Let me just get it out of the way: I am 100% behind the idea of a free Tibet, and I am not thrilled with China hosting the Olympics.
That being said: Stop attacking the torch carriers.
Those of you who think that attacking the runners somehow furthers your cause, or somehow makes “a statement”, shut up, sit down, and get over yourselves. People have every right to protest the torch, but there is no need to go beyond signs, banners, chanting, etc; there is absolutely no reason why you should be impeding the runners, or laying hands on them. At this point you are endangering yourself, the runner and all of the people around you.
You do realize these are innocent people, correct? You also realize this is an open flame? The worst thing I’ve seen so far was the person in Paris in a wheelchair carrying the torch and people started scuffling around the torch. What if it had fallen in their lap? Are you willing to injure someone to make a statement? A person that is more than likely not even Chinese? I know I certainly wouldn’t be willing to see that happening.
So, again I say, protest all you want, Tibet should be free, but assaulting the runners is just wrong on so many levels that it is mind boggling.
How, or why, is there any sort of correlation between my ability to place a piece of cloth around my neck, tie it in a certain way, that makes you realize I am some how worthy of doing business with you? I have not worn a tie since 1996, and I am quite happy about this; I hope never to wear one again. There are numerous ways you can still dress in a business fashion without putting that silly piece of cloth around your neck, which just makes me curious why people still do.
There is no denying that there are gorgeous ties out there, but why they are still considered proper business attire is just completely beyond me. Perhaps maybe I can prove this point by tying some other completely random piece of clothing around my neck. Do you think I can make a tube sock around the neck into a fashion statement?
Walt Mossberg, the technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, spoke to a technology conference in Finland about the future and gave what is probably the most salient breakdown of what is wrong with American broadband that I’ve heard. He talks, at first, about what consumers want from their Internet, and then at the 4:36 mark, he launches into why our Internet speeds are a global embarrassment.
When will we realize we are settling for not even “second best”, but really what is “third best”? As I’ve talked about before, instead of forging ahead, trying to bring the newest technologies to this country, we are willing to settle for DSL as a standard for “broadband” speeds.
I understand we are dealing with an amount of land mass that dwarfs countries such as Japan and Finland, but we have to get over this presumed hurdle and start to catch up with the rest of the world. Not only are we suffering from slower speeds, but insanely high prices. I am currently paying $63 a month for 8 Mbps down/ 500 Kbps up, while people in France are paying €50 ($78.50 as of today’s exchange) a month for 100 Mbps fiber optic. (Mind you that is 100 Mbps down AND up.)
I understand there are other problems in the country that are pressing such as the war in Iraq, the current/pending recession, oil prices, food prices, etc, etc, but I also understand we are not doing anything to prepare for the future of technology. We are being left in the proverbial dust as other countries surge past us in the race for Internet speed, and it is going to impact us.
Wouldn’t you like to have a speedy enough connection that you could reliably do your word processing online, saving you the expense of buying something like Microsoft Office? Wouldn’t you like to have clearer quality Skype calls, allowing you to call friends and family all over the planet for free? Cloud computing is the wave of the future that will allow us to store far less data locally, making it accessible from anywhere in the world, but if we don’t get our speeds up, we will be held back in our ability to take advantage of this. It will also hinder companies from wanting to work here if they can not get speeds and pricing comparable to what they find elsewhere, which, in turn, will impact our economy.
This issue has to be dealt with, and an election year is the perfect time to do it. I beg of you, Please make sure to contact your state Representative or Senator and express your feelings on this subject. Let your voices be heard that this does matter not only to you, but to the future of our country. If we continue to allow ourselves to languish miles behind the rest of the world for much longer, it is only going to get worse.
This is where it gets funny. As of this moment, and keeping in mind that you can not rip music from your own CDs, there is no legal way to have the music of the Beatles on your MP3 player. Yes, a deal is now in place for their music to be sold on iTunes, but it has not taken effect yet.
Credit goes to 9to5Mac for finding this. Now, I’m actually not saying the RIAA should go after him, but I do think this demonstrates just how silly this whole idea is. I certainly don’t think President Bush went on a torrent site and downloaded the songs, and probably some intern ripped the music from the President’s CD collection for him, but that just shows people don’t think twice about such an action, and in my thinking, they shouldn’t have to.
