It was only last night I that I reflected on being branded with the mark of DRM and as I awoke this morning the headlines on ABC News Online broadcast this;

Music industry pushes ISPs for action on illegal downloads

The Australian music industry has approached Internet service providers (ISP) to penalise people who illegally download music.

Under the plan, record labels would identify Internet customers who are illegally downloading and service providers would give them three warnings before cutting off their phone and Internet connections.

The full story can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1897439.htm

This reeks of what I believe was a previous Telstra proposition to packet sniff our connections, to have a peek at what we are downloading and to then prioritise bandwidth so that P2P apps are essentially cut out of the equation. I think according to Telstra, torrents are only used to download illegal material and that we are guilty for just using a Bit Torrent client. Now the “Australian Music Industry” wants to cut our “phone and internet connections” if we are caught downloading illegal content. This no breaking news and it is already loosely done, although I don’t know if anyone has ever had their internet connection terminated because of it and if they were threatened to be cut off, then it was simply a matter of churning to another ISP.

The Music Industry already tracks downloaders of illegal content. They essentially join a swarm and identify the ISP’s associated with an IP address downloading and uploading particular files and then send cease and desist letters or copyright infringement notices to the ISP’s who own the IP addresses, who then pass the infringement notice onto the consumer who has that IP address at the time of alleged unscrupulous activity . However, now the Music Industry is embarking upon a crusade to deploy Internet Service Providers as the conformity enforcers of a solution to what is essentially their problem and to top it off they want ISP’s to act as morality police for a failure on their part to stamp out file sharing and piracy.

The ABC article states that ”

Ms Heindl says several smaller Internet providers have already expressed support for the plan” and I can’t help but be suspicious of the motives behind targeting smaller ISP’s who would be only too keen on deploying measures to protect bandwidth that is precious to their survival due to some flaw in their business model. I wouldn’t put it past the big name players like Telstra and Optus to use whatever excuse to prevent bandwidth exploitation from torrents and other file sharing apps so that their bottom line can be further expanded by whatever totalitarian methods they see fit.

There is something wrong with the system if the big guns in society are reduced to litigating against some teenager downloading a few measly songs off the internet. The idea of maximising the profit margins to finance the bonuses of music industry executives is where the whole system is flawed, so that some fat cat can maintain an ever increasing quest for power and a lifestyle to match. The solution to piracy that we are being sold is to live in a police state, where the moral police are internet service providers and the thought police are tied to the courts so that some sorry arsed geek, cops a termination of his telecommunications or ends up being sued for some breach of copyright, is absurd.

The problem can be fixed without such draconian measures, we just have to think outside the square. Surely the music industry can come up some scheme where there profits can be maximised using the technology that the consumer is using. Nowhere in history has prohibition ever worked so to think that threatening an online community with dire consequences is bound to be a futile endeavour. Surely the music and movie industries have to realise that the price they are charging and the limitations of digital rights management they are imposing are the culprits in this failure to enforce copyright. Online piracy is only one part of a bigger system of piracy represented by racketeers overseas where hard copy piracy runs rampant, with little word from the industries about taking actions to police such organised disregard for executives pay cheques.

This whole anti piracy campaign will ultimately fail because technology will always be one step ahead of what the bureaucracy is capable of enforcing.

I’ve gone legitimate and DRM’d myself. I’m now in possession of not less than 5 albums which I purchased off BigPond Music and am not ripping my hair out with worry that the files will be next to useless. I was fairly surprised that I could transfer the files onto my Creative Zen Vision M without as much as a blink and in fact I used the Creative software to copy the files across. I can also burn the albums onto CD and then rip them to MP3 without grief. I of course use the worlds greatest MP3 encoder, LAME via Exact Audio Copy which I use to do the copying of all my audio CD’s and I can’t recommend it enough. Give Windows Media Player the flick if you want to rip your CDs, not so much as one blip or click when playing back on my MP3 player with EAC.

