20 Examples of Hilariously Geeky Art

Ive always had a perchant for geeky art. Here is a Gallery of some superb work.

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Petition against Copyright extension.

If you are involved in any way with the music business, I can not stress the importance of this petition.
If you know what its on about, sign it.
If you don't know - read up here, & then sign it.

To explain in simple terms.
Current copyright for music in the UK is for 50 years.
Long enough for the artist to profit from their work.
The 'industry' wants to extend this to 95 years.
Why is this bad? - because music is a tangible part of a society.
If you excessively limit its use, it is detrimental to those who follow.
Why do you think you never hear the song 'Happy Birthday to you' in films? Its copyrighted to an American owner who charges excessively for its use.
Surely a piece of music so ingrained into our culture, should, after a reasonable amount of time, make its way into our shared pool of culture.

TVCatchup caught up.

Very sad to report that TVcatchup has been nobbled. It was an online video recorder (PVR) that seems to have upset the UK's broadcasting industry.

As ever, good reporting from The Register

And a fine MUST READ article from TorrentFreak

Raquel Welch does Space-Girl Dance

Ahh - retro sci-fi!

Beautifuly Dark Art

This is some of the fantastic work by Biddy Maroney, an Australian Illustrator hosted at Fantazmagloria.

Fantazmagloria.com

The Machine is using us.

A nice video explaining Web 2.0 and some of the implications.
Yes - I know its geeky - but since your connected to it, you may as well understand some of whats going on.

Another detailed, but much less amusing video here.

Thanx David

MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims

Brokep, one of the Pirate Bay founders told TorrentFreak earlier that they decided to file complaints because they want to make these big media companies aware of their own wrong doings: “I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how this case develops. One thing is for sure, it will be hard for these media companies to deny their involvement with these emails as evidence.

Torrent Freak

The Hard Disk youve been waiting for !

Only $3398!

A Nation of Sheep

A surprising piece on Fox news.
No, not surprising in its content, we know the US is losing the very freedoms it believes were given to it by god (!), but this is surprising as it was on Fox, a channel not normaly associated with dissent.

Judge Andrew Napolitano - A Nation of Sheep

The First Photograph

A great analysis & history of the first ever photograph.
Made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce at his estate in Chalon-sur-Saône, France.

First ever photograph.

Post Secret

Ive just re-discovered the very wonderful & disquieting Post Secret web site.
People are invited to post in thier secrets on handmade postcards. The result, a poigniant collection of thoughts & musings.

PostScret

P2P anonymity

P2P researchers: use a blocklist or you will be tracked!

The old cliché "You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you" turns out to apply quite nicely to the world of P2P file-sharing. A trio of intrepid researchers from the University of California-Riverside decided to see just how often a P2P user might be tracked by content owners. Their startling conclusion: "naive" users will exchange data with such "fake users" 100 percent of the time.

Ars Technica

Sinister Funeral Service Advert

I would advise you not to read the small print.

Major Act defecting from the Majors

Following on from my post about the Yahoo Music Exec telling the Majors to stuff DRM, we have news of Major Acts such as RadioHead & NIN being quite happy with no Record Company involvment.

DRM is an insidious technology that restricts your ability to do what you wish with the things you have bought. Some companies actually remove rights you had purchased when they ... er ... update you.

Lets hope that the Major Record companies (& other interest) learn from this debacle and realise that not treating your customers like criminals can be beneficial to business.

"Radiohead's management says that the free-download experiment is working out very well so far, driving an 11-fold traffic boost to the band's Web site and converting plenty of those hits into sales of premium boxed sets for £40 a pop."

Band releases Album on Floppy

A UK band called Batch Totem has released a 74-minute album compressed down to fit on a 1.4MB, 3.5" floppy disk. Who need vinyl nostalgia?

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Thanx BoingBoing

Yahoo exec tells Majors to stuff DRM

Finaly, some one in the business stands up to the majors & tells them to stuff it!

I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

Yahoo Music to record execs: No more DRM, ever


UPDATE - Madonna also quits the majors
Music Industry Launches Four-Pronged Effort to Destroy Itself

Record Companies stiff woman over mp3s

The RIAA has won its court case against an American woman for making mp3s available across the net. (Kaazaa).

Copyright law is, as Berkeley law professor Pam Samuelson points out, way too verbose; it's now swollen to an unbelievable 200 pages long. It's complex, incomprehensible, designed to favor large copyright holders over defendants, and thoroughly out of touch with reality.

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Update - Juror aparently has never been on the Internet - Opens up questions about the trial.

Poigniant Video Essay on Population

Hes a very beautiful video short detailing world statiastics if our global villiage contained only 100 people.




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Gizmodo Readers' Computer Rig Poll

Geeky I know, but they are beuatiful.

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Steal Colour Profiles from Old Masters

& then apply them to your own photos.
Great trick in Photoshop to improve the colour balance of your images.
I spotted this a few months ago, & Ive just had chance to use it.
Works a treat!

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