Well, it seems I’m not the only one who still thinks the drinking age needs to be lowered.

I have visited this subject twice before, but my Should the legal drinking age be lowered? post from last August sparked the most feedback.  I won’t rehash everything I said there, but I still stand by it.  There was one thing I did not take into account was the angle of binge drinking, and that is the angle that is most concerning the 129 presidents of colleges and universities who have signed a letter, known as the Amethyst Initiative, asking for the legal age to be re-examined.

This story is about a week old now, but I wanted to think on it some before I went off on it again, and I think I have an even stronger feeling now that the age should be lowered than before.  For those unfamiliar with the concept of binge drinking, this is the act of people drinking mass quantities of alcohol in a short period of time.  This has become quite popular with college students as they will have someone buy them alcohol and they drink it (commonly called “pregaming”) before they head out to clubs were they won’t be able to drink.  This leads to cases of alcohol poisoning, car accidents and all of the problems related to extreme drinking.

As I have said before I don’t get why the United States has the oldest legal drinking age in the world.  Especially in this day and age it has become a bigger and bigger joke that anyone actually thinks this age actually acts as a deterrent to people drinking to begin with.  Either you have older people buying alcohol for you or you have a fake ID, but alcohol is easily had by just about anyone who wants it.  My parents now know that I had as much alcohol as I wanted as a teen, and it was not so much as I actually wanted it as I have always enjoyed finding ways around rules and systems. As I said last year, I think most people indulge in alcohol while under age for the taboo factor.

I personally think the majority of the problem falls on parents with so many other factors in this day and age.  How many times have I talked about no one needs to tell you watch to watch on television as you have the ultimate control with your remote?  How many times have I said parents wouldn’t have to worry about sexual predators getting their children on the computer if they would simply move the computers to a common room of the house and take more responsability?  The same applies to drinking.

There is a very telling quote from a woman named Toni Chippi of Grand Blanc, MI.  While dropping off her 18-year-old daughter at Michigan State University told the Detroit News:

“They drink anyway, but I don’t think they need a ticket to drink any sooner. It just starts the problems sooner.”

That seems to be the general consensus of people that they drink anyway, but oh well, we’re legally keeping them from it.

If parents would take the time to actually talk to their children as opposed to expecting the world to safe-guard them, you would be amazed what would happen with a lot of today’s “problems”.  They aren’t problems in the traditional sense, they are problems in the sense of lazy parenting.  I always like to point to the UK law that says 16-year-olds may drink in restaurants at meals with their parents or guardians present.  Perhaps 16 is too young, but what a concept of breaking people into the world of alcohol as opposed to going, “Hey, you’re 21 now, have at it!” or, dropping your kid off at school and saying, “behave”.

So why does lowering the age appeal to so many college presidents?  It will allow them to tackle alcohol education more directly.  If the legal age is 21, their hands are pretty much tied in talking to the incoming classes of freshman who are 18 about drinking.  Wouldn’t that seem pretty silly since they aren’t technically allowed to drink?  By lowering the age you would be able to include alcohol education in the orientation information and you would also see a reduction in the number of binge drinking related problems.  The Los Angeles Times has a good list of the pros and cons of a younger drinking age, and I like it as it contradicts itself, truly showing you both sides of the argument.

Is there a perfect solution?  No.  Do I think the age should be lowered?  Well, honestly, it has already been, just not legally or safely.  You would be hard pressed to find people who have gone off to college and not picked up drinking under the age of 21.  By it being driven underground, it is being handled in an even more unsafe manner by all parties involved.

I don’t think the age will get lowered, but I certainly hope it at least gets looked at, and until someone can give me concrete reasons as to why we should have the highest legal drinking age in the world, I will continue to say that this is not only not working, but is dangerous.

Hollywood has tried turning numerous video games into movies, and most of them… well… lets be honest, most of them have sucked. Now the savior may be on its way, and its name is…

Guitar Hero: The Movie!

-commences to slamming his head against a wall-

Mind you this is in no way official yet, but according to an interview with MTV, Brett Ratner is keen to do it.  Luckily for the masses of the world, Activision, the makers of the game, don’t seem so keen on the idea.

For those of you unfamiliar with the popular gaming franchise, you play a plastic guitar and hit the corresponding colored buttons on the instrument to what you see on the screen.  The game is enermously popular, but it doesn’t exactly scream “movie plot” to me.  Ratner has an idea in mind, though:

“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

Didn’t I already see this movie?  Ah, yes, the 1989 “classic”, The Wizard, starring Fred Savage.  Not EXACTLY the same, but close enough.

Anyway, no, this is not a good idea, and thankfully Activision doesn’t want the franchise messed with.  Apparently they think a lackluster movie could possibly damage the name of the game.  Brett Ratner is a big time director though, so I’m not sure how they think the man behind the Rush Hour series and X-Men: The Last Stand could possibly make a bad movie…

Aw crap.  RUN, ACTIVISION!  RUN!

