a lesson in propaganda from beautiful Portland, Maine

While spending a few days in Portland, Maine I had the unfortunate opportunity of watching some classic in-room american television. ESPN showed a military showcase and airshow that was the year 2000 equivalent to the now hilarious and frightening US and Soviet propaganda videos of the 50s. According to the hosts of the show it is a great opportunity for the military to mingle with the public and for the public to get a see “all the wonderful things that the U.S. Military is doing”. Don’t worry, young environmentalists, the smoke generated by the showplanes is ‘environmentally friendly’. I shudder.

On a more positive note, Portland is a beautiful city (despite the hideous buildings built in the last 40 years). I strongly recommend the Basket o’ Gritty Chips at “Maine’s original brew pub” Gritty McDuffs.

Oh, they still show Full House on TV here and the Olympics broadcasts are all a day old. God bless the CBC.

 

re: apple legitimizes amazon patent tomfoolery

re: apple legitimizes amazon patent tomfoolery

Mastah programmah John Carmack (his company, Id Software created Doom and the Quake series of PC Games) on software patents:

“The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.”

Check out the rest of the interview at VoodooExtreme.

 

apple legitimizes amazon patent tomfoolery

A few months ago, Amazon.com went after BarnesandNoble.com with their absurd ‘1-Click Shopping’ patent.

Now Apple has legitimized the foolish patent by licensing 1-Click Shopping for the Apple Store.

If you locked a few reasonably intelligent web developers in a room for six weeks to design a user-friendly ecommerce site and they had never heard of 1-Click Shopping (capitalization used sarcastically), they would probably develop it independently.

Boo Amazon.com, boo U.S. Patent Office, and boo Apple.

 

big ups, blogs, and STDs

Thanks to Don at IslandEdition.com for the kind words in the Island Web section of the latest issue (and it is a fine issue, as usual).

<sarcasm>
It’s good to see that we still control the media even with Kirby gone.</sarcasm>

The smart folk at IslandEdition.com put it nicely, comparing the spread of ‘blogs’ to a bad genital rash:

“Done well, blogs can be a refreshing, quick read. Done badly, they’re indulgent and dull.”

Blog. I hate the word. Maybe that’s what this site is, and maybe denying it is like The Moffats saying “we are not a boy-band”, but I still loath the term.

One final note: However hip/cliché it may be, the proper capitalization is silverorange. Not SilverOrange, Silverorange, or Silver Orange. We artists are picky about that.