Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Infographic in today's Times, showing destination & amount of British arms sales Jan-June 2011 to Mid East

(Click to enlarge)

NBN will worsen piracy: leaked cable

Chathexis

Someone who wanted to know how we live might ask how we talk. Madame de Rambouillet talked in bed, stretched out on a mattress, draped in furs, while her visitors remained standing. Blue velvet lined the walls of the room, which became known as “the French Parnassus”: a model for the 17th- and 18th-century salons, where aristocratic women led male philosophes in polite and lively discussion.
Talking, of course, is nothing new. But conversation, in the 17th century, was a novel ideal of speech: not utilitarian instructions or religious catechism, but an exchange of ideas, a free play of wit. Thus the hostesses of the Enlightenment received visitors in a new kind of furniture. In 1667, the Gobelins tapestry-weaving workshop became Louis XIV’s official furniture supplier. Previously, fabric—like Madame de Rambouillet’s velvet—had been confined to walls and clothing. The Gobelins were the first to apply it to chairs, which for many long, uncomfortable centuries had been small and hard. Now they were wide and soft—more like beds. The fauteuil confessional, for instance, had wraparound wings against which the listener might rest her cheek, as the priest had done behind his screen. Listening and talking became even easier in the 1680s, with the introduction of the sofa. Seating for two! For the first time in history, people could sit comfortably together indoors for long stretches—thereby making it easier for them to speak comfortably together for long stretches. Thus was conversation enshrined—en-couched—as a vehicle of Enlightenment, fundamental to the self-improvement of civilization.
Face-to-face exchanges continued in the exchange of letters. As the salon had the sofa, “written conversation”—as one style manual called it—had the desk, another invention of the 17th century. For men, there was the bureau—a big, heavy table for conducting official correspondence. (From bureau comes “bureaucracy.”) For women, there was the secrétaire. Unlike the flat bureau, the light, portable secrétaire featured stacks of shelves and cubbyholes, which were kept locked. Some writing surfaces slid outward, like drawers. Others opened from the top, as if the desk were a jewelry box—or a laptop.
If talking is one thing, and conversation another, then what is chat?
In the early days of the internet, chatting was something that happened between strangers. “Wanna cyber?” millions of people asked, and millions answered: Yes! On AOL—as of 1994, the most popular internet service provider in the US—half the member-created chat rooms were for sex. AOL also launched the first mass IM interface, which was where the real action happened. Each conversation appeared as a flat, white square on your screen—it was like having sex on a tiled floor. But at least it was someone else’s floor. Signing off was like walking out of a public bathroom. Nobody knew where anybody went: answers to “a/s/l?” were likely lies, screen names universally inscrutable. Because AOL permitted five screen names per account, it was possible to use one for strangers, another for friends. Before the introduction of the Buddy List—in 1996, dubbed the “stalker feature” by AOL employees—you could come and go without any of them noticing.
Eventually, AOL’s dominance waned as people signed up for free web-based email and downloaded desktop-based chat clients, like AOL’s own Instant Messenger (1997). In AIM, all that remained of the original AOL was the AOL Buddy List, which hung in the corner of our screen. (Chat rooms were still out there, but mostly for terrorists and pedophiles.) Chatting now required constant tabbing between applications: browser for email, IM window, browser for search. Like hermit crabs outgrowing their shells, people kept shucking their old screen names for new ones.
Gmail changed all this. We signed up using our real name. So did our friends, and one day those names appeared in a column on the left side of our inbox. This was Gchat, and whenever we signed in, up came the gray, ghostly list of Gchattable names. And what names! Previously, we’d decided which screen names to include on our “Buddy Lists” (poor AOL: it came first and had to name the animals, and it named them in a corporate-Midwestern way that couldn’t help but become comically creepy). Gmail made the choices for us, pulling names from our email contacts. It was like standing outside the door of a party that all your friends had been invited to. Maybe they had already arrived!
Gmail began “in beta” and by invitation only in 2004 and remained technically in beta for the next five years; it continued to feel exclusive long after everyone was using it. (Registration opened to the public in 2007.) Being new, it was also youthful: you could tell when a person signed up for email by the client they used—AOL between 1994 and 1999; Hotmail or Yahoo! between 1999 and 2004; after 2004, only Gmail. When Gmail automatically added Gchat to every user’s inbox in 2006, it was like a conspiracy of the young against the old. We would chat while they thought we were working; they would grow old and die; we would inherit the earth and chat forever...

