| Friday, February 15, 2008 |
09:01 - Big Time
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Virus/malware writers might still have hardly bothered with the Mac market, to the point where there's an argument to be made that the malware risk Mac users face is zero rather than not much.
Well, perhaps that's true, but once the spammers start taking interest, it's only a matter of time:
Subject: cid Hey you Apple Fans o
Cheap Apple s0ft: iWork, iLife, .MAC etc.
http://angeldornandt.blogspot.com
No extra prices for shipping, only downloadable s0ft, right at your desktop.
http://judithbeltramixt.blogspot.com
There is more than a 40% discount!
It's all over now...
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| Thursday, February 14, 2008 |
09:16 - Oh, now what?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/ap_en_mo/tolkien_lawsuit
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Are these guys just incapable of getting on the same page with a basic contract?
LOS ANGELES - The estate of “Lord of the Rings” creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company hasn’t paid it a penny from the estimated $6 billion the films have grossed worldwide.
The suit, filed Monday, claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts to Tolkien’s estate and other plaintiffs, who contend they only received an upfront payment of $62,500 for the three movies before production began.
Via Aziz, who probably rightly sees this as an indication that we won't be seeing a Hobbit movie anytime soon, which means not with the same team and cast as LotR. If this is indeed part of a pattern with New Line, one wonders why anyone would sign with them ever again. Though the commenters at Dean's World are less dismal in outlook...
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08:55 - In a nerdy mood
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1202917823.shtml
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Kevin D. at Dean's World asks who you like better: Batman or Superman?
I lean in the direction of his conclusion—he makes a strong case—and in evidence I cite what I think is my favorite Superman story, which was actually a one-off issue of Garth Ennis' Hitman, titled "Of Thee I Sing". There's way more complexity available to a writer of such a thing than it seems at first glance. Tarantino knew this, hence his Superman monologue in Kill Bill: Part 2.
I had my introduction to "adult" comics like the Batman iterations descended from Frank Miller's in the Caltech Coffeehouse late at night over cheesesticks (eventually settling on Preacher as my yardstick series against which I compare all else); but Kevin is right: Batman does get old and tedious after a while, and all the more so the more brooding he gets. There's never anything new that can happen with his character to make it more complex or appealing. Superman, though—you always get the feeling there's something someone hasn't written down yet. And when they try, it may not ever succeed in answering more questions than it raises, but at least it usually looks very, very pretty.
Meh. Okay, enough of that.
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| Wednesday, February 13, 2008 |
21:25 - The Satirist's Tale
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/02/heere-bigynneth.html
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When things seem bleak in Merrie Mother England, fear not; all things are well when Iowahawk is in town.
Via Tim Blair.
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13:24 - †Requires belief
http://www.fdhom.co.uk/about.asp
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This is pretty hilariously awesome. Actually sounds like it might work, through the sheer power of rare brute honesty!
How does it work?
Homeopathy works through a complicated interaction with the human body and mind known as the "placebo effect". The placebo effect is still not fully understood, but is very effective for certain conditions†.
What conditions can FairDeal Homeopathy treat**?
FairDeal Homeopathy can be used to treat any self-limiting condition. Examples include non-specific aches and pains, mild headache, unlikely allergies and intolerances, implausible phobias, vague nausea, surprising bruises, UDIs and most other conditions for which your GP may find difficult to give you an instant cure.
All you have to do is "fill in our specially designed form to describe your symptoms in detail, complete your contact details and pay by Paypal, and we'll rush you a specially prepared, individually tailored remedy by first class post." Hey, I can go 'em one better: I'll just pretend to mail in the money and then drink some water from a bottle with a label on it. All that matters is that I believe, right?
I love it when snark is indistinguishable from frankness.
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| Tuesday, February 12, 2008 |
01:46 - The more you know
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I learned a number of things this past weekend, not least of which is that in suburban New York there are Mexican restaurants whose hole-in-the-wall authenticity rivals or indeed surpasses what you'll find in LA or Arizona or the Bay Area. I'm talking waiters who don't even attempt to engage the customer in English. He comes up with the order pad and a ¿Ya listo?, and you'd better be ready with a Creo que sí, or else you're in for an embarrassing session of pointing and grunting.
And then you'd better be hungry, because it's good. (When the guy came over to ask how it was, I came close to saying ¡Espectacularrrrrr! —but that might have gone over less well if he'd gotten the reference than if he didn't, so not this time.)
Also, though I knew this already, I had it demonstrated afresh to me that you can eat well in Logan Airport in Boston. The jetlagged traveler shuffling blearily out of a jetway at lunch or dinnertime may well count himself lucky to find himself there.
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Brian Tiemann
