Almost as soon as the deal was struck for the movie, the production of the Hobbit video game began. I've been hearing about it for the last 2 years from the lead artist on the game Morgan Wolverton. If the game is anything like the work on his site, it's going to feature some really twisted looking creatures and scenes.
One small detail that many of the stories miss is
the names of all the students. There was two students
busted at RIT (as opposed to one at every other school). You know how in cop shows they bust the snitch along with the perp and release him later? According to Yahoo one of those students at RIT is Aaron Sherman.
If Aaron is in fact related to RIAA Cary Sherman and is involved in setting this up, it
will demonstate how desperate the RIAA to resort to this.
I remember John Stewart when he was a bartender at a place called City Gardens in Trenton, N.J.
He was a kind of guy that was the "perfect bartender" because he always was cracking people up. He knew instinctively what was funny, and his timing was great.
I remember a few years later I bumped into him at another bar called Mundy's after his shift. I was coming back from a recording session (I had a producer paying for a 24-track 10 song demo...and felt pretty big about it) and he asks me "what do you do"? I tell him "I'm in the music biz, I'm working on a demo". So he goes "really, I'm in the entertainment biz...I just signed a contract at MTV". So I asked him if he was going to be a V.J., he told they were giving him a show! Well I told him he'd buy the next round, and for six months I fumed because it took that long for even the Jon Stewart commercials to appear on MTV...I thought he was pulling my leg..stealing my little bit of glory.
But from day one, that man has been consistently funny. Good work Jon!
What a difference a "don't" makes (sorry for redundancy)
You don't have to be Stevie Wonder not to notice how most of our great IT jobs (at least in
Silicon Valley) seem to belong to either whites or imported workers. Yet at the same time we are
failing many of our resident minorities by not providing adequate training. If we don't put as much
money and effort to train less fortunate Americans as we do trying to import foriegn help for
short-term gain, eventually all the knowledge that the imported workers learn here will trickle
it's way to the greater good of thier homeland....and we will still be suffering the uneducated
homeless here and the domestic gap between rich and poor in this Valley of meritocracy will only
be greater than ever.
Am I a conservative or a liberal? I forget...but I seek justice.
You don't have to be Stevie Wonder not to notice how most of our great IT jobs (at least in Silicon Valley) seem to belong to either whites or imported workers. Yet at the same time we are failing many of our resident minorities by not providing adequate training. If we put as much money and effort to train less fortunate Americans
as we do trying to import foriegn help for short-term gain, eventually
all the knowledge that the imported workers learn
here will trickle it's way to the greater good of thier homeland....and we will still be suffering the uneducated homeless here and the domestic gap
between rich and poor in this Valley of meritocracy will only be greater than ever.
Am I a conservative or a liberal? I forget...but
I seek justice.
Although I think much of what she is saying about the Valley is right on...I checked out http://www.cyberselfish.com and noticed it was ALL about Paulina. Writers serve a needed function in society to help (hopefully) create change. Lord knows, we need some change here.
But what I was looking for in my stroll through the site were solutions, not just those observations that anybody with a heart and a pair of eyes can make.
For instance, who did her webpage? A consultant?
Or did she teach a kid in the Barrio html and make the site his first blip on a resume that would forever improve his life? I'd rather read a book written by someone who attempted some solutions and find out what road-blocks were faced in the effort than the guilt-ridden ramblings of someone who wants it both ways. I'd rather read about Wavy Gravy than about some clown with a word processor.
Of course, if she's got the walk to go with her talk, then she's wayyyyy cool in my book.
"When I food to the poor, people call me a Saint. When I ask why don't the poor have food, people call me a communist" - The late archbishop
Romero
Ok, it wasn't the Devil, just that puffed up punk, Sean Fanning. He was there buying a $3,000 stratocaster guitar...his white porche was parked outside this Redwood City music store.
So he asked me what I thought of his company, to which I replied "I think you are ripping the artist off". He said smugly "We just don't have copyrighted work, we are a way for independent artists to distribute thier work". Ever try to search napster for a band or song whose name you haven't heard of? What a crock! Then he tried to tell me "what the artist wants". I informed him that many artists signed with a label...many well known new artists in fact are currently in debt to their contracts (not that this is fair) and it's not just the record company that gets screwed if they don't have as many of thier records sold as possible and can't get out of that debt. Look at a band like TLC. They declared bankruptcy after their biggest hit album.
It's a hard life for these bands (outside of the glory of being on stage and the screaming fans). Many working musicians under contract have to spend thier lives on tour working much harder than any programmer. It must be nice hustle a stupid greedy VC, get advertisers for your site and be able to buy all that stuff and still claim you are doing the artist a favor.
It became very apparent that he really had no clue as to the life of the typical working musician. So then I wanted to hear him play that guitar that he just bought. He can barely play!
Now I'm no big fan of the RIAA, and philosophically I believe there is a need change the paradigm of music distribution. Frankly I think that OpenNap and Freenet are a good thing...because they are free and open...and only the fans gain. But I have a hard time when some 19 punk profits as much as a record company exec and then tries to sell me and the rest of the world on his virtuous arguments that he had to scramble to come up with because he's all of a sudden feeling the heat.
