It seems in Sweden you aren’t allowed to dislike any one for any reason, and if you do, someone will cry to the government about it.

Duncan Riley at The Inquisitr wrote up a story this weekend that is just jaw dropping in its oddness.  It seems that an 8-year-old in Sweden has set off a firestorm of controversy over his not inviting two of the kids in his class to his birthday party, while inviting the rest of the class.  The two kids were left out due to one not inviting the original boy to his birthday party, and the other because they had a falling out.

When the teacher saw that two students had been left out, she confiscated all of the invitations and informed him that since he did it during class time, it fell under Sweden’s non-discrimination laws.  According to the original BBC story, when the birthday boy’s father learned of this, he filed a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman for a ruling, and that is expected to be handed down by September.

I can see where perhaps handing out the invitations during school was a poor choice, but what do you expect from an 8-year-old?  As for it being an act of discrimination, let’s look at the Dictionary.com definition of discrimination:

1. an act or instance of discriminating.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment: She chose the colors with great discrimination.
4. Archaic. something that serves to differentiate.

Okay, yes, they did belong to a class you could say: Kids This Other Kid Hates.  Again, I can see where it would have been better not to have been done in class, because I’m sure those two kids felt bad not getting invitations, but I think the teacher’s explanation was a bit much that this incident fell under this law.  How do they handle round robin picking of teams in gym class there?  “Okay, you can’t pick any one last because that would be discrimination, so whomever you were going to pick last, pick them first… wait that won’t work either… could someone call parliment to see how we should handle this?”

That is the other thing that amazes me about this whole incident: the parliament is actually going to rule in this. Why didn’t they say, “You know, this is silly, sort it out for yourselves at the school level.” No, the parliament of Sweden is going to actually rule in what boils down to who a child can and can not invite to their birthday party. I think Mr. Riley may have said it best in his article, “We now crown Sweden as the winner of the ultimate nanny state award for 2008…and possibly all time.”

Who are these analysts, and how do I get their sweet job?

Craig Berger at FBR Research has issued a report that he expects an iPod line refresh in the near future, especially on the iPod Classic and on the iPod Touch.  This is something akin to saying, “the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.”

According to my records, for the past two years the iPods have been updated on September 12th, 2006 and September 5th, 2007.  Gee… any one thinking September again?  Maybe that’s just me.  Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, likes to do it then because then it gives time to ramp up for the holiday sales.  Well, okay, that’s my “analysis” of why he does it then.

For years now, I’ve been hearing these proclamations from “analysts” about new Apple products coming down the road.  “They’ll update the MacBook Pros this year.” er… Yeah, they will, what’s your point?  “The iPods will be getting a line refresh soon.”  Yes, they will… and the Earth will continue to rotate.  What I found amusing, and shows that they truly are guessing, is how many times they have predicted the death of the Mac Mini.

Pretty much every time an Apple event comes around, someone will say, “Well, they’re going to kill off the Mac Mini this time, and replace it with such-and-such.”  Take this post from AppleInsider on May 24th, 2007 as an example.

Ladies and gentlemen, AppleInsider believes in all sincerity that the Mac mini is dead.

True, this is an Apple blog I am quoting here, but it is just one of many examples of people thinking the Mini was dying off.  Well, funny, the Mac Mini is still here, and has even been updated in the past year.  It may very well die off, most products usually do, but it is still here, and analysts keep saying it’s doomed.  Doesn’t this tell us something about the value of their “analysis”?

Essentially analysts are doing nothing more than making educated guesses, and yet people act like it’s some sort of message from on high.  Mr. Berger’s report is burning a path across the blogosphere with people reporting on it, and I just have to scratch my head.  We all know the iPods will be updated, it’s a given, so why give so much free publicity to some guy stating the obvious?