I can’t say that my days with channel BT are over because I’m an immoral being and haven’t sold out entirely to DRM and besides where else will I get my Linux ISO’s from? I believe that EMI are doing away with DRM and it is a welcome move on the part of one Record Industry giant to heed the calls of the consumer. I think the Record Industry would do well to utilise the torrent culture in some way, but they seem to just want to take us music fans all the way to the bank. The price one pays for legitimate music downloads is a little hefty in my opinion, $16.50 for the average album probably represents a cost of half to that of an actual CD. It is excessive for what we are getting, when in comparison, owning a CD gives greater freedom to shift the music around. I’d like to see albums go for around 5 dollars online and also for online stores to offer a far greater array to choose from. The biggest attraction in the Bit Torrent swarm, from what I can gather, is that the selection is far superior to that of any online store and also the obvious consideration, that the music is free. (apart from AllofMP3 which has a good selection and extraordinarily inexpensive, but the legality of their offerings is somewhat dubious and suspect) In truth I haven’t used the much famed Itunes because I don’t want to have to install more software just to download some songs, however I’d imagine that their selection is much the same as to the plethora of music stores claiming millions of songs, but tell me if you can find Skepticism anywhere on their listings? I’ve had another go today at ordering their CDs, this time from Red Eye Records as JB Hi-Fi left me cold with only one of the CDs I ordered. After waiting for a couple of months, the deal fell through when their supplier couldn’t get it or some other bullshit. Utopia Records didn’t have any of em in stock either when I visited today, but I did get the new Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero CD, Kreator’s Enemy of God and My Dying Bride’s Deeper Down EP. I’ve gone ballistic with music this weekend but when discomfort is present, retail therapy is sometimes the only source of distraction and escapism that is viable. I guess I’ve been on trip in nostalgia and some of the purchases over the last couple of days are a reflection on this trip. A trip into a more innocent and endearing time of my life. When I look back it was a time of promise and perhaps fury of possibility, but as I sit here pondering, I never really took advantage of the fury in its full potential. I want to recapture some of it and redirect it into something worthwhile, but even now I am racked with the same doubts that fueled my existence back then. Some things don’t change and I suppose it can if I want it to. I want some old flame to reignite the passion I once felt but it seems withered and aged and I’m afraid to take flight in case I cannot subdue it to manageable levels.

I’ve yet to fully listen to all this new music but the train ride to work in the sombre mornings of autumn will afford me the time to reflect on the soothing sounds of Metal to gear me for the long winter days ahead, while I slave at my workstation for the greater good of humanity.

Year Zero is a strange story in the land of Reznor, from having read the wikipedia on Year Zero and the back cover of the CD it promises insight into the moral police and what could be described as the beginning of the end. A concept album for a conceptualised world of terror and corruption of God. I really like the cover art, is it “The Hand That Feeds” coming from the heavens on the front cover?

I am almost jealous of artists, they seem to be able create something worthwhile while all I can do is create a mediocre existence and fantasise about how awesome it would be to have this thing that people could could take away with them on their travels and daily grind. I really admire musical songwriting talents. The seemingly simplicity of songs is often such an intense emotive force and the beauty of it is such that they can be tucked away in your pocket and expressed wherever you are. Anyway I haven’t such talents but I can imagine and that is good enough.

Writing about the day’s events is near impossible, only because my days are so very uninteresting. Like what should I write about? Nothing interesting happens in the engineering world. We design bridges and infrastructure so that the greater community can function in the way that it does, however when one begins to examine the events behind the making of said infrastructure, there really is nothing of any interpersonal interest that can be argued or extrapolated. There is no meaningful illustration of the human condition that can be drawn. For the better part of the day I sit in front a screen connecting dots into a depiction of how to possibly build a structure like a bridge, but it is boring. The only real metaphysical insight that may be drawn from such disinterest, is something someone once jestingly said, “build a bridge and get over it!” And that’s what we do, build bridges so that people can get over them.

On a technical level, bridges present themselves as interesting structures to detail but if I were at all creative, I could investigate the physical symbolism of the forces and the agents of nature working against the design, something akin to the epic struggle between good and evil. However, in the quest for balance, it is Newton’s third law of motion which at the end of each day, maintains the state of equilibrium that we take for granted. Perhaps it is this law, which states that “for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction” that subdues the agents that work with such laws into a dry and uneventful environment, that is the design office. Tis true that on rare occasion this equilibrium is pushed into an erratic state, when deadlines are tight and tempers frayed and someone snaps, but surely it is a cold day in hell when such entertaining displays are revealed.

