Archive for November 2005
Long story short…
- 2003 – Miami Football players make the brilliant decision to record a rap song (Streaming, MP3) glamorizing gang bangin’ bizzatches, or as one member of the 7th Floor Crew so delicately put it, “We ’bout to run a seven-man train all up in you.” I especially liked the reference to having sex with someone’s ear. Lyric Excerpts
- 2003 – 2005 – UM campus has good laugh, knowledge of this doesn’t spread much further.
- 11/05 - 19 yr old UM student & blogger Kyle Munzenrieder wants something to post on his blog and decides this song would be a good choice.
- 11/18/05 – ESPN.com “Manufactures scandal” with an article entitled “Rap recording could threaten Miami’s progress
- Muzenrieder takes down post at the request of the university, but audio file & other blog posts are already out there. Too late UM, sorry. Welcome to the internet.
- 11/17/05 – After recieving threats from UM football fans, Muzenrieder posts a fake suicide note. Cops show up, take him to dean’s office where a hilarious conversation ensued…
It was a good-sized office, with room for what seemed like an awful lot of people. It had a side door, which was closed, and — rather disconcertingly — a photograph of UM football coach Larry Coker on the desk.
”Suicide isn’t funny,” Sandler said. Munzenrieder agreed that suicide isn’t funny, and that it was stupid of him to have made the post.
But, the 19-year-old noted, just that morning he’d taken two tests, in Computer Science and Ethics in Media. ”If I was going to do it,” said Munzenrieder, “there’s no way I would have taken two tests today.”
That argument, like most he made that day, didn’t go over well.
Sandler told him, ”I have the power to decide whether or not you go to school here anymore.” Munzenrieder was advised to withdraw from school. The dean called his parents in Naples and told his father that “your son has caused a big headache for the administration here.”
At some point, a psychologist emerged from the side door. ”I think you should go home,” she said.
”For how long?” Munzenrieder asked, seeing his college career flittering away. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. What do you think it means?”
“I think it means you don’t know.”
”Stop double-talking me,” she said.
- 11/17/05 – Kyle sums up his day with a post titled “A Run Down Of The Best Day Of My Life” which includes this nugget of wisdom…
I’m on the phone with my sister and I’m glad to know that at the young age of 14 she realizes what most people never do: “A lot of people are morons”. Of course most people never realize this because they are morons.
Kyle has since been removed from the dorm and it living in a hotel. He will only be allowed back for the spring semester upon completing a “psychiatric evaluation” by the UM medical staff which I am sure will deem him “unfit to continue studies at UM.”
Bottom line is the Miami administration just doesn’t get it. How is Kyle any more responsible for this than Pat Forde? The players were the ones creating the story & distributed the song. Kyle reported on this story two years after the fact, and then Forde reported on that story. Forde was the one who brought the “headache” to the school’s administration, not Kyle. There was no controversy until Forde created one, everyone just thought it was funny.
In conclusion, Forde’s article was about how the Miami football team had successfully transformed their old image of “Thug U” into a rather clean one and how that apparently was all thrown away with this creation of this song. Well Pat, sorry, looks like you were wrong. There are still thugs at UM, they just don’t play football.
Good luck Kyle.
These blog entries of mine, they are really just things that I am thinking about throughout the day, or things I find interesting while perusing the web. Typically, when I post about a movie I just finished watching, it happens to a documentary. Why? Because those tend to be some of the more thought provoking ways I spend my time. You take in real life stories, process them, and if you did something right in that brain of yours, you typically get something out of it in return. Sometimes it is a life lesson, another time it may just be something you would never get the chance to experience directly, but regardless… you should come away thinking about something, anything. Not very often does a movie come along that has the same effect and it is not a documentary. Why? Because human experiences & emotions are so difficult to portray on film in a realistic manner because any thought provoking moment created by the director, writer, actor, etc… is typically drowned out by the need to appease the mass audience, so in come the explosions, the comedy, the tears, and everything that makes Hollywood… Hollywood.
About 6 months ago I heard an interview with Ryan Philippe about a new movie he had coming out. This interview was during a radio morning show on a FM rock station, probably stuck somewhere between prank calls and prize giveaways, so the content of the interview struck me as a bit odd, and now I know why. During the interview, Philippe tried to keep the discussion rather serious, while the host tried to crack jokes, and I vividly remember Philippe saying something along the lines of… “I’m trying to keep this serious because I need to convey the message of how important I think this movie is, and that it should be something every person needs to see.” My thought… “Sure, people HAVE to see it so then you get more money. Makes sense to me.” After watching his movie, I now agree with him, it is something everyone should see.
