Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Well, sort of. What is really happening is that one person got targeted by the RIAA, charged with the hideous crime of downloading seven songs! They demanded that he pay the ludicrous amount of $500 in order to redeem himself. He refused, of course, the songs themselves aren’t worth near as much. This was in 2003, and now, six years later, the case hits the courtroom.
So what does this have to do with the wonderful people in Radiohead? Well, they decided that something wasn’t quit
e right, and agreed to testify against the almighty RIAA! This isn’t the first time that Radiohead has declared war on the music industry. They were one of the first bands that let people decide what they wanted to pay for their music, and made entire albums available for public downloads.
Recently they co-founded the Featured Artists Coalition, a congregation of artists who will no longer stand for the industry speaking out on their behalf without conferring with them beforehand. Can you say open warfare? When you throw in the album “Hail to the Thief,” you can’t but grin at the effort that these guys are putting into pissing off the industry. I hope that more people will decide to follow Radiohead, because even if they are big, they probably can’t take down the industry on their own. The Featured Artists Coalition is a brilliant incentive, and I sincerely hope that the case against the RIAA is won. Now if The Pirate Bay would win their case too, the music industry would be seriously damaged, which can only be considered a good thing!
You can read more about this at ITavisen! Beware though, it’s in norwegian!
Song of the Blog: Bodysnatchers
Sincerely
Bjørn
So Kim Jung Il is trying to get attention again. Oddly, he always tries the same thing at a slightly larger scale when he wants this, thinking that if he can just get the pitch right, the girls will surely fall for his daring whistle. So they decided to put a satellite in orbit, and the world gets piss-scared because he’s an insane communist bastard, right? Hardly a communist at all, but if that’s what he calls himself then I guess you just have to respect the man enough to at least grant him that title, as he does, after all, lead a country.
So it’s launch day, and the entire world trembles! What on earth might this satellite be? Is it the end? Have they gotten some new ultimate weapon capable of destroying us all before we can arm our warheads and blow them off the very pages of history? No, of course not, they don’t talk to anyone outside North Korea, so there’s no way they could have the knowledge necessary, and indeed they have proven that it is so. They couldn’t even successfully put the thing in orbit, falling a few steps short of world domination, and both the rocket and satellite are now drifting somewhere in the Pacific. So what would have happened had the satellite made it?
We would all be doomed to have praise mp3s to Kim Jung Il and his dad streamed through us at all times, wirelessly! Oh woe! What a terrible fate! How would we ever be able to cope? World domination indeed, he would be everywhere! I’m not entirely sure I’d be able to live with myself knowing what was in the air. I can see him sitting there with his launch button, sniggering, thinking dirty thought involving rockets and tentacles. As he pressed the large red button, he probably screamed maniacally; “TAKE THAT, OBAMA! WHO’S THE FOUR-EYES NOW?? NOT SO TALL NOW, ARE YOU?” And then he proceeded to laugh a wheezing and most evil laugh, while his advisors stood by, rolling their eyes at each others.
Honestly, why does the world even care what this guy does? You can’t really do anything about him, seeing as China is on his side, so all you can do is wait for his death. He won’t do anything if you ignore him besides sulk. If you look at him, he gets excited and starts acting up. His country desperately needs attention if it is to survive, and he needs the west to be scared of him if he is to get any supplies without lifting the blockade. Ignore him and he starves, and in the end he’ll come crawling, as opposed to now, when we all grovel in front of his tiny and most unintimidating figure. Just look at the guy. His face just screams “I had no friends in school so now I’m getting my revenge on you all!” He just needs a hug, but he won’t let anyone touch him, so what can you do?
Again a link to a norwegian news article here regarding the launch here
Song of the Blog: Power Trip Ballad
Sincerely
Bjørn
Well, he can’t possibly do a worse job of it than the previous one, so I guess I’m happy that he got elected. So who is he? His name is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and he’s the current Prime Minister in Denmark, for the political party Venstre (grouped as liberals in a biparisan system), so at least he’s on the right side of the spectrum. The fact remains that NATO should not even exist anymore, but maybe it can make a turn for the better once there’s some good scandinavian blood in charge.
So you’re probably wondering what my grudge is with NATO, right? Today is its 60th birthday, so of course Red Youth was out protesting. Personally they haven’t done anything to me besides indirectly causing that I had to lay on a cold floor and play dead for a while with fake blood all over me, as seen here.
But there are problems with NATO. In the beginning NATO started out as a rather clever defense mechanism that kept the Sovjet Union at bay. A direct consequence of the opening scenes of the cold war, it gained its foothold, and while the Sovjet Union fell, NATO remained tall and proud, but without a purpose. Then USA started looking for countries to pick on, and NATO was all in from the start, and of course this had been going on since before the fall of Sovjet too. Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, they all have NATO all over them. And soon Obama will go after Pakistan, just you wait, it’s in the budget. When this happens, Rasmussen will have no real choice but to follow. That is if Obama will even wait until August, which is when Rasmussen will officially become the Secretary General.
NATO is the aggressor these days. It is an obsolete organization whose only means of surviving are war. As long as it can pretend to still be needed, it remains, in a world where the United Nations has long since taken over as the peace-preserving part.
