Drat. The “add a comment” section of the blog has the text field, but the fields for name and e-mail and URL are missing. =/
I’m so busy right now I’ll have to wait to the weekend to figure it out.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

By the way, I watched the season opener for “The West Wing” last night, and while the script, the story and plot were all as good as always, it didn’t have the same spark and chemistry it used to have. I sure hope it’s not due to Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schalmme leaving the show. I’ll have to give it another couple of episodes before I make my decision. After all, this was a low toned depressing episode…but it shouldn’t be for 95% of the episode. It gets tiring and boring when it is.

Yes, kids, it’s Banned Book Week this week.
I was reminded by reading Seraphim’s post on Megatokyo today. =/

Maybe I’m losing my passion as I get older, but the whole subject tires me out just thinking about it. No eloquent statements, no flowery prose, I’m just going to say book banners are fnerkin morons who should be flogged.

The arrogance and audacity of these people who feel they know what’s right for everyone else makes me angry, and tired. Back in high school and college I’d be up in arms ranting (er, audibly as opposed to compositionally as I’m doing now) over the subject of censorship (which is a misnomer, by the way…but more on that in a sec.)(OK, the sec’s here…)
Censorship is defined as governmental banning of material from any of its citizen’s ability to get it, not simply a group or a library or one bookstore not selling or loaning the item when you can get it elsewhere. It’s like the term “phobia.” People use whatever-phobia when they’re talking about simple fear or revulsion when phobia really means an EXTREMELY unreasonable fear to the point of harming yourself or another in order to avoid what you have a phobia of. But I digress.

Instead of copying the key points, take a read of Seraphim’s blog on Megatokyo, where she discusses a self-appointed police for morality working behind the scenes (and possibly illegally) to get the county library to rid itself of the horrible current policy that allows for access to damaging material like Harry Potter and S.E. Hinton books. The letter that was secretly sent to some of the members of the counsel often equates changing the policy and breaking free of the permissiveness of the American Library Association with Bush’s campaign against Iraq. (Regardless of my pro-Iraqi war feelings, and the war is a necessary evil, but an evil none the less, and Bush is a corrupt idiot and any morality movement that equates itself with that jackass and with a war (necessary or not) is a frightening thing.)

Becoming a parent has certainly changed my opinion on some things, like violence and sex in the media. Before being a parent, I was all for it saying “a good parent can teach their kids right from wrong regardless of what’s in the media.” Yeesh! The extremely violent and sexually charged TV and cartoons and commercials and all sure does make it VERY tough. And regardless of how hard I try to bring my daughter up with a critical mind and an ethical heart, there’s still peers and adults out there who are damaged by society’s amorality (notice I said a-morality and not im-morality) and will seek to make her a victim. It’s enough to give me panic attacks every other day. And don’t get me started on the Internet. I used to be an advocate of completely open and free Internet…until I started getting pop-up ads and spam everyday for sites where I can see teens doing horses while getting body part enlargement while better mortgage interest rates. You get my point. And more to the point, it seems like once a week I read about some girl that got killed, kidnapped, raped, or assaulted from a secret meeting with someone met on the Internet. Panic attack time.

HOWEVER, I will never change my opinion regarding public libraries. I don’t care if it’s Mein Kampf, the Bible, deSade’s 120 Days of Sodom, or the Velveteen Rabbit, every book and every idea “good” or “bad” should be available in the library. These are bastions of free speech, free expression of ideas, and people should be able to go there and read anything they want whether it’s something they agree with or something that challenges them and makes them think. I want my daughter to be able to go to the library and read the insane rantings of a mad dictator in the making, so she can better understand what allowed the horrors of the Third Reich to occur, I want her to be able to read on other religions and see what ethics are a part of other cultures to better understand them, I want her to be able to read about “bad” things and how the characters overcome them so she can learn about the world she has to live in. A person that’s sheltered from everything except only what they already believe in is an ignorant fool who is incapable of critical thinking and either becomes a gullable dupe or a bullheaded moron.

