Chaf's Digital Brain

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Jon Stewart is Back! YouTube, Viacom Reach An Agreement

Viacom and YouTube have reached a licensing deal. After Viacom asked the popular video-sharing site YouTube to remove much of their popular content, including clips of The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Sponge Bob Square Pants. YouTube swiftly replied by taking down all of the clips pertaining to Viacom’s request.

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Nick Burns - Your Companys Computer Guy - Jamie Foxx

America: Freedom to Fascism Part 1

America: Freedom to Fascism Part 2

Sunday, October 29, 2006

First question wrong on Who Wants to be a Millionaire

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Playstation 3 Baby commercial

Monday, October 23, 2006

Borat: Give him job, MakeItSo.CO.NR camera in ladies toilet

Golf Cart Chase !

GOLF CARTING!!!!!!11one one!!!

President Bush on Iraq: It's Never Been

Ouch, bad choice in words Mr. President.

Wii History-Part1-The Beginning

Wii History-Part 2-Wii Revealed

Wii History-Part3-Final Details

Nintendo Entertainment System 20th Anniversary

It was 20 years ago today...The catastrophic crash of 1984 had wiped out or severely weakened all the major home videogame companies, and home computers were becoming more and more popular. The future of videogames looked bleak and it seemed as if the home videogame system would become a thing of the past.

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Sunday, October 22, 2006

Newsweek: 51% of Americans want Bush impeached.

Remember all the pundits laughing at the notion of impeaching president Bush? Remember all the pollsters refusing to even ask that question in their polls? Well, a majority now approve of Democratic plans to impeach president George W. Bush. 28% think it should be a high priority, 23% think it should be a lower priority, while 44% disapprove.

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Saturday, October 21, 2006

Scrybe: Sneak Peek

Organize your life with this software...looks amazing.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Mock robbery at montred.com

Listening To The Sound Of Skin Cancer

Researchers can now detect the spread of skin cancer cells through the blood by literally listening to their sound. The unprecedented, minimally invasive technique causes melanoma cells to emit noise, and could let oncologists spot early signs of metastases-- as few as 10 cancer cells in a blood sample -- before they even settle in other organs.

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Monday, October 16, 2006

GoogleTube

5 Reasons Why RSS Feeds are Not Popular

5 Reasons Why RSS Feeds are Not Popular
By Hiveminds
Created 2006-10-15 17:45

Only geeks use RSS feeds. Is this true? Unfortunatly yes. Why? well because like most things in web technology and computers only geeks can understand that nothing is one hundred percent all the time. There are probably 5 reasons that the average internet user does not know about or trust RSS feeds.
RSS is still unknown
The average internet user still has no idea what RSS is or how to go about using it. Though Google, Yahoo and MSN have reader services they don't appeal to anyone but the internet savvy. Ask someone at a gathering of people that actually work in an IT oriented field and you will be surprised at how little they know about RSS technology. I recently participated in a seminar for social networking and only 2 of the 20 persons I spoke to used and understood RSS.
RSS feeds fail frequently
Many RSS feeds do not work or fail frequently. The owners of RSS feeds do not check them often enough to make sure they are working. Even the big websites with dozens working on them have not been able to prevent their feeds from failing. We all know how visitors feel about web pages that don't work. While website owners may be constantly validating and testing web pages to make sure they are visible and valid in the case of RSS feeds it is not quite the same. RSS feeds go without maintenance for months without being looked at or validated. And just like in the case of a badly coded web page the site visitor is unlikely to notify the website owner of a problem with a RSS feed. They just surf on to the next feed or website.
RSS Feeds are sensitive
Why do feeds break? Well because the XML documents that they are built on are sensitive. An XML document is mostly sensitive to whitespace and thereafter some characters may break them depending on how they are coded. Frequently a website builder will trust this part of their website to the knowledge and expertise of the open source CMS creators. The developers of an open source CMS may be leaving the testing of RSS feeds up to the user group. So you can see how a problem can go unnoticed for a very long time.
Failed to parse RSS feed Opensource CMS: Invalid document end at line 1.
Failed to parse RSS feed Mamboserver.com: Invalid document end at line 1.
Failed to parse RSS feed e107.org: EntityRef: expecting ';' at line 133.
I looks as though upgrading to the latest version of Mambo has caused feeds for two high traffic websites to fail.
Feeds that have been removed
When a website changes its domain name or a web page is not available there are solutions for redirecting and notifying the visitor. Website owners are aware that they will loose traffic if they do not take in account changes in URLs and content. Apache .htaccess files and 404 file not found documents can be used to take the visitor to the newer and proper area of the website. But for some reason no one uses these tools to redirect a RSS feed URL.
At this moment I see notices of errors from RSS feeds from four open source projects. I have checked two of them and they no longer exist. The websites have been updated and the old feeds URLs are completetly missing. There are new feeds but I doubt that I will subscribe to them because the websites have proven themselves to be unreliable.
An example of a missing feed during a domain change is the http://www.openngo.org domain which unapparently has become http://civicrm.org/. While the main URL has been redirected the RSS feed is dead.
A notification service is needed
Services like feedburner.com provide lots of functions but the one that is missing is the broken feed service. It would be nice for website owners to get an email about the status of their RSS feeds. This way if they upgrade their website with the latest CMS or blog software version and the RSS feed breaks they will know. I think too many assume that feeds will automatically work when going from Drupal 4.6 to Drupal 4.7 for instance.
Conclusion
RSS feeds are becoming more and more important because of the importance that website owners place on them not because visitors think they are needed. Dreamhost.com has recently replaced their newsletter notification with an RSS feed. While I appreciate the convenience of a having a feed. I don't think that it is a good replacement for a newsletter.
To the average website visitor RSS feeds seem to be a geek toy requiring knowledge that they don't have time to gain or just are are not interested in. If web browsers included feed readers by default it would probably increase RSS usage 10 fold. But since none of the web browser makers seem to be interested in trying to do this RSS may remain unkown and unpopular for years to come.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