You can read more about Rasmussen and the NATO birthday here and here.
Song of the Blog: Blood
Sincerely
Bjørn
What might be the most awesome research ever is being carried out right now, in Japan of course. Who else, besides these horny midgets would be able to do something like this? For the time being they’re not quite at that level yet, but they’ve managed quite extraordinary things already, and those people are quick!
If your norwegian isn’t too shabby, you can read about it here.
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Basically what they’re doing is they’re scanning people’s heads with modified MRIs, while showing them patterns in black and white. The computers they use then try to reconstruct the image based on electrical signals recorded in the subject’s brain! The recorded image that is shown at the time that I am writing this article is scrambled, and sometimes you have to wonder if it just looks similar to the presented image because you want it to, but other times it’s unmistakable. The opportunities if they manage to perfect this tech, and knowing the Japanese, they will! Imagine if they become able to reverse the effect! All of a sudden those 3d glasses don’t seem so nifty anymore.
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Try to think of what you could do once computers are able to visualize your thoughts! And even put pictures in your head! Starting with the small steps, there would be no need for a keyboard anymore, no mouse, no need for a human interface at all! And that’s just for starters! The next one is for the gamers! Playing a game inside your head might not seem that much more fancy than a monitor, but only if you think of it in standard terms. The most obvious difference, the game seeming to be real, is one thing, but again think of the possibilities! 360 degree vision anyone? Levitation? Could this machine be used to do more than just force pictures and shapes? What about the other senses? Smell, sounds, taste, touch? The last one would call for some interesting erotic games, but I’d stay away from pirated games if I were you. And once we’re at this stage, I’m almost at the destination I’ve been aiming for throughout the paragraph. Interaction.
As the possible bandwidth keeps growing in accordance with known laws, the possibilities for interaction by means of thoughts via one of these theoretical devices is only a few inches away. It will no longer be necessary to be a fruitcake to hear the thought of another, all you have to do is boot up your machine and log on MSN. I imagine it’ll be a lot cooler chatting with friends from across the globe while drinking tea on a cloud somewhere on Venus, don’t you think so too? Whereas I look forward to doing some mental blogging afloat in the center of the sun, while still within the confines of the four that make my headquarter.
Those are the ideas that I could come up with, and this probable future technology, these ideas are equally probable! So do me a favor you guys; Come up with something that’s batshit insane! Something utterly impossible. I want to bet a lot of money against someone that something impossible will be commonplace in 50 years, if not less.
Song of the Blog: Paranoid Android
Sincerely
Bjørn
These days there are a select few lunatics running things everywhere, and they connect to each other to make very important decisions. It’s incredible how those in charge always make bad decisions, it makes it seem like they’re humans or something. The problem is that even if they are rambling mad, there’s really nothing you can do. They’ve been elected at some point, so they call the shots, and the only ones there to call them out when they do their deeds is the media, and while the media would rather cover the love life of some backwater singer that no one has heard about, humankind suffers.
Right now there’s the issue with oil. There’s a number of people working to create a world for future generations, there’s a few elected officials, there’s the oil companies that lobby for the elected officials, and then there’s the rest of us. So the oil companies go to the elected officials and scream and shout about how the economy will collapse if they’re not allowed to drill for oil in protected areas, even while statistics show that the opposite is true. Then the elected officials in the capital gets on the line with the elected officials from the districts. These elected officials have somewhere along the line been convinced that oil is the only way to keep their regions populated, despite the people expressing something completely different, so they agree wholeheartedly, and next thing you know the protected areas are no longer protected, and there’s a brand new pumping platform.
This would not be such a bad thing, after all the oil keeps us relatively rich, if it weren’t for the fact that it has certain effects. The first noticeable effect is the disappearance of fish. Even the tests that they do to see if there is any oil at all drives away and kills fish. The truth is that the only substantial wild cod population in the world resides in the Barets Sea, just north of Norway and Russia. So what does this have to do with oil at all? When they breed the population temporarily migrates to Lofoten, one area that the oil companies are showing an unhealthy amount of interest in.
Because of this, these areas have traditionally been populated by fishermen, and everything grew around that. Nowadays the ministers and mayors don’t seem to have much respect for this, and all they see is the wonderful oil, that will solve all the problems and cause immense growth for all. This is of course a fantasy, the oil companies offer a measly 2000 jobs if they do get to drill.
Then of course there’s the environmental perspective. Even the oil giants admit that they can’t be completely safe against accidents. They tried saying that after an accident once, and the next day there was a major one. There will be leakages, which we can’t really do anything about once it’s started except bring out the shovels. The whole oil way of doing things is very damaging anyways. Exhaust causes terrible air in cities, toxic rain destroys forests and water, gasses break down the ozone layer and in all probably causes global warming. It’s not pretty.
So what do you do? Vote Red. If SV gets enough power, and Red is there to see to it that they actually do what they’re promising that they will, things will all work out for the best. New cars will have to be able to run on alternative fuels after 2015, we’ll cut our emissions, and we’ll be able to do what our prime minister says is so easy to do: Just let the resource stay where it is. He said it about rainforests, why doesn’t the same apply to oil?
Sincerely
Bjørn
