Just posting a quick link to the current playlist
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KevFrey
kevfrey@gmail.com
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Ben Falcone made this useful video for all you struggling actors. This guy was one of the funniest guys in our high school, and has been successful in landing some memorable supporting roles in a variety of comedic movies and tv shows. His timing and visage are simply funny; you are ready to laugh just by they way his eyes prep you for the punchline.
Falcown it and book it!
He seems to be on a quest to visit every country on the planet. Found him while I was checking out a directory of other sites hosted by my ISP. This video leaves me with a very positive feeling for some reason.
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KevFrey
kevfrey@gmail.com
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Greetings all; Just a quick one…
New flaws have been fixed by Nullsoft (list of fixes here 
) to resolve some apparently nasty issues in WinAmp. Additionally, many other fixes that resolve some operational issues with the software have been implemented which should help the overall user experience (few crashes, odd behavior, etc.).
If you use Winamp, please update it to v5.22 .
For years, my wife and I watched Wall $treet Week on Friday evenings. Although that sounds like a laughably dry way to spend Friday nights with a loved one, for those that don’t know he was a very entertaining fellow. We looked forward to the 30 uninterrupted minutes of his wit and subtle puns on the weekly PBS show and he always put us in a good mood. Being that we often do the bills on the weekend (as I imagine millions of other Americans do too), he would make it less of a chore and more of an opportunity through his light-hearted framing of money matters.
When PBS gave him a very bitter pill to swallow, we applauded his move to CNBC and followed him over. And, we applauded CNBC for retaining that no interruption, low key format with which fans and viewers fell in love. 
who was out to make sense of big economic ideas for the lamen. I, for one, will miss him.
If you didn’t already know (which means you probably are not an avid South Park fanatic), Isaac Hayes – who plays the voice of the popular character “Chef” on the animated show – recently resigned from the show. This resignation was allegedly in protest of the show’s frequent satire of religious beliefs. However, most observers (including everyone I have spoken to on this matter) feel that it was likely due to a more recent episode poking fun at Scientology and Tom Cruise – Mr. Hayes is a Scientologist, as is the superstar TC.
In many circles this is seen as hypocrisy (or, at least, veiled reasoning) since Isaac has played Chef on the show throughout its 10-year run – over which South Park has lampooned nearly every major religion on the planet. That is, no one is exempted from their satire (as it should be), so mark 1 for Trey and Matt .
But, CNN recently reported that Tom Cruise has jumped into the fight with his ponderous Hollywood gravitas. Comedy Central was going to rerun the Scientology/TC episode, but two days prior they promptly pulled the rerun and aired another. Now, this is where the corporate conglomerate stuff kicks in and we see where money really does equal speech (as so many lobbyists would like us to believe ). TC’s upcoming blockbuster-ready, Paramount Pictures Mission Impossible 3 (MI3) is ready for promotional round-robin. But, allegedly TC threatened to refuse press junkets for the project if Comedy Central aired the Scientology South Park episode again. CC then pulled the show… Why? – Because both Paramount and Comedy Central are owned by the same corporate entity – Viacom. Even though South Park is a wildly successful show on CC, I’m sure its revenue stream pales in comparison with a major motion picture like MI3, so mark 1 for Scientology.
To add an additional twist to the whole ordeal, and perhaps more intriguingly, Isaac might not have actually written his resignation (the spark for this whole battle). The Defamer blog has written that Isaac has fallen ill early this year (stroke), and the message might have been composed “on his behalf” by his handlers. Mark 1 for the implication on the Trey and Matt side.
Regardless of truth or dare, what has been demonstrated is the Church of Scientology’s will and influence over large companies like Viacom. Mark 1 for Scientology’s power.
Now, in usual South Park react-quickly-to-recent-developments fashion, the SP team have re-tooled their season 10 debut episode and titled it “The Return of Chef! .” They are clearly going to address this now very public issue directly in their own way… mark another one for Matt and Trey, with a bonus mark for the obvious free publicity that this is generating for SP (so far, seen as free-albeit-crude speechers while Scientology and Viacom are seen as reacting to hypocritical developments).