deslizamiento

Woah

Friday, October 13, 2006

HBO to Premier 'Hacking Democracy' Just Prior to November Election!

A week before the midterm elections HBO is planning to air a documentary about the fragility of electronic voting systems in the US. Isn't this timing a little suspect considering that nothing can be done within such close proximity to the elections if the general public actually starts to listen to us nerds?

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Daily Show: Bush

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Stephen Colbert vs George Lucas on a lightsaber duel!

Grind House Trailer

Tarantino + Rodriguez = Goodness

The Departed

I give this one 2 thumbs up. It was way better than I thought it would be.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Wii Tennis Show

30 Wii Launch Titles!!

CONFIRMED! Sony is Worried About Overheating!

Just as PS3 pre-orders are selling out nationwide at EB Games/GameStop stores, Generation: Gamerz has received confirmation that Sony is worried about PlayStation 3 heat issues, contrary to recent reports.In addition to the 3 crashes witnessed by many at the TGS show, companies that manufacture the store kiosks have been asked to...

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North Korea Threatens War Over Sanctions

By HANS GREIMEL, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 6 minutes ago

North Korea stoked regional tensions Wednesday, threatening more nuclear tests and saying additional sanctions imposed on it would be considered an act of war, as nervous neighbors raced to bolster defenses and punish Pyongyang.
South Korea said it was making sure its troops were prepared for atomic warfare, and Japan imposed new economic sanctions to hit the economic lifeline of the communist nation's 1 million-member military, the world's fifth-largest.
North Korea, in its first formal statement since Monday's claimed atomic bomb test, hailed the blast as a success and said attempts by the outside world to penalize North Korea with sanctions would be considered an act of war.
Further pressure will be countered with physical retaliation, the North's Foreign Ministry warned in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the statement, said without specifying what those measures could be.
President Bush called for stiff sanctions on North Korea and asserted that the United States has "no intentions of attacking" the reclusive regime.
He said he remains committed to diplomacy, but also "reserves all options to defend our friends in the region."
As Bush spoke, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Washington to hold one-on-one talks with Pyongyang, something the U.S. has refused to do.
"I have always argued that we should talk to parties whose behavior we want to change, whose behavior we want to influence, and from that point of view I believe that ... (the) U.S. and North Korea should talk," Annan said.
Annan also called on the communist nation not to escalate an "extremely difficult" situation.
North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam threatened in an interview with a Japanese news agency that there also would be more nuclear tests if Washington continued what he called its "hostile attitude."
Kim, second to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told Kyodo News agency that further nuclear testing would hinge on U.S. policy toward his communist government.
"The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country," Kim Yong Nam was quoted as saying when asked whether Pyongyang will conduct more tests.
Along the razor-wired no-man's-land separating the divided Koreas, communist troops were more boldly trying to provoke their southern counterparts: spitting across the demarcation line, making throat-slashing hand gestures, flashing their middle finger and trying to talk to the troops, said U.S. Army Maj. Jose DeVarona of Fayetteville, N.C., adding that the overall situation was calm.
On the streets of North Korea's capital, it seemed like business as usual. Video by AP Television News showed people milling about Kim II Sung square in Pyongyang and rehearsing a performance for the 80th anniversary of the "Down with Imperialism Union."
South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said that Seoul could enlarge its conventional arsenal to deal with a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea.
Scientists and other governments have said Monday's underground test has yet to be confirmed, with some experts saying the blast was significantly smaller than even the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
