In which I might become the author of a meme

In the world of the internets, the meme author is king. Admiral Ackbar, AYBABTU, Do not want - all these meme creators have been glorified by their actions.

So what did I do? Well, it's still developing, but it's possible that I created a meme called "Move to Svalbard". It started at Reddit (as all horrible things start there) where I posted what I felt was an interesting link. I had been going through Wikipedia when I reached the page on Svalbard, which is a Norwegian Island near the north pole. Now the interesting thing about the history of Svalbard is that it was the subject of an international treaty in 1920 which is still in force today. One of the most important bits of the treaty is the following:

All citizens and all companies of every nation under the treaty are allowed to become residents and to have access to Svalbard including the right to fish, hunt or undertake any kind of maritime, industrial, mining or trade activity. The residents of Svalbard must follow Norwegian law though Norwegian authority cannot discriminate or favor any residents of a certain nationality.

Did you get that? Basically it means that anyone from the 39 nations who signed the treaty can migrate to Svalbard to live and work. Even though Svalbard is part of Norway, the Norwegian government cannot prevent people from the 39 nations moving there to work.

So I thought "this demands a Reddit posting", which I titled Sick of your country? Don't mind cold weather? The treaty of Spitzbergen allows citizens of 39 nations to migrate to Svalbard (a Norwegian island near the North pole) and become residents if they want to, no questions asked. Link here.

The response was enthusiastic. The posting reached into the top five postings for a while and it has so far generated over 500 comments. What are the comments about? Well apart from the terrible Reddit humour (which is why I was drawn to Reddit in the first place), there seems to be some level of enthusiasm for actually moving to Svalbard. It would be interesting if people actually DID migrate to Svalbard as a result of my posting. "Jobs in Svalbard" has apparently become a search phrase as a result.

The interest generated has moved on to another posting made by someone else. It is entitled IAMA Request: Someone living in Svalbard, in the hope that a Svalbardian might just read it and respond. The post was created by someone who wants to know what it is like to live there. In response to this, some people have even begun to comment on Svalbard message boards - which is going to be hard since the message boards and the population all speak either Russian or Norwegian.

How far will this go? Who knows? If a "Reddit IT Community" begins in Svalbard (a semi-serious suggestion by a redditor) you can probably thank me. I'm not going to move there - too cold. But if anyone does, make sure you name something after me.

Update: Someone has decided to visit Svalbard and study there.

Scorpions and Simpsons - child porn?

Two interesting internet events have happened in the past couple of days - both of which are a result of an unrestricted format butting up against national child pornography laws.

The first is in the UK, where some Wikipedia images have been censored - specifically the original 1976 album cover of a German Heavy Metal band called Scorpions. The album cover was the image of a naked pre-teen girl with her private parts obscured but her chest still visible. The album was called "Virgin Killer". The Wikipedia page, where you can see the image, is here. The image was recently censored in the UK because it was considered "child porn".

The second case occurred in Australia where a man who had images of naked Simpsons characters - including the children - found on his hard drive. Many of these images were of a deliberately sexual nature.

Now I'm not a defender of child porn at all. I've actually known three paedophiles who kept their sexual dysfunction secret from the people around them, only for the police to eventually arrest and charge them. I support international efforts to close down and expose child porn rings - even more so after knowing these three paedophiles.

Yet I have to say that there are some rather important issues that have been raised as a result of these two recent cases.

Consider the poor Scorpions, that German Heavy Metal band with the tasteless album cover. Even back in 1976 the cover was controversial and they were forced to change it (to the one shown above). In hindsight I'm sure that some of the band members are probably regretting their decision. Yet even so, images of the original cover can be found throughout the internet, not just at Wikipedia. Moreover, the album image is also shown in books that can be legally purchased. If the UK has decided to censor that particular image then they should be consistent and prevent access to the album cover from all websites. They should also ban the sale of books that contain that image as well.

The case of the naked Simpsons images is no less problematic. The fact is that the characters depicted in the images are cartoon characters and are not just fictional but have no bearing to real life. Yet at the same time there are images of Bart, Lisa and even Maggie engaged in sexual acts.

