UH OH: Colin Powell Airs Doubts on Obama Agenda. “Colin Powell, one of President Obama’s most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern Friday that the president’s ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much.”

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

All throughout the testing phase of Mozilla's Firefox 3.5, we've been tracking the often very granular, very minor speed tweaks that developers have been making to the browser -- a one percent improvement here, a two percent dip there. And some of our readers have been wondering why. With computers that are already fast enough for many consumers, will it matter much that Google Chrome completes some operations in two blinks of an eye versus Firefox's three blinks?

We posed those questions to two of Mozilla's browser engineers: Senior Director for Platform Engineering Damon Sicore, and infrastructure developer Vladimir Vukicevic. Their answers include items we can share with you directly, and demonstrate to you explicitly.

A few percentage points here and there is the complete difference between whether some of the browser's new functionality works fluidly or doesn't really work at all. One test you can see for yourself is on one of Vukicevic's test pages: a high-contrast landscape photo complete with sliders that control the photo's relative brightness and contrast. Live image manipulation isn't particularly exciting, especially for folks who see this sort of thing in Paint Shop Pro.

But slide these two sliders around for yourself in Firefox 3.5, and watch how fluidly the browser responds to your motions, producing updates as fast as 12 frames per second on Betanews' quad-core test system. Then try this same page on Firefox 3.0, or something even older.

"What's important here is how fast the actual adjustment occurs, and how many frames per second you can get while doing this," Mozilla's Sicore told Betanews. "With Firefox 2, you get 0.18 fps, which is almost unusable. Your laptop will heat up, and it doesn't really necessarily enable you to make the changes you want to the actual image. But as we use Firefox 3.5, we can get 8.1 fps, and [even more increases] by tuning the JavaScript just a little bit." Betanews tests estimate that Firefox 3.5 performs with about 251% the speed of the final stable Firefox 3.0.11, in repetitive benchmarks. Those are the tools engineers use to reveal areas of the JavaScript engine that require improvement. In this particular test, the differences are way beyond 251%. In fact, with Betanews tests of this same page using Firefox 3.0 on the same system, after playing roughly, we were able to freeze the browser completely.

"One of the things we've been trying to do is figure out, what are the kinds of actions and applications that we want to see show up on the Web, that are greatly helped by having a faster JavaScript engine?" remarked Vukicevic. "What are the things you couldn't do before that you can now, once you have a significantly improved JavaScript engine? We use [benchmarks] to judge either peak performance, or performance under very specific conditions."

"In the TraceMonkey engine itself," Sicore added, "inside of JavaScript, we've focused on key performance benchmarks that we feel will reflect how the Web is being used today by people."

Another extraordinary demonstration of what a tad more speed makes possible, is the inline video/graphics injection demonstration we unveiled last week. There, an inline video played by 3.5's new inline video rendering engine can receive live overlays from any of six other graphical sources on the page, without slowing down the movie. This is the kind of mixing that has historically been the realm of fully compiled applications. But this is JavaScript, Web code, stuff you get online.

When you're developing a compiler or a language interpreter (which isn't just the engine for Firefox but also its "chassis," if you will), there is a performance threshold below which some functions such as this are not possible. Making Web engines faster by tenths of a degree makes feasible new classes of online applications that could not happen no matter how much faster the underlying computer becomes.

As one Betanews reader named Nick asked me via e-mail earlier this week, though, does that window of opportunity have a ceiling on the opposite side? Or as Nick put it: "I think it's great that all the main browsers are working to improve performance. The consumer actually wins! The improvements over the past five years have been so dramatic. But now, are we comparing three cars and how fast they can go from 80 to 100 mph, but the speed limit is only 65? In other words, can the human eye notice anything below a half-second? Another way to put the question, does Firefox, Chrome and Safari now get a A+ in performance, IE 8 get a 8 and IE 7 gets a C and IE6 gets a D-minus? [And] if so, is A+ the best they can get?"

If the speed limit were something set by the human eye alone, then perhaps the answer to this would be, "Yes." That's if we presume that all that a Web browser will ever do is recite Web pages like the one you're reading now. But as Mozilla and its competitors understand, that's not all the Web will be. For too many years, the speed of everyday processors has been locked away from the novice or experimental developer, only to be tapped through low-level languages such as C++ and C#. In the beginning of the computing era, BASIC was the way we learned to use our machines; today, typical users are no more compelled to program their own applications than to build their own automobiles.

Making JavaScript faster changes this equation, shifting the balance more toward where it used to be when the craft of computing was conceived. The feasibility of doing things like live video mixing through high-level languages (those that use interpreters) sets new speed targets that developers at Mozilla and Google, and evidently Apple and Microsoft (and our Opera readers will chime in at this point), will endeavor to reach. This week, Mozilla has reached that bar; I have no doubt that Google, whose Chrome browser already has a faster engine, will meet this challenge in due course.

But when the next class of applications makes itself feasible on a higher level (multiplayer online 3D games, anyone?), then suddenly "A+" will become more like "C." And the competitors in that field (assuming no one's messed up the Web browser market a second time) will endeavor to meet this new target. There may be a dozen or so people who don't really care, at least not at first, because Betanews will render pretty much the same in whatever new browser that comes along. But there will be a different class of developer, one who isn't as pleased with Nissan's 350Z as with the 370Z, who will raise his own expectations and who will contribute to the act of setting the bar higher.

When we reported on Kiva.org’s decision to open up its micro-lending platform to U.S. entrepreneurs, Kiva CEO Premal Shah told us he was concerned about backlash in the community. Shah acknowledged that the decision to open lending to U.S. recipients may draw criticism because it goes against the idea on which Kiva was founded—lending to help development in third world countries where credit options are limited.

It looks like Shah’s prediction was correct. There is now a lending team on Kiva’s community platform titled “Unhappy Kiva Lenders.” The members, which total 375 lenders from around the world, are angry that Kiva is extending loans to U.S. entrepreneurs. The team’s page states that “including borrowers from the USA has undermined the very core of what made [Kiva] so unique and special; small, impactful contributions to entrepreneurs in impoverished situations in developing countries.”

The tirade on the page is harsh, calling the decision “shameful and disgraceful” and a deviation from Kiva’s core mission. The group cites an example of a recent Kiva loan request from a U.S. entrepreneur who had a college degree and a career in architecture who wanted to start a business in website design. The loan he requested was for $7000 to start the business, an amount the lenders suggest could help 7 to 10 different borrowers in other parts of the world.

Kiva’s stated mission is “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.” The anti-U.S. lenders claim that lending to U.S. entrepreneurs doesn’t alleviate poverty because Americans aren’t living in true poverty, compared to people in underdeveloped countries.

**US borrowers do not have to pay to send their kids to elementary school. **They don’t have to build their own house. **They don’t have to walk miles to get the bare minimum of medical care….if needed they can access FREE, generally high quality medical care. **They have a system of laws and courts in place that work. **They enjoy police and fire protection. **They generally have access to inexpensive and dependable public transportation. **They take for granted electricity, clean water, inspected food and indoor toilets. **

Some of that may be true. On the other hand, Shah makes a compelling case for the need for a micro-lending platform in the U.S. He says more than 10 million U.S. business owners face difficulty obtaining capital—even before the credit crisis and economic slowdown which made lending tight. And there’s no doubt that with the credit crunch creating a drought of lending, small businesses in the U.S. are finding it tough to find funds, especially if their financial history isn’t stellar. Finally, there is nothing wrong with giving U.S. lenders the opportunity to boost entrepreneurship at home, especially at a time where jobs created by small businesses can help lift the economy out of a recession.

It seems to me like the angry protests are misdirected. Kiva’s lending program has long been hailed as one of the more innovative platforms on the web and its ambitions have always been towards helping foster entrepreneurship (as well as alleviating poverty) in various areas of the world. Kiva’s decision to offer microlending to U.S. entrepreneurs reflects a genuine need for additional lending in the U.S. economy. And who knows? Kiva’s policy may attract a new crop of lenders who want to help at home first, and once they get hooked, spread capital overseas as well. The more capital that goes into the Kiva system, the more chance borrowers everywhere will have to eventually tap into it because many Kiva lenders simply recycle their loans as they are paid back.

We’ve contacted Kiva.org for a formal response.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

What would you do if Ryan Gosling hit on you? Would you A) Run straight over to your D-list boyfriend and whine about it or B) Take your clothes off and whisper “Take me, now, Ryan Gosling!”? If your answer was B, congratulations, you’re normal. If your answer was A, then you suck Lauren Conrad. According to Radar, Lauren Conrad was complaining to her boyfriend Kyle Howard that Ryan Gosling was trying to hit on her. Radar even has Lauren saying “Who does he think he is?” Uh... Lauren, honey, who do you think you are? That’s not all, though. Apparently, Kyle and his D-lister buddies got their panties in a wad and started chanting something about going to find Gosling to beat him up. Douchebags.

File this under one of the more bizarre conversations we’ve overheard:
Lauren Conrad and boyfriend Kyle Howard were whipping themselves into a frenzy Thursday night at Deluxe, where we just happened to be an earwitness.

Lauren claims that Ryan Gosling tried to hit on her and she told Kyle, “Who does he think he is? I’m with you. I would never…” At that point we couldn’t stop listening and Kyle said: “I know baby, if I was there I would have set him straight.”

But sadly, that wasn’t the end of it. Kyle then started chatting with a friend and suddenly there was testosterone in the air, and a lot of it. “Let’s go find Ryan Gosling. Let’s beat him up,” one of them said. And yes, it was funny that they kept calling him “Ryan Gosling” instead of just Ryan.