North Korea appeared to respond to that Wednesday, saying in its statement that it "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions."
In rare direct criticism of the communist regime from Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said the security threat cited by North Korea "either does not exist in reality, or is very exaggerated," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
He spoke even as South Korea's military was checking its readiness for nuclear attack, Yonhap said. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended improving defenses, possibly with state-of-the-art weapons to destroy nuclear missiles, the report said.
The top U.S. general in South Korea said American forces are fully capable of deterring an attack despite the North's still-unconfirmed nuclear test.
"Be assured that the alliance has the forces necessary to deter aggression, and should deterrence fail, decisively defeat any North Korean attack against" South Korea, U.S. Army Gen. B.B. Bell said in a statement to troops. "U.S. forces have been well- trained to confront nuclear, biological and chemical threats."
About 29,500 U.S. soldiers are deployed in the South, a remnant of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a cease-fire, not a formal peace treaty.
Bell said seismic waves detected after the claimed test were still being analyzed and it had not been yet determined if the test was successful.
Japan took steps to punish North Korea for the test, prohibiting its ships from entering Japanese ports and imposing a total ban on imports from the impoverished nation.
North Korean nationals are also prohibited from entering Japan, with limited exceptions, the Cabinet Office said in a statement released after an emergency security meeting late Wednesday.
"We cannot tolerate North Korea's actions if we are to protect Japanese lives and property," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said after an emergency security meeting late Wednesday. "These measures were taken to protect the peace."
A total ban on imports and ships could be disastrous for North Korea, whose produce such as clams and mushroom earns precious foreign currency on the Japanese market. Ferries also serve as a major conduit of communication between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations.
Two dozen North Korea-registered trade ships are moored at Japanese ports, according to public broadcaster NHK. Local traders already were refusing to unload shipments to protest the alleged test, and the boats were expected to be ordered out, NHK said.
Tokyo already has halted food aid and imposed limited financial sanctions against North Korea after it test-fired seven missiles into waters between Japan and the Korean peninsula in July, including one capable of reaching the United States.
The North lashed out at the prospect of further economic sanctions.
"The enemy schemes to destroy us through economic lockout ... but that is merely a foolish illusion," said an editorial published by the state-run Rodong Sinmun, according to Radio Press.
Meanwhile, Japanese TV reports that North Korea may have conducted a second nuclear test stirred new anxieties, but one of the networks later issued a retraction and officials said it was most likely a false alarm.
NHK and Nippon Television, a commercial network, reported that "tremors" had been detected in North Korea, leading the government to begin investigating whether a second blast had taken place. The reports cited unidentified government sources. Nippon Television later apologized.
South Korean and U.S. seismic monitoring stations said they hadn't detected any indications of a second test, findings backed by White House spokesman Blair Jones.
With the United Nations debating how to respond to North Korea, China agreed to punishment but not the severe sanctions backed by the U.S.
Beijing is seen as having the greatest outside leverage on North Korea as a traditional ally and top provider of badly needed economic and energy aid.
The United States asked the U.N. Security Council to impose a partial trade embargo including strict limits on Korea's weapons exports and freezing of related financial assets.
All imports would be inspected too, to filter materials that could be made into nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
___

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Google & YouTube - Six reasons why this deal makes sense

1.65 billion dollars. Thats how much Google just spent to acquire YouTube.

