Month: June 2002

“My silence is better than yours”

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

Experimentalist composer John Cage is famous for his piece 4’33”, which is just silence of just that length. Recently, Mike Batt composed a piece of minute-long silence for an album. But, Cage’s lawyers didn't take kindly to that.

Mike Batt, the man behind the Wombles and Vanessa Mae, has put a silent 60-second track on the album of his latest classical chart-topping protégés, the Planets. This has enraged representatives of the avant-garde, experimentalist composer John Cage, who died in 1992. The silence on his group’s album clearly sounds uncannily like 4’33”, the silence composed by Cage in his prime. [...]

Stupid lawyers. (Link from Adam Shand’s Word Up mailing list)

Wireless Minutes

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Looking over CNN.com, I found this article on “What to do with all those wireless minutes?”. And, I can relate to much of what they speak about.

A more extreme solution for using free wireless minutes has been to ditch the wires altogether and use cellular for all calls, whether local or long distance. But less than 2 percent of Americans have ditched their regular phone and gone all-wireless, according to Diercks.

Ah, that would be me ;). Actually, I’ve arranged with Jason to split the landline with him. Previously, I only used my mobile phone for all calls, but I figured that the quality of a landline may be handy for job interviews and such.

One way to address such issues, at least partly, is to attach a cell phone to a docking station that connects with a regular telephone to mimic the experience of a normal call. Such devices can also come with a special antenna to improve wireless reception indoors.

“If they didn’t have quality issues in the home environment, people would optimize their cell phone minutes,” said Mark Isaacson of WHP Wireless, a Melville, New York-based company that makes one such device, the CellSocket.

Another base station named VoxLink is produced by Vox2 of Northborough, Massachusetts. Both products, which sell for $100 and up, only work with a limited but growing number of cell phone models.

Those devices sound quite convenient — almost giving the best of both worlds, if you will. But, given my current state of (non) employment, I’m trying to cut down on my spending. So, I won’t be buying either the Vox Link or the CellSocket at the moment.

No Longer Employed

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I “resigned” from my web publisher position at AIVIA today. If you need a front-end web coder, please contact me (the link is on the right). I’m proficient in (X)HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

I’ll post links to my resume and portfolio once those are up to date.

Minority Report

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Some bloggers are going to see Minority Report this evening, the new Tom Cruise / Steven Spielberg flick. It was well received by critics, and it'd be kinda tempting to go.

Chicago Sun-Times / Roger Ebert:
This film is such a virtuoso high-wire act, daring so much, achieving it with such grace and skill. Minority Report reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place.

Film Threat / Clint Morris:
Where Minority Report succeeds is by dishing up a little bit of everything � to see no one leaves the theater disgruntled. There are helpings of science fiction marvel, there�s some interminable tension and a real human story underneath it all. The specials effects are damn impressive to boot.

Salon.com / Andrew O’Hehir:
It's a dark and dazzling spectacle.

And, I’m not just cherry-picking the reviews, either — those are all reviewers that I feel I can trust. However, my long-standing boycott against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is still intact.

The reason for my boycott is that, under pressure from the MPAA, the Norwegian government earlier this year indicted teenager Jon Johansen for writing software to enable DVD playback on Linux.

In exemplary cases over the past few months (Lord of the Rings, Episode II, and the like), I would make donations to Johansen’s legal defense fund. However, I'm now in a bit of a moral quandary. Up until now, my procedure has been to avoid MPAA films if possible, and make matching defense-fund donations if I do attend a movie.

Thinking it over, I could tweak the “boycott” such that I would instead be a “matching-funds consumer” (or something). That is, under this new idea, I would attend movies as if I had no “boycott”, but continue making the matching donations. That would allow for the entertainment value of the movies, of course, but it may also mean net-positive monies towards The Good Guys. That is, though I would pay (say) $8 for the movie and $8 to the EFF, the money would act as $8 gross revenue for the movie industry but $8 net revenue for the defense. Hmm, not bad.

Man, principals can be tough.