To be honest, I think it’s a little disingenuous on the part of the analysts who make these types of predictions about Apple.  It’s almost as if they take a look at the clock on a Friday, and say to themselves, “ugh… I didn’t get any predictions out this week, I need to get an easy one out… new iPods are coming!  Brilliant… let’s go hit the bar!”  It’s a softball prediction, there’s no risk in it, and yet they are able to spin it into coverage all over the Internet because it’s about Apple.  Sure, it’s their job to make predictions, and maybe they should be thankful there is the occasional no-brainer such as this one, but it just comes across silly when it makes it out to the general public.

In short, yes, new iPods are coming, and trees will continue to produce oxygen.

On Saturdays and Sundays I put in 8 hours each day with Mashable, working on my lists for the coming week.  Since my lists are rarely time sensitive, this works out great, except for one small problem.  Have you ever tried working from home?

I admit I break the golden rule of home working in that I don’t set up a designated work area free of distractions.  I could if I really wanted to, but I used to do that here, and I don’t miss it.  It is also in a part of the house the dogs aren’t allowed in to, and I don’t want to lock them up while I go work.

However, it’s not the distractions that get me, it is the mad urge to take a nap.  It probably doesn’t help matters that I typically sit in “the comfy chair” with a warm laptop in my lap all day, because warmth is something that will put me to sleep in a nanosecond.    The thing is, I love my chair, and it really is the only chair in the house I’m comfortable in.  I’ve tried sitting in hard wooden chair when writing, and all that did was make my butt numb for an entire day.

So, how do I fight the napping urge to get my work done?  Coffee… copious amounts of coffee.  I try to get up and walk around every hour or two just to get the blood flowing.  Even with that, there are times when I’ve woken up to a depressed key and a seemingly endless row of a letter as I pressed a key in my sleep.

While I prefer working home just for comfort and ease, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world when it comes to self discipline.  What do all you readers out there do to make sure you are productive when working from home?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) group, the people responsible for regulating the rules of domain names, passed a new measure today that could either be the greatest idea ever, or the worst.

According to Times Online, people will be able to purchase pretty much any top level domain they can think of, so instead of seeing .com, you might see something like .apple or .microsoft.  This is only going to be for big corporations, though as prices will start at $100,000.  So, lets say I bought .seanpaune, and then sold the right for people to buy domains on it just like you do a .com now, those are the type of people they are looking at.

My problem with this is that up until now I knew if I needed to go to a website, all I really needed to was remember the first part of the domain name.  So long as I remembered that part, I knew the last part had to be .com, .net, .org and so on, but now I will have to remember everything.  I know this doesn’t sound major, but lets say I’m driving down a highway, and I see a billboard for a company that I am interested in.  Instead of just having to remember one word, now I also have to remember the extension, and that may not be easy while going 65 mph.

The only big success story I can think of using one of the off-shoot extensions already is Del.icio.us.  They hit on a beautiful idea by using the underused .us extension, but how many times are you going to see something like that under this new scheme?  Sure some people will try it, but most of those styles of extensions will only be good for a limited number of domains, and the person will have trouble recouping thier $100,000 investment.

It is obvious that ICANN is doing this to make more money, but I feel they have done a horrible disservice to the Internet at large with this decision.  Yes, all the good .com names are gone, but such is life, and this will only lead to a rash ever increasingly confabulated names and user confusion.  This will only serve to confuse the Web at large and possibly frustrate people to the point of not even wanting to bother with it.

Then comes the idea of how fast do you think people will rush for things like .sex, .porn and any other number of popular Internet activities such as .betting and so on.  This will also cause a problem for small companies that could easily see their name snapped up as an extension because they can’t afford a $100,000 price tag, and even in just the scenario of needing to buy thier addresses with yet another extension.  I already have several misspellings of my main domain names locked down, now I will have to worry about a possible endless wellspring of new domain extensions I may need to snap up also to protect my company name?

The better idea would have been to release a few new extensions a year, but now we will just see a flood of bizarre names, people investing in extensions and domains that will do them no good and users that are just fed up. Good job, ICANN.

