(A ripping yarn - thanx Stan!)
Friday 3 February 2012
Fresh Hats Tight Beats - That's All We Need
That’s All We Need was created during a five day writing and recording extravaganza in Denver, CO during November 2011. These eleven tracks were further refined over a month and a half until New Years 2012 when the tracks were completed.
Released 10 January 2012
All tracks composed and performed by Phil Buck, Zach Matthews, Matt Nigro, and Tim Santos.
Phil Buck - bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keys, beats
Zach Matthews - beats, drums, percussion, keys, sound effects
Matt Nigro - beats, percussion, sound effects, synth bass
Tim Santos - acoustic & electric guitars, bass, keys, flute, beats, banjo, percussion
Featuring:
Nick Monks - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, banjo (on “Course Clear!”)
Dave Benedict - trumpet (on “Mind The Line”)
Produced by Fresh Hats Tight Beats
Recorded at Studio-T in Denver, CO
Album Art by Leigh Buck
www.freshhatstightbeats.com
www.areyouawinslow.com
Ad Break: 'You were born of the 21st Century, now act like it'
Michael Stipe says:
I’ve been listening to the new Perfume Genius record all last week in Mexico, it is a beautiful and amazing record and a stunning 2nd album and achievement. But in trying to advertise the record and first video, this short clip has been banned by YouTube. For YouTube to deem this advertisement as “non family safe” is dumbheaded discrimination; I find their actions in doing so disgraceful and cowardly. YouTube, shame on you. You were born of the 21st Century, now act like it. Read more about this here: http://www.queerty.com/watch-the-perfume-genius-clip-that-got-booted-from-youtube-for-adult-content-20120125/
Google changes enable 'per country' blog takedowns
Blogger sites can now be blocked on a "per country" basis after a change to its web address system.
Google will now be able to block access in individual countries following a legal removal request.The new system means blocking will not require restricting world-wide access to a blog.
The changes apply in Australia, New Zealand and India, but the BBC understands Google plans to roll it out globally.
The news follows Twitter's announcement that it could selectively block tweets on a country-by-country basis - news that attracted criticism from free speech campaigners.
However, Joss Wright, research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said he felt the changes to Blogger were a positive step.
"Google's new approach to supporting country-level takedown requests in Blogger strikes a good balance between free speech, legality and practical issues for end users.
"By allowing per-country takedown requests, Google can meet local laws without blocking content at a global level."
Change of address
Under the new system, a blog reader will, in the first instance, be directed to a website address using a "country-code top level domain".
For example, for users based in Australia, Blogger's servers will automatically direct them to blogname.blogspot.com.au.
"If you visit a blog that does not correspond to your current location as determined by your IP address, the blogspot servers will redirect you to the domain associated with your country," Google said in a Q&A the company posted about the changes.
Google believes this will allow it to comply with local law enforcement requests, while keeping content available in other jurisdictions.
Additionally users will also able to tell Google to direct them to a different country web address by adding "/ncr" - ncr stands for "No Country Redirect".
In order to read a blog via a US web address users outside America would type " blogname.blogspot.com/ncr".
"Blog readers may request a specific country version of the blogspot content by entering a specially formatted 'NCR' URL, " the company wrote in the Q&A.
It is not clear, however, if this would work for requests to access blocked blogs made from the jurisdiction in which the removal notice originated.
Keeping it local
The company has in the past taken a similar local approach to blocking content in other products.
For example, Google has said it removes all Nazi-related content from Google.de, the address for its German services.
In a 2007 blog post, which the BBC understands still reflects the firm's position, Google said that "dealing with controversial content is one of the biggest challenges we face as a company".
In the same post the company noted that different national laws on free speech "create real technical challenges, for example, about how you restrict one type of content in one country but not another".
With this system Google may have, for Blogger at least, answered its own question.
@'BBC'
(Thanx Helen!)
Anonymous Hacks Neo-Nazis, Finds Ron Paul
The hacktivist collective Anonymous set out to take down the white supremacist American Third Party (A3P) in what they called “Operation Blitzkrieg” but they may have done much more.
In a document dump that includes private forum messages, emails, organization notes another other information the group found numerous connections between Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and A3P. According to the documents, all hosted here, Paul himself regularly met with many A3P members, engaged in conference calls with their board of directors and engaged in a “bridging tactic” between A3P and the Ron Paul Revolution.
Other excerpts show A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso (whose email account was one hacked by the collective) coordinating meeting between Paul and other members of A3P such as corporate lawyer and chairman of the neo-Nazi group Paul. “I’m going to go to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with Bill Johnson,” reads an email to an A3P member dated January 2011. “Bill and I will be meeting with Ron and Ran Paul. I have a teleconference call with Bill (and Ron Paul) tonight. Much more later. Things are starting to happen (thanks to folks like you).”
In another passage, Kelso, a former Scientologist and account owner of other German Nazi forums, wrote: “I’ll be at CPAC from Feb. 9 to Feb. 12. I’ll send back reports to you from personal meetings with Ron Paul, newly-elected Senator Rand Paul and many others. It’ll be here on WhiteNewsNow, a place that is really starting to get interesting because of the presence of folks like you. Birds of a feather flock together, and we are really gathering some quality here.”
Accusations of racism and ties to neo-Nazi interests have plagued Paul since the 1990s and have re-surfaced during this campaign. So far Paul has issued standard denials, claiming not to have been aware of the ties between his camp and the racist right and denied authorship of a series of racist newsletters, despite confirmation from his closest staff that Paul signed off on every detail.
So what’s Paul’s explanation now?
Jessica Pieklo @'care2'
(Thanx GKB!
