A friend of mine online pointed me at this article at sfgate.com:

High-tech billboards tune in to drivers’ tastes

Roadside signs coming to Bay Area listen to car radios, then adjust pitch

The billboard is listening.

In an advertising ploy right out of Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” electronic billboards in the Bay Area and Sacramento are being equipped to profile commuters as they whiz by — and then instantly personalize freeway ads based on the wealth and habits of those drivers.

For example, if the freeway were packed with country music listeners, the billboards might make a pitch for casinos. If National Public Radio were on, the billboards could change to ads for a high-quality car or a gourmet grocery.

The billboards — in Palo Alto, Daly City and Fremont — will pick up which radio stations are being played and then instantly access a vast databank of information about the people who typically listen to those stations. The electronic ads will then change to fit listener profiles.

Yikes. It is one thing when you have ads online target you. It’s another when you happen to be just going down the street and streetsigns can tell what you are listening to. It looks like this system keeps everything anonymous, but it is still kinda creepy.

So NationStates has been pretty fun. Right now I’m playing my nation more for fun. It’s a pretty wacky insane place and just today its UN classification changed. Here’s what the game currently says about my nation:

UN Category: Corrupt Dictatorship

Civil Rights: Excellents, Economy: Fair, Political Freedoms: Rare

Location: Lost Continent

The Rogue Nation of Snoozeville is a large, socially progressive nation, renowned for its compulsory military service. Its hard-nosed, cynical population of 23 million are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn’t gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The small, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Religion & Spirituality, and Education. The average income tax rate is 17%, but much higher for the wealthy. A powerhouse of a private sector is led by the Soda Sales, Automobile Manufacturing, and Basket Weaving industries.

The government’s religious works are headed by a New Age guru, organ donation rates have hit a new low, same-sex marriages are increasingly common, and political parties are banned from advertising and receiving private donations. Crime is moderate. Snoozeville’s national animal is the sloth, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the Tylenol PM.

You can check the ongoing status of my country too, if you are interested.

Ernie Kovacs. “Television – a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well-done.” [Quotes of the Day]

Lyn and I were briefly discussing if ghosts masturbate and I was reminded that I wanted to post about Odes to Onaism, which features the 11 greatest songs about masturbation. Link was found at the wonderful Reverse Cowgirl’s Blog.

or something of the like ^_^

animedom and anime fandom has certainly changed a lot over
the last few years, especially in terms of fansubs -now digisubs-
and the sheer massively growing amount of available anime. and
there looks to be no end, of which i am glad :3

watching the digisub tapes greg has sent me reminds me of
my roots, of crowding around a tv with other otaku, hanging on every
5th gen fuzzy illegible sub. franticly fastforwarding to the next
episode cause damned if every episode didn’t end with a cliff-hanger O_o
how each tape was coveted, especially the 1st-2nd gen tapes,
and where fansubs were a painstaking art-form of ultimate fandom
(and too much time on one’s hands ^_- )

now we have digisubs. as long as they respect the same rules the
classic vhs fansubs and fansubbers did, then it’s ok. but digisubs
are dangerous in that they are much more accesible and prone to
continuance and spreading after a series is liscenced. i’ll buy the dvd
as soon as it comes out, fansubs or no, but some won’t. and that is sad -.-
truly, i pity ye fool who raves over the latest digisub they downloaded,
but won’t fork over a cent to buy the copyrighted liscenced dvd of it,
whether it be r1 or r2.

and what happened to spending hours, days, any resource possible
to rake in whatever news, tidbits, spoilage, info, background on your
latest anime obsessions and passions. now it’s askaskask so you don’t
have to find out on your own. for me, at least, anime is a very personal
passion which i enjoy on a most private/intimate level, but also that i like
to share with others so long as they respect that privacy/intimacy.
while i don’t mind looking for and asking for insight on an anime, part of
the burning passion and love comes from that special something which
can’t be quite put into words, you just feel it here ~points~ in your heart.
questions are ok, but i’m not going to provide all the answers. life
and anime isn’t that easy; you gotta find some on your own 🙂

and what happened to the classics. yes, there is a lot of great anime
coming out today, along with the usual average and the usual shlock.
demo, i want some of those truly great classics on dvd too, especially
r1 dvd. that’s one gripe i have with r1 companies is that they are truly
passing over some stellar timeless older anime just because it is older.
bah! age doesn’t mean anything when it’s g00d.

they call them Classics for a reason ^_^

I enjoyed gatekeepers quite a bit. It wasn’t the most amazing show, but it was good light fun. I’d been waiting to check out any of Gatekeepers 21 until I finished watching the first series though.

So far I’m really impressed. This series has a completely different feel from the first one. A much darker feel. It takes place around 30 years after the original series and things have changed a lot. I’ve only watched the first three episodes, but I am anxious to check out more now.

More Music.

• The Future Sound of London – far-out son of lung and the ramblings of a madman
• The Future Sound of London – Lifeforms
• Front 242 – Official Version
• Front 242 – Front by Front
• Freaky Chakra vs Single Cell Orchestra
• Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Welcome to the Pleasuredome

The last CD on the list, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, is definitely within my top 10 list of all time favorite CDs. I remember hearing about them on MTV a month or so before the album came out in the US and picking it up the day I could. Welcome to the Pleasuredome is still one of my favorite tracks, try listening to it really loud while driving down a dark road at 2am in the morning. I still have the vinyl for it along with the single releases of it (There are some amazing remixes of Two Tribes). The CD was one of the very first full digital releases. I wish I had the original CD release of it because I seem to remember it actually cataloging some sound issues in two places on the master.

I ran across a kinda nice anime site this morning. It’s called Anime-Source.com. It feels like it’s a little on the quiet side of things, but looks like it maybe be growing a little. I was looking for bbs systems with posts about Kiddy Grade and ran into it. (As an aside, Kiddy Grade 10 was pretty damn good IMHO).

I definitely say check it out.

Here’s something from CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Customs officials opened his suitcase and a bird of paradise flew out but that was nothing compared to what they found in his pants — a pair of pygmy monkeys.

Not just one monkey, but TWO monkeys in his pants. Along with 50 orchids and a number of birds in his bag.

So one of my friends over on LiveJournal had his account suspended because of a post he made. I hadn’t even realized that LJ has that level of restriction on what you can post. Something about it supposedly violated the TOS of LJ. While I do think his original post had some pretty inflamatory stuff in it, I don’t see anything that jumped out at me as violating it. One thing that I thought was also kind of lame on LJ’s part was that they basicly told him he couldn’t post the details of the mail they sent him about it or he’d lose his account. That just sounds kind of childish to me.

Do other blogging systems have these kinds of restrictions? Blogger/blogspot? Radio? Salon Blogs? (radio and salon didn’t have any I could easily find) Xanga? The systems that do have them all seem to be pretty much the same. I wonder if that same post would have been judged offending by the other systems.