Creative Commons Licensing

Spurred on by a suggestion from popejeremy and the freshness of Charles Stross' worldwide release of Accelerando, I've been investigating Creative Commons licensing for all future HPL Laboratories releases.

Let's face it: the kind of stuff I've mostly been putting on under the HPL Labs moniker (Nyarlathotep, A Doctrine of Works, Retar-D2, my own solo stuff, etc.) isn't ever going to make me--or anyone else involved with these projects--any kind of real money. The whole aim of HPL Labs was to just get this stuff heard, and enjoyed, by those who like such weirdo music.

Hence the reason I'm thinking of making all future (and most past) HPL Labs releases 100% free and downloadable under Creative Commons licensing, which will protect the artists' right to be acknowledged as the owner/creator of the music, but freely allow sampling, using tracks in movie soundtracks or comps or whatever, and so forth--as long as proper credit is given to the creator of the music. That way, stuff can be freely distributed and enjoyed ANYwhere, by anyone, and still be legally protected. Quite frankly, I think traditional copyright concepts as applied in this country are fucking worthless these days, and rather than play into The Man's clutches by contributing to a system that underlies the RIAA, DMCA, and so forth, I'd much rather go with this.

I'm thinking of making all HPL Labs releases "virtual CDs," which will be downloadable most likely via BitTorrent--which lets us package all the songs from the albums, plus artwork, and whatever other kinds of supplemental material we want (text files of lyrics, links to other websites, videos, animations, etc.) together into an easily-transferred .zip or .rar file. We can still sell CDs, of course, too--and will, if interest is there. But everything is going to be protected, to a degree, under a Creative Commons license.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Those dang robots!

The Onion in 2056...on robots.

"Here's something I don't understand: We can develop a robot sturdy
enough to mine the Saturnine moon Enceladus, strong enough to withstand
the fierce ionic winds and burst through the 40 meters of scorched onyx
that covers the planet, and smart enough to collect the vital crystals
from amidst all the worthless rock, but the designers at USR labs can't
figure out how to stop them from finger-banging my wife?"

Never trust a Russian rocket

So, apparently, Cosmos 1, the new solar-sail trial spacecraft, is kinda-sorta alive...but no one knows where the hell it is or what it's doing.

When I first heard that the launch of the trial craft went wrong, I wasn't surprised. After all, a solar-sail craft really doesn't have any moving parts: it's just a payload surrounded by thin, reflective film. How could something so simple EVER work when the aerospace industry is involved?!

But, it turns out, the reason for the craft's problems are even more ridiculous: the Russian rocket being used to lob it into orbit shut down halfway through its launch procedure. WHAT A SURPRISE. A piece of Russian hardware that doesn't work? Could've knocked me over with a feather.

At one time--during the Soviet Era--Russian space hardware was the shit. Why? Because it was all built on a shoestring budget, making do with what little money and materiel the Russians could scrape together, and BUILT TO LAST. While NASA was dumping millions into designing a "reusable" orbiter that cost a few more million to overhaul between missions and a few million more just to kick into space, the Russians were saving billions of rubles by using simple, inexpensive, bulk carrier rockets that could toss something into orbit and then be melted down and recycled into more bulk carrier rockets. Hell, their only overhead was fuel costs.

Unfortunately, since the demise of the Red Bear, the Russian "space program" has completely caved in on itself. They're still operating on a shoestring budget, making do with little money and materiel, but now they don't even attempt to get their money's worth out of what they're building: they just throw something together when the ESA gives them a call and then they hope it works. Occasionally, it does. More often than not, it doesn't.

So FUCK the Russians and their launch vehicles. If you want something placed into orbit reliably, go with the French or the Chinese. Jesus, people--this ain't rocket science here....