And it’s the library. You have to GO to the library and seek out the “bad” things. It’s not like TV which comes openly into your house with next to no checks and balances. If you want to avoid reading “bad” things in a library, don’t go. Don’t let your kids go. (Although if your kids disobey you and sneak out to the library and learn dissenting views, good for them! Better than sneaking out to party with unsafe sex and drugs.)
Not to mention the fact that the free republic we live in has a responsibility to its public to make available all the interests of its people. (Well, I’ll agree, books that detail how to make pipebombs and how to assassinate people aren’t really for the public interest. You should have to probably work real hard to get access to those.) All taxpayers pay for the library, not just the Moral Majority or the Religious Reich…er, Right. Everyone. So it must serve everyone, not just people who are too stupid or lazy to think for themselves and feel other people shouldn’t think.

And what kills me, is if you look at the list of banned and challenged books, most are books where the moral, the theme, the plot, has to do with overcoming the topics they’re being challenged for. “The Chocolate War,” “Huck Finn”, “Julie of the Wolves”, “I know Why The Caged Bird Sings”, “Bridge to Terabithia”, these are books that deal with overcoming fear, racism, hatred, (wait, those are topics the Religious Reich uses to keep people in line and convince themselves they’re right and everyone else is wrong! Critical thinking senses tingling…). They help kids and young adults learn about tough decisions and situations and how to deal with them. Let’s face it, after a certain age kids don’t listen to their parents as much as they used to. But if they grow up learning to read (beyond a gradeschool level, and material other than Powerpuff Girls,) they will read books by S.E. Hinton, Stephen King, Maya Angelou, Louis Sachar, and will be able to confirm ethical behavior and true morality that’s open minded that their parents hopefully planted the seeds of. If all a person reads is the Bible and other religious propaganda, all they learn is ignorance, intolerance, hatred, arrogance, and all the other values that makes religions, societies, cultures war with others and within themselves. Completely off the subject (well, not really,) I say it again: Religion is the worst thing to ever happen to faith.

Purusing Datagrid Girl’s blog (she’s a pretty talented ASP.Net datagrid guru who speaks in normal English, and has helped me more than once with datagrids,) I followed a trail to this site:
What’s so Bad About Microsoft?
Which is a part of this site:
KMFMS

It’s a page about how evil Microsoft is on a site extoling the evils of Microsoft. While I agree with only about 50% of it, it’s a pretty clever site. =)
It appeals to me because being a fan of the indistrial rock band KMFDM I can appreciate the cleverness and the homage they give. PLUS, they actually got BRUTE!, the guy who did the cover art for all of KMFDM’s albums to do the art for FMFMS! That freakin’ rocks!

(That’s a lot of links today.)

Quickly, because I’m behind on blogs lately, I don’t have anything against Microsoft. I’m an avid Linux and PHP user, but that’s because I like that OS and that language. I used to be anti-Micro$oft because it was the cool and clever thing to be when you’re an elitest geek, but I’ve come to realize that they’re just a business like any other business. They have used the way our capatalist free enterprise economy is set up to become rich and powerful and God love em for it. Have they used deceptive and underhanded methods to gain market share? Sure. But I bet if you took just as fine of a microscope to any corporate business like people have to Microsoft, you’ll find the same level of questionable practices, give or take.

The thing is, Microsoft is smart and despite bugs, their product is very good for the 90% of the public that aren’t skilled computer geeks. Since Windows 3.1 in the early 90’s, their operating systems and GUI’s have been user-friendly out of the box. That’s why people buy Microsoft products. Linux may be a more stable, better, expandable OS, but it wasn’t until RedHat 8 almost 2 years ago that any Linux distrobution has been appealing to the average user. And whether we geeks like to admit it or not, most PC users is where the money and the business is. Microsoft has always known how to appeal to and serve the general populace, and get rich off them at the same time. It’s a very symbiotic relationship. Personally, I LIKE spending days and days configuring and tweaking my Linux to work with my hardware, and installing software, and whatnot. But Mrs. Sally Smith from Nowhere, Montana who wants a PC for her family to send e-mail and view family photos and play The Sims wants it to work out of the box and be easy to use. And Microsoft has provided, helping the American society to become a little more computer savvy and literate over time…for good or bad.