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@'n+1'

Riot sentence 'feeding frenzy' claims anger magistrates

Magistrates have responded angrily to prison governors' accusations they have indulged in a sentencing "feeding frenzy" after the riots in England.

Prison Governors Association president Eoin McLennan Murray said sentences had appealed to a populist mentality.
But Magistrates Association chairman John Thornhill said sentencing had followed guidelines and he was "angry and concerned" by the comments.
Since the riots, the prison population has gone up by more than 1,000.
It reached a record high for the third consecutive week last Friday, standing just 1,500 short of its operational capacity at nearly 87,000.
The most recent Ministry of Justice statistics for court cases relating to the disturbances between 6-9 August estimate that 70% of people were remanded in custody. By comparison in 2010, 10% of those brought before magistrates' courts were remanded in custody.
When it came to sentencing, 46% received a custodial sentence. For equivalent offences convicted and sentenced last year the custody rate was 12.3%, the MoJ figures show.
'Conveyor-belt' justice

Mr McLennan Murray said magistrates hearing the riot cases were ignoring the norms of sentencing and that the media were putting pressure on the judiciary.

He said the magistrates were "choosing at a much greater rate" to use custody rather than bail, and criticised the "conveyor-belt" situation where courts were sitting through the night and weekends to deal with the large number of cases.
"What they have been doing is reflecting the anger and emotion that surrounded it and therefore using custody," Mr McLennan Murray told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Mr McLennan Murray said the seven-fold increase in remanding in custody raised concerns that "this kind of speedy, across-the-board justice probably means that a number of people are dealt with unfairly".
But Mr Thornhill said the riot cases occurred in "special circumstances", and added that there had been an increase in custody remands because of a corresponding rise in arrests.
'Heightened atmosphere' "Yes, there have been more remands in custody than normal, but there have been more offences than normal - 2,000 arrests and more in a very short period of time."
He dismissed claims of influence, saying "the judiciary does not respond to political pressure", and instead looked at the sentencing guidelines and Bail Act and applied them to individual cases.
"That is what has been happening even in this heightened atmosphere," he said.
The Courts and Tribunals Service says legal advisers in court have been advising magistrates to "consider whether their powers of punishment are sufficient in dealing with some cases arising from the recent disorder". Magistrates are able to refer cases to crown courts which have tougher sentencing powers.
Sentencing guidelines
Maximum sentences are fixed by Parliament and there are discounts for early guilty pleas. The Sentencing Council drafts guidelines to promote consistency but judges and magistrates can depart from them when the interests of justice require it. The Court of Appeal also hands down guidance in appeal cases.
Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt has said he believes harsher terms for rioters are justified under case law. But some MPs and justice campaigners have said some of the sentences handed down have been too harsh.
In one case, magistrates in Manchester jailed mother-of-two Ursula Nevin, 24, for five months for accepting looted shirts. A Manchester Crown Court judge later freed Nevin and ordered her to do 75 hours' unpaid work instead.
@'BBC'

3RRR Byte Into It - 24 August 2011

Dr Suelette Dreyfus talks about digital whistle-blowing, Julian Assange, and the Melbourne Writers Festival. A performance & interview with John Jacobs from the Handmade Music Festival. Presented by Georgia Webster, and Ben Finney.
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Monday, 29 August 2011

American Theocracy Revisited

19 years old iPhone hacker Nicholas Allegra (comex) joins Apple

Famed Scientist Richard Dawkins Destroys Rick Perry on Evolution

Jamie xx Essential Mix (27/08/11)

