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11 Aug 2008 No Comments
in Politics, Signs of the Horsemen Tags: history, marriage, Politics, progress
Ghostbusters Remake?
01 Aug 2008 No Comments
in Entertainment, Signs of the Horsemen Tags: childhood, movies, remakes
As if the JC Penny’s ad featuing the total composting of The Breakfast Club wasn’t enough for you, the newest rumor has it that Judd Apatow and crew (Seth Rogen, etc..) might remake Ghostbusters.
Can an actual remake of The Breakfast Club be far behind? Come on John Hughes, give Uwe Boll and call!
One More Time, Let's Review
14 Jul 2008 No Comments
in Politics, Signs of the Horsemen, Uhm... yeah Tags: magizines, New Yorker, Obama, Politics, satire, whoring
This is satire. It’s also ham-fisted (thanks J–) and stupid for a cover, but satire nonetheless. If When you encounter someone who thinks it’s prescient or insightful or whatever, you have my permission to smack them upside their idiotic skull*. ‘Grats to the New Yorker for the best attention whoring of the election season so far.
* Note, my permission doesn’t mean crap in any court, workplace, or household, including my own.
One Function Review of the New Indiana Jones movie.
01 Jun 2008 No Comments
in Entertainment, Signs of the Horsemen Tags: film, indiana jones, movies, travesty
(with apologies to anyone who actually can code)
function toViewOrNotToView (seeFilmInTheatre) {
int fanboi = 0;
int literalism = 1;
int alteredState = 0;
int mentalAcuity = 1;
//note, we can’t let mentalAcuity dip below 1 to operate machinery safely
if (fanboi == 1 && alteredState ==1) {
return 1;
fanboi–;
mentalAcuity–;
}
elseif (fanboi ==0 && alteredState == 1) {
return 1;
alteredstate = 0;
mentalAcuity–;
}
elseif (fanboi == 0 && alteredState == 0 && literalism == 1) {
return 0;
alert (“How many more films must George Lucas ruin before he is stopped?”);
//I know we’re not subtracting from mentalAcuity
//here, but that should be covered in the viewDVDAtHome function
}
}
Expelled Exposed
14 Apr 2008 No Comments
in Politics, Science, Signs of the Horsemen Tags: comics, creationists, evolution, expelled, idiocy, movies
Since I talked about it before, and a CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY APPARATUS DIRECTIVE exists, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point of that Expelled has a new counter-site aggregating the awful reviews and accounts for and about the movie.
Oh, and Overcompensating has good comic up today as well.
Know Your Enemy
21 Mar 2008 No Comments
in Politics, Science, Signs of the Horsemen Tags: creationists, Dawkins, evolution, Godwin, idiocy, movies
Slight backstory: There is a movie currently being screened for very select crowds called EXPELLED!, hosted by Ben Stein. It is, essentially, creationist propaganda about how colleges and universities are evil for promoting science and not religious dogma in their classes (here’s a trailer, if you have 8 minutes to sacrifice). It has, predictably, come under intense criticism from actual scientists for what it is; creationism dressed up as victimization. Yah know, the classical view that evolution is, as they say, the view that life is simply “mud animated by lightening.” The trailer even Godwin’s itself.
Anyway, as I said, they are screening this movie for very select audiences to build good grass-roots support for it. This basically means they hand-pick audiences of the Faithful to view the film or go to churches and show it there. They have been very wary of allowing anyone not on The List to see the film, which should send up red flags everywhere.
Last night, PZ Meyers, a biologist, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, and vocal critic of the creationist agenda, tried to see the film with his family. According to his blog, he registered for the event (as did everyone else attending), but was thrown out of line and then the theater property altogether before being able to enter the movie at the request of the producer.
The funny bit is who the producer (Mark Mathis) missed. You’d think that if one were so averse to allowing any potential critic into one’s movie, one would know all the major players to bar from one’s film. You’d be wrong because, although the producer knew Meyers, he didn’t know his friend, a friend who was able to enter and view the film. The friend? Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, good one guys. I bet your film is utter crap and I can’t wait for its vivisection.
Can We Get Our Money Back, Then?
07 Nov 2007 No Comments
in News, Signs of the Horsemen, Spot the Sarcasm
Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.
Next on ABC News: America’s Bombing Campaign Not Producing Desired Goodwill Among Bombed; People Do Bad Things Despite Pleas to Stop; Oil Prices Rise Despite Constant Demand: Who’s To Blame?
Worst User Experience Ever – Vista
25 Oct 2007 No Comments
in Rants, Signs of the Horsemen, Technology
My next computer is very likely to be a Mac at this rate. For every feature of Vista that I like (native search), some idiotic thing just pisses me right off.
Tonight, it’s iTunes on Vista. Now, before you get all bent out of shape that it’s the fault of the app developer, I gotta go with this being Vista’s fault.
First, I’ve lost my iTunes library no fewer than 3 times since moving to Vista 4 months ago. It’s a pain in the ass to recovery from that because something on Vista makes iTunes take forever to write library changes (no idea what). I could easily chalk that up to an iTunes fault (and, actually lean that way), but iTunes works on my XP boxen just fine at the same version; what’s so frackin’ hard about Vista?
But tonight, tonight it’s Vista’s fault. As I continue to reload my entire library of videos into iTunes–again–I noticed that some videos I newly converted won’t play on my Vista box. They played fine on the Mac that made them, on the XP box I use at work, and on another XP box of a colleague.
After getting a Quicktime error on a file I know worked on this Vista box as recently as Monday, I hit Google. And, lo and behold, I found this:
As soon as I "Safely Removed" the USB FlashDrive, thereby turning off "ReadyBoost", al 14 files loaded properly into iTunes, and played properly in Quicktime. [source]
Wouldn’t yah know it, I had plugged in a USB drive for the ReadyBoost benefits just this week. I unload the USB drive, double-click a file that had just failed on me and BAM it works.
That is, frankly, absolutely fucking stupid. What does or could ReadyBoost have to do with playing video files on Quicktime? Anyone?
So, now ReadyBoost is worthless to me, I still have to reload my entire library in iTunes, and I’m pissed. Working the checklist of new features in Vista, they’re not really helping me out much. ReadyBoost? Unusable. UAC? Please; disabled. Sidebar? Aside from a clock and the weather, the gadgets are worthless (and development is anemic).
Congratulations Microsoft; when I have the money, you’ve likely lost another long-time customer.
Mac Worm Author Gets Death Threats, Blog Hacked
19 Jul 2007 No Comments
in Signs of the Horsemen, Technology
Synopsis: Researcher claims to have created a proof-of-concept worm for OS X. Posts this nugget to his anonymous blog. Apple zealots begin ad hominem attacks, insults, etc.
Now, it seems, the blog has been receiving death threats, been hacked, and the hunt for the identity of the poster is in full swing.
The best part? The comments on the Slashdot article.
Does this mean I should end my genetic experiment to cross-pollinate a Mac fanboy with a Scientologist to produce the world’s most pompous asshole? [#]
He would have been better off picking a weaker target such Islam. You don’t want to mess with those Mac zealots. [#]
Ah, ye olde flamewar… Repeat after me… it’s just a computer. It’s just a computer.
Internet Radio's Death Rattle
26 Jun 2007 1 Comment
in Entertainment, Music, Signs of the Horsemen, Technology
Today is a day of silence for Internet radio. Small broadcasters all the way up to Yahoo are shutting down in protest over the outrageous royalty rates approved by the Copyright Royalty Board. Who’s the CRB? Essentially, they are an arm of Congress, tasked with reviewing and setting royalty rates.
How bad are the rates? Instead of a flat fee, broadcasters will have to pay a per performance, per listener rate with a minimum of $500 per channel per year. Of course, they don’t define a channel in terms of the internet, so no one knows what that clause means. Internet broadcasters had proposed a fee structure that allowed for their continued existence and it was soundly rejected in favor of a proposal from SoundExchange, a fee collection body created by, guess who, the RIAA.
What’s the math on this?
Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that’s a royalty obligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.
In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour. [source]
Effectively, the CRB has adopted a proposal that makes it cost at least twice as much to run an Internet radio station as what you could conceivably make in ad revenue. Oh, and satellite and terrestrial radio don’t pay this rate. Note that this has nothing to do with RIAA-member bands or acts; this is a fee you have to pay if all you did was broadcast music you created yourself. It’s a hit job by the RIAA, plain and simple.
So, what can you do? Call your representative, write a letter (not an email), urging them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act introduced in both the House and Senate. Internet Radio is not dead yet, but today is a preview of what it will be like come July 15th unless something changes.