Category: Digital Culture

The Man in Black is dead.

Interesting story from the Washington Post concerning the rise of the “adult strategy board game.” It talks about Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico, two really great games…Settlers some of you have played, Puerto Rico is one that I've been meaning to buy for a year now. For those of you who want to explore some good games, I suggest:

Cheapass Games
Looney Labs
and, of course: Raw Deal

I know that I missed this first time around (saw it, but didn't blog it), but for everyone looking for a P2P fix, try Earthstation 5. I haven't tried it, yet, but I will. But anyone who basically tells the RIAA to fuck themselves is ok in my book. Kazaa is not only unsafe, but the company recently fucked with Google results using the DMCA (another BIG no-no in my book). Earthstation looks like a good start, but future P2P software will be better…encrypted, with distributed file a la Bit Torrent, and IP spoofing with anonymity features. The RIAA can't win this battle…they can just prolong the bleeding.

Question of the day:

If more people are currently on P2P networks than voted in the last presidential election, why is it that the american people are allowing the RIAA to have the power that it does? Why aren't we berating our representatives for not changing the copyright law to reflect the digital revolution? How long will this take?

From Fark…a dark and secret look inside the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Those of you reading this that are not gamers….view this and fear us. Those of you that are gamers….welcome, and rejoice!

8 Bit Dead Alewives skit

You know…I never really thought I'd ever say these words, but…well…here you go.

Ted Koppel is THE MAN!!

From Lisa Rein's Radar, an entry about the PATRIOT Act piece from Nightline on Sept 4th. Probably the most insightful piece that I've seen a major media outlet do on PATRIOT. Lisa also vid-captured it, and posted it on her space as a Quicktime file…I'm mirroring her capture of the entire piece until I'm told to take it down. (warning, BIG quicktime…~50 megs).

Here's the transcript of his closing remarks…take it away, Ted:

“The men who drafted our constitution, who framed our civil rights and protected our various freedoms under the law would, I suspect, retch at some of the bone headed, self-serving, misinterpretations of their intentions that they so often use these days to undermine the very freedoms they pretend to safeguard. The miracle of American Law is not that it protects popular speech, or the privacy of the powerful, or the homes of the privileged, but rather, that the least among us, those with the fewest defenses thoses suspected of the worst crimes — the most despised in our midst, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

That remains as revolutionary a concept now as it was in the 1780s. It makes protecting the country against terrorism excruciatingly difficult, but we cannot arbitrarily suspend the rights of one catagory of suspects without endangering all the others.”

*applause*

In honor of the upcoming publication of Neil Gaiman's first Sandman work in several years (Endless Nights), a quote about librarians:

“Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained.Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?”
 Neil Gaiman The Sandman. Line spoken by Lucien, Librarian of the Dreaming.

For those of you who have been unlucky enough to have missed this amazing series completely, the Library of the Dreaming figures prominently in several stories (to be fair, Gaiman did largely steal the library from Jorge Luis Borges, but most of his best ideas are stolen…he weaves them in ways others envy, though.)

In North Carolina political news:

Edwards in blogland. Senator Edwards has launched a blog. Built on Slash, with ratings, and a special icon to signal staff postings, the site has local (well, state) blogs linked to the national blog as well. [Lessig Blog]

“The Future is here, it just isn't evenly distributed yet.”
                                                   –William Gibson