When it comes to buzz in the blogosphere, this is a perfect storm. People already obsess over Google. People already obsess over YouTube's traffic/inability to make money. And then came the rumor (first by TechCrunch) - Google was in talks to buy YouTube. Bloggers went nuts. Everyone threw their self-important weight, talking about what a horrible deal this was for Google (whilst a fantastic deal for YouTube). And then it happened. What appears to be a most bizarre marriage finally took place.

I do want to take a moment to pause here and give Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) his deserved kudos. I may not agree with a lot of what he says, but he beat everyone to the punch, including the venerable big boys like the New York Times. I guess he can take some satisfaction in leaving them behind.

When I first saw the deal announced, a range of emotions swirled inside me. Firstly was jealousy. I have to admit - 1.65 billion dollars for a site bleeding money? (and without a real plan of making some) I would take that any day. Then came confusion - why would Google do this? They just placed Google Video on their frontpage - wasn't this a way of saying 'we lose?' Plunking down 1.65 billion dollars for YouTube?! And then finally - enlightenment!

Perhaps not real englightenment, but an understanding that Google may be smarter than all of us

Let me share my zen on why this makes sense for Google:

Propensity to fight. It is not hard to argue that YouTube owes a lot of its success to copyrighted videos. SNL's Lazy Sunday was the first big viral splash (I myself saw it first on YouTube). This lead to other massive viral hits. Even at this moment it is easy to go through the site and find TV episodes uploaded part by part. But if there is anyone on the internet who ignores copyright, it has to be Google. Just look at their core search feature of caching. I have no desire to go into the legality of it all, but Google has been sued quite a few times because of it, and Google has swatted them away like flies. The entire ongoing saga of indexing book contents. Again - Google is being sued left and right for infringment. Still, Google ignores them (while charging ahead). In turn, it goes ahead and subpoenas Yahoo and Microsoft. Why not drag the other two into this? Their image search. Their keyword (read: trademark) based advertising. I could go on and on, but Google, if looked upon as a person, has a very headstrong personality. If anyone is prepared for lawsuits, its Google.
The next frontier: video ads. While Yahoo and MSN may make noise about Oventure and AdCenter respectively, AdWords is the king of textual keyword based ads. Yet a juicy new frontier awaits - video. YouTube did prove one thing - people like viewing videos online. Even taking out all the copyright material out of YouTube, a lot of legitimate videos are quite popular. Instead of waiting around to see if there is market for video (which should command *far higher* prices than text links), Google has opted to take the bull by the horn. While Google may never directly put video ads on its core products, it now has one of the largest inventories of video on the internet. Google.com was a massive testbed for AdWords before it was distributed to publishers small and big. Consider YouTube as a massive testbed for Video AdWords before distributed to publishers small and big. (Note: I do understand that you cannot directly compare text-ad inventory and video-ad inventory, but the analogy serves as a useful example regardless).
Competitive knowledge. Where Google totally smacks Yahoo and Microsoft around is in data. There is no doubht in my mind that the next stage of search engine algorithms will involve user analysis. Why do you think Google Analytics is free? Because Google loves you? No way - they are tracking user behaviour to find out which sites are quality and which are not. A quick example: two sites (Site A and Site B) rank equally inside the Google algo for keyword 'blue widgets'. Using analytics, Google knows that Site B gets far more clicks from other sites, and also has 3x the stickyness when compared to Site B. Which site do you think should rank higher? Yahoo has tried to rectify this lag in user knowledge by acquiring sites like Flickr and Delicious, but only time will tell if the data will be useful. Quick aside: I make a bold claim here that StumbleUpon will soon be courted by the big three - again, easy insight into what users like (and dislike). Back to the point - who was using Google as one of their primary ad inventory sellers? YouTube. So every single Adsense impression that Google delivered, Google also stored that information on their own servers. Many months later with billions of pageviews served, Google has a mountain of data to analyze. Yahoo and Microsoft? Sorry champs, out of luck. Even without YouTube explicitly providing statistics, Google already knew the most popular videos, the top referrers, and so forth. They have information no one else (including you and I) have access to.
Liked brand. Internet users may be fickle, but Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask are all learning a hard lesson in consumer loyalty. All that money they are spending on getting more traffic to their search engines? Talk about failure. YouTube is a brand liked by many many people. Google+YouTube = fanaticism. Yahoo got a lot of goodwill out of purchasing Flickr and Delicious. The jury is still out if that goodwill will translate into money, but it can still be a force to reckon with.
Defensive move (while sticking it to them). Google continues to jab at Yahoo and Microsoft, and they have nothing to respond with. Microsoft gets Facebook, Google gets MySpace (but take the hype with a grain of salt. Even then, MySpace is still far larger than Facebook). And now this - Google gets YouTube, Microsoft gets a deal with Blinkx. Say it with me - "Blinkx who?"
Stock. Not a single dollar was directly transferred to YouTube. Considering that Google's stock is ridiculously high already, why not? While more real than Kevin Rose's 60 million, the value of the deal could easily decrease quite a bit.
In the end, this deal is about potential. In a worst case situation, the YouTube acquisition is a horrible failure. Lets even say Google blows 2 billion dollars on the site. So what? They make more than that in a year. But the upside? Billions and billions of advertising dollars. And the possibility of pulling the rug from under Yahoo and Microsoft (again) can't hurt.



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Its confirmed. Google buys youtube for $1.6 billion

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Google Inc. said Monday it's buying No. 1 Internet video sharing Web site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock. The deal is regarded as a largely defensive one that leapfrogs Google into a leading role in a burgeoning Internet marketplace. Moreover, the Google/YouTube deal highlights how Google (GOOG : google inc cl a
News , chart, profile, more
Last: 432.50+3.50+0.82%

10:46am 10/10/2006

YHOO24.74, -0.29, -1.2%) and other Internet companies are betting heavily on video to attract more customers and generate more advertising revenue. Indeed, many analysts chiming in on the deal Monday suspect Google's competitors will now seek to buy YouTube-wannabes in order to keep pace with their rival. On Monday, the boards of directors of both Google and YouTube approved the terms of the deal, which was announced after the market closed for the day.

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A Message From Chad and Steve

The Creators of Youtube discuss the sale of Youtube to Google.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Daily Show: What Exactly Is President Bush's Job?

Why do Atheists care about Religion?

Friday, October 06, 2006

Unnessary Censorship

Awesome.

They Didn't Make It Trailer REDUX

This is the film that i've been working on all summer.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Jon Stewart on Foley child predator sex scandal

This is awful.

PS3 Frozen In Time

Speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz Sony Europe has categorically denied reports that the PS3 hardware has suffered any problems due to overheating.

The rebuttal follows a report by Macquire Securities analyst David Gibson, who wrote that PS3 units at the Tokyo Game Show were overheating, causing concern over the stability of the console, which in turn caused Sony shares to tumble by 2.75 per cent yesterday.

"SCE can categorically deny that there's any problems with PS3 units overheating," said the company in a statement issued to GI.biz.

"As could be seen on the TGS floor by the tens of thousands of media and public attendees, both the hardware and software worked flawlessly," the statement concludes.

Sony has been suffering negative press since the company announced it would be delaying the European launch of the PlayStation 3 until March 2007, due to difficulties in producing a key component of the system.

The overheating rumours have also been fuelled by a recent recall of lithium ion batteries manufactured by Sony, which affected technology partners Dell, Toshiba and Apple.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Ultimate Trailer!

Mr Rogers plays video games

Musharraf on the Daily Show

Pakistan's President interviewed on The Daily Show.

Alan Wake live demonstration on quadcore intel processor

Quadcore processor Demo of the game Alan Wake, looks insane!

Dancing Indian Kid

WTF!?

DailyShowFoxClinton

Jon Stewart's take on Clinton's episode on Fox

Hilarious House of Frightenstein: AMOS MOSES 1 of 7

Anyone remember this show!?

The death and rebirth of a frog (really!)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

John Kricfalusi - Creator of Ren and Stimpy and ME!

John K (Orange shirt in center) was an interesting fella to speak with. We didn't get to chat too long, but we briefly discussed how blogging and vlogging are changing popular media. He discussed the success of Ren and Stimpy and touched on a few other projects that he's worked on in the past such as The Goddamn George Liquor Program . I LOVED The Ren and Stimpy Show when i was a kid! Here is John K's blog: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ and his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kricfalusi