However, if the RIAA is going to make such a stink about this act, and even try to use it in court hearings, then I want to know they went after this evil-doer that has admitted publicly to having music on his iPod that could have only gotten there by illegal means. Come on RIAA… you seem to have big brass ones when it comes to picking on the common folk, you got what it takes for this case?
Basically the article talks about how bloggers are working in unsustainable circumstances, especially in the technology field, and it is leading to health problems: sleeping disorders, weight issues, possibly two deaths and a heart attack. They also point to the fact that most bloggers are paid by the piece, leading to a drive to produce as much as possible, no matter what the consequences. The article also points to other problems, such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch gaining 30 pounds since he started his site in 2005.
Essentially the entire article seems to imply we are all big quivering messes of nerves, ready to turn into pools of jelly at any given moment.
I am sure someone at the paper is patting themselves on the backs for the amount of attention this piece is attracting. As Mathew Ingram aptly points out:
Obviously, the Times has learned the first rule of getting attention from blogs: talk about blogs. The Times also seems to have learned the second lesson, which is related to blog “trolling,” namely: associate blogs or blogging with some kind of apocalyptic or otherwise incendiary statement, viz. “Blogging kills.”
I’ve gone back and forth on my feelings about this piece, but I think I am coming to a similar conclusion as Mr. Ingram: We got gamed, and we got gamed hard. The deaths of Russell Shaw, 60, and Marc Orchant, 50, while tragic, certainly do not point to some form of trend in the industry. Even the article aptly states that they can’t be sure if blogging played any factor in their passing, but it certainly did not stop them from casting a shadow over the industry as a whole.
If anything positive came out of this mess of a “news” story, it is that the payment structure of some blogs are taking advantage of their writers. While I still think a union for bloggers is a bad idea, I do think that these low paying blogs will eventually be weeded out as their employees discover there are sites that pay a fair wage, and don’t drive you to insanity. When I started doing this professionally last year, I did run into some crazy pay situations, and I accepted them because I knew I had to build up my body of work. You will, however, notice that I am down to only one paying job now, Mashable, and I am quite happy there.
The New York Times, as well as others, are now enjoying making analogies that blogging has turned into “the digital-era sweatshop”, or that what we do should be called “flogging“, a thinly veiled analogy to the days of slavery. I think both analogies, especially the sweatshop one, are horribly off base. Blogging is bigger than ever with a wealth of opportunities out there for writers, and more appearing each day. Unlike a normal job, you can switch blogs extremely easily, sometimes working for one only a matter of weeks, as I did a few times. This is not some form of indentured servitude.
As for the other accusations the article levels at us (driving ourselves to exhaustion, poor health, etc), I say this life is what you make of it. Yes, I am tired, but anyone who has known me for any length of time can you tell you that I’ve been tired since the day I was born. If anything, blogging has made me get more sleep because I know I have a tighter schedule to keep. I make sure to exercise at least every other day because I am aware I am sitting more, and I also force myself to eat better because of the schedule I keep. If anything, I think blogging has made me more health conscience. And, I’m sorry, but it’s not a bad life: during a slow moment during my shift today, I laid on the floor of my family room, in my pajamas, and let myself get ravaged by three cocker spaniels all trying to lick my face. If that’s what sweatshops are like, I think I want to work in one for the rest of my life.
I think they may have had their heart in the right place, but they went about it all wrong. We are not slaves, we don’t have whips at our backs, and this career is what you make of it. If you are working in poor conditions, more than likely you can change it if you really want to. Perhaps I have a different perspective due to my age (I am the oldest employee at Mashable), but I honestly think we’re working in a pretty exciting industry, and I hope to be doing it for quite some time to come.
Okay, no one pass out… I’m actually going to praise something.
Inifinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty 4, released four new maps for the online version of the game on Friday. After some errors with buying them (it was the fault of Xbox Live, not Infinity Ward), all was well and you could purchase the new release. Now, in the past when I’ve bought maps for other games, you have to hope enough people buy them for them to show up in normal rotation. Usually this leads to frustration, cursing and wondering why you bothered to buy the maps because not enough people got them for them to show up in the playlists.
Well, in a show of forward thinking, Infinity Ward set up special rooms just for people who bought the maps and, for this weekend only, are offering you double experience points for playing in them. All I can say is kudos to them for thinking of this very situation and I can say I’ve already gotten my monies worth out of these new arenas. And, bonus, the new maps are kick-ass. I never thought I would say, “Wow, this map is TOO big!”, but the map named “Broadcast” really is!