I hope you all like it, because it’s here to stay for a while!  I’ll be adding little tweaks, and please let me know if you run in to any bugs/problems, but I think we got those all worked out last night.

Just as an amusig aside, I couldn’t believe how different browsers did different things to the page.  As an example, this image of the search bar shows the magnifying glass out of alignment with the rest of the line.  This problem only showed up in Safari, but not in Firefox, Flock, Internet Explorer or Opera.  It has now been fixed, but what an odd little pecurality to show up, and in Safari of all places.

Any way, long story short, I think everything is working now, just let me know if you find anything else we might have missed!

If things appear a little odd over the next 24 hours, it’s because I am finally installing a new theme on the site.  It’s been up a few times, but we keep finding little bugs.  So, just hang in there and all will be well soon… I hope!

The record industry is making me slam my head into the wall again.

Our friends at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Society of Singers, Rhythm & Blues Foundation, Recording Academy and others make up a coalition named musicFIRST.  According to David Kravets at Wired, said coalition has decided that it is time that AM and FM radio stations stop getting a free-ride of playing music without compensation to the artists.

You see, for the past 80 years, radio stations have played all of the music you hear for free.  The musicFIRST has now determined this is the equivalent of piracy due to the fact that radio stations earn advertising revenue from the music.  The radio companies claim that it is not piracy due to their playing the music acts as a promotional tool for the recording industry.  Martin Machowsky, a spokesman for musicFirst, said, “Today we gifted them a can of herring, about their argument that they provide promotional value. We think that’s a red herring. Nobody listens to the radio for the commercials.”

This issues is due to be addressed by the United States House of Represnitives, and should it pass, the new law could cost the radio industry in the neighborhood of $7 billion dollars annually.  According to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the AM-FM radio industry grosses $16 billion annually, so you are looking at nearly half of their annual revenue going to the recording industry.

If you hadn’t guessed, I’m against this.  Yes, the radio stations sell advertising and earn a revenue from the playing of the music, but it is no red herring that this is the single biggest promotional tool the recording industry has.  Why do you think bands focus so heavily on the songs they release as their singles?  They know those are what will be played on the airwaves and help sell their albums.

What gets under my skin is that the record industry obviously knows what a powerful promotional tool radio is due to the long history of “payola“.  For those unfamiliar with the term, this was a practice started in the 1950′s where DJs received bribes to play and promote certain songs by artists.  This practice was still well known to happen up through at least 2005, and I highly suspect that it still hasn’t disappeared completely.  If radio wasn’t such a useful entity to the record companies, why would they make these payouts to have certain songs played numerous times?

If radio stations are facing paying such enormous fees for the music, what makes the recording industry not think that stations won’t make tweaks to their format to lower the amount of music they play?  Changes to talk radio formats, playing of more music in the public domain, more remote broadcasts from paid sponsers, an increase in the number of ads verses number of songs played per hour and so on.

While small stations and public broadcast stations will pay a flat fee of $5,000 a year, this is still going to put a hurt on a lot of mid-sized stations.  They will either be faced with selling out to large conglomerates like Clear Channel Communications, or they will simply close their doors, lowering the number of promotional opportunities for an artist, and, in turn, lowering the amount of money the industry collects.

The system was not broken, and it certainly did not need fixing.  The recording industry can claim all day long this is about protecting the artists, but how have they survived for 80 years without this revenue stream? I don’t care how they try to disguise this, but it is just yet another move in the industries endless march of greed. They simply can not let any potential revenue stream set idle, they have to continue to milk every potential source of income they can, and damned the consquences.

This belongs in the pantheon of bad ideas, and all one can hope is that this will never make it out of committee in Congress, but there is every chance that it will.

For those who don’t know who Herb Tarlek is, he was the slimey station ad sales guy on WKRP in Cincinnati.

Message forum etiquette is one of those things that you could say seems to have disappeared over the years, but that would imply it ever existed.

