Well, this is just unfortunate news.

Variety confirmed today that Paramount has greenlighted Cloverfield 2, with plans to reunite the creative team behind the first film: Drew Goddard will write, Matt Reeves is negotiating to direct again, and J.J. Abrams will be back to produce.

As I said in my review, the film had a lot of problems, and I honestly can’t imagine how a sequel won’t be even more troubled. When you hear the Mr. Reeves talked with ComingSoon.net about one of his ideas for the follow-up, it’s even more worrisome.

CS: Any possibilities for a “Cloverfield” sequel?

Reeves: This was so fun ’cause we’d never done anything like it, and I think we’d want to find a similar challenge, to find a way to have its roots in this but be fresh and new, otherwise you’re just repeating yourself. There’s a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that’s been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy’s briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another. That idea sort of tickled me. We’ll have to see if anyone would want a sequel. If the movie does well and we find a compelling reason to do so then it would be fun to do a sequel.

Please… no. A whole movie again… from a different angle?  If you have to do this, give us a new part of the story.  Did Rob & Beth survive whatever that bomb was?  (some people speculate it wasn’t a nuke)  Where did the monster come from?  Or, here’s a WACKY idea… EXPLAIN WHY IT WAS CALLED “CLOVERFIELD”!  There are dozens of better ideas than showing us the same story from a different angle, sure, it might be fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.  (I personally lean towards the idea of a news crew… or a soldier on the ground… and how they viewed it, but 20 somethings with a camera again… no thanks)

It doesn’t have to be a “typical” movie, but let’s hope they at least exercise some sensibilities in whatever they choose to do.

U2, the world famous rock band, wants to turn all ISPs in to copyright police and have them stop all that darned piracy!

Paul McGuinness, the gentleman on the right in the picture, has been the manager of U2 since it’s inception. In other words, the man helped craft one of the biggest acts in the music business, and has probably made more money than any of us will see in our lifetime.

According to The Telegraph, while attending the Midem music industry conference in Cannes, France last week, Mr. McGuinness called for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to begin cutting off their customers who were illegally trading music over the Internet. He proposed a three strike system that would eventually result in customers being “banned” from the Internet.

The problem is that Mr. McGuinness clearly has no true understanding of how Internet file sharing works, as demonstrated by his comments. “For ISPs in general, the days of prevaricating over their responsibilities for helping protect music must end. The ISP lobbyists who say they should not have to ‘police the internet’ are living in the past – relying on outdated excuses from an earlier technological age.”

I am going to try to keep this as non-technical as I can, but this is unfortunately a fairly technical issue.BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol that is used in most piracy, is a non-centralized form of distribution, also known as a peer-to-peer system. This means that there is no one centralized server handling all of the data, it is instead done through multiple computers sending numerous packets of information. Since the packets are small, you can receive say packets “A” and “C” from one computer, and packet “B” could come from a computer in a totally different country.

Once all the packets arrive at the destination computer, the BitTorrent program on the computer will assemble them in to your completed file for you to use.

This is where the problem comes in. Peer-to-peer technology is a fabulous way for a company to distribute an immense amount of data without straining their own systems too much. The systems will use several small parts of bandwidth from numerous sources to off-set the cost to them. This is why companies like Skype, the free computer-to-computer phone service, is a peer-to-peer based system; by using this technology they are offer you the free calls as they are using unused bandwidth where possible. The problem gets bigger here as their packets of information will look similar, if not exactly the same, to a BitTorrent packet.

For an ISP to determine which packets are Skype-like, and which are BitTorrent-like would require them to do “deep packet inspections“. This is defined by WikiPedia as “a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data and/or header part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for non-protocol compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or for the purpose of collecting statistical information.”

So, even if an ISP would opt to start doing inspections, and sorting out which packets were illegal, they would then run up against net neutrality violations. Net neutrality is a concept that ISPs must treat all packets of information equally no matter what they contain. As Comcast, a popular broadband service provider is learning, when you throttle BitTorrent traffic, even though it’s mainly used for illegal reasons, it can cause the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) take notice and make you face fines up to $1.77 trillion dollars. While net neutrality is still in its infancy, what Mr. McGuinness is essentially asking the ISPs to do is something that is considered unethical to stop something else that is unethical.

