- I read one legal analyst compare patents to bullets last year, in that they’re cheap and quick to manufacture and they have the potential to do a LOT of damage. The past few years have seen an escalation of patent-based lawsuits, and I don’t just mean the high profile cases like Apple v. Samsung (or the latest Facebook suit). Patent based legal action has skyrocketed in all sorts of industries, but yes… mostly the tech industries. “Everybody in the hi-tech industry is picking up their patenting, but we are also seeing that litigation is slowing people down,” Gwylim Roberts to BBC in THIS ARTICLE… “We didn’t see litigation for a long time and suddenly it began. I personally think it might be peaking at the moment – it’s now starting to get in the way of business objectives.” I believe in the next few decades — as the exponential curve of tech growth continues — we will see a revamping in patent laws across the globe.
“My wife had only recently been unemployed for 4 months and has a good understanding of what it is like. Her warnings and advice have been invaluable. That said, I was not prepared for the full brunt of it. I make a point of applying for at least 2 jobs a day, maybe more. These are not necessarily jobs on my formal career path, but are jobs I am qualified to do based on my career or based on my experience over the last 15 years. Anything and everything. The Kitchen Sink approach. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.”
“Of course, astronomers have known about Mercury for thousands of years, but since NASA’s MESSENGER probe went into orbit around Mercury in 2011, researchers feel like they’ve been discovering the innermost planet all over again. One finding after another has confirmed the alien character of this speedy little world, which you can see this week with your own eyes. Mercury is emerging from the glare of the sun for a beautiful two-week apparition during the month of February 2013. The show begins about a half hour after sunset. Scan the horizon where the sun’s glow is strongest and, if the sky is clear, Mercury should pop out of the twilight, a bright pink pinprick of light. Mercury itself is not actually pink, but it is often colored so by the rosy hues of the setting sun.”
- A few thoughts about the sexual harassment of the woman who dressed as Black Cat at NYCC. Her name is Mandy. She’s a 22 year old freelance designer (here’s her Etsy page) and more who lives in NYC. Reading about her experience at NYCC, from her own blog, is just a disgusting feeling. Especially as a man. To think that a large group of men didn’t think twice about the way they were behaving — or worse, some did but were too big of pussies to say anything about it — is just inexcusable. This isn’t 1952 anymore, and you can’t go around saying these types of things and behaving this type of way. Obviously. That being said, the comics community (fans and creators alike) are missing a massive opportunity to fix, or at least talk about, something that’s been plaguing mainstream books for sometime now: sexism. Mainstream comic books, mostly superhero ones, not only condone sexism, they thrive off it. Don’t believe me? Did you know THIS book exists? Go ahead and Google image search some pages. Not only in the pages but on the covers too, you will find poses that would make Sasha Grey blush. It’s really bad, and has gotten more and more out of hand the past 5 years or so. So I guess I wasn’t surprised when a bunch of adult-adolescents harassed this woman. Not one bit. They probably all read that things like Gotham City Sirens! And Black Cat is one of the characters who gets taken advantage of the most by artists. And I don’t mean making her “sexy”, there is a difference between sexy and gratuitous (go out to a bar on Halloween this year and you’ll know what I mean). Now, of course no one deserves to be sexually harassed when they dress up like Black Cat, or Emma Frost, or fucking Linda Lovelace. But what does it mean when women are dressing as Slave Leia? What kind of subconscious themes are at work amongst those seeing these beautiful women at Cons? Are we just simply feeding the machine to continue to keep female characters down? Will they ever rise from the box they’ve been put in?
- I’m realizing that there is a fundamental flaw with democracy: to get elected you need votes, to get votes you need to appease people now, to appease people now you need to focus on what ails society now. It’s instant gratification on a very large, sociopolitical scale. And right now more than ever before, we need to look at problems in the long term because what we face has plagued us since we’ve been the modern version of ourselves. Of course, no one’s gonna win with a platform of “We’ll be in a lot better shape by 2060!”.
