Setting Humanity Back a Few Millenia

I don't want to become a link farm but in lieu of time to post in length I gotta share the shit that crushes my soul so I don't suffer alone.



As a music lover and music player (in my ancient past) this video hurts on several levels.

The product is so dumb the blog that discovered it trashed it completely and was contacted by the company's PR firm.
Gotta love Gizmodo.

Ha.

I think Lil Wayne just bought 15 of these.

Parental Fail

From Engadget

This is just pure evil.
Next time you hear a story about a kid pushing his parents down the stairs, think of this kid.

Oink Oink Bitches

(Boo hoo)

Like every breathing 20-year old in America I have used P2P and I fully advocate a recreation of the music industry and I am against DRM, so I am not declaring any moral high ground here, but I am pretty glad that Oink, a super-duper illegal and private file sharing network for indie rock and hipsters got raided by anti-piracy agencies.

Oink web site
Oink Wikipedia page
Peep the story here.

• Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said in a response to the news: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”

I hate the RIAA and the music industry's approach to the internet, it's suicidal and short-sighted, however exchanging money for leaked pre-release albums is stealing no matter what hipsters tell themselves.

Besides being illegal, Oink was the most annoyingly pretentious site ever.

When I first checked out the site, I saw a request for an essay as to why rock is the greatest musical genre in order to get an invite.

Are you fucking serious?

I used to buy CD's often and I lived in the used CD stores around Ann Arbor, but the size of my wallet could never watch my curiosity. And then when the CDs I paid for and burnt to my PC got wiped out it P2P came to the rescue.
I've been using a music subscription service which I sold my remaining CDs to pay for, for over a year and it's pretty great.

It's like Netflix for music.
Unlimited music for a fee, recommendations, radio stations and all that.

The upcoming revision of the Microsoft Zune music store looks pretty good as well.

If people are willing to buy DVD's, go the movies and/or pay for Netflix, then what is the objection to a subscription service?

Do people not love music enough to pay for it?
Or do they just not like the purchasing options?

To Those Who Paid $600 for the iPhone...

$200 price drop in 2 months. Take that early adopters!

Steve Jobs is the P.T. Barnum of the 21st century, but that doesn't stop me from wanting that iPod Touch for Jesus' BDay.

Anyone want to slide one out the back of Best Buy for me?

Fake Steve Jobs Is Saving the Internet

Dude, I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it?


The internet hates me along with Toshiba. Never fuck with Toshiba computers.
If you have laptop money I say get that new Dell XPS 1330 or a MacBook and don't forget Start Snitching needs one too when your checking out.

While I fight the good computerless fight, enjoy the comic stylings of Fake Steve Jobs. If you don't know, Fake Steve Jobs was an anonymous tech writer, before he was outed by the New York Times, who mocked the entire technology world and world at large through the smug and self-righteous voice of Apple's CEO. The more you know about technology the funnier it is. It was and remains the best idea ever for a blog. In fact the real Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both admitted to reading his blog.

That's some high quality readership I could fuck with. Not that I don't appreciate the poors that read my site now, but a few billionaires never hurt anyone's blog traffic.

This is his greatest post ever.

SIOOMA for life.


And when you're done with that OhWord.com has an important brochure about a powerful disease sweeping the black community.

Baduizm.

Don't be next.

Fun With Race!

How racist is this Intel ad?

Six cloned black sprinters (they indicate speed, get it?) surround a white man who is centered above them so that it appears they are bowing to him/rowing a slave ship.

Intel, give your marketing department a raise for tapping into the (not-so) subconscious racism of corporate America.
I bet your boss just ordered Intel Core 2 Duo processors and sprinter's blocks for the whole damn office.


- Also for consideration, is it racist to set Resident Evil 5 in Africa where a white protagonist has to mow down hordes of infected African zombies?

I can see the Al Sharpton getting up in arms already but on that one I have to say nay. if CJ from Grand Theft Auto IV can murder Californians of all colors at will I say let that fight go and save the energy for this next issue.


- ABC's upcoming show "Cavemen."
The pilot leaked to the intertubes (download the .torrent file here) and "Sweet antebellum south Batman!" is that shit racist.

