Mayhem & Chaos Blog

Burning Man

Monday - Working on the Jungle Car

Today the Jugle Car made leaps and bounds of progress, and it should be mostly finished by the end of today. We hope to register it with the DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) this evening:

The weather has been nice -- up until now it was beautiful. Not too hot, with not too much wind. But this afternoon the wind picked up and we saw a few white outs in the afternoon. Let's see what the playa will dish out for us for the rest of the week. I'm ready for some interesting weather, but I do hope that the playa gods will look kindly upon us and not batter us too badly.

The city is currently in this eerie grey zone between being filled with burners with lots of potential for cool art and much crazyness, and the full fledged Black Rock City that sparkles and crackles with amped burners and brilliant art. I can't wait to see how the city will unfold -- tonight will be the first night we'll go out for a full fledged rumble around the city to see all the marvels it has to offer.

Burning Man

Sunday - Fishing Buddha & Trego

After a good night of rest we spent the day setting up our main project -- the fishing Buddha:

All of us worked hard and very efficiently at building our project -- it took us most of the day, but by Playa standards that is not bad at all. In the evening Bugbreath and Scott took Lillian and myself out to the Trego hotsprings, where we had a nice soak and were quizzed about Burning Man by three Nevada desert rats who claimed to have BM tickets, but still wanted us to smuggle them into the event. Ha! The BM perimeter security team, which is equipped with nightvision goggles and ground radar will undoubtedly at some point intercept our three intrepid desert rats. These guys were severely underestimating the seriousness of Burning Man.

Just before midnight we took the art car out for a spin around the city, and stopped by the man:

The man was supposed to be on the base on Saturday, but the base team built the base to be 8 feet wide at the top, while the man is actually 12 feet wide between his feet. Ooops. A couple of adjustments and the man now sinks a bit into the base a bit, but he is where is supposed to be. Hey, Burning Man is all about overcoming adversity, right??

That pretty much wrapped up the first full day on the playa. The city is amazingly full at the end of Sunday evening, but so many of the big camps are in the middle of setting up, so very few things are going on late at night.

Burning Man

The road to Black Rock City

Our trip from San Luis to Berkeley was largely trouble free. But once we got to Berkeley and started fussing with the RV we started hitting a few snags. First off we noticed that the RV had a trailer hitch lock, which would've prevented us from towing the art car trailer to BRC. Of course we noticed this after business hours and we had to break the trailer hitch off the brand new RV -- that was kinda fun, but a stressful detour nonetheless. Once we got the trailer hitch squared away we noticed that the plug for the trailer lights didn't fit. More sketching, and trying to find and open parts place in Berkeley at 10pm. No go. So, with lots of patience Jack managed to get the plug to fit. We were finally ready and packed at 1am, but we decided to get some sleep and drive to BRC the next morning.

Once we were on the road, the entire trip was smooth. Everyone was rested and calm -- which made the usually stressful trip to BRC a lot easier. Shortly before sundown we pulled onto the Playa and started pitching our camp. Home at last!

Burning Man

Blogging at BM

I'm sitting in center camp at Burning Man, listening to awesome live music, trying to blog but the connection is dog slow. I dunno if its the overcast interfering with the satellite link or if there are too many people on the connection. I've got some pics to upload, but its just not happening. I'll keep trying...

Hair

Greymatter Convolution

This is my hairdo for Burning Man 2003:

Billy started on one side of my head with the clippers and drew one squiggely line all over my head until it ended up on the other side. Very simply, but quite effective -- it doesn't look as sharp in the pics as it does in person.

Music industry watch

Some interesting links to share

We're officially on the road to Burning Man -- one stop to get our hair done by Billy in SF and then pack the RV and head out. My hair is done and looking quite fab -- I'll upload pics in just a minute, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here a couple of links that look interesting:

• File swapper fights the RIAA
• .au CD Price fixing fine raised to A$2M
• SCO continues its FUD crusade

Ok, now on to the hair pics...

Burning Man

Off to Burning Man

I'm close to wrapping up packing and other BM preparations, and soon Jean and I will head off to Berkeley/SF as the final stop before we depart for Black Rock City.

Rumors have it that we will have wireless net access on the playa again. If that is the case and if I have the energy I will attempt to do some blogging from the playa. No promises, but the thought of putting on my backpack and riding to some art, taking a picture and then blogging about it right then and there is sexy. We'll see what happens -- stay tuned!

Linux

SCO joins the Sue the World program

SCO, the favorite evil company of the moment, is now joining the Sue the World program by going after actual Linux users, not just Linux companies:

SCO has three groups working on identifying and approaching Linux users. The first is drawing up the list, the second will send out letters offering the chance to license the code SCO says has been copied into Linux, and the third will take legal action against those who refuse.

