Thy Fearful Symmetry
These People Ought to Know Who We Are and Tell That We Were Here
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Quote reblogged from a much-needed gap
When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.
And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”
What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.
Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web (X)(Source: roominthecastle)
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Audio post reblogged from HAMBURGLR
First, go grab some headphones. The best ones you’ve got. If the best ones you’ve got are these suckers (or something similar), you should really go buy new ones, but use the best you’ve got for right now.
Take a break from whatever you’re doing for 2 minutes and listen, but just listen to the whole thing, even if you have to multi-task.
Headphones on? Ok. Good.
Now, press play.
“Upular (3D Audio Version)” - Pogo -
Photoset reblogged from Inspirations
M&Ms Droplets
now that’s what photography should be about… not a black and white picture of someone’s shoes
The top picture is full of M&M’s. They’re bule, red, orange, green, yellow, and brown.
But in the bottom picture we clearly see there’s white, pink, and even purple candies in the bowl.
The bottom picture is of gumballs! This concludes that the bottom picture is not taken with that camera at all. I’d even go as far to say that it was edited in photoshop with a filter!
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Yes the above image and the below image are not the same photograph being taken. This is rather obvious.
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BUT Mr. Wright there is one thing you overlooked. Examine the droplets on the bottom image. None of them are from the same angle. This is a natural occurance when looking through water droplets.
Is it not possible that the photographer took the second image first?
Would it not be more probable that when asked HOW it was taken he/she took the above image of their setup Using M&Ms, something much more common in a household rather than many gumballs, something they may have just bought for the original photo?
So to claim it was not taken with the same camera is indeed a long shot Mr. Wright.
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Thank you for your time.
Really Edgeworth, is that you’re argument.
Aren’t you overlooking the fact that there are no pink M&Ms. This proves undeniably that these are not, in fact M&Ms, but some other kind of candy.
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And one other thing, I find it highly improbable that not one piece of candy is facing so the M logo is on the candy.
So in conclusion, there is no way these are possibly M&Ms.
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hey mister I think you’re confuuuuuuused. Edgeworth agreed that they weren’t M&M’s. He was just refuting that there is a possibility there wasnt any photoshop used and that the above image was only depicting the method used in the bottom image.
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I think someone might be getting a little senile hehehe
Everyone seems to be walking around the accusations by examining whether they are or aren’t M&Ms. That is not what’s important. What we should be looking at is instead, the so-called droplets, compared to the background image.
The angles within the droplets do not realistically coincide with one another! As well, I don’t spend much time staring at drops of water, but I can surely say I’ve never seen such clarity in any water droplet. Also, as in the former picture, there is an obvious fogging on the glass, surely caused by whichever process was used to spray the water. Where is the fog?
On top of all that, the drops are amazingly tiny compared to the anonymous-candy. One could argue the sheet is further away than in the ‘example’ pic, but the blurring of the candies definitely objects to that. We could also try to assume that the spray method used in the ‘original’ photo caused much tinier water spots, but are we to believe that the photographer was so careless that they couldn’t recreate the correct droplet size in the ‘example’? Surely, they should have been able to cause at least a closer resemblance.
Sure seems like they went out of their way to showcase the methodology of how the photograph was taken, yet neglected to go far enough to ensure it could be a like-comparison?
Rather unlikely!
Actually, Mr. Godot!!
Well, according to the properties of light and the way it’s refracted…
If you mirror it the right way, they line up just fine!
Aah… these M&M’s droplets
So colourful… reminds me of the days of my youth!
the red ones remind me of my hemorroids… *cough*
I have found some new evidence though the original image source suggesting this second image has been tampered with!
This image clearly shows candies that correspond to the colours commonly found in M & M s… The edge of the bowl is visible, as are some ‘M’ symbols, if you look closely.
This suggests the second image in the original is perhaps just a fabrication based off of the second.
Therefore…
It is clearly a fraud!
You shouldn’t jump the “fraud” gun just yet, Wright. If your source is really the corresponding photo to the first, then the “gumball” picture in question might not be at fault. To put it bluntly, it might just be a copycat.
To put it another way, this could just be a case of a mistaken and mismatched photoset..
With all the evidence provided, I think it’s safe to assume this case could be solved: The candies in the second photograph are not M&Ms, but the photo itself was not exactly tampered with. It was just a completely separate photo of separate candies, possibly just misplaced in this set by the original poster, who was completely unaware of the mismatch!
Hold it right there everyone.
There is..
A PUZZLE HIDDEN IN THAT BOWL OF MISLEADING CANDY.
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Much of magic as I understand it in the Western occult tradition is the search for the Self, with a capital S. This is understood as being the Great Work, as being the gold the alchemists sought, as being the Will, the Soul, the thing we have inside us that is behind the intellect, the body, the dreams. The inner dynamo of us, if you like. Now this is the single most important thing that we can ever attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet there are a frightening amount of people who seem to have the urge not just to ignore the Self, but actually seem to have the urge to obliterate themselves. This is horrific, but you can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually posses such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure? I think that the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it.Alan Moore