Of course we have no idea if Ryan Gosling did hit on Lauren, we only know what we heard. And there are many who would say if he did hit on her she should be flattered!

[From Radar]

“Suddenly there was testosterone in the air, and a lot of it.” Why do I think Ryan Gosling could have taken Kyle Howard and all of his little friends with very little effort? Oh, right. Because Ryan is awesome. And lovely. I can’t even imagine the audacity of someone complaining because Ryan Gosling might have hit on her. But, you know, I even doubt that. Ryan does seem to have pretty good taste in women, so it’s possible he just asked LC if she knew where the bathroom was and she was all “Oh my God, gross! I have a boyfriend, you know!” What a twit. Instead of wasting any more time on LC and Kyle, let’s just think about how lovely Ryan is...mmm...

Here’s Lauren Conrad leving Bar Delux in Hollywood last night. She looks like the type that’s easily grossed out, doesn’t she? Images thanks to BauerGriffinOnline and Images thanks to INF Photo..

PhotoShop is the premiere software when it comes to image manipulation and is renown by professionals and amateurs alike. For those who have purchased PhotoShop you can testify to the fact that the software is expensive. Some have also described PhotoShop as being the industry standard in which other image editing programs are compared.

But there is an alternative software product that is specifically designed for the frugal computer user. GIMP is free and is available for Windows. There is also a tutorial site that describes GIMP as:

Gimp has been famously known as the “poor man’s Photoshop”, and perhaps rightfully so. That’s a complement Gimp won’t mind taking. While it would be an unfair comparison to make between Gimp and Photoshop, Gimp can easily meet needs of most amateur image editors out there and then some. Since its release in 1995 Gimp has come a long way in to being the most powerful image editing tool freely available out there. With these tutorials we hope to vanish some of the doubts you might have had about Gimp’s ability as a powerful image editor.

If you would like to try GIMP I have provided a download link for the Windows version. I have  provided a link for a tutorial that will help you get started with GIMP.

Comments welcome.

50 Tutorials To Get You Started With GIMP

Download GIMP for Windows

In principle, any advance in any field of technology is welcome, but I have my doubts about this new service developed by a Japanese company called DSS. It’s basically aimed at establishing a “big brother”-like control system [JP, PDF] within factories.

After paying $21,000, factory management can simultaneously monitor the activities of up to 30 workers and then analyze and visualize the data collected (fee for a 3-day-analysis). Each worker has to wear a gyro sensor and an acceleration sensor at the ankle and a mini video camera in the shirt pocket.

DSS also installs so-called infrared milestones (pictured above) at various places in the factory halls to be able to locate the workers, record their activity and then deliver a “digital heat map” of the factory to their clients.

The company claims their system helps to significantly boost productivity and cut costs in any factory. It also says the inspiration came from a Toyota production philosophy: “1 second = 1 step = 1 yen of productivity”.

Via Tech-On

Rubinius, which you've no doubt heard lots about over the last few years, is an implementation of the Ruby language written from scratch using cutting edge technology and the best industry research. Based on the questions we've received over the past few months, it's clear that a lot of folks are looking to learn more about the technologies behind the project. This is exciting because with so much written in Ruby, Rubinius positively begs Ruby developers to experiment and explore.

For marketers, Twitter has been a dream come true. It’s an open platform growing at a phenomenal rate. This combination can allow a single tweet to be seen by thousands of potential customers. But as Twitter continues its mainstream ascent, it has been targeted by spammers and scammers, something that doesn’t help legitimate marketers or users at all.

Yet despite its spam woes, Twitter has somehow avoided an overflow of content from one of the Internet’s biggest industries: porn. Well, until recently that is. An interesting article in MediaPost describes both marketers and Twitter users noticing an increase in pr0n-related spam, and they are not liking it. The issue makes us wonder: should Twitter stamp out pornography; and how should they go about it?

The MediaPost piece essentially quotes some of Twitter’s active marketers on the issue of Twitter and porn. What they have to say, though, is not pretty at all. While you can guess how users react in the piece, Ben Smith of MerchantCircle sums up the problem best:

MerchantCircle has begun to offer a portfolio of local city-specific coupons via Twitter feeds. “As we have found with any new communication form, pornography and other types of issues creep in,” says Ben Smith, MerchantCircle CEO. “The problem with this type of activity is that it undermines the trust in the communication channel, which will have a disastrous effect on the channel.”

Has pornography taken over Twitter? No, not by a longshot. Is it a growing problem? Absolutely. Things like Twitter porn trojans make it clear that Twitter is not impervious to porn-related spam and malware.

We took a look at the Twitter Terms of Service, which governs user interactions with the Twitter platform. While it mentions that they can “remove Content and accounts containing Content that we determine … are obscene or otherwise objectionable,” it makes no specific reference to pornography.

Compare this to the terms of service of other social media companies, such as the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which specifically states the following:

6. You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

Does this mean that Twitter doesn’t care about porn? Absolutely not – Twitter has addressed pornography spam in the past and we doubt that it would let the Internet’s underground industry tarnish its strong reputation.

And yet Twitter needs to monitor the situation. Porn should not be acceptable on Twitter, especially an open platform that millions of companies and users use for business and marketing every single day. It may be a relatively small issue now, but it will grow more prevalent unless they put a stop to the problem early. It’s easy to forget just how much of the Internet is entirely porn.

First though, Twitter needs to build a search spam solution ASAP. It’s all part of the same core problem that Twitter will need to address.

Tags: porn, pornography, twitter

There's no denying that gaming publisher Midway has had a rough time in the past year. After an insane saga of strange twists, turns, accusations, and increasingly dire news, most of us weren't entirely certain that the beleaguered publisher would actually survive to see 2010. Despite our doubts, it turns out that Midway is living to see another day, having just been acquired by Time Warner for $33 million.

For those of you new to the situation: after the company's much-hyped Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe earned lukewarm reviews and reasonable (though not amazing) sales numbers, Sumner Redstone sold his controlling interest in Midway for $100,000, and the publisher wound up laying off roughly 25 percent of its workforce and killed many games that were currently in development. It was then revealed that, even though employees weren't getting paid what was owed to them and the publisher was filing for bankruptcy, executives were still raking in a great deal of cash during all this.

There's no denying that gaming publisher Midway has had a rough time in the past year. After an insane saga of strange twists, turns, accusations, and increasingly dire news, most of us weren't entirely certain that the beleaguered publisher would actually survive to see 2010. Despite our doubts, it turns out that Midway is living to see another day, having just been acquired by Time Warner for $33 million.

For those of you new to the situation: after the company's much-hyped Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe earned lukewarm reviews and reasonable (though not amazing) sales numbers, Sumner Redstone sold his controlling interest in Midway for $100,000, and the publisher wound up laying off roughly 25 percent of its workforce and killed many games that were currently in development. It was then revealed that, even though employees weren't getting paid what was owed to them and the publisher was filing for bankruptcy, executives were still raking in a great deal of cash during all this.

As the sixth instalment of the teen wizard's adventures gears up for a global rollout on 15 July, let's see who could end up the winners and, erm, winners

Holy Hogwarts! After a handful of highly publicised setbacks and real-life tragedy, the world is finally about to see its favourite gang of teen magicians charge up their wands and return to school in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As the press screenings kick off today ahead of a global public launch on 15 July, now would seem as good a time as any to take stock of what we know about this sixth serving of magical mayhem and gaze into our crystal ball.

Questions abound. By all accounts director David Yates and lead producer David Heyman have maintained a happy atmosphere on Project Potter despite the murder of cast member Rob Knox (Marcus Belby) outside a nightclub in 2008 and the studio's ultimately unsuccessful intellectual property infringement lawsuit against the Punjabi producers of Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors. But will moviegoing muggles forgive Warner Brothers for making Harry and chums vanish from last autumn's releasing schedule and postponing the release until now? And does that poorly-received Chicago test screening last spring spell trouble for Harry's box-office prospects?

They'll turn up. In droves. All but the most churlish fans will forgive the studio for delaying the release until the more profitable summer season, but you can bet there'll be a collective cry of "Expelliarmus!" if the subject matter isn't handled properly. The main gripe from the Chicago test audience was that the storyline was a bit soppy. Yates has happily confessed to this episode's strong romcom tone. Let's face it: gazillions of young fans are already going weak at the knees over those upcoming clinches between Harry and Ginny Weasley and Ron and Lavender Brown. Word is there will be other changes (SPOILER ALERT), including an attack on the Weasley household that wasn't in the book.

Hello? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was a mesmerising, monochromatic mashup between the forces of good and evil that became the second highest grossing movie in the series on $938m (£571.4m). Not bad for what's only your second feature film. Yates has talent to burn, as they say in talent-burning circles, and earned his stripes on the TV series State of Play and Sex Traffic. Considering Half-Blood Prince is arguably the best book in the series, he's got plenty of great source material to play with. Warner clearly loves the Briton and signed him to do the rest of the series – the studio wouldn't entrust the Potter franchise to just any old hack.

Oh come on, is this in any doubt? Warner moved the movie to July 2009 because it didn't have a potential blockbuster scheduled for the summer. It does now. Collectively, the previous five Harry Potter movies have sold roughly $4.5bn (£2.7bn) in tickets around the world, rising to about $7.2bn (£4.4bn) when you add in DVD sales, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. The average Harry Potter movie has sold $896m (£546m) in tickets worldwide and this one could be the biggest of the lot. At any rate this will be one of the biggest movies of 2009, if not the biggest.