He further went on in his speech, entitled “The Online Bonanza: Who is Making All The Money and Why Aren’t They Sharing It?”, to make analogies that make it even more obvious he does not grasp the way the technology he is decrying.

“If you were publishing a magazine that was advertising stolen cars, processing payments for them and arranging delivery of them you’d expect to get a visit from the police wouldn’t you?”

“What’s the difference? With a laptop, a broadband account, an MP3 player and a smartphone you can now steal all the content, music, video and literary in the world without any money going to the content owners.

“On the other hand, if you get caught stealing a laptop in the computer store or don’t pay your broadband bill there are obvious consequences. You get nicked or you get your access cut off.”

His analogy is flawed to say the least. ISPs do nothing but unlock the door to the Internet, a place that is not quite the den of crime people make it out to be, and what you do with it is your own matter. It is more akin to blaming the factory that makes the paper the magazine is printed on then the magazine itself.

A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers’ Association said “We do not support abuses of copyright and intellectual property theft. However, ISPs cannot monitor or record the type of information passed over their networks. ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope.”

In theory, yes, they could inspect every packet, but what people like Mr. McGuinness don’t seem to take into account when they make such grand statements is the expenses involved with such an undertaking. Who would pay for the new equipment? Who would pay for the man hours spent going over packet logs to see what was legit? Who would pay to monitor the violations, and the inevitable appeals by customers?

This proposal is an easy out for the music industry. There is no denying that their sales are down, but instead of looking at how the industry is structured, they want to find an outside source to blame. If things were okay inside the industry, performers such as Radiohead and Madonna would not be looking for non-traditional ways to distribute their albums.

The music industry is obviously broken, and instead of looking internally for what ails them, they find it easier to point fingers at external sources, make others (ISPs) “fix” things, and ask them to do that even it is at the cost of neutrality. Mr. McGuinness has accomplished nothing but to show his total lack of understanding of a technology that he feels is evil, and he has also accomplished making me wonder if I should ever support the band he has managed for 30 years, ever again.

I debated bringing this up as I am not one for shameless self-promotion, but no other ideas for a post are leaping out at me.  Let me give you the timeline first.

On Saturday the 26th, I wrote an article over at Mashable.com about the move to make Facebook applications available to websites via a Java Client Library.  The news had been announced late on Friday, and we followed up on it Saturday morning.

At some point (no time stamp provided) Computerworld wrote a very brief article about the news, and it was primarily made up of quotes from blogs, with quotes from my piece taking up a large amount of the piece.

On Tuesday night I got an instant message from Pete Cashmore, the owner of Mashable, asking me about my being mentioned on The New York Times website.  As I had no clue what he was talking about, my eloquent reply was, “huh?” He pointed me to this post on their website.  Apparently Computerworld has a syndicated article deal in place with The New York Times, and so this caused my name and quotes to appear on the site.

While it’s not quite as cool as an actual reporter from the paper picking up the quotes, at least I can still say I was on their site!

Computer gaming enthusiasts are an interesting lot.

Case in point was a comment I found on this post on Engadget about how people are still flocking to Windows XP, even though time is running out. One commenter mentions how he’s skipped Vista as he prefers a more stable OS to work with. He then received the following reply from another poster that said “Let me know how that works out for you when all games require DX10 in the next year or two.”

The original poster came back and stated that he doesn’t game on his computer, and there was no reply, so I imagine the issue is dead. Still, this is a common attitude I run into all over the web from computer gamers that they simply can’t comprehend how anyone can be satisfied with a computer that is anything below a top end gaming rig.

I’ve played my fair share of computer games back “in the day”: Master of Orion II, Civilization 1, 2, and 3, several Star Wars games, I loved the Mechwarrior series and so on. What stopped me was a combination of things, but namely my unwillingness to purchase a new video card every time I turned around. The games constantly expect you to be upgrading and upgrading to keep up with them, and, I’m sorry, but I’m not made of money. Mind you, this was several years ago, and from what I know of the current crop of games, it’s only gotten worse.

As I’ve gotten older (ugh), I prefer the simplicity of console gaming. Sure I have to buy a new console every few years, but when I buy a game for a specific system, I know it’s going to work. I’m not going to put it in, fire it up and be told I need a more powerful video card… or more RAM… or a new sound card… you get the picture.  I just prefer the ease of enjoyment that a console gives me over finding out I can’t buy a game because I don’t have the WillyWooly 256X Video Card with the Slushee attachment in my PC.