Welcome back for the seventh episode of Scattercast!

Yes, it’s another episode of just me talking, sorry folks. This week I go off about being passionate about things and explaining some of the process behind how I choose my topics for my blog and how it all relates back to my passions on various subjects. I think it’s more interesting than it sounds once you listen to it, but that’s up to all of you to judge. Let e know what you think, and leave comments about the show in general!

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

Edgar Bronfman, Jr is back.

For those unfamiliar with Edgar Bronfman, he is the CEO of Warner Music Group.  Good old Edgar and I have a long history of his amazing comments in that I have written about him numerous times,and I’ll link those as we go.

This time around, the story comes from the Chicago Tribune where Mr. Bronfman was talking about the success of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.  These games are built around playing fake instruments to music, and those songs tend to be well known.  While bands have seen an increase in sales for music included in these games, Mr. Bronfman told the Chicago Tribune the following:

“The amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small,” he said during an earnings call this month.

This is shockingly remiscent of what he said in September 2005 when he thought it would be a good idea for Apple to give music companies a cut of iPod sales because he felt the $.99 price for iTunes songs was artificially low, and everyone knew Steve Jobs couldn’t sell iPods without the licensed music.

Bronfman’s solution? Well, if Apple is “artificially” keeping the price of downloads low to promote sales of iPods (you can debate amongst yourselves whether 99 cents is artificially high or artificially low), then as he sees it, the labels should get to share in those [iPod] revenue streams.

However, back in November of 2007, while at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress conference, he said:

“We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.

How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

Mind you, that was only 10-months ago he said this, so what changed?  What do I mean?  Again from the Chicago Tribune:

Bronfman suggested that he wanted Warner to be less a supplier than a partner.

“If that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games,” he said.

So, here we are again, in the exact same type situation we were in back in 2005 when he thought it was a good idea to mess with Apple.  So it appears his solution is to threaten the video game makers with totally withholding music from them.  Does he not realize this would mean no realized income from this revenue stream?  This is exactly like the article I wrote the other day about how the industry is killing off music discovery methods over greed, and now here is yet another example of them doing the exact same thing.

When is this industry ever going to learn that their greed is doing nothing but angering the consumers, and they keep killing the golden goose that keeps laying eggs for them.  Sure, they’re making money from Pandora, but not ENOUGH.  Yes, they are making money from Rock Band, but not ENOUGH.

Mr. Bronfman said that the music industry wasn’t evolving as fast as the technology and that needs to change.  So here you have two of the biggest promotional tools going right now, and you are realizing revenue from it, but you may kill it off because it just isn’t enough.  I am sick and tired of the music industry being nothing but story after story of greed.  How they are so put upon, and everyone takes advantage of them, boo-hoo, poor them.

Well, apparently history does repeat itself, because Bronfman is sounding like a broken record.  Let him cut off the games from getting music, and your company can continue to lose money.  Oh, did I forget to mention Warner Music Group suffered a net loss of $9 million last quarter?  Yeah, good idea, threaten to cut off even more money to drive those losses even higher, good thinking!

Before I say good-bye to Mr. Bronfman before his next asinine comment calls me to his shores again like the Sirens of myth, let us not forget this is also the man who gave his kids a ‘talking to’ after he learned they were illegally downloading music.  He never did reveal what their punishment was, but I suspect it had something to do with charging them more money.

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to figure out exactly how Digg works.

For those of you unfamiliar with Digg, it is a social bookmarking site that once you add a link to it, people can vote, or “digg it”, to rank it higher.  In theory, the more diggs you get, the better chance you have your article going popular and making the front page (FP) of the site.  While just being on Digg brings you some traffic, making the front page brings you INSANE traffic.

Naturally, every blogger wants to make the front page, but it rarely happens.  To that end, people endlessly try to figure out the formula of what it takes to make it, and about the only thing most people can agree on is that it must happen in the first 24 hours your article is on the site, but beyond that, it’s a mystery.

In general the articles from this site rarely make it on to Digg at all, I think maybe 10 times total.  The one I did the best with was Anonymous Takes On Scientology, but I was fairly certain it wouldn’t make the FP.  Over on Mashable, just about everything I write gets put on Digg, and on average I make the FP once or twice a month.  Even with a good track record, I can’t figure it out.  I thought I had it down to a mix of number of Diggs with a high number of comments.  I had some with lots of diggs/low comments and they didn’t make it, and then had low diggs/high comments and they didn’t make it either, so obviously the formula was a balance.

Today a friend of mine is nearing the 24 hour mark, he has almost 300 Diggs, almost 100 comments… still not popular.  Say what?

It’s probably a good thing that bloggers can’t figure out the formula, otherwise we’d all be writing the perfect Digg articles on a daily basis and the site would be useless, but at the same time it becomes a bit depressing when you think you’re so close, and then it just never happens no matter how many of the factors you’ve hit.  Apparently I need to go back to the drawing board though as my friend’s lack of FP has totally chucked all of my theories right out the window!

