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Hollywood, Politics, and ACTA

Craig Michael Patrick — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:00:15 +0000

You may have heard of ACTA, which is essentially Hollywood buying legislation to globally enforce its views on copyright.

Kader Arif, the European Parliament’s rapporteur, resigned over the issue this past Friday. Emil Boc, Prime Minister of Romania, also resigned, though it’s not entirely clear if it was directly due to ACTA, stating:

“I do not hold any information on the circumstances in which Romania has adopted the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

TRANSLATION: “I just sign stuff.”

Similarly, Poland has put ratification of the trade agreement on hold. The Slovenian ambassador to Japan, Helena Drnovsek Zorko, apologized for signing ACTA. In a written piece translated into English, she admits that she signed it because her government told her to, and “out of civic carelessness” in not bothering to understand what ACTA meant before signing it.

A spectacular mess.

Samsung Airs Super Bowl Anti-iPhone Ad for $10 Million

Craig Michael Patrick — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:05:56 +0000

I’d lose the pen.

Indicative, I think, of the fundamental differences in thinking between Samsung and Apple. Apple wants you to streamline and be better for it. Samsung wants you to digitally maintain your way of doing things, maintain your way of thinking about things.

‘Think Different’ is a philosophy, not just an advertising slogan.

Trending Inhumanity: Flowfulness

Craig Michael Patrick — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:57:45 +0000

Artists are keenly aware of flow. ‘Flow’ is that point at which focus is utterly effortless, completely laser-like, and is not an uncommon occurrence in right-brain types. The challenge is that it usually takes a little while to submerge yourself into the folds of your consciousness and wrap yourself completely around what you’re doing.

New Scientist¹ has an interesting article called Zap your brain into the zone: Fast track to pure focus which suggests short-cutting into that precise focus.

Frankly, it’s disconcerting. Some things should be difficult. Some things should take time and training to attain. There should be effort, there must be some sense of struggle.

It’s a human story, that struggle, and it helps define our humanity, flaws and all. Part of being human is the struggle to maintain our humanity, in spite of ourselves.

The New Scientist article is, unfortunately, a multi-page article to help offset the cost of the magazine to multiple advertisers. Sorry about that. Fortunately, there’s a way around all this. If you’re using Chrome, download the iReader plugin which consolidates articles like that into one scrolling window. If you’re using Safari, a reader plugin is built into the URL bar. iReader for Firefox is also available. If you’re still using Internet Explorer, I recommend you use something else. Anything else. Even Lynx.

Still The Same As It Ever Was

Craig Michael Patrick — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:16:32 +0000

Regarding my earlier post on Sony’s new leadership: I stand corrected. Sony doesn’t have a chance.

DuckDuckGo

Craig Michael Patrick — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:07:19 +0000

I’ve just recently moved away from using Google. Even Gmail (except as a junk mail account). Three simple reasons for this:

Google’s most recent privacy policy changes
Google’s choice to add Google+ content to search results
I choose not to be Google’s product to advertisers

Instead, I’ve started using DuckDuckGo. It’s search results are excellent, it’s a clean, well-designed layout, and searches are private. DuckDuckGo does not log my information. It’s a great engine.

Speak No Evil

Craig Michael Patrick — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:33:12 +0000

CHALLENGE: Twitter announces censorship policy, followed closely by Google’s Blogger platform. According to the Wired.com article, Facebook also regularly practices censorship.

Validating censorship by saying it’s ‘just business’ is repugnant behavior in a modern society, equivalent to keeping the peasants uneducated in the Dark Ages. If that’s ‘just business’ then you need to redefine how ‘just business’ works because it’s ‘just broken.’ There can be no compromise with this line of thinking.

SOLUTION: Tor is software which allows users to reroute IP addresses, circumventing censorship.

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.” – V for Vendetta

Same As It Ever Was, ‘Til It’s Not

Craig Michael Patrick — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:57:34 +0000

Here’s to hoping that Video Game Chief, Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s new CEO, can rebuild the Sony brand name, a name once synonymous with ‘quality.’

Hirai replaces Howard Stringer, who permitted departmental siloing, a debilitating intrusion on the Playstation Network, and endured declining HD television sales.

I would love to see Sony give Apple a run for its money, but I’m afraid it’s just too big, too unfocused, too encumbered by bureaucracy. Apple needs the competition.

SOPA And The Guy From AOL

Craig Michael Patrick — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:31:54 +0000

Steve Case, ex-CEO of AOL (which is notably absent from his truncated biography) opines on his TechCrunch article You’ve Stopped SOPA, Now Let’s Startup America:

“Young high-growth companies have created 40 million American jobs in the past three decades thirty years – and accounted for all of the net new jobs produced during that period.”

A worthwhile cause, no doubt. Everyone wants to see an end to this depression. But I’m concerned with Case’s attention to detail here. Let’s face facts, his leadership of AOL is questionable.

And the truth is, we haven’t stopped SOPA. It’s being resubmitted under the auspice of a trade act. Declawed, but fangs still.

There’s work yet to be done.

Oh, And About That Rock…

Craig Michael Patrick — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:57:20 +0000

Banksy:

“The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit. The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff.

“Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you, it’s yours to take, rearrange and re-use.

“Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.”

Kill Hollywood

Craig Michael Patrick — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:42:40 +0000

Paul Graham writing for Y Combinator, an investment firm that seeds capital to start-up companies:

“Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”

Graham’s referring to the story wherein Hollywood seems to be cast in the role of the villain.

I don’t believe Hollywood needs to die, but it does need to contract. Desperately. How could anyone look at the cost of some Hollywood films and not say ‘enough is enough.’ Especially in light of the global economic crisis.

Ever see the science fiction film Primer? One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve ever watched. Cost: $7000. Memento, one of my favorite films, cost $3 million to create. It’s all about the story.