Monday, June 12, 2006

Clinton Library....much?

Kinda says it all dudn't it?

Friday, May 05, 2006

The Revolution will not be blogged has been blogged

Ripped Shamelessly and with pride from Pharoah Asheseti's MySpace Blog


The Revolution will not be Blogged

You will not be able to read it at home, brother.
You will not be able to log on, log in and syndicate your feed.
You will not be able to lose hours in MetaFilter and Kuro5hin,
Click on text ads for naked punk girls with online diaries,
Because the revolution will not be blogged.

The revolution will not be blogged.
The revolution will not be hosted on Blogspot or Pitas.
It will certainly not be hosted on Salon or Backwash.
The revolution will not show you digicam pics of people
You've never met before in pubs or bars looking like they've
Just stepped out of Nerd Central Station and
Eaten a few too many Ring Dings.
The revolution will not be blogged.

The revolution will not win a goddamn Web award
From the Bloggies or Webmonkey or be linked to by A-list
Bloggers like Meg Pickard or Wil "Crazy Hair" Wheaton.
The revolution will not be turned into a comedy novel.
The revolution will not comply with HTML 4.01.
The revolution will not be updated regularly in easily
Digestible chunks, because the revolution will not be blogged, brother.

There will be no half-baked diatribe about the plans
You and your lover have for the weekend or that thing
You saw on television the other day but missed half of because Nancy rang.
The Guardian will not run a special on you
Or be able to spell your name.
The revolution will not be blogged.

There will not be any little graphics from "alternative" websites
Declaring you to be Syphilis or Charlie Manson.
There will not be any little graphics from "alternative" websites
Declaring you to be a Native American Chief made of butter.
There will be no custom scripts allowing you and your friends
To talk banalities in the sidebar of your site.
There will be no webcam pics of you posing just like Madonna
So that the rich nerd perverts who visit your page can buy you things
From your Amazon wishlist.

Memepool, Daypop, Blogdex, B3ta and Fark
Will no longer be so goddamn relevant or funny, and
Women will not give a shit if Brad and Jennifer are having
a happy marriage or if Tom Cruise is a homosexual because
The good people of the world will be in the street looking for peace.
The revolution will not be blogged.

There will be nobody having nervous breakdowns while
Putting together Web applications for updating your page
Or links to pages with many hamsters dancing in unison.
The revolution will not be an all-pervasive medium for
The transmission of ideas in a timely manner on a global scale.
The revolution will not display correctly in Mozilla.

The revolution will not have banners or popups or popunders
Or those irritating graphics that take over your whole screen.
You will not have to worry about having the latest Macromedia
Flash, Macromedia Shockwave or Macromedia Goddamn plugin.
The revolution will not work at all in Opera.
The revolution will not secretly hope for a deal with Microsoft.
The revolution will not be skinnable.

The revolution will not be blogged, will not be blogged,
Will not be blogged, will not be blogged.
The revolution will be no Web diary, brothers;
The revolution will be televised.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Random idea

What would it mean if there was a day when no one was born or died. Why would that day be important. why would non one begin or end then?

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Drunken Ramble (to the tune of bueno sera by Louis Prima)

So, the world is converging into a global entity. This much we can agree on right?
No? will okay then you go now. The rest of you stay for what surely is the new world order.
The more we access our databases, our computers, our pda's etc., etc. We undergo a change.
This change pits us againt extroveriotn and introvertion. While we are able to access the far reaches of the globe,
we are doing so in more private spaces. Our information sources are connecting in ways never seen before.
Soon one thought leading to the next will lead to all the others in the same moment. What do we do then though?
When we have the mass of information, total and complete at our fingertips. Do we remember it, use it, trash it, what?
Right now, we flash feel. A moment comes up and we think about it but as the saturation of info dies down so does our interest.
I hope that soon we wake up. We wake up to this new revolution. Every piece of news and information at our whim. We can know.
what is happeneing anywhere and anytime. We can act, learn and do. What harms what when everyone knows the whole story?

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Give us your poor, your tired, your....ahhhhh forget it

Reuters has an article about the new Immigration Bill which looks to finally be...finalized. One section caught my attention.

The Senate compromise would give illegal immigrants who had been in the United States less than five years but more than two years a chance to obtain a temporary work visa. They would have to leave the country and reapply to come back. Those who had been in the country less than two years would not be legalized.


Now, I understand there is a lot about this bill I don't understand but why would it matter if a person has been here less or more than five years. Do you automatically become a citizen in the US after 5 years? I wouldn't think so but again I'm not as fully versed as I'd like to be but if you've been here longer than five years your out of luck? Seems wrong. On the flipside if you've been here less than two years your out of luck anyway.

Seems that a "guest worker" program should be based on working status, not how long you've lived here. It should be based on contribution. Being here for less than two years, even if you've worked your ass off every day still doesn't cut it? Ridiculous.

Once again we're not looking at the source of the problem, just brushing over the divots and that painting won't sell.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Whats behind the curtain?

I picked up the following article from the excellent badastronomyblog.com - and as he says, this can be and most certainly is an attack on religion, but it's a great metaphor.

