Archive for May, 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Lawyers Gonna Put You In The Hurt Locker
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 16, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, May 16th, 2010Makers of The Hurt Locker are causing more casualties in the War On Piracy. Didn’t they hear about the cease fire?
While the Iraq War has claimed at least 100,000 casualties, it looks like the makers of the Oscar-winning film about it are getting ready to claim another 20,000 or more. Only in this case, the lawyers will be doing all the shooting, and the casualties will be internet users like you and me who are nerdy enough to use Bittorents. It appears no-one at Voltage Pictures (the backers of Hurt Locker ) got the memo about how stupid it is to sue your customers, and so they’ve contracted US Copyright Group (who apparently didn’t get the memo about updating their vintage web site) to go after every one of the filthy pirates that swiped their movie . Don’t they know that even the MPAA has decided that Anti-piracy is passé and that it’s now to be called “content protection”? You may remember the relatively short-lived You Can Click But You Can’t Hide campaign (our parody below) by the MPAA a few years ago, which was a little different, and not nearly as insane as the practice of suing consumers en masse, which even the music industry has come to realize is absurd . Who knows when these industries will ever figure out that they’re fighting an assymetrical war (ironically, much like the one that the film is about) and that their “enemy” is the future and their inability to understand it, not the consumer. Just ask British entertainer Peter Serafinowicz, who expains in this Gawker piece why he’s going to have to sue himself for piracy. Do the Hurt Locker folks ( and me) a favor and buy their dang film through this link
He Blinded Me With Silence
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 15, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, May 15th, 2010Thomas Dolby had a tremendous impact on pop music for a few years, and then it seemed he lived up to his last name, suppressing any noise. He’s back though, with a new album called “A Map Of The Floating City”, due for release later this year.
  This is probably one of my favorite pop albums of all time. |
If you know your pop music history, you know that Thomas Dolby was – in spite of a rather short life on the mainstream charts – one of the most influential acts of the 1980′s. If you don’t know your pop music history, you’d at least know his songs She Blinded Me With Science
Sick & Tired Of The Government? Become One Yourself!
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 14, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, May 14th, 2010But you’ll still get arrested by the one you’re rejecting when you present the passport you printed on the crappy inkjet printer in your “embassy” office.
 This seal accompanies the bizarre terms of use mentioned in the article. |
Remember when you were in grade school and you would insult somebody, and say “no takebacks“, and they’d say “I’m in a no ‘no takebacks’ zone, so your ‘no takeback’ doesn’t count!” and it would perpetually escalate into an absurdly recursive game of making a rule about a rule that didn’t exist? Well, apparently some people have trouble outgrowing this behaviour. Back in March I saw this piece about a flurry of arrests in Indiana involving Sovereign Citizens, who – among other things – claimed they weren’t US citizens, but rather diplomats living in embassies, and would produce documents they’d made themselves to back it all up. I kind of wrote them off as typical rural Midwestern loonies; there are areas in just about every one of the United States where you might wanna turn down the Cat Stevens as you drive through if you don’t wanna get shot. But it turns out these people are for real, and as ginormously high-larious as their proclamations are, their deranged and misinformed logic has already caused one of the greatest tragedies on American soil, the Oklahoma City bombing. Yes, Terry Nichols, friend and accomplice of Oklahoma City Federal Building bomber Timothy McVeigh was one of them. More recently, you may have read about how the group Guardians of the Free Republics sent letters to 30 state governors demanding their resignations. Well, as my grandpa would say, “their elevators don’t seem to go to the top floor” either. Their site has a deadline of March 31 of this year for the bizarre actions they ramble about on this page. And all the pages of the site have a weird seal at the bottom that says “Private web site under non-corporate venue. This seal conveys immunity from public scrutiny, discretion, regulation or trespass. Trespassers beware. Co-claimant fee applies to impairment.” I’m sure if you stop by their embassy they’ll be glad to explain what that means. If you can find the bomb shelter it’s located in.
