All the stores are being closed down. R.I.P. CompUSA and BestBuy on Riverdale. We hardly knew ye.
November 24, 2006
Black Friday 2006: Becoming Like A Ghost Town
Black Friday 2006: WHERE IS MY CIRCULAR?
I stood out there and froze my ass off and I don't know why. I gotta get in there and get my value on. OH MY GOD, here it is….Atari Flashback Game System.
Black Friday 2006: HANDS OFF MAH DVD PLAYA
It wasn't enough to be up all night after getting Turkalepsy, I had to be an idiot and go join the other idiots in pursuit of the ultimate Xmas gift for someone else (or perhaps myself?). Anyways, you get the notion. Hear the glory of my visit to Target.
November 26, 2005
L.A. TIMES: Profits From “Hustle & Flow” Are Being Paid Out Kinda Slow
Jon W. Sparks was kind enough to make mention of this article from the L.A. Times on his blog, and I’ll do the courtesy of making the same mention. Having just finished working on a movie with Craig, I was surprised to learn that nobody has been paid a dividend from the $9 million distribution buy-out for Hustle & Flow. According to the story, that would be nobody except for the producer John Singleton. It seems like a very difficult situation for everyone involved, and an excellent point is made in the article by John himself: “This is a matter of business.” I’ll make no comment other than to suggest you read the story and make your own inferences.
I hope for a positive resolution for everyone involved.
Sphere: Related ContentNovember 18, 2005
All I Want For X-Mas Is My Two Front Teeth.
There’s no way it’s too early to start asking about things I’d like for the holidays. While I sit here waiting for two more people to complete free iPod referrals and playing Dell’s instant win game waiting for the Dellf to bring me something swell, I realized that Christmas is probably on everyone’s mind this year for a number of reasons. I’m the first to admit, I do want peace on earth and goodwill towards mankind. I want people to donate to charity and help out those in need because it’s been a tough year for so many of our fellow man.
But I have some basic needs of my own.
Mind you, I have come to realize that I have fairly simple needs. Part of 2006’s pre-planning for me is about dreaming big and living simple. In accordance with that, I have a few small wishes and needs from the people I know and love. I’m going to go ahead and link you to my X-Mas wish lists, and if things come up that I need, I’ll add them here.
This has been a very tough year financially in a number of spots. Despite what you may think, internet jobs only pay if you work for a big company and the movie business only pays you if you’re at the top. I’m nobody special, I’m just like everyone else in the world, working my fingers to the bone scraping to get by. I’m not complaining, mind you, because at a personal level my successes in 2005 have been many. This has been the year that put me on the path, and I’m grateful for so many opportunities. So many of the things on my list are in service of 2006’s plans. If you think you’d like to buy me something on one of these wish lists, I’d love you forever and I’d probably be indebted to you for at least that long.
If you have a used iPod, laptop or digital camera lying around that you’d like to donate, I’ll gladly take it off your hands and put it to good use. Barring that, here’s some of my needs (and wants) for 2005.
My Froogle wish list can be found here for you to look thru. If you want to buy something from this list, be sure and email me to let me know so I can tell someone else not to buy it for me. If there’s something that you’d like for Christmas this year, leave a comment here and (if I can afford to do it), I will do my best. But I warn you now: it’s going to be a regifting/handmade Christmas for me.
Good tidings to all, and to all a good night.
Sphere: Related ContentNovember 14, 2005
By The Way John Stubblefield, You’re Number 1 With Me, Too.
November 13, 2005
Here’s A List Of CD’s Known To Contain The Sony-BMG XCP Rootkit
The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a list of all known Sony-BMG products that contain the “rootkit” technology I’ve been writing about. Here’s what they have so far:
Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver’s Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)
Ricky Martin, Life (Columbia) (labeled as XCP, but, oddly, our disc had no protection)
Also of note, according to the EFF, “Sseveral other Sony-BMG CDs are protected with a different copy-protection technology, sourced from SunnComm, including:
My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album”
The best thing for you to do if you’ve purchased one of these titles but have not attempted to play it on your Windows-based computer: click here for detailed instructions on preventing infection of your computer with the potentially dangerous rootkit.
If you have already attempted to play one of these titles on your Windows-based computer, click here to download the patch which disables the XCP patch.
Sphere: Related ContentNovember 11, 2005
Sony BMG Will “Temporarily” Stop Making Anti-Piracy CD’s, No Offer Of Relief To Impacted Consumers
In response to public outcry, Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed to stop selling music CD’s that carry “anti-piracy“, or rootkit technology, to consumers worldwide. The anti-piracy features which Sony had been including on new music titles creates even broader security risks to those who use the CD’s, including leaving a listener’s computer vulnerable to hackers.
Since the discovery of the security holes on October 31st by Mark Russinovich, chief software architect at Winternals Software, the word of the technology leak has spread broadly throughout the tech and consumer world. The “XCP” technology, which affects users of Windows-based computers only, was intended to keep purchasers from making more than a certain number of copies of the CD. The technology also prevents users from loading the songs from the CD onto an iPod while leaving the opportunity open for loading songs to owners of Windows Media Player-compatible portable media players.
The extent of damage to home computer users is not known at this time, but the technology was only present on 20 popular music titles at the time the decision was made to stop including it. Fortunately, some leading antivirus manufacturers began including the Sony XCP technology for recognition in their virus definitions as potentially malicious, enabling it to be detected as a virus and to be disabled.
Sony has neither made admittance of wrongdoing nor has any offer for replacement or refund been made to any purchasers of CD’s which contain the XCP Technology. Thousands of the discs are still in CD stores at this time. Sony has no plans to recall those music CD’s at this time, but they began making a patch available for download on their website which purports to fix security holes left by the discs. But some computer experts have reported that the patch not only does not work but may cause more crashes and potentially further damage.
The best bet for all concerned: DO NOT PURCHASE ANY Sony/BMG products until they discontinue all copies of CD’s carrying this technology. Send a message back to the company that you don’t like being treated like a criminal for giving them your hard-earned money.
Sphere: Related ContentPREDICTION: Netvibes Is Going To Take Over The Planet
I’m sure by now, everyone is familiar with RSS Feeds and how you can have a desktop appliance to aggregate, or collect, updates from your favorite websites and blogs to your computer as they happen. Any good website or blog has an RSS feed. Yes, even I have one right here you can subscribe to my site with if you use an aggregator.
Well what if you’re far away and you don’t have your computer? What if you dont want to have to set all that stuff up again time after time? NetVibes handles it all for you. It’s a completely interchangeable web-based desktop aggregator that is easy to organize. Once you add a feed, you can arrange it in the order you want to see it by clicking on the feed, dragging it to where you want to view it on your page, and NetVibes remembers your personal settings.
It can act as your home page for your browser, complete with instant email checking, a number of excellent built-in options (including easy connectivity with your del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, or Gmail accounts), a feed directory you can browse through to find web feeds you’re interested in, and a customizable header.
Mind you, NetVibes is only a couple of months old — officially it’s still in Beta. But when you see how nice this webtop appliance is, how quickly it works, and how it is accesible from any place that has internet connectivity, you’ll want to play around with it and see how it works for you.
I like this thing a lot. No spam, no pop up ads, nothing (at least not yet). If you understand how to set up RSS feeds, then go set up your own NetVibes and check it out.
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