Unutterably Silly Avatar for zelda_pinwheel

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Bingo Zelda -- Make yer own damn T-shirts!

!!!!

[nekokami]

Hee hee hee.

[LazyScot]

Well, since NetSlut asked about The Collection, and since the explanation relates to this highly dangerous avatar practice that only Sparrow has the sense to avoid, here goes.....

<pause>

Actually, I'd better start of with MoM, otherwise you'll just accuse me of being sane, or some such slur.

Right; MoM. The Ministry of MisInformation. It's based somewhere up near Edinburgh and employs a whole bunch of creatives, generally authors from all over the country (the artists and musicians tend to end up in The Collection). Now the whole purpose of MoM is to make sure that no-one believes the truth if they ever encounter it (admitted rare, given that most media outlets one way or another come under MoM's control). One of their favourite ways, is to let everyone know about the truth in advance but call it fiction. Cunning, huh? Oh, they change a few bits here and there, but basically it’s the truth. So if someone spouts out and says so and so happened, someone will say "you just read it in a book", end of Truth.

As an example, I think Ken Macleod is a member of MoM - some of the descriptions in the Execution Channel read just like MoM, and I'm sure you can think of other stories along the same line.

Douglas Adams was another. You think the cute furry animals like cat, squirrels and meerkats are just what they appear? Nope Mr Adams was spot on with his mice – they're all conducting hideous experiments on us (actually the cats are the senior managers uniform). And the crop circles? They're the compulsory purchase orders for the hyperspace by-pass (fortunately the Men in Black are successfully challenging the planning application).

And don't think MoM is UK-only; I know the US has DoC. The Department of Confusion (though I feel it has grown somewhat and probably taken over a whole bunch of other departments). Sadly, I don't know of any of its authors…

Actually, MoM, like The Collection, has a real problem for a quango. They make a tidy profit. You have no idea how embarrassing this is for them (well, you try explaining to government accountants that you want a negative budget without getting sent to the funny farm). They've been forced to launder large amounts of money through sporting ventures, buying loss-making media companies and employing ever more authors who are not part MoM. Which tends to backfire around Edinburgh. I think the person who hired Alexander McCall Smith has been sacked (though they went on to set up a very profitable agency…).

Of course, occasionally one of their authors goes AWOL and has to be "delt with" or brought back under control before they say things or become too popular. For that, MoM has a secret prison somewhere in Edinburgh and a range of actors to replace the authors (though some of them are just too darned creative to be impersonated…). I remember hearing Ken say he was okay so long as his Blog doesn't mention cats.

Ouch. Stop poking me with that green stick. I am not off-topic, I'm just taking the scenic route… a very twisty scenic route…. Oh, alright. I'll try and be succinct.

[LazyScot]

Now where was I… Oh yes. Avatars and The Collection.

Another of MoM's authors is Charlie Stross (I wonder if he's got a warning word in his blog to show he's gotten on the wrong side of MoM. Hmmm.). His main MoM work involves his laundry novels, such as the free Down on the Farm (though I'm very worried about Halting State…). Now, the thing is that the Laundry actually exists, but it's called The Collection. And it's not mathematics that are used to invoke creatures that eat holes in your mind and take over your body. It's graphics (and, I'm pretty certain, music). And that is why the artists and musicians end up in The Collection and not MoM.

Put simply his Laundry Novels say that if you do the wrong sort of mathematics, then extreme badnesses will happen, your brains will leak out of your ears (if you are lucky), and you will be taken over by the Great Old Ones. The truth is that if you draw the wrong graphics (or music), then extreme badnesses will happen and your brains will leak out of your ears (if you are lucky) , and you will be taken over by the Great Old Ones. Have you never wondered why so many artists and musicians go mad or die young? That's why. Essentially, the pictures or sounds open up pathways in the mind that allow it to be taken over – hacked if you like (sound familiar – well both Ken and Charles talk about it in other books – see how well MoM works?). Ever felt yourself gaze at a picture and go momentarily blank – well that's how it starts.

It wasn't too bad until computers came along – the peculiarities of the pictures needed to hack into the brain seem exceptionally hard to do except on a computer (so generally photos of the real world are fine). There were a few artists in about 1000AD who got it just right – their work ended up in the possession of a now-unknown aristocrat. Actually his "collection" was as a threat (kept strangely enough, in Room 7) and it is this that The Collection can trace its roots back to.

