McCain vs. The Video Professor

by twit

it had to happen…

postcards from the internets

by twit

Banksy! Perhaps his identity has been revealed? The twit’s not convinced, but this:

Asked by the paper whether Gunningham was Banksy, he replied: “Well, he wasn’t then”.

Gunningham’s father Peter said he did not recognise the person in the photograph, while his mother Pamela maintained she had never even had a son.

does seem like something that a mother of an artist would say…

They are the experts: Just because it’s a stone thrown in a glass house doesn’t mean it’s not true:

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said: “McCain’s crude remark on the indiscriminate killing of the Iranian nation not only testifies to his disturbed state of mind, but also to his warmongering approach to foreign policy.”

The Ron Paul Army: Laugh if you must, but these folks may swing the election away from McCain and the Hillary Avengers:

Hillary For Worldwide Emperor

by twit

Some of Hillary’s most avid supporters are under the impression that she has been offered the Veep slot on Obama’s ticket. So they have created a site, that allows comments without moderation, with the following inspirational message:

Hillary, don’t take a VP slot. Stay in the Senate (or retire or go worldwide).

We won’t let you sacrifice your own future to prop up Obama.

No Remington Steele presidency!

Go worldwide? Is it time for the Emperor of the World election already?

Click here to sign the petition, and don’t forget to leave a comment! Certainly we can all agree that we do not, under any circumstances, want Hillary anywhere near a ticket led by Obama…

Since so many of us actually want Obama to win.

Viacom wants to know what you are watching on YouTube

by twit

The beginning of the end, via Wired on July 2, 2008:

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyrighted videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Sure, right now they are just suing Google and Youtube, but Jammie Thomas probably has a different perspective on where this can lead. Via Wired on June 30, 2008:

The Recording Industry Association of America on Monday urged a federal judge to leave intact a $222,000 jury verdict against Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota mother of two who has become a public symbol of the RIAA’s litigation campaign of more than 20,000 copyright lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharers.

it’s all viral marketing, isn’t it…

by twit

“Viral marketing” videos are out and about everywhere these days, including the ones that don’t make it clear what they’re up to from the start, such as the “crazy office guy” and “popcorn mobile phone” videos.

So the twit does wonder what they are selling with “crazy girl on a train,” now remixed by Ludrachrist:

via Delicious Ghost

Chinese hackers don’t watch the news

by twit

and Congress doesn’t get access to the important information about how our government operates. That’s why the President and Vice President are starting to get impeached…

Nevertheless, The Hill reports on June 21, 2008:

More Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed.

Apparently, we’re just beginning to get a sense of what has happened:

Computers within the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which Smith serves as a senior Republican, were also infiltrated. Kirk suspects that other committees may have been attacked as well.

“I would suspect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, (and) Appropriations committees would all be top targets,” Kirk said.

postcards from the internets

by twit

I heart Joan Rivers because she says “Yes, I swore, and I’m so fucking sorry“

The cost of free advertising

by twit

So the Associated Press had a bit of a mental misfire the other day and freaked out at the Drudge Retort…

Copyright, fair use and the freedom of speech, nobody seems to quite know how to define it, but people tend to think they know it when they see it… at least according to the New York Times on June 16, 2008:

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

… Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated.

in the meantime, here’s a video about “fair use” and copyright law in general:

Comedy Porn

by twit

This guy is great. The LA Times describes him as:

[Alex] Kozinski, who was named chief judge of the 9th Circuit last year, is considered a judicial conservative on most issues. He was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He has a national reputation for a brilliant legal mind and has developed a reputation as a champion of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression.

So when his online porn stash becomes public in the midst of an obscenity trial that he is presiding over, does he meekly retreat from the appearance of impropriety? Not a chance. Instead he calls for an investigation, inviting an ethics panel to look over his collection. From the Associated Press on June 12, 2008:

The criminal prosecution of a hard-core pornographer turned into a personal trial for the presiding judge, who called for an investigation Thursday into his own conduct over lewd photos and videos stored on his family’s publicly accessible Web site.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asked an ethics panel of the court to initiate proceedings after the disclosure about his trove of sexually explicit material.

“I will cooperate fully in any investigation,” Kozinski said in a statement.

Classics of Western Literature in the 21st Century

by Loadz

Who knew that a random spam e-mail could be so beautiful…

Although it’s not much for rhyming, the imagery it invokes is a weird and wonderful thing. I call it “Cassette of Inadequacy” and have carefully transcribed it here:

It debris? or was.

Is occasional is exponential.

Or readily The brevet.

Which in rive. Or do confluence.

But in bottleneck philosopher highly.

happen a lullaby.

Is distal my sensible. But exhibitor?

Are on neck whites.

Have flannel Be radar.

I buffalo.

The trouble with sockmonkeys

by twit

is that they are usually made to look like socks.

For example, via sockmonkeyfun.com:

these are the kind of sockmonkeys one might find if one googled such a thing.