Read my lips. There will be no competition. Up has come down. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will have done most of its damage by 15 July. Brüno should be entering its second weekend on a roll, but do you really think the Austrian provocateur has a chance of getting on top of Harry? Don't think so. There'll be a few counter-programming movies knocking around in the weeks after Harry Potter comes out – in other words alternative genres for those who care little for the antics of lovelorn teenage conjurors – but nothing on the Hagrid-like scale of Half-Blood Prince.

You mean something like Harry Potter and the Convenient Prequel? The studio should be so lucky. As almost the entire population on the planet knows, there are only seven books in the series. The studio pulled a fast one when it announced it was splitting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final instalment, into two parts. Something to do with doing justice to the complexity of the story, I think the execs said. Cue uproarious laughter. Oh, that was a good one. The first part will come out on 19 November 2010, and the final episode is scheduled to be in a cinema near you on 15 July 2011.

Ah yes, Gandalf. You can't blame him for feeling a fair amount of staff envy. One minute you're the main magic man and next you're tugging irritably on your pipe as Dumbledore steals your thunder to become the most beloved senior conjuror in all the known worlds. What's that you say? There can be only one? Hang on a minute, surely there's room for two great wizards? Dumbledore will be around for a few more years and Gandalf will get at least one more outing in Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Hobbit projects. There. See? Peaceful coexistence.

• Harry Potter
• Guillermo del Toro
• Daniel Radcliffe

We’ve covered our fair share of sports games here on MakeUseOf, including soccer, snowboarding, golf and racing games.

One group of games that is still missing from our passive sportive arsenal here are pro billiards and snooker games.

And that is a real shame because those sports might just be some the geekiest sports known to man. Every single shot in those games is based on an insight or ‘feeling’ for the fundamentals of geometry and physics. Ergo, not to be discluded on a site like this.

Today, we try to make it up to you. Reader, meet Cue Online. I’m sure you’ll get along really well.

Cue Online was released earlier this year by GameCampus.com, the guys behind soul mate MMORPG Asda Story, and is without any doubt, one of the best pool games out there. Since then, it has received several nominations — amongst which, one for “Best Game of the Month” by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Cue Online allows you to enjoy games of eightball, nineball and snooker, accompanied by astonishing 3D graphics — but great graphics isn’t even the trump card of Cue Online. The game is based on one of the most realistic engines on the market, the physics of which allows you to manipulate every detail of the game, even pull off pro billiards trick shots.

As would be expected, the player can control aim and power but in Cue Online, you can also adjust the angle of your shots and the exact place to hit the ball, to give it a spin or to make it jump.

Apart from how the shot is exercised, the movement of the ball gets influenced by a few other factors like the realistic cloth friction. Make the sum of all this, and you’ve got a first class realistic pool game that will satisfy even the most critical of minds.

During gameplay, the player can improve upon five different skills; power, spin, push, pull and masse. Unlike most skill-based games (mostly MMORPGs), you don’t get better only by using them often, but also by really learning how to use them well.

It is to be expected that skill would play a major role in a precision pro billiards sports game like Cue Online, but the game’s system provides various possibilities of gameplay. You’ll notice that each player is unique, with different strengths, weaknesses and a defining playing style, just like in real life.

If you’re up for a great game of eightball, nineball, or snooker, you must download this game. Let us know what you think about it, or which of the 3 games you enjoy playing. Also, let us know about the other sources of billiard games. Don’t be shy, the comments section is below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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In 1988, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody commercial deriding clumsy business models. “At First CityWide Change Bank, our business is making change,” said actor Jim Downey, portraying a naive “service representative.” After listing various ways in which his company could break a five, he explained how money is made. “The answer is simple: volume.”

More than 20 years later, I wonder if some digital entrepreneurs think the same. “Simple: we’ll make money on volume of traffic, at some future date,” they promise, even if the math doesn’t add up right now. Despite a knee-deep recession, the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever. But is “free” selling?

Free
Although not the inventor, the chief evangelist of the “free” world is author and Wired editor Chris Anderson. Last year, before the recession hit, Anderson outlined his upcoming book in a cover story titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.” A year and a half later, the final subtitle was changed to a less pretentious “The Future of a Radical Price,” “mostly because ‘why X is the future of business’ is now a cliche,” Anderson tells me.

The gist of his book: “People are making lots of money and charging nothing,” he writes (via the LA Times). In fairness, though, the idea of “Free” is a little misleading, since someone has to part with money so someone else can profit. “For most customers in the marketplace, the product is really free,” Anderson clarifies in an email. “The difference is who the paying customers are: advertisers or ‘premium’ users,” which effectively summarizes Anderson’s thesis.

The only problem? It’s difficult to cite thriving examples of either ad-sponsored or paid upgrades taking place online, at least when compared with the disproportionate amounts of money still being exchanged for offline goods and services. Google is the glaring exception, a web darling Anderson is quick to reference in his book. But even the search giant isn’t perfect — YouTube is a money pit, as part-time critic and full-time intellectual Malcom Gladwell notes in his dissenting review of “Free” for the New Yorker.

Obviously, Anderson is glamorizing a little with his endorsement of “Free.” His hardcover retails for $27. A subscription to Wired will still set you back $12 per year. And his Geek Dad blog, an admitted labor of love, is hardly capable of piquing investor interest (at least not yet), despite Anderson’s suggestion that the site is another successful example of the “Free” model.

But Anderson isn’t the only wordsmith endorsing a “Free” future. Well-read business author Seth Godin tells me, “There are 100 great companies that are using generosity as a scalable business.” He didn’t name names, but I’m sure success stories exist. Nevertheless, Godin isn’t as hasty to call “Free” the next big thing. “It is a future business model, not the future,” he emphasizes. “It’s so easy to misunderstand Anderson’s point.” Indeed.

Paid
So if “Free” is one way to skin a cat, does “paid” have an online future? For example, how about charging RSS subscribers, who enjoy instant delivery of trusted content to their “doorstep” without having to go out of their way to find it elsewhere? Anderson says no. “I doubt content companies can charge for RSS. Your content has to be incredibly unique and valuable, which may describe Bloomberg but not the average media site.”

Godin also balks at the idea, calling it shortsighted. “It’s like charging someone to go on a date. If your goal is to get married, why on Earth would you do that?”

I was unable to find working of examples of paid RSS subscriptions for this story. But there has been a cottage industry of paid newsletters since email was popularized in the ’90s. And the capitalist pig in me can’t help but think how much a 3 percent to 5 percent conversion of paid subscribers might yield. If only someone were willing to jeopardize their subscribers and try it.

Perhaps my suspicions of “Free” would have been obviated had that living, breathing economy decided not to exhale. But exhale it did, and here we are wondering what can be done to exploit the growing popularity of the Internet during times of uncertainty, amid a myriad of nascent, sometimes under-performing business models.

So until products like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube start operating on earned income instead of venture capital, the Internet might need to move to a paid system, especially if we hope to sustain intellectual property and original content produced by reporters, artists and entertainers. We might even be able to do it the old-fashioned way — you know, enticing a prospective customer into your “store” with an incredibly compelling product. Then selling it to them. Like cable TV.

Earlier this week the news that Sam Sethi is suing TechCrunch hit, and as was expected Michael Arrington posted the legal documents, just as he has done before. The responses to the law firm’s letter to TechCrunch and Arrington have also been reposted, so if you want to dig into what has been said thus far, this is the only place I know of. The TechCrunch stance is obvious, of course:

Needless to say, we think these claims have no merit, otherwise we would not have written the posts in the first place, or would have retracted.

I did an email interview with Sethi, after he got in touch with me and wanted me to correct or retract the news story (which I didn’t do, obviously). I figured an interview would be the best way to get Sethi’s side of the story.

The interview spanned a couple of days, and was made via email.

Why have you decided to sue TechCrunch?

To clear up the lies written by Mike Arrington. To seek costs for the printing of a stolen termsheet and to put the record straight.

The termsheet mentioned is a leaked document which TechCrunch published. The source is said to be an anonymous one.

What do you hope to gain from the process?

Vindication and reward for the editors of Blognation.

Would you like to comment on Arrington’s claim that you are or have been sued, and that you are or have been banned from acting as a director or manager in a company as a result of these lawsuits/complaints?

I placed a link to the disqualified directors directory on companies house here in the UK. That is enough to tell you that I am not disqualified. Equally Starr did try to sue me but this was overturned by the courts in UK.

So you are not involved in any other lawsuits at this time, nor are you in any way hindered to run a business legally?

Yes I am closing a case against Oliver Starr but nothing is preventing me from running a business legally.

The mentioned link is Companies House’s disqualified directors directory. A search for “Sethi” doesn’t return any hits, so he is definitely not in that directory right now. The Starr mentioned is Oliver Starr, who posted an open letter to Sethi back in December 2007, regarding Blognation. That’s a story in itself. When asked, Sethi didn’t want to share his side of the story at this time.

I continued to push the issue about Sethi being legally hindered to manage a company the day after. It does shed some more light on the matter.

So you are not involved in any other lawsuits at this time, nor are you in any way hindered to run a business legally?

I answered this last night. I was invovled in a previous business where my business partner stolen monies and put it in his personal bank account. I had to pay back that money in order that I was no associated with the issue and resigned from the company. My partner was however banned as a director which is what Arrington is hinting at and trying to associate with me.