Life After Facebook – The Open Source Project “Diaspora”?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 13, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Yes, Facebook is beginning to show the signs of a dying culture. But does a brand that evokes images of translocated, beleaguered refugees stand a chance as a replacement?
If you’re at all in touch with the evolution of web trends, you can probably sense change in the air. One of the really great things about the web is that when something is really cool, people gravitate to it, and when it develops a high “suck quotient”, people just walk away and find the next cool thing. Google, for instance, has repeatedly done a masterful job of keeping the cool quotient just slightly ahead of the suck curve. Facebook? Not so much. The “information highway” is strewn with the debris of discarded innovation. Like the term “information highway”, for instance. And I’m confident that Facebook will soon be joining MySpace and Napster and IM and mp3.com and e-cards and a million other once-popular web doodads in that great wasteland on the web. So what’s next? Personally, I think it will still be a form of networked sharing, but someone’s going to figure out a way to make it work without constantly tinkering with it to try to monetize every user interaction. The browser you’re using to read this was free. Wikipedia is free. Your email program is probably free. So why not social networking? And by “free” I mean free of advertising. Or fees. Or freakish privacy issues. A project that’s generated considerable buzz in the tech press the last few weeks is Diaspora, an “open source Facebook”. These young developers are definitely on to something, but in spite of exposure that has reached even the New York Times and raising over 120 grand (and growing) in startup capital in just a couple of weeks, they may be missing it on a few beats. First of all, their idea requires the user to download software to connect. Maybe they can sell the idea that being a “seed” is somehow desirable, but this is the kind of territory that’s usually only broached by fairly tech-savvy users. Another biggy is the name. Do you really want a brand that references a permanently displaced and relocated collective? Who knows. Maybe it could work. One more significant hurdle is actually operating within the terms of use of all the sites (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) that they plan to integrate into their idea. Whether this particular bunch of youngsters pulls it off or not, I wish them well, because they’re at least tapping us all on the shoulder and reminding us that there were fun times before Facebook, and there will be fun times after as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Upset About The Gulf Spill? Maybe You Should Kick Your Oil Habit
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 12, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010Blaming BP for the oil spill is like a Detroit crackhead blaming the Peruvian coca farmer for his financial problems.
 BP will get all the mud slung their way, but what about YOUR part in all this? |
When I see the devastation being caused by the recent gulf oil spill, I can’t help thinking about all the people driving around in their Volvos listening to NPR and shaking their fists in anger at British Petroleum. Which to me is a lot like the Hollywood celebrity strung out on cocaine blaming the Latin American coca farmer for all his problems. I’m certainly no corporate apologist, but when there are an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil being dumped into the ocean every day, who’s really to blame? The oil company that had the accident? Or the oil addicts that demand the insane quantity of oil that is being sucked from the ground daily so that they can drive to the store for a gallon of milk whenever they feel like it? If you own a car or do any of a million things that demand this mind blowing supply of crude oil, you can hardly deny your complicity in the tragedy occurring off the Louisiana coast right now. Do you feel like you can even begin to visualize how much oil we consume in America? It’s around 378 million gallons daily. That means the daily amount flowing into the gulf is about 5% of how much we consumed that day. I can’t decide which is more apalling, the amount flowing into the ocean, or the amount flowing into our gas tanks. To make these numbers real for you, we’ve found a couple of interesting visuals. Google engineer Paul Rademacher has created an easy-to-use tool that superimposes the spill over any city you specify. See the map image below; I entered Ann Arbor, MI, but as you can see, the spill would easily engulf the entire city of Chicago. To get a picture of ongoing global consumption, there’s a handy waterfall analogy. This guy did the math, and figured out that Jog Falls in India (see clip below) flows at nearly the same rate. Just imaging black sludge instead of frothy water and you’ll get a good feel for things. And lastly, this PBS News Hour page has a “Gulf Leak Meter” that displays the spill on real time (also embedded below). Read the rest of this entry »