Category Archives: entertainment

File sharing fines go mainstream

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Many see as harsh the recent $220,000 fine levied  on a Minnesota housewife for online music sharing, but it’s more appropriate to view this action as a significant milestone in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) strategy to crack down on illegal music and try to push people to legal file downloading.   The coverage on this file sharing case is overwhelming and it will be very interesting to see how the online community will absorb this verdict.

CNET’s Declan has a good summary of key points in this RIAA case here, although in one sense it should be easy to understand the verdict because pretty much everybody knows file sharing is illegal!    Common use does not make file sharing “fair use”. 

Now, one can make a reasonable case that the illegality of file sharing is a trivial offense – something like driving going 58 mph in a 55 mph zone.  One can hammer home this point noting that simply making a mix tape for friends is also technically illegal but never enforced by RIAA, and that gray areas about in the law surrounding intellectual property.    But only foolish people (ie a lot of people) seem to argue that file sharing is a perfectly legal activity.

So, what is the solution here?   RIAA would say it is for everybody to stop illegal downloads and sign up for paid services.   Yet RIAA must be spending far more than 220k on this case, and won’t ever get that much from her anyway.  Given the difficulties of prosecution and the prevalence of the behavior I think the laws should to be modified to reflect widespread accepted social standards while still protecting copyright holders.  However this may just open up a new hornet’s nest of legal complications.    

Britney Spears Loses Kids today. Oh, and some 27,000 children will lose their LIVES. Today

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OK, so it’s beneath me as a web guy, technology “writer” and pseudo journalist to write about Britney Spears latest headline sweeping news.     But wait, sadness for her children aside it’s another SEO experiment!

It’s true by the way.  A court just ordered Britney to give up her children to ex-husband Kevin Federline.  Frankly, I’m surprised that with all her wealth she could not have bought her way out of this, probably an excellent decision by the judge.   Poor Britney is a mess – a victim of our overwhelming entertainment and star obsession.  Now her kids are victims too.

But, this isn’t really news and all of us should be completely ashamed of ourselves for the attention we and the networks and our world give to this garbage.  Sure it’s titillating, but it’s not news.  News is big.  News matters.  News is that about 27,000 children die each *day* from preventable causes that, if prevented would likely reduce our own economic and military burdens. 

Poor Britney Spears, poor Britney!  Oh, yes, and poor 27,000 children.

Pipo Nguyen-duy

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Pipo Nguyen-duy is one of my table tennis pals, but Pipo is also a great photographer who teaches art at Oberlin in Ohio.   Like many new sites,  Pipo‘s website is not appearing first as it should for the query “Pipo Nguyen-duy”.   Other sites that *reference* Pipo’s art appear before his because Google’s algorithm still faces challenges when it tries to determine the best site for the query, which in this case clearly should be his own website.

Here the SEO problem likely relates to the ranking weakness of a new site vs. an old one,  plus the fact Google cannot easily “know” that the site  pipo nguyen-duy.com is actually the official site for the name Pipo Nguyen-duy.   There’s also a title tag change needed over at the website, but this post should start fixing the problem by providing some authoritative links to Pipo Nguyen-duy ‘s real website using anchor text that matches the query we are targeting and a lot of text rich in the query term.    This technique is known as “white hat SEO” because it’s “helping Google” properly index and get the right site ranked for the query.    Generally Google approves of this type of SEO tactic if they see it as something that makes indexing work better and does not deceive users.

1850 bottle of Scotch sets sales record at almost $60,000

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A 157 year old Bowmore Scotch sold for almost $60,000, setting a new world scotch record.  My experiences with single malts have been uninspired – so much so that I’m skeptical about most people who claim to have special tastes for good scotch.

However in this case I’m guessing that even I could tell the difference.    

But at $2000 for a shot of this whiskey I’m confident we’ll never know.   

 Hey Mr. Bartender, can you make mine a 1850 Bowmore whiskey sour with extra ice?

Halo 3 and the statue of the 3 lies

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Speaking of Boston MA as I (ummm … sort of) did yesterday, MIT students have pulled a great prank on Harvard by decorating the famous statue in Harvard Yard as a Halo 3 fighter.

The “John Harvard” statue may now get nicknamed “Statue of the FOUR mistakes”. Ironically the statue has three big mistakes as it sits in the hallowed yard of Harvard University, that bastion of intellectual achievement.

Also called sometimes “The statue of the three lies”, the mistakes are:

The statue isn’t really John Harvard. It was commissioned after his death and he had no known portraits so a student sat for the artist.