- The Iron Man 3 trailer is up:
- I’m going as Walt from Breaking Bad for Halloween. Here’s a cool piece of Walter White fan art:
“This week I finished making a radio documentary about the 50-year reign of Welles’s masterpiece – and heard how it might all soon be over, thanks to a change in constituency boundaries. The last time the survey was conducted, 145 mainly anglophone critics were polled. This time an 1,800-strong body of writers, curators and directors have been asked, a group representing the film cultures of most countries in the world. An electorate as broad as that might not feel the critical anxiety of influence that has kept Kane on its pedestal. Tellingly, the longlist, at 2,000 titles, is already much longer than its predecessors.”
I thought it was absolutely awesome to hear that two of Michael Haneke’s films were close to making the list: Cache and The White Ribbon. I have not seen Cache, but have wanted to for some time. It’s hard to find, and I don’t much enjoy watching movies on my computer screen. If you’ve never seen any of his movies, Haneke makes some truly disturbing images and themes come to life. Not that he does horror (Cache is the closest thing to horror; or maybe Funny Games in that it goes out of its way to essentially torture the audience), he just knows how to pick out the little details. The terrible, terrible little details. The guy is a true artist.
- Akai posted this on their Facebook today with the caption, “Save this. Trust us. You’re going to need it someday.”:
I know they’re probably starting to get outdated — especially the 2000XL series — but I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of my Akai MPC thus far. And I’ve only had it for a couple years. It’s a great piece of hardware. I’ve got the blue one they released around 2001, I think:
According to one of our sources, “the word ‘contempt’ was bandied about by Apple’s lawyer.” So Quinn’s personal frustration may be at least somewhat understandable.
It seems like the main thrust of the declaration is that everything from the release was “previously in the public record.” He explains that everything was “specifically addressed in open court with the media in attendance.”
Quinn also directly addressed accusations that Samsung’s legal team was trying to intentionally mislead jurors. He made the (fairly obvious, in my humble opinion) observation that jurors had already been instructed not to read any form of media relating to the case.
- Samsung Can Continue Selling Galaxy Tabs In Germany.Apple has lost another lawsuit, this time in a German Appeals Court in Duesseldorf. The ruling marks the third attempt and loss by Apple taking legal action against competitors citing infringement of patent rights.
“Furthermore, “following the design changes undertaken by Samsung, the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1N does not contravene competition law. Apple’s iPad computers and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1N are rival products of equal value,” the court said in a statement. Earlier this month, two other courts in Germany — in Munich and Mannheim — also quashed Apple’s request to impose a preliminary ban on sales of its Galaxy Tab 10.1N and Nexus smartphone.
The two technology giants are engaged in a legal battle involving dozens of cases worldwide as they struggle for leadership in the hugely lucrative smartphone and tablet computer market.
Apple launched legal action in April last year, accusing Samsung of “slavishly” copying its iPhone and iPad designs. Samsung has focused its own lawsuits on technology patents rather than design. The South Korean giant received two legal boosts in December. A court in San Jose, California, denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have banned the sale of three Samsung smartphones and a tablet computer. Australia’s High Court cleared the way for Samsung to sell its Galaxy 10.1 tablet in the country in time for Christmas, dismissing Apple’s bid to have a ban extended.”
The iPad 3 will come out in March I guess. It will purportedly have faster processing power and a better graphics engine.
- Why did everyone hate on Iron Man 2so much? Yes, there is little action but if you want 2 hours of almost non-stop robot on robot brawling I’d recommend any of the Transformers movies. The fights are quick; much quicker than the end of the first movie, which went on way too long. The story of Tony Stark’s self-made artificial heart slowly poisoning his bloodstream (and subsequently synthesizing a new, man-made element) is a good one, and would be a fascinating run in the pages Invincible Iron Man; but I always need to remind myself, “how many people who like the Iron Man movies have read an Iron Man comic?”