So I struggle and wrestle to make sense of this world with such limited material available to me. The resultant force of such depravity is that I’m often left feeling rather cold and numb. Perhaps this other world or alternate reality that the office represents is truly where the heart of the human condition is. We spend the better part of our lives in such enclosures and surely it resembles a zoo to the alien life which transverse through strings that criss cross our fabric of reality into the multiverse of unseen realism. Perhaps it is why we are here, for the amusement of travelers that shield themselves from our insanity.

Little by little do these days fall away to something that is called a life, however a question lies in wait. What have you done with your life? I seem to be stuck at square one. I’ve done this loop and it is a continuous spiral that spins in on itself and then out again. I seem to be caught in this spiral of doubt, doubting whether I have indeed moved forward or have just wound back to the position I started in.

Once again I’m left scratching my head wondering how I got stuck in this predicament. One of many existential crises that emerge in the daily battle with time. I have moved from one job into another, only to be back where I was before I left the prior. I am continually trying to understand how I can move out of the career that I just seemed to drift into and I can muse over what a colleague said, which went along the lines of “everybody does drafting by default”. I have to agree with the statement, I drifted into this trade by default, without too much consideration of what I really wanted to do. Now that I have transitioned and honed my skills in this craft I find myself dissatisfied with my chosen career.

It is not an unusual dilemma and in times gone by it was considered the norm that one would stay inside a chosen field or skill or study and remain in that position for a lifetime. However it is the age of sanctified obsolescence and it is no more a virtue to remain with an employer or career path than it is to toss out last years generation Ipod.

My dilemma is compounded by lack of motivation, I know what I’d dearly love to do and it is within my power to strive in such a direction but I am discerned with total apathy. My ideals are thwarted by this uninspired apathy towards a desire I take flight with, inside the narrow vessels of synaptic vibration. I feel almost justified by accusing the machine of soul corruption for the demise of energetic enthusiasm that forms the pursuit of self actualisation. I can readily lay blame for the lack of available time to this disease of industrialised cloning of souls, to feed this beast of societal machinery that demands the attention to detail of an insect. The facade of individualised self is bought and sold with a trip to a muliplex, a cathedral of managed excess, in exchange of plastic swipes and ka chinging of registers. The whole idea is flawed and a mockery of counter culture revolt. In fact the whole basis of this society is built upon the illusion that we have a unique identity and that in essence we are free to express this individualism. In reality we are just conforming to multi national branding and express our individuality through the ring tone we put on our mobile phone. Such individualism, at best can merely be interpreted as a sign that we are chained to a corporate master and at worst, that we have contracted our souls to the devil or signed our lives over to a higher being that is telecast across the airwaves.

I can’t say that I am immune to this disease because I am caught within its grip, a strangle hold of self that is miraged by the status of gadgetry. At best I can maintain some awareness that my identity is not all together defined by how many gigabytes of hard drive space my MP3 player has, or whether my mobile phone has an array of components to rival that of James Bond. I am a technology buff and enjoy the benefits that technology afford me but I would also like to keep some resemblance of the human form in my quest to achieve techno salvation. There was a time not that far away in the distance, that I could not lay claim to any of this quasi status egocentricity and it would soothe my soul to keep this fact in perspective and at the fore front of my thoughts.

A lot of humanity is suffering and I am lucky, just to be born in an age and a place where my greatest concern is pondering whether my life has amounted to anything. I can forever remain dissatisfied and it is outside of this demeanor that I can choose to find solace. If I continue to subscribe to the notion that it is not enough then I will believe that it isn’t enough. I have aspirations and dreams and would like to explore areas of my creative expressionism in a more fulfilling fashion and nothing is preventing me from pursuing these dreams. I live in a country where I have the opportunity and freedom to explore my talents and if I fail to have a go then it is only I, that can accept such failure and blame. In truth I already explore my creative bent and my only regret is that I haven’t more time to be more absorbed in this pursuit. At the end of the day it is about risk and if I don’t have enough faith in myself to take the risk then it is my responsibility to let go of my aspirations and dreams and get on with whatever I have to get on with.