People who have been using Macs for years now, because their hardware/software works nearly flawlessly and updrades are almost perfect, in general have no idea how computers work or how to tweak or fix something. PC users, even the average Joe-blow, because their Microsoft software on Intel hardware flakes out now and then and upgrades sometimes take some work, occassionally picks up PC Magazine or “PC’s for Dummies” and becomes a little more computer literate. Which actually annoyed the crap out of me when I worked for Software ETC. because half my customers knew only an iota but thought they were experts, but as a PC technician who doesn’t like helping people *eg* (at least not as 90% of my job description) it was nice when you got someone who had a little problem but figured out themselves how to fix it or overcome it.

Anyway, I’ve digressed greatly. Good for Microsoft for becoming rich and successful and being the big “Bad Guy” to people who have learned from growing up with Star Wars to hate Empires. And good for Linux distros like RedHat and Mandrake, and BeOS and Macintosh for their OS-X for starting to become viable alternatives to the general public and not just us geeks and IT professionals. Because only when Linux becomes a REAL alternative for the AVERAGE PC user will Microsoft be forced to streamline their product, fix bugs without forcing people to pay full retail for the patch, I mean, next version, and bring their prices down. Open Office has actually started to become a viable replacement for MS Office, as well. And it too is free.

So in the meantime, I’m going to continue to dual-boot my PC with WindowsXP for my games and keeping files I want to KEEP like my mail .pst, and Linux for playing around with getting things to work and running servers.
I am going to get that KMFMS t-shirt, though.

Music: “Underworld” Soundtrack
I just finished the “Matrix” review, and that was long and tiring. So, this’ll be short.

I’m a HUGE fan of NineInchNails and Tool, and the trailers for the movie “Underworld” look incredible, so, I bought the CD. I mean, how can you go wrong with NIN and Filter members, former Limp Biz’ and RedHotChiliePepper guitarists, and the like. The amount of industrial music performers and producers in that album is an amazing feat! I was really looking forward to this CD.

However, the CD is extremely limp, and not the Bizkity kind.
Only two tracks, “REV22:20″ and Skinny Puppy’s “Optimissed” are any good in that they have life and creativity. The former simply because it does, the later probably because it’s not original for the soundtrack. (The remix for “Judith” will likely grow on me, I think.)
The rest of the CD is simply loud and crunchy with very little musical skill or originality.
My brother, to give credit where it’s due, I think hit it on the head when he said Lohner was what Trent Reznor wanted him to be with NIN and isn’t uniquely talented in himself, Frusciante is brilliant with a funky group like RedHotCP’s, Wes Borland is cool because of his image, not because he’s talented, and Patrick is pretty descent hit or miss, not consistently. Put all these people together, and you get great mediocrity.

I’m really disappointed. I’ll admit my expectations were quite high, but I judge the CD by how interested I am in listening to it, not by its coolness factor. How many of the tracks would I want to put on a mix CD for long drives. And I’d have to say only two tracks (plus the “Red Tape” song used in the trailers.) The rest is simply not interesting at best or annoying at worst. Even David Bowie couldn’t save “Bring me the Disco King” from being laughable.

My recommendation, do NOT buy this simply because it looks like it’d be cool; listen to it first. You’ll probably find you’re only going to want a track or two, especially since the CD booklet is worthless and not enough to make this CD worth buying retail.

Movie: “Matrix: Reloaded” (finally got to see it.)
Wow, great movie! I was SO worried going into it. I was sure the action would be old, or get old fast, I had heard the plot was impossible to understand, the dialogue was mystical nonsense, and it was full of incontinuity.
Wrong!
Action has really begun to bore me. Starting with the 1st “Tomb Raider” I’ve become jaded by action and have started just tuning it out. With certain exceptions like “Black Hawk Down”. But pointless big budget explosions and cars flying up in the air and whatnot, just boring. But “Matrix 2″ shocked me out of my action ennui! Even the scene with Neo vs. a hundred Agent Smiths. The clips in commercials I’ve seen had me worried it’d just be plodding annoying. It was like a ballet! It was a stunningly choreographed display with so much going on but so well put together and organized, it didn’t bore nor overwhelm. I didn’t even mind the parts that looked obviously CGI and too rubbery or plastic, which is a HUGE peeve of mine.

