Standards for Vampires - Even the Undead Ought to Obey a Few Simple Rules

Standards for Vampires - Even the Undead Ought to Obey a Few Simple Rules

My kind of essay.

DCist: A Year's Worth of Baseball Politics

DCist: A Year’s Worth of Baseball Politics

DCist looks back at the Nationals’ first year and its political mess.

WOMMA's Word of Mouth vs. Advertising: Your $1.2 Billion Tease

WOMMA’s Word of Mouth vs. Advertising: Your $1.2 Billion Tease

Advertising has almost no impact on army recruiting numbers. Why not give the money as a signing bonus?

NY Times Op Ed on Author's Guild Suit Against Google

NY Times Op Ed on Author’s Guild Suit Against Google

Good summary of the pro-Google argument here (i. e. the correct side of the issue).

TIME.com: Interview: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon -- Page 1

TIME.com: Interview: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon — Page 1

Make sure you stick around for Neil’s final anecdote.

Music Video Downloads

I ran across this link today, featuring a PHP script that lets you download music videos from the iTunes Music Store. Cool. Apple’s put a lot of music videos up, and now I can download them onto my machine and watch them whenever I want.

But wait? Why the hell do I need to hack together a script to do this? It’s always bothered me with their Quicktime Movie Trailer repository. Here’s a page full of ads I’m willing to watch voluntarily, yet they¹ don’t let me download them. Letting me download movie previews would let me watch them whenever I want, and do so without using up Apple’s bandwidch, near-infinite though it may be. The same goes for music videos. They don’t really sell them, unless you count the occasional collection of a band’s entire videography. Are record labels worried that free, high-quality downloads of videos will put MTV out of business (as if they showed more than four hours of videos a day anyway)? It’s rare that people are willing to watch your ads on purpose. Music videos and movie trailers are lucky exceptions that the entertainment industry has somehow achieved. Seems that among the very long list of things that entertainment executives are too stupid² to understand, this is another.

1. I’m conflating Apple and the entertainment industry here a little bit. Either could be the culprit for not giving you the option to download the files. I’d be willing to bet that some idiot executive(s) and/or lawyer(s) stipulated that Apple would only be allowed to provide the content if they locked out downloading, but it’s also possible that Apple did it on purpose to promote their idiotic Quicktime Pro strategy. “Hey look, if you spend $30, we’ll unlock features that our product should have for free! Then you can download these files that are already cached on your machine!”  ↩
2. Note that when I say “stupid” and “idiotic”, I mean that they’re being idiots to treat their customers like idiots. I’m sure it’s making them some money, but I think in the long run is the reason most people don’t have any moral qualms bootlegging CDs and DVDs. If the entertainment industry showed more thanks for our business, we might care a little bit more. ↩

Would You Play The Bait Shop?

Would You Play The Bait Shop?

Responses of a bunch of bands when asked if they’d play on The OC if asked.

NEWSARAMA - DUNST: VENOM & SANDMAN IN SPIDEY 3

NEWSARAMA - DUNST: VENOM & SANDMAN IN SPIDEY 3

Oh man Venom. Could be great, unlike how he actually is in most of the actual comics.

A Bit Part I Never Played

My dad discovered that I apparently played the part of an intern on this week’s Lost. I’m guessing it’s this guy.

The CulturePulp Q&A: Joss Whedon

The CulturePulp Q&A: Joss Whedon

Long interview about Serenity and such.