heavydog

The Library of Congress, which is purported to be the biggest library in the world and the research arm of congress, has recently launched a new project in conjunction with Flickr. In order to enhance the quality of their photo library, which is incredibly huge, some 14 million prints at the moment, they’ve decided to create a Flickr page to be the new home of 3000 of the 14million prints.

The idea is that Flickr users will recognise people or places in those photos and add the relevant tags to them. It’s a fantastic idea, but unless Flickr has a special deal with the LOC, then it’s fundamentally flawed. Let me explain…

A photo has attached inside it’s very file something called EXIF data. This data, amongst many other things, including the lens used to the the photo, shutter speed, apeture, ISO, contains all the keywording and meta-description data you could need. If, when you import the photos onto your computer, you add meta data to each of them, everywhere that you use the photograph (be it Flickr, Zooomr or Photobucket) those sites will use that meta data, the EXIF data, to infer things about the image and add them to your upload. That’s how Flickr auto-generates tags and how it knows who uses what cameras.

Wind it back a bit. If you add tags and meta data to an image on Flickr, you’re adding the tags to FLICKR and not to the actual picture. As Thomas Hawk has previously blogged about, Flickr doesn’t add the tag added to it to the meta data of the photo. What I want to know is, how does the LOC get that meta data, added by Joe Public, back into the original file (because, I can guarantee that the Library of Congress stores these images as multi-megabyte files and not the Jpeg you see on Flickr).

Unless they have a special relationship with Flickr, then I don’t see how this project can be anything other than a Flickr based project. This data cannot be taken back into the library unless it is done manually.

Your visit to the Library of Congress to research some photos will be able to be done just as effectively as if you’d never left the comfort of your armchair.

If you’d like to read more, then the LOC blog post is here and Flickrs’ news about it is here.

I love what Flickr do, but not giving you a way to export your tags in a meaningful fashion is a hamstring.

Don’t use your ipod! The RIAA will arrest you and bang you up in a Bangkok prison!

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, “perfectly lawful” means “lawful until we change our mind.” So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance. What about all the indie label CDs? Do you have to ask each of them for permission before ripping your CDs? And what about all the major label artists who control their own copyrights? Do we all need to ask them, as well?

THIS PEOPLE ARE FUCKING RETARDED!

GRRRR, they make my blood boil with their money-grabbing, whiney little bitching. Fuck the RIAA. Not that it has much influence on what happens over here, or at least I hope not.

Let this video enlighten you on how ridiculous the American government is:

Best Kept Military Secrets.

This blows my mind. I sat watching this with my mouth open. They couldn’t find it, so they gave up the search? Thats is quite possibly the most outrageous thing I have ever heard.

Perhaps the bomb is corroded so much that it will never explode, but is that worth the risk? Suppose some terrorist group decided they would use todays technology to try and locate the bomb and actually see if it could explode?

Simply breathtaking stupidity.

In an astonishing peice of groundbreaking news, it appears as though the US governement failed in the reaction and action relating to all things Katrina.

All levels of the US government, from President Bush down, were at fault for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, a leaked Congressional report says.

From BBC News: US government ‘failed’ on Katrina

Does this come as a surprise to anyone at all?

Mr Brown argued that the response to Hurricane Katrina would have been more effective if a terrorist had blown up one of the levees.

Thats right, remember how more money is being spent on the War on Terror than it is on the safety of US citizens at home? How money that was set aside to improve the levees was instead used to fund the war in Iraq?

“The investigators said they ‘are left scratching our heads at the range of clumsiness and ineptitude that characterised government behaviour before and after this storm.’” Most of the rest of the world has been left scratching their heads ever since Bush was re-elected for a 2nd term.

I’m glad that this report has been leaked, it means it cannot be censored or covered-up. The US government should be held accountable for their actions, I just hope that they can learn from their mistakes.

Politics seems to get in the way of even the most basic of human desires: survival.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican paper announced in Tuesdays edition that Intelligent Design is not science.

No shit.

I’ve been reading bits and peices about intelligent design for a while and one thing that strikes me is that it is all very purile.

Some religious nuts are upset that only science is taught in schools, which is a fair point. But ‘Intelligent Design’ is just a thinly veiled attempt at turning religion into science as far as I can tell, and I can’t remember the last time that any school system was allowed to teach it’s children lies and half-truths based on a work of fiction written about 2000 years ago.

I think that children should be exposed to religion, but only when they are old enough and only as a point of reference. I.E. religion is out there kids, this is what it is, make your own mind up. Not teaching them that it is THE TRUTH. Kids believe Power Rangers are real, how difficult will it be to push onto them fiction about a man on a cross who could perform miracles? Not very difficuly I would wager.

I don’t want to get into a bitchfight with myself about religion, I’ve still not completely made up my mind about it. All I do know is that it is a great way to control a large number of people, but religion is losing it’s hold over society - the internet helps. It’s now easier than ever to find out about anything, not just religion and to get a — mostly — unbiased view on the subject.

So, becoming religious is almost like buying a new car or house. You pick the one most suited to your needs - which kind of makes a mockery of it eh?