So, what do you think it is?  What makes a Digg article go popular?  Throw out some funny theories if you want, because we all know that none of us have it figured out.

I know I said the other day I had Final Thoughts On The Olympics, but then you run in to a story you missed that is just jaw dropping.

A Cuban Olympian, Angel Valodia Matos, was participating in the Olympic taekwondo men’s +80-kg tournament for the Bronze medal.  He was leading 3 - 2 when a time out was called to tend to an injury on his foot.  According to the rules, participants have one minute to attend to any injuries, if this is exceeded, the match is to be awarded to the opponent. When Matos exceeded the time limit, Swedish judge Chakir Chelbat called the match for Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan.

Matos argued the call with the judge, while his coach raced out to also argue it and ended up punching the judge in the chest.  Then came the coup de grace as Matos decided to kick the judge in the head.  Other judges raced out to seperate the three men, and Matos was dragged off by staff as he continued to scream.  Within 30 minutes of the incident both Matos, who won the Gold medal at the Athens games in 2004, and his coach received lifetime bans from all World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) events.

Fidel Castro, the former President of Cuba, defended Matos in a column he wrote for a newspaper, saying that he couldn’t control himself since there had been attempted bribes of his coach.  He did not offer any further information on this aspect of the story, but it sounds fishy to me.

Remember folks: Usain Bolt was rude to celebrate too much, the Chinese gymnasts appear to have done nothing wrong… and, oh, we had an athlete kick a judge in the head?  Funny how I can’t find any comments on this from Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).  Did it somehow slip past him?

Say what you will about Usain Bolt being cocky in his win, at least he didn’t kick anyone in the head.

In a move that is sure to leave me scratching my head for days, Microsoft has partnered up the Xbox 360 gaming platform with Rock the Vote.

In a press release put out today, Microsoft revealed that as of today, users of Xbox Live will be able to take polls about the upcoming presidential election, participate in forums and… oh, how this scares me… register to vote.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for people registering to vote, and I actually went and did it the day of my 18th birthday I was so anxious to have the right.  What scares me is, and I know I will catch flames for this, is the goofballs on Xbox Live messing this up.

I’ve written a couple times this year about the intellectual titans I run into playing some of the games online, and it worries me that some of these folks, for laughs, may try to register fake people or some other way gum up the works.  I have not looked at the process yet, but I am hopeful there are multiple safeguards in place.  I asked my mother for her feelings on this since she used to be the president of the local League of Women Voters chapter, responsible for many people being registered to vote, and her reply was simply, “this troubles me.”

Hopefully this will lead to legitimate sign-ups, and hopefully it will also lead to people actually going to the polls come election day, but it still makes me a bit nervous to see it done in this fashion.  Going to the gamers is a great idea, but why not set it up around the release of a major game?  Madden ‘09 just came out with a huge push for midnight releases, wouldn’t it have made sense to set up at some stores and do it there?  Yes, there is a certain convenience factor to doing it at home, but I worry about faked names, hacked accounts and any other number of potential problems.

In my heart, I hope it is successful because I think our freedom to vote is one of the greatest things in this country, it is just the method of registration that is worrisome to me.

The Olympics are finally over, and I have a few parting thoughts on the whole thing.  (I know you’re all shocked by this.

NBC

NBC, the broadcaster of the games here in the United States has nothing to be proud of.  Yes, they had a record number of viewers, but the way this was handled doesn’t justify them crowing about it.  I’ll even ignore the fact that they white-washed everything abotu China, presenting us with nothing but fluff pieces about how warm and cuddly China is, I am sure they were mindful of censors, but it was the way they tape delayed everything.

Mind you that back in 2006 they asked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to move certain events so they would air in primetime in the USA, if things weren’t moved, they just tape delayed it.  At around 12:30 AM on August 24th, the United States men’s volleyball team was playing for the gold medal against Brazil.  This was a high profile game due to the fact that the the father-in-law of the coach had been killed early in the games by a random knifing, and his mother-in-law was seriously injured, but lived.

This became a team of great interest to Americans for the way our hearts went out to them, so of course them going for the gold against the number one rated team in the world is a big deal.  It just so happens I know someone who lives in Rio, and she instant messaged me last night when the game began so we could watch it together and root our countries on.  Except there was a small problem in that NBC chose not to show it to me live.  Instead I got to see it a full 15 hours after it had ended so that NBC could show it during prime time.

Sure, you can say they wanted to get their money’s worth out of it, but mind you Brazil was seeing it live at slightly after 2 AM their time.  That seemed to work for Brazil, why not here?  I was in Japan during the 2004 summer games, and all the events for Japan were shown live no matter what the hour.  So why is it that America can’t suck it up and show the events live?  The rights for the 2014 and 2016 games are coming up for auction soon, and according to the New York Times, ABC wants the games, and they are also promising no tape delay if they should get them.  HUZZAH!