If you've seen the Geico commercial you may think you know what's coming but you really don't.

The whole show is really just a thin guise to tell the most hackneyed black jokes you can possibly drudge up on network television. Replace "Cavemen" with "nigger" in any of the show's jokes and you have the show's premise laid out for you.

The show stars 3 "cavemen" who fit the 3 categories of

1) Unaware minority
2) Angry radical "Free Mumia" type minority
3) I-Just-Wanna-Fit-In minority

The caveman who is trying to fit in has a white girlfriend whose parents don't accept her relationship and the whole pilot episode involves them trying to attend the white girlfriend's rich parents BBQ without embarrassing their friend.

One joke refers to reclaiming the word Cro-Magnon as a term of endearment (cough, cough **N-Word debate** cough cough.)

Another joke involves a white girl at the BBQ who wants to fuck one of the caveman's friends because she thinks it will be pretty wild and freaky.

There is also a scene where the completely unaware friend, who is a great dancer, leads the white folk on a magical dance-along at the end of the show.

The jokes go on and on expect they don't actually make you laugh. And the backlash is already brewing.

This is building up to be a modern-day "Bamboozled."

ABC has a shitstorm in the works if they air this show as is. If they are smart they will take the L on this garbage and scrap whatever they've produced thus far.
If you're going to make an racial allegory at least be funny.

Note From the Management

To all the blog fam who still check this blog despite my neglect, I will be back next week and keeping the blog as regular as your grandpa on oatmeal.

Paris is free, white people are safe and now I can resume the hate and snitching.

I will try my damn best to do three quality posts a week plus do the Snitch of the Week.

Any quality blog drops happen while I was gone?

Snitch of the Week: 5/27 - 6/2 (Regal Cinemas)

I've been waiting my whole life for a device that let's you snitch on your fellow moviegoers. Regal Cinemas has ended my wait.

• Moviegoers would receive remote devices that allow them to silently page theater staff if something is annoying them, whether it be another person talking or making noise, something wrong with the picture, or movie piracy. Those doing the snitching become members of the Regal Crown Club loyalty program, which allows them to accumulate credits toward future box office and concession stand purchases.

Paid informant?
Regal Cinemas is a theater I can fuck with.

While few things beat movie hopping on a Saturday, nothing ruins that experience like other human beings.

For making snitching as simple as pressing a button, Regal Cinemas is the Snitch of the Week.

Au Revoir: The Shield Season Finale From France

As I explained before The Shield plays two episodes at a time in France, so while America just aired Episode 6 of Season 6, France just finished the 10 episode season.

All you "Jack Bauer" fanboys need to jump off the sinking ship of "24" and get on some "Shield." Our 6th season is great and our 7th will be even better.

May God bless Shawn Ryan, Michael Chiklis and the French for the joy they brought to my life this spring.

Season 6:

Episode 7 (5/15) Link

Episode 8 (5/22) Link

Episode 9 (5/29) Link

Episode 10: (6/5) Link

You will need uTorrent and a high-speed Internet connection to enjoy these episodes.

Don't tell the Interwebs where you got your supply from...

Snitch of the Week: 4/22 - 4/28 (Canadian Fiance)

(Is no joke...)


Peep this story from Canada about Mikhail Drachev, who got turned in by his fiance five years after he murdered a police witness,

• "About a week ago, he decided to come clean and give her his real name because they were thinking about marriage," Staff-Sgt. Paul MacIntyre said yesterday. "She Googled his name and learned he was in fact on America's Most Wanted."
  
  The fugitive's girlfriend, whose name was not released, was initially "conflicted," MacIntyre said. Although it took her a week to tell police, she eventually "did the right thing" and should be commended, he said.

Love is no joke. Anonymous snitch, for your merciless enforcement of snitching regardless of the personal cost, you are the Snitch of the Week.

Wu-Tang Archive

(Get it...)

Y'all should be messing with Spine Magazine, one of the few hip-hop news sites that finds shit worth your time.

Recently they posted a link to a 215 song list of FREE MP3's from the Wu-Tang clan.

I don't even know what to do with all that or when I'll be able to listen to it.
But that's what external hard drives are for.