It’s too bad that Favreau isn’t doing the third movie, because he’s been slowly building towards the man behind the curtain, pulling the strings, since the beginning: The Mandarin. Who, as the first movie insinuates, has been funding extremists. “The Cave of the Ten Rings”. And I’m pretty sure Shane Black is on record as saying he isn’t going to use him because he sees the character as a racist stereotype.
Today — as you probably know, if you’re reading this — is the day many websites are striking against SOPA and PIPA across the globe. But especially here in the United States, where it was conceived.
Don’t take anyone’s word for it, though. Do yourself a favor and read through the Bill yourself. The bill would do all sorts of things to websites like this one, and user-generated based sites like YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud, etc. There’s a whole section titled “Streaming Copywrited Works In Violation of Federal Law”, which could have catastrophic effects in terms of marketing for artists: I don’t stream [Band A]‘s new song, 20 people don’t ever get into [Band A], multiply that by hundreds or thousands of sites like this one, [Band A] may take a big enough financial hit to not be able to make a living as musicians anymore. The same goes for artists.
There’s a lot more going on here though than that one section, of course. CNET posted an excellent article delving into a lesser known section of the bill which contains the language “prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States”… it’s referring to ISP’s (service providers), and what it’s preventing access to is the websites the bill deems as “piratical”. This section very closely relates to the concept of “Net Neutrality”, the idea of keeping ISP’s out of their customer’s bit rates, traffic, and browsing history. (PIPA, a previous version, did not include this language)
They’ve also posted a good FAQ article for anyone new to what SOPA is.
Here, Mashable talks about the bulk of the bill: Section 102(a)(2). It gives the Attorny General permission to take action against a website if “the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement]“. This is a problem because a massive amount of websites could be considered in this umbrella:
“Since copyright violation is ridiculously easy, any site with a comment box or picture upload form is potentially infringing. Furthermore, DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are no defense. You, as a site operator, become liable for copyright infringement committed by your users, even if you comply with DMCA takedown requests.“
Then there’s Section 103, so coded in leagalese that one would be hard pressed to understand it. This helped me out quite a bit:
“Any site that allows users to post content is “primarily designed for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables copyright violation.” The site doesn’t have to be clearly designed for the purpose of copyright violation; it only has to provide functionality that can be used to enable copyright violation.“
Yesterday I was waiting for a friend with a beer at the bartop. One of the televisions was set on HLN or some shit, one of those 24-hour news channels that always seems to have trials live and other crime-related talking heads news shows. There happens to be a woman from Orlando — seriously, it always Florida; that state is so batty — who is on trial right now for killing her 2-year old daughter. Her name is Casey Anthony, and she looks like this. Partying is, often times, for losers who have nothing better to do with themselves (so is kidnapping and killing children). But that’s not what I want to talk about.
Yesterday at the trial, prosecutors administered a form of evidence I did not know existed yet. Computer experts, several of them, were called to the stand after riffling through the personal computer of Anthony to testify about her internet and search history. Two terms stuck out as admissible evidence in the case of a missing child: ‘chloroform’ and ‘death’. She was smart about it, to an extent, Anthony actually had deleted her internet history but such things do remain on your hard drive until they’re overwritten with new data. Plus there’s always cookies. The testimonials were very very specific about what exactly the defendant had been doing with her PC:
The searches using the keyword “chloroform” were conducted in March, three months before Caylee disappeared, according to testimony.
It appears the computer user first searched for “chloraform” on Google and received results for “chloroform,” said John Bradley, owner of the software development company that created the software used to retrieve the data. One of the search results was from Wikipedia.org, which was accessed, he testified.
It also appeared searches were conducted using terms such as “inhalation,” “self-defense,” “meningeal artery,” “ruptured spleen,” “alcohol” and “head injury,” he said. The user either typed those terms in to search, Bradley said, or in some instances might have clicked on links on the Wikipedia site to go to a different page.
