[via digg - wooster - rebelart]

Tags: mediahacks, hacks

where is the interweb? this morning i had the strangest thing happen, for awhile there i was on the nationalnet, not the internet. i could load all local websites, but no international ones. i have no idea what was going on, if this was something everyone experienced, or if it was just with my isp. but it felt really strange…

Tags: internet, switzerland

a week ago we had a date in zürich to test the PS3. i had kindly been asked to write a review for tastentest, a bi-weekly column featuring blogger’s reviews of their favorite gadgets. needless to say i was quite exited about this date. finally i would be able to test the console i had read so much about, and that had received such mixed reviews. finally i would be able to make up my own mind.

this date had been set up weeks before, even months?, i can’t remember exactly. on friday at 16:57 we received an email cancelling the date on the following monday …

it’s just a small example, just a silly incident. but if nothing else, it did kill off the last little bit of goodwill i had towards sony, and at one point i could have been considered quite the fanboy.

but hey … who at this point doubts that the PS3 is gonna tank?

Has Xbox 360 squelched the Playstation 3’s advantages?
Ripped from the headlines: Microsoft’s role in building a gaming community
“How to Kill a Brand” by Doc Adams - mp3
PS3 Song - video

Sony, you went wrong, with your PS3
I’ll just keep playing my 360
Hope this song has helped, you understand
Now you know, How You Killed Your Brand.

Tags: ps3, sony

[teh glorious interweb what got stuck in my camino tabs this past week]

the steve jobs show

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs - the fake steve jobs blog receives a sponsorship deal from wired: “Well after a fierce bidding war I have found a happy home in the warm soft furry bosom of Wired magazine.” btw. the blogger wonders if bill gates hit crack again, lol. if nothing else, this is how steve jobs should blog really.

Steve Jobs’ iTunes dance - cory doctorow sets things straight regarding steve jobs’ recent drm critique: “I doubt Jobs’ sincerity. I suspect he likes DRM because it creates an anti-competitive lock-in to Apple. I think he’s trying to shift blame for the much-criticized DRM to the music industry, whose executives are twirling their mustaches and declaring DRM to be the only way forward for their industry.” or this line actually says it all: “The iPod is a roach motel: Songs check in, but they don’t check out”.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Rare Public Appearance Together (Photos) - awww, that’s quaint II…

Apple and Cisco share iPhone name - awww, that’s quaint…

britney’s shaved head

shaved head fetish website [NSFW] - while the b3ta newsletter quickly points out that ofc there is such a thing as a shaved head fetish

YouTube - Shame on the “Britney Spears Profiteers” - Shmuel Tennenhaus starts yelling at everyone for trying to make fun of britney shaving her head - yes dad -

YouTube - HeadBlade’s Top Ten Reasons why Britney shaved her head. - meanwhile this is an example of a poor viral campaign exploiting it. gotta admire how quick they came up with it tho.

video killed

YouTube - helge schneider about punks (german) - ok, so helge schneider does NOT like punks, lol [in german]

The Five Second Rule should be used carefully - “We’ve all heard of the Five Second Rule, that food rule that says when you drop a piece of food, as long as you pick it up within five seconds it’s still OK to eat. Anything more than five seconds then you should throw it away.”

Graffiti Research Lab » L.A.S.E.R. Tag - GRL lasertags rotterdam - a video

VIDEO: Monkey Controls Robotic Arm With Mind. Beware Of Robot Monkeys. at Random Good Stuff - The Entertainment Blog - “The monkey in the video has a chip in its brain that controls a robotic arm. He uses the arm to feed himself a piece of yellow food.” i got it, bananas!

what else is new

Gender diversity at conferences - jason kottke compared the number of men and women speaking at various conferences. laurent haug gives some interesting feedback from an organiser’s viewpoint. i fully agree with him, that the ratio in conference attendants should worry us equally.

my sculpture - “my sculpture needs you” please add to michael’s ascii sculpture.

BBC NEWS | Egypt blogger jailed for ‘insult’ - “An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years’ prison for insulting Islam and the president.” *gasp

Licenses and Images: A Modest Proposal - “the (X)HTML specs should add an attribute to specify the license governing a photograph.” gief.

Flame wars as psychopathology. - the NYT article looking into the psychological motivations behind flamewars leads, surprise suprise, to a flame war; gotta love that kinda thing. [via BB]

Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior - “several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure.”