Take note other game makers: this is how you handle an expansion release.
Some mornings you wake up with a feeling of dread. Maybe you slept wrong, or perhaps there is a high pressure system moving in, destined to make your sinuses ache and throb. Other mornings your eyes snap open… a cold sweat trickling down your spine… you know the evil is approaching, you can feel it in your soul, and you gasp out a word or a phrase. Today was one of those days for me… I knew the evil was approaching, the end was nigh, and I muttered…
“Michael Bay”
It’s time again, time for me to cry as my beloved Transformers once again get violated by one of the most talentless hacks working in Hollywood today. News is hitting the net that Satan Michael Bay worked on the outline of Transformers 2 during the recent writer’s strike, and since that wound down, he’s handed it over to the script writers to finish for a July start of filming.
The biggest rumor is that the Constructicons, a group of six Decepticons that form together to make Devastator, will appear in this one. This is someone’s computer artwork to the right of Devastator, you can click on it to see a much bigger view, but I promise it is not an image from the movie… it’s too close to the original for Bay to work with it. It’s been long suspected these guys would appear in the second movie, so much so that fans were questioning why the mine vehicle in the first movie was named “Bonecrusher“. Originally that was the name of the bulldozer/left arm of the Constructicons, which led to people wonder why the name was used for a non-bulldozer character. As much as I dislike Bay, and we did see Bonecrusher “die”, he could always explain it away that the robot just rescanned to take on a new form, but we’ll see what he does with it.
What is worrisome is he seems to have learned nothing about too many human characters if this casting information is to be believed.
[CHUCK] 19-25 yrs., Sam’s roommate at Princeton. He runs a conspiracy theory website. Funny in an irreverent, edgy way, he is shocked to see his conspiracy theories come to life. (2nd Lead)
[U.S. MILITARY LEADER] Late 20s/early 30s, African American with a great sense of humor and a tough military presence. (Supporting lead)
[UK SPECIAL FORCES LEADER] British, in his early to mid 30s, smart and capable. Can be Caucasian, Black, East Indian. (Supporting lead)
[GALLOWAY] Early 40s-early 50s, male, National Security Advisor and presidential liaison. A curt man who is tightly wound. (Supporting Lead)
[PROFESSOR COLAN] 40s, Sam’s physics professor at Princeton. He’s a self-satisfied intellectual who compares himself to Einstein, and is arrogant enough to wear leather pants to look cool. (1 Scene)
[THERESA] Early 30s; she’s Sgt. Epps’ wife, has 4 kids, sassy and sexy, good with comedy. Submit African American actresses only
[MOMMA SIMMONS] This NY Momma is in her late 60s / early 70s. She runs a deli/ butcher shop with her son in Brooklyn. Tough and sarcastic. (1 Scene)
[MASSIVE DYNAMICS CEO] 50s, male, this Corporate CEO appears in front of congress to testify. (1 speech/scene)
[TEXAS CONGRESSMAN] 55-65 yrs., on a Congressional Committee investigating the purpose of the “Automated Defensive Initiative” developed by Massive Dynamics.
[FBI DIRECTOR] Mid 50s, male, giving a press release assuring the public they will be safe against attacks. (1 speech/scene)
[CNN REPORTER] Reporting on missile strikes and bombings in various cities. Submit male / female, all ethnicities (1 speech)
Why can’t he learn that people couldn’t care less about the humnas? Yet, here we are again with him loading up the film with superfluous humans. Do we really need Sgt. Epps’ wife? An “Automated Defensive Initiative” that has a sub-plot with congressman? Bay said in several interviews that this one would be more robot-centric… this sure doesn’t look robot-centric to me. Oh… wait, did he mean the actors’ performances? My bad.
Yesterday I posted two April Fools jokes: The knitting list and “a Muppets video“. The video was an afterthought because as the day wore on, and I saw more and more people getting “Rick Roll’d“, I decided it was an excellent opportunity to explain and discuss the idea of “Internet memes” to those readers of my site who aren’t familiar with them.