- Also, Spine Mag also put me onto Brooklyn Radio Dot Net, which hosts all types of hot radio shows. It's all worth checking out, but the shit that caught my eye was one radio show called The Rub which recently finished making mixtapes for every year of hip-hop from 1979 - 1989. Some years are obviously better than others but the sheer anthropology of it alone makes it worth some of your time.

Let me know what y'all think of this.

Someone should do this for 1990 - 2000. I'd kill for that.


What hidden podcasts and radio stations are worth checking out?
I know y'all are holding out on me...

Save Internet Radio!

Dead Prez said "Turn Off the Radio" damn near 10 years ago and since then I feel like most people with an IQ in the double digits have given up on the incestuous pool of AM/FM radio save for the college stations and the hidden gems buried on the dial.

I literally have not turned on a radio since Star and Bucwild got fired.

Even satellite radio, which is attempting to emerge as a breath of fresh air to stale closet of terrestrial radio falls into the same repetitive clusterfuck as terrestrial radio at times.

So where was the intrepid music listener supposed to go?

Internet Radio.

Or at least that was the solution, until the SoundExchange decided to raise the royalty rates of Internet radio to a level most smaller companies can't afford and that most larger companies won't put up with when their profit margins start shrinking.

That means no more,

Last.FM

Pandora

Woxy

Soma

Launchcast

Y'all know how much I love me some damn Launchcast. I got put on to so much diverse shit I probably would have never heard if it weren't for the customized recommendations and the Payola-free environment you can only get online.

From the Yahoo! Music Blog,

• Compare the implications of this decision to terrestrial radio which pays NOTHING to SoundExchange, or even satellite radio which pays only 3-7% of their revenue to SoundExchange, and it’s hard not to be left scratching your head. The irony of all this, of course, is that this ruling will keep LAUNCHcast, Pandora, and the like out of your living room and push you toward FM, where the labels are paid zero. This decision cuts off a genuine future revenue stream before it has had a chance to grow.

I have never seen an industry respond worse to technology and innovation than the music industry. I smile every week when I read the Nielsen Soundscan numbers and witness the rate at which the industry is imploding.

Keep fighting the Internet and I'll keep fighting gravity.


JP just commented on my last post

• "I probably do need to look a little harder for some of the real music being made. I don't want sound too nostalgic. I just wish I could still turn on the radio and hear something a little better than 'This Is Why I'm Hot.'"
  
  

Net Radio was the place to go for that. But the music Nazis think bleeding a bunch of Internet station will save their industry.

If you have any love for Internet Radio visit SaveNetRadio.Org, click a link and let your thoughts be heard.

Leaked Shield Episodes From France: Bonjour!

I don't know why, but The Shield airs in France before it airs in America and they get two episodes at a time instead of one.

Yea, I don't get it either.

Peep The Shield's French Site, which is kind of better than the American one.

I would be jealous but the power of the Internet makes the international local and the secret global network of Shield fans united to get those early episodes over here. Don't worry they're in English.

I present to all my fellow Shielders:

Episode 4 from 4/24

And

Episode 5 from 5/1

Of course you will need to use BitTorrent to get these files.

Did I ever tell y'all how much I love the Interwebs?

The Internet Hates Me

It's hard to stay in a flow on this blog shit.
Especially when you can't stay online longer than five minutes.

But my Indian fam over at Linksys believed that my router was less than a year old (ahem) and my new out-of-date router is on the way. Indian call centers are awesome that way.

Snitch of the Week: 1/14 - 1/20 (911)

Bloomberg got 911 accepting digital images and video?

Say word.

Expect snitching to at least triple in 2007.

Mayor Bloomberg, for introducing the ancient art of snitching to the 21st century, you are clearly the Snitch of the Week.

Sharpen up your discreet phone cam skills.

Snitch of the Week: 1/7 - 1/13 (YouTube)

It was only a matter of time before people started getting busted via YouTube.

In an age where people don't care about government surveillance because they're too damn busy volunteering all their info on MySpace and Facebook, it's only right that YouTube start catching those criminals smart enough to commit crimes in the purview of a working camera.