John Harvard was not the founder of Harvard. It’s named after him, founded by Mass. legislature.

Statue has the wrong date for the founding of Harvard. 1636 is correct, statue shows 1638.

Boston Legal Jumps the Shark

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I’ve been a fan of Boston Legal for a few years but the season premier tonight is really, really bad in my opinion.   The new characters are weak and uninteresting, the performances seem anemic and uninspired, and the storylines are stupid rather than quirky.    Did the old writers go on strike?    If not, they should stop paying them.    If this wasn’t bad enough I missed my Facebook pal Mark Cuban on “Dancing with the Stars”

Balls of Fury * * 1/2

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OK, I *LOVE* Table Tennis so it was probably foolish to hold high hopes for the new movie “Balls of Fury” which pokes way too much fun at Table Tennis without helping people gain any sense of what a great and complicated sport it is.

The story was fun as it followed a “has been” table tennis prodigy as he regains his skills to help crack an international criminal who is paissionate about table tennis.   But this is no “Enter the Dragon” and falls pretty flat as a funny movie as well as pretty lousy as a Table Tennis fling.    This Table Tennis Service is …. missable.

Children’s Musical Theater of Oregon – Bravo!

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Here in Southern Oregon we’ve got a lot of outstanding professional and community theater action going on. The Children’s Musical Theater of Oregon is no exception. We just enjoyed their excellent performance of Peter Pan, complete with amazing flying effects, great costumes, rich sets, and some outstanding performances by very talented young people.

CMTO is the product of Rhonda and John Taylor’s enthusiasm for working with theater and with children. Rhonda teaches school and John is a very accomplished musician and director who has worked with many musical luminaries as well as two years at the Las Vegas Bellagio as the musical director and keyboardist with Cirque du Soleil’s “O”.

One of the benefits of living here in Southern Oregon is having great professionals in theater, music, movies and television who bring their expertise and enthusiasm to our community.

More about Peter Pan from Mail Tribune

FOX Sucks

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So I’m watching the ‘Teen Awards’ with my 11 year old daughter. Hilary Duff, Hannah Montana, and, WTF!!?? (pls forgive the modern parlance) here comes Snoop Dog and then the “Party like a Rock Star” finale.

Here are the lyrics from FOX’s awards show targeting kids of all ages:

i’m on a money makin mission
but I party like a rockstar
flyin’ down 20 lookin’ good in my hot car
you know them hoes be at my show
worried bout where my chain go
I uh rubba in ma pants
but these hoes won’t let my thang go

I uwa like I uwa
cuz you know them hoes be tryin us
hoe don’t you know I fuck wit fine dimonds
that look like Pa-me-la
they fine and they hot bra
when i’m in the spot bra……
I PARTY LIKE UH ROCKSTAAARRR!!!!! !

Let me just say on behalf of a lot of parents that I’m so totally sick of the BS that passes as family fare. This is not prudish, it is a recognition that the extensive commercializing of kid-focused media is leading to a complete distortion of what should be considered appropriate family content.

Almost all sane people favor media censorship in some forms. For example most favor restrictions on child pornography and consider it a parental obligation to keep kids away from extreme violence and adult content. But FOX and other network “family shows” that use adult themes masquerading as “Family Fare” make it almost impossible to do what parents are obligated to do – restrict adult themes. This is especially outrageous because critics of censorship typically argue that parents are simply avoiding their obligations when they rant against the media’s sexual assault on children. “just turn off the TV” squeak the idiots who generally don’t have kids, have a huge monetary stake in continuing the media’s sexual assault on children, and rarely provide a thoughtful solution to the growing challenges facing a modern, open minded parent. Do you advocates for unrestricted modern media have *NO* shame? NO creative solutions to this? Or are you just too drugged out, drunk, or morally bankrupt to care at all?

Extraterrestrial Tourism and the Alien Abduction Roller Coaster

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Extraterrestrial Tourism really is considered a niche market, but it’s not really named properly as that would involve visits to other worlds. Roswell New Mexico is the best example of ET Tourism. For decades the city of Roswell has based much of its tourism economy on the mysterious crash back in 1947 that some claim was an alien spacecraft with aliens aboard. Most Roswell conspiracy theorists also hold that the US Government covered up the evidence of the Alien landing.

Now Roswell is stepping up to the Extraterrestrial Tourism plate with a new amusement park that will feature an Alien Abduction Roller Coaster ride as well as other Alien themed rides and attractions.

I just hope they give free parking for all the UFOs that are sure to land there regularly to ride the ET coaster.