This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in October 2004.

A moment’s reflection on change

Friends took me out for cocktails and dinner tonight to celebrate. I had the baked penne (con la salsiccia.) This is my last week on the job. I’ll be starting a new job soon.

Tonight I’m thinking of this big change in my life and am looking forward to it. There is a hint of heaviness in my heart though. It will be hard to say goodbye to the people I’ve worked closely with over the past four and a half years. But there is also a lot of excitement. I can’t wait to start the new job. It’s in academia, but I won’t say more about it at this point.

I’m curious by nature and have always liked new experiences and new adventures. That curiosity has taken me to five continents, and I feel like I am just beginning. This fall I took a French class for the first time. It’s exciting to dig into a new language (to me) and try it on for size. The mantra many people use is “Change is good.” Change can be good. Change can be bad. The important thing to note about change is that “Change keeps curiosity alive.”

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That good old timey industrial musik

Do you ever sit around thinking, “I’d love to hear some of that old timey Eastern European industrial music from the 1980s?” Come on, admit it! Well, as if I just read your mind, I’m compelled to mention that Laibach’s 2-disc greatest hits collection is now available. Yes, indeed, Laibach. Remember them? They were the Slovenian guys who did a cover of the entire Let It Be album by the Beatles with the exclusion of the song Let It Be. Oh, yeah. That was back in 1988, and those guys were going places. So check out their greatest hits, and say it with me, “Neue Slowenische Kunst ist gut! Noch einmal, bitte!”

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Voting by Absentee Ballot

Do you have plans for November 2nd? What’s on Nov 2 you ask? I’ll be at Vito’s watching the results come pouring in. I’ve done my duty for this election. In Iowa, one can easily vote by absentee ballot. That’s what a lot of people here are doing this year.

It’s an involved process with envelopes that go in envelopes that go in envelopes. If you haven’t registered to vote already in Iowa, it is now officially too late. Some states let you register at the polls. Not here. At any rate, here’s a quick guide to filling out the illustrious Absentee Ballot.

Items needed:

• #2 pencil
• water or tongue for sealing envelopes
• nearby post office

The ballot itself is double-sided. Lots of choices. The front is for national offices and the backside is for local elections. Be sure to use a #2 pencil only to fill in the space on the arrow.

Be sure to follow the instructions on the instruction sheet and on the form carefully. Any mistake here will certainly doom your ballot. You’ll note that here in Iowa Ralph Nader and also the Green Party are on the ballot. And I have no idea how the socialists and the libertarians make it onto the ballot each and every election. To the press, they are invisible. At any rate, once you have completed your ballot, place it in the Secrecy Envelope. The Secrecy Envelope is opaque—no one will know your vote until election day when the County Auditor’s staff open the absentee ballots.

Once the ballot is in the Secrecy Envelope, you need to place the Secrecy Envelope into the Affidavit Envelope. And this is important: you need to sign and date the envelope and write down your address in the space provided. If this sounds official, that’s because it is.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You’re nearly done. What’s the last step? Well, it involves an envelope. If you’ve been keeping track, we’re up to envelope number three. But thankfully, this is the final envelope we need to deal with here. So after filling out the Affidavit Envelope and sealing it, place it into the return envelope. The postage is already paid, so just fill out your return address and seal the sucker up. You’re set!

The next step is to go to your local post office and mail this off. This is your ballot. It’s important. Don’t leave it in your mailbox for the postal carrier to pick it up. Mail the thing, and you’ll feel a whole lot better.

The final step? Make plans for Election Day—with your absentee ballot mailed, you’ve got the day off. Just sit back, and watch the results come pouring in. Did I mention I’m anxious about the election? How can it be this close? The election is barely a week away! Get with the program, people! Don’t make a really big mistake! You know who’s the right choice…don’t you?

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Manufactured Environments back online

We’re happy to announce that ManuEnvi is back in action. Events turned out favorably. More on that later.

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Betty Blue on DVD this Tuesday

One of my all-time favorite French movies is being released on DVD in the U.S. on Tuesday. Not only are they releasing the film, but it is the famed director’s cut, which is three hours long. Betty Blue is the story of Zorg and Betty. Zorg is a mechanic and would-be writer and Betty his girlfriend. It’s a great film. I’m anxious to see the film again. A local video shop has it on VHS, but who has VCRs anymore? Not I, he says. The last time I wrote about the film here was on 22 April 2003. Here’s the entry. There are a lot of great French films, and this is one of my favorites. Here also is 37°2 le matin, which is the French title of the film, at imdb.com.

