• creating propaganda to persuade people that replicating an infinite resource is morally wrong (using morally loaded terms such as "stealing" and "piracy" (neither of which it is)
• paying politicians enormous sums of money to enact laws to make the free use and trade of digital information illegal (ironically often the same people who shout loudest about the virtues of the free market economy)
  

1. Minimoog - which didn't impress me too much, but I'm not a huge Moog fan anyway
2. Lightwave - oh hell yes, it's a wavetable synth like the Waldorf MicroWave. Nice digital sounds, they don't sound that great on their own, but I bet they will really useful in a mix.
3. Organ - it's another Hammond B-3 emulation. Why do people bother with this? It's a frakin' organ, big deal. On the other hand, if they had stuck some serious distortion on the back of it I could like it a lot.
4. Vocoder - now this is what will sell it to me. There's a mic input on the back panel, though unfortunately it's a jack, not an XLR, but it is a TRS balanced input. And it's a frakin' VOCODER! We use vocoders live all the time in The Cassandra Complex, so a small cheap, easy to carry box with a good vocoder in it is always interesting. And this one seems really damn good too. Would definitely like to spend more time with it.

1. Prodyssey - is a ARP Odyssey emulation. I've always liked this synth, and it's definitely great for Gary Numan impersonations. Would like to play with it a bit.
2. Pro-12 - now we're talking. I've been a huge Prophet fan ever since the early days. Most of the first Cassandra Complex songs were written on an old Pro-One; and this emulation sounds really damn fine. I really wish this one was one of the basic onboard synths, it's an absolute godsend. I love this synth.
3. FMagia - another DX style synth. Didn't impress me much from what I heard, I'd like to play a bit with it though. Most preset FM sounds are very boring, but you can do cool things with them if you kick it a bit.
4. Drums & Bass - loads of drums... and loads of bass. Definitely useful, it basically turns the box into a rhythm machine. So yeah, if you need a box that'll do excellent backing tracks live, this will do it. Unfortunately you can't run the other synth models while you're doing it, so it makes it slightly limited. Still pretty ok though.

...here's my pitch on why giving away ebooks makes sense at this time and place:

Giving away ebooks gives me artistic, moral and commercial satisfaction. The commercial question is the one that comes up most often: how can you give away free ebooks and still make money?

For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy.

(CNN) -- The monumental quarterly loss revealed by U.S. insurance giant AIG of $62 billion is the largest in corporate history, amounting to about $460,000 per minute. The loss caused jaws to hit the floor around the world and left us wondering, what else would $62 billion buy?

1. It could pay off the combined national debts of China, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, according to 2008 estimates by the CIA Factbook, and still have plenty left over for a good night out.

8. Given an average used car price of $13,900 in the United States and an average car length of 5 meters, $62 billion will buy enough of them to create a traffic jam from New York to Beijing AND back.

...

"Sex is like computer hacking - we all know it exists but most of us don't know how to do it very well."

Just got this from the LibDems. Looks pretty awesome at first glance. I encourage every British reader of this blog to read it and sign up.

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Dear Rodney

I don't know about you, but I've had enough.

Restriction of our fundamental rights and freedoms has gone too far. ID cards, more CCTV cameras per head than any country in the world, a database of children's fingerprints, a government that wants to conceal its own record on the disastrous war in Iraq - it's the stuff of fiction.

We need to put a stop to this. The Liberal Democrats are proposing the Freedom Bill: freedom.libdems.org.uk.

I need you to look at the bill and comment to tell me how to improve it. What's missing? What's wrong? Is your civil liberties "hobby-horse" not on our list? If you haven't time to comment, you can sign our petition in support of the bill instead.

Here's a selection of the measures incorporated in our first draft:

• Scrap ID cards for everyone.
• Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square.
• Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
• Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
• Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.

You can read the full set on the website.

I need your contribution to make this bill as robust as possible - because it's not going to be easy getting this on the parliamentary agenda. The other two parties won't like it, we can depend upon that.

I want to take forward a bill we can all be proud of. I hope you will join me in making it clear to the government that Orwell's nightmarish 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.

Best wishes,

Chris Huhne
Shadow Home Secretary, Liberal Democrats

UK government backs open source

Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations; it has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about intellectual property rights and the availability of information for re–use by others.

This Government has long had the policy, last formally articulated in 2004, that it should seek to use Open Source where it gave the best value for money to the taxpayer in delivering public services. While we have always respected the long-held beliefs of those who think that governments should favour Open Source on principle, we have always taken the view that the main test should be what is best value for the taxpayer.

Over the past five years many government departments have shown that Open Source can be best for the taxpayer – in our web services, in the NHS and in other vital public services.

Note the mention of the NHS. Translated this means "Yes, we now realise that we allowed proprietary software vendors to really fuck up the whole NHS IT infrastructure, and we're going to make sure that doesn't happen again."

Bravo. Probably the only thing the current administration has done right since... well, ever.

#ukgovOSS

Stella Rimington has often been critical of the government

A former head of MI5 has accused the government of exploiting the fear of terrorism and trying to bring in laws that restrict civil liberties.

In an interview in a Spanish newspaper, published in the Daily Telegraph, Dame Stella Rimington, 73, also accuses the US of "tortures".

The Home Office said it was vital to strike a right balance between privacy, protection and sharing personal data.

It said any policies which impact on privacy must be "proportionate".

Dame Stella, who stood down as the director general of the security service in 1996, has previously been critical of the government's policies, including its attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and the controversial plan to introduce ID cards.