Where was I? Oh Yes…

Real problem today is that silly spinning lines of just the right colour (and other annoying animated GIFs and MNGs can cause problems, as can certain smooth patterns (don't worry, I'm told the Collection got the Queen's early avatars in time). Fortunately a few pixels altered break the patterns, and so various bits of code are hidden in compression algorithms and filtering software to provide a degree of protection. Ever wondered just why you get such a long lag on some LCD monitors – they're the ones with the best protection schemes. And as soon as the chips for the monitors get faster, MoM and DoC have to provide more complicated algorithms for the newly discovered optical hacks. So the monitors never get any faster.

However every so often something new comes along and isn't picked up. So every picture gets scavenged and sent off to The Collection who check it out, and if necessary update all sorts of bits of software. (I bet you thought Microsoft had buggy software because they were bad. Well, okay, maybe; but it does also provide a handy route in to update the software filters on a lot of computers when a new visual brain hack is discovered.)

Actually The Collection also turns a very embarrassing profit. You see to maintain their cover they also provide a lot of graphics and design consultancy (which also helps to ensure nothing accidentally appears one morning on every advertising hoarding in the land causing everybody to do something really stupid like buy some item of rubbish or vote an idiot into power – trust me, it has happened). And The Collection are very good at graphics and design; they're always in demand. Rumour has it that once or twice, for very good causes, they have allowed very minor brain-hacking to get into the adverts. At least that's the only explanation I have for the teletubbies craze.

Where was I? Oh yes….

Now the trouble is that some of you are just too creative. A little bit of bad luck and you could unleash an avatar that would rot the brains of everyone and let "beings of exceptional nastiness" into the forum (and I'm talking about something far worse than a bunch of script-powered trolls from the planet Zog stealing all of Zelda's capital letters). Now that would really spoil the Green Ones day. Have you any idea how hard it is to clear up and eliminate a bad picture once it's on the web?

See --- all about Avatars. On topic!

Now, I don't suppose you would be willing to slow down slight on the Avatar usage?

<Looks round at a large collection of avatars that aren't here and are studiously ignoring him.>

Hmmm.. Thought not. Well, just keep looking at MySpace then.

[LazyScot]

Oh… I was going to explain about the excellence of My Space and why people should look at it for at least 30 minutes a day.

Ouch... Put down the stick, please. This is on-topic. Trust me…. No, you don't need the capital letters Zelda (no, please don't order a few more gross of them.) If I can just explain about MySpace – It's not as if I'm not asking you to like it.

Now let's start back a bit when DTP first came out (sorry, I was a lecturer once…). In those days The Collection didn't have much work to do as computers weren't so widespread (and music was pretty tightly controlled through a small number of record labels), and generally did it by looking at images and hoping for the best – Health and Safety wasn't around. It also meant that their pension plan was very good since almost no-one survived to take it out, or at least survived in any recognisable form.

Then one day an image slipped by, and well, it wasn't too bad but the Bay City Rollers had an unexpected revival. Now eventually they found out what happened. Poor young Joe (name changed to protect the insane) had looked at it, but not suffered so it was assumed to be okay. But Joe had been into SciFi fanzines and had access to some early DTP packages through the Collection – and as always happened in the early days got a little bit carried away with fonts, sizes, alignments, and so on. With the usual result of a page that was best described as challenging to look at. And he'd been doing this continuously for about 4 hours a day, every day for months on end. And basically parts of his visual cortex partially shorted out in self defence. Now it transpires that those parts are exactly the parts most of the visual hack use to take a human 1.0 over. So he'd basically he'd developed a degree of resistance. (Sadly, not enough, it was later to transpire.)

(Actually rumour has it that the music side of the Collection had tried a similar kind of "inoculation", and that's where Eurovision Song Contest came from…)

Now once the web came out, it seemed an excellent idea to try and provide a mechanism that you can play on the computer which basically damages your optical system just enough to prevent most viruses from getting a foothold. And that was how MySpace started (yup, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest for the web). The hope is, that with its incredible popularity with the young, it will provide a high degree of resistance to these hacks, and make the work of the Collection somewhat easier – or at least give them longer to catch and adapt any dangerous images…

See – I told you MySpace was a great thing – bruises up your optical system something chronic to help save your mind. (Whatdya mean, the cure is worse than the disease….)