Cries of “newb/n00b” whenever someone joins, insulting choices when one likes a piece of technology another member doesn’t, and on and on. Well, apparently I am not the only one who has ever found all of this to be silly as the guys over at Red Vs Blue put together a video of things you never read in forum posts.

If you don’t follow Red Vs. Blue, you won’t get a couple of those jokes (such as why the robot speaks Spanish and Caboose is… well… Caboose), but that doesn’t change that this may be the best thing ever said about the actions of people on the Internet.

As I have discussed several times before, the nastiness on the web seems to do nothing but get worse over time.  In particular, I have never understood the whole “newb” thing.  Like the people yelling about you being new to a forum weren’t also new at one time?  Were they somehow magically born with the knowledge of the forum, so they came into it knowing how to do everything?

One of the best comebacks I have heard to this was while playing an online game the other day.  Some people were mocking a “newb”, and a guy spoke up, saying to leave the new person alone.  Someone replied that they got mocked when they joined, so why shouldn’t they do it in turn?  The defender said, “Well, you know that you should mock all new people, but you don’t see me hitting my kids for not knowing how to do things.”

The newb got an apology from those mocking him.

Somehow I doubt we will ever see this age-old trend stop, but it sure would be nice.  So listen up the RvB guys… even they rant about Lost.

More teachers, more sex with students.

Christel C. Gravlin, a 33-year-old former teacher at the Lisbon Central School in New York, plead guilty in March to having a sexual encounter with a student in November 2007.  She and the 15-year-old were in a one to two week relationship, and she was charged with 3rd degree rape after telling other spectators at a high school football game about activities while drunk.

As she has been seeking counseling, the judge sentanced her to be marked as a Level 1 sexual offender, meaning she is not expected to repeat her offense.  She will serve no more than six months in prison and then follow that up with 10 years probation.

The married mother of two cited depression, alcohol, abuse of perscription drugs and pressure from the boy as her reason in a 3-page signed statement she gave when she confessed.

I certainly don’t defend her, but it is nice to see one finally confess with no fuss or muss, and just take her punishment.  Still sickens me, but at least it ended quickly.

Our second lucky contestant today is Julie Pritchett.  Ms. Pritchett, a 34-year-old married woman, was a teacher at the Clay-Chalksville Middle School in Alabama.

In February of this year, Mr. Pritchett struck up a sexual realtionship with a 15-year-old student.  It seems the teenager couldn’t satisfy her as she then used his membership on the baseball team to get her seven more lovers from amongst his teammates.

Yes… a total of 8 students.

Only two of the boys were 15, placing them under the legal age of consent in Alabama.  The other six were over the age 16, and they are refusing to cooperate with the police.  The whole scenario was revealed when one of the 15-year-olds told his parents about what was going on.  The investigation is ongoing as the police feel it is possible there may yet be undiscovered victims.  if convicted of the sexual laisons with the underage boys, she is facing up to 20 years in prison.

It was just back in March I posted about three female teachers in one day, all of them from the same general locale of Tampa, FL.  I don’t get this.  Why is it only female teachers?  Excuse my gender bias, but aren’t most jokes/worries about teachers having sex with students usually about male teachers with their female students?  I can’t remember the last time I heard of that scenario happening, is it just hidden better, or does it just never happen?  There’s no way to say for sure, but all I know is I that I don’t get it.

Why I have talked about five female in the span of three months.  Is this problem getting worse?  Is it just reported more?  Has this been happening for years, and just no one talked about it?  The idea that a teacher does this once is deplorable enough, but to do it with eight separate students is just mind-boggling to me.  At some point don’t you think you might finally say, “You know, this is really wrong of me,” instead of being all, “I am done with you, help me find another lover!”

Without knowing the details of their private lives, it is difficult to say what drove them to their actions, but does it really matter?  No, it doesn’t.  I hope they all enjoy their time in prison.

George Carlin was never one to skirt controversy, but no one can ever deny he had a profound effect on comedy.  Not many comedians could claim that one of their routines, Seven Dirty Words in Mr. Carlin’s case, was turned into a definfing case on onscenity before the Supreme Court of the United States.

At many times he was seen as nothing more than a foul-mouthed gutter comedian, but he was so much more than that.  He had an unfaltering eye for seeing faults in society.  His rant about Stuff came years before the current astronomical credit card debtthe most American households carry.

When you look at the current crop of comedians that are popular, there simply are not any that hold a candle to his ability for insight.  This is not saying that there aren’t any good comedians, they just aren’t of his level.  It may even be a disservice to call him a comedian as what he did was more of a form of social commentary with a humorous edge to it.

I’m getting very tired of writing these eulogies as I have for Bo Diddley and Stan Winston, and yes, I chose to pass on Tim Russert, though I felt that was also a great loss.  I’m tired of losing so many greats in their fields, and that is exactly what it feels like.  All of the people that have died as of late have been pioneers and masters of their crafts, and all of them have been a horrible loss to their chosen professions.

Rest in peace, George, you have earned it.  I leave you with one of my favorite routines of his, Baseball vs Football.

Why is it that older bands such as Kiss and Metallica can’t accept that the record industry is changing to finally favor the fans?

In a recent interview with AOL, Gene Simmons had some strong words for the fans of music.

“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilised. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”

Considering that Kiss has not released an album of new material in over nine years, somehow I highly doubt this has anything to do with the state of fans downloading music.  Sure does make a convenient excuse though for a drying up band, doesn’t it?

There was no direct quote for his feelings on Radiohead’s decision to release In Rainbows in a method that allowed fans to name their own price, but that is where my real bone of contention is with Mr. Simmons.  According to the above linked article, he said that this move by Radiohead was contributing to the demise of the record industry, and that his band (should they ever happen to record again – ed) would never follow suit.

I feel the correct wording of this would have been, “they are contributing to the demise of the recording industry as it once was.”  This would have been more spot on, and also less obvious of someone who has tied to the status quo.  All things in the world must grow and evolve, and it is time for the recording industry and artists to accept this.

Isn’t it interesting that the biggest detractors of the industry changing are acts such as Kiss and Metallica?   Bands that have sold tens of millions of albums?  Of course they don’t want it to change, they were able to play the system to their advantage, but what about the thousands of bands and artists that don’t have that luxury?  The bands that are getting no promotion from their labels, that still travel from gig to gig in a beat up van, lugging their own equipment around instead of an army of roadies?

Bands such as these two were once those guys, but they came in to the industry when there were less acts, and it was easier to get promotion.  There are far more acts out there nowadays, and they aren’t getting backing from their labels unless they get a huge hit, so it is up to them to promote themselves as best they can.   Yes, bands such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are successes, and they have followed this model because they see the writing on the wall.  They can either embrace the fans in the place they are most comfortable, or they can hold on to the outdated, broken method of recording and distribution and earn nothing as they do truly turn to piracy.

What these bands has done is tell their fans they understand them and their desires, and under the current recording contracts, they truly aren’t losing much by giving their albums away because they are making up for it in goodwill.  These people will feel warmer feelings towards their favorite band, new fans will be introduced because they can try their musif for free in by a legal means, and really diehard fans wills till purchase the eventual commerical releases or the special gift packs they come out with.

Sure this new method of distribution may not be the perfect solution for everyone, but with constantly declining album sales, it is obvious the old one isn’t right for anyone.  Instead of complaining about what other bands have done to “destroy” the industry, why don’t you try to find some compromise that resides between the old and the new?  Discounted CDs if purchased online?  Exclusive bonus track(s) if purchased online? Day-and-date release of material online and in retail stores, but online is sold at a significant discount due to reduced costs of production?  There are ways to have your cake and eat it to with what is going on, but apparently Mr. Simmons is just too short sighted to see it, as are most of the old guard musicians.

