Dyscultured

from lovehatethings Is it just me or does Hallowe’en seem more culturally devoid every year? I know. I get it. I’m kidless. And while baby goats shouldn’t be a consideration for one’s love or hate of Hallowe’en, I’m thinking back on my own childhood at memories of All Hallow’s Eves gone by and realizing that there really aren’t that many fond memories. I’m not saying I hated the event, in fact I remember, at the time, having a certain anticipatory delight in thinking up costumes and gathering free candy. I have come to grips with the fact that most of my early childhood will be shrouded in a glittery nostalgia with a soundtrack of AM pop rock. Quite simply, the costume/candy ritual was fun, but did not inspire near as many found remembrances as other holidays. Let’s take a sobering look at Hallowe’en: pre-pubescent, confused children try to hide behind dollar store Transformer masks as they threaten homeowners with vigila...

Show Notes twitter.com/dyscultured full dysclosure Google Android Gmail Changes – Autoresponder The New iGoogle layout and the evolution of “portal” pages Bill Gates’ Think Tank Movies Holiday Movie Season – October/November Wheel of Pop The Episode Five “Wheel of Pop” segment was postponed due to the Carrier Moose not arriving in Victoria on time. Website of the Week Anth – www.posterous.com (the easiest free blogging platform on the web) Mike – www.freewebs.com (another almost-as-easy blogging platform with some extra perks and optional charges) Music Great Lake Swimmers – from 2007’s Ongiara – “Your Rocky Spine” In addition to the core band of Tony Dekker (voice, guitar), Erik Arnesen (banjo, electric guitar) and Colin Huebert (drums, percussion, glockenspiel, timpani), the Ongiara features special guest appearances by singer-songwriter Serena Ryder (backing vocals, autoharp), Bob Egan of Blue Rode...

from lovehatethings.com According to Mary Richert (I really don’t know who she is, but she probably doesn’t know who I am either) of guardian.co.uk, social networking sites are more popular than porn sites . In the article she asserts some criticisms about social networks that I agree with. Most importantly, she states that, in comparing social networks to the antisocial aspects of porn, “there’s something similarly antisocial about social networking sites.” My immediate concern is that internet technology has been driven by porn since its inception. Broadband was developed simply as a way to get porn faster delivery times. Porn drove peer to peer applications for almost a decade… let’s face it, while many people on Kazaa were downloading Britney Spears songs, other were looking for Britney Spears lookalikes in compromising positions. Bandwidth demands spiked for Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee and, a few years later, for A Night in Paris . While, fr...

A picture is worth 1000 words… or at least $2700.

Is it just me, or were my expectations for any product that came with the “android” moniker just a bit too high? When I think “android”, I’m thinking super cool, almost human-like robot with crazy math skills. Apparently the threshold for such optimism has been lowered a little bit. That said, the first Google Android-powered phone was sold today . Instead, I get an phone with an unfinished OS. I’m sure the phone technology is okay… at least better than the phone capabilities of the iPhone. All reports, however, indicate like most things Google, the Android OS is beta at best. If Google history is any indication, the OS will be in beta for at least two years. The optimism arises in the fact that they’re making it as open source as possible and allowing for quality control to be thrown to the wind. That said, by relaxing the control on Android they are opening the potential up for the  OS to become the most functional, cross-branded piece o...

The Show Notes Full Dysclosure:  Elections, new MacBooks, Passchendaele and more… Browser Wars The Revival of Piano Rock Wheel Of Pop:  Movies in 1993 Websites Of The Week:  Anthony – Newseum ; Mike – Very Tasteful (Anth sez:  I also revisit last week’s pick, Mufin .) Musical Artist: Billy Reid To tie up this fourth episode, Very Tasteful’s own Billy Reid is the featured musical act.  His song, entitled Spring Yields A Goldblum , sums up several of the topics we “dyscussed” on the show. Billy is a filmmaker, performer, musician and (more recently) an animator, and his stuff is hugely popular on YouTube .  Mike has performed with him on the Victoria improv scene, and you can check out all of his stuff at the link provided in our Websites Of The Week show note.

In a post from a couple of months ago at lovehatethings.com , I lamented how the 99 cent download could be damaging to the integrity of many artists as it essentially did away with idea of the full album/cd as a unified piece. Citing that same defense (kind of), AC/DC this week said it would not sell any of its new album Black Ice on iTunes because people would be to tempted to buy single tracks and ignore others thus deconstructing the full work. Brian Johnson opined , “Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless ’em, it’s going to kill music if they’re not careful….” Two things… I do agree with the point that there should be a place for the full CD as a single work. I grew up listening mostly to music of a past generation in progressive rock.  One of the reasons I was drawn to that style was the frequent ability to create larger scale concepts even through single songs set in a certain order. But AC/DC… seriousl...

Although this TED talk has been widely spread about the “interwebs”, Hans Rosling’s animated analysis of poverty stats gives a unique look at worldwide trends. Poverty is a solvable problem that helps to alleviate dozens of other problems. Vote for, advocate, and support anti-poverty initiatives in your area.

