Technology
Microsoft already working on Windows 8. If 7 is the new XP (in terms of popularity), does that mean 8 will be the next Vista and flop?
TWC to customers: you don't want tiers, you don't get super-fast broadband. Sounds like some sour grapes to me.
Accept the rate increase or pay a "downgrade fee"; RCN will get money from you either way. A "processing fee"? Really? That's outrageous. Honestly, all it takes to change services is some underpaid and over-stressed phone jockey typing in a few things and making a few mouse clicks. Unless things have dramatically changed there since 2001. (I worked for the company for a little over three years.)
FBI workers accused of spying on dressing room. The government spying on citizens is all over the news lately, but this is an interesting wrinkle. Two feds used surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. Clearly they had watched REVENGE OF THE NERDS one too many times.
Here's something to keep you awake at night... Cyberspies hack into U.S. fighter project.
10 years of V-Chip: utter failure. The only useful thing to ever come out the V-Chip was that it got parodied in the SOUTH PARK movie.
My Usual Griping
Big Content seeks injunction as Pirate Bay appeals verdict. The Pirate Bay guys may have been found guilty and ordered to pay up (which they say they won't) and have to do a little jail time, but their site is still going, and the corporations realize that with the site still up, they've pretty much won nothing except a victory in name alone. Couple that with the possibility of an appeal negating their court victory, and you have to imagine that makes for an unhappy plaintiff. Throwing a little more salt in that wound, you have the press finally realizing that Google can do anything the Pirate Bay did. Then there's also the grim (for the content companies at least) reality that like the mythical hydra, with filesharing sites, if you cut off one limb, more grow to take it's place. Example: Mininova surpasses 8 billion downloads as court date looms
Still it's not all gloom and doom for the content industry. They still seem to get their way... Mobile broadband providers block the Pirate Bay. I can't imagine people are too happy about the service provider deciding where they can and can't visit online.
Obama, keep filling administration with RIAA insiders. That's what the copyright holders say anyway. I honestly believe that it doesn't matter who won, that Republican or Democrat, the politicians are bought and paid for by the companies through lobbiests. You do have to laugh a bit at the irony that Obama won by appealing to the tech saavy crowd, and those are the exact sort of people who usually do filesharing. Still, I knew this was coming the second he picked Biden as a running mate. In fact, the next story provides an example of ol' Joe shilling for his Hollywood buddies...
Movie studios tout job creation. Sounds like they're publicly rolling out the propaganda machine to the lawmakers to do more for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same industry that made record profits last years (and in the years before it) to try to get some sort of bailout money. Unsurprisingly, the vice president is one of the people speaking on behalf of the MPAA.
EU states, lawmakers on Internet collision course. Basically, it looks like there's going to be a clash over the proposed and unpopular "three strikes" method of cutting off people accused of "illegal" downloading on the internet. In fact some people think this could impact the future careers in politics for some people. Could Pirate Bay verdict affect EU elections? Given the public's anger with the results of the Pirate Bay trial, it's conceivable that supporters of filesharing could vote out the politicians who are against it.
Study: Pirates buy 10 times more music than they steal. These sorts of studies come up all the time. Of course, the music biz would argue the results of that study. They're claiming that Global music sales down 8 percent in 2008: IFPI. Factor in an economy in the toilet and the reality that most of the music coming out these days is completely disposable utter shit, and why wouldn't you expect sales to be lower?
PRS copyright 'investigators' actually sales people. Read about the kind of silly nonsense these scumbag music licensing organizations try to pull on people. Especially when we all know that the musicians rarely, if ever, see a single cent of that money they bamboozle people into paying them in fear of being sued.
Entertainment
Somebody almost found a way to make me watch TWILIGHT... by MST3King it. Rifftrax TWILIGHT makes vampire angst easier to bite into. Just watching that clip, even with the old MST3K crew mocking it was painful. Seriously, I've seen better acting in local car commercials.
THE INBETWEENERS (and some other show that looks dumb) are coming to BBC America. Sure, we'll be two years behind, but for those of you who don't import DVDs from other countries or don't download TV shows, this is good news.