Is piracy good?  At it’s heart, no, but it is necessitating a change in the industry, and one that was badly needed.  People such as Gene Simmons wouldn’t have their enermous mansions and toys without the fans who supported them for years, now that is the landscape is changing, these older bands don’t want to embrace the change.  The answer is simple: evolve or die.  In the case of Kiss, I think this has already happened, someone just forgot to tell them.  (Seriously… no new album for nine years because you want to punish the music industry for changing?  Riiiiiiiiiiight… I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya if you believe that one.)

As part of the nature of the AnimeUSA business, we end up doing 26 conventions around the country each year. We go in, set up for the weekend, sell for 3 days, pack up and do it all over again.  As we currently work it, it is my parents who go out to the conventions as they both work for me, and I stay back at the office as I am the only one who knows how to work the websites.

On this particular weekend, that brought them within just a short drive of the diabolical Miss M that I mention from time-to-time here on the site.  See, this is the part about M I have not really ever pointed out to the readers of my site in that M and I have never met in person.  We met back in February of 2007 on a message board and hit it off in moments of the first time we talked.  Now, nearly a year and a half later, I actually consider M my best friend, but I tend not to discuss this because of the nature of how we met.  As if I don’t have enough strikes against me already with everyone thinking I’m a hermit!

Since they were in such close proximity to each other, M trekked over to the convention center and met up with my parents for dinner.  Mind you, M and I talk on the phone so frequently that she has talked to both of them just in the course of them answering the phone when I’m not around.  So, it wasn’t a completely cold meeting, but still odd that my parents have now met her in person while I still have not had the opportunity.

She and I have tried numerous times to meet up in person, but something inevitably gets in our way as adult responsibilities are want to do.  We think we finally have a safe date picked out for later this year, but we don’t want to jinx it, so I’ll just keep it to myself for now.

Why do I share all of this with you?  Well, I think it’s time people realize that as we live more of our lives online, that virtual friendships are going to become more common.  I have been on the Web since 1986, and have had many cyberspce only friendships over the years, but there seems to be a shift in them: while in the past they seemed to be only someone you would chat with on an aquitannce level, they seem to becoming more intense.  As we do everything online, from blogging like this, sharing videos on sites like YouTube, posting pictures on Flickr and so on, it is becomeing easier to let people become incorporated into your life, and the lines between virtual in real life friendships is blurring more and more.  All that is missing is that face-to-face element, but even that is disappearing with free video chatting capabilities being built into more applications.

Do I think will ever go completely virtual?  Of course not.  I think in 99.9% of cases, friendships forged in real life will always be tend to be stronger, but there will be the rare cases where friends made in an online environment can be as strong, if not stronger.  Sure there are chances for people to fib about themselves, be it their appearance or just making up facts about their life, but in general I think online cuts out some of the malarkey.  You don’t tend to hide as much because for the most part the person is faceless to you and it’s not worth exerting the effort to type it out.  There is also the chance to guard those parts of yourself you don’t want to share with others, but that is for everyone to judge personally if it is a positive or a negative aspect.

I will probably always prefer making friends in person, I can’t see that ever going away, but you do end up with those rare instances where you meet someone online that the only thing that really makes it different from a real life friendship is the distance.  Personally I find the distance interesting at times because it can allow you to get a taste of other cultures depending on where they are from.  I have had online friends from Mexico, England, Brazil, India, Japan and several other countries, and I have learned things about each of their cultures that I probably would have never known otherwise.  Not all of them were or are strong friendships, but it is still interesting to learn about how they view the world.  From M, I just learn how to formulate diabocal plans to take over the world… apparently it has a lot to do with designer shoes…

So what say all of you, dear readers?  Have you met any online friends you think will be life long friends?  Are they people you just “hang” with while your online?  Do you avoid talking with people online all together?  How do you say the nature of friendships changing in this digital age?

By the way, in case you were all wondering why she is simply known as “M”, well, if you were an evil genius, would you want everyone knowing your name?  Although, in her case, I know she just has managed to keep her name out of every search engine, so who am I to ruin her track record?