Milk’s Site

Former Campaign Manager for Howard Dean, Joe Trippi, made a speech at O’Reilly’s recent Emerging Technology Conference. He talked about how the Internet (specifically blogging and social tools) will be the a revolution for politics as it allows for a freer debate on the issues than the mass media would allow (or could manage), how they used it to engage new activists and get “200,000 … signed up in over 1000 cities and towns” and raise $45 million — “more than any Democrat in history has raised, including Bill Clinton as sitting President”, but how the “media’s portrayal out of context” managed to damage the campaign. A stream of the speech, along with links to the notes of several bloggers, can be found here.

Well, you’ll never guess what happened next! Mass-media organisation Reuters comes out with an article which spins the whole speech around, claiming that Joe talked about how the Internet “Failed Dean in Crunch“. Techdirt has all of the details, but while the poster there says “I’m not one who believes that bloggers are a ‘threat’ to journalism”, I think the point of this is that online blogging and social networking tools were able to provide points of view to the public other than those of a supposedly reputable mainstream source (plus provide a forum for people to debate these views), and show that the mainstream source was blatantly wrong. That is the threat that bloggers and social tools pose to traditional journalism; not extinction, as centralised news sources have many advantages over ‘distributed journalism’, but a requirement for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as readers (and viewers) are basically going to make up their own minds and walk away. As Joe Trippi said, “This couldn’t have happened earlier. The Internet wasn’t mature enough. The tools weren’t there in 2000.” This is only the beginning as the Internet still has a lot of maturing to do.

P.S. On a related matter; Salon.com asks the question “Is there an echo in here?“, to which Mark Pilgrim gives a resounding answer.

You know that Coors light TV advert, yeah? The one where there’s a load of people dancing in some kind of wintry mountainous area, then the DJ turns up the sound system’s volume, causing an avalanche, which then turns into a gentle snowfall? Is it me or is the DJ none other than Mr. Richard D James? Can anyone confirm or deny this for me please? Thanks.

I have a whole smorgasbord or technology links to post, but I’ll spread them over three or four posts to ease up on the linkage.

Wireless USB – this is looking like being what Bluetooth wasn’t, i.e., successful. WUSB is basically USB2 plus the absolutely amazing technology of Ultra Wideband (which Robert X. Cringely titled the potential 100 Mile-Per-Gallon Carburettor of the computer world). It does 480 Mbps up to about 4 meters and 110 Mbps up to 10 meters, with the potential for future speeds of 1 Gbps or more. Check this excellent introduction to Wireless USB (which contains some snazzy diagrams to explain the possibilities). The link rich Daily Wireless posted about this last week (”UWB/USB Group Formed“) and again today (”Wireless USB Expected Soon“).

• 31 Green parties from 29 countries have joined forces to create the first pan-European political party.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed his government in a live television broadcast.
• The American Education Secretary calls teachers union a “terrorist organization”.
• America, not really the land of the free.

Well, I travelled down on the train to Sheffield two Tuesdays ago (the 10th). The coach journy was priced at £49 and would have taken 13 hours (fuck that shit), but a getting a young persons railcard, then a discounted super return saver came to just £48. I used to be very into using coach travel, but people change. I took a some photos on the journey down and up which can be found through the new image gallery script I put up on my site yesterday.

I met Daisy outside the Sheffield Uni student union, and sufficed to say I was very very happy to be with her again. We spent most of our time in her flat doing the sort of things lovers do; arguing (not really). Unfortunately Daisy’s computer was b0rked so we couldn’t watch the Depeche Mode One Night in Paris DVD I got her for her birthday, but we had fun listening (and dancing) to Toyah’s greatest hits, my second present (for those who read poll results on Daisy’s journal, she liked the third present too).

I spent Thursday afternoon carrying said b0rken (and heavy) PC around Sheffield town centre but without actually finding somewhere to get it fixed (damn unhelpful uni techs). Then Daisy fainted in the street so we got a taxi home. On Friday evening, and after some very nice kebab, we went out with and some of his friends to The Bunker, a new fetish goth/industrial night in Sheffield City Hall’s massive main room. Apparently the organisers of the night neglected to tell the City Hall people there would be podium dancers and cabaret performers coming along and doing their thing until the last moment, at which point they said “not in our venue”. The music was fair enough; not that leftfield, but not too middle-of-the-road either, although the sound system and acoustics of the room detracted from the atmosphere a bit. I found it slightly disorienting to dance due to the combination of a high roof, a massive square dance space and under dance floor disco stylee lights (which apparently featured in the video for Pulp’s Disco 2000), but I managed to soldier on with my trusty glowsticks (even though they were uncomfortable to hold tight due to the fact they were hexagon shaped). I had a little chat with but unfortunately couldn’t think of much to say at the time. Afterwards, Daisy and I made our way to ’s flat and saw briefly again before he exited. , his flatmates, Daisy and I then proceeded to get quite stoned. Then we all fell asleep. The next morning (well, afternoon) we wondered home, relaxed a little, then I packed my things and said goodbye to Daisy before getting a taxi to the train station.