And of course stylistically it’s incredible! Each individual looks like an individual in the perfect clothes for their personae. We get to see more of the Zionists (hey, uhm, I just realized that. Not to be confused with Extremist Jewish sects….) in their in-Matrix form, and they’re fantastic costume designs! Each bad guy is dressed like someone you’d feel good about being whipped up by. One of the best looking scenes is probably not any of the fight scenes but the one where Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus are talking to the Merovingian and Persephone(sp) with the Raynart twins and the Chinese guy nearby…just a stunning costume scene!

As for the plot, brilliant! It was faithful to the mystical philosophy mixed with sci-fi established in the 1st movie, and evolved it into a great set-up for the 3rd. However, I can see why most people would find it unintelligible. There were two scenes that were pretty long (for an action movie) dialogue heavy, and laden with mystical explanation or technical philosophy, and I saw the 20-30 year old audience kinda shuffling and looking around as it went right over their heads. And I don’t REALLY blame them. To follow the dialogue, at least the 1st time through, you really need to have a grasp of quantum mechanics/theory and Buddhist fatalism. A FANTASTIC mix, by the way! Quantum mechanics defines existence by choices, and Buddhist fatalism defines personal reality through acceptance of existence and dharma. If you are at least familiar with these concepts you can follow the dialogue and plot pretty well, and experience a great development of realization, and a rollarcoaster of possibilities without having it minimized because you have to see it again to just catch the drift. Discussion about toward the end with spoilers. I’ll warn ya.

In fact I want to get right to it, so, great movie! Now, beware spoilers in the EXTENDED ENTRY. Don’t read the extended entry below if you don’t want to see spolier! =)
Read the rest of this entry »

(need sleep!)
So at the end of the PennyArcade rant (see previous blog) he’s got some links to anonymous file sharing utilities. I like this statement on the Filetopia site:

“If i dont have anything to hide: Why should i care?

Imagine that the government decided to place a video camera in every home to control terrorists and other criminals. Would you feel comfortable with that camera in your living room? Would you feel happy living with camera even if you’re not a criminal and if they tell you they’ll use it only with a court order?.
Or imagine that the government passed a law saying that every homeowner had to give a copy of their house key so that their house could be easily entered and searched if a crime had been committed. Of if they suspected that a crime had been committed.

Or think how you would feel if you had to use special envelopes for your letters, so postal authorities could easily inspect them.

All these analogies describe pretty well what is happening with online privacy right now.”

And my submission: Not for file swapping but for general PC security and encryption, I HIGHLY recommend and encourage Stegano Security Suite, or at least Steganos Safe found here.
Extremely easy to use way to encrypt files or whole directories, hide files and directories, and send encrypted e-mail. Also a net anonymizer to help keep you invisible during Web browsing.

…it is when someone you like and admire their opinions makes a “rant” with the same message as your own: PennyArcade

He says basically the same things, except better. Which I like because I feel validated, but I hate because he’s better at expressing it and has a readership of a million people while I have a readership of…me. =) And that’s OK. =)

I’M SO TIRED! Me need sweep….

Argh, matey! Oops, wrong piracy.
Gawd I’m exhausted. My wife got a new laptop this week. I spent 2 whole nights setting that up, and then last night til 3:30 setting up my new PC (her hand-me-down.) I’ve had a RedBull and a SoBe Adrenaline, and I’m still about to collapse.

Anyway, came across this quote in a CNN.com article about college student reactions to the RIAA suing students:

” ‘This is insane, they can’t just hack into our systems and track our activities. It’s our property,’ said Lucy Chen, a sociology student who thinks downloading free music is fair because compact discs are overpriced.”

OK, it’s no secret I think the RIAA collectively are as stupid as the MPAA (the movie rating group) but more like an evil Keystone Cops who are actually effectual in their getting the “criminal” but for all the wrong reasons…and I’m so tired that’s not even making sense to me. Let’s just say RIAA bad!

BUT! And however, let’s get real. Downloaded music you did not pay for is NOT “your property” and the overpriced CD’s is not justification for theft.
I download music, a LOT more in the past than I do now, but I do, and 66% of the reason is because I can’t spend $16 on a CD for only a song or two.
But I know that downloading it is wrong ethically and not wanting to pay for it whether it’s $20 or $1 doesn’t make it right. A Lexus sedan is rediculously overpriced, but that doesn’t make it right for me to steal one, and doesn’t justify my opinion that I deserve one.

