Olpc, eepc, the netbook and several “toaster,” or internet-mostly systems that use baseline hardware and an open-source browser as a platform to access the internet have changed a computer from a software engine to a browser engine. It is a simple task-execution system, OS agnostic, mostly browser agnostic and is easy to configure. The gradient between netphones and desktops becomes grayer as more devices fill in, leading me too ask just one question:

When is the task-based interface going to truely make its way to windows? Soon please.

A family has a drink to mull over wedding plans.

I have been mulling over something I watched on TV a few months ago. At the time, I felt uneasy about it a scene from the amazingly good “Mad Men” on AMC. Aside from showing us this country on the perch of real, painful change, this show delves into class disparity, gender disparity and race disparity using not conflict per se, but general acceptance. The nonchalant way people deal with these issues while working out other plot points is creepy and effective.

The primary character of the show is Don, on who my wife has an admitted crush, and he is as compelling a character as I have ever seen on Television. In the scene that bothered me, Don goes with his girlfriend(not his wife) to a house where beatniks are getting high and discussing what is wrong with the world.

Don is in a suit, and the lines are clearly drawn around who has status, who has a “real” job, who has credibility, who is lying to themselves and who is lying to everyone esle. I fealt at once like I was watching a scene from inside my psyche. Different aspects of my personality fighting for control and my internal monologue finding my future.

It was unnerving.

I loved it.

If you want to see cutting-edge television, watch an episode from the beginning with TiVo. From the intro to the credits, I promise you not only a visual feast (pause at least once during every scene, you will know when) but a writing and acting orgy. At no point, if you are truly paying attention, will you be disapointed.

Norman Rockwell it ain't - but it looks nice.

Meet Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency

Don and wife discussing his abusive father.

I didn’t watch this show when it aired orginially, but I believe that I would have liked it then. Often the people from that show crop up in other TV, as the show was Canadian in origin and lots of media is produced there and has been for the last 20 years. Indeed this show had much in common with some of my other favorite shows, including some things that I didn’t remember; ghosts of dead parents, snarky one-liners, a tendancy towards fantasy, humor with heart.

While watching the episodes, it is easy to notice the difference between the earlier shows and the later. The first set could have been any 70s episodic character-centric dramedy, but the last two seasons smack of modern TV, about 5 years early. Oh, yeah, with Mounties.

In case you missed it, that show was Due South, the first TV show that I loved as an adult. I can’t watch Battlestar or CSI: New York without thinking about it.

Thanks.

Writers love vampires for many reasons, mostly to use well-worn plot devices in new ways; such as flashbacks to much earlier times, addiction metaphors, obsession, a almost universally accepted set of bylaws, brooding internal monologues, simultaneous immortality and vulnerability, and gobs (and GOBS) of sexual tension, to name a few.

As I am not an expert, I will just take the rest of the space to mention that not all western renderings of vampire lore are that bad. For instance, after years of thought, I am prepared to say that “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” did not suck, despite the Oscars. Not completely. Despite Keanu’s, criticly accaimed performance in “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey,” he didn’t live up to my expectations and Wynona’s pre-”Reality Bites” angst didn’t satisfy at all.

However, the other performers came straight from Chapter One of “How to Cast a Film.” Gary Oldman as Dracula even now give me goosebumps, if you haven’t seen “The Dark Knight,” he plays Jim Gordon… magnificently. Anthony Hopkins. Cary Elwes is one of Lucy’s suitors, and great even with a crappy accent. A red-headed Sadie Frost as Lucy. Awesome. Tom Waits as Renfield, but unfortunately no music.

Oh yeah, if you are paying attention, Monica Bellucci is also in it, but you have to rent the R-rated version.

“Yes, I would like satellite TV.”

“No, I am not sure that I will be voting for your candidate, but I would be glad to donate.”

I would very much like to meet the person who pitched, and sold the first robo-caller. In Detroit right now, in an alley, nursing some fortified courage, is where I will probably meet this forward-thinking Marketeer. A person who fundamentally misunderstands cold-calling and human interaction to such a degree, one can only assume they are unemployed and unable to panhandle.

Is there a person alive who actually listens through a full robo-call other than to push the “take me off your f-ing list” button? Perhaps Aspergers patients who would like the practice, maybe a schizophrenic who isn’t sure which voice is on the phone and which is in their head?

I am not sure if it was intentional, but this bit of diabolically annoying technology is giving us a capitalist’s answer to the Turing test. Alan Turing was a brilliant Mathematician who devised a simple test to deem a machine “sentient,” and the method was a conversation in which a person is fooled into believing that the computer is another human. Ideally, one assumes that robo-callers will reach this with full market force before, if not shortly after, MIT does. The simple reason being economics and evolution.