“Non-religious beliefs should be taught as part of compulsory religious education, a think tank report suggests.” [link]. Progress, but not a solution. This doesn’t go far enough; I want to see proper philosophy (or at least real-life decision helping philosophy) taught on the national curriculum. The lack of hardcore thought provocation in schools these days is leading kids to think that discussing ‘life, the universe and everything’ is something to be seen as ‘ironic’, or even worse, something reserved for boring people or sad-cases.

“The main reformist coalition taking part in Iran’s controversial election says it expects to lose after many candidates were disqualified.” [link]. I would definitely not like to be living there. P.S. Apparently the two main Iranian reformist newspapers have been shut down by the government one day before the elections for publishing information on the MPs who had been blocked from standing for election. Charming.

If you have a spare 20 minuets, and are interested, have a gander at this essay, titled Validity of Law. It contains a good introduction to (and differences between) the jurisprudence concepts of natural law, legal positivism, and legal realism. Either that, or this, a critique of presidential candidate blogs.

I’m in the process of clearing out my links-that-need-to-be-mentioned draft post, so here’s some old/new news/links. I promise I’ll write about real life soon.

“Police and trading standards officers are investigating the sale of sweets called ‘cannabis lollies‘.”

“German band Eisbrecher has decided to make a statement for its fans and for music consumers in general and is releasing their album (”Eisbrecher”) including a bonus DVD with 2 blank CD-Rs which have the same label as the CD itself.”

Who want’s to overdose on cats?

Does anyone remember me asking for info regarding my vague memories of early 90’s children’s television shows a while back? Thanks to Carl (admin of blogim.com), I have closure (check the comments).

Here are a couple of very interesting artists I’ve found through the various experimental music sections on epitonic.com:

Alp (Roger Horberry) takes found sound recordings from various sources in his apartment (including heating ducts, a washing machine, a boiling kettle, a disk drive, a microwave, doors, and a fridge) and outputs a very interesting form of dronology that makes one wonder what the world might sound like if our hearing was highly advanced.

L.O.S.D.’s music is based around “numerology and mathematics”, “built on the fundaments of pure sine waves in the lower range”, a concept that I’ve always been interested in and plan to touch on when I get a chance to create my own music, i.e., taking a single tone and modifying, filtering, etc, it (although I plan on a more platonic-form-tone-dronology meets sid-station meets electro-funk/clash meets cliqhop sound).

Plus, check out these amazingly talented pavement chalk drawings by Kurt Wenner.

I’m back again; details of my trip to follow at some point this week. I haven’t touched a [working] computer all week, and the nightly build of my jabber client I was using before I left was b0rked, so I have a bit of catching up to do.

I have recently acquired a job (starting properly on the 16th), doing tech support for BTopenworld broadband at £5.45 an hour. It’s not a career (I know a girl who did it for three years, and said it would fuck your mind if you did it any longer), but at least it’s technical in some manner. It’s a [fairly good] start. I had a quick phone interview (the recommended Dundee (fuck knows why), so him and his wife decided to up sticks and give it a go. He’s going to be doing tech support too. He also mentioned he’s into rock/a bit of metal, usual ‘team work’/'bad customer’ questions), then a group interview (there was just four people there). I was the only one who managed to type out some text in the allotted time, and I also scored highly on the technical test so I was offered the opportunity of doing tech support. Afterwards, I met one of the other guy’s from the interview outside and had a chat with him. Apparently he ’s originally from England, but several online gaming friends of his so I helpfully pointed out the doghouse and mentioned bondage, which he seemed interested in.

Employees who do tech support have to be flexible to work sometime between 7am-11pm, and given the fact that there is no bus from Newport into Dundee before 7:20, I will have to move to Dundee. This is both good and scary.

And btw; I’m going down to Sheffield tomorrow to visit Daisy, returning Saturday.