I know some peopel will complain about the idea they don’t get to see the events in full, but from my perspective, I hate watching tape delayed sports.  I don’t like spending my day dodging results so it will be new to me.  Anytime something is done live, I think it should be showed live.  Record it if you want to watch it on your schedule, but some of us want live or nothing.  NBC also has enough netwworks to their name they could have a tape delay channel for those who want it, but I for one want live.  Like the opening and closing ceremonies ran a full half-day late here, I just didn’t care by the time they aired because I had seen so much online just from my normal surfing around.

You have two years to the 2010 winter games, NBC… shape up.

The IOC

The IOC has been slow to respond to criticisms that some of the Chinese female gymnasts appear to have been under the eligible age of 16.

While the Chinese government continues to state that the girls were of legal age, pretty much anyone with working eyeballs could see that a few of them were clearly under the age of 16.  While the paperwork for the girls supports this, past registries for other events show specifically that gymnast He Kexin was born on January 1st, 1994, meaning she was not of the correct age to participate this year.  According to the International Herald Tribune, after these descripancies were brought to light, the sources of the information have either been blocked or altered.

So how does one determine the age of someone if the paperwork, which is easily altered, says another thing.  The answer, dear friends, is as easy as an x-ray.  The Los Angeles Times ran a piece on this the other day, and it truly is as easy as x-raying a few bones and they can tell by growth how ole the patient is.  Since the IOC has numerous drug testing requirements, why should x-raying be such a problem?  The answer is simple, it shouldn’t be a problem, and I can’t believe they haven’t asked for this yet.

In my personal opinion, yes, the girls were underage and China cheated, end of story.

What really got my ire up about this whole thing is that Jacques Rogge, head of the IOC, seems more disturbed by a little showboating by Jamician sprinter Usain Bolt than he is by the Chinese possibly cheating.  He said that he felt Bolt should show more respect for his fellow athletes, comments he reaffirmed when he spoke with the Inquirer, “I gave Usain Bolt what I believe is fatherly advice. I stand by what I said.”  He went on to add, “but I repeat what I said - he should show more respect for his opponents. I also said he was a young man of 22, and he has time to mature.”

Well, I have some ‘fatherly advice’ for Mr. Rogge, do not choose Communist countries to host your games, and you may not have issues such as this one with the gymnasts.  Obviously there is a certain embarrassment factor by having to confront your host country about a potential cheating scandal, but get over it, and get with it. Don’t worry about a showboating 22-year-old when there were even more egregious incidents throughout the entire game by many other athletes, some who didn’t even go on to win.  Bolt is fast, he will mature, drop it and look at the more serious issues.

The IOC has spent years now fighting doping scandals, and now it would appear it is time to fight age issues.  Figure out a policy and get it enacted now so this won’t ever have to come up again.

In Closing…

I am sure some of you thought this part wouldn’t come, but here it is.  The Olympics are coming to a crossroads I believe.  Are they a world-unifying force for peace, or are they insanely large business with billions of dollars floating around?  I think the unification factor happens in spite of the business side of things, but the corporate side is getting bigger, meaner and seemingly a whole lot less considerate of what goes on around it.

While I still watched the entirety of the games, I was not thrilled with the location, and when NBC decided to do their fluff pieces about the wonders of the country, it only served to sicken me.  Instead of doing things you knew the censors would let through, just don’t do the fluff pieces at all.  Trying to give a warm & fuzzy spin to a country that everyone knows violates human rights on a whim was just nauseating, and that blame falls squarely to NBC.

The IOC needs to get its priorities straight, and fast.  You handed out 100,000 condoms this year, so obviously you care about pregnancy and STD scandals at the games the sexual health of your athletes, so why not the morality of cheating, no matter what form it takes?

I am sure I will be watching the 2010 winter games, but I sure hope to see some changes made.

Barack Obama’s team needs to learn some manners.

Yesterday I was told by one of the editors at Mashable that I should do a list of resources about Obama’s pick for Vice President as soon as the name was released.  As it was coming via text message, I headed over to his site to sign up for text alerts, got set up and waited.

Now, the deal was that people on Obama’s text list were supposed to hear the news first on Friday, with the two people making an appearance on Saturday together.  As the day progressed it came out that he was going to hold the text until sometime on Saturday.  I took myself off alert, and went about my normal day.  My gut feeling was we would see the text around 12 PM EST so that it would be 9 AM PST.  That way they could minimize the number of people they woke up, and nobody likes to be worken up.

… that was a nice dream.

Aug 23, 2008 3:42:42 AM
Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.  Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!

I would like to know what idiot in his campaign felt it was a good idea to text people at 3:42 AM.  There is nothing wrong with using text messaging technology to get the word out, but you can at least be somewhat considerate of that time you send them out.