Searches were also conducted on “how to make chloroform,” “neck breaking” and “making weapons out of household products,” Bradley testified.
Defense attorney Jose Baez then cross-examined Bradley, which made this whole thing even more interesting:
Baez attempted to show that the user apparently did not spend a great deal of time looking at the pages referencing chloroform. Only a few seconds elapsed in some cases before the next site was accessed, Bradley said.
Bradley agreed with Baez’s assertion that the links do not tell jurors what was on the websites accessed, and that some could have been jokes or information on self-defense. He also agreed he could not say how closely the user was examining the websites or whether a user was looking at multiple browsers.
While there were two user-created profiles on the computer, Osborne told Baez she could not tell who performed the searches.
She also testified she found no reference to chloroform on a computer belonging to Ricardo Morales, Anthony’s former boyfriend. Shown a photo Morales earlier admitted posting on his MySpace page featuring a couple with the caption, “Win her over with chloroform,” Osborne said either it had been deleted and overwritten or posted from another computer.
Should browsing history be admissible evidence in murder — or any sort of — trials? There’s a fairly detailed page about it at something called Internet For Lawyers. I thought this was interesting when I saw it; I had no idea we were doing this. The future is certainly now.
“Since VERY rarely is it important for any random company to have your real name, especially lots of free things that require registration, I always make it a point to use the name of the company or product that I am registering for as my name during registration. This way, when you get emails later addressed to “Mr. rave-forums.com Stanly” you can instantly know which website is letting your email out, or selling it, and set up a spam filter accordingly.
EDIT: I’ve found an even BETTER method for gmail users that a lot of people mentioned, if you put your email in as youremailaddress+thenameofthecompany@gmail.com it will work as your regular email address, but when you receive email from it, it will show you the extra + part. This will allow you to see who is sending you spam AND block any messages that someone tries to send to that specific address. Basically, gmail lets you create a dynamic address based on whoever is mailing you that forwards to your regular account. This is gives you even better spam protection that gmail already has.”
Back to that story about the leakage of private information by known and popular websites… This could be a HUGE problem considering I scrolled down that same site’s (PhysOrg.com) front page and found an article titled: Internet Traffic To Quadruple By 2015. I don’t know about other countries, but in the United States we really, really need to start thinking about how to regulate the Internet. Because if it’s run in a total free-market type way corruption and abuses and illegal activity will run rampant.
(Also, by 2015, mobile data traffic will supposedly be 26 times greater than it is now. Food for thought.)
More Rock Band/Guitar Hero idiocy. The CEO of Guitar Hero, Inc. recently released a statement that the usage of a certain dead musicians likeness was perfectly legal. Let me back up. Months ago Nirvana fans – as well as Kris, Dave, and Miss Love – were outraged to find out that the newest version of Guitar Herofeatured the unlockable character/skin of the legendary Kurt Cobain. It didn’t take long for the ex-bandmates and ex-wife to threaten legal action. The trio claimed Guitar Hero had absolutely no right to use Cobain’s likeness and told the creators they should stop using the dead man’s likeness immediately (of course, sold copies would always have Mr. ‘Bain as a playable character… unfortunately). Guitar Hero refused. In a public statement, CEO Dan Rosenweig had this to say:
“I do know that there’s absolutely a contract, and we know that the check has been cashed. I can only deal with the facts. It’s very clear what the terms are. It’s really not ‘Guitar Hero”s confusion. We went and spoke directly to the estate and made it crystal clear, got the rights, paid for the rights, and really we’ve done what we’ve always done. The fact that the rest of the band and the estate did not communicate – I’m not aware of those facts [about their communication].”
Well yeah, you dumb asshole, it’s maybe technically LEGAL (though it may not be), the problem is it’s extremely bad taste. Course, as long as there are dipshits spending enough money on the game – the same game it’s been since it’s original debut back in 2005 – they won’t change a goddamn thing.