Economically, more funds will go toward keeping people on the phone, as this yields a higher percentage of sales. Also, computers like this will be infinitely cheaper than humans, have programmable dialects and even language modules for other countries. Evolution will be present in the many companies using different approaches in parallel, learning from each other and building on the mountain of statistical data gained one annoying car warranty call at a time. With each hardware and software iteration, the conversation will get a little bit better.

When a human and a computer are indistinguishable from one another on the phone, it isn’t much of a stretch for a robo-call to sample your voice after a short conversation and use it to call your mother. What percentage of the populace will have to be fooled and for how long before the test is passed? What happens when less ethical persons get their hands on this technology

Maybe my digital secretary, or intelligent digital agent can screen my calls with a Turing Captcha.

What kind of questions will be hardest to answer?

I cried today for, I think, the first time since my Father died.

Some of you know why, this is for you. In honor of one of the most important and loved of all my favorite places:

Top 5 songs my unconscious offered up to make me cry:

5. Cheers theme
4. Change is gonna come - Sam Cooke
3. That damn catchy Beta Band song, everything is not going to be alright, asshole.
2. Both sides now - Joni Mitchell
1. Landslide - Dixie Chicks(damn them anyway)

Top 5 things that meant the most to me about the bean:

5. Hot Java on tap.
4. It wasn’t going back to my empty apartment.
3. I met the nicest people, and count them among my friends.
2. Thursday Night Open Mic - the best ever.
1. Tiffi and I met there.

I will take it with me where ever I go, that sense of peace, of belonging. I feel a montage coming on, gotta go.

You are worse than Karl Rove pandering to the fears of the public. You are dismissing the entire state, a state you obviously don’t understand. Maybe you should stop whining about the outcome of the primary and try to do something about it.

To quote someone I used to respect, “You’re hurting America! Stop it!”

It is John.

More specifically it is about Content Producers, and folks who would like to post their nice photos on Flickr with a regular copyright and not have to worry about policing every and all forms of media for misappropriation. Instead of protecting the astronomically multiplying creators, this orphan works act simultaneously reduces (to almost nil) protection for hard-to-reach producers and then LIMITS legal recourse to suing for reasonable compensation NOT INCLUDING LEGAL FEES.

This is a big, fat F-you from big business to every small studio, copy writer, photog and upstart arteur in any creative field. There are several legal gray areas built into this sieve, with lots of large holes for people and work to fall through. This was written to bring thousands of works, stranded in a copyright limbo by Sonny Bono, into the public domain for all to use and appreciate. But lets look at a few cases where this would have been tragic.

When Lara Jade had her self-portrait (when she was 14) taken from flickr and used as the cover of an adult film. Her mother was told that to take the case, the attorney would need 50,000 up front. I don’t know how the story was resolved, but consider if this happened in the US with this law.

A young woman gets an e-mail from a friend on flickr detailing how her work is being used in the back of a magazine to advertise phone sex. She tracks down the company on the internet and calls them, they explain that they found the image on a google search but couldn’t find attribution so they assumed it was an “orphan work.” So she says that this is a use she would not have condoned for her work and she demands they stop, they promise to. Two months later, she buys a dirty magazine just to check and sure enough, there is her image AGAIN. She calls the company, they say it is a misunderstanding and she threatens legal action. Laughter ensues. The company basically tells her “good luck.”

Her work is practically indefensible, and if you have ever tried to hire an Intellectual Property attorney, you know why. Money, big piles of it. One consultation with the most bargain-basement litigator and the fair compensation for a b&w dial-a-whore ad is gone. No trial, settlement, or anything.

Now imagine the situation reversed, and there was a copyright holding company with art languishing in the basement. A map of the celestial heavens has been scanned by this company and used with permission by a student magazine advertising for it. One of the Back-up CDs is found on campus and a small publisher decides to use the work as a chapter divider graphic in a book on Buddhism.

Hellfire rains down and an army of attorneys is dispatched to deal with the situation. The publisher shows where this image was originally published in the 16th century, but the lawyers press on, and issue motion after motion until the publisher offers fair compensation. But the copyright holding co. has other ideas, there are 2,000 of these books, and the rights per impression could be as much as 30 to 50 cents each. However, as a chapter graphic, and there being 12 chapters per book, this leads to $6 a book.

$12,000. Sound outrageous? Check out rights-managed scans of Andreas Cellarius’s Harmonia Macrocosmica. If you choose to license first, you could get off the hook for $500, but who knows how punitive they could be.

In the haste to bring acres of Books into the public domain, congress is dragging all other disciplines with them. This, like most copyright legislation written in the last 50 years, creates a widening gap between people who have the resources to defend work or the use of it and the people without.

Maybe some of the photographers can find room in the Disney Vault to keep their work safe.

