8 Ways to Sunday

Blendtec is a little company that makes kitchen appliances, most notably some uncommonly powerful blenders. Faced with the question of how to market their blenders, Blendtec decided to do something… different. You’d best take a moment to steady yourself before pressing the “play” button, especially if you own an iPod. (more…)

To quote the t-shirt that director Michael Bay wore during production: GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS ARE COMING.

The Transformers were among my favorite toys as a kid. I was actually surprised to learn that they still make new Transformers toys. I guess there may be a market for this movie beyond those strange adult men who collect retro toys in unopened original boxes.

Even though I haven’t touched a Transformer in about twenty years, I was still pretty excited (in an utterly nerdy way) when I heard about this movie. I imagine anyone who ever pitted plastic Autobots and Decepticons against each other on a living room carpet will probably feel the same.

They even got the original Optimus Prime from the U.S. cartoon to voice Prime in the movie! Woo hoo!

I am such a dork.

I may be the last person on earth to learn about this. Back in late June, Senator Ted Stevens (R, AK) regaled the Commerce Committee with a nearly 11-minute rant about his opposition to a proposed net neutrality amendment to a communications bill. That may not sound very interesting, but it was Sen. Stevens’s… unique attempt at explaining the workings of the Internet that brought this otherwise obscure speech to public attention. (more…)

Discovered on Uninnovate, this video takes less than sixty seconds to cover some of the biggest problems with digital rights management (DRM) technology:

If you’re unfamiliar with DRM, it’s basically a kind of computer program that’s embedded in the media you purchase — store-bought DVDs, iTunes downloads, etc. — that keeps you from using your computer to create copies of that media or even keeps you from playing it on certain devices. The idea is to prevent Internet piracy, but the problem comes when DRM keeps law-abiding consumers from doing perfectly legal things with their movies and music. Unfortunately, that problem crops up pretty frequently.

The video seems to be the work of “Defective by Design,” a Free Software Foundation campaign against DRM. If you’d like to learn more about how DRM violates your rights, and what you can do about it, here are a few places to start:

• Here’s another video: ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind gives a more detailed explanation of how DRM screws you over, and suggests the technology be renamed Content Restriction Annulment and Protection (CRAP).
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent mini-site devoted to explaining the issues surrounding DRM.
• The Defective by Design website has a list of places where you can buy DRM-free media.
• Wikipedia’s article on fair use rights will help you understand what you’re losing by buying DRMed media. You can also get more background on the controversy over DRM in this article.
• The Digital Freedom website has some info about how DRM hurts artists and others, as well as consumers.

Updates

• 11/05/2006 @ 11:30 PM — Added a brief explanation of what DRM does for those who aren’t familiar with the technology.

TBS has cooked up a few amusing promos for their Lord of the Rings showings this weekend. Here’s my personal favorite, via YouTube:

Since when does TBS do slash fanfic?

Update

Turns out the embedded video above doesn’t agree with the Opera web browser. Opera users can still watch the commercial on the YouTube site, however.