So, I have nothing against computer gamers, knock yourselves out, have a ball and enjoy it if that’s your hobby, but why is their this attitude that those of us who don’t are somehow lesser? I have had many conversations with one gamer in particular who just can not comprehend how I am satisfied with run-of-the-mill video cards, he can’t understand how I enjoy any games with my current computer. No matter how many times I tell him I don’t do computer games, he still doesn’t get it.

To each their own I say, just remember, now all of us are using our computers for gaming, some of us actually use them for work!… and porn… can’t forget the porn.

While playing a quick game of Halo 3 (you can see my lousy service record here) the other night before bed, I somehow ended up with seven teenagers on my team. Considering the hours I play, that was fairly odd, but no big deal. The problem was 2 of them were female, and that just made it that much more difficult to play.

See, when you stick 5 teenage boys in a “room” with 2 teenage girls, all that gets accomplished is flirting. And let me tell you, there was plenty of that! I tuned out listening to them when one boy kept insisting the girls prove they were really girls by sending him pictures of thmselves, which they refused to do. As the game progressed though, and we were getting our asses kicked, I finally started listening to them again and… they were discussing where they would like to be raped.

Yes… rape.

“I think I’d want to be raped in a hot tub!”

And I thought, “Okay, they just don’t know what the word means. It’s disgusting, but they don’t know what they’re discussing,” but then one of the two girls says, “I think I’d want to be raped in the bathroom… it’s already dirty.”

After I picked myself up off the floor, though my jaw was still down there, I couldn’t help but finally make some comments to them about it.

“DEAR GOD! Do you all know what you’re talking about?!? Rape is not something to be joked about! Wait until you get older and you’ve known people who have been raped and then see how funny you think it it is!”

To which one of the boys said, “… you’ve been raped? What was that like?”

Cue sound of me repeatedly slamming my head against my controller.

I think I have finally reached that point in my life where I have to wonder, “These kids today, what are they thinking?!?” Which, I guess officially makes me ‘old’, but I’m okay with that in this situation because I don’t think I would be mentally right to not wonder this time.

Hopefully none of these kids will ever suffer such a fate, but I certainly wish they get a clue about what it they’re saying, and soon.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve suspected the RSS feed service, Feeburner, of being on crack. As you can see from the screen shot on the right, no two days in a row show the exact same number.

• 1/19 – 37
• 1/20 – 32
• 1/21 – 35
• 1/22 – 34
• 1/23 – 39
• 1/24 – 36
• 1/25 – 30
• 1/26 – 35

I wouldn’t care so much, but back December 19th, when I set my blogging goals for this year, one of them wanted to add at least 2 readers a month to my RSS subscribers.  At the time I had 30 (approximately) readers, and I hoped to hit 54 by December, so I would kind of like a more precise idea of how I’m doing.

Does anyone have another way to measure your number of subscribers?  It’s obvious I am gaining subscribers, but it sure would be nice to know more accurately by how much.

It seems that you are no longer only responsible for your own actions, but also the actions of anyone you befriend on a social network.

School resource officer John Nohejl of the New Port Richey Police Department is under criminal investigation is under investigation by the his department and the Florida attorney general’s cyber crimes unit for providing pornography to minors. I know, what a horrible crime, right?

Want to know how he did it?

Officer Nohejl has a MySpace profile, something that was encouraged and cleared by both the school and police department, so that he could interact with the kids that he sees each day. Of his 154 friends, it seems one of them had a link on their profile to something called ‘Amateur Match Free Sex’, meaning that children could reach the porn site in just three clicks.

In a quote to the St. Petersburg Times, Sandy Copes, a spokesperson for the Attorney General, said, “I am sure the attorney general would be extremely concerned if a member of the trusted law enforcement community was either inadvertently or directly placing students at risk to being exposed to inappropriate content.” The problem is that Officer Nohejl didn’t place the kids at risk, even “inadvertently”.

In the same article, Chief Martin “Mo” Rickus said “the department will look into how the links got there and what role, if any, Nohejl played.” Um… what role he played? You mean the role he had of getting on someone else’s account and inserting a link? The chief also went on to say that “It’s unfortunate. We apologize that this happened. But it’s something that can happen on any site. We’re going to look into it and see that it doesn’t happen again.” YOU HAVE NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR!

