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  • The History of IMDB

    LA Weekly has a cool feature on the history of the Internet Movie Database. The part of the article I was happy to see was acknowledging the early roots of the database.

    That’s a bit of an understatement considering Needham ended up transforming a small hobby into an international business. But remember, back in 1989, terms like “World Wide Web” were totally foreign. Needham joined a movie discussion group on what was then the fledgling university-linked Internet. The members were almost all American male college students, and their favorite topic was — you guessed it — who’s the most attractive actress and what movies has she been in.

    Soon, the guys volunteered their private databases and actresses begat actors, which begat directors, which begat writers, which begat cinematographers, which begat plot summaries. [LA Weekly]

    I remember when I was at CMU hanging out on rec.arts.movies and people discussing THE LIST. Which was this list of actresses and movies. If you search on Google Groups you can find numerous mentions of it.

  • Flash: Shoot the Cliche

    clicheOnce again that #!/usr/bin/girl finds the cool flash games. This time it is Shoot the Cliche. My high score was around 252, but I only played it twice. And remember. Spare the kittens.

     

  • Bye Bye Jack, We Won’t Be Missing You

    Tim Wu (over on lessig blog) has listed a bunch of Jack Valenti quotes from over the years. Here’s a sample:

    On the nascent cable industry, in 1974
    “[Cable will become] a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.”

    On the VCR, 1983
    “We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault … and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape.
    We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry … whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR].”
    “[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

    On the public domain, 1995
    “A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film’s quality?”

    On the meaning of value, 1983
    “Nothing of value is free. It is very easy … to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else’s property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled.”

    And the Valenti slogan
    “If you cannot protect what you own, you don’t own anything.”

    [lessig blog]

  • SMC Bests Airport Express? Maybe not.

    Over on Gizmodo there’s a post about the new SMC SMCWRK-G, which is a portable wireless access point similar to the Airport Express.

    SMC has announced a new portable wireless access point a la the Airport Express. They’re calling it the “EZ Connect™ g 2.4GHz 802.11g Wireless Traveler’s Kit SMCWTK-G,” but we’ll probably just call it the SMCWRK-G or Dance Panda Mandy, as it suits us. For what it lacks in good looks it makes up in features, as the SMCWRK-G can do everything the Airport Express can do and more (save the iTunes streaming), including act as an Ethernet bridge. It might not be attractive, but it’s $30 cheaper, ringing in at just $100.

    Perennial Wi-Fi smart guy Glenn Fleishmann weighs in with a little more detail at Wi-Fi Networking News.

    Read – SMC Offers Multifunction Traveling Gateway [WiFiNetNews]
    Read – Press Release [SMC]

    [Gizmodo]

    The Airport Express is also a print server, which SMC isn’t listing as a feature for this device. This looks like it is more useful if you just need wireless access when you travel. But for $30 you’re losing a bit of functionality, and you need to carry around a power supply to go with it.

  • Airport Express and the Genius of Apple

    Today while looking for a wireless mouse I picked up an Airport Express. For those of you who aren’t aware of this device, it is Apple’s mini base-station, music streaming, usb printer sharing, network extending device. Currently, I have it set up downstairs hooked to the stereo and had it cranked up while I sat out on the porch. Currently, any mac in the house can stream music to it from iTunes. In some ways it’s not a perfect solution, since in my parent’s case they’d have to go upstairs to their mac to start iTunes. But for someone with a laptop or a laptop and a desktop it just plain rocks. And I’m not the only one who is loving it.

    Here’s where I think Apple was smart with this device. They’ve made it so easy to want more than one of them. I’ve already got one and can easily justify two more. The second I’ll use in my room as a print server/wireless client. The third will go on the third floor hooked into the home theatre setup. At around $130 each it isn’t something I’ll pick up right away, but once I get my laser printer I know I’ll be eyeing it.

    Of course, then I may want one for when I’m on the road. MacMegasite has a neat article about using the Airport Express in a hotel room.