I spoke in the latest episode of Scattercast about how I plan to never discuss my personal politics on this blog, and this has nothing to do with whom I am supporting for President this year, this has everything to do with common courtesy.  I value you my sleep, and I don’t appreciate being woken up.  True, I signed up for the text messaging list so I would get the news and get to work on my project, but I certainly never thought it would come through at some insane hour when normal people are sleeping.

While I certainly don’t think Mr. Obama was standing next to some technician, looking at his watch and going, “NOW!  SEND IT NOW!”.  I think he may need to say to his team, “Hey, guys?  When trying to connect with the common people, you know, one of my major campaign slogans?  Try to not send them text essages at hours that might, oh, you know, wake them up and cause them to get pissed off and blog about it.”

Bad move, folks.  I didn’t appreciate it, and while it won’t factor into my voting, it is a small thing in the grander scheme of things, but it certainly did not endear you to me.

Welcome back for the sixth episode of Scattercast!

Just one subject this week, and it’s all about where I get inspiration. I ramble a bit, but it stays mainly on the focus of how I get inspired to write so many blog posts a week. Here, StarterTech or Mashable, all of those stories have to be inspired somehow! Oh… and some random Olympics and Scientology thoughts.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

Found a great article on Mental_Floss yesterday that talked about twelve sports that used to be Olympic sports, but have been removed over the years for various reasons.

As we’ve been watching the summer Olympics this year, my family and I have been commenting on some of the sports that are seemingly missing from the games, but yet we get things like race walking.  (my hips hurt after just watching these people for five seconds)  While some of the sports that are mentioned on the Mental_Floss list make sense as to why they got cut (tug-o-war… really?  Was it played by kids at summer camp and they got medals?), I have often wondered why golf, rugby and cricket aren’t included.

Cricket and rugby aren’t exactly popular in the United States, but are hugely popular in other parts of the world.  Just like soccer, which I personally love, got next to no air time on the American broadcasts of the games, it is included due to its popularity in the rest of the world.  So where are these two super star sports?  Cricket might be a challenge due to how long a game could last, but why not rugby?  It makes no sense to me.

Golf is the one that truly blows my mind.  Despite my family working in the golf industry for 29 years, it isn’t a sport that thrills me, but I understand the allure it has to other people.  How in the world can this not be in the Olympics?  Table tennis is still included for crying out loud, but not golf?  All I can figure is that it’s because there are already so many tournaments, but there are just as many, if not more, for soccer.

They’ve announced that squash and karate are being added in 2012 for the London games, and from what I hear, rugby was on the short list, but didn’t make it.  I understand that they have to judge a game’s appeal to the masses for inclusion, but come on, we got BMX racing this year, you can’t tell me that one wasn’t included as an attempt to grab attention away from the X Games, because I can pretty much guarantee you it will be cut in 4 or 5 Olympics from now.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is obviously not that much in touch with the regular world of sporting, and that’s a shame.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am no great fan of the Church of Scientology.  I have nothing against your every day followers of the organization, but I have large problems with the actual Church itself and their practices.

All that being said, this leads me to the business card pictured to the right that my parents recently found hidden in some of our merchandise at a convention.  Someone had stuck it in one of the coffee cups on display, and a customer showed it to my dad.  Knowing my love for the church, he brought it home for me to check out.  As soon as I saw the Guy Fawkes mask image from V For Vendetta on the far right, I knew it was from Anonymous.

If you head over to YouFoundTheCard.com you’ll see it is a site run by the latest anti-Scientology group that is simply referring to themselves as “Anonymous”.  They started off with a few YouTube videos describing what they were about, which led to some old school service attacks on Scientology websites, but now they are calming their tactics down and going with street protests that they launch globally at multiple church sites.  You can ready more about the timeline of how this developed on the Project Chanology Wikipedia page.

The Guy Fawkes masks started popping up with the first street protests because Scientology is well known to take videos of protestors and then harass them with legal papers, send threatening mail to their homes and more.  So protesters have chosen to conceal their faces and more (Anon has a whole list of suggestions of how to protect your identity), why they chose the mask from V For Vendetta hasn’t really been made clear, but Alan Moore, creator of the series, approves of it.  He said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, “That pleased me. That gave me a warm little glow.”  If you’ve seen the movie, you can draw your own conclusions to the parallels between the end of the film and why they use the mask, but I will leave that for everyone else to figure out.

It seems they will be having another worldwide protest on September 13th, hence why they are passing out these cards, and trying to drum up interest again.  It is encouraging to see not only a whole new group of people enter in to the fight with the church, but a group that seems motivated and full of ideas.  I can’t say I have ever been a very active player in the whole thing due to my location, but I do care deeply about the wrong doings of this group being exposed.

That brings me to something I’m not sure I have ever really discussed is why I dislike the Church of Scientology so much.  To be clear, it has nothing to do with the religious aspects of the group, I feel all people should be free to worship in any way they see fit, but I do disagree with the tactics of the Church of Scientology.  They have been linked to deaths, threats, suing their critics, making false police reports and much much more.  It is the tactics of the organization of the church hierarchy I have problems with, and not the beliefs of the followers.  I want to be 100% clear in that I am not attacking anyone’s religious beliefs here.

