TriNetre - Archive for November 06, 2003
(no longer updated)
November 06, 2003
Review - Through The Ashes of Empires
[Music]
@ 01:31 PM
One of the most anticipated album of Machine Head, "Through The Ashes Of Empires" delivers what it promises.
"Imperium" starts slow but builds up pace fast with a blast of heavy drums and sonic guitar play. Brings flashes of their debut and greatest album "Burn my Eyes". This leads you to the guitar quirky "Bit the Bullet" with clearer (but still ferocious) singing. "Left Unfinished" starts with a disturbing musical box piece that starts to haunt you until it is slightly spoilt by the sudden rise of riffs. The song relates the lead singer Rob Flynn's adoration for his adopted parents and utter disregard for his biological parents who left him "You never could love me, I'm glad that you never did. My parents that raised me, Had plenty of that to give".
The whispering rendition of "In The Presence Of My Enemies" and simplistic start followed by bone crushing force of "Days Turn Blue To Gray" leads you to "Vim". However, somehow the voice in "Days Turn.." seem out of place and overused. The sudden breakdown in the middle is impressive but the rest follows similar grounds. "Vim" starts of with a heavy roll of drum and continues to be dominated by drumming all the way. Overused? A very vulnerable song best left out. Long-delay guitar greats you in " All Falls Down", followed by straight onslaught with the guitar taunts coming back in between. I like those grooves.
The diatribe in "Wipe The Tears" leads you to the last track, which left me breathing for air - "Descend The Shades Of Night". This has all the making of a classic. With lyrics like:
One day I will not be here
Death she comes and with her thread
Upon me ties a mask for dead
Its tears of blood to seep
And bleed the sky.
followed by screaming, crying melodic guitar and emotional background voices, this track leaves you with the best of this album, wanting more like it.Death she comes and with her thread
Upon me ties a mask for dead
Its tears of blood to seep
And bleed the sky.
New albums to check out:
- As the Palaces Burn by Lamb of God (death/hard metal)
- Swampsong by Kalmah (thrash-tempo metal)
- Impact by Dew Scented
The Matrix Revolutions - "Rotten"
[Movies]
@ 11:13 AM
Rotten Tomaoes's Tomatometer states Revolutions is Rotten. So does these review:
"Better than 'Reloaded,' but the thrill is gone" -- Hollywood Reporter
"Slam-bang, dreary mess ... should have taken the blue pill after all" -- Slate
"What began as an interesting philosophy discussion ... has quickly degraded into pseudo-intellectual babble ... you'll be happiest if you leave your brain at the door -- DVD Talk
"'The Matrix Revolutions' is awful. It's not merely hapless or disappointing -- it's a total catastrophe, an apocalyptic waste of money and talent that obliterates its very purpose, which was to resolve the cosmological questions ... likely to leave even the target audience of stoned teenagers slack-jawed with outrage -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Slam-bang, dreary mess ... should have taken the blue pill after all" -- Slate
"What began as an interesting philosophy discussion ... has quickly degraded into pseudo-intellectual babble ... you'll be happiest if you leave your brain at the door -- DVD Talk
"'The Matrix Revolutions' is awful. It's not merely hapless or disappointing -- it's a total catastrophe, an apocalyptic waste of money and talent that obliterates its very purpose, which was to resolve the cosmological questions ... likely to leave even the target audience of stoned teenagers slack-jawed with outrage -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Personal opinion - will watch, but not in any rush to see explosions and wire flyings.
EFF's position on RIAA
[Technology]
@ 10:23 AM
There has been an interesting debate going on in Politech mailing list about EFF's call to arms against RIAA policies and methods. The latest email from Brad Templeton sums up EFF's line of thought:
Free speech and privacy are trump at the EFF.
We won't sacrifice them to solve the copyright crisis. We plan to
find solutions that don't need to sacrifice them. I hope nobody who
knows the history of the EFF would ever doubt that.
Will the solution be found overnight? I doubt it. We've been agonizing over this stuff for years. Will we be implementing it? No. We're just doing research, trying to frame the debate, looking for input.
And yes, when we see wrong solutions coming from the RIAA we're coming down on them. Should we do otherwise?
Expect ambivalent solutions here, this is not a black and white problem. Expect flaws in our proposals and everybody else's too. Come up with solutions that don't involve locking up all content and banning technologies and regulating every computer and player. We would love to see them.
Will the solution be found overnight? I doubt it. We've been agonizing over this stuff for years. Will we be implementing it? No. We're just doing research, trying to frame the debate, looking for input.
And yes, when we see wrong solutions coming from the RIAA we're coming down on them. Should we do otherwise?
Expect ambivalent solutions here, this is not a black and white problem. Expect flaws in our proposals and everybody else's too. Come up with solutions that don't involve locking up all content and banning technologies and regulating every computer and player. We would love to see them.
This is a must read for anyone who plans to attack EFF's policies and direction on the notion that they help looters loot with blatant disregards to law. What EFF is stating is that they will not stand by and watch a strategy that "involve locking up all content and banning technologies and regulating every computer and player".
Backend News Project "dies"
[Software]
@ 08:54 AM
My first project at Sourceforge, Backend News Project has died its natural death. Backendnews was my first Perl module project (NewsGrabber module) and was started in the year 2000. Its last active release was on 30th March 2002.
Please note that this project is no longer in active development. This project was started in the year 2000 when RSS, RDF and feeds were not common. Hence at that time there was rarely any tools available to support the parsing of these feeds. However, due to the recent interest in blogs and use of RSS by blogs, a lot of more capable and powerful parsers have come into the picture.
Hence this project is going into its natural death. I will keep these pages and file here just in case someone has a flash of brilliance and wants to use them for some radically new project or if they want to use bits and pieces of codes from the projects.
Hence this project is going into its natural death. I will keep these pages and file here just in case someone has a flash of brilliance and wants to use them for some radically new project or if they want to use bits and pieces of codes from the projects.