Does anyone feel like I do? Have we finally sacrificed function for flash in our electronics? I remember growing up with PC cases left unscrewed so that I could get in and overclock and tweak and swap RAM, graphics cards and CD-ROM drives that often didn’t match the colour of the case but could burn at 4X instead of 2X. I remember the glory of gunmetal beige. I remember accessories that dangled from serial and parallel ports. I remember when I tried to squeeze every single last ounce of power out of my system and really not care about how it looked. I remember the first laptop I had was dinged, scratched, butchered and every blemish was a badge of honour that was embellished by a sticker or liquid paper graffiti. I remember the besmirched black plastic that I abused and bled every last recharge from. Is there really any reason to pay for what Steve Jobs’ called “the new range of aluminium bodied MacBooks [that] offered the same features as the old MacBook Pro series?...

The Show Notes Canadian Thanksgiving – Where Be The Pilgrims? Spotlighting the spotlight on Mac notebooks The Spider Man Musical – Broadway Budget Ballooning The 49th Perpendicular:  Election Fever! Wheel Of Pop:  Television in 1984 Websites Of The Week:  Anthony – Mufin ; Mike – Mecanbe (Mike sez: Email us for invites to Mecanbe!) Musical Artist:  Rob Szabo Rob Szabo was first “dyscovered” by Anthony and mike when they worked at CFMU in Hamilton.  Rob was a member of the Groove Daddys, a power pop trio that they played endlessly.  Because it was good.  Rob struck out on his own years ago, and we play a track from his latest album, Life & Limb entitled That Cold Hard Sell .

The lovehatethings.com look at regional legislative votes during election season. read more | digg story

The pervasive, and growing, number of suggestion engines concerning topics of all sorts have become a de rigeur aspect of social networking pages. I intentionally didn’t say social networking sites, because, as we discussed on the podcast lat week, social networking is becoming more a regular part of ALL sites as opposed to platforms in themselves. Whether it’s film, television, music, books, websites, cars, etc., the ability of web users to rate and comment on anything under the sun is facilitating the aggregation of opinion. And popular opinion, right or wrong, often gets confused with fact… but that’s another issue. There is an inherent danger in recommendation engines that is often overlooked and has nothing to do with the truth or fallacy of the opinions used to generate the recommendations. Recommendation engines homogenize choice. Discovery of the new, unique, and radical is, by nature, stifled by numbers. If 1000 who liked movie A also liked B, C, and D,...

When I sift through a social news aggregator like Digg , I often ponder the differences between something that is cool for its own sake (like Shark Week on Discovery) or something that is meaningful on a level where I actually have an interest and a desire to follow story updates or do more research. I’ve decided to create a template for myself that tries to juxtapose the following four domains: 1) Cool but don’t care 2) Cool and do care 3) Not cool but care 4) Not cool, don’t care Let’s face it, there aren’t many stories in the last category we even give a second glance to, thus I’ve instantly made my job 25% easier for the long term. For analytic purposes, however, let’s establish some real world examples for each of subdomains (I’m feeling so pedagogically enabled): 1) Cool but don’t care – “ Oct. 8, 1582: Nothing Happens ” 2) Cool and do care – “ 460,000 brick Lego Tower in Austria ” 3) Not coo...

The Show Notes revisiting the world of Michael Moore and his “free on his terms” movie The Future of Social Networking – Is Facebook surpassing MySpace? Websites Of The Week:  Anthony – Vegas Today & Tomorrow ; Mike – Addicting Games (a game that Mike had a hand in writing on that site: Frat Boy Girlfriend Defense ) The 49th Perpendicular:  Bill C-61 and DRM (start preparing for your mugshots…) Musical Artist Profile:  Cindy Davis Cindy Davis is a singer/songwriter from Victoria, BC (and a former workmate of Mike’s).  Her debut album, A Year Or More is available via iTunes and CD Baby, and she is also featured on CBC Radio 3.  If you like piano-based musicians, give her a listen.

I learned yesterday that the lawyers representing Michael Moore issued takedown notices to torrent sites hosting his new film “ Slacker Uprising ” which we talked about on the show last week. There seemed to be a confused “WTF?”that circulated around the web as to why someone who is releasing a film for free via download would complain if it was being spread via torrent. I know he does plan on eventually selling a DVD that will probably contain 12 hours of Moore leading his revivalist sessions at Tallahassee JUCO and the like, but why the big legal fuss? I think I’ve figured it out. The currency that Moore is getting from the free web download is an email list. He’s created a product that will draw a certain demographic that he can now reach any time he wants. Most people who “buy” into the marketing platform of a free download are probably fans that will not begrudge such an intrusion, which has become regular since I downloaded the film....

Canadian Bill C-61 concerning protections from copyright infringement and harsh penalities for infringing on Digital Rights Management  is brought to you by US lobbyists and Conservative Sith Lord , Jim Prentice . To put it bluntly: the law, as it stands right now (while grey) seems to support the idea that downloading copyrighted material without paying the rights holder, or their agent, is actually not illegal as too many instances of this could fall under Canada’s version of fair use . Where the illegality starts to wander in, is when you share that content, either hand to hand or p2p . The new legislation, in addition to reworking “sharing” has some draconian concepts surrounding copying your own “paid for” media, which had previously been considered “owned” (at least in a limited way) by the person who bought it. I can, before C61 passes, back up a copy of a DVD I purchase to my hard drive and convert it to watch on my iPod nano for a flig...