I know I have many web savy/2.0 types who come by now due to my work at Mashable, but I also have a large number of readers and friends that come by and have no clue what it is we in the tech business are talking about sometimes. As fun as working in the Internet realm can be, I think we sometimes forget that not everyone who uses the net is privy to our own brand of English we have developed, nor are they “in” on a lot of our little jokes. Last night I had to explain “Rick Roll’d” to a very good friend of mine, who also informed me she had just discovered ICanHasCheezeburger, (“I just learned about this place ..I think it’s the same place the satanic verses prophesize”) and that made it abundantly clear to me that we may be getting a bit presumptive with some of our jokes.
So, before I go further, an Internet meme is any video, image, text or hyperlink that gets passed around from person to person until they reach a point where it seems like everyone is in on the joke, with some of the leaking into mainstream entertainment. The first time I can remember a meme going mainstream was the “Dancing Baby” videos that eventually worked themselves into a recurring character on Ally McBeal in 1997. That was one of the first times I can remember thinking, “Oh crap… the Internet is going to be one of the biggest things ever…”
There have been hundreds, if not thousands of memes since the dancing baby: Numa Numa kid, Star Wars kid, Hampster Dance (this one may pre-date Dancing Baby… not sure), and on and on, but I think as of yesterday, Rick Rolling took on a whole new level. The basic concept is that you trick people into hearing, or seeing the video of, Rick Astley‘s 1987 hit song, Never Gonna Give You Up. You typically hide the video in a “blind” link, such as saying “I think this may help explain the quarterly reports better”, the person clicks the link, and it’s Mr. Astley singing away. The Muppets one I posted yesterday is a bit more devious in that it is “mashup” (a combination of two things on the Ineternet), so even though the YouTube preview shows Beeker from the Muppets, you hear him singing the song, hence, a Rick Roll.
Quickly leaking out to the offline world, Rick Rolling first appeared about a year ago, and, for reasons beyond my comprehension, has become popular at rallies against the Church of Scientology, with people playing it over boom boxes in front of church sites. What made me realize it has reached insane proportions was when YouTube set a trap for users so that whenever they clicked on a “Featured Video” on the site’s front page, they were, you guessed, it Rick Rolled. This is what made me questions the whole thing because YouTube has millions and millions of users from all over the world, different age demographics, different languages… how many people didn’t get the joke and just thought the site was screwed up?
Rick Rolling works best when people understand the joke, when they don’t, it just seems odd. This is a lot of the reason I posted the Muppets video because I knew some of you would be scratching your heads, thinking I had lost my mind. My hope is maybe the Internet will re-think things for next April 1st and pick a more universal joke than one only those of us who live our lives on the Net will get.
Today marks a new direction for my site… it’s all going to be about knitting. No more tech (unless it has to do with knitting), nothing about pop culture, no rants… all knitting, all the time. What better way to start than a list of 10 sites for knitting fanatics?
DesignsToLove.com – Dedicated to all sorts of crafts, this social network will allow you to show off your work and get inspired to do new things.
Etsy.com – Etsy is a marketplace for you to sell things you make, so if you have a talent for knitting toaster cozies, this may be the site for you to sell them on.
KnitGeekLife.com – He’s a geek, he’s a knitter… surprised aren’t you? Check out how much he’s completed of each project.
KnittingHelp.com – Well, this is unfortunate, I do a screen shot for you all, and they are jokingly changing to DentalHelp.com. How juvenile to make your blog something else for April Fool’s Day! That aside, lots of lessons here on how to knit.
KnittingNinja.com – Many examples of this woman’s knitting skills… not so many of her supposed ninja skills. I call fraud!
Ravelry.com – Proving that there is a social network for everything, Ravelry is a social network for knitting and crocheting enthusiasts. Share your work, swap patterns, get your knit on.
StraightMaleKnitter.blogspot.com – The name of this blog says it all. See his thoughts on knitting and what projects he has completed.
Let me just get it out of the way: I am 100% behind the idea of a free Tibet, and I am not thrilled with China hosting the Olympics.
I don’t get ties. I know I have whined about other formalities, such as 
I understand there are other problems in the country that are pressing such as the war in Iraq, the current/pending recession, oil prices, food prices, etc, etc, but I also understand we are not doing anything to prepare for the future of technology. We are being left in the proverbial dust as other countries surge past us in the race for Internet speed, and it is going to impact us.
In December of last year, I discussed that the 
The New York Times ran a piece this weekend entitled “
The New York Times, as well as others, are now enjoying making analogies that blogging has turned into “the digital-era sweatshop”, or that what we do should be called “
Okay, no one pass out… I’m actually going to praise something.