Sethi didn’t want to add anything more than this, and referred to the ongoing lawsuit of course, which is understandable. I did, however, comment on the fact that he’s in the UK and is trying to sue an American company on US servers.

There is TC UK/europe and that is up to a court although right now TC are hiding behind that issue.

I’m not so sure about that, actually. Unless there is an actual TechCrunch company or person responsible in the UK, how will Sethi get to them? Then again, I’m not a lawyer so I wouldn’t know.

So there you have it, Sethi’s take on the lawsuit, why he filed it, and his response to Arrington’s post on CrunchNotes. When asked to comment, Arrington referred to his post and the law firm’s response to the lawsuit within.

Sethi’s answers in this interview does clear up a few things, but until everything surrounding Blognation is on the table, it is hard to know what really happened and who did what. One thing’s for sure though, the voices speaking up against Sethi in this endeavor are numerous, and it is in everyone’s interest that the truth will be unfolded. Except anyone not playing by the rules, of course, but let’s hope there is as little of that in this affair as possible.

Sadly, I doubt this lawsuit is the end of it, nor will it tell all.

• Sam Sethi Sues TechCrunch
• How To Get In Touch with Michael Arrington: Sue TechCrunch
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Leading figures from the dance world and beyond have paid tribute to the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died this week at the age of 68

For me, Pina's work was a trigger when I saw it in the early 80s. She opened a lot of doors for many of us. She was the first one to ask questions of her dancers and use the answers to make performances. She had little lists of questions. They could go from the absurd, like "What did you eat for Christmas?" to "How do you feel about love?" There were a thousand other questions in between. It was quite revolutionary. Many of us use that method now.

Her masterpiece is without doubt Café Müller. I was asked in 2001 to organise a dance festival, and I contacted Pina. Everyone told me that it would be impossible, that she never showed only Café Müller – and that she would never show it just for one evening. But she invited me to Wuppertal, and we talked, and she came! She came to the festival to show Café Müller in a theatre that was too small for the set to fit in.

The way she talked about her own and others' performances was very subtle and poetic. What I liked about her was that she would never talk about your work in terms of good and bad; she would always try to understand why somebody would do something.

I probably will not be the only one who was extremely in love with her. She would give you a lot of attention in a very positive way. She would share you with the people she was with. She was extremely intelligent and sensitive – and, in that way, a mirror of her own performances.

An artist of true inspiration, Pina Bausch has changed the dance and theatre landscape forever. Always provocative, her amazing body of work stands testament to her enduring vision, innovation and creativity.

When Pina Bausch first came to London in 1982, I remember swathes of audience members walking out and many critics sullenly dismissing her work as "not dance", "structureless" or "self-indulgent", and some still do. But Bausch was not a person to kowtow to audiences' or critics' demands to change her work. The rewards of that singular, uncompromising vision mean that nowadays for every person leaving one of her shows, there are 20 others waiting for their seat.

Bausch understood that dance and linear narrative weren't always the best vehicles for discussing the human condition. Even if you were a disciple of her work from the outset, like I was, her work could delight you but just as easily frustrate and annoy you. That was her magnificence. Bausch made you feel. She had the courage to relentlessly pursue, on stage, her own fascinations and obsessions about time and human relations no matter how minuscule or epic those ideas might be; and that was her genius.

It is rare to find dance- or theatre-makers with such vision and courage. Her work truly allowed people to see the world from another perspective that, had she not been around, we would never have known. Her legacy is monumental.

I first saw Pina Bausch's company in 1980, in what I now gather was an "unsuccessful" season at Sadler's Wells. In retrospect, that makes sense: as a graduate student at the Royal Ballet School, I certainly couldn't have afforded the seat I occupied at its face value. I don't remember much about the performance other than a line of black-clad women advancing towards the audience and answering, one by one, the question of a disembodied voice: "What are you afraid of?" "Death." "Is that all?" "Isn't that enough?"

I knew I had seen something huge, something groundbreaking, something which would change forever what I believe can be expressed through dance, and how. Watching Bausch's choreography is like watching life through a train window: unexpected peeks into private places, swathes of day-to-day drabness and life's flotsam and jetsam washed up at the side of the track. A living tapestry which, like life, doesn't always make sense. So some bits of Bausch wash past, leaving you unmoved, while there are moments which leave you wondering how she got the keys to your soul.

I know that Pina's company is on tour at the moment and I send them heartfelt good wishes and strength as they continue. Pina must have triggered a continuous circle of enquiry and knowledge that rebounded around the artists that gathered to work with her and make years and years of outstanding performances. The loyalty that Pina and her company exchanged produced the power to make every minute of work count. An unconnected collection of felt images from performances ping into my mind as I write; many of then are of Dominique Mercy, whom I thank. Pina and her close associates must sometimes have taken each other to the edges of where performances can be made and sustained, but by the time they reached the stage, the wealth of energy and detail came from a whole company.

With a perennial cigarette in her hand, and her indescribable smile, Pina Bausch established a turning point in contemporary dance for the last quarter of the last century ... Our friendship was intense and forever. Pina was very feminine and very sensual ... She sparked very diverse emotions in me and always inspired me.

Pina Bausch's work was the first "contemporary" choreography I felt I understood. She somehow found a way to reflect reality, or at least show in movements and metaphors, a view on real life, on real relationships. Compared to classical dance, where men and women were pushed in specific and limited archetypes, her work touched me deeply as I recognised the tensions, the issues she was handling in her pieces. It moved me to tears, every time I saw something of hers.

She inspired me to this day to do what I do as a choreographer. She made me, through her art, believe in asking questions, and dancing the answers away, forever searching for a moment of grace. I was blessed in meeting her a couple of times and was invited to dance at her festival in Germany. I will cherish those moments of seeing her think, seeing her energy, and how she tried to make everyone feel welcome and taken care of. She had so much clarity and kindness, such power and vision, so much mystery also.

It's a great loss to have her pass away, and a lot of tears have been shed since the sad news. I was struck by how extremely sad and empty I felt when I heard she left us. Death is not a new thing for me, yet I felt lost hearing of her passing away. In many ways, Pina was such a powerful inspiration, such a beacon, it's like we are all her children. Suddenly we have to wake up and realise we have to become grownups and handle reality on our own, it's a difficult shift to make for everyone staying behind.

My heart goes out to her family and to all her dancers and company members, to everyone in Wuppertal. I wish them a lot of courage in these difficult times. Pina leaves us with an incredible oeuvre, limitless inspiration and a vision of dance as a reflection of human lives, of human feelings, of human struggle. She will dance on forever in all our hearts, in our memories, in our bodies, in our movements. Let's all keep (or start!) dancing to honour her. I feel she would have liked that ... to see us all unite in dance.

When I started choreographing, Pina Bausch was already an icon. She was like a huge mountain we all admired but also wanted to run away from. We were slightly scared that we'd be so influenced by her we wouldn't find our own voice. In her work, there was an incredible theatricality of the body. You came out of the theatre gasping for breath. The Pina Bausch experience was like someone turning on a cold shower. It was an incredible assault on the senses. She's a nice contrast to someone like Merce Cunningham. Cunningham is incredibly cool; it's like looking at something from a very long distance but it still engages you. With Pina Bausch, it's like looking at something at completely close quarters; you don't get the freedom to have an emotional perspective. It's thrown at you with such vigour and drama and energy.

My last beautiful encounter with Pina was a night in an Antwerp restaurant a year ago. They closed the restaurant especially for us in order that we could smoke. Pina was a great lady, a great artist, and a fantastic smoker! I imagine that she died with a cigarette in her mouth: you have to stay loyal to the things that kill you.

I saw Nelken in Venice in 1983. Half the audience had walked out in disgust by the end, but I was mesmerised. For years I had a poster of the girl with the accordion wandering through that endless field of carnations on my bedroom wall. The trouble with Pina is that her stuff is so distinctive you've got a real problem passing it off as your own without getting nabbed. Fortunately I did a youth theatre show in Ashford in 1990 where I offloaded most of it but she still haunts me after all these years.

I was sorry to hear the news of the death of a great artist, the pioneer of the dance-theatre genre. My first introduction to dance was her piece 1980, which I saw as a young teenager. A year later I had the privilege of helping to set the stage for Nelken and of observing the dress rehearsal – an experience that had a great influence on my development as an artist and my creative life today. Her work had the kind of impact that stays for a long time after you've seen it, and I'm sure this impact will stay for generations to come.

I first met Pina a few years ago, when Viktor was being performed at Sadler's Wells. I'd always assumed that she would be a larger-than-life character because of those incredible images that she created, but the reverse was true. With her shyness, modesty and wraith-like physique, she seemed like somebody from an Edvard Munch painting.

There was a lot of humour in her work. People think of her as this dark German expressionist but there was lots of wit as well as tragedy, she used the whole emotional register. Her works weren't about people having the perfect body. There were dancers of all ages – you might have 30 old age pensioners pirouetting on the stage, alongside sheep and dancers with impossibly long limbs. There's a hypnotic refrain that seems to consistently resurface, like a slowed-down, Hawaiian hula. What is great about experiencing her work is the generosity and the space it allows you for your own thoughts.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to do a project in Wuppertal. There's a suspended monorail in the city that passes right by the windows of Pina's studio. I covered the windows of the trains with transparent gels, each carriage a different colour. I hoped that she might look out from her studio at night and see those mood trains go by.