I choose Door B

Pharyngula: Doors

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Quote of the Day

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could be president. Now I'm beginning to believe it."
- Clarence Darrow

Monday, March 27, 2006

Your Daily Hate Mongering

I feel like someone just shit in my mind

A Border War

...Tom Tancredo, the Republican congressman, was coming to welcome the new citizens. He was hard to miss when he breezed in, 25 minutes late, dressed in a dark suit and an American-flag necktie. Even so, few in the room recognized him until one man whispered, "He's the guy who sits on the border chasing illegals." Tancredo may not be a household name yet, but he's doing everything he can to change that. As the House and Senate debate the nation's immigration and border-security laws, the four-term Coloradan has positioned himself as the loudest, angriest voice against the estimated 11 million illegal aliens now living in the United States. They are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation," he says. He laments "the cult of multiculturalism," and worries about America's becoming a "Tower of Babel."

Read Holly Bailey's full article here

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Great Name Part 2

Velva Crownover....I presume

PS3 will be region free...

...I'm sure marketing loves the ill rhyme





PlayStation 3 to ship region free! - Engadget

Yeah yeah more video game stuff and when I'm working too. Shame for my company, great for me as I find out that the Playstation 3 will ship region-free meaning that any game purchased anywhere in the world will work on any system anywhere in the world.

In an age where DRM and licensed coding yadda yadda is the bane of all geek's Sony just made me a happy man.

Now if they can only figure out who's bulding the parts, how much it'll be and when they wanna release it.

Region-free is where it needs to go and like it or not it's where it's going. It's too easy to share anything anymore. You can slap on as much DRM as you want, someone will write a program to get around it.

Sony gets it now. They get how upset a person gets when an amazing game is only released in Japan or in Europe.

Now I can play Brian Lara's Cricket without buying a whole new system and that is good.


Video Games Rule! Part 153: Dad plays 'em more



Keeping in the video game vain as currently I am hopelessly addicted to World of Warcraft I got this uplifting article on the percentage of video game users which probably won't surprise most adults but will give their kids something to throw in their face.

World of Warcraft players need only apply





Great Wired article on how MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) are increasing our rate of learning and problem-solving.

"Ribbit" HONK!!!...."Ribbit"....HONK!!!!!



These guys are my new heroes...

With a Roomba(copyright) automated vaccum, these guys pimped it out to be bluetooth-remote controllable and set it out in the real world. Now I'm off down the sewer drain to stomp on mushroom's so I can get big enough to fight the turtle-dragon and his son's.

Personalized Music Video




This is very cool.


This is a flash based music video for Mike Milosh's You Make Me Feel. The special bit is that it will take your local weather data, time of day, position of sun in the sky, etc. and build you a personal flash music video. The song is only alright by my tastes but the idea here is great.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Great Names and Places

I came across two different patients today....


Dr. Hubert Chow, who lives on East Las Tunas Drive


And


Ms. Lida Ganja


Powered by Qumana


Monday, March 20, 2006

Instincts

"Wild animals -- when provoked -- are going to do what wild animals do, and that's protect themselves and their territory," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Officer Kat Kelley explained.

Friday, March 17, 2006

RIAA: more to chew on


Zeek @ Newsforge has put up an amazing article about who the pirates really are, us or the RIAA?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

In his article, Zeek brings up a salient point. If all the fuss is about licensing and having the proper license to view and copy a product you bought, then why does that not carry over to the new format when it is released?

A few years ago that answer was easy. The new format was genuinely new because it offered better qualty or more portability.

vinyl --- 8 track --- cassete tapes --- compact disc ---mini-disc --- online download.

Now that we are in that final stage where the quailty has reached it's zenith, we are now hearing more talk of "licensing." That when you buy a CD, what you are actually buying is the license to listen to that product. Only now we are playing our music on machinery that requires you to not buy anything. You don't put a cd in an ipod. So now their frantic. mostly because people are starting to realize they've been ripped off for years with cd's and they have stopped buying.

This is much like the oil industry where you have a large spike in the price of crude oil so your gas tank becomes much more expensive to fill. Yet when that crude oil price goes down, your gas prices does not decrease in the same ratio it had increased, it stays relatively the same. The same can be said for cd's. The manufacturing has gotten much less expensive since the early days of cd's. I think it costs less than a quarter to produce one today. Yet, the price of cd's has stayed the same. The only cheaper cd's are found in Best Buy's and Circuit City's, because their warehouse business model allows the volume of sales to supercede the per unit profit. The same is not true for smaller cd stores who still must sell them at $15.00 to $18.00 as oppose to $10.00-$13.00 at Best Buy.

They are chickens looking for their heads before all of their blood (profits) splurge away.

MPAA lambasted at SXSW


Full Article courtesy of Powazek.com

Very interesting coverage of a SXSW panel gone off-rail which reinforces what I've been thinking about lately which is the massive business failure or soon-to-be at least that is DRM (Digital Rights Management)

Brief Glimpse:

Think about this: I can go to the store and buy a five inch reflective disc that holds digital media. If that disc is a music CD, I can pop it in my computer, encode it, put it on my iPod, and listen to it whenever I like. But if that disc is a movie DVD, I cannot, even though the same iPod is perfectly capable of playing the same digital content that I own just the same. (Oh, and by the way, Apple created a billion dollar industry in legal song downloading because of this. Where's the Apple Movie Store? Ask the MPAA.)



Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Unexpected Smile

Ok, here's the thing. This video I'm linking too, at least judging from my past posts, is a little odd.

I've noticed a lot, I mean a lot of these type of videos in places like youtube and google video. Just people, usually two and asian, singing together into a camera on their computer.

As much as I want to drive a rusty icepick into my ear and spoon out my eyes, I found myself cracking a smile. There's something about the energy between the two people, it's a bit infectious. These two girls especially just have the biggest smiles on their faces.

It's all for the 15 minutes of fame of course. Something the Internet has made exponentially easier for all of us, for better, for worse.





I need throw in these guys too...

This one is just so...classic


And then there was two...



Ya gotta complete the trilogy...




I could post some more of those guys but they are just too amazing and they have too many videos to put here, check em out Here.

Entire collection of Abu Ghraib photos and videos



Abu Ghraib Files - Salon.com News

So now that Abu Ghraib is closed, does that mean it is ok to release all of this information. I think so yes. I've always believed information is power and the more information the individuals in our society has the more we'll be able to sustain that society. The idea of one man, one vote is one of our founding principles, well okay, some were 2/3 but we fixed that soon enough. If we give more information to those people who are meant to decide our leaders and our policies (through the power of voting) then they must have all the available information they can get their hands on and good information as well.

While all this doesn't really apply here per SE, it does in a figurative sense as we would not be seeing this giant collection of photos and videos had Abu Ghraib not been shut down. The powers would have stopped their release. Of course many of these photos have been published elsewhere prior to this but here in one easy to swallow article? Not likely before the closure. So now if someone asks why these weren't released prior they can just say "well, it's closed now."

Sure, you could argue the 'mob mentality' you get when you give too much information to too many people at once...

"A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
- Tommy Lee Jones, "Men In Black"

...That is something you just have to deal with though. If the mob is mad, it's because something is fucked up. Whether you agree with it or not, power comes in quantity. Quantity of information and of people. And unless more people start speaking up, start paying attention to the details, start simply caring about the entire world they live in and not just our red, white and blue bubble, nothing will ever be changed.

Mr. Moore speaks



The Beat has just posted part 1 of an interview that Heidi did with Alan Moore.

MILE HIGH COMICS presents THE BEAT at COMICON.com: A FOR ALAN, Pt. 1: The Alan Moore interview

Everytime I read his interviews or have heard him speak he always amazes me at how literate and direct in focus he is. You'll never be getting any bullshit from alan Moore. unofortunately the interview also confirmed some of my fears about V for Vendetta the film. Alan has famously removed his name from the film because of changes to the story. Basically he said they have made it less a dissection of the two polar extremes of politics "Anarchy and fascism," but have instead made it more of a look into the liberal vs. neo-conservatism fight we have today. which of course makes it more palpable or controversial I guess to audiences today but I think it cheapens the experience. it makes it less timeless and grand. Please read this interview and I'll post the follow up as the beat does. I'm such a whore.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

'Creative plumbing' delivers beer



So, you can't afford a kegerator? Just get a plumbing license and move in above a bar.

Haldis Gundersen was planning to do the washing up when she made the unusual discovery at her apartment in Kristiansund, west Norway...

Full story here courtesy of the BBC

"Pedro offers you his protection"

A teenager was shot Monday afternoon after he was arguing over tater tots with another teen...

Find out more

Monday, March 13, 2006

Think he's mad in the video?

...How about now that it's online and has been viewed by oh....1,777 people on youtube alone, just today. HAHA and if it's his own character onscreen then he's dolphin-slapping on two different levels.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Finger Break Dancing!!!

Where is this guy when he's doin this. White, non-descript architecture. Empty and a clock on the wall. Wherever it is it's no wonder he mastered this little-known yet extrmeley popular art.


Saturday, March 11, 2006

Batman Vs. joker Vs. Predator Vs.......

This short film understands Batman a lot more than some previous films did. This Joker isn't too bad either if not a bit melodramatic. The costumes as well, it feels real. Except of course for the turn in the middle there, well ya just have to see it. There's just so much in there, it's fantastic.



Bada BOOM

Video of underground atomic tests



Proper Grounding



"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."


-- Carl Sagan
From "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," Random House, 1994




Two impact craters found on Google Earth

First I see someone spotted a live burning ship and now someone has discovered two unknown Asteroid impact craters?

Now if only someone could figure out what's going on here?

weak knees

I've just had my first cigarette in a few days.
I knew I could never quit cold turkey.
I just hadn't counted on hearing the throws of passion from down the hall.
In my fit of laughing I fell off the wagon.

Woman sues Chicago hotel after being bitten by 500 'Bed Bugs'

Full story here

Mom...I'm sorry, I mean you ARE an old wife, how could I have known?

Friday, March 10, 2006

Picture(7).jpg