I don't believe I need to comment much on this. Captured in Footscray, Melbourne just off Moreland street (where there is also a fantastic view of the melbourne CBD skyline). BTW a "spunk rat" is a "Good looking bloke, as described by females." according to Roger's Profanisaurus.

I was going to write about it today but found this well researched article which goes far beyond anything I would have written about Geeks or Nerds. It does not explain Dork. I will below.

My simple explaination which came about after much arguing with a friend in first year uni (or was it even earlier?) agrees mostly with the article linked.

Geek tended to be someone with extended interest in many intellectual hobbies, showing above average intellegence and good social skills. Nerd tended to be someone with an unhealthy interest in one topic and little social skills. Dork was a general term to encaptulate the socially unskilled, irrelevant of interests.

It's all crap of course, "all words" as I often say these days. A social snapshot. Even the article linked differs from my time when "being geeky" was far less (at least it seemed to me and my friend) acceptable as it is now.

Lessig said a major problem is the fact that copyrighted material simply vanishes because corporations aren't interested in keeping all that they copyright commercially available.

Belfast film producer Paul Largan of media company Bandigital said organizations that fund digital filmmakers demand the copyright to the work -- but they may never show the artists' film again after an initial screening. "Copyright is key," he said, or a work just dies.

My example: Metallica used snippets from a particularly good film Johnny Got His Gun in a video for their song One. To do this they bought the copyright for the film. Dispite many cries from fans of the band and the movie, the band have no interest in re-releasing the film for sale. Thus it is very difficult to obtain a copy without buying a second hand ex-rental or dubbing it. (or struggle your way through German Amazon, buy Apocalyptica's live DVD while you're there and send it to me)

In David Brin's Earth, a character's profession is to take "old" films such as Terminator and either reduce their length to a less boring 45 minutes or so or increase them by including film archives / deleted scenes etc. The inference in this could possibly be taken that such films and such activity is perfectly legal.

It is often the case that preservation of musical material from bands falls into the hands of fans. Often a band will not have a copy of a song as all of their copies are destroyed by mismanagement of materials by a careless record company. This is often the case with live recordings. How often do you hear calls for video recordings of old "classic" concerts by the band or record company? Yet if such recorders were caught at the time they'd probably have been whipped.

I recently saw what may well have been one of the master recordings of a The Sharp song at a record fair once. No-one cares. Throw it away...

(via Dev Null)

I remember first hearing Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War Of The Worlds on vinyl at my neighbours house in Moranbah, Queensland. I had nightmares for months afterward. It was more the images in the sleve that got me. Horrible pictures of massive tripod ships with green "eyes" burning warships into nothing with terrifying red lazers, and landscapes covered in what I thought at the time to be blood, but which was infact "alien fungus" that apparently gave Mars it's red colour.

Music can have more effects than the much sought after this-song-is-fantastic-shiver. Anyone else scared by a piece of music?