Abstract Hacktivism: The Making of a Hacker Culture Reviewed by Rob Myers, furtherfield

A book collecting two essays by Otto von Busch and Karl Palmas transforms the concept of "hacktivism" with well-argued historical analysis and a number of informative case studies.

"Hacktivism" is a cool-sounding portmanteau word combining "hacking" and "activism". Activism means political organisation and activity directed toward particular issues. Hacking can mean either "creative mastery and reworking" or "breaking and entering" of various systems, usually computer systems. The latter is more properly called "cracking". Hacktivism tend to mean cracking rather than creative hacking. This means that hacktivism usually identifies at most a negativist posture of technological resistance to socioeconomic ills. Permlink - http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=307

Big Buck Bunny. The Blender Foundation. Big Buck Bunny is the second short 3D computer animated cartoon from the Blender Foundation. The Blender Foundation produces these films to stimulate development of and promote use of their popular eponymous free software 3D modelling and rendering package.

The Foundation's first film, codenamed Orange, was "Elephants Dream". This was in the European experimental stop-frame animation tradition, a dark Gilliamesque fantasy with two men trying to escape a threatening clockwork labyrinth that may or may not really exist. The character and scenery designs were excellent, and the film as a whole was very atmospheric. The quality of the facial animation and the comprehensibility of the plot were criticized, though. And the full release of the soundtrack for the film was not Free due to being limited to noncommercial use. These minor criticisms aside, Elephants Dream was a very successful production. Permlink - http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=306