When SCO first started this M$ backed FUD campaign I thought it was a bit far out there. But this thing keeps rolling along and getting more ludicrous by the day. I'm hoping that once SCO gets struck down, runs out of cash and then goes belly up, the SEC/FBI will start digging in SCO's ashes. So much of this is completely sheisty that some portions of it have to be illegal.

I think SCO CEO Darl McBride doing the perpwalk would be a great way to settle the score with the community. Of course, here I am dreaming again...

Music industry watch

Correction, BuyMusic.com still sucks

A group of people who dislike buymusic.com have created a spoof site called dontbuymusic.com. It was down for the last few days since the BuyMusic.com lawyers sent a letter to dontbuymusic.com's ISP, not the people behind dontbuymusic.com. Very lame indeed -- read the Wired article for details.

The site is back up now with all infringing graphics removed and it should be 100% legit and here to stay. Please take their advice and dont buy music from buymusic.com -- don't support crappy businesses with crappy business practices.

Linux

SCO is full of shit -- proof emerging

LWN has analyzed the recently leaked pictures of the Linux code that supposedly infringes on Linux:

This code is from sys/sys/malloc.c in V7 Unix. It has been widely published; among other things, it can be found in Lion's Commentary on Unix (if you can get a copy). It featured in this 1984 Usenet posting. And, crucially, it has been circulated with the V7 Unix source, which was released by Caldera (now the SCO Group) under the BSD license. SCO would like the world to forget about that release now, but the Wayback Machine remembers.

Busted by the wayback machine! (I gotta buy Brewster a beer next time I see him.) To think they have the balls to claim that code that was posted to USENET in 1984 infringes on their copyright. Wow! Needless to say, if the community were to ever get its hands on all the SCO claims, the community would take about 3 hours to dismantle each and every one of their claims.

Not surprising that they haven't been giving out examples of the infringing code, is it??

Dumbshit Dept.

E-Commerce Times rips off EMusic ad

E-Commerce Times (what a sad .com name that is) has a story about how the RIAA details its Sue the World program. Apparently they are only going after big-time file traders. DUH.

But, the E-Commerce Times has this lame ass graphic that they ripped off from EMusic:

And ripped off in such a lame fashion. Bad photoshopping. Bad colors. Lousy message.

You guys suck!

Music industry watch

BuyMusic.com now sucks less

C-Net reports that BuyMusic.com has updated it's service to make the payment process more streamlined and it approved more digital devices.

BuyMusic.com has had such a rough rollout that I doubt they will ever live up to the iTunes store. Botched rollouts, buggy implementations and bad customer service are signs that the operation that drives this company doesn't have the first clue about how to run a business. And certainly not an Internet business.

Music industry watch

Grokster: Recording companies are a cartel

I've been saying that the RIAA and the companies it represents are a cartel for a long time now. I'm glad to see that Grokster is now saying the same thing about the European record labels:

The Grokster president, Wayne Rosso, claims European record labels are refusing to consider licensing tracks to it and other file sharing services.

"It's clearly a cartel in violation of competition laws. We've tried to negotiate with the record labels. They leave us no choice but to protect consumers and ourselves from these grievous practices," Mr Rosso told trade magazine New Media Age.

Its about time someone took these guys to task for the shit they've been pulling. Two price fixing lawsuits are apparently not enough to raise a flag with the governments - apparently little companies have to do this on their own dime.

Music industry watch

M$ and OD2 start .eu music download service

Yahoo Finance reports that M$ and OD2 plan to form a music download service for the European market. Aimed to compete with iTunes and providing an a la carte download service in Europe, the new system will use Windows Media Player 9 to offer the downloads.

No word on any DRM in the system, but since M$ is involved I assume that their WMP9 DRM will be used. Which is good, since M$ provides the tools to legally circumvent their own DRM. Stupid Morons.

No word on when the service will go live.

Cool Tech

Google does math & conversions

Joi blogged about Google doing math and unit conversions. Just enter your equation (45 + 69) or your conversion in english (100 oz in liters) into the standard search box and if it understands it, it will solve it for you.

My good old HP-48SX calculator just lost one of its reasons why I still have it around. Pretty soon its going to end up on eBay.

Thanks Google!

Linux

SCO Officers dump stock

Looks like the SCO officers have started to dump their stock. This proves what people have been saying all along about SCO's gameplan. They knew they would bite the dust soon, so sueing IBM over Linux with M$'s backing was a sure fire way to pump up the stock price. Watch the stock rise, Linux get muckraked, dump the stock to have something to show for all of SCO's efforts and retire in the Bahamas.

Bastards.

Junkmail Man

Tower Art Reception in L.A. this Friday

Buster Friendly, the artist behind the successful regional burn event Junkmail Man is holding a fund raiser for his latest Burning Man project:

An art reception for The Tower of Enlightenment project will be held on Friday, August 15th, from 8p.m. till Midnight at the Brewery Art complex in L.A.