But this issue gets even worse when you consider the fact that the characters of both Bart and Maggie have appeared naked in official Simpsons animation, not just in the sick minds of internet artists. Anyone who has seen the latest Simpsons movie knows that one of the more humourous moments involves Bart skateboarding in the nude, the highlight of which occurs when objects just "happen" to pass in front of his genitalia as he skateboards along that prevents us from seeing them... only for his entire body to disappear behind a hedge with only his penis visible (see bottom image).

So while a judge may rule the sick fan-drawings of naked Simpsons characters to be child porn, the fact remains that naked Simpsons characters are broadcast on a regular basis on Network TV and, in the case of Bart and his exposed penis, available to buy from the nearest K-Mart store.


In both of these cases (Scorpions and Simpsons) a decision has been made by someone in power that determines that something is "child porn", while at the same time opening up a whole new area of censorship on legally available images (whether in books or on TV/DVD). This is not necessarily a problem (I'm not a huge supporter of the anti-censorship brigade) but the law needs to be enforced consistently - and if it can't then what is the point of having the law?

Back in 1978, actress Brooke Shields, then 12 years old, appeared nude in a film called Pretty Baby, where she played an underage prostitute. This was certainly controversial at the time yet the film itself has not been banned nor have Shields' nude images in the film been deemed underage porn by authorities. Nor have the authorities banned the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy or the film The Song Remains the Same, which also contain images of nude children.

By the way, this is not some attempt to defend images of child porn - all I'm trying to point out is that authorities have been inconsistent in their application of censorship.

Another 15 minutes

The LA Times mentions some awful jokes I wrote about Peak Oil.

I hope Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp reads them and gives me $1 million for being so damn good. Until then I will continue to work as a casual teacher and blog.

AAAAAAAAA

A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

Where have I been and what have I been doing?

Well, for the last week or so I have been diverting my online energies to Last.fm, specifically forming a group of Last.fm listeners who like RIDE, my favourite band. So far the group has managed to get 70 people join in the last 8 days.

The tactics I have used are relatively simple. Anyone at Last.fm can create a group and so I created "The Mouse Trap" (the name of our group) on March 21st. I then began to trace Last.fm listeners who were listening to RIDE and invite them to the group.

On Last.fm, every band has its own page, and everyone who subscribes to Last.fm and who listens to music on their PC or mp3 player can "scrobble" their tracks to last.fm, giving each individual their own playlist. Click here to see mine. Of course data from thousands of Last.fm listeners is pouring into the site continually, which also allows you to see who's been listening to a certain band or a certain song. Click here to see who has been listening to RIDE in the last few minutes.

Armed with this knowledge, I visit the personal Last.fm page of every RIDE listener and plonk a message in their "shoutbox". The first message went like this:

Attention. All RIDE fans are ordered to join "The Mouse Trap" group. Failure to do so will lead to global chaos.
http://www.last.fm/group/The+Mouse+Trap+-+Ride+fans

Completely overbearing of course, but when you look at the Mouse Trap page, you'll see this description of the group:

Recent peer-reviewed studies by musicologists have come to the conclusion that RIDE is the greatest band in the history of music. This controversial study is based upon scientifically tested empirical experiments which prove beyond any doubt that RIDE, a one-time "Shoegazing" band from Oxford, England, is many magnitudes superior than any other band in all histories of music, including extrapolations using Quantum mechanics of potential bands that will arise in the future, as well as those that have arisen in alternative universes.

If you have been convinced of these plain facts, then please join our group - The Mouse Trap - which will act as a conduit of truth and harmony towards humankind for centuries to come as RIDE's songs turn our dirty globe into a utopian paradise in which Mark Gardener, Andy Bell, Laurence Colbert and Steve Queralt reign as a Quadrinity, dispensing their wisdom to a world that is still painfully suffering from exposure to too many Spice Girls songs.

So, grasshopper, leave those other groups all behind, come up for air, get stuck in the Mouse Trap and watch your dreams burn down as the seagull leaves a vapour trail across the sky. Just make sure you don't go in a different place, lest you be paralyzed like a daydream and end up nowhere.

So, am I overstating the case here? Of course. But, then again, elevating a mere band to semi-godlike status is quite common, and RIDE lovers I contacted in the Shoutbox seemed to enjoy the description and began joining in droves. One or two people have joined because they were looking for a RIDE group, but most of the (now 70) members joined because I wrote an invitation in their shoutbox.

And when they joined, then what? I would give them this welcome message:

You are now a member of "The Mouse Trap" group and have made the world a better place because you listen to RIDE. Your life is now complete.

