Fate: 1 Internets: 0
Newsfilter: 30,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power today at about 1:50pm PDT, in a series of power failures which knocked out a major datacenter hub: 365 Main. The hub controls servers for many social media sites, including Technorati, Netflix, Yelp, Craigslist and all Six Apart properties, including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox. (6A’s twitter stream has updates.) More here and here.
Amusingly enough, 365 Main tempted fate and released a press release today patting themselves on the back for "two years of 100-percent uptime".
Share this:
Kinder Surprise
Kinder Morgan oil pipeline ruptured near Vancouver, British Columbia Thick, black oil dripped from lampposts, splattered across suburban lawns and crept into Burrard Inlet after a geyser of crude spewed from a burst Kinder Morgan pipeline Tuesday. [google news]
Work crews ripped into the TransMountain pipeline about 12:30 p.m., causing the oil to "explode," as one witness put it, from the ground and burble up from manholes, pouring down streets toward the ocean, according to witnesses.
Kinder Morgan bought the pipeline from a Canadian utility in 2005, and is known as a "poster child for pipeline problems."
More Kinder Morgan accidents.
Share this:
The Theiving Magpie: Jimmy Page’s Dubious Recording Legacy
The Theiving Magpie: Jimmy Page’s Dubious Recording Legacy
MUSICIAN: I understand “Dazed and Confused” was originally a song by Jake Holmes. Is that true?
PAGE: [Sourly] I don’t know. I don’t know. [Inhaling] I don’t know about all that.
MUSICIAN: Do you remember the process of writing that song?
PAGE: Well, I did that with the Yardbirds originally…. The Yardbirds were such a good band for a guitarist to play in that I came up with a lot of riffs and ideas out of that, and I employed quite a lot of those in the early Zeppelin stuff.
MUSICIAN: But Jake Holmes, a successful jingle writer in New York, claims (pdf) on his 1967 record that he wrote the original song.
PAGE: Hmm. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I’d rather not get into it because I don’t know all the circumstances. What’s he got, The riff or whatever? Because Robert wrote some of the lyrics for that on the album. But he was only listening to…we extended it from the one that we were playing with the Yardbirds.
MUSICIAN: Did you bring it into the Yardbirds?
PAGE: No, I think we played it ’round a sort of melody line or something that Keith [Relf] had. So I don’t know. I haven’t heard Jake Holmes so I don’t know what it’s all about anyway. Usually my riffs are pretty damn original [laughs] What can I say?
Hm, defensive much? Sure, by the time Zeppelin came along, the practice of ‘borrowing’ from obscure blues sources was well enshrined in British rock. (Though some were good enough to acknowledge their debt) But taking it a step further, and even apart from the above, Page was more than content to crib notes off of his immediate peers (bowed guitar at 1:40) , as well.
(grain of salt not included)
Share this:
CBC posts Dr Who episodes (streams only, geo-crippled, boo!)
The CBC has put episodes of the current Doctor Who series online streamed in flash. It’s a pretty major step as it means not Windows Media, and the only restrictions are geofencing. Episodes go online the day after broadcast, and will be there for a 4-week period to let people catch up on the series. Too bad it wasn’t 13 weeks to cover the whole series, but it’s still a giant leap forward.”
Also too bad that:
* It’s streaming, not download: the CBC doesn’t stop you recording the TV shows they transmit, but they stop you recording the shows they webcast. Why should one be different from the other?
* I can’t see it, because I’m using an IP address outside of Canada. The CBC broadcasts all its programming to all antennas, north and south of the US border.
It’s a bummer to consider a future in which broadcasts — which we can all see and record — are replaced with geo-locked, streaming crippleware netcasts. Hard to understand how that serves the public interest, something that the CBC, a tax-supported institution, is required to do.
I spoke with a friend at the CBC, and he was very sympathetic to my concerns. The BBC — producers of Dr Who — insisted on the region-locking and streaming only, as well as the four-week window (significantly, this is a much better deal than the BBC gives to Britons, who are required by law to pay a hefty annual fee to support the BBC — they only get seven days to see old episodes, and have to use a DRM-crippled product called iPlayer that only runs on Windows).
The bottom line seems to be that the CBC can’t afford to buy the right to just put downloads of Dr Who online from the BBC, even if the BBC could be convinced to sell them.
But at the end of the day, both the CBC and the BBC are public service organizations, charged with making material of public value. They are supported through tax (the CBC) and license fees (the BBC), and it’s tawdry for them to devote all this energy to locking away their media from one another. The BBC turns over a paltry five percent of its annual budget through licensing deals like this one — imagine how much benefit the Beeb could get by saying to the CBC, “Give us all your programs and you can have all of ours.” Is that enormous vault of programming worth more than the shows that a fraction of five percent of the BBC’s budget can produce?