It has been a great privilege to have been able to first present the work and then become a friend of Pina Bausch over the last eight years. Pina was first and last an artist who lived and breathed her work with the Tanztheater Wuppertal. She rarely took holidays but rather spent time travelling everywhere with her company, creating a new work every year and, most importantly and remarkably, keeping all of the works she ever made available in the repertoire. She had incredible stamina and there were regular, very late-night dinners after performances in Wuppertal and all around the world with a customary clinking of red wine glasses to start proceedings. Little did I know that the toast after her most recent premiere would be the last one I would have with her. Pina inspired absolute devotion from her company and collaborators, they all loved her deeply and so did I.

I was shocked and very saddened to hear of the death of Pina Bausch. She was a genius and a giant in the field of modern dance theatre and I wish I'd had the chance to know her and to perform in a piece of her work. It was always so exciting and inspiring to spend an evening watching her company performing. Her death leaves dance devastated.

Pina was well known for not talking about her work to journalists. She very rarely talked about her work to anyone at all. Whenever I went to Wuppertal, everything under the sun would be discussed around the dinner table but not the work. It wasn't that she didn't want to; she didn't know how to talk about it. She was not an intellectual. She was motivated only by emotional truth and was not frightened to put difficult and paradoxical feelings on stage, almost as a way of evacuating aspects of humanity that she was fearful of. She made so many works, but they're all one piece really. And it's all about staging the full complexity of human emotion and impulse, however tough to look at. She celebrated humanity in all of its guises. Increasingly, she perhaps celebrated happiness more than pain. She always fused humour with horror, offsetting anxiety with compassion.

Ten days ago, I saw what has turned out to be her last piece. She would always show a new work without naming it; the title would come later. So this piece remains "ein stück von Pina Bausch". It felt particularly complete and had a real integration of the more experienced members of the company and some younger dancers, making their debut.

Pina's vision was second to none. I'd put her up there with Beckett and Bacon as one of the towering figures of the 20th century. All of the work is in repertoire and she kept it fresh so there can be a future for it. The company gave a performance in Poland the night that she died and they will perform over the weekend in Spoleto. The determination to keep her spirit alive through the work is fierce. The company were all asked if they wanted to perform on Tuesday, and they unanimously wanted to – and needed to.

• Pina Bausch
• Dance
• Theatre
• Art

Last week we lost Michael Jackson, a true legend and without any doubt, an inspiration to a whole generation. I grew up listening to his songs and of course, was amazed by his movie clips and dance moves. The moonwalk was something I always wanted to learn how to do and even today, it still impresses me. Also the light effects were always part of the Michael Jackson’s repertoire and of course, have influenced a lot in my style.

Welcome to the two-hundred and fourteenth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous two hundred and thirteen.

Comic Book Legends Revealed is now part of the larger Legends Revealed series, where I look into legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can check out here, at legendsrevealed.com. I’d especially recommend last week’s Movie Legends, for a piece about Waldo (of Where’s Waldo fame) popping up in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto!

I presume Shelly did not like last week, and I don’t think she will be too pleased about this week, either!

Let’s begin!

COMIC LEGEND: John Severin was tricked into drawing the Rawhide Kid MAX mini-series not knowing what the content was.

STATUS: False

As you might recall, last week we discussed the Rawhide Kid mini-series that Marvel put out under its MAX imprint (their “mature readers only” line of comics). That’s the series that took a different look at the classic Marvel western hero and made him out to be a fairly flamboyant gay man (while maintaining his fighting skills).

The series was written by Ron Zimmerman and was drawn by John Severin, who was in his 80s when the mini-series came out. Severin had drawn Rawhide Kid stories when the character was NEW (before Marvel Comics was even known as Marvel Comics! It was still Atlas Comics when Severin started working there on the Western heroes). So it was a real coup to have one of the character’s early artists draw this new, fairly controversial mini-series.

In any event, writer Chuck Dixon made some comments at the time about the comic book. He said:

But am I to understand that John Powers Severin is drawing this wretched piece of exploitational trash? John objected to (but finally drew) a western story I wrote in which an unmarried couple were shown together in bed. (this was for the more adult-oriented ‘Savage Tales’ magazine.) Could he have willingly participated in this? I doubt it very strongly. I’ll bet he was handed a plot with no idea that the subject of the Rawhide Kid’s ’secret’ would be revealed in the dialogue.

Reader Gorpulon wanted to know if this was true (Gorpulon knew that Marvel denied it, but he was wondering Severin ever did).

First off, yeah, Marvel did, in fact, deny it, pretty emphatically, really.

Here’s Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada on the topic:

Every once in a while something so ridiculous comes out of a mouth of one of my fellow comicbook constituents that I just have to chime in and clear up some things. Now I realize that by me bringing this up more people will now have heard this comment than the few that actually did, but heck that’s okay.

[Quesada then repeats the above quote - BC]

Now let’s read this carefully because it’s troubling on many levels. First, let me say that I like Chuck, heck I hired him to work at Marvel Knights. I guess that’s why I’m so troubled by what he’s implying here. Must be that mix of sun and sigils.

1- That Senior Editor Axel Alonso is so unscrupulous, so underhanded that he would actually try to fool the great John Severin into doing this book. That he would lie to his talent about something so important to core of the story.

2- That as Editor in Chief, I would condone such behavior of any of my editors. That I would let my editor lie to a talent about what he or she was working on and not fire that editor on the spot.

3- That John Severin isn’t smart enough to know what he’s drawing or that he’s incredibly gullible.

Which is it? Quite frankly all of the insinuations here are pretty crappy and owing of an apology. Not to me, because at this point after hearing a rant like the one above, I could give a horse’s butt what Chuck thinks of me, but to Axel and John.

Just for the record, John was approached and told the idea for Rawhide before there was even a writer fully attached to the project. He has known from the very beginning and loved the idea from day one. According to Axel, he’s also loving all of the media attention the book is getting as well.

He also worked from full script.

Let’s take a look at some pages from Rawhide Kid #2…

Those pages sure look like Severin is in on the joke, no?

Luckily for us, in Comic Book Marketplace #98, Severin DID talk about the series…

Severin: It’s kind of weird. (laughs) I guess, yeah, I think the information is already out there. The Rawhide Kid is rather effeminate in this story. It may be quite a blow to some of the old fans of Rawhide Kid. But it’s a lot of fun and he’s still a tough hombre.

That interview was given before (or right around) the release of the first issue of the series, so it sure does not seem like Severin was unaware or what was going on, right?

I think Dixon’s point was mostly rhetorical, anyways – sort of a “He couldn’t know what was going on, because how could he have known and still done it?” type of thing.

Thanks to Gorpulon for the question, and thanks to Comic Book Marketplace (and John Severin) for the spot-on quote, and thanks to Rich Johnston for the other quotes!

COMIC LEGEND: EC Comics was told to change a black character to a white character or else violate the Comics Code.

STATUS: True

By the end of the 1955, Bill Gaines’ comic book company, EC Comics, was in pretty rough shape as a result of the 1954 creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Gaines firmly believed that the Code was designed, at least in part, to put his company out of business, as the Code had rules against titles with the words “horror” and “terror” in them, and rules about how large the word “crime” could be in a comic book title.

So within a year, sales of EC Comics had slumped dramatically.

The last traditional comic book produced by EC Comics was 1955’s Incredible Science Fiction (a series that had just begun a few months earlier, taking over from Weird-Science Fantasy) #33.

The last story in the issue, “Eye for an Eye,” had to pulled at the last minute due to objections by the Comics Code Authority.

So Gaines and editor Al Feldstein substituted a story that Feldstein had written (drawn by Joe Orlando) that had appeared in Weird Fantasy #18 in 1953.

The story, “Judgement Day,” was about an astronaut sent by the Earth to examine a planet to see if it was up to snuff and worthy of joining Earth’s “Galactic Republic.”

Well, the planet of robots was found wanting, due to its treatment of different colored robots.

Then, of course, the big “twist”…

When the issue first came out in 1953, it was heavily lauded, including the following missive from a certain Mr. Bradbury…

However, when Gaines and Feldstein went to put it in place of the pulled story, they were told no, the story violated the Comics Code.

Judge Charles Murphy (administrator of the Code) said that they would have to change the astronaut from black to white if they wanted it to be included.

After being told that, clearly, the color of the astronaut’s skin was practically the whole point of the story, Murphy backed down, but said that they would at least have to get rid of the perspiration on his skin.

Feldstein and Gaines both refused, and Gaines threatened a lawsuit and/or a press conference to shine a light on why exactly the story was objected to.

The story ran as is.

However, it was, as I mentioned, the last traditional comic book published by EC Comics.

It’s a damn fine comic book story, at that, so if you’re going to close out your comic book company with a story, that’s as good as any (EC, of course, kept going, just not as a traditional comic book company).

Thanks to Digby Diehl’s excllent book on EC Comics, Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives for the information! Also thanks to cyberghostface for helping save me scanning time!

COMIC LEGEND: The address of Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum is of a building Roy Thomas lived in during the 1960s.

STATUS: True

Reader Stergios asked about a story he heard that:

[T]he mansion where Dr. Strange lives, his Sanctum Sanctorum is located at 177A Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, New York, which in this universe was the actual address of the apartment building in which the series writer at that time actually lived.

And I have heard in other places that this address doesn’t really exist and is completely made up.

Where does this address come from? Was it Stan Lee’s at the time? Or was it some other writer?

First off, the history of Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum is pretty interesting.

It appears in the very first appearance of Doctor Strange in Strange Tales #110, including the funky window designs…

And the building as a whole appeared in Strange Tales #117…

But, similarly to Namor’s home of Atlantis (as I mentioned in this previous installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed), it was never actually called anything for years.

