firefox vlc plugin not updating -- minor note to others with this issue

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Minor note to Firefox/VLC users:
The latest version of VLC is 2.1.5. Logically they should rename their browser plugin to conform to this numbering scheme. But they didn't! The npvlc.dll file still says 2.1.3.
So Firefox compares the .dll to the latest version of VLC and again, logically, informs you in the Add-ons tab that your VLC plugin is out-of-date and vulnerable.
When this was pointed out to VLC the developer, Rémi Denis-Courmont, got damn snotty in response:

What part of "This is a Firefox bug" do you not understand?
Complain to Mozilla. At this point, I am closing the discussion. This is a waste of time.

Sometimes "open source" means head up the you-know-what. VLC is clearly in the wrong here. I realize you are volunteers, but update the .dll, please.

Andy M (and thoughts on outsiderdom)

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andy_M_imgonnaloveyou_BW

remix GIF based on a YouTube vid by John Andrew Medeiros, aka Andy M (hat tip frankhats)

Artist, musician, and YouTube channel dynamo Andy M stands alongside Kathleen Daniel, aka Silicious, in the small pantheon of outsiders who rival or exceed the creative abilities of many self-identifying net artists. Let's say up front that he's a better musician than he is a videomaker, and the catchy songs he writes, sings, and produces, in a trance/synthpop vein with angelic, slightly discordant layers of barbershop harmony, would work very well on their own.

The videos, done mostly in the Poser and Blender programs, are 3D puppet shows that illustrate the songs, with a bevy of off-the-shelf effects. The outsider part of the equation is that Medeiros hasn't heard of the uncanny valley (a YT commenter asked him about it) and doesn't seem aware that the surrealism in his vids functions on two levels: the trippiness of his own imagination and the unintended grotesqueness of the frozen-faced puppet automata that dance, sing, and fly apart into geometric tile patterns. An insider has a filter, a nagging, internal voice that is always aware of the art world consensus and rejects certain ideas as too stupid to use. The outsider has no filter and just gives his/her imagination free reign.

The pigtailed Gretel in Hansel and Gretel Dance Video reminds me of a Poser character Kristin Lucas made for herself around 2000 or so, which went on a video tour of the basement of the former World Trade Center, via animation inserted into live footage. Virtual Lucas was clumsy-looking and routinely defied the laws of physics but it wasn't just for giggles -- the viewer always knew it was capital-A art.

But in a way I prefer Andy M's video, with its non-irony-based song he wrote and the enthusiastic-but-bizarre dance moves of his puppet characters. You can say a label like outsider is condescending and elitist but you can be completely confident that Ed Halter will never write an Artforum cover story about Andy M and you will never see Hansel and Gretel Dance Video on Rhizome.org, so don't blame the messenger.

The video from which the above GIF is taken, I'm Gonna Love You, might have more of a chance in the art world -- its pistol-packing drag queen main character could be tied into some Ryan Trecartin-carnivalesque discourse, but then Andy M goes and extensively quotes MC Escher, who is artistically déclassé -- a popular artist who, despite his mathematical precociousness, is not written about in histories of the avant garde.

"chorus of angles" vimeo embed

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Video version of "Chorus of Angles I," a music track posted Nov. 2011. Watch for the Ken Burns effect.
Embedded videos stay up until they drop off the blog front page (yes, how quaint) and then the embed code is removed (the links stay up). Not that you need to know these Byzantine self-made rules.
As for the embed, it's always good to take abstract art and stick logos all over it. These could be removed but am kind of enjoying the horribleness of it.

Chorus of Angles from Tom Moody on Vimeo.

cory doctorow interview

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Salon's Laura Miller talks to Cory Doctorow about copyright and the differences between rules and expectations for "industrial" users versus the rest of us. (He says we shouldn't be held to the same standards for sharing things around.)
As usual, the Salon headline writer takes a narrow point Doctorow is making (about Google's indexing of books) and enlarges it to an alarming clickbait proposition: ""We're all sharecroppers in Google’s fields for the rest of eternity." Like, woah. Here's the context of that "quote" (emphasis added):

...Do you remember when the Authors Guild sued Google over Google Book Search, which is basically the right to make an index of stuff in books? They said to Google, “If you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it on our terms, and you’re going to have to give us a whole $70 million. And we want to establish that we’re not saying that it’s legal to do this for anybody. You have to come negotiate with us first, and next time the price might be higher!” Google said, “$70 million? Let’s shake the sofa and find some change for you.” Meanwhile, you are guaranteeing that nobody else in the future history of the world will be able to afford to index books, which is one of the ways people find and buy books. Now Google owns that forever, for a mere $70 million! Nice work, Authors Guild. You’ve just made us all sharecroppers in Google’s fields for the rest of eternity.

It's not entirely clear what Doctorow means in either the larger or narrower context. One minute he's talking about "making an index of stuff in books" and later he talks about "index[ing] books, which is one of the ways people find and buy books." Instead of the traditional, back-of-the-book index I believe by "index" he means that Google makes every word in the book searchable and that's one way people "find" books. But that's just a guess. Checking the ever-wonderful Wikipedia, it appears the author's guild settlement is still up in the air so who knows what Doctorow is even talking about.