Author: ryanvis

Once again, completely stolen from Boing Boing:

Unlike many nonsensical prejudices, it’s roughly possible to trace the root source of all this hostility, identify a locus classicus of Ikeaphobia: in this case, the vastly-overrated Fight Club. Ever since the film hit American screens, some years ago now, it’s been hip among would-be cynics of a certain cohort to reserve a stream of vituperation for the giant Swedish furnishings chain. (For those of you who didn’t see the movie, it contained a very nicely-produced CG sequence that essentially laid the blame for all that is fake, mediocre and generic in contemporary life at the company’s blue-and-yellow feet: the minute-long rant that launched ten thousand sneers.)

Read the article

You know, when I read things like this, it makes me just sigh deeply and wonder where all the good people have gone. I think the Python’s had it right; “We don’t have a lord. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week…”

A Brief History of the Democrats

And since we know you’re dying for a picture.

Click for larger image

Totally stolen from Fark.

Stick figure warning signs

I don’t think HP had this in mind when they turn their CEO loose at CES. Good job HP! You finally start making products almost worth buying, then you give everyone a political reason not to buy those products. Bravo!

HP users cry foul at death of the open PC

I never thought I’d have a reason to watch CNBC, but now I do. Dennis Miller is back on the air.

Just a gratuitous link since I’ve read all this stuff already, but Cory Doctorow blew me away when I first read Ownz0red on Salon. See the rest of this post for links to many of his stories.

Cory operates on the Creative Commons license (thanks to a generous publisher) and his work is freely downloadable, distributable, reproducable, and performable, as long as you give him credit, don’t sell it, and don’t make derivitive works (and he wouldn’t mind if you bought a book, I’m sure).

I already mentioned Ownz0red, my favorite story, which also earned Cory the John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards. But he has a lot of others available. You can download 6 stories here.

You can also get Down and Out at the Magic Kingdom for free as well (and I highly recommend this story, too).

Other things (commentray aside):
Truncat (requires Salon premium or sitting through the ads)
Liberation Spectrum

Cory is also an editor for Boing Boing, a great blog about pop culture.

Who knew? A judge ruled that Monotori Kishi, a Japanese manga writer, violated a 1957 law against distributing obscene literature.

The weird thing is that in Japan, a ton of the stuff on the streets is manga, and most of its borderline porn anyway. This is not something people go in the backroom for, it’s all over the place.

Kishison got a one-year prison sentence, suspended for three years, for his diabolical plot to “unnecessarily sexually stimulating, (which) damages the normal sexual sense of shame of ordinary people, or is against good sexual moral principles”.

The best part? The law is based on a ruling involving DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Will we see a Japanese Cultural Revolution over manga?

Of all the things that scare me, this is right up there. The RIAA, defenders of one of the last citadels of whorish consumerism cum virtual monopoly, have taken to the streets with paramilitary elements in order to enforce, uhm, the rights of their artists. *cough*

RIAA adopts paramilitary garb for parking lot bust

Excuse me while I stifle a scream, but even my conservative mind can’t wrap itself around this one. No company, no matter what you produce, provide, or support has the right to go around enforcing the law. It’s not even implied. If you’re a corp with a problem, CALL THE POLICE. Pardon my French, but damn, what does it take for people to stand up and see that this is about more than a few people downloading 50 cent? The RIAA is setting precedent here.

What’s next? Comcast can enter your home to make sure you aren’t stealing cable? An MPAA representative can randomly stop a movie and make you present your ticket? The cops can pull you over just to make sure you didn’t steal the car your driving? Wait, they do that already.

This is way over the line. If I wasn’t already boycotting all the RIAA companies, I’d start boycotting the RIAA companies.

IT’S OBVIOUSLY TIME to start publishing the Journal of Critical Cyberspace Studies. Hey, maybe we already are.