“Crash” is a movie so unique and so against the grain of what you typically find coming out of Hollywood that I wasn’t too surprised to learn that it really didn’t come out of your typical Hollywood studio. Lions Gate is a relatively small studio by Hollywood standards, but is also one of the larger independents out there. For only a $6 million budget, they were amazingly able to land Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris, Ryan Philippe, Larenz Tate and a slew of other notable faces. Bullock alone typically demands around $15-$20 million per movie, and Cheadle is one of the hotter names out there to cast at the moment.
This film takes half a dozen different stories in post-9/11 Los Angeles, intertwines them, and digs deep into the motivations & essence of each character. Some scenes were eerily reminiscent of a Quinton Tarantino movie, for example there is a scene where Ludicrous & Tate are walking down the street analyzing the problem of racial stereotypes and how incorrect they usually are, just prior to carjacking someone. Mostly the movie revolves around racial relations in a post 9/11 world and how each and every person can be affected in a large way by even the smallest of things.
The movie spends quite a bit of time reflecting back on how people respond to those racial issues. Some take circumstances of nature, and interpret them as acts of faith. Others, who may be the anti-stereotype, let their emotions fuel a rage that converts them into the stereotype for a brief moment. Some of the most racially ignorant characters end up doing some of the more commendable acts, while others just cannot let doing what is right get past their pride.
Honestly, I don’t want to go into the movie too much. Not that it is an edge of your seat thriller that would be ruined by a spoiled ending, but rather because I guarantee you every person comes out from this movie with a different interpretation. So, I’ll leave this one up to you to dissect.
If you are looking for some comparisons, I would liken this movie to Garden State for its low-key indy-vibe and American History X for its thought provoking racial theme.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – NFL owners voted Wednesday to tentatively award Kansas City a Super Bowl, largely as a tribute to owner Lamar Hunt, who gave the game its name.
It comes with one giant string attached: improvements to Arrowhead Stadium, including a rolling roof to keep out the February cold. The team estimates the cost of the roof alone at $100 million to $200 million — and that’s not counting $300 million or so the Chiefs say they need in stadium upgrades.
The approval is for a 10-year window, starting in 2011, but Hunt said the most likely prospects would be for the 49th or 51st Super Bowl, after the 2014 or 2016 seasons.
This, on top of announcing a partnership with Yahoo gives clear indication where TiVo is going. No longer will living room IPTV be confined to MythTV & savvy Windows users, but now it is being delivered to the masses. The Yahoo partnership allows TiVo users to schedule recordings from Yahoo’s website. A neat little trick, but that is just the tip of the iceberg on what we can only speculate the end goal is at this point. Now that you have the ability to schedule recordings remotely, and download video via an internet connection, the possibilities are virtually endless with regards to internet media. Click a banner or any ordinary link, and seconds later a related file is being sent to your living room all automagically.
TiVo once again appears to have an edge over its cable counterparts, which is something it will need to stay in business as we’ve already found out. Could only be a matter of time before the Yahoo > TiVo buyout begins.
Two announcements today….
- Microsoft will treat & remove the Sony/XCP rootkit like the malware that it is.
- Bush Administration to Sony: It’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer.
When you have both the Bush administration & Microsoft telling you your latest shenanigans are up to no good…. that’s saying something.
Yahoo has an article about how three trojan horse viruses have been found that exploit the massive serurity hole left by Sony’s rootkit. It also reports a class action lawsuit has already been filed, and the EFF is looking into filing another. As I blogged earlier, it is in their EULA that they can install whatever they want, but EULAs have been shot down in court before, so let’s hope this one is as well.
UPDATE: Somewhat UELA related story on TechDirt. Can Malware Firms Use EULAs To Ban Security Firms From Stopping Spyware?
Paul Roberts reports on EWeek that Microsoft is considering ‘taking action’ against Sony with regards to its rootkit that has been all over the news recently. This comes on top of Microsoft claiming Sony’s next-gen DVD format (Blu-Ray) is “Anti-Consumer.” Anti-consumer? Pot, meet kettle. How many anti-trust lawsuits has Microsoft had slapped against them in the last few decades? Still, I’m totally with them. The Blu-Ray DRM is waaaaaay over the top.
“Bricking” your Blu-Ray player for tinkering with it?