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

Oh… I was going to explain about the excellence of My Space and why people should look at it for at least 30 minutes a day.

Ouch... Put down the stick, please. This is on-topic. Trust me…. No, you don't need the capital letters Zelda (no, please don't order a few more gross of them.) If I can just explain about MySpace – It's not as if I'm not asking you to like it.

Now let's start back a bit when DTP first came out (sorry, I was a lecturer once…). In those days The Collection didn't have much work to do as computers weren't so widespread (and music was pretty tightly controlled through a small number of record labels), and generally did it by looking at images and hoping for the best – Health and Safety wasn't around. It also meant that their pension plan was very good since almost no-one survived to take it out, or at least survived in any recognisable form.

Then one day an image slipped by, and well, it wasn't too bad but the Bay City Rollers had an unexpected revival. Now eventually they found out what happened. Poor young Joe (name changed to protect the insane) had looked at it, but not suffered so it was assumed to be okay. But Joe had been into SciFi fanzines and had access to some early DTP packages through the Collection – and as always happened in the early days got a little bit carried away with fonts, sizes, alignments, and so on. With the usual result of a page that was best described as challenging to look at. And he'd been doing this continuously for about 4 hours a day, every day for months on end. And basically parts of his visual cortex partially shorted out in self defence. Now it transpires that those parts are exactly the parts most of the visual hack use to take a human 1.0 over. So he'd basically he'd developed a degree of resistance. (Sadly, not enough, it was later to transpire.)

(Actually rumour has it that the music side of the Collection had tried a similar kind of "inoculation", and that's where Eurovision Song Contest came from…)

Now once the web came out, it seemed an excellent idea to try and provide a mechanism that you can play on the computer which basically damages your optical system just enough to prevent most viruses from getting a foothold. And that was how MySpace started (yup, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest for the web). The hope is, that with its incredible popularity with the young, it will provide a high degree of resistance to these hacks, and make the work of the Collection somewhat easier – or at least give them longer to catch and adapt any dangerous images…

See – I told you MySpace was a great thing – bruises up your optical system something chronic to help save your mind. (Whatdya mean, the cure is worse than the disease….)

I'd recommend some medications, but you'd probably think I was from MoM.

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

I'd recommend some medications, but you'd probably think I was from MoM.

Nope. You're from POOP, but that's another story.....

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

(Actually rumour has it that the music side of the Collection had tried a similar kind of "inoculation", and that's where Eurovision Song Contest came from…)

Now once the web came out, it seemed an excellent idea to try and provide a mechanism that you can play on the computer which basically damages your optical system just enough to prevent most viruses from getting a foothold. And that was how MySpace started (yup, a sort of Eurovision Song Contest for the web). The hope is, that with its incredible popularity with the young, it will provide a high degree of resistance to these hacks, and make the work of the Collection somewhat easier – or at least give them longer to catch and adapt any dangerous images…

See – I told you MySpace was a great thing – bruises up your optical system something chronic to help save your mind. (Whatdya mean, the cure is worse than the disease….)

that is actually the only credible explanation i've ever heard for either of those phenomena. thank you, lazyscot, for taking that weight off my mind. i feel a bit better now. not enough to spend any time on myspace or eurovision, of course, but it's comforting to think that they might actually have a purpose, be working toward the greater good, however obscure the method...

[nekokami]

I'm not convinced there's any justification adequate for the Telletubbies.

This reminds me slightly of one of the sub-plots of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash....

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I'm not convinced there's any justification adequate for the Telletubbies.
...

I find the Teletubbies quite scary. If ever I'm channel-hopping, and they appear, I find myself having a quick look to see what nonsense they're harping on about and, before I know it, my "quick look" has turned into "watching the end credits". It's...mesmerising (and also lots of bright shiny colours, which might explain thingOOHLOOKBRIGHTSHINYCOLOUROVERTHERE....

[Madam Broshkina]

Time for Tele By By

[RWood]

And she thought I was joking.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by RWood

And she thought I was joking.

oh, no. i believed you. however i am thrilled to see the photo. does it count as an avatar ? (say yes !)

[Patricia]

Here's one that Zelda will really appreciate.
http://books.cafepress.com/item/cook...t-hair/9666668

[Madam Broshkina]

Don't forget the dogs.