Pop producers are now sampling C64 MOD files

for their hits. Example: Timbaland blatantly ripped off a Finnish MOD writer for a Nelly Furtado song, and failed to give credit where it was due. (Link contains MP3s for comparison.) It wasn't just a minor sampling; pretty much the entire melody line was borrowed. How easy would it be for an average hobbyist like this guy to defend his copyright? Since copyright owners have gotten vigilant about sampling royalties, and court decisions have changed things to the point where famous albums couldn't have been produced today, perhaps they'll be opting to borrow from artists who aren't in nearly as good a position to defend their copyright claims. (Via Waxy.)

Don't buy Pop Tarts.

Happy belated New Year. Yes, I've taken a break from blogging. I intend to post more, and in more depth. However, with a couple of paper deadlines approaching, and me having to begin my search for postdoc/research positions and write a thesis, I may have less time for plunging into the random nonsense I've oft posted in the past.

Having said that, here's some random nonsense: Jenni was watching Spongebob Squarepants today, and at the commercial break I caught an ad for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts that surprised me: it was in the style of famed animator Don Herzfeldt, of "Rejected" fame. Did Herzfeldt, who has refused to do commercials for years, finally sell out, I thought? Turns out no - they shamelessly ripped him off. For shame, Kellogg's! You can find them on the plagiarists' own website; notice the site is designed in Hertzfeldt style.

"The dynamic programming matrix (Peterson, 2003), for example, was M.C.A."

Amusing: The Universal Text Imitator, which attempts to imitate the style of any arbitrary corpus of text by mere analysis of sentence structure, without any additional provided information about the documents.

More amusing: The Universal Text Imitator's output when applied to Beastie Boys lyrics.

I'm in ur b00k, stealing ur w0rdz

Caught.

Excerpt from Atonement, by Ian McEwan...

"In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut, and painted lead lotion on a bruise. But mostly she was a maid."

Excerpt from No Time For Romance by Lucilla Andrews...

"Our 'nursing' seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains."

As more and more books are transferred to electronic media and sucked up by the gigantic information vortex that is Google, it's going to become mighty easy to find plagiarism. I have a feeling we'll see a lot of this popping up in coming years, with many long-dead and long-revered authors being revealed as cheaters. (Via Slog).