I personally don’t fault Viacom for their actions so far (they are, after all, a business and they have final say over programming). The viewers will decide whether to make MI3 a huge hit or flop and whether to make SP a continued success or flop – Such is the existing marketplace of entertainment. But, in the court of public opinion, I think Scientology is increasingly becoming a political force with artificially broad reach due to the revenue-generating membership it has cultivated.
Scientology has been described by its founder as “a study of knowledge.” Hate to break it to the late LRH, but that is the very definition of epistemology – whoops, taken already. More on Scientology here for those interested in the origins, history, and controversy surrounding this applied philosophical pursuit. In the early 1990s, a former girlfriend of mine that knew (and probably still knows…) more about this stuff than I did, explained to me that a well-circulated rumor claims that the founder of Scientology formed its basis after having made a wager with another author that he could “invent a religion” based on his knowledge of historical philosophy, theology, and science fiction. Additionally, Hubbard was also once quoted a long time ago as having said “If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion,” which certainly doesn’t lend Scientology much credibility upon scrutiny.
Whatever your beliefs or doubts, I think Isaac Hayes (or his handlers), TC, et al have chosen the wrong target to engage in the creators of South Park. These two really don’t care what other people think or feel and will always strike back (in comedic, satirical fashion), and IMO, the writers of this show make formidable foes.
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So, i bought an iPod. Now I feel cool … I think. I was a hold out for a while. They didn’t hold enough in the earlier versions, and monochrome screens just don’t do it for me. My friend Bill, however, shamed me into getting one to, and I quote, “get me up to speed.” So, if I had any questions on whether I was too old to own one, the answer is a resounding No since my maturity level is still apparently low enough to fairly easily succumb to peer pressure.
But, now I have been converted. Now comes the formidable task of loading up my 3,000+ releases of music that I have to show for the last 20 years or so.
However, just in case someone else has run into these issues:
Other than those growing pains, I have been enjoying the new “toy.” The first quest was finding a case to protect it. Out of the box, the black iPod has a terrible affinity for fingerprints and everyone tells me that it has a proclivity for scratching. I have settled on three ways to keep these things from havppening: The InvisibleShield is protective plastic cover that you can apply to the entire exterior of the iPod to protect it from scratches if you drop it, keep it in your pocket with keys, etc. It was originally developed to protect helicopter blades from debris – the stuff is pretty hardcore.
Additionally, I am using the Agent18 for the Video 5G 60GB. It is translucent/transparent hard plastic, and with the black front of the iPod creates a kind of smokey gray appearance to the device without adding my much mass or girth.
While in LA, I also picked up the black Speck Toughskin at the Northridge Apple store. The service in that store is very good – everyone was friendly – and that alone almost made me want to convert to a Mac. The Toughskin is a black rubber cover with an almost “Mad Max” look. I’m not sure how I feel about the look yet, but it should prevent my butterfingers from destroying my new acquisition (at least in the first month or so).
So, the 5G Video iPod is nice and I’ve put in around 4GB at this point. My favorite part so far is podcasting. I have been into it before, but only via my computer.
If you don’t yet know of Karl Pilkington, you will have fun learning all about him. This is a producer/friend of the creators of the original (UK) TV program named “The Office” – the U.S. version of the same program stars Steve Carrell. If you want to hear the first twelve episodes, please feel free to download them from here. If you have a good sense of humor, you are bound to get some good laughs out of this series of time wasters. To give you an idea if you haven’t become an addicted listener, the most famous thing Karl has pontificated out loud has been “I could eat a knob at night.” This facet of the show has spawned (per host’s request) over 70 variations of dance remixes using that quote as the hook. The original mix was quick and direct, and here is my favorite so far. Here are a few I’ve compiled so far.
Karl even has his own Wikipedia entry – amazingly detailed and complete.
“May the funk be with you.”
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I am an avid user of WinAmp, as are millions of other people. But, one thing I don’t make a habit of is downloading other people’s playlists, mainly because I have too many of my own to handle. However, if you have WinAmp installed on your machine (even if you are not an avid user or don’t DL playlists) watch out for a new nasty bug in versions of WinAmp 5.12 and prior. This buffer overflow vulnerability allows maliciosly coded playlists to run other programs on your machine (known as arbitrary execution) without your control. A good example might be a link to a playlist on a malicious website disguised to be a normal webpage link.
