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

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

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.

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

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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.

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.)

Scratchin the Streets

I just came across this and it's just cool as shit.

Scratch n Spin - eb_proxfade_400_225_web.mov @ ZippyVideos.com - Free Video Webhosting

Mr. Moore continues speaking

Read it, ya bastards

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.

'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

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.

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.

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?

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