spaceship no future

August 2000

so that’s what we look like from the outside!

a writer for salon went to the kindercore expo 2000 in athens and wrote this twee exposé. starts out good- prefers japanese candy to beer, etc. and yeah he got a lot wrong (what else am i gonna say?) but it’s a fun read. except for the following gem:Twee kids are a lot like the punk rockers before them, but you could say that twee, since its erstwhile inception in the ’80s, has always rebelled against punk.um, twee IS punk. i can let the rest slide, but, oh, well, wait….

fhazel · August 31, 2000 · read

“Making it illegal to even talk about drugs”

Actually, there was a bill in the House of Representatives in July, the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, that would actually do this. Or was it the Ecstacy Anti-Proliferation Act? My sources differ on this. At any rate, the bill would actually criminalize dissemination of information about illegal drug use. I don’t know what became of this bill, but even with my limited faith in the U.S. judicial system, I have a hard time believing it would survive past its first court case. As a professor quoted in the Salon article said,…

cobra libre · August 30, 2000 · read

MPAA begins bold new prior restraint initiative against sites linking to DeCSS

recently the MPAA got a ruling against 2600 magazine preventing them not only from providing DeCSS for download, but also preventing them from even *linking* to sites that have it available. this is akin to not only making it illegal to use drugs, but also making it illegal to even talk about drugs. an apt analogy, considering drugs shouldn’t even be illegal. DeCSS is no different- a legitimately reverse engineered utility that allows you to watch DVDs on linux systems (there is no commercially available DVD player for the Linux…

fhazel · August 30, 2000 · read

that’s not a knife!

yes, crocodile dundee, part three. it’s in production for an april 2001 release. years since crocodile dundee part two: twelve. now, understand. crocodile dundee part two was *necessary*. after movies like “less than zero” and “bright lights big city” cocaine use was just too glamorous in the eyes of 80’s america’s, um, electric youth, and we needed a simple morality play about evil drug dealing south americans to counteract it. and at the time, nobody was more ethical to an american teenager than some australian who killed a crocodile….

fhazel · August 30, 2000 · read

Robots + Guns + The Internet = Good Times

Quoting the Bangkok Post, online edition: “The world’s first armed robot security guard that can open fire on intruders while controlled through the Internet was unveiled in Bangkok yesterday.” Please watch this space as fhazel continues to improve his Perl/CGI skills and I finally put together my Lego Mindstorms robot….

cobra libre · August 30, 2000 · read

hello there! i’m the talking parrot!

my first encounter with ELIZA was in grade school. i had two giant books of basic programs which i dutifully typed into my dad’s APPLE ][+ (yes!) for fun. my friend chris was usually there. often our debugging routine was to just delete any lines that gave syntax errors when we tried to run the program, and then run it again until it stopped complaining. you can’t learn skills like that in a classroom. one of those programs was ELIZA. she repeated part of whatever you typed at her in…

fhazel · August 30, 2000 · read

Skate or Die

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was probably the only good Nintendo 64 game to show up in quite some time. Sadly, the sequel will not be ported to the N64, but on the other hand, it is being ported to the PC. A demo has been released, and I’m displeased with the disappointing console-quality graphics, but the exquisite gameplay has been retained. Hopefully, the graphics will be cleaned up in the final release. The full version promises tons of tricks, Steve Caballero!!!, a character editor, a track editor, and tons of…

cobra libre · August 29, 2000 · read

Sony exec: “We will bury you”

This is slightly old news (from August 17), but it bears repeating. Steve Heckler, a VP with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., speaking informally to a small group audience members after a speech at a conference at Cal State Long Beach, had this to say about Napster:”Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source — we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block…

cobra libre · August 29, 2000 · read

new roy montgomery album on drunken fish

jacob emailed me about this a few days ago, thought i’d put it up here so we could work towards getting more than ten items posted and see if the archives work. it’s called “the allegory of hearing” and it’s another all-instrumental one like scenes from the south island and temple IV. his 7” singles that he sings on are fantastic, there aren’t many better songs in the world than “just melancholy” or “E.N.D.,” but the album with vocals was kind of bleh, so i’m glad this one is instrumental….

fhazel · August 28, 2000 · read

I *heart* Metroid

Nintendo’s upcoming cubey console was unveiled last weekend at their SpaceWorld convention, but more exciting than that were the 10 seconds of footage hinting at a new Metroid game! though the series was never popular in Japan, the original Metroid was my favorite game as a youth, and Super Metroid is the best game ever. according to reports, the American press in attendance screamed like teenage girls at a Beatles concert when footage of Samus hit the big screen. actually, I saw a clip of the convention with audio, and…

cobra libre · August 28, 2000 · read

intel recalls pentium III 1.13GHz chips

just kidding, give those back. it should be one of the easier product recalls in history, since the processors were pretty much vaporware to begin with, with only small amounts supplied to Dell and IBM. the reason? according to an intel spokesperson, they “malfunction in laboratory tests under certain conditions.” the question? was the recall a foregone conclusion, or did recent articles from tom’s hardware and hard|OCP about the instability spur the recall by spreading the word? huh. when corporations screw up, they do a cost/benefit analysis, not soul searching….

fhazel · August 28, 2000 · read

poetry ‘86 (repeat to fade)

wham! is always newsworthy, non? now reach up high and touch your soul the boys from Wham! will help you reach that goalit’s gonna break your mama’s heart (so sad) it’s gonna break your daddy’s heart (too bad) just throw the dice and take my advice ‘cos i know that you’re smart can you dig this thing? (YEAH!) are you gonna get down? (YEAH!) say wham! WHAM! say bam! BAM!…

pooka · August 27, 2000 · read

important news from japan

that is all….

fhazel · August 27, 2000 · read

Napster

I talked with people from Spain, Japan and Ohio on napster today. They had good songs. Or they took good songs from me - I reserve the right to start talking to anyone that downloads from me… So if you are thinking about leeching from “Chamegon” or “KingOfLuxembourg” you’d better consider your decision carefully! Be sure to download lots of Hideki Kaji. Start with “Tokyo to London” featuring Sarah Cracknell. Then get everything else. The stuff from 15 Angry Men is probably best……..

doug · August 27, 2000 · read

Secret Language of Cats Decoded by Supercomputer

meow means “meow.”…

fhazel · August 27, 2000 · read