If you go to the officer’s profile now, you’ll find the following statement:

*****DISCLAIMER: NEITHER I NOR THE NEW PORT RICHEY POLICE DEPARTMENT ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CONTENT FOUND ON OTHER MYSPACE PROFILES LINKED TO OR THAT CAN BE FOUND IN OUR FRIENDS LIST.*****

This should be the end of the story. The officer did nothing wrong, and if you read his comments from students and parents, he is obviously a loved part of the school community. As I said, he has 154 friends, is he supposed to check each friends profile daily for questionable content? Is he supposed to be now not only his own keeper, but the keeper of everyone who talks to him?

So, ready for where this story gets even odder? According to the original story I read on Wired, Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility was following the story and investigated the schools website where he found a page with links to sites for clip art. Testing their three clicks theory he checked out the sites and discovered one was now a gay porn site.

The page has since been removed from the site and the principle is “outraged”. Will there be an investigation of him now?

However you slice this, this is despicable and wrong. The officer did nothing wrong, and the stress this must be causing him is just cruel. You can NOT be held responsible for what someone else does with their social profile. Yes, it was unfortunate and embarrassing, but to launch a “criminal investigation”? Inexcusable and wrong in my opinion.
One of my followers on Twitter, sheagunther, was posting about this story yesterday, so all credit goes to him for finding it.

So… this picture hasn’t been 100% confirmed yet, but it’s looking like the picture to the left is the new Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie they’re working on. (You can click it for a MONDO-sized view) If it is the real deal (which I believe it is), they really are going for the re-imagining route. There are some large changes to the nacelles, and the primary hull (the neck down) has lots of new tweaks.

Yes, it is basically the Enterprise, but if you’re doing a prequel, why change it at all?  Take for instance the bottom of the saucer neck, that looks to be photon torpedo tubes like the ship had in all of the movies.  The TV series didn’t have that, so I’m guessing the Enterprise once had it… they cut it off for a few years… then put is back on?  Er…

Now, the pic to the right is an official shot, and 100% confirmed, of the new corridors of the Enterprise.  You have to jump through some hoops to get to it, but it does come from an official source.  (For those who can’t remember what the old corridors look like, I made a comparison shot)  Yes, it looks like JJ Abrams is going “viral” even with the marketing for Star Trek.

I don’t know why this whole concept is bothering me so much, but I just think there are certain things that should be left alone.  Yes, the original series looks dated, but so what?  It was never a show about the sets or locales, it was about good stories and characters you cared about, and the Enterprise was one of those characters.  To change something that so many people grew up with just seems wrong.  Never mind this all looks a little too much like the 5th television series, Enterprise, for my tastes.

It could also be this is coming from J.J. Abrams who just gave us the much hyped, but really pretty much sucked, monster film Cloverfield, and my view may be tainted.  I fear that Mr. Abrams is turning into the next M. Night Shyamalan where people confuse style for talent.

Only time will tell, but I’m getting less enthused by the day.

I came across the unfortunate news that The Wire is losing viewers. Why, I have no clue.

With the current writer’s strike going on, you would think people would be starved for new entertainment, and with this being the final season, you would think would be glued to it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it’s the story of life in Baltimore, MD told from multiple views: the police of Western district, the drug lords that rule there, the backstabbing politics of city hall, and the toll these lifestyles take on these people. Each season has had a different theme, and a whole new set of problems for each group of players in “the game” (as the drug lords like to call it). The name of the series comes from the constant efforts of the Major Crimes Unit always trying to stay ahead of the ways the bad guys constantly change their means of communications, and their need to find ways to intercept their talks.

HBO has a tendency to pick amazing shows (The Sopranos, Deadwood), and The Wire is no exception. The writing is superb, the acting impeccable, and the characters as rich and textured as any you have seen. Without exception, almost everyone will point to the characters of Bubbles, a drug addict, and Omar, a… wow… not sure how you’d label him, as examples of astounding characters. Even the “bad” characters have their good moments, their sense of right & wrong provides some moments of jaw dropping surprise. And, of course, the same goes with the good guys such as McNulty, a cop that has proven he will go to ANY lengths to do the right thing.

The unfortunate thing is that this show has always been like the unwanted child of the HBO family. It has struggled for renewal each season, but has always come back to even larger critical acclaim than the season before it. It has never won an Emmy, it gets very little “water cooler” chat, and, I hate to say it, but I agree with th numerous people who have said over the years that the show is just simply “too black”.