Dynamically updated copy protection schemes
Discs locked in to one specific Blu-Ray player making it even “borrow-proof” between friends?
I’m not going to sit here and defend anyone’s right to copy intellectual property, but I’m not going to defend a companies right to have a monopoly over innovation, break my analog equipment (here also), and make the process of being entertained by watching a movie a nightmare of making sure my Blu-Ray player is hooked up to the internet before I am able to watch a movie so it can download the latest copy protection schemes, and renting a copy of a movie I already own just so I can watch it at a friends house.
Maybe it is just the geek in me, but watching Microsoft v. Sony throwdown would be entertaining as hell. People seem to think Microsoft is a mindless power & money hungry corporation, but Sony is 10 times worse. When was the last time you heard about Microsoft suing people for pirating their $200-$300 software? Ok, now when was the last time you heard about Sony & the RIAA suing people for pirating $.99 songs? Oh wait, $.99 is too little now for the RIAA .
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“This is the week that Sony declared war on the consumer”
0 Comments | Posted by Derek in Random
In a scathing attack on Sony, CNet editor Molly Wood calls this last week as the beginning of a war the media content companies have waged on its own consumers. How did that happen? In one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever seen by a technology company, Sony somehow though it was acceptable to force the user to install a rootkit in order to listen to some albums under their record label. Have a listen to this NPR report for more breifing on this situation. By the way, someone needs to tell Ari Schwartz, Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, who was interviewed by NPR that the “root” part of the term is not derived because “it’s at the root of the computer” but rather because by having “root” access on a unix/linux based system means you have super-admin access. It’s really not that big of a deal, except for his occupation as a Washington DC technology lobbyist. I would have hoped he knew what he was talking about.
How about this comment from the story as well… the President of Sony BMG’s Global Digital Business stated “Most people, I think, do not even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” How unbelievable is that?!?! Ignorance is bliss I guess Mr. Hessa. I just couldn’t believe a Sony exec would say such a thing, basically saying that what you don’t know doesn’t concern you, even though it is on your personal computer.
Anyways… Sony’s latest attempt is just a a natural evolution of the media/software/technology companies attempts at preventing people from doing perfectly legal things with products they buy (CD “Ripping” falls under fair use laws). Molly Wood gives a great description of what we are facing now days and how absurd it is getting.
No, we ain’t gonna take it
This is an unacceptable development in digital rights enforcement. I don’t know how to put this any more clearly. Don’t get me wrong--we’ve long since crossed the line. It’s utterly absurd that we accept paying for music that will play on only one or two digital audio players, at best. It’s absolutely insane that anyone ever tried to put out a CD that couldn’t be ripped to a PC at all. It’s a complete joke that we’re sitting around anticipating the day when TiVo comes along to tell us when we have to watch a recorded show, and that it will choose when a recorded show might be deleted. I can’t even believe cell phone carriers think it’s OK to cripple cell phone features in order to protect their own moneymaking propositions. And Hollywood’s proposed new Analog Hole legislation, which would criminalize nearly every digital video activity you can think of, is another column unto itself, and it’s going to be a long one.But this--using the tactics of criminals to invade our PCs without our knowledge and to expose us to further attack, just so you can keep us from, say, burning a mix CD and giving it to our friends--this is beyond the pale. And as many news sources are beginning to point out, there’s some reason to think it might also be illegal, under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Ever ask yourself questions about the birth of RSS, XML, online advertising, O’Rielly Publishing, Archive.org, or even the internet in general? Well, I just recently discovered NerdTV, an IPTV show (meaning… internet only TV show) done by tech writer Robert X Cringley (the same guy who has done numerous other PBS technology specials. Go Netflix Triumph of the Nerds). In each episode of NerdTV, Cringley brings you a 1 hour, unedited interview with the innovators, the movers, and the shakers in the computer industry over the last 20 years.
I can’t say it is for everyone because if you are not familiar with those terms mentioned above and you aren’t particularly interested in learning, NerdTV might not be for you. However, if the stories telling the birth of computing and the technologies that rule our lives today interest you, then odds are you will find these interviews wildly fascinating.