Broadcast on BBC Radio 1, 27th August 2011.
Tracklist:
Orbital - Belfast
Phanes - Lucky Woman
Ifan Dafydd - No Good
Harvey Mandel - Christo Redentor
Koreless - Lost in Tokyo
Floating Points - Sais
Wiley - Colder (Instrumental)
Fantastic Mr. Fox - Untitled
Pärson Sound - Untitled
DJ Deeon - Fine Hoes
Luke Vibert - Analord
New Look - Janet
John Tejada - Unstable Condition
Univac - Untitled (Track 1)
Aardvarck - Nosestep (Original Mix)
Jean Jacques Smoothie - 2 People
Instra:mental - Pyramid
Grimm Limbo - Fortune Favours the Brave
R A G - Rage (Spaventi &Aroy Raw Mix)
Ronnie Dyson - All Over Your Face
Jamie xx - Far Nearer (Bootleg)
Axel Boman - Purple Drank
Loosse - About You (feat. Yolanda)
Anette Party - Moreno (feat. Anita Coke)
Gino Soccio - Dancer
Mr Beatnick - Synthetes
Funke, Sacha vs Nina Kraviz - Moses (Stimming Remix)
Jamie xx &Gil Scott Heron - I'll Take Care of U (Special DJ Version)
Genius of Time - Houston We Have a Problem
Austin Eterno/The xx - I Remember Shelter
James Blake - Libra (Edit)
Pangaea - Bear Witness
Holly Miranda - Slow Burn Treason
Peter Horrevorts - Siren
Chuck Roberts - My House (Acappella)
Virgo Four - Do You Know Who You Are?
Morning Factory - Diane's Love
Karen Pollack - You Can't Touch Me (Roc &Kato Vocal Beat Trip Mix)
War - The World Is A Ghetto (Special Disco Mix)
Marshall Jefferson - Mushrooms (Justin Martin Mix)
Radiohead - Bloom (Jamie xx Rework)

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ABCtech ABC Tech & Games
Wow, Slowed down #Nyan cat sounds like Vangelis conducting a choir of whales. Top comment by Dontholdback too youtu.be/d0Ud0tSx1tw

Smoking # 109 (LadyLike)

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Krystof from NO JUSTICE NO BART speaks to BART BOARD

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The Rampant Misuse of 'Orwellian'

Nightmare or fantasy? A look at the often used (and often misused) insult.

A recurring theme of this column is that language is a giant organic beast, with thousands of tentacles and no sense of right and wrong. Nowhere is the amorality of language more clear than in the realm of eponyms, those words that turn a name into a new term, often in ways the bearer of the name would despise.
The best example might be “Orwellian”—an adjective that has likely made George Orwell spin in his grave repeatedly, ever since his name started being used as a synonym for the totalitarian doublethink he attacked in 1984. Recent uses of “Orwellian” seem to expand the term even further, as it joins “socialist” as a common weapon used by right wingers against all things Obama. Without a doubt, “Orwellian” is one of our most commonly and controversially used words.
Though Orwell was a prolific writer—you should really check out his essays—it’s the dystopian novels 1984 and Animal Farm that form the popular sense of “Orwellian.” The Oxford English Dictionary started finding examples of its use as early as 1950, one year after 1984 debuted. The OED also collects other meanings for the word, including “an admirer of the works and ideas of Orwell,” but that more flattering use didn’t show up until 1971, and the bulk of recent uses mean doublethink-y, newspeak-esque, and Big Brother-ish. It’s as if we called criminal scum “Batmanistic” because Batman is so effective in beating them senseless.
Though “Orwellian” is almost always a negative term, the targets vary. Often, it’s about language: Legislation like the "Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010” and disturbing euphemisms like "sudden in-custody death syndrome” get the Orwellian label. Writers make reference to “an Orwellian global corporate state” and the GPS-like Facebook feature “Places” is described as being “so Orwellian as to surpass even what Orwell imagined...” Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about a new weapon is called “exactly the kind of Orwellian doublethink that characterized the Bush administration.” Even the “end” of the Iraq war gets the Orwellian treatment, as Salon’s Hannah Gurman writes that the author "could not have invented a more Orwellian tale than the actual story of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.”
In particular, the recent “Ground Zero Mosque” hubbub has been the cause of many accusations of Orwellianism, as seen in stories like “MSNBC Masking the Mosque: Muslim 'Scholars' aka Stealth Jihadists, an Orwellian Freak Show” and “Associated (Orwellian) Press.” These stories equate the recent AP stand against saying “Ground Zero mosque” (because the potential mosque/Islamic cultural center would not actually be located at Ground Zero, just near it) with the Nazi-inspired totalitarian villains of Orwell’s books. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that is a stretch...