Obruo

… wtf. Are we as a society so freaked out and scared that we react to everything in a negative manner? Didn’t someone ask any of the commuters near the “bombs” if they were there yesterday… or the day before… or the day before that?

“Turner Broadcasting is expected to issue an apology for causing today’s series of bomb scares throughout Boston. A statement emailed to the Globe from Turner Broadcasting said: “The ‘packages’ in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger. They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger.”

I’d be embarrassed if I were from Boston right now. The mayor should probably also issue an apology for running his mouth off before knowing what the situation really was.

read more | digg story

I just read V’s take on dating at ViolentAcres, I never really considered how women think about dating, but I find it fairly interesting to read a womans point of view on it.  Kinda scary being a man all said and done… men are largely oblivious to most of the mechanizations of woman kind… they’re scary.  I suppose a man feels somewhat like women, but we’re not nearly so manipulative about getting them.

If you have trouble understanding women, take a gander, its a real interesting read.

I just read the transcript of the GWB interview on 60 minutes, and honestly a lot of people are ragging him out about what he had to say, and I do take exception to several points he brings up, but all in all, it is probably the most intelligence I’ve ever heard him utilize during an interview or speech.  I may not agree with him on several points, but at least this time he doesn’t sound like a dumb ass red neck with no cares or thoughts about our soldiers dying over there.  Check it out, it’s an interesting read.

A game called “Super Columbine Massacre RPG” was made about the columbine shooting where you are the shooters, you wander around the school and do largely what they did. They were entered in the slamdance competition which is pretty much a small developer/indy comp… they were finalists until they got canned because the corporate sponsors didn’t like that they were in the competition and threatened to pull support and the president caved in. Since originally being reported however, the president of Slamdance says he pulled it on moral grounds. right. There’s a bit more available at rocky mountain news.

Since then, 5 others have quit the contest in disgust over the practice, even if they didn’t agree with what the game stood for and was.

The first contestant to quit was Braid, followed by fl0w, then in quick succession 3 more dropped– Everyday Shooter, Toblo, and Once Upon a Time.

All of them basically have the same thing to say, but I suggest you read each site, they all have slightly different views and insights. Maybe download the games and give them a go, because their creators show integrity and it’s a rare thing to see in the gaming industry these days… or in people in general.

I hope they all get massive amounts of publicity and they each deserve an award for integrity when they could have viewed columbine being disqualified as making the odds of their own game winning better. If they want to exclude something from entering, but do it upfront, it’s dirty and underhanded to do it after the fact when someone you don’t like is a finalist regardless of the reasons.

If I had a game… I wouldn’t enter it in Slamdance– they can’t be trusted to be fair.

EDIT: Sponsors and other contestants (Book and Volume) have pulled themself from the contest also and even some of the judges are up in arms. Baxter (president of sd) commented… it wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t actively TRIED to get SC* to compete in the comp.

EDIT2: Even wired is in the act.

EDIT3: The final edit, no one got an award this year the rest of the contestants that still went or were forced to go declined the award. Good for them!

The RIAA is off its rocker.

Check this little gem out.

The summary if you’re to lazy to click the link is that the RIAA (music industry) is suing a music download site in Russia who sells music for a few cents each song.  About $4 per CD give or take.  They’re suing them for… 1.65 TRILLION dollars.  Last I checked the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for the ENTIRE country was about 750 BILLION dollars.  Now this is where it even gets better… this only includes the songs from June to October 2006.  They’re charging $150,000 per song.  If they had applied those numbers since the inception of AllofMp3.com which according to a quick whois lookup of the site name, is June of 2000… and we’ll say they sold 8m overall each month average, because at the beginning it would have sold slower and now it’s much faster… is roughly 78 months times 8 million downloads or 624 million total downloads… at a cost of $150,000 per song they’d owe the RIAA 93,600,000,000,000 dollars… yes 93 TRILLION, 600 BILLION… because they sold songs cheaper than apple… who sells each song for $0.99.  Just for comparison… the national debt of the united states is currently capped at 9 Trillion.  The gross domestic product of the ENTIRE WORLD combined is about 45 Trillion…

God, someone who does damages and math for this kinda shit needs flat out shot.  This is STUPID, punitive is one thing and understandable as a discouragement… this is mental.  Any judge who gets this case should toss it out for being to stupid to contemplate until they can come back with a reasonable number of some sort.

Anyways, enjoy figured everyone needed some light hearted stupidity for the holiday season!  Oh and AllofMp3.com is presently is giving a 20% holiday increase for any money you transfer in for downloads.  Merry Christmas!