So you think you can trust Google ?

Since Google released their beta tool to search locally on your desktop, there has been concerns about privacy and what Google could do when they know more about you. Now it's about security.

Google couldn't explain why it didn't have a working email or phone contact for security alerts

Conclusion of the article :

It's good to know Google takes security as seriously as it takes privacy.

(one more from Andrew Orlowski)

JetGroove no longer worth

Apparently JetGroove had legal problems selling music. Most of the stuff they had was not available for sale, but you could still listen to a streamed version. Now even that feature is gone. All the (about) 100 tracks I selected but couldn't buy (and didn't bother listening as streamed) are now gone !

Of course it's the copyright pigs again at work. They can't stand when anyone but them can make money on music. Even if that's a service they don't even offer (underground music mostly found on shitty vynils). So the guys with the big MP3 collection behind JetGroove know what they should do : spread the music for free on P2P to piss the pigs even more !!!

JetGroove

Finally a good digital shop has emerged for electronic music ! JetGroove seems to have a lot of hard to find things in underground music, even from vynil sources. I'll try it with a vynil source to see if the digitalisation is better that if I do it myself... The price is 1$ to 1.25$ for each track in MP3 format. It's way more expensive than AllOfMp3 but that's the price for underground music...

Free publishing

Back in the good old days it was easy to publish content on the net, especially text and music. But now that the pigopolists are lobbying every possible inch of world parliaments, it's becoming harder to publish even legitimate content.

This interresting dutch study on 10 ISPs is quite impressive. It shows how the ISPs are devoted to the copyright owners or fear possible legal actions. Sometimes don't even caring about their own users. So be careful with your own content !

Live forever ?

The new book of Raymond Kurzweil will probably lead to a lot of questions on the real possibilities of "eternal" life and wether we really want that or not.

I think the 'blind' minds will find it cool and want it, while the 'lost' minds will not find it that interresting... I think that as long as I discover new things I'll be happy to live.

Kurzweil said he doesn't think such changes will detract from our humanity. "The emergence of artificial intelligence is not an alien invasion of intelligent machines coming from over the horizon to compete with us," he declared. "Rather, it is emerging from our human civilization."

Protective Patent

Sun recently said they would patent their 3D interface to protect them. They relased the code with the GPL license, which is supposed to be the most politically correct OSS license. So putting a patent on a GPL code is kinda strange.

But that's a really week argument when you think about it for a second ! Why would you need to patent something to protect you ? Prior art exists and means that if you can prove that you have made a system using the same technique as a patent, before the patent was applied, this patent is void. How could someone attack Sun for a system that is not patented yet and that they have made public ?! That's simply impossible...

So don't believe Sun or anyone else when they tell you that it's just to protect them !

(the only worth protection needed is to find if patents exist on the subject before you release something, only companies can afford that)

Sony Japan stops DRM

The reason? According to Sony, Japanese consumers now have a far better appreciation of the issues surrounding copyright and music piracy, and the law is now tougher on those who flout it.

Hopefully that will be a general move now...

Andrew Orlowski at his best

Talking in front of the pigopolist bosses, and explaining them why they are wrong... And what could be done in the music business in the coming years. I like the insurance thing a lot :

CDs break. Hard disks crash. Phones are stolen. Sell them access to a permanent collection. You're then in the services business. That's where all computer companies want to be. A permanent fixture of everyday life.

And also the bundle importance (hence the one album per file):

The world works on bundles: a newspaper is a bundle of stories; a TV channel is a bundle of programs; a satellite channel is a bundle of TV channels; economically the world only works through bundles. The stuff you don't want pays for the stuff you do. There are sound actuarial reasons for this. It works. And artistically, we wouldn't have had The Beatles or Joy Division without the bundle.

Semantic Data

The semantic inside digital data is hard to discover for a computer. But there are technologies emerging to work out this problem. The semantic web and semantic database are good examples of what the future may allow.

Check out the first article which is an "Introduction to semantics technology" that covers the basis (maybe a bit too vague) of the technology challenge it will be.

Human/Machine analogy helps understanding aging

A quite interresting study (even though the extrapolation on the possibilities of non-ending life is very weak).

The "aha!" moment took place some years ago when we had to work with an unpredictable, dilapidated mainframe computer in Russia, and we got the impression that the complex behavior of this computer could only be described by resorting to such human concepts as character, personality, and change of mood. This observation led us to the bizarre idea that living organisms, including humans, have more of a resemblance to partially damaged machines than to new ones.

People prefer CDs

At the contrary to what many people think, most people largely prefer their CDs to MP3s (92% of DRM customers). Don't take users for fools... They know what is convenient and pricey and know how to make the difference.

Mixing stereo

An interresting study that tend to prove that ears hear differently between the left and the right. That could have an interresting impact on how sounds are place in stereo.

We were intrigued to discover that the clicks triggered more amplification in the baby's right ear, while the tones induced more amplification in the baby's left ear.

Singularity

Seems like everyone is back from vacation and at work today ! This time is the sci-fi author Bruce Sterling in Wired :

The singularity's biggest flaw isn't that it's hard to imagine, but that it flatters its human inventors. We may be on the verge of an astounding breakthrough! Or, with equal likelihood, we may be at the edge of a new dark age of plagues, mass hunger, and climate destabilization. More likely yet, we live in a dull, self-satisfied, squalid eddy in history, blundering around with no concept of progress and no sense of direction. We have no idea what we really want from our own lives or from society. And no Moore's law rising majestically on any 2-D graph is ever going make us magnificent or spiritual when we lack the will, vision, and appetite for spiritual magnificence.