Ron D. Moore explains what the frak CAPRICA is with new clips. Allow me to explain, it's a shitty soap opera cash-in on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Think BSG if it was made for the CW. Bear in mind, this show wasn't originally intended to be a BSG prequel. The creator brought it to SciFi (or SyFy... gag) and they somehow brought in Moore and decided to make it related to BSG. From everything I've seen and read, the events of this show don't really add up with what we were told in BSG in terms of the origins of the Cylons.
Trademark filed for FALLOUT movie adaptation. I think FALLOUT could make for an amazing movie or series of movies. But then I remember every video game movie I've ever seen or seen parts of. I fully expect a FALLOUT movie to be utter garbage.
Video Games
Father beats 6-year-old over poor video game play. Horrible. This sounds like the kind of dad who would also beat his kid for not doing well in little league or hockey or whatever. Maybe this is the 21st century version of that. After all, I'm sure less kids play outside these days, right?
So, how much do video game composers make? $1000-2500 per minute of music. Sounds like a nice career to get into.
FALLOUT 3 delivers puppies! on May 5. New DLC missions will also include a higher cap on leveling your character (up to level 30) and make it so that you can continue to play the game after beating it.
Idiot kid tries to swap handgun for PSP at school. The kid swiped the gun from his father's collection. Way to parent! Nice job locking up the firearms! At least he wasn't there to shoot up the school. Still, this sort of thing, where kids have easy access to guns, doesn't sound all that uncommon. I'm all for the right to bear arms, but when you're not bearing them you should be locking them away where kids can't get at them. This prevents kids from shooting themselves or anybody else and also has the added benefit of preventing idiots for blaming video games for real life violence. (Of course, we still have to work on keeping guns away from criminals and the mentally disturbed.)
DEAD RISING 2's main character is named "Chuck". So yeah. That's uh... well, exciting isn't the right word. Hmmm.
Microsoft already working on Windows 8. If 7 is the new XP (in terms of popularity), does that mean 8 will be the next Vista and flop?
TWC to customers: you don't want tiers, you don't get super-fast broadband. Sounds like some sour grapes to me.
Accept the rate increase or pay a "downgrade fee"; RCN will get money from you either way. A "processing fee"? Really? That's outrageous. Honestly, all it takes to change services is some underpaid and over-stressed phone jockey typing in a few things and making a few mouse clicks. Unless things have dramatically changed there since 2001. (I worked for the company for a little over three years.)
FBI workers accused of spying on dressing room. The government spying on citizens is all over the news lately, but this is an interesting wrinkle. Two feds used surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. Clearly they had watched REVENGE OF THE NERDS one too many times.
Here's something to keep you awake at night... Cyberspies hack into U.S. fighter project.
10 years of V-Chip: utter failure. The only useful thing to ever come out the V-Chip was that it got parodied in the SOUTH PARK movie.
My Usual Griping
Big Content seeks injunction as Pirate Bay appeals verdict. The Pirate Bay guys may have been found guilty and ordered to pay up (which they say they won't) and have to do a little jail time, but their site is still going, and the corporations realize that with the site still up, they've pretty much won nothing except a victory in name alone. Couple that with the possibility of an appeal negating their court victory, and you have to imagine that makes for an unhappy plaintiff. Throwing a little more salt in that wound, you have the press finally realizing that Google can do anything the Pirate Bay did. Then there's also the grim (for the content companies at least) reality that like the mythical hydra, with filesharing sites, if you cut off one limb, more grow to take it's place. Example: Mininova surpasses 8 billion downloads as court date looms
Still it's not all gloom and doom for the content industry. They still seem to get their way... Mobile broadband providers block the Pirate Bay. I can't imagine people are too happy about the service provider deciding where they can and can't visit online.
Obama, keep filling administration with RIAA insiders. That's what the copyright holders say anyway. I honestly believe that it doesn't matter who won, that Republican or Democrat, the politicians are bought and paid for by the companies through lobbiests. You do have to laugh a bit at the irony that Obama won by appealing to the tech saavy crowd, and those are the exact sort of people who usually do filesharing. Still, I knew this was coming the second he picked Biden as a running mate. In fact, the next story provides an example of ol' Joe shilling for his Hollywood buddies...
Movie studios tout job creation. Sounds like they're publicly rolling out the propaganda machine to the lawmakers to do more for them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same industry that made record profits last years (and in the years before it) to try to get some sort of bailout money. Unsurprisingly, the vice president is one of the people speaking on behalf of the MPAA.
EU states, lawmakers on Internet collision course. Basically, it looks like there's going to be a clash over the proposed and unpopular "three strikes" method of cutting off people accused of "illegal" downloading on the internet. In fact some people think this could impact the future careers in politics for some people. Could Pirate Bay verdict affect EU elections? Given the public's anger with the results of the Pirate Bay trial, it's conceivable that supporters of filesharing could vote out the politicians who are against it.
Study: Pirates buy 10 times more music than they steal. These sorts of studies come up all the time. Of course, the music biz would argue the results of that study. They're claiming that Global music sales down 8 percent in 2008: IFPI. Factor in an economy in the toilet and the reality that most of the music coming out these days is completely disposable utter shit, and why wouldn't you expect sales to be lower?
PRS copyright 'investigators' actually sales people. Read about the kind of silly nonsense these scumbag music licensing organizations try to pull on people. Especially when we all know that the musicians rarely, if ever, see a single cent of that money they bamboozle people into paying them in fear of being sued.
Entertainment
Somebody almost found a way to make me watch TWILIGHT... by MST3King it. Rifftrax TWILIGHT makes vampire angst easier to bite into. Just watching that clip, even with the old MST3K crew mocking it was painful. Seriously, I've seen better acting in local car commercials.
THE INBETWEENERS (and some other show that looks dumb) are coming to BBC America. Sure, we'll be two years behind, but for those of you who don't import DVDs from other countries or don't download TV shows, this is good news.
Ron D. Moore explains what the frak CAPRICA is with new clips. Allow me to explain, it's a shitty soap opera cash-in on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Think BSG if it was made for the CW. Bear in mind, this show wasn't originally intended to be a BSG prequel. The creator brought it to SciFi (or SyFy... gag) and they somehow brought in Moore and decided to make it related to BSG. From everything I've seen and read, the events of this show don't really add up with what we were told in BSG in terms of the origins of the Cylons.
Trademark filed for FALLOUT movie adaptation. I think FALLOUT could make for an amazing movie or series of movies. But then I remember every video game movie I've ever seen or seen parts of. I fully expect a FALLOUT movie to be utter garbage.
Video Games
Father beats 6-year-old over poor video game play. Horrible. This sounds like the kind of dad who would also beat his kid for not doing well in little league or hockey or whatever. Maybe this is the 21st century version of that. After all, I'm sure less kids play outside these days, right?
So, how much do video game composers make? $1000-2500 per minute of music. Sounds like a nice career to get into.
FALLOUT 3 delivers puppies! on May 5. New DLC missions will also include a higher cap on leveling your character (up to level 30) and make it so that you can continue to play the game after beating it.
Idiot kid tries to swap handgun for PSP at school. The kid swiped the gun from his father's collection. Way to parent! Nice job locking up the firearms! At least he wasn't there to shoot up the school. Still, this sort of thing, where kids have easy access to guns, doesn't sound all that uncommon. I'm all for the right to bear arms, but when you're not bearing them you should be locking them away where kids can't get at them. This prevents kids from shooting themselves or anybody else and also has the added benefit of preventing idiots for blaming video games for real life violence. (Of course, we still have to work on keeping guns away from criminals and the mentally disturbed.)
DEAD RISING 2's main character is named "Chuck". So yeah. That's uh... well, exciting isn't the right word. Hmmm.
Posts
1 comments:
I live about one town over from the dressing room story. I've actually had interactions with those guys. They didn't say it in the story, but it was a team of ass-hats who work as a police force(read rent-a-cops) for the FBI grounds in West Virginia. They're nothing but assholes who wish they could be real cops,so this story doesn't surprise me that much.
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