Greenflame
Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Category: General
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Persuasive Games produce a variety of games with the objective of stimulating thinking and experience of real world issues with a view to persuasion, instruction, and activism (or at least, social awareness). Saw a link to their latest game ‘Airport Insecurity’ today when following up some virtual reality links. Ian Bogost, Partner, and Game Designer…
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I borrowed An Ordinary Joker: the Life & Songs of Peter Cape from the library on Saturday. It’s a collection of biographical pieces, his poetry and a CD of him performing some of his songs. Cape wrote a variety of pieces in the gap between the the Second World War and the rise of global…
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Wired News: Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit has a follow-up to the Sony BMG copy-protection debacle, including the really good question of why the anti-virus and security software we all “have” to use on Windows didn’t pick it up. And also that the DRM software may have used other software outside of the scope…
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Looks like Sony will (temporarily, at least) stop producing the spyware DRM on CDs. See Wired News: Sony to Suspend Antipiracy CDs. User Friendly had a related cartoon also this week. (To understand the cartoon see here if you’re not up with geek jargon) See also: Greenflame: DRM Hell. Update: Looks like the User Friendly…
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The Seattle Times: How to outsmart automated phone systems and The Seattle Times: Business & technology: Dial-a-human shortcuts have advice for those who wish to subvert automated call centres. It’s US focused but I guess you could apply the same principles to generate a list relevant to you own location.
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If you click the link it will generate an essay for you with the appropriate style and vocabulary. See The Postmodernism Generator: Communications From Elsewhere. That’s pretty impressive. I wonder what other “dialects” you could get it to speak?
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Visited Hamilton yesterday to catch up with various people at the University of Waikato. The weather was perfect with warm sun and crisp blue skies which made driving there and back a pleasure. The campus there is refreshing too, with trees, lawns and water, as opposed to the more urban campus of Auckland which is…
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Not so much an article about science-religion animosity but one about how copyright holders use intellectual property rights to influence policy direction in the wider world. So copyright here isn’t about making sure the people get acknowledged and paid fairly for their work but rather about issues of power and control. Interesting. See: Wired News:…
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At the end of what feels like a long and stressful day this made me smile. Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now.
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I’ve started following these recent stories about Digital Rights Management approaches to music. I don’t buy a lot of CDs – rather buy books instead – but I always check the back for DRM because it can screw up listening to the CD on the iBook. Now I’ll really check closely in case I end…