I wonder what this life has in store for me. I fear that I will never get to a place where I can feel completely content. It is where my folly lies, in the completeness that can not be. What is completeness? Can one be fully complete or rather complete. It’s impossible to assume that any form of the complete can even be entertained. How can one be complete? It assumes an end, some destination that is loosely defined by a word, content. The contentedness of being in some state of perpetual happiness. Content and happy, are these two words mutually compatible or are they two entirely separate entities? Is happiness defined by being content? Some correlation can be drawn for the mutual inclusiveness of happiness insofar as being in a state of not wanting or needing anything more, of being content. However is this really the definition of happiness? It seems to me, to be some ephemeral term this contentedness, a vaguely translucent construct that appears in moments of a wish less night. How can it be anything more than just a fleeting moment when, all things being considered, are in some alignment and then with the whim of a thought it can waft away with the breeze of desire. Is it not what desire stands for, discontentment? It would seem that happiness is circular, some crazy notion that one could be complete. Happiness is the absence of discontentment and somewhere along its etymology it has become a goal, a human pursuit that is ill perceived in reality. When one says they are truly happy, what exactly do they mean? That they are lacking desire or need or want, that they are content with exactly what they have? Its conceivable that such people exist but are they for real? Are they hidden in some existential bubble that they care not for anything? Do they not feel the macabre face of suffering when they look beyond the bubble. Are they living in a utopia that mere mortals dream of?

Happiness is bought and sold to the masses as an illusion. There is no happiness only the illusion that we could be happy, if only. Happiness is not the domain of the thinker, it is the possession of the mindless individual in the sense that the mind holds the keys to heaven and hell. Reality decides which way the key turns.

Reality is the key and its substance is illusion. Reality exists in an entity that does not exist. No where can we find the key but in our mind and it is nowhere to be seen. The mind hovers in a vacuous state of nothingness and no eye can perceive of this nothingness. If heaven and hell reside within the confines of nothingness then it is a nowhere place in a void that seemingly exists but does not. The clarity of this vacuous stare can be beheld when looking into the black dials of nothingness. If one looks deep inside the mirror, to the pupils of the beholder, a flash of recognition illuminates the illusion, it becomes rigid; it solidifies as it stares back into the reality of nothingness. Can we be happy when we see that there is nothing to be happy about, because it is nothing that is happiness. Like the song goes…”Don’t Worry…Be Happy” because there is nothing to worry about.

Sometimes it seems as if I’m just pushing through this dark mass of matter that really shouldn’t be in the way but is there nevertheless. It is a futile fight because I know that once I shovel through one great pile of shit then most assuredly another pile will amass. It just never ends and it is the way I look at things which causes me the most grief. I feel almost guilty for feeling the way I do. One of my great desires is to just to be able to be at home in the quiet and solitude without having to deal with the griefs of a long lost past that I can never reclaim or change. The problem is that this ill defined past is always in my shadow and I just cannot out run it. It clings to me like dog shit on the sole of my shoes, stinking the air that wafts around me.

I just need to hang on for just that little while longer. I just wish I knew how much longer that little while is. I can choose to define my experience as a lesson which I can grow from but it is just a load of bullshit. This experience is just one more of life’s meaningless ventures. It is exactly in this existential vision that I can draw the most fixed state of being from. If I can somehow banish all meaning from the experience of living in a loveless past, I will then be in a position to strengthen a deeper understanding of the nuances of the present. The current feelings of anger and resentment are just mere fragments that I can salvage into a better day tomorrow. I have made it through this day, although I despised having to walk through the day I made it to the other side. At least when we celebrate God’s death next weekend, I won’t have the object of my frustration in front of my eyes so I can be thankful.

I was surprised to see in my yahoo inbox an email from a fellow nodian or perhaps an insider that commented on my previous post. The wonders of technology is such that Big Brother is never too far, the Google eyes have ears as well (who would have thought), ears to hear the rants of one disgruntled end user. As suggested by the commentator I have contacted Internode and am currently doing an extended isolation test, which will hopefully shed some light on the predicament I face. I will say that the gentleman on the other end of the line was extremely helpful and I cannot find fault with the tech support from Internode It is one of the reasons why I decided to go with Internode in the first place, they get rave reviews on Whirlpool so I joined the band wagon and haven’t had much cause for complaint until recently, but that may very well be a fault on my end rather than anything to do on the Node’s end. Because I have an affinity with speed I upped my dosage to 8 Megabit and my greed seemed to be my downfall but what can I do? My attempts at satisfaction go awry unless I get instantaneous gratification for my need for speed. Ideally things in cyber space should happen in a blink of an eye but we are still a ways off from such technology. I await in anticipation for the brute force of technology to satiate my desires.