McCain vs. The Internet

by twit

It was fun while it lasted, although the party is now officially over. Last night, Wonkette noticed that the website selling McCain’s campaign gear allowed people to write reviews of the products. The twit then endured laughter so painful she could hardly work her computer, but she did manage to preserve some highlights for posterity.

For example, there are pins for sale:

eom	June 11, 2008
Reviewer: George Orwell from Washington, DC United States

Irony is dead.

To my sisters planning to vote for McCain

by twit

I realize it hurts that Hillary didn’t get the nomination, especially after all of the early media attention that said she was the inevitable candidate. It was a historical moment on its own, providing clear evidence of the cultural shift that finally allowed a woman to become known as the most credible candidate for the  Democratic ticket.

I realize that she was going to vindicate every woman, create a victory for every female held back and left behind by this sexist culture of ours. She called much-needed attention to the inequalities faced by women in America and the unfulfilled promises of liberty and justice for all.

Now the internet is ablaze with former Hillary supporters promising to either vote for McCain, to not vote at all or to write in Hillary on election day. As a woman, from my heart to yours, I ask you to remember why you supported Hillary in the first place. You care about the plight of women, you are sick and tired of being treated like a second-class citizen, you want change to come and you want it now.

I ask you to consider how staying home on election day, writing Hillary in or voting for McCain abandons that clarion call.

Will you work further destruction on your sisters and daughters in order to protest Hillary’s loss of the nomination? Will you work to secure a darker future for all women, now that your first choice is no longer available?

Fun with Mobile Phones

by twit

I realize neurosurgeons have their reasons for using earpieces or speakerphone instead of putting their mobile phones right next to their ears, but this is getting ridiculous. If placing four cel phones around a few popcorn kernels and calling them all at the same time actually causes the kernels to start popping, maybe those doctors have something of a point…

Videos via Weberence:

morning cartoons

by twit

via Delicious Ghost

morning cartoons

by twit

starring “Young Hillary Clinton”

Cyber G.ho.st. breaks down real world walls

by lestro

According to the New York Times, there is a team of Palestinian and Israeli coders who are working together on creating a new web-based personal computer that will allow people to log in to their own virtual harddrives from any internet connection.

Despite the differences between their people and the walls put up to stop them, the programmers are working toward a common vision and goal.

They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa,” Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.

The goal of G.ho.st is not as lofty as peace, although its founders and employees do hope to encourage it. Instead G.ho.st wants to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. G.ho.st, pronounced “ghost,” is short for Global Hosted Operating System.

“Ghosts go through walls,” said Zvi Schreiber, the company’s British-born Israeli chief executive, by way of explanation…

could this possibly be real?

by loadz and by twit

Attention Hypochondriacs: Leprosy is Fun

by twit

So sayeth the Washington Post on May 27, 2008:

“it has been a really cool experience having a biblical disease.”

Which probably has a lot to do with the fact that in this modern age, when it comes to leprosy, “about 95 percent of people are thought to be naturally immune to it,” there’s a routine test to diagnose it and it is “effectively treatable.”

Please make a note of it.

help us Jon Stewart, you’re our only hope

by twit

according to The Telegraph on May 2, 2008, these are the top ten “most influential” political pundits in America:

why yes, that is Karl Rove named as the number one ‘pundit’ in America. imagine that.

coming soon to a YouTube near you

by twit

because crazy like this won’t be denied an audience.

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

In the twit’s humble opinion, the only discourse to be had at this point is whether this chick is a danger to herself or others.

From Yale Daily News on Apr 21, 2008:

The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts ’08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday.

But as the chick has previously insisted:

“… she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself.

At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

and what horrorshow awaits us in the near future?

Breaking the Great Firewall of China

by twit

via Wikileaks:

In the last week Wikileaks has released over 150 censored photos and videos of the Tibet uprising and has called on bloggers around the world to help drive the footage through the Chinese internet censorship regime — the so called “Great Firewall of China”

… Wikileaks has also placed the collection in two easy to use archives together with a HTML index page so they may be easily copied, placed on websites, cd’s, emailed across the internet as attachments and uploaded to peer to peer networks.

Censored Tibet March 2008 protest photos (120 photos on a single page)

leak:tibet-protest-photos.zip (120 photo archive)

Censored Tibet March 2008 protest videos - display (35 flash videos)

Censored Tibet March 2008 protest videos - FLV format (Flash archive)

Censored Tibet March 2008 protest videos - AVI format (AVI/mpeg4)

postcards from the internets

by twit

Headline of the day: “How to do business like the Mafia“

“They’re violent, they’re ruthless, they have caused misery to many, but you can’t fault their business sense: mafia bosses know how to make a profit.”

Weird shit of the day: “Frog without Lungs” … it breathes through its skin …

Bickford said the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this unusual trait…

“These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet,” Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.

“They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt,” he said…

The Next Great Global Pandemonium of the day: Cosmic Rays

The BBC reports on cosmic rays, “which originate in space before sporadically entering the Earth’s atmosphere and going through everything they encounter” and:

Because the operation of computers is through charged particles, the unpredicatable hits from the rays are problematic, potentially causing the system to crash.