The Tower Of Enlightenment is a 33-foot tall replica of the Trinity Atomic Bomb Test Tower, which will incinerate self-help books donated by the citizens of Black Rock City at this year's Burning Man Festival.

I have nothing but respect for BF -- his pyromaniac tendencies are deeply ingrained in each one of the fire sculptures he creates. I've never met someone who knows so much about how to make things burn in new and creative ways.

If you live in LA and you appreciate and want to support non-traditional art, then this reception should be for you. Go out and show your support by making a donation to the project and/or by donating a self help book for the burn.

From: Buster Friendly
Subject: [Fandango] Tower Art Reception in L.A. this Friday
Date: 11 Aug 2003 18:02:17 -0800

An art reception for The Tower of Enlightenment project will be held on
Friday, August 15th, from 8p.m. till Midnight at the Brewery Art complex
in L.A. The top 2/3's of the tower will be on display in Studio 232 of
the main building (2020 N. Main Street), which is the same building a
Barbara's Bar.

The Tower Of Enlightenment is a 33-foot tall replica of the Trinity
Atomic Bomb Test Tower, which will incinerate self-help books donated by
the citizens of Black Rock City at this year's Burning Man Festival.
Scheduled to burn at 11 p.m. on the Friday night of the festival, the
Tower will be ignited as part fire performance show called "Apocalypse
A Go-Go", which will go on as the Tower burns and not end until the
Tower's collapse.

People are encouraged to bring self-help books along to the reception
for contribution to the project, (that way they won't need to remember
to pack them for the playa). While no books will be turned away, it's
requested that people not contribute what are commonly accepted and
historically recognized as sacred books, such as the Bible, Koran,
Bhagavat Gita, and Torah, nor any books printed before August 6, 1945

This art reception will be the last opportunity to see the Tower before
it's disassembled for and shipped up to the Black Rock Desert. For
other information about the project contact

BusterFriendly(at)Junkmailman.org 

Linux

Nixing SCO support in GCC

Slashdot has a quip about how the FSF is encouraging the GCC developers to remove SCO support from the GCC compiler.

What a great idea! This will make it tons harder for people to use SCO products, and it will force SCO to patch/maintain GCC's SCO support themselves. However, it's widely rumored that the whole SCO case is just a ruse to discredit Linux before SCO folds. Without the multi million dollar license cash from M$, SCO would've already folded. The sole reason why SCO is still around is this stupid lawsuit.

In other words, this GCC trick is not really going to have much effect. But its cool tactic, I gotta give the FSF credit for that.

Music industry watch

RIP mp3.com?

Joi blogged about how Vivendi's Internet Unit that owns mp3.com doesn't want to allow the Creative Commons to contact its artists:

Nothing replaces the legal protections provided by registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office--most certainly not your “free license.”

This email is formal notice for you to cease and desist from further contacting our artists through our web site to solicit for your product/services, which are not sanctioned by us.

Legal Department
Music & Media
Vivendi Universal Net USA, Inc.

mp3.com never got it and never will. One of the comments on Joi's blog says:

Don't worry about MP3.com --- the company is shutting down, so the whole issue is moot with that company. Big layoffs this month, and assets will probably be sold off within next few weeks to months. Possibly as soon as September. Read the message boards on the MP3.com site for more details.

This is pretty much consistent with the word on the street. mp3.com has been hemmoraging money for years now, and Vivendi was dumb enough to actually buy the damn outfit. mp3.com never had a valid business model and it is one of the few .com leftovers; its about time it gets tossed into the trash with the other .com companies.

Too bad that emusic.com got lumped in with them. I wonder what is going to happen to it. :-(

Legal/Government

US Govt. screws US airlines

The latest action by the US goverment is going to screw US airlines with international networks. In the futile war on terrorism, the US now requires transit passengers to get a valid US visa!

For instance: Someone travelling from New Zealand to London would normally make a stop in the US -- most likely LAX. Before the new rule, the traveller would not need a US visa for stopping in LA and catching the next flight to London. But now, these travellers need to get visas in order to stop in the US.

This way thwart a terrorist attack, but more likely lots of passengers from countries like Mexico are going to be negatively impacted. A lot of flights to Europe from Mexico go through the US and now 200,000 passengers must now get a visa, which is slow, difficult and it costs $100, or route around the US which can be more expensive.

With the airlines in a world of hurt already, why make it worse for them? Can't the Department of Nazi Security keep track of transit paggengers in airports? I guess this shows that they don't trust their own airport security.

Music industry watch

SDMI, where are you?

What ever happened to SDMI?? The RIAA cartel was so gung-ho about it and there was such much hubub about it. I haven't heard anything about it in years. Of course its not surprising that the RIAA would quietly sweep their failures under the carpet.

