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2005

  • in Humor
  • 1 min read

Declaration of Revocation

Our independence from England has been revoked (by John Cleese of all people).

John Cleese shares the Declaration of Revocation:

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections.

  1. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

Copyfighting

More goodness today via BoingBoing:

A diary entry on DailyKos by RadicalRuss nails the hypocrisy of the Grokster case in comparing it to the gun industry.

This is a must read.

From the story:

Got that? If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally copy a movie, that company is liable. If a company makes a product that is inappropriately used to illegally kill a human, that company is not liable. What’s the common logic holding these disparate concepts together? Massive corporate special interest money. Welcome to your government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, where a pirated copy of “Hollywood Homicide”* is bigger threat than an actual Hollywood homicide.

RIAA Uses More Power They Don't Have

Via BoingBoing:

The RIAA has ordered a take down notice to RPG Films. RPG films is a machinima site that takes animation made from video game / video game engines to make short movies and films. Some of them included music video’s – which is where the RIAA had a problem.

How is this not fair use? There is no MP3 to download . Only the most sophisticated computer user could figure out how to seperate the audio from the video, and even then the quality would be awful – with a video file you’re trying to compress it down as far as you can to save your users’ bandwidth.

If anything, this probably helps promote more music you’ve never heard, that will spark you to find out who to make it and go buy it.

The RIAA just doesn’t get it.

The more things change, the more things stay the same

USA Today’s Michael Hiestand’s column covers the shifts in the TV network’s announcer lineups now that NBC has picked up Sunday Night Football.

Let me express my disappointment in the quality of announcers on the air in the #1 lineups. In no particular order:

  • John Madden: Too old, too much of a showboat, and has lost his touch with today’s game
  • Joe Theisman: Not many original thoughts, was in the booth to argue with Paul Maguire (who was a much better color analyst than Theisman). Too animated.
  • Al Michaels: All class
  • Troy Aikman: Has gotten a lot better these last couple of years. Getting Cris Collinsworth out of the booth with him with only help him. Insightful analysis.
  • Joe Buck: Stick to baseball please.
  • Cris Collinsworth: Good riddance from Fox and the booth. Won’t have to put up with you calling Packer games, or on Sunday Night Football. Thank god.
  • Michelle Tafoya & Suzy Kolber: I really enjoy both of their sideline reporting. Blows away Pam Oliver at Fox or anyone MNF had before Ms. Tafoya.
  • SNF / MNF losing Mike Patrick and Paul Maguire is a huge blow. I really, really enjoyed the way they called football games. Take out Maguire & Theisman baiting each other, and it was the best broadcast of football weekly, including the analysis and ESPN’s presentation.

ESPN Voting

ESPN held a poll yesterday around NFL hold outs and their reader’s thoughts. I thought it was fairly interesting to post the results (Man, did I get the Shaun Alexander question wrong at the bottom):

Vote: Do players have a right to hold out?

SportsNation

Thank you for voting. See below for the results from across SportsNation.

Your responses in bold text below.

1) Do you feel there is a legitimate difference between teams saving money by cutting players for performing below expectations and players holding out for more money after exceeding expectations?

53.6% Yes

46.4% No

2) Given that the average NFL career lasts just 3.2 years and NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed, what do you think about players who hold out to renegotiate a contract?

66.1% They’re being selfish and should honor the contract they signed.

33.9% It’s a business, and they have to look out for themselves first.

3) Are there instances where you’ve supported a player holding out for a new contract?

59.9% No

40.1% Yes

4) How important do you think training camp is for rookies?

97.7% Very important

2.2% A little important

0.1% Not important at all

5) How important do you think training camp is for veteran players?

55.8% A little important

39.9% Very important

4.3% Not important at all

6) What do you think of Terrell Owens’ contract situation?

86.8% He signed a deal which made him one of the highest paid receivers, so he should play.

13.2% He earned a better deal through his performance last season.

7) What do you think of agent Drew Rosenhaus?

62.9% He’s a greedy SOB.