After the group passed 50 members, I changed the invite to this (which is what I am using now):

Attention. RIDE fans have been flocking like Seagulls to join "The Mouse Trap" group in order to prevent their Dreams from Burning Down. Please join our group and turn our world into A Different Place.
http://www.last.fm/group/The+Mouse+Trap+-+Ride+fans

As leader of this growing group I've begun to initiate discussions about the group's Last.fm page, giving over important decision making to them (and thus empowering them and increasing their "ownership" of the group). One member runs an IRC channel and is willing to set one up for us so we can converse in real time.

In retrospect, what I have been doing is forming an online community. These are 70 people who don't visit my blog (although some no doubt visit) and we have music, rather than politics, in common. From what I can gather, the formation of the Last.fm RIDE online community has been achieved very quickly in comparison to other Last.fm groups. One group I am a member of, the Warlocks group, has 58 members but has been in operation since August 2005. The RIDE group I have formed is bigger but has been only operating since March 21st 2008.

We'll see how this goes. I'm just enjoying a diversion from politics, economics and the environment and opinionation at the moment.

BTW, if you're a music lover, I seriously suggest you give Last.fm a good tryout. Membership is free and, at the very least, you can listen to some good music streams on your media player.

New Charlatans Album

Now available for FREE download here. I'm downloading it as I type, so I don't know what sort of file format it is or whether it is good or not, or what sort of copyright it carries. It's titled "You Cross My Path".

It has been available now for 3 weeks - so the band must have distributed it online around the same time as Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV.

Last.fm is interesting. Reason #1

You listen to a song, say The Queen is Dead by The Smiths, then check out the song at Last.fm and discover that some 20 year old woman in Sweden has just listened to it to at the same time.

I'm enjoying Ghosts

That is, the album Nine Inch Nails has released free on the internet.

Trent Reznor's decision obviously has Radiohead's "In Rainbows" in mind, but with one significant difference - Ghosts is copyrighted under a creative commons licence, which means that people who own it are allowed to copy it and distribute it as much as they want to.

With that in mind, if you wish to download Ghosts II-IV (which are not available at the NIN site), then click here where you can legally download the entire release.

Virtual Monetary Policy

This is absolutely fascinating:

The game Eve Online has a major virtual economy, and many of the players form corporations to handle space exploration, mining, and manufacturing. So, in August, they hired a economics professor to be their "Alan Greenspan". He measures CPI and markets in the game, so that the game designers can institute virtual monetary policy. The PDF above is the latest quarterly report where he tries to address the debate about whether or not inflation exists in Eve Online.

How do you handle monetary policy in a game? In Eve, there is no loan system (though they are thinking about inserting one), so monetary policy consists of making minerals scare or more plentiful, or changing the powers of in-game objects, thus changing how players value them. For example, this PDF has a graph showing how changing the range of cruise missiles in the game affected their prices.

I remember a few years ago when I heard about people willing to spend real cash to buy good characters in World of Warcraft that there would be some interesting times ahead for online gaming and economics.

I love the fact that EVE Online has its own "Alan Greenspan" who controls inflation by adjusting the amount of resources present in the game - far more effective than the real world, though if God chose to he could adjust all the resources accordingly.

Of course people would say that such an economy would be limited to the online gamers themselves and have no real world application. I disagree. There is a commodity that our modern economy has complete control over, which can be produced or restricted at will. We can produce an infinite amount if we choose to, or completely rid ourselves of it. What is this commodity? Money.

Let's reverse the analogy here. Instead of the economics professor being a virtual "Alan Greenspan", let's assume that a central bank is like that economics professor. Of course, central banks do not have control over any form of goods or services except money, so while inflation in the game is controlled by this professor adjusting the amount of goods present, the amount of inflation in the real world is controlled by central banks adjusting the amount of money present.

Central Banks can induce inflationary monetary conditions quite easily - this is through its open market operations like reducing interest rates, reducing reserve requirements on bank accounts, or even simply creating the stuff out of thin air and distributing it to whomever you want to. On the other hand, central banks can induce deflationary monetary conditions just as easily - by increasing interest rates, increasing the reserve requirements, or getting rid of any income it receives (from overseas reserves for example). Both forms of monetary policy - inflationary and deflationary - rely upon the effect of the money multiplier as money passes through the economy.

