I watched The Thief of Baghdad this morning. It’so romantic in a cheesy, special way. Watch the best clip here. To watch it you might need the Divx MPEG4 decompressor.
29
Jul 03
Odds and ends
- Research by George Zieman gives the true reason for falling CD sales: the major labels have slashed production by 25 per cent in the past two years, he argues.
After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it’s clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite higher prices, consumers retain the CD buying habit.
- Some message boards help users find each other and set up networks. Others turn to chat rooms or recruit friends on college campuses to form a network. And even when a user finally charms his way into getting an encryption key, giving him access to a network such as Waste, other members’ identities are not revealed until they also decide they trust the newcomer, Kalanick explained. “You essentially will have to ‘socialize’ your way into a network,” Kalanick said. Kalanick said the extreme focus on security is meant to keep outsiders — and copyright lawyers — out. “RIAA may be better off penetrating al Qaeda,” he said.
29
Jul 03
Best friends forever? I think not.
- Kindergarten: Some smallish hispanic kid, always up to no good. My doberman, Inga, bit him on the face when he snuck over the fence to check out her newborn puppies. I remember when we stole some of his older brother’s porno magazines. This brother used to make fireballs come out of his mouth using hairspray.
- First Grade: Paul Link, red haired even with light reddish eye lashes. I remember he always had a flat top and identified himself as an ‘Aggie’ which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time.
- Second grade: This is cloudy.
- Third grade: My little brother, Scott. We lived out in the country so we had a lot of time to ourselves. We usually played with the Halverson’s, our next door neighbors, or the De La Rosa clan across the road. With 17 children and 16 grandchildren there was always someone to play with.
- Fourth and Fifth grade: Sheldon Sugioka. He initiated me into the world of Tron and arcades. We pretended to throw frisbees like the people in Tron. He was very stoic but also very funny.
- Sixth Grade: Daniel Rupley and then Chris Paek. Daniel was the other kid in my gym class who was exactly 4’11” and 76lbs just like me.
- Seventh and Eighth Grade: Chris Paek. We always played this game of who could think up something to top the other person’s weapon. You know, I have a knife, you have a bat until at some point someone has nuclear weapons. We also got each other suspended on the last day of school in seventh grade when I ended up pushing him into a room divider during English class and then didn’t own up to starting it.
- High school: I think in high school I was above identifying people as my best friend. Either that, or it’s too hard to figure out who beats out anyone else.
29
Jul 03
Stick it to them
Go to shows. Go to libraries. Lend and borrow books, download them, buy them second hand. Get your clothes second hand, make them, or borrow those too. Buy second hand CD’s, borrow them from friends and burn them, make mix CD’s and tapes because it’s fun and people like to get them. Download music. Make your own music. Sing to yourself. Make your own greeting cards, they’re better that way. Eat at home sometimes because it’s cheaper. Drink more water. Make iced tea and koolaid. Reuse things. Rent a movie and get a group together to watch it. Lend and borrow your movies instead of amassing your own private collections. Stop wasting your money for crap you’ll just have to move or discard later. Share everything you can. Stop paying fifty dollars for shitty video games. Share those too. There are better things to do with your money. It’s not your job to pay for someone else’s rockstar lifestyle.
29
Jul 03
RIAA cozeys up to the Republicans
The RIAA has decided to drop all pretense and has cast their lot in with the freedom-loving souls in the Republican party. Not to imply that the Democrats are any more freedom-loving or somehow above outright bribery, they are not that. It’s just that the RIAA, in their desperation to protect their failing business model, have finally realized that when you need real muscle and real action without concern for constitutionality you pay off Republicans. As Malcolm X once said, the Democrats are foxes and the Republicans are wolves. These media conglomerates are getting very antsy about people sharing music and video outside their control. The motion picture industry is watching the same thing happen to them that happened to the music industry a few years ago. Just tonight on the news program of the local Fox affiliate, I saw some anti-piracy ads featuring real people employed by the movie industry. The message was essentially “stop downloading OUR movies because you’ll make us have to lay off all these nice regular people like you”. People who download movies and music are doing themselves a favor, in some respect. After all, the point is that these people are employed with some small portion of the revenues from when regular people like me get screwed for something with an insane profit margin like music and movies. It’s just not my job to care about what happens to some guy linked to the movie industry or to try to prop up some monopolistic business because they can’t get with the times. Look at it this way, piracy is an incentive for companies to give people what they want, namely reasonably priced media or movies they can download over the internet. People are plain tired of getting caught over the barrel and are enjoying a period of consumer revolt.