Everyone needs faith in something, but faith is a personal thing and not something you can put upon other people, espcially children. Parents have a duty to educate their children on many things, but religion is something personal. Of course, as a parent, you want your child to have the same set of beliefs that you do, but you also want to give them the choice and the information to make it an informed choice. Well you should do, what kind of parent are you otherwise? Until a child reaches an age where they CAN make informed choices based upon the information they have, what can you do? Your best. Show them what you believe and try to get them to understand it’s a choice they have as they grow up.

But don’t teach it to children in schools as the truth. That’s just plain wrong.

Read more > CBS News

So, Bush Plans to Seek $1.5 Bln to Bolster Levees in New Orleans?

Thats fantastic news - but, didn’t he spend all the original money that had already been set aside to reinforce the levees (before the hurricanes) on the Iraq War?

To date, more than $219 billion has been spent on the Iraq war. This folly has diverted billions from the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project, despite pre-Katrina warnings of impending disaster from former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief Mike Parker.

2theadvocate.com

See that? Folly. Haha. I like that word. Folly, the Iraq war is a folly. I wonder whether Bush will receive a boost in the polls, now he’s left it long enough so people will forget it was his fault there was no money to strengthen the levees BEFORE the hurricane.

The man is a fucking moron.

This morning at 08.01GMT Stanley “Tookie” Williams was killed by lethal injection. See the BBC story here.

26 years ago, he was accused of murdering 4 people, a convenience store owner called Albert Owens and an elderly Taiwanese couple and their daughter at the motel they owned, for 26 years he has claimed he is innocent. He denounced gang life while serving his sentence on death row and his written a number of books on the subject - mostly childrens books - about how gang life is the wrong path to take. Teachers and parents use the book as a source of material to further explain how gang life is the wrong way. Tookie, who co-founded the Crips gang in Los Angeles in 1971, which has now spread to many other states and even has copy-cat gangs in South Africa, was even nominated for a nobel peace prize in 2001. Tookie has always been deeply regretful for his involvement in founding the Crips and it’s subsequent spread and increase in members.

On Monday 12th December 2005, the US Supreme Court refused a stay of execution, as had California’s Supreme Court and a federal appeals court.

California Govenor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, denied clemency after “studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences”. (You can read higlights of his statement here.)

What a fucking tradegdy. In this day and age, for the death penalty to still be a feasible means of punishment is barbaric.

For 26 years Tookie denined that he was responsible for the murders. How can the anyone say, with 100% certainty, that he was definately guilty? Read through Tookies website and you’ll see how the court case was nothing less than a farce, employing racist tactics (who’d have thought that 26 years ago, racism would have been rife in a public court) and other “reprehensible and unconstitutional” means.

Could Tookie have been of more use if he was kept alive? If his sentence was reduced to life without parole? If he had written more books, more teachings, sent more letters to kids who are still unsure about their life in South Central and helped them to decided that ganglife wasn’t for them? If he *did* commit the murders, how many lives has he actually saved since he was convicted by turning kids away from crime and gang life?

Who knows? And I guess no one ever will.

But maybe Tookie won’t neccesarily have died in vein. Perhaps the media circus around this whole event, the fact a FUCKING MOVIE STAR had to make a judgment on someones life, the protests and the backing from Hollywood celebraties to commute his sentence, might bring the subject of the legality, the issues surrounding it and the unconstitutional-ness of the Death Sentence to the fore.

I hope that someone clears Tookies of the crimes, won’t that fuck up the so-called justice that American dishes out.

An American mother is on trial for killing her children. The chain of events: she set the family dog on fire because her son was allergic to it. Burning dog set fire house ablaze. The kids in it died.

Source: Popbitch newsletter

So, there you go Mr Bush. You fuck with the big Ma and she fucks with you, with knobs on. You’re utter lack of spine when it comes to looking after the planet on which you reside disgusts me.

Not only are you being ripped a new arsehole for your failure when it came to responding to the disaster down South, but you’ll soon be ripped a new dickhole while you continue to not sign the Kyoto agreement that you so graciously pulled out of in 2001. “It costs too much!”, you whined. You pathetic, miserable little pussy - get a backbone.

How much could have gone into reducing the shit that America pumps into the atmosphere if you’d have not gone to war? How many lives could have been saved and propery not damaged if the money set aside for rebuilding the levees and strengthening New Orleans from flood had not been spent on war?

Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution which advises the government, made what the Independent newspaper said was a thinly disguised attack on the stance of U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration.

“The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming,” Lawton told the newspaper in an interview.

“If this makes the climate loonies in the States realize we’ve got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation,” said Lawton.

Peep the full article

Fucking loonies, headed by the looniest loony of all. Impeach that lying, cheating stealing fuckwad and lets all start making ammends on repairing our planet before the very place we live wipes us out.

Bush drew withering criticism when he said in a TV interview that the breach of levees was a surprise, despite YEARS of federal reports, scientific analyses, and newspaper articles predicting that it would happen in a storm of Katrina’s strength.

Read more (if you can bare it)