Reasons for revenge

Another interresting article on how the brain works for revenge and altruistic punishment (ie reprimand people who have abused our trust or broken other social rules, even when we get no direct practical benefits in return). Of course I'm interrested in that because I have a large tendency of doing these altruistic punishments.

In the end the study is not very conclusive and only deal with things you can already imagine : it's a mix of passion and rationality...

Neurosciences will not solve it ?

I think the reason people want to believe in all of this is that they have lost religion and the little of religion that remains to them takes the form of a belief that science will explain things.

An interresting article on neurosciences, the fact that it's currently overrated and will probably stay so for a long time.

I like the comparison between poets and mathematicians. That mathematicians actually get insane while poets don't. I don't think that's true. But mathematicians have a firmer understanding of truth and rely more on what they know than what they feel. So they are more bound to become insane when what they know is constantly questioned...

But I don't agree on the way the guy seems to think it's an impossible quest (to understand the consciousness), especially since he relies more on the ones who failed to make significant progress than on the ones who do. And the 5000 years quote is highly stupid, as much as the ones who claim the discoveries are near. It's not surprising from a guy who refuses to read books that say the contrary than what he thinks...

But since we are starting building artificial intelligence and that consciousness can be implied by intelligence, we will discover things. And we may also create different kinds of consciousness.

New Scientific Method

It's not very often that science manages to find new methods to apply to a field of research. Usually you use the same old technique in various fields because it works. But sometimes it doesn't work. And this new method is trying to find out why it doesn't work. Actually it's trying to find the holes in a theory and practices in a field of research. And these holes are involved by the human factor that is using his instincts where it shouldn't, because it's faster and relies on habits that usually work. But as always one should always be careful with one's instincts ;)

Late at night

I finally took the time to transfer my latest DJ mix from the iBook to the PC and upload it on the net in Vorbis format. Here is the track listing :

• Baby Ford - Car jacker


• Baby Ford - Crease release


• GusGus - Pagus (believe)


• Headman - It rough (Chicken Lips remix)


• Captain Comatose - Comatose Captain (5-8 mix)


• Hell - Limbische System


• Italic ???


• Saint Etienne - Heart failed (T.L.S. dub)


• T. Raumschmiere - Zartbitter


• DBX - Loosing control


• Hell - Listen to the hiss (Villalobos kiss hiss mix)


• Plastikman - I don't know


• I:Cube - Bubblesphere


• The Orb - Spanish castles in space

I've listened a lot to this mix without getting bored with it. It also had some powerful effects under the influence :)

Posting

It's been a while since I posted here. Not that I don't see/read interresting things everyday. But just because I didn't think of sharing what I met... Well, I did post about philosophy and science on DogSquad, in very good debates with silenus and others.

But today I felt like posting because I saw something I was thinking about and never saw mentioned before : the science-fiction authors that don't meet the expectations of the coming technological revolutions... Check that article here. If I could tell stories I would write many about all the possible futures that are coming, good and bad. But unfortunately I'm not good at it. And sadly there aren't many people out there who think about the future with a wide view and a deep understanding, like Kurzweil has.

Grrrrrreed

Ghislenghien, Asuncion...
Not only greed seem to invade the world. But now it clearly kills people !

Work more or die !
Pay or die !

LittleDetroit in London

I spend this past saturday afternoon and night in London. That was about 2 years since I went in the city to buy records or go in a club ! This time it was for doing both. I fist arrived by the Eurostar, being in the 1st class ! (unfortunately the seats are not electric or you can't plug anything like in the TGV).



As I had many hours before the party was supposed to start, I went in the usual places to find new and 2nd hand records : Camden, Notting Hill Gate and Berwick Street.



After that I was quite exhausted by the heat (still less than in Paris) and by the records I had to carry in my bag (27 plus a VHS and 2 DVDs). So on the way to the meeting pub, I stopped by the Blackfriars bridge for a while to relax.



Graham (cdw on the Black Dog Forum) recognised me there because I was wearing my Matroska tee-shirt as expected :) So he joined me to discuss, check the CDs and relax. Then we finally headed to the pub.



There was quite a few people there. Not a single one that I knew, except maybe for Martin Dust who was organising the event and also recognised me from my tee-shirt ;)



The 2 DJs we saw there were very good. Their track selection was just great. Too bad the sound wasn't so good and almost noone was dancing.



Around 11pm everyone got out of the pub to join the boat where the real party was happening.



We had to wait for quite some time outside and so we could realise that it was a full moon night ! Very promising :)



The music started to play in the boat and so everybody got onboard.



Downstairs were the toilets and also the second DJ room. But unfortunately it was not allowed to dance there for "security" reasons, so I didn't go much...



Then the boat left the border and the party really started on the river Thames !



The DJs were very good even though the cartridge of the turntable would jump once in a while... One of the so many advantages of digital DJs over legacy ones ;)







The trip on the Thames was really nice. We got to see many "famous" places of London during the party. So when you didn't feel like dancing, you could still watch outside and enjoy.











I really enjoyed the music even though I was a bit tired by the whole trip. But I managed to dance pretty much of the time while Graham was sometimes relaxing ;)





Then the sun slowly came up and the party ended. Everyone seemed to have spent a good moment in an unsual place to have a party !





And then I was back to Paris with the first Eurostar...