An exploit is out in the wild for this bug, making it exceedingly easy to exploit and some spyware is already using this flaw to install itself. Lately, spyware installers have been on the leading edge of exploits (over virus writers) – probably because there is money in spyware and not so much in viruses.
Since WinAmp automatically associates playlist files (naturally) to itself, you could accidentally trigger a malicious file without realizing it.
Bottom line – If you have WinAmp installed, update ASAP to 5.13 or higher: Here is a link to the WinAmp DL page
Questions or comments, please let me know.
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I am very happy to see the growth of more innovative applications on the Internet, particular those that involve truly coming together and building knowledge that will bring us forward whether it is artistically, intellectually, politically, or productively. The advent of what is being called the read/write Internet is a great step toward collaborative cultures coming together. I love sites like Wikipedia (although it has its critics), based on the great Wiki technology, the Rosetta Project which is documenting human languages, and ibiblio (a content aggregator of free information) – these use community submission to build content. By developing these kinds of huge scale bodies-of-work, we approach the ideal that Vannevar Bush envisioned with his ideas of memex.
The Semantic Web is a term, coined by Tim Berners-Lee (W3C founder), to describe how information can be made more useful on the Web. Specifically – “The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” – Tim Berners-Lee (from the article The Semantic Web, Scientific American-May 2001).
For several years Dr. Ted Nelson has been working in related areas while working toward Xanadu. He, Tim Berners-Lee, and a host of others have been working to realize the vision of Dr. Vannevar Bush (a brilliant researcher and scientist) who pioneered the idea of contextualizing and linking knowledge – making it much more accessible than traditional methods of presentation. In a July 1945 article published in the Atlantic Monthly, Dr. Bush wrote a paper describing this idea in a broad and philosophical sense entitled “As We May Think.”
Conspiracy theorists and UFO believers have even speculated that Dr. Bush’s efforts in this area came about through his contact with the aliens that allegedly crash-landed in the desert of Roswell ;-). I don’t buy into that explanation (the man was a brilliant visionary, before and after the Roswell incident), but there is no doubt that he brought this idea, as old as epistemology itself, new life in the 20th century.
These are truly big thinkers and they can be considered practical technicians in this modern-day epistemological effort to bring meaning
and newfound usefulness to the creation of knowledge brought about by the explosion of science in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In the days of our Founding Fathers, between Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, given enough time and intellect, one could know pretty much all there was to know at that point in modern history. But, just 100-150 years later, science has changed the world irreversibly not only with its advancements but in the amount of knowledge that has been created – to the point that it has grown to the level where no single person has the capacity to understand and know all that is knowable.
The current Web has the ability to catalog and make available the enormous amounts of information available today, but it is very bad at giving meaning to that information – or perhaps better stated, it was simply not designed to give content meaning. The Web was designed to make information available only. This is why search engines have become a major driver of research in information science – they allow users to sift through this massive information store more easily. But, it is still us, the users, who are giving context and meaning to the information we retrieve from the search engines. When we are returned a list of Google results, it is us that analyzes and categorizes the information presented. The search engine simply cross-references the words and phrases we provide it as input.
The Semantic Web effort would evolve the existing tagging mechanisms used on the Web today. Using technologies like XML, data would be given predefined meaning and context so that it tells the user what it is about upfront. This has the potential to transform the information available into knowledge – relevant, empirical, and continuously adapting to new contexts and developments.
This tool would also unify the language used to describe information on the Web. Take Yahoo! for example – The categorization used by Yahoo! to give context (using the directory model) to other websites form what Jerry Yang calls its “ontology” (or, its unified specification to represent information), as described in the May 1996 issue of Wired. Others have seen this categorization as the reverse: As a mechanism to describe documents individually to create a kind of pseudo-semantic web.
The Yahoo method requires the use of human-based interpretation, analysis, and manually categorization. Albeit sophisticated, this is still an effort that will be inherently flawed and difficult to maintain over time. The promise of the Semantic Web is that it will bring context to the information presented inherent to the document itself. This will modify the way that the document is created from the beginning to automatically have definition built-into the document so that it can be automatically correlated and given better relevance in the larger Web system.
Each document will define what it is, to some degree, so that we can better find, understand, and use the knowledge that would be inevitably created by such contextualization.
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