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outside

Growing Meat

Experiments for NASA have shown that meat tissue can be grown from existing meat cells, and now a new paper proposes two new techniques for large-scale production of lab-grown meat for human consumption. They still have to figure out how to make the cultured meat more meat-like by combining all the different kinds of tissue naturally found in meat and ‘exercising’ it for the proper texture, but they seem confident.

The article is very optimistic about the potential health and environmental benefits, but I’m wondering about the possible cultural ramifications. There is already a divide between the people who eat organic food and those who eat standard chemically treated food. Organic food still mostly costs quite a bit more than standard food so there is a resulting economic (and social) gap. Some people just can’t afford organic food no matter how good it is for you. With cultured meat, a similar thing may happen.

If cultured meat techniques develop to a point where it is cheaper overall than raising and slaughtering livestock, the number of people producing traditional meat may go down and the prices may go up. If that trend continues then, at some point, only the well to do of the world will even be able to afford real meat and most people will only ever eat food grown in labs or genetically engineered to be easier/cheaper to produce. Organic, natural food may become even more of a luxury item than it already is today.

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outside

Broadcast Flag May Become Law This Week

The Broadcast Flag that was recently struck down by a Court of Appeals as not within the FCC’s jurisdiction may become law this week after it was tacked onto an appropriations bill. This has very serious implications on the future of all media content. The flag would allow content creators to specify how you are allowed to use their content that you acquired legally. They could specify that you can only view it once after you record it, for instance… presumably unless you pay them to watch it a second time. All devices sold in this country would have to abide by the flag. If you care about your right to do what you want with something you buy, contact your local important people now.

Categories
reviews

Groundscore 10 Year Anniversary

Fabio and I went to the Groundscore 10 year Anniversary party last week (June 3, 05). Groundscore is the crew behind the Eklektic, Hektic and the Rude Metal Series of parties in the San Francisco area. It was our first drum ‘n bass party in years and had a huge lineup with some of the really big names from the last 10 years, Aphrodite, Fierce and Shimon.

Shimon’s set was filled with huge barnstormers, one after another. Some of the tunes had the crowd going, but the mixing didn’t flow that well and he repeatedly lost the energy he had built up. The songs were big enough to build thing up again quickly but I would have preferred more of a dynamic throughout the set.

Fierce’s set flowed better and of what he played I mostly remember a few intense tracks with some hard beats that rolled nicely. Fierce’s intensity behind the turntables was infectious and I found myself moving to the music without realizing it.

Aphrodite went on at 2:15 and made the night for me. He played a good mix of music including some great jump-up tunes. You just don’t hear much jump-up playing these days, and it was cool to see the whole crowd grooving to it.

We left before Aphrodite finished (because we’re old now) and I think the way too loud sound in the second room may have done permanent damage to my ears as we walked through it to the exit. Once we got outside we could still hear the sound from the club a half block away. Wow!

Overall, I had a good time and it looked like most of the sizable crowd did as well. Nice job, Groundscore!

Categories
musings

France and Spain

I’ve been traveling in France and Spain for the last week and a half or so. Before this trip, I had not been to a far-away land for about 16 years! We’ve spent all of our time in major cities and it’s been great to get a little bit of a feel for how other people in the world do things. We’ve got lots of great pictures and a more or less complete travel log will be posted at some point soon. Traveling is a lot of fun, but it’ll be really nice to be back home where I can mostly communicate with just about everyone I meet! We’ll be back in a few days.

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outside

Broadcast Flag Struck Down

A ‘broadcast flag’ mandated by the FCC in 2003 would have required consumer electronics makers to abide by specific digital flags encoded into digital television broadcasts. The flags could restrict whether or not the broadcast could be recorded or in what ways a recording could be used. It would allow content broadcasters to tell you how you can use your television recordings. The whole situation is pretty crazy but a ray of light has appeared as a Court of Appeals has ruled that the mandate is beyond the scope of the FCC’s authority. The original mandate required that any devices sold after July 1, 2005 adhere to the flags so this ruling came just in time.

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outside

Exploding Frogs

More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks. They have basically no idea why it’s happening. I suspect something along the lines of a mischievous young wizard in training, but I’m no scientist. This bit of weird news was passed to me by Tom.