If there was a literary equivalant of Scott Stevens – a complete badass without being a douche (bear with me Rangers fans), a modern talent, a lover of his craft/game, and mostly liked by his peers – it’s David Foster Wallace. The more I read him, and I don’t honestly read enough of him, the more I like him. Waiting for specs today, I gandered at the “Essays” section of B&N; the best way to pass time in a bookstore or library is to read out of a Short-Story Anthology or an Essay Anthology. What am I gonna do, start reading The Brothers Karamazovor Infinite Jestwhile killing just under an hour’s time?? Oh great, maybe I can finish 0.284% of either (not both). So today I sat down with the Essay Anthology titled Consider The Lobster. It’s a David Foster Wallace essay collection published in 2005 (novel form). I read two of them: first “Authority and American Usage” originally published in Harper’s Mag, 2001, and the second a review of the latest (at the time) John Updike novel Towards The End of Time called “Certainly The End of Something or Other…” from The New York Observer, 1997.
“Authority and American Usage” proved a not-shabby-at-all daily introduction to the man’s style (I’d been introduced sometime before his DEATH, circa 2005-06ish, from a friend/ex-lit-teacher) whilst sitting across from an angry looking High Schooler reading some over 1000 page novel with the Star of David on the cover. No, I didn’t get the title or author, I didn’t have my glasses yet! I just got that 6-star-ed, double triangled, symbol staring me down. I wonder what he was reading, cause this kid looked like he listened to Insane Clown Posse. I think there’s more than meets the eye with those clowns: their WikiPage claims they lyrically oppose racism, bigotry, war, and child abuse. Interesting. Anyways, this Foster Wallace essay talked about the “seedy underbelly” of the lexicon of the United States. Apparently some modern dictionaries are notoriously LIBERAL, while others remain notoriously CONSERVATIVE. Even our dictionaries speak in “Hannity and Colmes“/”CNN’s Crossfire“/Fox News vs. MSNBC terms? This is news to me. Not surprising news, but news nonetheless.
My font has inexplicably changed (Arial?). Oh well. Wallace ends his opening paragraph with the hilarious question: “Did you know that U.S. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?”. I didn’t. Essentially what “Authority and American Usage” is, is a review of a new linguistics Guide to EVERYTHING called A Dictionary of Modern American Usageby Brian Garner. But like most of Wallace’s reviews, this is more an essay on what exactly, in this case “the American lexicon”, means anymore. The division of America, which I’d assume began in my lifetime but perhaps not, is now filtering into every aspect of American culture. Even the way we speak, write, and communicate. Wallace closes with a statement powerfully on-the-nose, and scary to boot: “Dictionary of Modern American Usage‘s real thesis, in other words, is that the purposes of the expert authority and the purposes of the lay reader are identical, and identically rhetorical — which I submit is about as Democratic these days as you’re going to get.”
The real balls of D.F. Wallace showed though when I read his review – again, more of an essay on American culture – of Towards The End of Timeby legend (for good or bad) John Updike. Mailer, Updike, Roth’s — the Great Male Narcissists (GMN’s as Wallace calls them) — time on Earth, and in America, is coming to a close. [Yea, that got me back.] These are writers who emerged as a part of the Counter-Culture movement, but who’s personal philosophies represent everything that was shitty about hippies. Wallace calls this generation the “single most self-absorbed generation since Louix XVI“. What generation has so quickly deteriorated into self-absorbtion from selflessness than this one? As Wallace puts it: “But the young educated adults of the 90s — who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so beautifully — got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation“. Like Scott Stevens, Wallace takes aim at the cultural outshoots skating in open ice with their heads down.