What does this mean for us? Well, put simply, it means that central banks (including the Federal Reserve) DO have the power to completely control inflation if they want to. Inflation that is "out of control" is essentially the result of a central bank that is not using its powers properly (either through legal restrictions or incompetence).

For me, it means that it is more than possible that an economy could sustain Absolute Price Stability (zero inflation over the course of the business cycle). It also means that my idea for a taxless economy is also possible.

PBF - it's over

This is tragic:

Nicholas Gurewitch's "Perry Bible Fellowship," the offbeat comic that ran online and in newspapers, will end next week.

"I'm making this decision for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I want to do other things besides be a cartoonist," said Gurewitch.

A "Perry Bible Fellowship" hardcover book called "The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories" was published last fall by Dark Horse Comics.

This was my favourite internet comic. Arggh!

This is Beamer... and me!

And probably many many many people reading this...

XKCD

Scientology Protests - Pictures

What's the bet that this protest will increase interest in the film V for Vendetta? It is so cool that they are all wearing those Guy Fawkes masks, just like at the end of the film.

Project Chanology

The internet attacks Scientology:

Project Chanology is an Internet-based protest against the controversial Church of Scientology by the Internet group Anonymous. Project Chanology also refers to a website of the same name, used by the group to chronicle ongoing and planned actions by Anonymous, who state they are "everyone and everywhere", with "no leaders". The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from an exclusive promotional interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008.

Netscape is Dead. Long live Mozilla Firefox.

From the department of honouring-our-glorious-dead:

It birthed the web as we know it. But tomorrow, February 1, marks the demise of Netscape Navigator, the first commercial web browser.

Navigator will continue to function should you happen to have a recent copy stashed away. But America Online, which has been Netscape’s guardian during its long, downward slide in popularity, will no longer support the browser and will stop releasing updates. Support for all versions of the software will be off-loaded to the Netscape community forum. Netscape.com will continue to live on as a web portal.

...

Netscape released its browser’s source code and created the Mozilla project in 1998. AOL then acquired Netscape in 1999. Recognizing that Netscape got some things right and others wrong, Blake Ross and some of his developer friends branched off to create Firefox, which for all practical purposes is the current incarnation of Netscape.

Sinking ship and Microsoft Jokes

Okay, here's the actual news report:

More than 150 passengers and crew have been rescued from a stricken tourist ship after it hit ice off Antarctica.

The M/S Explorer is now lying on its side close to the South Shetland Islands, in the Antarctic Ocean.

Gap Adventures, which owns the ship, said 91 passengers, nine guides and 54 crew members were safely evacuated to lifeboats and then to another ship.

The company said 23 Britons, 17 Dutch, 10 Australians, 13 Americans and 10 Canadians were among the 154 on board.

The remaining nationalities of the rescued tourists are Irish, Danish, Swiss, Belgian, Japanese, French, German and Chinese, said the Toronto-based tour company.

And here's how Reddit reported the story:

M/S Explorer crippled in the frozen waters of the Antarctic - Outlook not good.

And here are some comments that people made:

The captain gave the Word to Excel, but they crashed. Now they have no Access to shore.

But they made it the to the FrontPage on all major Publishing sites.

They aren't sure how this happened but Dr. Watson is looking into it.

Wow, I hope all those people will zune be brought to safety.

I hope it all Works out for them as well.

Another couple of hours and they'll have to Bob.

Fortunately they sent out a Messenger before they sank. The rescue team has a large Windows of opportunity to save them. I'd say there is a 95 to 98 percent chance of success. I'm just glad this didn't happen to ME.

I hope no one lost their Passports.

The recovery team will try to restart it in safe mode.

It's the driver's fault.

I think they need to remove those drivers, and install some new ones.

It will be recovered ASP according to a source on the NET.

In Praise of XKCD

Randall Monroe's comic strip is just getting too popular - maybe he should stop doing it:

This mix of brains and fun, as well as underlying sweetness helped propel xkcd from a hobby to a full-time job for the 23-year-old former NASA roboticist. Since its 2005 launch, xkcd has grown from doodles in the margins of a graphing notebook to T-shirts, radio talks and lectures on humor at MIT, where students batted inflatable raptors around the auditorium. The website drew between 60 million and 70 million pageviews in October, Munroe says, and xkcd's growing fan base has taken to re-enacting events that take place in the comic.