Well having plugged the modem line directly into the telephone socket it appears that my connection has stabilised. Having done this test previously to a lesser degree than what i’m doing presently, I suspect I may know what the issue might be. As I looked at the line from my modem, something which I neglected to notice in my previous trouble shooting attempts, peering ever more closely I could see the line from my modem running through the UPS surge protector. Perhaps this is causing interference of some kind and thus the drop outs. I will leave the isolation test to run overnight to see if my suspicions are correct. Problems seemingly are almost always in the most obvious places and sometimes it pays to be a little more aware.

Anyway enough free publicity for Internode, after all they are just an ISP and I’m not being paid to write some spin for them. People can look here and here if they want more info.

Internode seems to be playing up tonight and I don’t like it when my internet connection is on the blink. I rely far too heavily on this connectivity, more than what is really healthy for any one individual. Alas I could be in far worse predicaments. One eye is constantly watching the DSL light on my modem to see if the dreaded loss of sync is upon me. My world depends on that wee little light, almost as if salvation is determined with the flashing of lights. My love affair with the internet began to blossom back in the nineties and it also marked my decline in other not so wholesome areas. But this connection into my main line of thought continues to grow like an extended synaptic nerve ending reaching the far recesses of the globe where I can travel without leaving the safety of these four walls that confine me. It’s pretty sad really but I am a traveler of space and I cling to the notion that I can have a life if I leave this chair and abandon my voyeurism into binary code. Sometimes it is all I have, this pulsing of energy that permits me to see, like a third eye. Some ESP kind of epiphany that keeps me glued to a liquid crystalline god. Anyway the damn DSL lights are blinking so it must mean that I am about to lose sync again. Looks like I will need to contact the node for some support because it is happening way too much lately.

Well I’ve changed fonts to mark a change in perception that has recently embedded itself into my consciousness. I am formally going through a period of dissent that has its sneering eyes penetrating the facade of cynicism that I often hide behind. I am struggling to find some validation to the lies that have seemingly been thrust upon me as the truth or the way. Some would say that I’m in denial, like some beast that has its claws wrapped around my throat, suggesting with ill intent that I do some heinous crime against the truth that I should adopt. In fact my eyes have been opened wide and I feel as if a spell has been broken, almost as if the world has dropped from neath my feet and I’m free falling into a reality that I wish wasn’t so, yet am glad that I have truly found a truth that extols all the truth that has been implanted into my feeble mind. Perhaps I am preparing for a landing which seems inevitable. I wonder at times if my legs will be able to carry the weight of awareness that has now been added into my periphery. I am sure that I can carry this weight, however it will require a strategy that will empower my defenses rather than weaken them. Perhaps I am well on my way in this regard. Of course no one here reading any of this dribble will understand what I am talking about and it is better that I hide behind the veil of evasiveness than spell out in detail. It matters not what the details are, what matters is that I map my thinking with a point of reference, for myself.

It seems that there is an unlimited supply of fixes and ample advice on what I should do but there seems little discourse on the subject of what exactly I want. In truth what I truly desire is autonomy and a self sufficiency that is laughed at by some members of my community. I have to agree that a fine line exists between such autonomy and disaster but I refuse to believe that a compromise cannot be drawn. Call me stubborn or tenacious but do not call me a fool. Sometimes I can smell the stench of manipulation a mile off and I find it disheartening that in group approval breaks down into fear and guilt mongering. A common theme in this blog is that of fear, a fear that is induced within me, a fear that I create whilst I contemplate an unknowable abyss that is the future. A fear that represents insecurity and lack of belief. I am on a quest to empower and strengthen myself against this fear, and to essentially find the voice within that is the true me, to capture a belief in myself that I have spent a lifetime running from.

I sit in this quiet flat on my own at long last. I have finally been given some respite from the long battle with companionship and am relieved and placated from this long suffering journey of butting my head against a red faced buffoon named rage. Although my head has yet to adjust to the culture shock of this silent cocoon, I am grateful for any time that I am spared from my nemesis. It is a rather exhausting expenditure of energy trying to stuff a cork into the volatile mix of anger and resentment. At last I can rest and bathe in the softness of solitude.