The RIAA and MPAA will continue to throw money after crooked politicians and will keep trying to sue individuals in order to scare everyone else into submission, but if we all continue to burn and share and fight we can eventually defeat them. And when that happens, they will surrender and will compromise…for a time.
29
Jul 03
Keeping vampire hours
There are few things sweeter than the satisfaction of a job well done. After at least two weeks of bugging my friend, Phillip, to help me get the additional hard drive working on the modded xbox and having him put me off and procrastinate(much the way I put other people off, I should add in all fairness), I finally got off my own ass and looked up the information and did it myself even despite my preliminary fears that it would be way over my head. Well, it wasn’t. I’m so heady with the pride of my own accomplishment that I’m thinking of replacing my own brakes. Why would I even want to attempt this? A mouthy someone at work told me that brake jobs are the biggest scam around, and that it’s a job that really anyone with half a brain could do for under fifty dollars in parts. I, of course, have half a brain (give or take a few percent) and under fifty dollars.
The last time I had the front and back brakes replaced it cost me nearly $300 and considerable inconvenience. Every time I think about handing over another $300 to someone to fix a car I paid a grand for, the prospect of cashing in on my own sweat equity looks sweeter and sweeter.
28
Jul 03
The Conceited Empire
Saw this linked over on Metafilter, a good interview with historian Emmanuel Todd:
Assuming you are right: how did this budding empire slide so quickly into decline?
A rift has been developing, slowly at first and then more quickly, between the US and their various geo-political areas of interest. During the early 1970’s a deficit in the balance of trade began to open. The US assumed the role of consumer and the rest of the world took on the role of producer, in this increasingly unbalanced global process. The balance of trade went from a deficit of $100 billion in 1990 to $500 billion annually at present. This deficit has been financed through capital flowing into the US. Eventually the same effect experienced by the Spanish in 16th and 17th centuries will come to bear. As gold from the New World flooded in, the Spanish succumbed to decreasing productivity. They consumed and dissipated, lived high and beyond their means and fell into economic and technological arrears.
But America is still the leading example of economic and technological competence.
When I speak of the economy, then I mean the industrial core and the associated technological cutting edge, not the anemic New Economy. It is in the core industrial sphere that the US is falling dramatically behind. European investors lost billions in the US during the nineties, but the US economy lost an entire decade. As recently as 1990 the US was still exporting $35 billion more in advanced technology than it was importing. Now the balance of trade is negative even in this field. The US is far behind in mobile communications technology. The Finnish Nokia is four times the size of Motorola. More than half the communications satellites are being launched with European Ariane rockets. Airbus is about to surpass Boeing — the most important transportation medium for personnel traffic in the modern global economy is about to be manufactured primarily in Europe. These are the things that are ultimately important. These are by far more vital and decisive factors than a war against Iraq.
28
Jul 03
Last night’s Dream Motifs
There are few things more boring than hearing someone go on and on about their dreams, but here are some things from last night I wanted to document:
- Fighting and running from a large, fast, armored, Gamorian-guard-looking troll who tried to cripple me by throwing his sword like a ninja star at my legs. Some king or other warrior who had a sword very similar to mine except that his was somehow magically or chemically tainted or poisoned.
- I was living in a decaying luxury hotel.
- Parking in a mall parking lot (ostensibly on the run from something) with two cats who kept trying to escape the car requiring me to chase and catch them.
28
Jul 03
Glowing mice and fish
Here’s a photo of some bioenginoodled mice. They glow greenish blue. There are also glowing fish and glowing rabbits, most likely coming soon to a petstore or AllMart near you.
I’m not sure how I should feel about this. On the one hand, I rather like the idea of biological monstrosities like cute glowing fish or cows that squirt chocolate milk, but then on the other hand I don’t want to be trying to rid my rose bushes of the super-intelligent rats or dealing with sharks that can talk. I have a full plate as it is dealing with ordinary creatures, like ants (damn them) and mosquitoes (double damn them).
After all this making of ‘designer pets’, what if people get the big idea to start noodling with human beings? Wouldn’t most parents simply try to have the most attractive, intelligent, and fit genetically engineered children? Wouldn’t that just make it boring to be attractive? Maybe those in the shallow end of the gene pool are necessary so people appreciate intelligence, health, and vigor, so why mess with it? Although, no one wants to be ugly or stupid, so maybe that’s not fair. Maybe people should just not judge other people on whether they’re ugly or stupid, but that’s almost certainly unrealistic.