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outside

The RIAA resorts to Extortion

ARSTechnica comments on a case where a woman was contacted by a collection agency and ordered to pay $4500 or risk being sued for much more money. Her personal information was collected from Comcast, who provided the information of their own free will. They were not required to do so by any court order and they did not notify the woman or any of the other customers whose privacy rights they violated. The RIAA has previously filed lawsuits against a few hundred people and they have apparently now decided that the lawsuit method is too costly and have resorted to simply billing people directly via a collection agency. It saddens me that all of this is allowed to go on. The woman is suing Comcast over it so we’ll see what comes out of that.

Categories
musings

AAC, iTunes and TiVo

I’ve had a TiVo for a little over two years after being pushed into it by a few friends and it really is a great little thing. It’s not majorly life-changing (unless you spend a large percentage of your time watching tv) but it is a big improvement over standard television watching.

About a year ago, the Home Media Option for the TiVo came out that added nifty features like the ability to listen to your digital music and view your digital photos. It also added the ability to move recordings between multiple TiVos in a house, but that isn’t very interesting to me since I only have one TiVo. I was most interested in the digital music player part of it as it finally allowed me to easily play the mp3 encoded music stored on my computer through my stereo connected to my TV.

The only real major downside of the digital music player part of the TiVo as provided is its lack of support for any file types other than mp3. I’ve pretty much completely switched to using AAC as my primary music encoding format. AAC features better compression (smaller files at the same audio quality) than mp3 and I think it represents higher frequency sounds better which results in a ‘brighter’ sound. I’ve also succumbed to the super convenience of the occasional iTunes Music Store purchase and all of those files are in AAC format as well, with an extra bit of DRM goop to make the major labels happy. So, the end result is more and more of my digital music is unplayable on the TiVo and I’ve been looking into other ways to shuttle my music around my house from where the files are stored to wherever I want to listen to them. So considering all of this, imagine my joy when I discovered that I now can play my AAC audio files on my TiVo, including those purchased from the iTunes Music Store.

While fiddling around with the new and very promising TiVo programming interface I ran across a message board post describing how to set up the latest Mac version of the TiVo desktop software (1.9) so it would transcode AAC files on your computer and send them to the TiVo as mp3. A self-described geek poked around in the TiVo install directory and found a utility program called SoundConvert that had references to the LAME mp3 encoder libraries within the binary. With some testing he discovered the TiVo Desktop software would automatically work with AAC files if it noticed the LAME libraries installed on your computer. I followed the link to the OS X LAME installer package, installed it and enabled music sharing in my TiVo Desktop preferences (after upgrading it to 1.9), and my AAC files were suddenly playable on my TiVo! They show up like all the other files (they didn’t show up at all before) and they play like any other file. A quick check on the computer acting as the server verified that the files were being transcoded before being sent out. Awesome!

Once I had AAC files playing, getting iTunes purchased music to play as well required one more step of questionable legality. I personally think it’s idiotic that I can’t legally play a song I purchased legally on my own device in my own house, but such is the idiocy of DRM. There are ways around the DRM iTunes uses such as JHymn, but you’re not currently allowed to use them in the US due to the DMCA. Anyway, I did try it on iTunes purchased music and it did work and I was able to listen to it on the TiVo. Unfortunately, since I first used JHymn successfully, Apple has made a back-end change that has rendered it unusable. I’m sure the JHymn people will get it working again before too long, but don’t head over there excited to claim DRM-free iTunes bliss just yet. I’ll update this when I hear of JHymn (or something similar) working again.

UPDATE (April 11, 2005): As reported by the main JHymn developer himself in my comments, JHymn is now working correctly again. TiVo and iTunes can play nice together once again. It is a forbidden love, but just as sweet.

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outside

About that Artic Drilling

Proponents of the arctic drilling plan claim it would only affect 2,000 acres of the 1,500,000 total acres in the coastal plain, but the part they don’t mention is those 2,000 acres are spread out all across the whole park. Check out the map and info on the NRDC Action Fund website. They are activists so their information is probably biased as well, but I know I certainly trust the activists more than I trust our current administration.

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outside

Octopus Walking on Two Legs

Found via ARSTechnica, movie of an octopus ‘walking’ on two of its legs and using the others as camouflage. Creepy and kooky!