And the messed up ethics of today’s youth, from about age 35 on down, makes me both mad and exhausted and extremely worried. It’s not unusual to find a person or two who feel they’re justified in taking something because it’s overpriced, but that’s the ethic that most of the youth have–not just one or two here or there.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: The record labels are bloody bastards for charging $16 (or even $12) a CD making virtually 50% clear profit off each CD (50% is a LOT!) with next to nothing going to the artist without whom there wouldn’t BE a CD to sell. THAT’s unethical and also robbery. Unfortunately, at the moment, it’s legal robbery. And whether you like it or not, Robin Hood was a theif. And he was giving to the poor, while music swappers steal for their own benefit.

The proper response should be not “Well I can’t afford the inflated prices so I have the right to download music and call it my property,” but to find alternate legal sources of getting your music that does not involve buying CD’s so the labels get the message. Using Launchcast, iTunes, BuyTunes, indipendant record labels…anything except buy a CD from a major label, but without being unethical. Maybe go even further and send letters to the labels and to congressmen and artists urging them try alternate methods of music distrobution instead of slaving themselves to the RIAA…but chances are the RIAA will only listen to revenue. And if CD sales continue to plummet, and despite their best luddite efforts online trading and downloading continues (which it will,) they may just get a clue and figure out online music sales can be a new sales paradigm.

I don’t think I’m being a hypocrite in saying downloading is wrong but still doing it. Because I acknowledge it’s wrong and that I’m doing it. Plus, I’m not saying other people are wrong for doing it, I’m urging people not to. But primarily, telling people to call a spade a spade and acknowldege that if you’re downloading illegally, you’re not justified and you’re stealing.

I’ve been able to almost stop downloading from Kazaa and Bearshare. What with Launchcast (WELL worth the $3 a month!!) and buying CD’s direct from indipendant labels where the artists get real profit, and buying used CD’s, my downloading consists mainly of seeing if I like something or not enough to go find it to buy it. It’s still wrong legally, and I’d like to be able to say it’s OK because I’m using it to see if I want to buy something…but it’s still wrong whatever the reason.

But I’m not going to stop. =)

It’s also wrong and completely draconian and empirialistic for the RIAA to also go rummaging through HD’s to find files and suing 12 year old girls and elderly people who’s computer is being used by their downloading grandkids, etc etc. And for being proud of making a poor family settle because they can’t afford a lengthy legal battle, they deserve to burn, 1st to death and then in hell.
I hope an unmanned airplane flys into the RIAA headquarters while the big pigs are all there in meeting and the innocent grunts who work under them are away at lunch, and destroys the head of the Beast. Then younger more savvy people who understand that the Internet is not going away and can’t be controlled by them will come into power, and completely update the way music is sold. And give more profits to the artists. And give everyone a magical pony that will fly us to chocolate seas and candy rainbows….

Sleep! Need…sleep….

RIAA Sues a 12 year old for music sharing.

A girl who lives in the projects, meaning, it was easy to convince her and her parents that it’d be more expensive for them to try to fight the suit than to just settle.
“The RIAA said it was pleased with the settlement. There are 260 cases still pending.”
Oh I bet they are. When they can terrorize a poor 12 year old into submission, I bet they’re real proud of themselves.
” ‘I am sorry for what I have done,’ LaHara said. ‘I love music and don’t want to hurt the artists I love.’ ”
Considering artists who are owned by the big record labels get squat from record sales, it’s their concerts and merchandising where they make any money at all, they’ve successfully brainwashed poor LaHara with their propaganda, or she’s forced to make statements like that because she was just screwed by them.
“Record companies blame illegal music file-trading for a 31-percent fall in compact disc sales since mid-2000.”
No, of course it wouldn’t be the fact that in a world where items get cheaper as their technology gets older, CD’s have not gone down in price but rather UP since their release in the mid 80’s. That people realize the artists they love don’t get anything from the record sales, that over inflation of craptacular pop music with maybe one or two good songs on a CD of over produced garbage…none of that can have anything to do with it. Interesting that in the heyday of Napster, record sales went up, but since the RIAA has been breaking balls over the issue, sales have gone down. I dunno, just speculating.