Of course, we all told them it would fail. To think it failed before it ever got out of the gate. Hehehehehehehehe....

Blogging

Free content will not be trusted

Louis Borders, the guy behind the Borders bookstore and the WebVan flop, has got a new company called KeepMedia. The KeepMedia subscription service allows you to read 140 popular magazines online. (Though, I don't know if The Corn and Soybean Digest really qualifies as popular.)

That's all cute, but in this ZD Net article Borders shows that he is on the wrong track about free content on the net:

ZD: Do you think the freeloader mentality on the Internet is ready for change?
LB: I think it's at the turn of the hockey stick, because it's at about 15 percent of the Web population that's paying for content right now--that's still a low number. Very soon, you'll see that the content that's left to be free is content that will not be trusted; content that has a bias. Just like when you pick up a magazine that's free, and you don't trust it.

Free content will not be trusted?? This guy has apparently never heard of weblogs -- the trend I'm observing is that the free content is getting better. Journalists feel threatened by the explosion of the weblog community and sites like Ohmynews which compiles a comprehensive news service based on volunteer work shows that free content can make a serious difference.

And I trust my local free New Times rag more than the local paper. Heck, I trust it more than the New York Times, given their scandalous behaviour as of late.

So is KeepMedia the next WebVan or will this venture pan out? I think Borders is on the wrong track...

Wireless

Wifi Shootout

The DefCon hackers had a Wifi challenge to see how far people could get a WiFi link setup and who could make the best homegrown antenna -- there were a bunch of other categories too. But the truly interesting part is that the teams had to deal with Burning Man like conditions: Heat, rain, cold, dust -- in the desert.

The teams got amazing results with few resources -- $98 spent on an antenna that created a WiFi link over 35 miles; with parts from Home Depot even.

The things that can be done with off the shelf components is plain amazing. Good going guys! All of these little hacking contests will make it hard for commercial ventures to try and corner the market.

Microsoft Bashing

.eu decides to clamp down on M$

I'm glad to see that Europe still has a backbone, unlike the US. BBC reports that the EU is about to levy fines against M$ for ongoing anti-trust violations.

"The Commission's preliminary conclusion is that Microsoft's abuses are still ongoing," the EU executive said in a statement giving the company a month to respond.

The Commission, which has been investigating Microsoft for four years, said the US software giant had been trying to crush rivals to its Windows Media Player, and in the low-end server market.

Low end server market? I wonder if this is a result of M$ targeting Linux and running afoul with its heavyhanded approach.

Linux

RedHat sues SCO. SCO may countersue!

In the ongoing SCO vs IBM/Linux battle, RedHat decided to sue SCO and setup a legal fund to help open source companies who get sued by SCO. RedHat pledged $1M for this fund and now SCO is talking about a countersuit. Slashdot has a bunch of links that go into more detail, if you want to dig in more.

Someone needs to tell these people that the sue all the world concept is owned by the RIAA and that they may find themselves the target of a RIAA lawsuit if they don't cease and desist.

Open source

Linux not hampered by SCO

Another study shows that Linux is not being hampered by SCO. I'm seeing more studies showing that SCO is not effective in their tactic, than the ther way around. Good.

Music industry watch

A realistic look at dwindling CD sales

The RIAA loves to blame file traders for the drop in CD sales in the last few years. BBC news doesn't buy this line and offers a realistic view of dropping CD sales. Their article points out:

• That fewer CDs were produced in 2001 and 2002.
• 90% of all CDs offered in China are illegal copies; every third CD sold is an illegal copy.
• The casette/LP to CD replacement cycle has ended. People are no longer buying the music on CD that they used to own on casettes/LPs
• Teenagers now spend money that used to go to music on mobile phones and other gadgets

But, the RIAA still wants to sue the world.

Legal/Government

The hated US copyright laws

The copyright laws here in the US are a complete mess -- I've been trying to educate myself on these laws for the last few years and I still don't really get large chunks of the law. I guess you have to be an actual copyright lawyer to figure it out, but IANAL.

Legal Affairs has a great article that gives an overview of how complicated and absurd the copyright laws are. If you've been wondering about the mess that that Napster/RIAA/MPAA have made, but never really understood it, go check out this article. While it won't make you a copyright lawyer, it will leave you in a slightly less confused state.

Legal/Government

Senator launches RIAA investigation

Sen. Norm Coleman is dismayed by the recent lawsuits filed against file traders:

The chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations Thursday began an inquiry into the music industry's crackdown against online music swappers, calling the campaign "excessive."

. . .

"The industry seems to have adopted a 'shotgun' approach that could potentially cause injury and harm to innocent people who may simply have been victims of circumstance, or possessed a lack of knowledge of the rules related to digital sharing of files," Coleman wrote.

Let's hope that Coleman has the balls to stand up to Orrin Hatch and all the other pro-media congresscritters.