuses we inflict upon you on the chin and if you don't like it, go work at dairy queen"</i></b> attitude as mantra and then work yourself to death think that <i><b>"this is just the way it is -- it's the nature of the beast, and i should be thankful".</i></b> in my head, i often compare the video games industry with the cult of scientology. it's practically the same. the only thing that is missing from the games industry is the hard labour that people at the lowest pole in the echelon of scientology have to endure (<i>well, that and all of scientology's wacky ritualistic practices that would have made even the denizens of T.O.P.Y. blush -- ask john travolta about his totally nutty idea of how a baby should be born if you don't believe me</i>)... granted, people in the games industry *do* get paid, but the garbage they have to endure is almost as hard. and you just have to buck up and take it on the chin when the larger turds start sliding down the shit-chute toward you. video game people -- unionize. show the upper crust that drives ferraris that you shouldn't be made to suffer so that they can continue to live on easy street. at this point, the upper crust regards you as peons, and if all of you spoke up, they'd never be able to do it again. if the voice actors are demanding things, you should too. ... think about it ... if the games workers were unionized, there'd have been a battle as to who gets a chunk of the pie first, as opposed to hollywood winning straight-away. Fri, 10 Jun 2005 21:33:00 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=106 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) man, this OS really does work well ... its' gnome defaults are piss-poor, but KDE works niftily. i'm so stoked that samba works. i may just set this up on my file server and ditch windows ... it works rather smoothly. :) w00t. Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:31:17 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=105 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) got debian up and running on the mac mini ... it was a bit of a chore to get the new kernel (with sound support) to compile (forgot --initrd! d'oh!), but i managed to do it. granted, it's probably a bit more bloated than it should be, since, in all honesty, i have no idea in hell what stuff is supposed to be there and what isn't on the PPC platform, but ... after about 7 hours of tinkering... and a headache that's gotten progressively bigger ... debian's working right. i've got sound. i've got 1280x1024 resolution. samba works (wa-hey!), and my mouse is functioning almost right (back/forward buttons don't work). the only thing that really concerns me is that somehow the whole shebang is taking up way too much space. i may have to start from scratch again, since it's obviously *not* lean-and-mean (the whole of the installation shouldn't be taking up over 10gb! sheesh!) ... i'm just happy it's working. g'night. Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:14:16 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=104 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) alrightey ... tried ubuntu out. didn't like that either. next up : debian (proper) i'm hoping this will work out. if it doesn't, then i'll probably try yellowdog and then call it a night with linux on the mac. i am especially leery of trying out debian because apt-get sucks ... well, at least, in my opinion it does ... i don't like apt-get, and never have. we'll see. Fri, 03 Jun 2005 04:48:02 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=103 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) so, i've played with fedora core on the mac mini for a few days now, and am pretty disgusted with it. it truly is a total 'testbed'. nothing works. and it seems as though when you try and make one thing work, 10 things break. which only reiterates my general experiences with linux and some general dislikes of it ... while it's great because it's 99% free, you really gotta fiddley-fart about with the operating system to make it work and to get *ANYTHING* to run right. you spend more time configuring things and trying to get dependencies installed so that you can try to compile stuff that may not compile because it's missing files than you do actually doing productive things. seems to be my experience with any linux distro. red hat, debian, and now ubuntu is turning out that way too. i'm not brave enough to try yellowdog, as supposedly it suffers from some of the ills that fedora does. largely a testbed and not much else. you can say "cool! i've installed linux on my mac!" and that's all the good you can say. which makes my blood boil. i like linux, but i hate linux. i hate the toll it takes on my wrists. and there doesn't seem to be any distros for the mac (which is really the only machine that i can run it on) that a) work and b) doesn't