If you want to learn more about the tactics of the church, and credible evidence of all their actions, I suggest the following sites to start you off.

Enturbulation.org - An unofficial organizational site for the world wide protests. (suggested by a commenter)

WhyWeProtest.net - Also suggested by an “anonymous” commenter, is a smaller, easier to breeze through rundown of what it is about the Church of Scientology that drives people to protest.

Xenu.net - Also known as Operation:Clambake (it’s a loooong story, and a Scientology reference), this was the site that really started to wake me up to just how far their vileness ran.  I had always heard mumblings about it until I found this site.

XenuTV.com - Run by journalist Mark Bunker, it was his videos that calmed the original tactics of Anonymous down, and they now refer to him as “Wise Beard Man”.  He is a long time critic of the church and has produced numerous videos with documentation.

YouFoundTheCard.com - Linked above, but here it is again.  They have a good breakdown of some of the more egregious actions of the church.  An excellent primer.

I always encourage people to do their own research into a subject such as this, but do read up on it, you will be amazed what this so-called church gets up to.

As for September 13th… no worries, I’ll be at home.  I’m not even sure where the closest Scientology office is to me, actually… and I kinda like it that way.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is at it again. I know… you’re all shocked.

The RIAA, the goverening body that is charged with the protection of musical copyrights, is again going so far in their efforts to protect music, that they seem to be doing more harm than good.  The latest confirmed casualty is the startup website called Muxtape.

The site, without a doubt, was questionable in its legalities from day one.  It allowed users to upload MP3s to the site and they could then make a “Muxtape” from those.  It was meant to bring back some of the feeling people got from making mix tapes for friends back in the 1980’s and 90’s.  You were limited to putting 12 songs on each Muxtape, and there was no means for downloading the songs present in the site, all in an effort to show the record industry that this was merely a way for people to promote the music they loved.

As of August 19th, the image shown above here appeared on the front page of the Muxtape site.  The problems more than likely stem from the fact that third-party developers came up with ways for people to download the music, even though one of the owners of the site repeatedly pleaded with poeple to not do so.  The company blog does make things a little less clear, though:

No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.

Whatever is going on with Muxtape involves the RIAA, and that is never a good thing.

So, while clearly Muxtape was on shaky legal ground all along, you then have the case of Pandora, which is 100% legal, but may be shut down by virtue of the greed of the music industry.  According to a story in the Washington Post, last year a federal commission, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB),  ordered that the royalty rate online radio stations pay to SoundExchange be doubled.  Mind you that at this time terrestrial radio does not pay any royalties (although the RIAA is looking to charge radio stations now), and satellite radio, which is subscription based, pays a lesser fee rate than online radio does.

Pandora is free to its one million daily users, and has become one of the most popular applications on the iPhone/iPod Touch app store, and all of this is made possible via advertising revenue.  Under the new fee structure, Pandora will have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of its projected $25 million in revenue to SoundExchange.  If this should go into effect, Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, says he will have to shut the site down because the company will only be wasting money at that point.

Okay, lets do some simple math for the music industry shall we?

Old Pandora fee structure
35% of $25,000,000 is $8,750,000
Sales of music discovered due to people listening to Pandora is impossible to calculate

New Pandora fee structure
70% of nothing due to Pandora shutting down under new fees is $0
No sales of music discovered due to people listening to Pandora is not impossible to calculate, it is $0

Which one looks more attractive to you?  The old fee structure, or the new, greedier structure, that leaves the music industry with earning nothing?  I think I’ll take curtain #1, Monty!

The music industry is going berserk with the online industry because I think they feel like they finally have a way to track stuff.  The amount of piracy that went on while I was in high school was astronomical.  We were all constantly taping off CDs for each other, passing them around, taping music off the radio and so on, but the industry could do nothing about it because they had no way to track it.  Now comes the Internet and they have ways to see how many times everything gets played, how many times something gets downloaded, and they have gone absolutely bat crazy with trying to figure out how to squeeze every penny they can out of it.  Remember when they wanted a percentage of each iPod sold because Steve Jobs couldn’t sell them if it wasn’t for the music to put on them?  Yeah, prove to me they aren’t trying to take insane amounts of money they shouldn’t be able to.

As I see it, the problem here is that the industry is forgetting that without the ability to discover new music, they won’t have any sales.  I have no desire to listen to commercial radio and be forcefed they drivel they program.  Sites such as Pandora are amazing because they learn from you and what you like, and then they will recommend new music based off of that.  I have discovered several bands I had never heard of via this site, and now it may go away because the music industry just simply can’t control their never-ending greed.