But this was really quite a breath of fresh after after hearing a 60-ish year old, bitter man describe how young people these days “just don’t have it”, and how no one wants to work hard anymore on WCCO 830 Talk Radio. Yup, cause YOUR generation was putting in 10 hour days between rolling through the landscape in an RV, or school bus, while taking acid and having consequence free, meaningless, no strings-attached, unprotected sex… right?? Oh sorry, I forgot to mention that 5 out of 13 protested, but only 2 out of that 5 KNEW what they were protesting about, and only .5 out of that 2 weren’t tripping balls at the time. So spare me the fucking speech about how young people are to blame for the American Problems of today. Look into a mirror… you’ll see a person who’s abandoned everything they’ve ever believed in (though lots of it was bullshit to begin with), traded it for a vacation home and Social Conservatism. When asked how the Counter-Culture movement could so quickly turn into the majority of invasion-loving, snide, militarism, fist-pumpers, a great Constitutional Law professor of mine (who, importantly, was CONSERVATIVE) thought for a moment and responded blatantly: “I know exactly how. They’re extremists. I saw it when I was young: burning down medical research facilities, spitting on police, bombing recruitment centers. Now I see it as I’m old, it’s just the opposite side of the spectrum”.
Ok- if my generation’s to blame for the shit economy of today, the societal standards of today, then YOUR generation is to blame for the ideological extremism in America. You’ve been on both sides of the fence, own up to it. David Foster Wallace saw it was a child of the 80′s and a young adult of the 90′s, I’m seeing it as a child of the 90′s and a young adult of the 2000′s. A lot of these people, both writers like Updike and callers of talk radio, are self-absorbed. They were as children, they were as young adults, they are as old men and women (like my teacher once said). How can we be blamed for a shit professional work ethic when there aren’t any jobs for us? How can we be told we’re the problem when we’ve only just begun? I don’t get that attitude. Perhaps DF Wallace’s final passage of Authority and American Usage will explain something (or maybe it’s just venting frustrations; one in the same?): “I’m not especially offended by this attitude; I mostly just don’t get it. Erect or flaccid, Ben Turnbull’s unhappiness is obvious right from the book’s first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole.”
-Sonny
- Phil Spector, one of the most influential record producers in history (probably THE most in my mind), has been found guilty of second degree murder in the slaying of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. The whole “wall of sound” recording/producing technique was invented by Spector, who’s worked with Bob Dylan, The Ramones, The Beatles, among many others. There would be no “Pet Sounds”, El-P, Flaming Lips, “Dark Side of the Moon”, Brian Eno, etc. without Phil Spector. Crazyness.
- Holy crap we’re getting somewhere! The Minnesota Supreme Court has finally come out with a verdict on the Coleman vs. Franken Senatorial Battle for the ages… uh, for the youngin’s. My home state of Minnesota has been with only one Senator, Amy Klobuchar, since November. This will inevitably be taken to the Supreme Court of the United States though; and thank God for that because our tax money couldn’t be going to a better cause!
- A whole plethora of information on the infamous Area 51 Military Facility has been finally declassified after some 50 years of secrecy. Among this information is the “OXCART Program” from the golden age of secret military programs which researched stealth aircraft, fuel efficient spy-planes, and more. In one story, an Area 51 test pilot is given “truth serum” to get the whole truth about a crash in the Nevada desert. Apparently a group of people in a pick-up truck found the found the pilot with his ejected canopy in their bed; the CIA disguised the accident as an F-105 crash (a standard Air Force aircraft from the time), and likely forced the Nevadaians to sign waivers. When the CIA brought the pilot home, he was so loaded with the drugs his wife thought he was drunk and/or taking recreational drugs. Yikes. Link: The Road To Area 51.
- One of my favorite rock bands, Local H, is putting out a DVD of their last of seven back to back to back to back to back to back to back shows in hometown Chicago which showcased their ENTIRE catalog live to fans in chronological order. Pretty cool. The last night was the debuting/release party of their newest studio record “12 Angry Months” (a play on the classic film “12 Angry Men”) straight through in its entirety. The DVD is a multi-cam, professionally shot and recorded, movie of that show. Also with comments and behind the scenes stuff. Cool. Here’s the trailer (you can also see it at LocalH.com):