IKEA US to ‘Bag the Plastic Bag’ - you mean to say they handed out these huge plastic thing for free up to now?

linegame.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object) - brillant game. use navigational buttons to stir a dot along a given path.

Urban Curators - art project using pictureframes to point to artistic scenes on the streets. reminds me of a photo project i did ages ago, that i will scan and flickr later next week.

Details zum DJ-Vertrag von der IFPI - omg, the IFPI, swiss music rights handeling company, releases the conditions under which DJs are allowed to release music for promotional purposes. its a fashist machine.

[stream: del.icio.us/pieceoplastic | links or subscribe to this RSS feed]

Tags: linkdump, stevejobs, britney, shaved, streetart, helgeschneider

bleep43 has some very interesting podcasts/mixes, some are way-out-there electronica, but show 42 for instance is very cool in a retro-electro style. [via phlow]

Toni is hooking up Guitar Hero to a Commodore 64 and this is how it sounds … love it [via make | waxy]

Ski better with Hans Gmoser ski.mp3 [via wfmu]

liliput: eisiger wind [via good bad music]

Tags: mixes, mp3

wikis are great. anyone can just go ahead and edit a webpage and … well, you know the drill. love em love em love em.
sadly, if anyone can edit so can the spammers and on my wiki no one but the spammers ever edited anything. and they went at it. omg did they go at it.

over these last few days i have killed my wiki. very sad. loved loved loved my wiki. but i simply got too tired of having to delete one spam entry after the other. i moved the content to my wordpress pages, like the NomenEstOmen list is here now …

one thing tho, killing my wiki and my guestbook and protecting the various contact forms with politically correct spam protection (not quite done with that part yet) will end up costing me more than a days work. that’s quite alot, just because some idjut spammers have decided to annoy me? i hate these guys with a passion.

Tags: spam, protection

[via bb - … - …]

Tags: photos, conversation, humor

with all the bruhaha that life is giving me atm (mostly ha ha) i almost forgot about this service i read about in the papers on saturday.
bern now offers a sms service, that allows people to input a car’s license plates and they will get the owners adress sent to your mobile. i have tested this, and i’m afraid it does work like a charm.

this bloody scares me. i ofc already know, that privacy laws are very lax in switzerland. i can input any persons name at tel.serach.ch and usually find their adress and phone number within seconds. but with cars and license plates this feels somehow different. say my beautiful wife drives somewhere our car and all some creepy stalker now has to do is send one sms and he knows where we live. btw. the service does not work after 22:00 h because - if i remember this correctly - they want to protect stalkers going after girls they meet in nightlife. but duh, the stalkers can always wait till the next morning and pursue their stalking business then … i dunno. its kinda evil.

edit: apparently license plates can be blocked by filling out this form. thx gebsn [comment] and häck-a-bløg

Tags: swiss, switzerland, privacy, licenseplates, cars

via de-bug i found these articles on blog.almend and netzpolitik regarding the letters that have recently been sent to swiss DJs by the IFPI - the IFPI in this case meaning the swiss chapter of the International Federation Of Producers Of Phonograms And Videograms, a music rights organisation associated with the RIAA. in these letters 200 swiss DJs were asked to return an attached contract signed or face legal prosecution. bellow, in german, is a list of some of the demands contained in this contract [via].

i have to admit i find these demands to be exsessive and highly restrictive. for instance, if a DJ wants to provide samples of his mixing skills on his website, the audio files can be no longer than 60 seconds, a maximum of 5 such mini-mixes can be online at any given time, they have to be hosted on a swiss server (why?), downloading has to be restricted, no loops allowed, no video can be associated with it. but the part that kills me is where they demand that DJs have to provide the IFPI with the log-files to their websites - after saying the audio can’t be offered for downloads; as such they are treating all visitors as potential pirates - even if, who in their right mind would want to pirate a 60 second mix (speaking of which, how can a 60 second mix say anything about a DJs mixing skills) ??? i am not sure, how this is handleded in other countries, but it seems to me i have not heard of such a restrictive deal from elsewhere. during the time when i used to be an active club DJ the SUISA started to collect fees from clubs, i think that’s the fair approach. the clubs are the “broadcasters”, the DJs just work there. with this contract the IFPI is trying to [over]-regulate the DJ’s self-promotional activities.

with these and similar recent acts somehow one gets the feeling the music industry sees DJs as the enemy, while in fact it should be the other way around. i think DJs should be treated as partners by the music industry. DJs are great promoters for music and other lifestyle objects. if anything, i think the IFPI should ask DJs to make their playlists available, so that if someone likes a track that he hears in a club he can find it and purchase it. and at some time in the future one could even imagine the music industry paying DJs, if they play certain tracks and this leads to sales, a pay-per-sale model.

i am very curious to hear from swiss DJs who received this letter: what are you planning to do? are there efforts to coordinate a response? should all swiss DJ’s move to lichtenstein and self-promote from there? djantoine.li etc.