Let's face it, the net is and always will be about empowerment. It doesn't matter if the person using it is a poor latin american farmer or a poor inner-city kid. Once people discover the scope of information on the net and realize that they can educate themselves in a way that they once thought was only possible for the elite classes, thier minds and spirits are transformed, and thier life and circumstances have, for the first time, a possibilty to follow suit. Anybody saying otherwise is just a patronizing elitist. Who are we to say "let's wait on giving the poor knowledge to feed themselves better until we have given them enough food"? The blessing that we geeks have from our early access to the net should always be balanced with with a sense of responsibilty to allow others that same opportunity for a paradigm shift or our priviledge isn't worth the keyboard we type on. "If I give a man food, they call me a saint, if I ask 'why doesn't he have food?', they call me a communist." - Archbiship Romero (I believe). This is my first post...give me some karma points!
Slashdot Mirror
Almost as soon as the deal was struck for the movie, the production of the Hobbit video game began. I've been hearing about it for the last 2 years from the lead
artist on the game Morgan Wolverton. If the game is anything like the work on his site, it's going to feature some really twisted looking creatures and scenes.
If Aaron is in fact related to RIAA Cary Sherman and is involved in setting this up, it will demonstate how desperate the RIAA to resort to this.
He was a kind of guy that was the "perfect bartender" because he always was cracking people up. He knew instinctively what was funny, and his timing was great.
I remember a few years later I bumped into him at another bar called Mundy's after his shift. I was coming back from a recording session (I had a producer paying for a 24-track 10 song demo...and felt pretty big about it) and he asks me "what do you do"? I tell him "I'm in the music biz, I'm working on a demo". So he goes "really, I'm in the entertainment biz...I just signed a contract at MTV". So I asked him if he was going to be a V.J., he told they were giving him a show! Well I told him he'd buy the next round, and for six months I fumed because it took that long for even the Jon Stewart commercials to appear on MTV...I thought he was pulling my leg..stealing my little bit of glory.
But from day one, that man has been consistently funny. Good work Jon!
Am I a conservative or a liberal? I forget...but I seek justice.
Am I a conservative or a liberal? I forget...but I seek justice.
But what I was looking for in my stroll through the site were solutions, not just those observations that anybody with a heart and a pair of eyes can make. For instance, who did her webpage? A consultant? Or did she teach a kid in the Barrio html and make the site his first blip on a resume that would forever improve his life? I'd rather read a book written by someone who attempted some solutions and find out what road-blocks were faced in the effort than the guilt-ridden ramblings of someone who wants it both ways. I'd rather read about Wavy Gravy than about some clown with a word processor.
Of course, if she's got the walk to go with her talk, then she's wayyyyy cool in my book.
"When I food to the poor, people call me a Saint. When I ask why don't the poor have food, people call me a communist" - The late archbishop Romero
So he asked me what I thought of his company, to which I replied "I think you are ripping the artist off". He said smugly "We just don't have copyrighted work, we are a way for independent artists to distribute thier work". Ever try to search napster for a band or song whose name you haven't heard of? What a crock! Then he tried to tell me "what the artist wants". I informed him that many artists signed with a label...many well known new artists in fact are currently in debt to their contracts (not that this is fair) and it's not just the record company that gets screwed if they don't have as many of thier records sold as possible and can't get out of that debt. Look at a band like TLC. They declared bankruptcy after their biggest hit album.
It's a hard life for these bands (outside of the glory of being on stage and the screaming fans). Many working musicians under contract have to spend thier lives on tour working much harder than any programmer. It must be nice hustle a stupid greedy VC, get advertisers for your site and be able to buy all that stuff and still claim you are doing the artist a favor.
It became very apparent that he really had no clue as to the life of the typical working musician. So then I wanted to hear him play that guitar that he just bought. He can barely play!
Now I'm no big fan of the RIAA, and philosophically I believe there is a need change the paradigm of music distribution. Frankly I think that OpenNap and Freenet are a good thing...because they are free and open...and only the fans gain. But I have a hard time when some 19 punk profits as much as a record company exec and then tries to sell me and the rest of the world on his virtuous arguments that he had to scramble to come up with because he's all of a sudden feeling the heat.
Let's face it, the net is and always will be about empowerment. It doesn't matter if the person using it is a poor latin american farmer or a poor inner-city kid. Once people discover the scope of information on the net and realize that they can educate themselves in a way that they once thought was only possible for the elite classes, thier minds and spirits are transformed, and thier life and circumstances have, for the first time, a possibilty to follow suit. Anybody saying otherwise is just a patronizing elitist. Who are we to say "let's wait on giving the poor knowledge to feed themselves better until we have given them enough food"? The blessing that we geeks have from our early access to the net should always be balanced with with a sense of responsibilty to allow others that same opportunity for a paradigm shift or our priviledge isn't worth the keyboard we type on. "If I give a man food, they call me a saint, if I ask 'why doesn't he have food?', they call me a communist." - Archbiship Romero (I believe). This is my first post...give me some karma points!