"It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state," she told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years. Former Irish president Mary Robinson Send us your comments

She said the British security services were "no angels," but they did not kill people.

"The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures," she said.

"MI5 does not do that. Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

'Take stock'

Dame Stella's comments come as a study is published by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that accuses the US and the UK of undermining the framework of international law.

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This brief message is a call to all concerned with the threats to our fundamental rights and freedoms. It introduces you to the Convention on Modern Liberty. The Convention is live already in video and writing on the web. It has an amazing list of speakers (see below). It is supported by a growing and surprising mixture of organisations. The latest to join is the Football Supporters Federation. The big day is Saturday 28 February in London and venues across the UK. The aim: to ensure that the State remains our servant and does not become our master – a battle made all the more urgent by the likely consequences of the financial meltdown. here it is!

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.modernliberty.net

Tickets to the London event are selling fast.

Below this brief message you will find a longer press release that tells you more.

Please take a moment of your time now to forward this message to friends and colleagues. Thank you.

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PRESS RELEASE
The Convention on Modern Liberty

This year, the Convention on Modern Liberty will gather in London and six venues across the UK, from Belfast to Cambridge, on 28 February.

It will bring together well over a thousand people, nearly fifty organisations, from the TUC to the Countryside Alliance, from the Football Supporters Federation to the British Instite of Human Rights, and more than a hundred distinguished independent speakers, with widely ranging political views and interests, among them Philip Pullman, Lord Bingham and Shami Chakrabarti, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Tory Shadow Justice Secetary Dominic Grieve and Labour Minister for Skills David Lammy and Helena Kennedy (full list, see below).

The Convention is a call to all concerned with the threats to our fundamental rights and freedoms – from our own State, from terrorism and the responses to terrorism and from the gathering financial crisis.

From being imprisoned without charge, to bailiffs entering our homes without a warrant, to unlicensed surveillance and officials taking your information from anywhere and passing it anywhere they like – our liberties are being violated.

The Convention organisers will publish audits of these violations, show how they are connected, ask why they are taking place and how they might be reversed.

The Convention’s co-directors, Anthony Barnett and Henry Porter, said “We want three things.

First, we want the public to ask why these violations are happening and see that they are not isolated events.

Second, we want the violations to be stopped in a way that ensures they do not happen again.

Third, by asserting the right to manage our identities and to share between its agencies deep dossiers of information about us the government trespasses on the first claim of democracy: that the State is the servant of the people. We want to ensure that the tradition of public freedom in our country is renewed not suffocated, that our fundamental rights are secured, and that the agents of the state understand their powers exist to serve not control the citizens of Britain. This is all the more urgent as the financial crisis deepens.”

For videos by key supporting organisations, the full programme, press and blogosphere coverage see
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.modernliberty.net

The Convention is sponsored by The Rowntree Trusts, openDemocracy and Liberty. The Guardian is its media partner. NO2ID is a lead organisation partner.

Confirmed speakers:

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Lisa Appignanesi
Mohammed Aziz
Anthony Barnett
Simon Barrow
Peter Bazalgette
Moazzam Begg
Sir Geoffrey Bindman
Lord Bingham
Andrew Blick
Caspar Bowden
Billy Bragg
Victoria Brittain
Tony Bunyan
Jean Candler
Malcolm Carroll
Douglas Carswell MP
Joanne Cash
Shami Chakrabarti
Tufyal Choudhury
Nick Clegg MP
Nick Cohen
Linda Colley
Philip Collins
Tony Curzon Price
Iain Dale
David Davis MP
Andrew Dismore MP
Cory Doctorow
Oliver Dowlen
Terri Dowty
Michael Edwards
David Elstein
Brian Eno
Keith Ewing
Peter Facey
Edward Fitzgerald QC
Liz Forgan
Sabina Frediani
Edie Friedman
John Gardiner
Juliet Gardiner
Edward Garnier QC MP
Timothy Garton Ash
Alex Gask
Pam Giddy
Paul Gilroy
Jo Glanville
Lord Goldsmith
Zac Goldsmith
David Goodhart
A C Grayling
Colin Greer
Dominic Grieve QC MP
Gerry Hassan
Iain Henderson
Georgina Henry
Savitri Hensman
Guy Herbert Becky Hogge
Chris Huhne MP
Sunny Hundal
Murray Hunt
Saghir Hussain
Will Hutton
John Jackson
Simon Jenkins
Vaughan Jones
Mary Kaldor
Yasmin Khan
Sunder Katwala
Helena Kennedy QC
Paul Kingsnorth
Francesca Klug
Satish Kumar
David Lammy MP
Neal Lawson
Paul Lay
Guy Lodge
Caroline Lucas MEP
Ken Macdonald QC
David Marquand
Ehsan Masood
Christopher Meyer
Mujib Miah
Suzanne Moore
Ivo Mosley
Peter Oborne
Tom Porteous
Henry Porter
Philip Pullman
Geoffrey Robertson QC
Alan Rusbridger
Paul Rogers
Meg Russell
Mike Rustin
Laura Sandys
Quentin Skinner
David Smith
Roger Smith
Trevor Smith
Sam Talbot Rice
Chuka Umunna
Geraldine Van Bueren
David Varney
Sarah Veale
Hilary Wainwright
Marina Warner
Stuart Weir
Stuart Wilks-Heeg
Michael Wills MP
Gareth Young
Christina Zaba
Simon Zadek
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Population: The elephant in the room