# Der DJ muss der IFPI von jeder Promo-CD unaufgefordert eine kostenlose Kopie zusenden.
# Wenn der DJ Hörproben eines Sets zwecks Promotion auf seine Website stellt, ist «die Spieldauer eines jeden Ausschnitts auf eine Dauer von 60 Sekunden limitiert.»
# «Die Anzahl der gleichzeitig auf der Website angeboteten Hörproben ist auf 5 Stück beschränkt.»
# «Die Wahrnehmbarmachung via Internet wird mit einer Software bzw. Website-Gestaltung realisiert, die sicherstellt, dass ein Herunterladen (”Download”) oder Speichern [..] verhindert wird.»
# «Jede Tonaufnahme darf nur einmal je “Anklicken” wahrnehmbar sein.» Eine automatische Wiederholung (”Schleife”) der jeweiligen Ausschnitte oder die Verwendung als Hintergrundmusik der Website ist nicht gestattet.
# Die Berechtigungen beziehen sich ausschliesslich auf das HTTP-Protokoll.
# Auf der Website müssen Links zu den Websites von IFPI, SUISA und SWISSPERFORM plaziert werden.
# Der «DJ gewährt IFPI vollumfänglich Einblick in alle bezüglich Internet-Nutzung verfügbaren statistischen Daten (z.B. log-files).»
# «Das Speichern (”Hosting”) [..] ist ausschliesslich auf einem Server mit Standort in der Schweiz gestattet.»
# Der «DJ darf ausschliesslich Tonaufnahmen zur Vervielfältigung verwenden, die nicht aus [..] Online-Tauschbörsen stammen.»
# «Tonaufnahmen, die mit einem Kopierschutz- oder einer sonstigen Schutzvorrichtung versehen sind, der ihre Vervielfältigung verhindert, dürfen nicht kopiert werden.»
# «Tonaufnahmen dürfen nicht mit Videoaufnahmen zusammengeführt werden.»

Tags: swiss, switzerland, DJ, DJs, legal, IFPI

vor einer woche hat das magazin den zürichkritischen artikel “die grösste provinz der schweiz” von stefan von bergen publiziert - gut argumentiert und dabei nicht einmal die hälfte der gründe erwähnt, warum die behauptung stimmt. heute erscheint die entgegnung von thomas sevcik unter dem titel “metropole der schweiz” - triefend vor arroganz und selbstüberschätzung … wie gewohnt.

quelle: clicksie

tja, was soll man dazu sagen? nur dies: als einer der 6 jahre lang in san francisco und somit in einer wahren metropole gelebt hat, kommt mir das profilierungsgehabe der zürcher immer etwas suspekt vor. wie ich es nämlich in san francisco erleben durfte, bleiben die bewohner einer wirklichen metropole in der regel bescheiden. sie wissen um die starke position ihrer stadt, sie kennen ihre stärken und die vorteile, die sich daraus ergeben. sie kennen aber auch ihre schattenseiten, wie die soziale ungerechtigkeit, den erhöhten stress und so weiter. sie müssen keinesfalls immer wieder betonen, wie grossartig und wichtig ihre stadt ist. der zürcher hingegen glänzt immer wieder vorallem durch arroganz und überheblichkeit und versucht zureich bei jeder gelegenheit als den nabel der schweiz aufzumotzen. das fängt in den medien und im sport an und nimmt in claims wie “downtown switzerland” oder redewendungen wie “die schweiz = grossraum zürich” seinen tragischen fortlauf. werdet endlich erwachsen, zürcher, und wisst um eure grösse. klar seit ihr die grösste stadt der schweiz, auch eine sehr schöne stadt, gut gelegen, sowie, natürlich, der wichtigste und attraktivste wirtschaftsstandort (*gähn*). but so fucking what, no need to fucking brag about it. so wie ihr euch aufführt, muss man ja misstrauisch werden. so verhält sich ein provinznest welches sich über andere provinznester absetzen will, doch keine stadt mit selbstvertrauen und wahrer grösse.

Tags: zürich, schweiz, stadt, profilierungsneurose