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Shaking Down the World

The fight against file traders had another round in the international community. The IFPI filed 459 lawsuits against individuals in various European countries. In the U.S., the RIAA is appealing the Grokster ruling to the Supreme Court. That’s the one that says the Peer To Peer networks are not liable for the content transmitted on their systems. Basically, the RIAA wants to make all P2P activity illegal regardless of legitimate uses. Here’s a news brief on the European action from Edupage, an electronic publication of Educause:

MUSIC INDUSTRY FILES LAWSUITS IN MORE COUNTRIES
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a European music trade group, has filed 459 civil and criminal lawsuits against file traders for copyright violations. Included in this round of lawsuits are users in Britain, France, and Austria—countries not included in previous lawsuits—as well as users in Germany, Italy, and Denmark. The lawsuits are said to target “uploaders,” those who make music files available for others to download. According to the IFPI, one of the defendants has 9,000 music files on his system. Other defendants include a teacher in France who faces three years in jail under a new French counterfeit law. The IFPI argues that illegal file trading has cost the music industry significant amounts of money, and the group said the lawsuits came as a last resort, after an extended public awareness campaign. In all, 650 users in Europe have been charged with illegal file sharing since March. In the United States, the music industry has filed suits against more than 5,700 individuals since September 2003.
Reuters, 7 October 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=6442562

The increasing number of users on P2P networks indicates that the lawsuits are not having the effect the RIAA hoped they would. Personally, I don’t think they’ll stop suing people until their is federal legislation that makes all Peer To Peer technology illegal. And then instead of sending out lawsuits, they’ll send out the FBI to hunt down these rogue teenagers.

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iTunes serves up Kerry and Bush and Edwards and Cheney

In conjunction with audible.com, the iTunes Music Store is offering free downloads of last Thursday’s presidential debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush. I see they’ve also added last night’s debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney. Free downloads for the asking. Either click the link on the front page (while it’s there) or search for “presidential debate” and you’ll get links to both debates.

Here’s a link to the first presidential debate:

Here’s a link to the vice presidential debate:

Update: Here is the second debate between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, which took place on Friday, October 8:

Update: Here’s the third and final debate:

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Sue, Sue, Sue ‘em all

In the latest salvo from the RIAA, 762 people are being sued. Again they’re targeting university students who have access to very high speed connections. Here’s a blurb from the Chronicle via Edupage, an electronic publication of Educause.

RIAA ADDS MORE LAWSUITS TO THE TALLY
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed another round of lawsuits, this time targeting 762 individuals suspected of illegally trading files on the Internet. The group’s lawsuits over the summer months focused on users of commercial networks, but with the return of thousands of students to colleges and universities, the RIAA is once again targeting some college students in its lawsuits. The latest round of lawsuits includes 32 students, and the RIAA named 26 colleges and universities on whose networks the alleged copyright infringement is said to have taken place. The new round of suits also goes beyond the major P2P providers, such as Kazaa, and now includes services with far fewer users, such as eDonkey. According to the RIAA, more than 1,000 of those charged so far have settled with the group, at an average of $3,000 per settlement.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 October 2004

The one correction about that blurb is that eDonkey has lots of users. Recent statistics indicate that eDonkey has equaled or passed Kazaa/FastTrack in the number of users. Investigate at Slyck.com.

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Bloglines here I come

We’re hanging out waiting for the Iowa/Michigan State game to start. It’s Homecoming weekend here. The parade was yesterday, but it was raining and cold. J and I decided to skip it this year.

In other news, I changed my RSS newsreader. After using it for a couple of weeks, I can heartily recommend Bloglines.com. I’ve seen other browser-based RSS newsreaders and thought them hideous. Bloglines is different. It’s nice to look at, and the feature set is good. If you sign up for a Bloglines account you get a clippings blog where you can save posts for later—a handy feature. Two other things I especially like: 1) you can download a small notifier app for Win/Mac that will check occasionally if you have new material to read. And 2) I especially like that it doesn’t tie me to one machine. I liked SharpReader a lot, but it could only sync up with one machine. Now I can check my RSS newsfeeds from anywhere. This is a great thing. I wasn’t sure at first if viewing news through the broswer would be as nice as an app, but I’m convinced now that this is a superior way to go about reading news. And of course the best thing? It doesn’t cost anything to get a bloglines account.

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