My opinion: Don’t support the RIAA! Don’t buy CD’s from major record labels. Use iTunes or BuyTunes to buy individual songs, buy CD’s from indipendant producers like Projekt and Righteous Babe Records and Nothing Records to name a few of the many labels out there owned by the artists themselves, or give more support to the artists than a couple of cents per $16 CD.

Every dollar you spend on CD’s from the major labels, you’re giving right to the RIAA to help them sue 12 year olds.

Cool development in the research of sound, and how it comes closer to disproving ghosts.
Basically, in short, they’ve proven what had been therory for some time, in that certain subsonic sounds can produce certain emotional and physiological reactions, like chills and terrible sorrow. “Symptoms” of encountering ghosts.
And that these sounds can be naturally occuring…like in houses or areas that are supposed to be “haunted”.

The study and the findings are really cool, and it helps add more fuel to my belief that ghosts don’t exist…but it also makes me a little disappointed, because I WANT ghosts to exist. Everyone to some degree wants to believe in a little mystery and strangeness in the world, either for excitement or so they can feel like there’s more to this world than the cruelty and banality we see around us everyday. And I’m not different: I WANT to believe in ghosts and UFO’s and psychic powers, but I don’t. Not until it can be scientifically proven with empirical evidence that can be verified and peer reviewed and repeated by the scientific community at large. Call me a skeptic. =)

I’m so sleepy today!! I’m sitting here at work trying to code some ASP.Net pages, and I can’t focus, my eyes are droopy. Guess I stayed awake too long last night thinking about an interesting plot idea for a new story. Kinda scary and creepy. =) Afraid I can’t say much about it, but oddly, it has to do with ghosts. *chuckle*

I need a good horror movie to watch. Not some stupid slasher movie, but something truly spooky. “Cabin Fever” SOUNDS like a good prospect, not too much blood and a lot of character paranoia and coping with panic and fear…but it kinda looks too much like a teen slasher in its casting and dialogue. =P
I wish I got a chance to see “28 Days Later”, and I still need to the “The Others”. I keep hearing it was pretty good.
I want another “Blair Witch Project”! A lot of people dump on that movie, and I myself feel it was maybe 10-20 minutes too long and just an iota too much shakey-cam, but it was still a brilliant movie! Vicarious horror, that is being terrified by the events happening elsewhere, is most effective when you don’t see what to be afraid of. The mystery, the darkness, the unknown. With $25,000 the Blair Witch creators were able to make a fearful and believable horror movie. And believability is key!
When you see some gruesome monster, or undead psychotic killer, or bloody dismemberment you’re taken out of the situation by either the distraction of the effects or because of the absurdity or extremity of it. When the visualization of the horror is minimalized, your imagination is much more capable of creating fearful effects than an FX team can.
I saw Blair Witch opening night in a huge old style thater converted into a movie theater. And during the scenes when it’s night, and the characters had just encountered something weird and creepy, and they sit still, listening, you’re sitting still and listening and from the very edge of the perifery of your hearing you can barely hear some sounds that may be children or laughter or you don’t know what, and in this theater of a few hundred people you can hear a pin drop, that’s great art.
I feel bad for people who saw Blair Witch 1st and only on video. Yo get maybe 1/10th of the effect of the movie, if even that much, by not having the environment of a dark theater surrounded by the sound of the movie with the best auditory effects playing tricks on your hearing and a large screen to fall into the action with, to stare into the darkness not knowing what you’re going to see, knowing you’re not going to see some “scary” monster popping out at you, but instead you might get a glimpse of some shadowy form or flash of unknown light or something you can’t identify….

I mean, am I wrong, or aren’t you most scared when it’s dark and quiet, and you think you may have seen movement out of the corner of your eye? Or are staring into the pitch black, and are expecting to see some sorm or shape even blacker than the pitch barely form out of the nothingness to disappear before you’re even sure if you saw it? That scared the holy crap out of me. Much more than some solid, defineable person or object or “creature” would. You can deal with a clearly visible object by either fighting back or running away, but when you can’t see or even be sure what you saw if you even saw it, how do you deal with that? Aside from fear?
If I allow myself, and I used to a lot as a teenager, I can scare myself into cold sweat by laying in bed and imagining I can hear half formed sounds and words at the very edges of my hearing, expecting to hear the chilling sounds of a crying spectral child from no discernable direction, peering into the darkness, expecting to see the light from the clock dim as if something just walked past it but not seeing anything, or seeing a face with no form or features barely different than the darkness it’s a part of looking around the corner, either at ground level or on the top of a spindly neck that disappears into the darkness….
Hell, I’m getting chills right now thinking about it in broad daylight.