The cast is probably 90 – 95% African American, and it sadly is the only thing that makes sense as to why it doesn’t do better in the ratings and awards. It is on par, if not superior, to the vast majority of shows on television today, and it’s just sad to not see it do better.

As I said earlier, this is the last season, but don’t let that put you off from giving it a try.  Yes, they do reference past stories and events, but each season has it’s own story arc and is easily accessible to new viewers.  They’re three episodes into the fifth season, but HBO does have a habit of running marathons early on in the seasons to let people catch up.

With no new shows for at least a couple of months, now would be the perfect time to give this show a try. Find it for rent, or pick-up the season sets. You can find season 1, season 2, season 3, and season 4 on Amazon.

In a rare fit of “I have no effin’ clue what to blog about today”, I took a hint from ProBlogger, and threw the question out to my Twitter followers for a suggestion. Low and behold, I got a good one back from Leslie Carbone! Thanks Leslie!

It seems that a Ms. Candy Tistadt, the wife of a Fairfax county, Virginia school administrator’s wife, has some anger management issues. Dave Kori, a student in the schools, called the Tistadt homestead to inquire as to why the schools had not been closed when it snowed. What follows is the voicemail Mr. Kori received in return. (ETA: Gee… shocker… the video has been pulled)

So… I Guess No Snow Day Then? This 17-year-old called his principal`s home phone regarding a potential “snow day.“ He got more then he bargained for.

ADDED TRANSCRIPT:
This is Candy Tistadt, Dean Tistadt’s wife. This message is for Dave Kori. How dare you call us at home?! If you’ve got a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it. My husband was up at 4 o’clock this morning, trying to decide the best thing to do, to send you to school, on a day when the weather man is calling for one thing and another thing happens. You don’t begin to know what you are talking about, and don’t you ever call here again! My husband has been at the office since 6:30 this morning, so don’t you even suggest that he purposely didn’t answer his phone. He is out almost every single night of the week at meetings for snotty-nosed little brats, and he may not have called you but it is not because he’s home because it snowed. Get over it kid, and go to school. Get an education, that’s what you’re there for.

Okay, I’m of two minds on this… I know, you’re all shocked, so just follow along. While I have never been known for my love of public school administrations (just a couple of examples), I do think without hearing Mr. Kori’s message can we actually completely condemn her. I do feel her level of reaction was uncalled for, and I do wonder what the student thought he was doing calling over something that it was too late to do anything about, but she still went too far. In short, both sides are faulty in this, and it’s easy to condemn Ms. Tistadt, but let us not forget that Mr. Kori probably went a tad too far also.Everything she complains about her husband doing for the “snotty nosed brats”? Guess what, it’s part of being a school administrator. It’s not just an 8 AM to 3 PM job, so her husband knew what he was getting into when he took this line of work. Yes, she could have called him and explained herself in a calmer manner, no matter what Kori’s unknown side sounded like, and she could have refrained from the name calling.

Seeing as this story has been picked up by places such as WashingtonPost.com, I think it’s safe to say this man is going to have a long, long rest of the week thanks to his wife.

Well, this sucks.

Heath Ledger, star of Brokeback Mountain and the upcoming The Dark Knight, has been found dead in a Manhattan apartment.  The apparent cause of death was some form of cardiac arrest as that’s what the call came into police as at 2:27 PM EST.

Considering he was only 28, I hate to say it, but I’m calling drugs on this one.  I hope I’m wrong, I sincerely do, but seeing as pills were found in the vicinity of the bed, things don’t look hopeful for it to be anything else.

When are actors going to learn?  How many have to die in such silly, frivolous ways before they realize they are doing nothing but throwing away their lives?  Ledger was an amazing, rising talent.  His turn in Brokeback Mountain, no matter your view of the subject matter may be, was amazing.  What little of him as The Joker from The Dark Knight that has been seen looks equally genius.  He had a long and bright future ahead of him, I despise the idea he may have intentionally thrown that away with illicit drugs (there’s every chance this is a “Doctor over-medicated him” situation, so I’m not fully condemning him yet).

Only time will tell, but what a horrible loss of a young talent.

SPOILER HEAVY – Do not read if you do not wish to be spoiled. It is not a normal review in that it expects you to have seen the movie.

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