More on Cuban underwater site

2012 posts several updates on the underwater site off the coast of Cuba.

“Manuel Iturralde, research director of Cuba’s Natural History Museum, has joined Canadian exploration company Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) in efforts to solve the mystery of the smooth, geometrically shaped, granite-like rocks. They are laid out in structures resembling pyramids, roads and other structures at more than 600 meters deep (2,000 feet) in a 20 km-square (7-3/4 mile-square) area.”

[via 2012]

Webcasting Legally

JWZ nicely summarizes the maze of bureaucracy involved to webcast legally.

If you want to do something different than what I described above; for example, if you want to let users choose the songs to download, or you want to archive dj sets, or you want to allow the world at large to collaboratively dj by voting on what song to play next, or anything at all interactive that actually takes advantage of the power of the internet: well… you’re fucked. When you go into that world, you are out of the “compulsory license” territory, and must negotiate with all of the copyright holders individually, which is prohibitively complicated, since there are so many of them.

What’s going on here is that the music industry establishment are absolutely terrified of the internet, and are trying to prevent any kind of progress that might require them to evolve and change their business models to keep up with the times. They are pretty much trying to legislate the internet out of the way, and force things to continue to be done as if early-20th-century technology was still all we have to work with.

And after all is said and done, what happens to your fees? The media conglomerates take your money, keep most of it for themselves, and then divide the rest statistically based on the Billboard charts. That means that no matter what kind of obscure, underground music you played, 3/4ths of the extortion money you paid goes to whichever management company owns N’Sync; and the rest goes to Michael Jackson (since he owns The Beatles’ catalog.) All other artists (including the ones whose music you actually played) get nothing.

[via RRE]

Summaries of Soviet literary classics

Soviet pulp novels?

The daughter of a Volga fisherman becomes a sniper with a Red partisan detachment. She misses her 41st vicitim (a White officer), then winds up stranded with him on a desert island, where they fall in love. However, the White’s essentially selfish, bourgeois nature becomes apparent and she shoots him, fulfilling her mission and her class destiny. (Sorok-Pervii, 1924)

Rocket-airships, radio-controlled tanks, and Death Rays. Evil Americans try to destroy the socialist paradise of the future, but the Soviets counterattack and win. Remnant capitalists flee to an underground base near Antartica, planning to escape into outer space. Socialism on one planet! (Borba v Efire, 1928)

Hey, Everybody, Let’s Put On An Avant-Garde Show!

From the current Onion. Beautiful, genius, and so very very wrong…

Now, don’t get sore if you don’t land one of the lead roles. There’s work for everybody on this avant-garde production! Virginia’s a demon with a needle and thread; she’ll be just the gal to stitch together the blood-red cloth backdrop with the vagina-shaped opening through which the giant fetus enters in the first act. Jackie, the junkman’s son, is a born prop man – he could dig up enough rusted urinals and soiled dolls’ heads for a dozen plays! Sissy Chester can compose the dissonant, aleatoric score. And Spud never goes anywhere without his hammer and nails; he can build the stage and the sets, as well as the huge wooden letter M that drops to the floor and crushes the proletarian rioters at the end of Act II! The rest of you can sell tickets, paste playbills on the fence outside Schwoegler’s Field, or hitch Nanny Goat to her cart and haul a giant papier-mache phallus up and down Gurdeyville Town Square. Yep, we’re gonna need all the help we can get!