EDIT: I am not the only one that things the Orphan Works Act is a bad idea either.

You can’t fight racism with regional bigotry.

We, the state of West Virginia, have provided coal for cheap heat and electricity to the east coast for hundreds of years, all the while living in isolation and poverty. From generation to generation we eek out subsistence and yank ourselves up by our bootstraps only to have to move away for a decent job. You will find West Virginians everywhere you go, displaced but friendly, holding get-togethers, finding one another, discussing the world and trying to get by. So before you judge us all by the cherry-picked interviewees, try to get to know one of us. No matter how little we have, we are willing to give, and just because some of us are misinformed due in no small part to the media, we are willing to listen.

There is a great injustice being perpetrated right now, as we speak…all over the country. Thousands of people are lighting up, toking, puffing…whatever you want to call it, all over the US. While being an alcoholic is a requirement for some vocations-an author in the British Isles for example-if you were to tell anyone except for your connection and your closest friends that you smoke the reefer, you might end up a pariah. A tad duplicitous, a bit unfair, but years of propaganda & misinformation are hard to counteract. So why isn’t it legal? Thats an all-day History Channel Marathon question, so I am going to skip it and move on to my modest solution.

The legalization movement (as it is) is never going to get the job done.

The folks heading up the legalization are bit too idealistic and high(ahem)-minded, expecting people to be reasonable and altruistic. What do you see when you think of the typical hemp advocate? A hippie liberal long-hair pinko commie lawyer. Wow, lets call our hypothetical barrister Marvin; and when Marvin isn’t arguing on the left side of the ACLU, he is hitting the bong with his draft-dodging and/or Canadian buddies. This is the man who is lobbying for the decriminalization of The Evil Weed. He might as well be wearing a Grateful Dead T-Shirt into congressional chambers and respond to all questions with “the dude abides.” What’s more, they give money to candidates that support medicinal marijuana and decriminalization. That’s not how to buy votes people, you give it to the other guy, so he supports it too. It doesn’t seem like the Pharmaceutical Lobby is going to allow medical Mary-Jane anytime soon, as the price would drop, and their medicine would no longer be competitive. But that is an argument for another time, or again, The History Channel.

What I propose is a completely different tactic. Let’s not use our own funds but find an industry with an itchy check-writing hand, who can feel the hellfire already licking their feet and know the viability of Vice. Lets convince them that this is not only a good idea, but with all of the negative press that they have received, this is actually a positive step for the future of their business. Maybe if they already have fields for growing in the right climate, and the ability to machine harvest. Perhaps they might even have rolling hardware? Oh yes, that juggernaut of jurisprudence, The Tobacco Industry.

When it comes to buying votes, who does it better? No one. They have beaten back Class-action lawsuits, congressional hearings and even the production of “good” propaganda trying to convince people that tobacco is evil. The have endured Cancer labels, state-wide bans, 60 minutes investigations, more than a little mean-spirited competition and Russell Crowe. But they they know things, like any press is good press; there is a sucker born every minute; and telling people not to do something triples the likelihood of them doing it. So how do we sell it to them?

Easy. We give the American people someone to hate and/or fear. We find a Republican congressman with impeccable credentials, maybe a little seminary school, from a strong southern state and buy him a jet. Not outright of course, but with the promise of revenue and a 521. If it is already a tobacco state, then it should be easy to show him how to triple his states GDP with one law, ensuring kickbacks from the growers and the industry, and solidifying his power base for, conservatively speaking, the rest of his life. I even have a nominee with a FANTASTIC NAME: Roy Blunt (R) Missouri. We build a message with other clergy and men of (dubious) character and it goes something like this:

God wants us to have weed. It’s the liberals that are responsible for making it seem bad, Jefferson grew it, Washington smoked it and it’s in The Bible. The government-simultaneously-grows it and destroys it to this very day. If it weren’t for the hippies making it look bad with their free love and communist, homo drum-circles, cancer patients would be able to use it as medicine.

In order to be sure, we should buy a few more Congresspersons, and launch a piece of legislation called the “Cannabis Reduction Act.” You see the most controversial laws have reverse nicknames like “Little John,” or the “Patriot Act.” Finally, we need to be sure that all of the crop is grown in the US, because even though we regularly destroy crops in Columbia and Afghanistan, we want to guarantee American jobs.

And as a last parting shot, if the industry isn’t completely convinced we will remind them that the side-product, hemp, is one of the best fiber sources in the world, as possibly the oldest cultivated on this continent (I know this because every Hippie in Speech class is required to tell me). I am preparing a Power-point presentation to several of the manufacturers and have been mocking up packaging with a market current attitude. Enjoy.

Watch this spot for the Slide Show - When I get 10 comments I will post it!