  • Home Alone Again

    I’m sure they must have told me sometime before yesterday that they were going away from Tuesday till Friday, but I can’t remember it at all. So, since my parents will be enjoying themselves on the cape I get the place to myself again. Except it is during the week. How boring. Maybe I’ll drive down to see my friend Patty (who gets a big congrats for getting a new job!).

  • Small Site Change

    I just turned on comment moderation for people who aren’t using TypeKey. I’ve gotten fed up with having to keep going and deleting comments. Sorry for any inconvenience. Real comments will still show up, though not right away.

  • The Revolution Will Have a Techno Soundtrack

    John Perry Barlow has a good idea for something to do during the RNC

    Dancing in the Streets:Revolution with a Smile

    I spent most of my political life as a Republican. While that’s a little hard to imagine now, I have sufficient experience to know that the commonly held view that Republicans either can’t dance or won’t dance is inaccurate. When I was a Republican, I was as dedicated to dancing as I am now and there were others like me, as I recall.

    Still, part of what drove me from the party – aside from a categorical repudiation by the current administration of most Republican principles – is a dour dancelessness that crept into Republican “culture.” It seems increasingly ironic to call the GOP a party at all…

    …I want to dance in the streets.

    I don’t want to confront the Republicans. I want to discombobulate them. I don’t want to argue with them, which would only convince them further, I want to throw them off their game. I don’t want to be aggressive in my discontent. God knows there’s been plenty of that on all sides. I want to be genial. But disconcerting.

    So, to that end, I propose the following: I want to organize a cadre of 20 to 50 of us. I want to dress us in suits and other plain pedestrian attire and salt us among the sidewalk multitudes in Republican-rich zones. At a predetermined moment, one of us will produce a boom-box and crank it up with something danceable. Suddenly, about a third of the people on the sidewalk, miscellaneously distributed in the general throng, will start dancing like crazy and continue to do so for for about a minute. Then we will stop, melt back into the pedestrian flow, and go to another location to erupt there. [BarlowFriendz]

    I can just see the headlines…

  • More on Drive-In Movies

    While I was in the midst of my search for Drive-In information, an article from the NYTimes showed up in my news reader about renegade drive-ins.

    LIKE most cities in Silicon Valley’s outer stratosphere, Santa Cruz has a district dedicated to an odd marriage of high and low tech, where lumber mills and cement factories squat beside gleaming software business parks. But the geeks and hipsters who parked their bikes on this slab of broken land and sneaked past the “no trespassing” sign were not here on business. They were going to the movies.

    Few theaters consist of dead weeds and a mound of gray slag squeezed between a laboratory and an alloy manufacturing firm. But these movie buffs have brought their own theater with them. For three years, cult-movie buffs have been organizing “guerrilla drive-ins” in a number of cities, rigging together a nest of digital projectors, DVD players, and radio transmitters or stereo speakers, spreading the word online, and assembling on parking lots or fields to watch obscure films beneath the stars. [NYTimes:Technology]

    This sounds just too cool. I wonder if anyone is doing anything like this in my area. I’m going to have to do some research. If not anyone wanna try to organize one in the Hartford, CT area? I think it might be easier to do here than in MA.

  • When It Rains At The Drive-In

    Recently I’ve gotten an itch to go to a Drive-In movie. I haven’t been since I was a kid and it just seems like it would be a fun thing to do. In doing a bit of research online I found Drive-Ins.com. It is a guide to Drive-In information. Everything from reviews to QTVRs of drive-ins. It also has a fairly completely database of past and present Drive-Ins. The fun thing was looking to see how many were in the area I grew up. It almost seems like there was one every other town. And, I did find one that is open not too far away (That also has their own web site). Along with a review over on Mapquest that made me laugh and cry:

    this place is awsome for 7 dolars u get 2 movies and u get to watch them in ur car!! thats better than that o wait when its warm out get some chairs and watch the movies and have a picnic its like dinner and a movie and ur not at home!

    D00D!