Ultra Violence
Initial reports said the violence erupted during a match between storied Cairo club Al Ahly, Egypt's most popular team, and Premier League team Al Masry, with only a minimal number of security forces in the stadium. While Wednesday's deadly incident constitutes the worst soccer-related violence in an Egyptian stadium in the country's history, it is not the first time that militant fan groups - or "ultras," modeled on similar groups in Italy and Serbia - have invaded the pitch. The incident is but one of a series of violent events involving soccer fans since Mubarak's fall...
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Combatting caste
‘In the rainy season,’ the woman began, ‘it is really bad. Water mixes with the shit and when we carry it (on our heads) it drips from the baskets, on to our clothes, our bodies, our faces. When I return home I find it difficult to eat food sometimes. The smell never gets out of my clothes, my hair. But this is our fate. To feed my children I have no option but to do this work.’
Narayanamma began cleaning human excrement at 13. She is now 35. The stench is nauseating, overpowering. First, she sweeps the shit into piles. Then, using two flat pieces of tin, she scoops it up and drops it into a bamboo basket which she carries to a spot where a tractor will arrive to pick it up. No gloves. No water to wash with. She hitches up her sari tightly so that it does not trail on the ground or touch the shit. Still, it is almost impossible to go through a whole day’s work without some of it inadvertently getting onto her clothes and person.
After 20-odd years of cleaning toilets, Narayanamma clings to a dignity which is markedly at variance with the work she does. She is dressed neatly, immaculately clean. Jasmine adorns her oiled and well-groomed hair...
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...and you think your life is shit!
(Thanx David!)
Baxter Dury @ La Maroquinerie Paris 18.12.2011
1. Francesca's party
2. Isabel
3. Claire
4. Leak at the disco
5. Trellic
6. Babies
7. Hotel in Brixton
8. Impro
9. The Sun
10. Cocaine man
11. Love in the garden (Encore)
12. Oscar Brown (Encore)
Baxter Dury is the son of British singer Ian Dury
Thursday 2 February 2012
Societal Control of Sugar Essential to Ease Public Health Burden
FuckingMorgan Anthony Morgan
Tax the sugar! Addictive health destroying sugar should be taxed at the same rate as tobacco! Go ahead. Do the thing.
Tax the sugar! Addictive health destroying sugar should be taxed at the same rate as tobacco! Go ahead. Do the thing.
Facebook IPO: what we've learnt from its S-1 filing
• It is extremely profitable. In 2011, it brought in revenues of $3.7bn and had an operating income (the profit after you subtract day-to-day costs, but before taxes) of $1.7bn. Its net income for that year was $1bn - giving it a 27% net margin. For comparison, most physical businesses have net margins of between 5% - 10%.
• The Like button - and user growth - turned loss into profit. In 2009 Facebook flipped from loss to profit, and the introduction of the Like button that February helped to target advertising.
• Mark Zuckerberg will remain in charge. The shares will be split into "A" and "B" shares, in which the latter get 10 votes per share, and the former get one. Zuckerberg presently owns around 28.2% of the share capital, so that will (on conversion) give him majority control of the votes.
• Active user numbers are still growing fast: at the end of 2011 had 845 million active users, up 39% from the same time in 2010.
• Facebook depends on advertising, but less of its revenue comes from that. The proportion of revenue from advertising in 2009, 2010 and 2011 was, respectively, 98%, 95% and 85% of revenue. The rest comes from in-app purchases such as in games like Zynga's Farmville. Speaking of which…
• Zynga is an important partner. In 2011, 12% of Facebook's revenue came from it (so between advertising and Zynga, that's 97% of revenues.) So much so that Zynga gets a special mention: "If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected."
• The rate of growth is expected to decline. That's not surprising given how rapidly it has grown - 154% from 2009 to 2010, but only 88% from 2010 to 2011.
• 2009 is the year when everything clicked into place. In the years up to that point, as recorded on the S-1, revenues were small compared to costs (which aren't broken down, but consist of activities such as running the site and getting advertising sales). But in 2009, it broke through: from 2008 to 2009, revenues grew from $272m to $777m, almost tripling, but other costs only doubled. Result, profit.
• Facebook's revenues for 2011 are about the same as Google's were in 2004, when it filed its S-1. But its profitability is much higher.
• Mobile is, potentially, the Achilles heel. Right now there aren't any adverts in the mobile version of the site, but more and more people are accessing the site via mobile - 425 million monthly active users in December 2011. As the filing notes, "our revenue may be negatively affected unless and until we include ads or sponsored stories on our mobile apps and mobile website. We believe that people around the world will continue to increase their use of Facebook from mobile devices, and that some of this mobile usage has been and will continue to be a substitute for use of Facebook through personal computers."
• Privacy only gets passing mentions. It doesn't have its own section with any warnings about what might happen if people get itchy.
• There are lots of rivals, especially in China. Facebook wants to get into that country, but notes there are already rivals such as Renren, Sina and Tencent established there. Russia and Korea and Japan also have entrenched social networking rivals.
• We don't know exactly what the offer share price is going to be yet. That has yet to be worked out with banks.
• It has started building its own data centres. The amount of investment isn't detailed, but it does say that "In 2011, we began serving our products from data centers owned by Facebook using servers specifically designed for us." We would like to know more about who's building the servers - does Facebook roll its own, like Google?
• The only "key personnel" named are Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer.
• Lots of Facebook employees who have been there a while are going to be very rich. This isn't surprising, but there are 138m shares that have been issued to them for $0.83. At an expected price of around $45, that's almost $6.2bn of pure profit for all those staff.
Charles Arthur @'The Guardian'
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