YouTube is the D.A.'s best friend. (ABC News)

According to the article people have been caught,

• Stabbing people in the club
• Using a fraudulent credit cards at Hom Depot
• Rioting at colleges
• Attempted break-ins
• And other assorted video-recorded crimes.

I love it.

YouTube for letting everyone broadcast their (illegal) ignorance, you are the Snitch of the Week.

I Thought I Was In Love: It's The iPhone...For Cingular

Let's keep this simple.

Apple released their LONG-AWAITED iPhone today and it's the truth, although the thing costs more than Dave Chappelle's diamond-coated dinosaur eggs.

It's $500 for 4GB/$600 for 8GB with a 2-year contract from Cingular in June, although I don't see why this won't work with T-Mobile.

The screen is bigger than all previous iPods at 3.5" with a good screen resolution. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 2 megapixel camera, 8GB Flash Drive a completely touch-controlled interface and all the other things that make nerds happy and help you achieve Balla Status.

Frankly, Apple should create another model of this without the phone feature and leave the music and video playback in and cut the price down to $300.
Not everyone wants to be on a Cingular contract. I know I sure as hell don't.

Anyone got that hook-up at Apple or Cingular?

____________________________________

UPDATE

I have downgraded my love to like.
I'm fickle like that.

Here's why,

• If you just can’t wait to buy an iPhone from another cellular carrier, like T-Mobile, Cingular has a message for you: you’ll be waiting a long time, my friend.
  
  Cingular’s exclusive rights to sell Apple’s new iPhone is a “multi-year agreement in the U.S.,” said Glenn Lurie, Cingular’s president of national distribution, in a press conference today at CES. The agreement also includes future models which will be introduced “soon.”
  
  And if you’re thinking of buying the iPhone through Cingular and then using it on another GSM network, you might want to reconsider. Both Apple and Cingular will sell the phone as a “locked” device. Even though it uses the GSM standard, it won’t work on other GSM systems.
  
  Hackers have made the unlocking of locked phones a cottage industry, but Cingular says that that won’t be so easy with the iPhone. If the iPhone gets hacked and unlocked, “we’ve thought through what our next steps will be,” Glenn Lurie said.

Cingular/AT&T can eat me. Imagine you found a hot computer but you could only use it with AOL Dial-Up.
That would suck quite a bit. That's what this shit is.

I would have respected Apple a lot more if they opened this up to whoever wanted this on a GSM network (T-Mobile & Cingular.)

If you like the hard rod up the ass that Cingular provides then go ahead and enjoy the fuck out of this phone.
The technology it uses is still top notch.

The Top Five Tech Things of 2006

(I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that...")

I don't blog about technology often because that is what Engadget and Digg are for.

But not everyone has the time or interest to get find the worthwhile shit out there and appreciate the power that technology has on their lives, so here's the shit you should have been rocking in 2006.


5. Google Earth 4

Link

I don't think people realize how real in the field Google is with their shit and the level they will be on by the end of the decade. I also afraid as to how much more detailed this program can get in 2007.
Tinfoil-hat conspiracies aside, Google Earth is exactly what a country who loves Borat but isn't quite sure if his country is real needs.
Get global fools, before Chinese robots are banging your wife.


4. USB Cell

Link



Batteries that charge through USB.
Quite simple, quite brilliant.


3. TVU Player

Link

Internet TV is some next level shit that won't take off until Verizon DSL and friends stop selling those bullshit "high-speed" Internet connections.
This software lets you rock free TV, Cable and Global Television over the Internet.
Illegal? Probably.
Free cable? Definitely.


2. FairUse 4 WM

Link

Sign up for a two-week free trial with a music subscription service.
MTV Urge, Yahoo! Music Unlimited and Napster are a few of the more popular ones. Urge doesn't ask for a credit card.
Download thousands of protected WMA files to your computer for free and then cry as they expire when your trial ends.
Or use this program to rip off the DRM protection and enjoy them well after your trial is up.

I'm not encouraging you to do that. I'm just saying that it's a possibility.

Shit, you might actually like one of the services enough to sign up after the trial ends.
That's what I did with Yahoo Music Unlimited.
You get tired of shitty quality SoulSeek tracks after a while.