I wish I could be a filmmaker….

So White Wolf, who I’ve always had a distant respect for, appreciating their “Vampire: The Maquerade” game and wishing I could play it…without having to play it with freaky drama-queens, is suing Sony Pictures over their new movie “Underworld.”

1st, the facts:
White Wolf’s press statement
The suit

Someone just shoot me in the head, because the rediculousness of this makes my brain want to explode.
Read the first couple dozen pages of the suit and you can see the point by point similarity between the movie and the game. You may gasp at how close these similarities are!
Until you realize that 90% of the similarities are also found in Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and pretty much any vampire folklore.

Penny Arcade makes a pretty good comment on it in this comic strip.

White Wolf is claiming as their own, many literary aspects that come from traditional folklore and vampire stories from centuries. I grant that the concept of a vampire and a warewolf falling in love while their two “families” are at war isn’t in any folklore and may be similar to the short story White Wolf says the plot is ripped from…but you know, “Romeo & Juliet” is probably one of the most often copied plots in literature. It’s not hard to believe two vampire/warewolf stories could share the same centuries old plot and not be dirivitive of the other.
And even if not, the fact another work in a similar setting does share the same over-used plot isn’t dirivitive enough for a lawsuit. When you discount 90-99% of the other points due to them being based on folklore or other folklore based on fiction.

That notwithstanding, take a look at the suit, pages 57-60. Unless my legalspeak is on the fritz, White Wolf is attempting to stop Sony from releasing “Underworld” at all, any marketing for the movie, and claim any profit from the movie (which I don’t see how can happen if the movie can’t be released,) for themselves. Even White Wolf’s press statement says: “The volume of confusion in our marketplace is amazing,” observes Tinney, “our fans think they�re going to be seeing our film. Of course, if the movie gets released, in a way they will be.”

Is it just me or is that a thinly veiled way of saying they want to claim the movie as their own?
Now, I’m not in law, so for all I know the extent of the damages their suing for may be a default level every Serpent, I mean, lawyer demands in their complaint expecting it to be setteled for something less out of court. It still adds to my extreme hatred of the demonic way our law system, primarily our “civil” system, encourages to sue for anything under the sun and demanding everything under the sun. Moo-moo wearing Mrs. WhiteTrash thinks they can get free money by suing some restaurant for serving hot coffee…hot, and businesses try to boost their revenue and nurture their sour-grapes for not thinking of “it” first by suing over the release of a product that has a small iota of similarity.

I hope the scriptkiddies who will likely want to take hacker action against a company for this will target White Wolf for their audacity and arrogance. Sony is just trying to make a kickass movie that has just as much similarity to The Matrix as it does to The Masquerade.

I got a cell phone yesterday!! =)
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/6800
Well, I had a Motorola analog phone back around ‘96, and then a nice Nokia digital flip phone in Iowa about 2000, and another similar flipphone off and on the last couple of years. I say off-and-on because I’d been using the pre-paid cell cards. Expensive, but useful.

So, last week I took a chance and ordered a new phone and real service through AT&T, and they didn’t laugh at me. So now I have a top of the line phone that I LOVE and good service with Internet access. =) I highly recommend Nokia and that phone specifically.

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I also recommend LaunchCast!
It’s a Yahoo! project, but don’t let that stop you. It’s streaming radio basically. The free version has OK sound quality, a LOT of channels and the ocassional ad between every few songs.
The pay service is only $4 a month, or less by the year, and has VERY high quality sound, CD quality even, and a TON of more channels and no ads! I listen to it 9 hours a day, 5 days a week at work, and it’s worth it!

My Station has a lot of techno, goth, alternative, etc. I LOVE the ’90’s Alternative station, and the Acid Jazz station. The amount of music LaunchCast has is a mixed bag. A lot I wouldn’t expect they’d have like Tea Party (YEAH!), but a few albums missing from bigger artists, like they don’t have “OK Computer” by Radiohead. But they have a goodly amount of Oakenfold and Nine Inch Nails. =)