It was just “Doctor Strange’s Greenwich Village retreat/home”…

It was not until Strange Tales #132 that it was even referred to as a sanctum at ALL, let alone a Sanctum Sanctorum….

It was not until Roy Thomas was in charge of Doctor Strange that the place got its name and address, 177A Bleecker Street.

And yes, Stergios…

A. 177 Bleecker Street DOES exist (here it is)…

and

B. Roy Thomas lived there for a time (I believe he was rooming with Gary Friedrich, but it may have been someone else).

What I would like to know from you readers out there is what issue did the Sanctum Sanctorum officially get its name? And what was the first issue to feature the address? I believe it was courtesy of a telegram delivered to Strange, but I can’t recall of an issue outside of Doctor Strange #183 where he received a telegram (and that issue doesn’t have the address on the telegram). Help me out, folks! I’d also like to know exactly which comic book pro Thomas shared the apartment with, as well! Thanks!

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comic Book Database for this week’s covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com.

As you likely know by now, at the end of April, my book finally came out!

Here is the cover by artist Mickey Duzyj. I think he did a very nice job (click to enlarge)…

If you’d like to order it, you can use the following code if you’d like to send me a bit of a referral fee…

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you next week!

• At July 3, 2009, Comic Book Legends Revealed #214 wrote:

  [...] here to read [...]

• At July 3, 2009, Chris Bloom wrote:

  I'm not homosexual, but that dialogue from RAWHIDE KID makes me embarrassed on their behalf. If that's the best ...

• At July 3, 2009, Manglr wrote:

  I'll point out that the "Judgement Day" issue was also covered pretty fully in the wonderful "Ten Cent Plague". ...

TONY Sensei and CARNELIAN Sensei are two famous Japanese Mangaka (pretty famous magaka artist in Japan) who decided with Etsu Japan decided to offer 2 unique keyboards painted with one of their character. Where or not you are in this kind of design... you have to admit that the result is really gorgeous.

This said, there are 2 drawback to these stunning keyboards, first they are only available in Japan with a QWERTY JP Keyboard, the 2nd is the quite expensive Price they are asking for basically a pretty cheap keyboard... 10 000 Yen each (75€)... But there are no doubts that if you are a fan, these keyboard may definitively worth some sacrifices.
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Reader Comments

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James White

Man, I love the new blog format! Although I guess only Brad and I are MAN enough to use the tags. Come on, my fellow bloggers, tag it up!

Agents of Atlas #7 (”Secrets of the Deep Part Two” and “Mr. Lao is Sleeping”) by Jeff Parker (writer), Gabriel Hardman (artist, “Secrets”), Jana Schirmer (colorist, “Secrets”), Nate Piekos (letterer, “Secrets”), Carlo Pagulayan (penciler, “Mr. Lao”), Jason Paz (inker, “Mr. Lao”), Elizabeth Dismang (colorist, “Mr. Lao”), and Tom Orzechowski (letterer, “Mr. Lao”). $2.99, 23 pgs, FC, Marvel.

So, in the second story contained in this issue, a dragon fights a genie. A DRAGON FIGHTS A GENIE!!!! Do I really need to go into more detail?

Oh, I guess I do. Well, the Namor/Namora romance is dealt with so that no one can point at Marvel and say, “Hey, they support incest!”1 It was kind of a haphazard kind of mess, that first story, as the principals kind of wander around by a giant sea anenome that looks like a flower but is far deadlier than everyone (well, almost everyone) suspects until Bob figures it all out and everyone goes home. It’s definitely not bad, but it feels kind of like Parker thought it would be cool to show Namor mackin’ on Namora but wasn’t sure how to extricate himself from that untenable situation. (I doubt if that’s the case, as I’m sure Parker plotted the whole thing out long before issue #6 saw print, but it just feels like he wasn’t sure how to get out of it.) It’s notable for the subplot with Derek Khanata that continues to bubble as well as Hardman’s fantastic art, as he really does a wonderful job with the underwater scenes. I’ll get back to the coloring, which has been a bugbear2 of mine since the title began.

The second story is the secret history of Mr. Lao, Jimmy Woo’s dragon friend, as “told” to Temugin through a psychic link. And yes, he fights a genie … and loses. So sad, Mr. Lao! It’s a fun story that apparently leads into more secret history, and it’s gorgeously illustrated by Pagulayan and Paz, which might sound odd given that I’ve been critical of that team since the title began. But you’ll notice who’s coloring the stories. Hardman’s art is colored by Jana Schirmer, while Pagulayan’s is colored by Elizabeth Dismang (who was recently featured right here on the blog, where you can see some of the pages from this issue). I don’t mean to pick on Schirmer, but I just haven’t liked her work on this book, as she seems to soften Pagulayan’s lines far too much and, although Hardman’s work resists that a bit, his work is a bit softer than it has been when Dismang (or should we call her Breitweiser?) colors it. Pagulayan’s lines are much stronger in his section, and I have to assume that’s due to Dismang’s influence. This title has been fascinating when it comes to the influence that colorists can have on the art. I mean, I’ve known for years how much influence inkers and colorists have on the pencils, but this series is a fine example of that. I don’t doubt that Schirmer is quite good (check out her DeviantArt site if you don’t believe me), but I don’t like the style she employs with the artists on this series.

Anyway, A DRAGON FIGHTS A GENIE!!!!!! And the recap page is quite awesome, as many of Marvel’s are. I’d rather read the recap page than see yet another alien get shot through the head. You know which book I’m talking about!

Finally, Mark Paniccia edits both this and The Incredible Hercules. In a comics universe where it seems editors do, well, dick, Paniccia is editing two of Marvel’s best books right now and throwing in footnotes when he gets the chance. I don’t think it’s coincidence. I’d just like to give a shout-out to Paniccia, because I rag on editors quite a bit.

1 I don’t know what the big deal with incest is. Okay, I do know what the big deal with incest is, but it’s not like royalty for centuries haven’t married cousins and whatnot. I mean, how closely related are Namor and Namora, anyway? It’s not like they’re fraternal twins or anything. Sheesh.
2 “Bugbear” is a weird word. I don’t know if I’ve ever used it before, either in speech or writing. Look at you, good readers – in on the ground floor of me using a word!

Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three #3 (of 4) (”Into the Abyss Part Three of Four: Deep Cover”) by Kurt Busiek (writer), Brent E. Anderson (artist), John Roshell (letterer), and Alex Sinclair (colorist). $3.99, 24 pgs, FC, DC/Wildstorm.

I’m sure this has been pointed out before, possibly even by me, but one of the nice things about Astro City is how Busiek writes superpower encounters. He not only writes them from a bystander’s point of view, which helps the reader get into it even more than usual, but because he is writing from this viewpoint, his superpowered fights are often disjointed, as we never see it all because the bystander is always ducking for cover and whatnot. In this issue, we actually get a bit more than we’re used to getting, but it’s interesting that the climactic moment, when Charles and Royal confront their parents’ killer, is interrupted by superpowered beings, and Busiek does a nice job implying that this sort of thing is just a fact of life in Astro City – as he has often done in the past. Just because he’s done it before doesn’t mean it’s not effective, and it’s always interesting to see how Busiek comes up with all these characters with fascinating powers and basically uses them as a backdrop.

And we get some more interesting facts about the Silver Agent, which is kind of neat. Busiek is always cognizant of the world he’s created, and I wonder how many charts and graphs and timelines and genealogies he has lying around to keep track of all this stuff (or maybe he’s just a super-genius). As good as this book is in single issues, the pleasure lies in the entire epic, and it’s always keen to re-read these (even though I don’t always have the time). Yes, the saga of Charles and Royal is interesting, but it’s interesting on more than one level – we have the human drama, but it also fills in a bunch of gaps in the history of this universe, and it’s fun to read that part of it. And the Incarnate is pretty keen, even if I’m not sure how scary someone named Egron the Sifter could have been. Look out – he has a sieve!

Atomika: God is Red #9 (of 12) (”Test”) by Andrew Dabb (writer), Sal Abbinanti (artist), Simone Peruzzi (colorist), and Dave Sharpe (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Mercury Comics.

I really can’t stress how uniquely wonderful this book is, because it’s hard to do that in a world where so many different and cool comics exist. When issue #8 came out two weeks ago, The Dude wrote that it reminds him of Miracleman, and that’s not as crazy as comparison as you might think. It’s epic storytelling, the kind we get occasionally on something like Thor, except that Dabb and Abbinanti have, yes, gone to 11 on this book, and they’ve never turned it down yet. Even the “quiet” moments, such as early in this issue, when Atomika is reunited with his son Chernobyl, is impressive because of Abbinanti’s art, which remains a blend of fantasy and Soviet-style propaganda that hits you right between the eyes. Yes, his thighs are gigantic, but these are gods we’re talking about, people! They ought to have gigantic thighs, oughtn’t they?

Of course, Dabb and Abbinanti continue to throw all sorts of insane concepts into the book, such as Chernobyl testing himself by opening the gates of hell and fighting all the demons contained within. The battle is visualized brilliantly enough, but Dabb keeps up with the purplest of prose, which still fits the bombast perfectly, and when Chernobyl does what he does to defeat the demons, Atomika’s narration is pretentious in the best way possible, in that describing what Chernobyl does almost goes beyond words, and Atomika is just trying to keep up. Dabb does a fine job in the smaller moments, too, giving us a glimpse into Atomika’s mind when he first sees his son after long decades apart and setting up the final act of this story on the final few pages. The machinations behind the scene are good enough, but it’s Atomika’s “humanity” – for lack of a better word, as he’s a god – that helps ground the insanity and make this such a great book. In a comic book landscape littered with tinpot dictators who don’t really earn their exaggerated speech, Atomika does, and it’s fun to follow him through the years.