But if xkcd is currently making headlines, it's because Munroe's message to "get out and live!" is provoking a stream of real-time events. For example, Richard Stallman was attacked by ninjas in a comical re-enactment of an xkcd strip as he innocently attempted to give a talk at Yale. Photos circulate of people playing chess on roller coasters.

And then Munroe's fans read the installment in which a mysterious dream girl leaves the hero with a set of coordinates for a place and time in the near future.

In the comic, nothing happens. "It turns out that wanting something doesn't make it real," the comic's narrator says mournfully.

But in real life, those coordinates pointed to a real time and place: Sept. 23, 2:38 p.m., in Reverend Thomas J. Williams Park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. On that day, nearly a thousand xkcd fans from as far away as England and Canada converged on the park, bearing tape measures and Rubik's cubes. At the assigned minute, Munroe emerged and spoke.

"Maybe wanting something does make it real," he said as his fans cheered and fought duels with foam swords. The comic that spurred the gathering was enlarged and hung from a fence, and fans took turns contributing to a new last panel, where dreams can come true.

XKCD is more than just another internet meme - it seems to make people do things. The picture above is a real-life person standing in a meeting with a sign saying "Citation needed", an in-joke for people who read and contribute to Wikipedia. This protester was inspired to do this based upon an XKCD comic. This is a case where life not only imitates art, it is influenced by it.

For me, I am merely an untergeek. I am neither a programmer nor maths head. Some of the comics go waaaaaay over my head. But he still has the ability to make me laugh 9.1 times out of 10.11111111.

Football team bought out by online collective

From the department of smashing-common-assumptions:

An online collective of football fans from more than 70 countries agreed in principle Tuesday to buy a controlling interest in an English football club.

The deal will give them a vote on everything from team lineup selections to which players should be transferred.

Ebbsfleet United, a lower-league professional team, said it was overjoyed by the deal with MyFootballClub, calling it a world first and the start of a new age in football club ownership.

"This is a brand new concept, basically a massive trust," said Roland Edwards, a director and club secretary of Ebbsfleet United in Kent, southern England.

"These individuals have bought the team. They will help run it; they will feel part of it," he said in a telephone interview.

Ebbsfleet United is currently in the fifth tier of English soccer, known as the Football Conference, which is the level below the four divisions of professional soccer - the Premier League, League Championship, League One and League Two.

Edwards said he hopes its new owners will help push it up one notch to League Two. Ebbsfleet United is ranked ninth in the Conference, which has 24 teams.

Edwards wouldn't disclose the price MyFootballClub agreed in principle to pay for a 51 percent stake interest in the club. He said the deal would be completed in several weeks.

MyFootballClub, which charges its 20,000 members a 35 pound annual fee, has a kitty of more than 700,000 pounds , and its money will not only help operate the team but deepen its pockets to buy new players, Edwards said.

There's a lot that organisations and fans can do with the internet to allow things like this. It'll be really interesting to see how this works out in practice.

Infuriating

1. Writing detailed comment (300 words?) on a Christian blog site. Takes me 15 minutes to write properly.
   
2. Finished comment. Entered the security code and pressed "publish".
3. "Wrong security code" says the next screen. "Press the back button on your browser"
4. Press back button.
5. My comment (300 words) is gone.
   

New York Times now free online

From the department of common sense:

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The New York Times has, in recent years, been subject to a number of journalistic controversies, including the plagiarism of Jayson Blair and the role of reporter Judith Miller in the Plame Affair. Despite this, it is perhaps the best known Newspaper of Record in the USA. That it has chosen to ditch the fee-paying TimesSelect and open up its articles freely on the web will give the newspaper an added boost. It certainly won't solve the problem of falling sales (as people stop buying the paper and, instead, read it for free on the internet) but it will free up important historical information.

Still, I can't see newspapers surviving in the current climate. There will always be a need to sell physical newspapers but, as time goes by, that number will drop. As a result, there will be a merger and consolidation of a number of different news sources, which will be a good thing.

Firefox passes 400 million downloads

From the department of the-best-things-in-life-are-free:

"Firefox hit another milestone this past Friday, when it passed the 400 million download mark. From its launch in 2004 it took one year to reach 100 million downloads, hitting 200 million downloads just one year later. According to figures released by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent."