I'm with her

Why would any guy think this would be a cool thing to do?



Woman realizes how lame her boyfriend is while thousands of fans look on.

Now How Much Would You Pay?

Stay tuned to the NBC downloads recently announced to be offered by Amazon's Unbox Service. The gist is this: NBC left iTunes over a disagreement about pricing. Episodes on iTunes go for a couple of bucks each. Apple says NBC wants 5 bucks per episode, but NBC says not quite, but rather, they want "flexibility in … pricing."

Why this is interesting is that it asks a fundamental question about the future of television: At what price convenience? And, who's convenience?

What is it worth to get a file of your favorite show? —a file you can then watch in a variety of ways, times, and places.

If you would download an episode of Heroes for 2 bucks each, would you download it for $5.? … $4.? … $3. … ?

Keep an eye on pricing, because the current episode price of TV at Unbox is also 2 bucks. According to Variety, Apple's idea is that if it were even cheaper — $1! — NBC would make up the difference in volume. And maybe cheapskates like me could watch two shows, without getting screwed over by my cable company. (oh wait, they're the ones selling me internet, too?!)

NBC is naturally affronted at the thought of giving the work of it's writers, actors, directors, lighting guys, etc for a measly dollar, but they are the 4th place network. But they also have The Office and Heroes, favorites among the downloading demographic. You know, those kids who also know full well what BitTorrent is.

To the People in the Street: Rock On!

Cindy Sheehan may have had it with the peace movement, but Marine Corps Sgt. Adam Kokesh appears to be just getting started. He and 14 others were arrested for unlawful assembly while staging a mock military funeral in the Hart Senate Office Building.

At the hearings of Alberto Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Cmte, Sgt. Kokesh editorialized silently and graphically, and with awe inspiring biceps.
Brian Haw marks time as a protest and entered his 6th year of camping in front of the Parliament building in London.
Artist Mark Wallinger brought the street to the institution by replicating Haw's signage in the marble halls of the Tate Britain after the police had carted away the protester's original installation. Wallinger's work was recenly shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize.

Last, but not least, full of rage, and not shy:
G8 protests - police car destruction attempt


thanks Crooks and Liars ; Wonkette

Go For Throttle Up: Will the Feds put a choke-hold on your CPU?

  It's worth recalling that the first computer to break the teraflop barrier, in 1997, was a behemoth assembly of 9,326 Pentium pro chips that sucked down enough electricity to power a high-rise building. Because now there is a desktop version.

Will this amount of computing power make it onto your desktop?

For a moment, let's imagine that teraflop computing on the desktop would be an enabling technology, the emergent features of which would precipitate qualitatively novel forms of communication. Urban legends of errant futurists abound, often taking the form of a noted luminary who underestimates what Joe Six-pack might do with the tamed silicon wafer. Treat them as a morsel of evidence lending an infinitesimal degree of plausibility to this hypothetical.

Among the many current uses for this league of high-performance computers are several that stand out for their security risks: nuclear weapons design simulations, and decryption, for example. Ostensibly, export controls on high-performance computers put in place by the federal government exist to keep this capability from falling into the wrong hands. There is a list of countries that Uncle Sam thinks shouldn't be sold such machines. Pakistan is on the list but Somalia is not. 

In light of the appearance of the "home-grown terrorist cell", which, like the ivory-billed woodpecker, may or may not have been sighted in the wild, how long will Uncle Sam be able to resist domestic curbs on access to high-performance computing? If a teraflop machine using as much power as a light bulb becomes affordable, the natural barriers of cost and power consumption will have disappeared, and for the first time this question will suddenly seem relevant. Given the array of surveillance programs launched after 9/11, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine this scenario. Would this amount to a further erosion of civil liberties?

One could argue a case for first-amendment protection of access to computing power. Without the means for communication, what does it matter whether there is a Constitutional right to free speech?

Electrons for Jesus

An old friend recently marshaled untold billions of electrons for the purpose of delivering this chain email:

[begin inane block-headed chain email]

Do you believe in God?

NBC this morning had a poll on this question. …
86% to keep the words, “In God We Trust” and “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
14% against.

That is a pretty 'commanding' public response. …

Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such
a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having
God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why is the world catering to this 14%?
AMEN!

If you agree pass this on, if not, simply delete.

-In God We Trust

[end inane block-headed chain email]

I was shocked and dismayed. It used to be that, in America, there was the notion that God created all people equally. Even the people that don’t believe in Him. He’s God, He doesn’t need to have an ego trip about having everyone believe in Him. So here is a chain email that characterizes the belief that God endowed each of us with the unalienable right to believe in His non-existence as something they can’t condescend to.

“Cater to”? Oh please! The Constitution protects the rights of the minority because God gave the minority the same rights as the majority and it’s not for the majority to say what those rights are. It is up to God. If you trust God you simply must not force others to proclaim the same, because that is tantamount to trying to take away a right granted by the Creator.

OK, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. IN GOD WE TRUST. Are you telling me you are a better judge of rights than God? I don’t think so.

This is the kind of thing that really gets my hackles up. Maybe the person who created it was being deliberately provocative and scored a point on my naïveté, but I know for certain that lots of people pollute their minds with these ideas, which amount to false maxims signifying intolerance and which cannot withstand even the most casual scrutiny.

Please see US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s moving explication of the tyranny of the minority at in an interview with CNN correspondent Jeffrey Toobin at this link:

http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1965499598&pt=Y

Upload and Downsize

The recently announced layoff's at NBC Universal make it clear that TV content from now on, has got to come cheap. We've seen this coming for a while, but for people making television, we must stop talking about the future of media, and accept that the future has arrived.

By "doing away with scripted programming" in prime time (8-11 pm), NBC sends a message to all of those who produce that old media. If you are among those who write it, light it, act in it, or make any kind of money from it, your jig is up.

NBC will put 700 employes on the street, and they'll be joining 400 axed by Warner Bros.,150 by Paramount, 1100 by MGM, and 650 by Disney, all within the past year. Since Disney reported a 40% jump in quarterly profits after cutting personnel, its hard to argue this is merely a lean time bound to cycle back.

I'm all for studying film history in film schools, but looking backwards is only half the picture. After screening Citizen Kane, let's take a look at some webisodes, mobisodes, and then upload to YouTube.

Empowered Thumb for Suckers

They have interactive television in the UK. Audiences send text messages (SMS) to support contestants, request music videos, express an opinion, or test their quiz smarts. This audience participation also allows a show's presenters to collect money from viewers directly, as opposed to relying solely on commercials.

While multiple time zones make it harder for this trend to fly in the US, more than 500,000 txts, at 49 cents each, were sent to "Big Brother" in a two day period last summer. NBC's "Deal or No Deal" earned enough via SMS to cover the more than $1 million prize money it offers. While voting on the internet is often free of charge, txting via phone means a participant need not leave the couch.

The strangest part of this is that many of those who text message TV shows don't even believe their messages are being counted or read by anybody. There's no verification or regulation, and some I spoke to say the videos they request never come on. It's all just a thumb charade, another illusion of the digital utopia.

Specificity

An artist told me that she was bothered by 'consumer culture', and that was what she wanted to paint - the bother. What about consumer culture bothers you so much, I asked.

She paused. She began to explain but stopped several times. It occurred to us both that the bother was something not so well understood.

Articulation requires specificity.

Do the general terms by which we describe the world and its imperfections do enough to help us fully understand our discomfort?

That thing we want to say, are we sure it's really worth saying? Exactly what is so interesting about that message we want so badly to deliver?

Are we even clear about what the message is?

Language of Self-Destruction

I saw a guy recently become invalidated by his own words. This guy has a habit of saying things he later can't remember saying. It is denial for convenience and raises the question of whether there is any value ever to saying things we may later feel the need to deny. In the case of my friend, nothing he says comes without the question of it being cancelled later.

Shakey credibility is a corrosive agent.

So is it possible to present one's self in a manner that undermines one's own presence; the function of a communication to create a hollowed out shell of meaning?

Conversely then, can language make us actual?