Come on – put down that book with whiny Hal and worshipful Oliver going off to make out (let’s hope) and give this a chance! You know you want to!

Batman and Robin #2 (”Batman Reborn Part Two: The Circus of Strange”) by Grant “It’s nothing like ‘Prodigal’! Shut up!” Morrison (writer), Frank Quitely (artist), Alex Sinclair (colorist), and Patrick Brosseau (letterer). $2.99, 21 pgs, FC, DC.

You know what’s funny about Dick Grayson desperately trying to get Damian to listen to him? In a weird way, it’s the same as Morrison and the other Bat-writers trying desperately to get the readers to listen to them: “Damian’s really cool, you’ll see! Dick can be Batman, you’ll see! Hey, where are you going? Put that copy of Reborn down! Come on, what kind of lame explanation is that? We’re DC, man! Didn’t you love Dark Knight?” It’s quite humorous. Or maybe I just see it that way.

Anyway, as much as the current regime would like us to forget it, I just can’t get “Prodigal” out of my mind. I guess that was never meant to be permanent while this change surely is (wink, wink), but Dick’s woe-is-me attitude in this book doesn’t ring true because he’s already replaced Batman once. Gordon and the cops sussing out that something is wrong doesn’t ring true either, because Gordon already knows that others have taken up the Batman role, and he wasn’t too jazzed the first time it happened. Morrison’s writing isn’t bad when Dick is speaking to Alfred about how sucky it is that Gordon just won’t respect him (wah!), but it’s just odd because Dick knows what replacing Bruce is like, and he should have gotten this out of his system long ago. It points out the fatal flaw with both “Prodigal” and “Batman: Reborn” – there’s no reason why Batman is necessary. Nightwing can patrol the streets of Gotham as easily as Batman can, and while he might not have the same relationship with the cops or the same effect on punks, leading to a spike in crime initially, once he beats the snot out of some of them, he’ll be established and everything can return to normal. Pretending to be Batman just makes people question you, as Gordon and the cops do, and as Damian does. Damian respected the man inside the suit, not the suit itself. Why should he respect Dick?

Anyway, the Circus of Strange part is still the best part of the book, and Quitely does a marvelous job with the fight in the police station. But, at the risk of opening myself up to ridicule from those smarter than I am who claim that if you don’t understand every single thing in a Morrison/Quitely production you’re basically a moron, what’s going on in the last panel of the book? In the penultimate panel, Damian is getting overwhelmed by the freaky red-haired things, and the pig dude walks around the corner of the carousel (yes, I know a carousel is a circle, but he’s coming around the corner of it anyway!) and watches as Damian gets overwhelmed. In the next panel, he continues with his eeeeevil monologue, implying that the final panel is happening simultaneously and, somewhat, in the same place. But I don’t think it is taking place at the abandoned circus. It seems clear that this is Pig’s “big plan” – have those red-haired dolls detonate bombs all over the place, and it appears that’s what’s happening here, as we see (I think) innocent bystanders caught in the blast of one of them. Is that what’s happening? If so, boo. Have we heard anything about his big plan? Did I miss it in B & R #1, because there’s nothing in this issue that points to this conclusion. I know that G-Mozz is all about making us do some leg work, but wouldn’t a panel or two of the red-haired things assembling throughout the city been a nice bone to throw to us stupid readers? When you have red-haired things overwhelming Damian in one panel and in the very next one we see more red-haired things, we instantly connect that they are in the same place unless we have something to indicate they’re not. That’s not being stupid, that’s the nature of reading a sequential narrative. If Morrison wants to get all Mark Danielewski or Milorad Pavic or James Joyce on us, he should get better at it.

Anyway, this is better than “Prodigal,” I suppose. Boy, is that damning with faint praise. Oh, I’m just joking – I like it quite a bit. It’s just that, as usual, I hold people like the God of All Comics to a higher standard than I do almost everyone else, so he tends to bug me more. It’s still a gorgeous book, and overall, it features the kind of weird villains I like seeing “Batman” fighting.

And does Lucius know Batman’s secret identity or not?

Chew #2 (”Taster’s Choice Part 2 of 5″) by John Layman (writer/letterer) and Rob Guillory (artist/colorist). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Image.

Layman is still feeling this series out, so we get a few superfluous pages of Tony Chu arguing with his stereotypically assholish boss, but otherwise, he’s just putting Tony through his paces on this first case. He introduces a love interest who probably isn’t what she seems, gives us more about the main case and its connection to the chicken ban, and a bit more background about Mason Savoy, Tony himself, and the mysterious villain behind everything. It’s certainly still a fun comic to read (well, “fun” being relative, as Tony does eat a human finger), but that’s not why it’s worth a look. It’s worth a look for Guillory’s art.

Yes, it’s cartoonish, but so what? Guillory manages to mitigate the confrontation between Tony and his assholish boss with body language and facial expressions, showing just how assholish the boss is without Layman having to do anything, really. When Tony snaps and throws a punch at said boss, Guillory does a wonderful job showing how fast a big dude like Mason Savoy can move. The love interest (who appears to be some kind of food critic, but we don’t actually meet her, so I guess we’ll find out) gets a wonderful reaction shot to a hamburger into which she bites, while Daniel, the fast food worker who found a finger on a burger, goes from snotty to desperate beautifully (why he goes through this range of emotions is a highlight of the book). Then, when Savoy gets in a fight against Yakuza, Guillory really takes off, as the battle is choreographed as wonderfully as Quitely’s is in Batman and Robin (their styles are completely different, of course, and Quitely takes more chances with his panel layouts, but in terms of choreography, they’re similar). I still don’t know how Layman will be able to keep this series going, but I hope he grows into the writing more, because his artistic partner is firing on all cylinders. It’s not a badly-written book, but it gets a big boost from the art. And that, plus the strangeness of the concept, is good enough for right now. We’ll see after the first story arc if it is.

Elephantmen #20 (”Star Bright”) by Richard Starkings (writer) and Marian Churchland (artist). $3.50, 23 pgs, FC, Image.

As always, this review is a bit late because I was waiting to receive it in the mail. Mad props to Richard Starkings for sending it out to me. (Can a 38-year-old white man get away with using “mad props”? Such are the sociological conundra I pose here at the blog, folk!) It came out two weeks ago, but you might have missed it!

It’s fascinating to consider how long Starkings has been working on this concept, as you look at the cover and realize it’s signed “Ladrönn 2000.” Starkings has just been sitting on the drawing, waiting to use it as a cover! Luckily, this issue focuses on Vanity and her relationship with Hip. Funny how that works out, doesn’t it?

This is yet another quiet issue, as Vanity and Hip head out to the sticks to visit the only friend of a man killed back in issue #9. Hip tells Vanity it’s agency policy to offer condolences in the cases of deaths in the line of duty, so that’s why he’s hanging out in a diner in the middle of nowhere. (As an aside: you rarely see the singular version of “condolences.” I wonder why not?) He brought Vanity along to ease her into field work. That’s the set-up, but in Starkings’s hands, it becomes much more. When he brings up why they’re there, he mentions it’s also part of his rehabilitation. Vanity is curious about that, and we’re reminded that Hip, as well as his elephantmen brethren, were killers back in the day, but before he can bring that up to Vanity, she’s off on another topic, reminding us how flighty she can be. There’s the usual prejudice against elephantmen, Vanity kicks some ass, and overall, it’s a fine issue that once again examines the world of the 23rd century and how it’s both very different and very similar to ours. It’s also an insightful look into Vanity’s relationship with Hip and how “normal” it is despite the obvious obstacles. Starkings has gotten better at writing this kind of issue, where things unsaid are as important as things said, and it continues to give the book more depth than it did when it started. Early on, the science fiction was more front and center, but as it’s gone along, Starkings has gotten better at the social commentary, which has become a bit more subtle.

As with the last two issues, Churchland is a good choice for this kind of story. I’m not sure if she could do as good a job with the “hard” sci-fi parts of the book, but with these stories that have focused more on the “human” parts of the book, she’s done a very good job. Starkings has taken the story out of the brooding city and into the country, and Churchland’s soft watercolor look suits that very well. Her Vanity, interestingly, is a bit more innocent than Moritat’s or Ladrönn’s, which is interesting for this issue, as she shows herself to be a bit more vulnerable than we’ve seen her before (granted, she still kicks some dude’s ass, but other than that). It’s a nice contrast to the other artists who have worked on the book.

This book is definitely worth the time I have to wait for it. Of course, the free-ness of it factors in, too, but as I’ve said before, I’d be buying this even if Starkings cuts me off tomorrow! But I hope he won’t.

Greek Street #1 (”Blood Calls for Blood Part One: The Monster of Greek Street”) by Peter Milligan (writer), Davide Gianfelice (artist), Patricia Mulvihill (colorist), and Clem Robins (letterer). $1.00, 32 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

Vertigo continues the category of “Why on earth wouldn’t you buy this,” as we get the first issue of Greek Street, which has 32 pages of story for one thin dollar, 100 meager pennies! And hey! naked chicks on the first page! Gold!