37.1% He’s just trying to do what’s best for his clients.

8) Which of these potential holdouts would be the biggest loss to his team?

40.1% Terrell Owens

33.9% Edgerrin James

17.1% Javon Walker

6.9% Richard Seymour

2.1% Sean Taylor

9) What do you think of Brett Favre’s criticism of Javon Walker holding out in Green Bay?

76.4% Favre is right, and as a team leader, he has an obligation to speak out and get a key player back.

23.6% Favre has always been taken care of; he should support a teammate trying to secure a better deal or say nothing.

10) Which of the following franchise or transition players who hasn’t signed is most likely to be a long holdout?

60.2% Shaun Alexander (Seahawks)

19.2% John Abraham (Jets)

14.1% Corey Simon (Eagles)

6.5% Bubba Franks (Packers)

Total Votes: 31,056

New printer

On the advice of two cow-orkers, who coincidentally had the same printer, I purchased a Canon PIXMA iP6000D today. (Canon has a crappy website, btw).

I, however, forgot to see if it has Linux drivers available. (It doesn’t).

It’s for the wife more than me, as she needed a color printer, and the sample 4×6 photo I saw at the office was good. I’ve printed out 8-10 4×6 photo’s after hooking it up, and it’s phenomenal. It’s amazing how far the technology has come. I printed off a bunch to hang in my cube at work. I’m quite interested in seeing how an 8×10 looks.

I’ve hooked it up to Kelly’s computer, and shared it over the network so I could print from my MCPC. I have a wireless Netgear print server around here somewhere, I’ll have to give that a go.

I’m annoyed about the Linux thing though. Now I have to transfer my pictures from my main box to my MCPC to print. But the printer does have a 7-in-1 card reader, so I can always just stick the memory card in if I want, though it looks like I’d have to press a bunch of buttons on the printer which doesn’t look the most user friendly way to do it. Ah well.

Second Life

Almost a month ago Icculus announced in his .plan file he was porting a game called Second Life to Linux, and included 3 screenshots.

Second Life is a fascinating experiement in the MMO genre. In some ways made for developers, it lets you own land, create and trade various items, all with a built in content creation tool. From the What Is page:

It is a palette for creative self-expression like nothing you have ever seen. Jump in, find a sandbox, and start building.

Icculus’ timing was amazing, as Cory Doctorow, Copyfighter, EFF employee, and sci-fi author, was having a book release party in the game.

Already available for Mac OS X and Windows, I’m anxiously awaiting the Linux port to try this out.

EFF Blog-a-thon

The EFF, in celebration of their 15th anniversary, is sponsoring a Blog-a-thon.

I can’t say it any better than they did:

We want to hear about your “click moment” — the very first step you to took to stand up for your digital rights — whether it was blogging about an issue you care about, participating in a demonstration, writing your representatives, or getting involved with EFF. As a thank you, we’ve enlisted an independent panel of judges to choose from among your posts for “Most Inspirational,” “Most Humorous,” and “Best Overall.” At the end of the Blog-a-thon, we’ll announce the names of the three bloggers with the best posts on our website and in our weekly newsletter, EFFector. We’ll also publish the three best posts on our site and send the authors a blogging “kit” as an extra thank you: an EFF bloggers’ rights T-shirt, special EFF-branded blogger pajama pants, a pound of coffee, and a pair of fuzzy slippers.

I’ve been thinking about my story for the last few days since I first came across this. It will definitely be up by Aug. 2nd.

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

The trailer for V for Vendetta has been released. Available in standard Quicktime, or 1920×1280 HD in Quicktime 7 using the h.264 codec.

I had read the graphic novel over 10 years ago, and bought it and re-read it 3 weeks ago. I absolutely love the author, Alan Moore, and this particular story – though his books are 10x better than the movies that are turned out based on his source material, as he’s never been involved in any of the movies made from his books.

The imagery and themes seem very true to the comic book, though I’ve heard a few things about the movie that don’t ring true.

We’ll see – the Wachowski brothers adapted and produced it, and it stars Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman.