Though I haven't really watched Boston Legal, this speech given by James Spader's character is pretty good.



Sort of sums up a lot about the current state of affairs.

Here's the link to the YouTube video.

Labels: politics

A great article from "Another Day In The Empire" on the ship jumping the neocons are going through these days.

Zalmay Khalilzad warns that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has opened “a Pandora’s box,” spreading “conflict,” as Cornwell describes it, across the Middle East. In fact, this is precisely what the Straussian neocons want—chaos and “conflict” spreading like an uncontrollable wild fire, scorching Muslim and Arab culture, eating away at the very societal cohesion of the region, thus leaving it decimated and malleable to reorganization along the lines envisioned by the Straussian neocons and the original architects of the plan, the racist Jabotinskyites in Israel. Cornwell, lost in the forest of corporate media spin and lies, is unable to see the tree planted by these devious Machiavellian co-conspirators.

The last line covers it succinctly. Even though they are admitting that Iraq isn't going so well, it's not the underlying idea, so much as the execution. In other words, when it comes to be Iran's turn, they'll get it right.

As has been pointed out by many in the past, the Straussian ideology is much like that of Trotsky, in that it calls for a perpetual state of conflict, or revolution.

Coincidentally (or not), it's no longer the "War on Terror", it's the "Long War".

The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.

The debate is being framed. The "War" isn't going to end any time soon, so we better fight it well.

If you've read 1984, you've been warned.

Labels: politics

The title says it all.

The coolest thing on YouTube at the moment...

Watch it!

Labels: fun stuff

There were rumblings of this for a while, and now the Toronto Star is saying that the downtown core may see the beginning of the rollout by September!

Canada's mobile-phone giants will be on alert today as Toronto Hydro Corp. details how it plans to turn the country's largest municipality into a massive wireless hotspot, similar to ambitious projects already underway in cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Personally, I think it's an awesome idea. Right now, we're being screwed over by the big cellular carriers and their joining together to give us "affordable rates" for their "Hotspot" initiative... if you consider $8 an hour affordable...

Hey, maybe getting a data plan would make sense? Hmmm... let's see. At 3 cents a kilobyte, to transfer a 5 megabyte song from your home computer to your PDA/phone or laptop through the cellular network would cost $150. That's NOT a typo. One hundred fifty DOLLARS. Of course, you could go with a monthly plan, such as $5 for 25 MB, or save even more by going with the $100 for 100 MB plan.

If the city can come up with a rate that is in the realm of believability, while enabling those who otherwise can't afford even WIRED dial up, let alone any semblance of broadband, I say more power to them.

Labels: tech

The UMPC is just around the corner now...

A thing of the future...now!

YOU CAN get information on the hottest sales and promotions at the Mall while you drive by.

Yay! SPAM has gone wireless, and in my car while I'm driving! The future looks golden!

YOU CAN compare prices online while you are visiting a store and make the right decision.

Dang, the Canadian Tire 10 kilometers away is selling that chainsaw for $5 cheaper! Let's put all this stuff back and drive over there now...

Woot!

YOU CAN get GPS information while driving or walking.

And so can Microsoft. Now I'm getting scared.

YOU CAN do email, or monitor work while standing in line at the DMV or at any other place you usually got bored at waiting and wasting your time.

YOU CAN surf the internet for the latest news while cooking in the kitchen.

YOU CAN download your music, videos, TV shows, photos and email, chat, IM friends…all from a small, thin device that fits in your purse!

Wow, so I can do all those things that a smartphone or laptop does, yet it's not quite as portable as a smartphone, and not as powerful as a laptop.

Well F me in the A. This sounds like EVERYTHING I dreamed about in a thing "from the future". The worst of both worlds.

Ow well. Still, slap it with a PDA range price and a dirt cheap broadband data plan, and I'd consider getting suckered... erm... I'd sign up... maybe.

Labels: tech

The original release date for Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is finally coming out! A second trailer for the film has been posted on Apple's site for anyone to check out, based on head-trippin' Philip K. Dick's story. If you don't know Dick, well, you don't know dick.

Being a fan of Linklater, PKD and digital animation, this is definitely on my list of must see movies.

This article about the post production process is interesting, and mentions the reasons for the lockout of the animators....

But behind closed doors, it was clear something had to change. Sabiston, who was falling behind schedule, allegedly asked for more time, more money, and more staff. Tensions mounted, and one Friday in February 2005, four months after the animation process began, Sabiston and his four-person core team went to a local café to discuss strategy. Pallotta took action. A security guard was posted at the door, the locks were changed, and their workstations were seized. Pallotta replaced Sabiston with two local artists, Jason Archer and Paul Beck, whom he felt would bring a more practical, commercial attitude to the production. "There were a lot of comments about 'ruining the art,'" says a source close to the situation. "But we weren't trying to ruin it, we just wanted it better than they wanted it done." The studio bumped the budget to $8.7 million and gave Linklater another six months to finish the movie.

Pallotta recast the operation as a more traditional, Disney­esque animation project - complete with a style manual, a strict deadline schedule, and a policy of breaking the film into even smaller segments. For example, one animator was assigned to work primarily on Winona Ryder's character. The thinking was that the character would then look the same throughout the entire film. The style manual standardized the movie's visuals and indoctrinated the new artists. It dictated a drawing method for everything from male characters ("an emphasis on tendons in the neck adds masculinity") to Reeves' beard ("retain the patchy quality by inking large, separate chunks that can be unified by color"). This approach, used successfully by larger animation houses, eliminates the personal interpretation that can sabotage a director's unified vision.

That sounds like the way it should have been handled from the get go. Then again, Linklater's earlier Waking Life, using the same rotoscoping techniques, didn't need such a tight constraint, given the lattitude individual artists were given for their vignettes.

Just don't follow the link to Wired's Top 10 Reasons Keanu Reeves Rules... I'm not even gonna hot link it.

Damn... too late.

A Scanner Darkly open July 7th, 2006.

Labels: film

A lot has appeared about Microsoft's Origami in the past few days. Engadget has a pretty good round up, and links, so here's one of their entries. Googling it will find you tons more links...

Given that it's supposed to be an ultraportable device (multiple models rumoured), with a price tag of about $500, I'm guessing that the cheap hardware cost is going to be subsidized by some sort of connectivity plan, probably through some cellular carrier(s) for maximum availability.

If not, then $500 for the device seems extremely low, and I don't see where the "money" is going to be made.

After all, here in Canada, we're still getting screwed by the cellular data plans.

If Origami does something to change the cellular data landscape, I'm all for that.

Labels: tech