Slashback: Google, Prince, Bayesian

Updates from the field on Google access in the People's Republic of China, Lance Bass's space-shot (shot down), the gaming ban in Greece, recording artists and Internet music downloads, and more. Read on for the details.

Please confirm, over. After reports that the People's Republic of China was blocking access to Google, an anonymous reader writes: "I'm working in China, and for the last 3 days Google and some other sites were not accessible. But since even sending SMS to europe didn't work I don't think it was censoring, more like routing problems of some sort. Anyway, Google is back and reports of slashdot blocking are also overrated :)"

Cradle of Democracy, or Regular Cradle? Many readers have written to point out that, just like they promised to in March, the government of Greece has gone ahead and banned electronic games. xlurker, for instance, writes "In an unbelievable move the Greek government has banned all public play of computer games with enactment of law 3037/2002. An english translation of it can be read here. This has been reported in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini and recently confirmed in detail at the German Heise site (Google translation). The law encompasses all appliances that play games, as ludicrous this sounds, it spans from cells ph ones and computers to gameboys and consoles. Greek internet cafes are protesting and international gaming events are being cancelled and relocate d. The bill was passed as a last ditch effort by the government to combat gambling. Thousands of Greek citizens have protested the blanket anti-gaming law. Online petitions can be found here and at the Greek Net Cafe site."

Welcome to your new email account. In addition to the Bayesian spam filter for Qmail mentioned in a previous Slashback, an anonymous reader writes "An article here talked about using statistical methods to classify spam (and perhaps other mail) automatically. A real implementation of this has been released (currently beta) here that acts as a POP3 proxy and works with any mail client. It inserts an X-Text-Classification: header in each mail message containing a classification of the mail into any of a number of classes that the user defines. The code is mostly Perl and an LGPL library so although the current version is for Windows it will work on other platforms and the author is asking for suggestions and testers."

Yes, I'd like to be paid in unlucky-pop-star weights, please. 21mhz writes "Reuters reports: Russia's space agency has scrapped 'N Sync singer Lance Bass's plans to join an October space mission after the U.S. pop star failed to meet payment deadlines. More details from AP. The guys that do real stuff at ISS will get an extra cargo package the weight of the unlucky pop singer."

And Lo, eleven shall have been selected, and it is so. AmateurHuman writes "After two delays, Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, have announced that the first stage of the New Fantasy Setting Search is completed. Eleven out of 11,000 entries were selected. Good job to those lucky eleven!"

Slashdot is not responsible for the content of external links. ttyp writes "We've all seen Janis Ian's opinions about P2P and the RIAA but, man, does Prince take it to a new level! Check out the artist's commentary A Nation of Thieves wherein Prince wonders, 'How long, however, b4 a critical mass of established artists realize that it is in their best interests, both artistically and commercially, 2 leave the system 4 good? How long b4 a critical mass of young aspiring artists become aware of the enslaving aspects of the system and r careful not 2 get involved in it without a maximum of precautions? And how long b4 a critical mass of art lovers get 2gether 2 provide these artists with a real, valuable, legitimate, truthfully enthusiastic alternative audience that completes the process of rendering the xisting system artistically irrelevant?' Also check out the links to other commentaries on this page."

Comments

Re:Prince really screwed them

[Golias]

Actually, a press agent (either working for WB, or one of Prince's people who didn't know better, I dont' recall which) told reporters to call him "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" when asked "How do we pronounce that thing!? And what do we call him when printing in formats that can't use symbols?"

IIRC, the Minneapolis Star Tribune used that weird symbol for his name fairly consistantly (even though it fucked up their printing process a little). The St. Paul Pioneer press with with the "TAFKAP" option. Both papers did call him "the Artist" on occation, but only in the context of an article where the meaning would be obvious.

The thing was, Warner held the rights to the name "Prince" for the duration of his contract (even though he went by that name before he even began his career at WB). By changing it to a symbol with no pronounciation, his fans would still call him "Prince", even though he never, ever directly told them to in any media events. Notice how the first album relased with that symbol-name had, as its first single, a song where he shouts, over and over, "my name is Prince". That's all he ever wanted to be called.

And now you probably know more about TAFKATAFKAP (as I like to call him), than you ever cared to.

Prince isn't imitating hacker speak.

[bass2496]

He has often written like that in the past. See his songs "I Would Die 4 U", "Money Don't Matter 2 Night", and "Nothing Compares 2 U."

Whatever you have to say about his method of communcating, there is no doubt that he is an extrememly intelligent man and a musical prodigy.

He has long been outspoken against the current state of the recording industry, and I am always glad to hear what he was to say about things.