This is how Internet exchanges work — ISPs don’t generally charge each other for the bits they exchange: Rogers doesn’t charge Aliant for the bits it sends to Rogers customers, and Aliant doesn’t charge Rogers for the bits its users send to Rogers customers. They’re “peers,” so they just send bits back and forth freely.
Virtually every country in the world has a state-funded public service broadcaster, all of them charged with the same mission: promote the public interest through programs with public value. They’re all on the same side — why isn’t their media? It’s time for public service broadcasters to peer with one another — to create an interlibrary loan system for public media.
All that said: top marks to the first person to demonstrate a working, reliable solution for watching and recording the CBC Dr Who episodes from anywhere in the world.
Share this:
NYC has Ugly People, Too
I’m tired of looking at attractive, fashionable people.. Behold: Ugly Outfits New York.
Share this:
Sumo Volleyball
Sumo Volleyball – online competition at its finest. For those of you who used to have ICQ, this game will be very familiar. Four different variates of play are offered. 1 on 1 is by far the favorite and the most fun, IMHO. One tiny downside, activeX based, and thus, pretty much IE only. There are also other games via the home page, of which Kung-fu chess is also very popular.
Share this:
Hey Mom And Dad, Leave Those Kids Alone!
Leave Those Kids Alone. The idea that parents should be engaging in play with their children is a modern concept (and not necessarily a good one, according to anthropologist David Lancy).
Share this:
Don’t go in the basement!
Sally Cruikshank intends to put all of her animations on YouTube, including her opening credits for Ruthless People, the Seseame Street Feets too Big short, and don’t miss the Oingo Boingo assist on Face Like A Frog.
She’s very active in the comments section of some of her videos, too, answering questions and participating in the discussion of her work.
Share this:
One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place
Before Caligula, Cat People & Star Trek: Generations, even before he played Alex de Large in Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell was dashingly rebellious in Lindsay Anderson’s If. (Some background of that cafe scene)
Share this:
Sing to us, O Muse, of our Timeless Myths
Sing to us, O Muse, of our Timeless Myths. A site dedicated to Classical, Norse & Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends.
Share this:
Frozen Moments – High Speed Art
Photographer Martin Klimas specializes in capturing high speed photography, but with a more artistic aesthetic than the usual "bullet through an orange", etc.
Share this:
Striker, listen, and you listen close: flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
Amazing 747 landings at in the St. Martins
YouTube has a great collection of 747 landings at Princess Juliana International Airport in the St. Martin Islands, famous for its short landing strip � only 2,180 meters.
Here’s the view from the cockpit. Most of the videos seem to have been taken at Maho Beach. Here’s an Airbus.
Share this:
1960’s anti-pron propaganda movie
This short film begins on a somber note…railing against the dangers of pornographic magazines in the 1960’s, but as it progresses, the images it shares with the viewer are more and more tantalizing…from nudity, to promotion on sodomy, to bestiality (really, just a farmgirl pic with a goat in the far background), to hardcore S&M and B&D…all displayed for the soon-not-innocent eyes of the film’s target market.
Share this:
Robotic Insect Takes Off
Miniature Robotic Insect Takes Off Researchers have created a miniature robotic fly that weighs just 60 milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters for covert surveillance. Thats progress!
Share this:
What are YOU listening to?
Simplify Media has made my Sunday morning, and if you have pals with good taste in music it will probably make your day, too. It’s a small download (4 MB) that allows you to stream the iTunes libraries of up to 30 friends as long as they’re online.
Share this:
The Young Ones
"A mad, helter-skelter, rude, awesomely violent, unpredictable, swaggering, staggering, joyously infantile, exhilarating steamroller of a sitcom, The Young Ones provided the breakthrough for the new generation of aggressive and forthright ‘alternative’ comedians."
Originally I got to watching this show because it was on PBS right after repeats of “Doctor Who“, and before “Are you Being Served?“. (I recommend Summer Holiday and Bambi.) Lots of great and soon-to-be-great guests. Look for Emma Thompson in Bambi as one of "the posh kids."
Share this:
A tangled web
A (rather beautiful) subway map of web trends.If you like maps, check out Strangemaps.
Share this:
Land o’ Lists
Best (or Worst) Pickup Lines Ever. Other useful lists on this site include: Things nobody can like,
Why I hate implants, Petite phrases that pack a punch, How to tell if your boyfriend is cheating and everyone’s favorite, my favorite sex blogs
RobDurdle.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.