Perhaps this actually is there plan.  Perhaps they want to be able to dictate how we discover music so they can continue to force us to listen to the likes of Britney Spears.  There is something horribly broken in the music industry, and it isn’t a couple of stolen MP3s from the likes fo sites like Muxtape, or from Pandora not paying enough in royalties, it is from the music industry having this omnipotent style attitude that essentially everyone in the world works for them.  Enough is enough.

In the above linked article about Pandora, towards the end, there was this quote from a musician (you know, the people this is supposed to all be about?) that I think sums it all up pretty well.

Matt Nathanson, a singer-songwriter who has recorded for both major and independent record labels, said he is worried that the demands placed on Internet radio could “choke” the industry before it gets its footing.

“Net radio is good for musicians like me, and I think most musicians are like me,” he said. “The promotion it provides is far more important than the revenue.”

There you have it folks.  True, this is just one musician, but this is still an actual musician saying that this is more important as a promotional tool than a revenue stream.  Every industry has promotional tools, why does it seem the music industry can’t have one without taxing it to death?  And if they aren’t taxing it to death, they want to sue people who listen to music… or they want to dictate how you can listen to it via Digital Rights Management (DRM)… or they want to impose a tax on all Internet subscribers to help cover “the cost” of piracy… the list of endless as to how this industry is attacking the consumers.

It is time you finally voice your opinion on this in various manners.

• The best way possible by skipping buying a new album, even if it is by your favorite artist, go to their concerts instead, buy their tshirts, make sure THEY get the money, but try everything you can to make sure the companies don’t see a dime.
• Write your congressman, let them know you think this new royalty scheme is a joke.
• Write the music companies themselves and make sure you tell them of your intentions.
• Blog about it, spread the word.

It’s up to us folks, how much longer will we stand for an industry that so clearly hates us, but isn’t essential to our everyday well-being like food or water, dictate such insane policies?

One of the features when you log in to your WordPress blog dashboard is you can see past entries from the same day in years past.  Well, I typically take a look at these to see if they inspire a new entry from me, and Firefox haters go to a whole new level, published one year ago today, led me to some interesting discoveries.

As a refresher, there was a man who had determiend the Firefox plugin Addblock Plus was just pure evil, so he had set up his websites to block Firefox users.  Instead of just blocking folks, though, it redirected them to WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com, which, at the time, explained his thought process behind this and how Mozilla allowing Adblock Plus to exist meant that Mozilla was endorsing it.  I ended up covering this for TECH.BLORGE.com also, and at that time Danny Carlton, the owner of the blocked site, and I had a… well… less than friendly exchange of emails.  Well, let me rephrase that in that I was friendly and he wasn’t.  You can see the quotes in either of my original pieces.

So, flash forward to today, and just for grins I decided to revisit his site while using Firefox to see what would happen.  Well, low-and-behold, I got onto his main site, JackLewis.net, with no problems.  So I decided I should go see what was on WhyFirefoxIsBlocked now, and what I found was a site that used to sport no ads covered in Google Adsense ads, and now just filled with news gathered from other sources telling you how horrible Firefox is.  I did a search on the domain name to make sure it hadn’t been taken over by someone else, but it is still registered to the same Danny Carlton in Oklahoma that owned it last year.

Considering how friendly Mr. Carlton was last year, I didn’t bother emailing him to see why things had changed, and since this isn’t a news piece, but an opinion piece on a personal blog, it wasn’t really necessary.  Seeing as this is my opinion, I’m thinking Mr. Carlton discovered that:

1. His campaign was pointless and never going to take off.
2. He claimed Firefox users were a small percentage of the Internet, but I showed in both stories I wrote that my personal research showed they were well over 1/3 of Internet users.  Perhaps he missed the traffic?

It’s just interesting to see how much changed in a year.  From a freelance web designer who was angering a third of the web, to someone who seems to have lost their willingness to fight in something they believed in so hard… what an odd little journey.  Oh well, my little write-up on him on BLORGE led to my most popular post ever while I worked there, so I guess I owe him some sort of thanks.

JC Penny’s has a recent ad campaign that is just annoyingthe living beejebus out of me.

I first encountered it at the movie theater a few months back, you know, when I lost 19 minutes of my life, and it has played every time since at the theater.  Well, now it has chased me home as it is on my television at least five times a night.  To the right here is a shot from the JC Penny “Get That Look” ad campaign which is 100% based on the 1985 John Hughes‘ film, The Breakfast Club.

You can’t fault Hughes for wanting to make money from an old property, but you have to wonder what in the world JC Penny’s was thinking with this campaign.  Yes, it is catchy, especially with the updated version of the theme song, “Don’t Forget About Me”, but the film is 23-years-old, considerably older than the people this campaign is targeted at.  Sure, people in my age bracket recognize things like the sculpture in the middle of the library, the premise, the little nods to famous scenes (they didn’t dance QUITE that much, though), but there seems to be no indication anywhere of the source material int he actual ad.  There is a little mention of it on the front page of the website, but it is easily overlooked.  Hopefully at least a few people will notice it and a new generation will be exposed to this classic teenager film.