become horribly broken because you want to install a C++ compiler so you can get SOUND running. i'm giving this one more shot and then getting back to other things. i've been sandbagged with this and it's frustrating me. it shouldn't. meanwhile ... i'm listening to therapy's "high anxiety" again. this album just rocks the box. throw the goat, baby. Thu, 02 Jun 2005 08:10:29 GMT http://darien.zerogauge.org/bl/index.php?blogid=102 darien@zerogaugeNoSpam.org (darien) yep. you read the title right. it <b>is</b> possible to be able to set your mac up to boot between these three operating systems. i've now done it. pretty keen, really. i now can: <ul><li>use panther for day-to-day schtuff</li> <li>use tiger for testing out schtuff and seeing how quickly and easily my poor little mini can crash</li> <li>waste hours and hours trying to get Fedora Core 4 PPC to <b><i>PLAY AN MP3 FILE</i></b></li> </ul> and you can, too. for those who want to know how to do it, here's what i did. note that this involves <b>STARTING FROM SCRATCH</b>, ie <b>WIPING YOUR HARD DRIVE CLEAN</b>. if you're going to do this, you'll want to <b>BACKUP EVERYTHING OF IMPORTANCE ON YOUR MAC</b>. <b>STANDARD DISCLAIMER : I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY OF THIS TEXT OR WHAT YOU, THE END USER, MAY DO WITH IT. IF YOU SCREW UP YOUR HARD DRIVE OR LOSE IMPORTANT DATA OR WHATEVER, YOU WILL NOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY OF IT. THERE IS NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED, WRITTEN OR IMPLIED BY THE BELOW HOW-TO. YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN.</b> ahem. now then, here's wha'cha do. this is of course assuming that you've <b>BACKED EVERYTHING UP BEFORE BEGINNING THIS PROCEDURE</b>. also note : you can't do this without a linux distro. at this point, there is no bootloader that i know of that's installable on a mac without being attached to some linux distribution ... debian, fedora core 4, yellowdog, etc. also, in order for this to work, you can't install darwin as your *nix based os, because of the following : when you set up the boot menu, you're going to have to use a trick where the yaboot bootloader thinks it is booting darwin, but in reality it's booting tiger. note also that i did this with fedora core 4. your mileage with other distros may vary. right. on with it. short version (for those of you who are impatient): <ol> <li>boot up your panther disk, repartition your hard drive and install panther</li> <li>boot up your tiger disk and install tiger</li> <li>read <a target="new_window2" href="Installing Fedora Core on the Mac mini">this article</a>, obtain a fedora core 4 installation disk and install fedora core 4</li> <li>modify your yaboot.conf file adding the magic missing ingredient to be able to boot to tiger as well as panther and fedora core 4</li> </ol> and now, the long-winded, more detailed semi 'how-to': <ol> <li>use your panther disc to both re-partition your hard disc, and then install panther itself. i suppose you could use the tiger dvd for this as well and install it first if you wanted to, but i went ahead and installed panther first, just in case there would be problems if tiger didn't like being second fiddle or whatever. right. get your <b>panther</b> disc, put it in your mac, and reboot to the disc, either by way of starting the installation software on the disc, or by holding down the 'c' key when the mo-sheen boots up. then go into the disc utility software included on the disc -- the pull-down menus should become available at some point. at this point, go to the partition tab and erase all partitions on the disc. then, make two partitions -- one for panther, and one for tiger. name them so it's easy to differentiate them -- i named mine 'tiger' and 'panther', which of course makes it stupidly simple to know which drive to choose when you're installing the operating system. and be sure to make them large enough to hold whatever the hell you're going to put on them besides the operating system. <b>NOTE : MAKE YOUR PANTHER PARTITION <u>FIRST</u>, AND YOUR TIGER PARTITION <u>SECOND</u>. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AS IT WILL MAKE IDENTIFACTION OF THE PARTITION WHICH CONTAINS TIGER EASIER WHEN YOU ARE SETTING UP THE BOOTLOADER!!!</b> myself, i made three partitions for Mac OS X related schtuff -- one for panther, one for tiger, and one for apps and documents, and after i had panther and tiger set up, i followed the instructions in <a target="new_window" href="http://maczealots.com/articles/home/">this article</a>. i have both tiger and panther using the same home dir, which seems to work quite well. keep in mind that when you're partitioning your hard drive, you want to have enough room for both mac os x installations *AND* whatever PPC-based linux distro you're going to use, so think about what you're doing before you