Category: society and culture

This includes the social impact of entertainment, but not books, media, and TV shows reviews—that stuff should be in arts and letters.

Pirates of Silicon Valley DVD

Pirates of Silicon Valley DVD

MacMinute clued me in to the fact that Pirates of Silicon Valley is coming out on DVD. I recorded this movie when I last had cable (back in 1999) because I was out the days it aired. I enjoyed this movie, and because of it’s high geekfest quotient, right up there with Real Genius.

I think Dave still has my videocassette of it. I had forgotten I had recorded it until a few years ago when I saw part of it with him. We had great fun watching all the 1999 dot-com boom commercials that were aired on TNT along with it (too bad the DVD doesn’t have that as a special feature.)

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Posted on by tychay 6

Regulating podcasts

This thread has been rated S

Now that Apple is offering Podcast integration into iTunes, an absurd argument has popped up concerning warnings vs. parental responsibility.

In typical polarizing fashion the discussion has been divided into a neat dichotomy: those who demand that Apple should censor/rate content for the sake of the children and those who think that you are just a lazy parent out-of-touch with today.

Even the people who disagree drop into the illogical and irrational. Take this high rated response from someone who claims to not “entirely agree with either of these guys” (but clearly is showing his biases):

It seems that they would, even by their own standards. We (meaning society in general, not just parents) expect such a system for movies, TV, video games, music, etc. And btw, we’re missing the point with some of this by focusing solely on children. I know plenty of adults who don’t care to see or hear “adult content” and would appreciate a warning in advance so a label system would serve people other than just parents.

My wife dislikes “adult content” in music and ironically, Apple does such a thing for iTunes Music Store (those little ‘explicit’ tags on some songs and albums.) It would seem even by Apple’s own standards they have come up a little short with their implementation of podcasts.

It would be very easy for Apple to classify podcasts in this manner (or ask providers to self-rate) and then give parents control over what podcasts their children could access via the parent controls panel.

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Posted on by tychay 0

BFD Today

Once a year, driving around work becomes impossible and and I become Grumpy Old Man. That is because of BFD at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Does anyone know how long this lasts? I have leave at a regular hour (5:30pm) to visit my brother and I need to know if I need to allot an extra 30 minutes to get picked up.

Caitlin pointed out that “for my safety” that “professional cameras” are not allowed there “point and shoots are okay”. How does that work?

Would my camera be banned? Probably. No wonder Ken Rockwell is obsessed with surreptitious uses of his digital camera. And yet when I buy plugins, I can get the consumer editions because my camera isn’t cool enough.
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Posted on by tychay 1

Blog comment logic…

book burning

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

—Ray Bradbury

When John Dvorak visited my workplace, I was introduced as “the Mac guy.”—the split second double-take on his part was funny. But he was amused that a coworker had programmed an old Apple //c we had lying around to generate ASCII art so it’s all good. He did tell me to read his blog.

I can’t keep up with him. He’s the Steven King of the tech world. But every so often I click on a random entry from him to see what is interesting out there.
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Posted on by tychay 7

Being Steve Jobs…

One thing I’ll never understand is why people follow what Steve Jobs does so closely. Are these the same people that have a secret stash of People magazine?

They’re in good company though. My co-worker (an ex-HP employee) once said that Carly Fiorina has a bad case of Steve Jobs-envy which pretty much hits the nail on the head. Too bad whenever I see a picture of Carly with rock stars, actors, or entertainment executives, I keep hearing the Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the other… One of these things doesn’t belong…”

Now Gawker has a contest guessing the expletives uttered by Jobs as if it is impossible to utter an 8 letter cuss word.
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Posted on by tychay 4

The new iPod Shoplift

LuxPro Super ShuffleNow that I finally gave my brother his gift, I was going to blog about the iPod Shuffles I got him and Caitlin. But then on Friday, I read something amusing.

Think that the picture to the left is an iPod Shuffle? It’s actually a photo of the LuxPro’s “Super Shuffle” which DAPreview snapped a shot of at CeBIT 2005 (mouseover for the backside). What a clear case of trademark and trade dress infringement! And just after they were asked by Apple Legal to remove them on Friday, they put them back up the next day because “Apple said nothing about Saturday.” I guess that’s what happens when you live in a country that is perennially sanctioned under the U.S. Trade act.
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Posted on by tychay 12

The (online) state of comics

screenshot of ffviewI used to love comic books.

When I was in middle school, one of the only two disciplinary reports I received was from reading a comic book. The headmaster ripped up a issue of Groo right in front of me. I remember receiving a tap on my shoulder, him yanking it out of my hands, and me yelling, “No! Don’t…” *riiiiiiippppp*,“…It’s somebody else’s.” The fact that I finished all my homework did not matter to me; knowing that a replacement issue was going to cost me a pretty penny did.

If you couldn’t guess already, most of my comic-book-reading friends didn’t survive prep school.1 Neither did I for I stopped reading them.

Then I went to college.
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Posted on by tychay 2

The Rambaldi^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDa Vinci Code

book coverI picked up an illustrated version of Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code.

The publishers have come out with this edition to exploit the holiday season. Like Harry Potter before, I’m curious what all the hype is about. Knowing my ability to absorb “genre fiction,” I guess I might as well write this day off.

When it came out last year, it was sitting on my room mate’s coffee table, and I probably should have read it then. From the back cover, the book is about someone who finds a hidden code inside Leonardo Da Vinci’s works. A secret society called the Priory of Sion exists to protect the secret revealed by the code and the Indiana Jones-alike and a love interest go off to unveil the astonishing truth.

I know this is genre fiction, but… C’mon! Where have I heard this one before?

Wasn’t it just the other day, waiting for my $1 double cheeseburger, I noticed a huge advert for National Treasure? I can picture Eisner’s yes-men at Disney saying, “Okay, we’ll do The Da Vinci Code, but instead of that a lame Italian, we’ll have the founding fathers to make it more American; instead of the Priory of Sion which nobody has ever heard of, we’ll use the Illuminati. Heck, we have every dollar bill in the United States advertising for us! And what’s more brilliant is no royalties to Dan Brown.” The last part probably sat well with ol’ Mike: Disney is still trying to convince the world they own Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan. Yeah, and the Lion King and Atlantis weren’t ripped off either. Disney, you sure know how to tell them…I have newfound respect for your originality: I await Toy Story 3 with bated breath—that’ll show Pixar who wears the pants in the family.

No, that wasn’t where I heard it before…
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Posted on by tychay 3