So far, Cringley has brought the following interviews…
Dan Drake – Autodesk Co-founder
Dave Winer – Father of RSS and Web Logging
Tim O’Reilly – Open Source Publishing Pioneer
Brewster Kahle – Internet Archive Founder
Bill Joy – Sun Microsystems Co-founder
Max Levchin – Co-founder of PayPal
Andy Hertzfeld – The first Macintosh programmer…ever
Even if you are merely interested in the business side of technology (not necessarily the technology behind the businesses), the interview with 29 year old Levchin (who is now worth ~$500 Million) was very compelling. Take him back 35 years to the days when the PC was born, and it would be him running Microsoft today, not Bill Gates. He’s that imaginative, that business savvy, and that determined. As Gates has shown, an engineer with business skills, and a drive to succeed at everything he tries can be a lethal combination. Here is a (not so) brief excerpt on selecting the “Next Big Thing” in technology to demonstrate the value in listening to this guy.
Now, so how do you select a new wave? What do you look for?
Max Levchin: I think the thing you do is you sort of try to keep track of what’s going on. And you try to learn about or take in the trends that are going on. So I think to take the metaphor further, there are tremors in the ocean floor that are trends of things. Like people watch less TV and use more computers. And people have digital cameras now that cost them nothing because they come with their phones. And these are not really waves, they’re just sort of truths about bandwidth being cheaper, etc. And they shake the ocean floor and a wave starts.
And then a wave turns out to be something like everyone needs to share images, cause they’re making so much more of them. And everyone needs to do something more than just stare into their computer for Excel and Word, because they’re really staring a lot. And everyone needs a better search engine, because they have more time and more bandwidth to spend through their computers. So you sometimes watch those waves emerge and you go, oh, man, that’s a big one. As you watch, some company synthesized those trends into a wave, and sometimes, if you’re smart and lucky, you say oh, this is – the shaking is going on. I think there’ll be a wave over there.
And you get your surfboard out and you paddle, and probably most of the time you realize that you’re going exactly the opposite way from wherever you want to be, and you lick your wounds and you go back to the ocean floor watching. But on occasion if you’re persistent enough you probably find yourself on top of a wave, or at least somewhere on the crest, and you try to stand on the board. I’ve beaten the surfing metaphor to death, but I like it.
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It very well could be the interviews Cringley has chosen thus far, but the more of these stories you listen to, the more common themes develop, and the more you notice personality trends throughout these industry leaders. You can of course pick out the obvious in that they are all nerds, but look a bit deeper and you’ll see a strange mix of wild imagination, and both competitiveness and generosity. Don’t be shocked… this is the same trait you see throughout the history of the computer industry. Remember, the computer was born in 1970s by the social outcasts who were often times in line with the “share everything” hippy movement. Software programs were not initially sold, but rather shown off as a badge of pride in saying “Look what I did and you couldn’t do.” That is a stark contrast to where we are today. The thing that fuels their motivation isn’t money (Bill Gates), ego (Steve Jobs), or power (Gates & Jobs), it does include those, but it also includes the aspect of being proud of your work, your ideas, and sharing them with the world.
In watching the NerdTV interviews and Cringley’s other specials, you see the exact same people making the industry happen, and for what reason? In their words… “to change the world.” You hear that bold reason in nearly every interview. Why? Well… there’s a reason, and due to it’s length it will likely another post at some point. But it is also the same reason that exists today and is a prime motivating factor driving the revolution of Open Source Software, which quite honestly is unlike anything you see in other industries. It is millions of programmers, writing code, and donating it to the world, for what in return? Nothing. Sure it is possible to get high paying consulting jobs, doing what you love, with some of the best companies in the industry (see: Firefox & Gaim developers now working for Google). But to me, that is the beauty of programming and the computer industry today. One person, with one good idea, can in fact change the world, and these people realized that decades ago. There are currently products being developed right now that will have the same impact that Windows did, that VisiCalc did, and Bulletin Board software did. Where and what are they? Who knows. In a recent podcast from Dave Winer (Morning Coffee Talk: Sept. 30th), he said the times we are in now are just like the times 20 years ago when he was in the thick of the software revolution. It is his opinion that users & developers are once again, working together, to create historic ideas, which in the end can change the landscape of the computing industry. Should be fun. =)
One top of all the other bad decisions and the PR nightmare Sony has created for themselves… the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has a great write-up of the more unbelievable terms in the 3,000 word UELA you agree to when you purchase Sony CDs.
Some of my favorite ones…
“Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to “enforce their rights” against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this “self help” crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.”
“If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.”
“If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That’s because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.”
“If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.”
A product better be reeaaaalllly damn cool if I am going to give my money to Sony ever again.
How many Web 2.0 keywords can you cram into one company?
My new company is “Meebodibo” and we specialize in “rss-based collaborative document editing via Ruby on Rails.” Awesome!