… this is potentially a problem not just for PCs and supercomputers, but anything with computer-operated parts - for example cars.

“You could be going down the autobahn at 200 miles an hour and suddenly discover your anti-lock braking system doesn’t work because it had a cosmic ray event,” Mr Hannah said.

No Justice, No Peace…

by the squid

I watched the morning news today. There was a segment about the group of girls viscously beating up another girl to make a YouTube video.

Amongst the interviewers, someone posed the question: Why would you record yourself committing a crime and then post it on the internet for all to see?

A rational thought, if The Squid says so himself.

However, I have to think that in this land of instant celebrity, lack of personal responsibility, lack of respect for laws, as well as unbalanced penalties within the justice system, teens and young adults simply have no thought, or clue, of penalty or prosecution.

Case in point, two blondes walk into a bank….and rob it of $11,000 and go on a shopping spree. Once caught and convicted, one is sentenced to ten years probation, the other two years in jail and eight years probation.

Last I checked, robbing a bank was a federal offense worthy of some serious jail time.

signs of the times

by twit

this is up on drudge:

LES MISERABLES:

Man in Wheelchair Robbed Bank…

…Man Accused of Stealing Pizza Pans

Wife, husband battle over hot dogs…

…mother and son arrested for stealing food

so i sent this in:

Man assaults sister over butter dispute

A 67-year-old man apparently punched his sister in the shoulder Thursday after he accused her of stealing butter from their mother, the Seattle police reported.

our tax dollars at work

by twit

The Raw Story reports on March 28, 2008:

“The 22-year-old Florida man who allegedly provided old, substandard Chinese-manufactured ammunition to troops in Afghanistan as part of a nearly $300 million Pentagon contract also started a private company that specialized in selling foreign munitions to civilian gun enthusiasts, according to public documents”

aaaand:

“The company’s Web site was taken down after RAW STORY began asking questions.”

But they were able to find at least one naughty picture from the now-defunct site:

“tell the world, they said to us”

by twit

an experiment in synchronicity, if you wish. play the first two videos at the same time, but the first one needs to be restarted when the music ends at around 3:05 (or so) to fit with the third video…

1) “mad world” music by Gary Jules, video by karma

2) BBC News, June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

3) 3.16.08 via mayoubekind

Should the US boycott the Olympics?

vs.

Previously, in response to a report that hundreds of Tibetans have been killed since March 10, 2008, lestro wondered, “what if they hosted an Olympics and no one came?”

The conversation continues…

Bush: Politics not a factor in Olympics

WASHINGTON - China’s crackdown in Tibet will not cause President Bush to cancel his planned trip to the Beijing Olympics, the White House said Thursday.

… Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush’s position is that the Olympics “should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.”

She said that Bush, in accepting the invitation last year from Chinese President Hu Jintao to attend the Olympics, told him the games would “shine a spotlight on all things Chinese.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Perino added.

Bush agreed to go to the Olympics during a meeting with Hu in Australia last September during the Asia Pacific Economic Council meeting. A White House spokesman said at the time that Bush was going to the games for the sports and not for any political statement.

(image via infoplease.com via www.attytood.com)

Should the US boycott the 2008 Olympics?

Careful now, all you Ashley Dupre fans

by twit

She’s jailbait:

“A lawyer for the call girl linked to former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer said the woman was only 17 when filmed for “Girls Gone Wild” videos in 2003.”

at least, according to this:

“The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.”

get it?

trying to click on a link for a video starring this notorious 17-year-old could be “violating federal law, which criminalizes “attempts” to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison.”

and then there is what this legal framework could mean for all internet users:

birthday parties for unjust wars

by twit

Five years ago I watched the war start on CNN. It had been frustrating then to see how limited the news coverage was of the protests that were taking place in DC and around the country at the time. On the ground, they were huge. On the news, not so much.

Five years ago we didn’t have the internets like we do now, but today, after visits to the main organizing sites and finding no blogs, no updates few updates, no recent press releases or video, I see a missed opportunity here. It looks like whatever fragmentation is happening with the organizers of the protests, it translated into fragmented coverage on the internets and in the news.

so what the hell happened?

meet the Technium

by twit

well, then. I suppose this means that if you feel like your tv is watching you, you’re probably right. From Kevin Kelly’s website, where he is developing ideas for his upcoming book, a clip with emphasis added:

… eventually technology will far more autonomous than it is today. Right now not only are we the parents of the technium, we are also the sex organs of technology. From technology’s view, we are the mysterious walking-around glands that reproduce them. They may be able to operate on their own, but they need us to reproduce them. This is already changing. Most computer chips in the world today are designed in part by other computer chips. Most robotic devices are manufactured in part by other robotic devices. As we improve chips and robots, there is no reason to believe that at some point computers will wholly design some other computers, and some robotic systems wholly manufacture other robotic systems. The next step seems inevitable: technology will reproduce itself.