Greatest 4K ever told?

In what is likely to be the most impressive use of 4096 bytes this year, RGBA and TBC have created a world, in a demo called Elevated. It takes upto a minute to start, but simple looks and sounds amazing for just 4KB.

If your computer isn’t up to the task, you can watch a it on YouTube - but try the real thing first!

Pirates vs legal ninjas

The Pirate Bay Pros:

• Don’t appear to support the commercial exploitation of copyright infringement.
• Don’t appear to profit from copyright infringement in the way that counterfeiters and the guys selling DVDs in the local market profit.

The Pirate Bay Cons:

• Called themselves “The Pirate Bay”.
• Arranged their site in a way which clearly endorses copyright violation - their TV Shows section lists modern shows, of which none are in the public domain.

The music/movie industry Pros:

• Spend vast amounts of money producing music and movies for the entertainment of the masses - some of which isn’t pure junk.

The music/movie industry Cons:

• Spend vast amounts of money producing music and movies for the entertainment of the masses - most of which is pure junk.
• Spend vast amounts of money litigating against teenagers and claim ludicrous losses whilst continuing to be profitable.
• Failed completely to update their business model to account for digital media and digital distribution instead opting to legally protect their pre-internet business model.
• Insist on charging increasing amounts for their content whilst the distribution and manufacturing costs have dropped - I remember when they said the lower cost of CDs would reduce the price of music - £20 for a blu-ray!
• Trying to control the world so they can control the content - forcing the computer and electronics industry to adopt HDCP, AACS et al - thou shall only watch that purchases blu-ray movie on a blu-ray player!
• Pay “stars” insane amounts to appear in their content.
• Pay non-”stars” as little as possible (writers strike, bands who make very little from their music sales etc).

Sure, I want to see great movies and listen to great music and i’m willing to pay a reasonable amount for it, but the media companies need join us in the 21st century. If they are not going to adopt more reasonable pricing (how can a digital download cost more than a physical CD delivered to your door?) and allow more freedom for us to use the content we paid for (you think I should pay again to watch my 1080p blu-ray movie I bought on my iPhone?). In an age of 160GB iPods and multi terabyte media servers that need filling and very fast internet connections, what do media companies think is going to happen if they don’t provide what the market wants how it wants it?

iPhone therefor I am.

I recently gave into technolust and bought an iPhone 3G. After a rather drawn out purchasing process ( Surely, if someone comes in and walks straight to the counter and asks for an exact phone on an exact contract, you can stop the sales pitch right there and just expedite the process), I left feeling the warm glow of high-tech consumerism and headed home to activate my futuristic communicator. All was well as the apps were stored, my media was podded, calls were made, photos were touched and maps were pinned - except there was a little niggle feeling that all wasn’t right.

Turning the iPhone from portrait to landscape whilst running an orientation aware app would sometimes result in the app rotating, but more often than not, it wouldn’t do a thing, Whilst a good vigorous shake would usually result in the screen locked upside down until it was rebooted, I don’t think this was the effect that Apple had been aiming for. I fired up the excellent App Store and searched for an accelerometer tool, finally settling on iHandy Level. Once installed, iHandy Level revealed that the iPhone seemed to think that being held level was the same as being tilted 45 degrees, although equally as often may just flip 180 degrees. After a soft reset, a hard reboot and eventually a restore, it was clear this iPhone had some issues with its accelerometers.

A quick trip back to the O2 store and an after-sales experience light years ahead of the actual purchase experience, the phone was twisted this way and that for a minute or two, before a brand spanking new iPhone was handed over and I was free to enjoy my iPhone and the forthcoming 24 months of contractual bliss which is certain to ensue…

Kurt Cobain estate ‘loses’ $750 million? Eh?

Kurt Cobain estate ‘loses’ $750m

Where the hell did Cobain get $750 million? I know Nirvana sold a lot of records ( I bought ‘em and so did you! Which is rare for us ) - indeed with worldwide estimate of albums sold over 65 million, the total plus interest would be in $750m territory…but surely Cobain didn’t get anywhere near the majority of it. Those sleazy, blood-sucking good for nothing record industry types would have just popped a ball of black tar on the table and gotten Cobain to sign away most of the money, if not, then perhaps they aren’t as evil as i’d imagined. I guess it was all invested wisely by his wife…

The bride of Cobain

I wonder how hard it was to scam Courtney Love? I’m guessing it was pretty easy if the first time she noticed was when ALL of the money was gone! Ah well, I’m sure Francis Bean will have her revenge on the scammers.

Robotic Overlord Overview

Is it just me, or is there no good way for the whole “killer machine” thing to turn out? I mean Terminator was pretty much the worst case scenario, but even PW Singers’ recent TED talk about these machines failed to highlight any real positives for mankind. Ah well, time to start shopping for underground property and EMPs.

SpaceX

So on the fourth attempt, SpaceX have successfully launched Falcon 1 into orbit. It really marks a significant change as mankind no longer needs government funding or direct military application to build a rocket and put payload into orbit.

I look forward to Falcon 9 lofting 10+ tonnes into orbit next year and perhaps even sending a Dragon full of crew to the ISS in coming years.

I love this.

A box full of computing history and Radiohead song are two things that I find appealing - combined in this way they caused me enormous pleasure. I want to buy this. Note: If you can’t stand the sound of a ZX Spectrum loading, then skip to 1 minute in!

In case you haven’t heard the original song (or a variety of):

Is that big doggy running Windows?

Boston Dynamics call it “Big Dog” and it looks rather funny, like two guys carrying a sofa, mixed with the Hunter from Half Life 2 Episode 2.

I am in two minds about this puppy - whilst it is an awesome piece of hardware and software engineering which I would love take apart or ride around town, if you pop some weapons on it i’ll be waking in cold sweats about the T3 Sci-Fi Mule coming back from the future to kill me…regardless you should take a look and prepare to be amazed or amused at it’s handling of icy conditions!

PHP 5.2.5 on Windows 2003

There is an oddity in the PHP 5.2.5 installer (and possibly earlier) on Windows 2003 in that it’s default install path is C:\Program Files\PHP. Nothing odd there and indeed the install finishes without issue with the PHP Application Extension and PHP Web Extension configured automatically in IIS (I was tried with both ISAPI and CGI) however when you try to view a PHP page in IIS you get a 404.

It turns out that the path of the PHP Application Extension is in 8.3 format whilst the Web Extension is in LFN format - as far as IIS is concerned that these are two different paths. Editing the PHP Application Extension to include the LFN path enclosed in quotes ( e.g. “C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll” ) makes IIS happy.

So if you find you install PHP to a path with non 8.3 paths and you get a 404 on PHP pages then edit the Application Extension to get it going!

Zeitgeist

I’m not sure exactly how much of this 2 hour film is true (a great deal of the details certainly are), but even if just half of it is true then it explains a whole lot about the world and the way it is. Either way it is fascinating (even for someone who doesn’t revel in conspiracy theories), so with Z-Day drawing near (15th March 2008) it seems appropriate to give it a link and hope one of you two visitors (I know who you are…) watch it…