1. Skype 3.0



Link

VOIP is scaring the shit out of the telecommunication companies. How do you run your business when you know that one day all calls will be free?
I don't know and I don't care.
Skype isn't new, it lets you call anyone, anywhere in the world for free as long as they have Skype.
The noteworthy step is the fact that Skype is starting to get common on cellphones with Wi-Fi, which means soon you'll be making free calls everywhere.
I love it.

_____________________________

My 2007 calls.

1) I know y'all are all in love with your iPods but don't sleep on that Microsoft Zune.
No one thought Microsoft would steal the crown from the Sony PlayStation and look what happened. XBox 360 is running the table and I am better than you at Madden.
The next Zune should be fire.

2) Cellphones will get gullier, meaning built-in hard drives, better cameras and such.
Not to mention Apple will release some sort of Apple Phone. Everyone will step their game up after the Apple Phone drops. Competition gets that ass moving.

3) I will acquire some sort of HDTV.
Standard TV is not cutting it for Start Snitching.

The Redemption of Justin Timberlake

No, this is not another hipster apologist defense of Justin Timberlake.
It's just him being in the right Saturday Night Live sketch at the right time.

Is this as funny as Lazy Sunday was before it was killed off by its own greatness?



Maybe.

But all I know is that I'm now looking for that special lady to share my Christmas gift with.

Mid-Week Goodness

I saw some shit relating to what I touched on about rappers talking about politics.

More poli sci rap wisdom from a Styles P interview,

• AllHipHop.com: Last month we’ve had an extremely vocal midterm election. If you were given the chance to vote, would have voted?
  
  Styles P: Do you really think it would count? I just watched a National Geographic [Channel] special on the voting machines. I seen how they switched the whole s**t around. Not just on paper, inside the computer. To tell you the truth, honestly, I wouldn’t [vote]. Whoever is running…when it was Bush versus Kerry, what would have been the use? They’re all in the same secret society, anyway. There’s another government besides the government. I don’t think it’s ever what the people want. Let me ask you something, you ever think there’d be a woman president?
  
  AllHipHop.com: I think Hillary [Rodham] has a strong chance. I also wouldn’t count out the Illinois Senator, Barak Obama.
  
  Styles P: I think if either one of ‘em would win, they’d get killed. [Barak] definitely wouldn’t stand a chance- he’s Black. [Editor’s note: Barak Obama is of multi-racial ethnicity] He might as well hang it up. I think the closest Black person that could have won would have been Colin Powell. You’ve seen what he did- he gracefully bowed out.

And some trademark Ghostface insanity,

• Are you talking about this stuff because you feel people don’t have respect anymore, any sense of the consequences of their actions?
  Yeah, they don’t have respect for nobody anymore. For God, for they moms, they parents. Not even for mankind. We killin’ the world, man. Ozone layer. Everything is melting. The gas from the cars. We goin’ in and fucking Iraq up. We done killed Saddam’s sons. It’s like, I know we played a part in the Twin Towers coming down. Everything is thieves nowadays. How can I tell you? Man is bad. It’s a battle in heaven between God and the devil, and the devil is putting the work in right now.

I loved this part in particular,

What are you saying, though – the Wu-Tang Clan feel awkward around each other when they haven’t been together for a while?
No, not awkward really... But you gotta get in that zone. I’m my own element. Like, if this was a bowl of fruit, I’d probably be a watermelon. You know what I mean?

Not really, no.
See, because Wu-Tang is like nine members. So one is a banana, grape, orange, pear – you know what I mean? I said watermelon ’cos I like watermelon. It’s nice.

Yes, it’s a good fruit. It dominates the bowl, too, if you know what I mean.
Yeah [laughs]. You know that shit.

Gotta love that dude.
If not for the fact that he made 2 of the best rap albums this year, then at least for his utterly incomprehensible interviews.



- On a completely unrelated note, this shit is pure fire.



The things nerds do with their time...


- Peep this fucking hilarious video of a Japanese robot demo gone wrong.



I don't know what I like better, the gasps of shock from the audience or the way they backstage crew rushes to censor his robotic shame.