I have talked numerous times about how Hollywood seems to be out of ideas for television shows and movies, but now it seems to be spreading into advertising also.  I can understand the “Get That Look” idea, but attaching it to a 23-year-old movie?  Could they not come up with any contemporary imagery?  A fresh idea?  This is a process I just simply don’t get.  Do advertising executives now just sit down in front of their DVD collections when trying to come up with a new campaign and say, “Hey, we can rip that off!… I mean, ‘pay homage’ to it!”

All I know is that I am ready for this campaign to run its course and just go away.  I don’t need to hear the modern version of the song one more time, and I sure don’t need to see “the young hipsters” ripping off some of my favorite scenes from a movie I loved in my teens.

Well, what can you really say? Eight chances to medal, and he walks away with eight gold medals in one year.  The record of seven had been owned by Mark Spitz since Munich in 1972, but now Michael Phelps stands alone as an eight time gold medalist in one year.

His total gold medal tally is fourteen, also a record, and that one may be challanged some day, but eight golds in one Olympics is going to be tough to beat.  He had to swim seventeen races to accomplish it, and kept a schedule that may have destroyed some other athletes, but he pulled it off as if it was nothing.  The schedule may be what actually keeps him from ever being challanged, or it may just be that no one else can ever be this good at any given sport.

So, congratulations to Michael Phelps on his amazing feat.  Now, go get some sleep, I think you’ve earned it.

Welcome back for the fifth episode of Scattercast!

A little bit of everything this week, folks! The United States is falling behind in Internet speeds still, and it angers me. Some more rambling about the summer Olympics and the last segment deals with my thoughts on this year’s upcoming iPods. A true Scattercast!

For those who wish to subscribe, you can do so by the RSS feed or on iTunes.

Here’s a link to the MP3 for those who wish to download it.

Sometimes a marketing idea comes along that is just so bad, you have to wonder not only what the PR person was smoking when they came up with it, but what pretty much everyone was smoking that it made it out to the public.

Scarlett Johansson, an acctress I have liked for a while now, is starring in a new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  From the commercials and advertising, it appears the film deals with a possible sexual threesome, and for sure it deals with a romantic triangle.

Now, I can understand playing up some of the aspects of this premise, but then you get things that happen like this image I have included with this post.  If you click on it, you can see it full sized version as it appears on ScarlettJohansson.com.  Yes, it goes on and on about winning a THREESOME with Scarlett!  A SMOKING HOT THREESOME!  Whoo!  You best get those entires in for THE SMOKING HOT THREESOME!

By the way, can anyone read that incredibly small print at the bottom of the ad that I had to squint and lean super close to my laptop screen to see that they were saying they meant threesome as in a movie date with her?  Did anyone else notice the incredibely creepy suggestive imagery in the second “O” of her last name?  Yes, one could say it is lips turned on their side and covered in lipstick… or you could realize what they are attempting to imply with those lips.

I have no problem with adult entertainment and so forth, but when this is done in the name of a serious actress?  Not cool.  I would hope that this was done with out Ms. Johansson’s full knowledge, but seeing as it is on her official site, I’m guessing she knows.  This is just poor marketing, a bad choice for a “serious acctress” and while some may see this as fun, I see it as just incredibly crass, and greatly tarnishes her image and of all those involved.

Good job, marketing department!  Big thumbs up!

Yes folks, it’s already time to talk about the Olympic beach volleyball uniforms again.

The other day when I talked about the Olympic women’s baech volleyball uniforms, it was more from the angle of how it was unfair that the men have to play in more annoying outfits, and how they wish they could remove their shirts, but Olympic rules won’t allow them.  Meanwhile, the women are pouncing around in bikinis which allow them the maximum amount of comfort, but Heaven forbid the men take off their shirts!  The horrors!

Well, Luis from BlogD left a comment on the article that said:

I used to visit the Yahoo News Photo page. As I recall, whenever there were sporting events like the Olympics, the women’s beach volleyball always got enormously unrepresentative coverage, but just in photos–and, as you point out, very few action shots. It always struck me as being equivalent to soft porn.

Which, he’s right, it’s always been a bit over-the-top, but the women don’t seem to mind, so I thought, “no biggie, just drop the subject and move on.”

Well, then up pops Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, one of my coworkers at Mashable, to just throw more fuel on the fire.  It seems NBC is running a 20 picture slideshow entitled “Cracking the code” which is all about helping you figure out the finger code the women use on the court to tell the server what to do.  However, it tells you they use a finger pointing system to do it… but no idea what each signal means.  What follows is the same caption on each of the 20 pictures which add nothing to your knowledge, it is, you guessed it, 20 butt shots.  The caption reads:

Hand signals are frequently used by beach volleyball players to communicate to their partners.  The signals — one or two fingers down, closed fist, etc — generally let their partner know who should attempt a black at the net on their opponents’ return.