19 April, 2010

nothing more than tiny fragments of a finger snap

"If the [Lindens] really want to be taken seriously and heard, if they really want us to believe in them, they need to stop rolling out a product with such an awful performance in the search stakes and they need to stop releasing a product to a marketing deadline, because politicians do nonsense like that, make it shiny for the photo opportunity, look good in front of the camera and then leave people scrutinising a mess that has been left behind when the actual policies kick in."

It's a damned good point Ciaran Laval makes, and you should go read the whole thing, not because I tell you to, but because (apart from stylistic errors), it's dead accurate. Laval (among many, many others, including me) think there are too many bugs in viewer 2.0 to ever make it into even Release Candidate status, and yet--the Lindens released it as the full official version. And they're clear that they're going to work on, adapt it to what the residents "really want"--but what they really want most? Search that works. Profiles that are easily updated. Tabbed windows, not 80 billion individually captured and preserved floating conversations.

Blatant copying of a 1997 pop hit for the Shanghai Expo theme song? That's a lot of controversy, world-wide. And as far as I know, it hasn't been answered.

On a similar note, a mention from 2006 of artists plagiarizing from photographs. There's only one problem with the presentation--some of the artists mentioned worked from photographic sources deliberately, and at least in the case of Degas, if not others, took the photographs themselves.

So if you're an artist and you're painting an apple in a bowl held by a nude damsel, that's art. But if you're an artist and you photographed the same composition, then painted from the photograph--that's also art, isn't it? What if you found a photograph, and painted from that as inspiration?

This is that fine, fuzzy line against between copying and theft, methinks.

There really is a store for everything in SL. There's someone making stripped/ripped clothing for damsels in danger, occasionally including shoes. It's called Tatters by Tempest.

Second Life,roleplay,shopping,Victorian,fashion

She even has a Victorian line. (Though I forgot the bit of breast showing on the larg image; I may have to re-upload these when PhotoBucket axes them.)

Second Life,roleplay,shopping,Victorian,fashion

I did have to clip this one down, but again, it may vanish due to PhotoBucket's oddity later on. Poke me if I forget, I'll drag them over to m'own server, where my sysadmin doesn't care about pixel nudity.

And last but not least, never forget: we are the machine. And all you need are four chords.

4 comments:

Rhianon Jameson said...

Four chords? Things have gotten considerably more complex than in my youth, when "three chords and an attitude" were considered sufficient, plenty of bands got by on only two chords, and, really, when you got down to brass tacks, it was only the attitude that counted.

Emilly Orr said...

The attitude is very important. And, as punk bands proved, you don't even need to be able to play, just snarl effectively on the right social issues.

Still, to be fair, we are talking the anatomy of pop songs, here. Though I'm amused they were dealing with "big", well-known bands and artists (at least in Australia), and Tim Minchin (another music parodist) got a mention. Yay!

Anonymous said...

Oh, umm, hi! Didn't see you there... I was just checking out that "Tatters by Tempest" place out of idle curiosity.

[attempts to hide shopping bags]

Yup. Idle curiosity.

Emilly Orr said...

*cackles*

I mean, no, of course, no reason.

I may have to go back and...not buy a few things m'self. :)

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...