The conceit of this book, in case you didn’t know, is that Greek characters from myths are still (or again?) living in London and doing the same old nasty stuff to each other. It’s an idea with a lot of potential, and Milligan is twisted enough to pull it off. The main character, Eddie, gets involved in a gang feud and, if you know anything about Oedipus … well, he fulfills some of that prophecy, too (ewwwww). Then there’s a murder that a police officer named Dedalus is looking into, the aforementioned gang feud, and something odd going on in a house somewhere. Frankly, this issue is kind of a mess, as Milligan simply chucks what appears to be every plot thread into this and just hopes we can keep up. It revolves around Eddie, of course, but it’s still a mess.

But guess what? Gianfelice, whose art isn’t as rough as it was on the first arc of Northlanders, draws it all nicely, even almost giving us male genitalia (but doesn’t, as even though this is a Vertigo book, we still can’t have that, can we? we might all go gay, right?). It’s a horribly creepy book, and Gianfelice does a great job with it, especially the ending, which made me and ought to make you cringe. And despite the mess, it’s really compelling. Milligan does a fine job creating a bunch of characters and giving them interesting personalities. There’s a ton in this book, and unlike the most recent Vertigo #1, The Unwritten, it doesn’t have a straightforward plot – Milligan just throws us in and commands us to swim! And why wouldn’t I? And why wouldn’t you pick up issue #1? Maybe it’s just wacky enough to lure you in!

Mr. Stuffins #3 (of 3) by Andrew Cosby (writer), Johanna Stokes (writer), Axel Medellin Machain (artist), Andres Lozano (colorist), Daniela Fiore (colorist), and Johnny Lowe (letterer). $3.99, 22 pgs, FC, Boom! Studios.

This series ends as predictably as you might expect, but Cosby and Stokes still have a lot of fun with it, from Mr. Stuffins acting like Rambo to Zack acting like, well, Rambo. Like a lot of Boom! books, it seems like it might have benefitted from (possibly) one more issue, but perhaps that would have been taking the conceit a bit too far. I guess it’s fine as a three-issue series. The problem is that this comic is about the father as much as anything else, and David doesn’t get as much screen time as he should. Unlike Mr. Stuffins, he’s not terribly heroic, but he does what he has to because his family’s in jeopardy. As fun as it is to watch a teddy bear kick ass, the real core of the book is a man desperately fighting forces against which he shouldn’t have a chance, but doing it anyway. It makes for a nice comic, but it had a bit more potential than that, and I wish it had been realized.

Of course, as with every Boom! book, there’s the price that often keeps people away. I guess they do fine (they’ve been around for a while, after all), but it’s frustrating. I’d certainly rather read this for four dollars than a comic where the latest iteration of the Avengers goes around shooting people in the head just for fun, but that $3.99 on the cover is still daunting, I admit. I wish Boom! could figure out a way to bring down the price of the trade, at least. Oh well. That makes these difficult to recommend, because while I’d say for $2.99 this is a fine comic, I’m not sure it’s worth the extra three dollars. I’m aware that I harp on prices far too much around here, but it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m writing about these comics (not so much when I buy them, as I just dip into the kids’ college funds – they won’t mind, as by the time they’re college age, we’ll be eating random strangers and living in caves anyway). So it’s something to think about. Sorry if it bores you.

Secret Six #11 (”Depths Part Two: Amazons Unleashed”) by Gail Simone (writer), Nicola Scott (penciller), Doug Hazelwood (inker), Mark McKenna (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), and Travis Lanham (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC.

There’s so much to love about this comic that I’m not sure where to begin. I mean, in the opening scene, that chick enforcer of Mr. Smyth is just wandering around with heads(...)

During a July 1 O'Reilly Factor discussion about whether "the liberal media" are helping President Obama "advance his energy agenda by spreading global warming propaganda," guest host Juan Williams advanced falsehoods about global warming. Williams did not challenge Fox News contributor Bernie Goldberg when he falsely claimed that if journalists "did some real reporting, they would find out that in the past 10 years, the world temperatures haven't gone up." But climate scientists reject the idea that the fact that, in most datasets, annual global average temperatures have not surpassed their 1998 level is any indication that global warming is slowing or does not exist. Scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability -- which includes relatively short-term changes in climate due to events like El Niño and La Niña -- to which they attribute the recent relatively cooler temperatures. Williams also did not challenge Goldberg's assertion that "this is déjà vu all over again. This is the 1970s, when journalists warned us of another climate, you know, catastrophe that was coming. That time it was global cooling. And they warned us of the coming ice age. They were wrong about that." But it is false to suggest, as Goldberg does, that in the 1970s there was a widespread scientific belief that the Earth was cooling that is tantamount to the current scientific consensus on global warming.

As Media Matters for America has noted, in a February 11 Guardian op-ed, Vicky Pope, the head of climate change advice at the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre, wrote that claims about the pace of global warming based only on developments in the past 10 years or in the 1990s are not valid, "since natural variations always occur on this timescale." She continued, "1998 was a record-breaking warm year as long-term man-made warming combined with a naturally occurring strong El Niño. In contrast, 2008 was slightly cooler than previous years partly because of a La Niña. Despite this, it was still the 10th warmest on record." According to the Met Office, "Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming." This long-term trend can be seen in this graph of annual global average temperatures from the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre:

Moreover, Goldberg's evocation of 1970s media reports about global cooling falsely suggests that the scientific basis for those reports is equivalent to the current scientific consensus on global warming. A September 2008 article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (a peer-reviewed publication) investigated the "pervasive myth" that "there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent." The article found:

A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth's basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. In fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then.

The Bulletin also noted several other "examples of modern writers perpetuating the myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus."

In addition, Williams criticized CBS correspondent Scott Pelley's reported statement that, in Williams' words, "when he was doing a piece about global warming, he would not, in fact, interview anybody who had any doubts as to the veracity of the global warming charge. He said that would be like doing a piece about the Holocaust and talking to Holocaust deniers." In fact, the 2006 CBS article in which Pelley's comments were reported also reported that Pelley "says he tried hard to find a respected scientist who contradicted the prevailing opinion in the scientific community, but there was no one out there who fit that description." From the March 23, 2006, CBS article:

Pelley's most recent report, like his first, did not pause to acknowledge global warming skeptics, instead treating the existence of global warming as an established fact. I again asked him why. "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel," he asks, "am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?" He says his team tried hard to find a respected scientist who contradicted the prevailing opinion in the scientific community, but there was no one out there who fit that description. "This isn't about politics or pseudo-science or conspiracy theory blogs," he says. "This is about sound science."

But doesn't the fact that there are a lot of Americans who are skeptical of global warming -- not well respected scientists, perhaps, but ordinary people watching the segment -- warrant at least some recognition of the other side? "There becomes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible," says Pelley.

From the July 1 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

WILLIAMS: In the "Impact" segment tonight: Is the liberal media helping Barack Obama advance his energy agenda by spreading global warming propaganda? Joining us now from North Carolina, my friend Bernie Goldberg, the author of the best-selling book A Slobbering Love Affair. Bernie, thanks so much for coming in.

GOLDBERG: My pleasure, Juan.

WILLIAMS: Now, Bernie, I don't know if you saw this, but Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes recently wrote that when he was doing a piece about global warming, he would not, in fact, interview anybody who had any doubts as to the veracity of the global warming charge. He said that would be like doing a piece about the Holocaust and talking to Holocaust deniers. Can you believe this?

GOLDBERG: Yeah. Yeah, I can, because I read the interview and I saw the piece he did. It was a completely one-sided piece about global warming. And when he was questioned about it, he said precisely what you just reported -- that if I interview somebody who believes in the Holocaust, do I have to find in the name of balance a Holocaust denier?

This amounts to journalistic malpractice. That -- it's as simple as that. Journalists need to do a little reporting and not merely be cheerleaders for Al Gore and Barack Obama's version of manmade global warming. And if they did some reporting, they would learn that the number of skeptics of manmade global warming is rising. It's growing, the number of skeptics. And these include some very prestigious scientists.

But you don't see a lot of that on Page 1 of the newspaper. And if they did some real reporting, they would find out that in the past 10 years, the world temperatures haven't gone up but may have even come down a little bit. But you don't hear that on the evening news.

Juan, we're going -- this is déjà vu all over again. This is the 1970s, when journalists warned us of another climate, you know, catastrophe that was coming. That time it was global cooling. And they warned us of the coming ice age. They were wrong about that. They never looked back. They never apologized. And if and when they're wrong about this, they'll just move on to the next crisis.

WILLIAMS: Now, Bernie -- Bernie, let me just protect you. You're not saying they're wrong. You're just saying there are two sides to the story. Because the U.N. scientists, the G-8 scientists, they've all said that air temperatures are rising, ocean temperatures are rising. You see ice caps melting. You're not saying you know. You're just saying, let's give everybody a fair say.

GOLDBERG: Yeah, thank you for -- thank you for clarifying that. I am, needless to say, I am not a scientist. I am willing to accept that there are two sides to this story, and both sides have legitimate scientists arguing their point. But you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media.

WILLIAMS: All right, so Bernie --

GOLDBERG: Not by and large, anyway.

WILLIAMS: Bernie, let me ask you about the politics of this, because to me, the numbers are very interesting. If I am talking to Republicans -- Republicans, Bernie -- 60 -- I think it's something like 48 percent say yes to global warming. There is global warming.

If I'm talking to independents, 67 percent say, "Yes, there is global warming." But if I'm talking to Democrats, Bernie Goldberg, then I'm up to 87 percent say yes to global warming.

Why do you get 48 percent of Republicans saying, "Yeah, it might be global warming," but 87 percent of Democrats? Why the politics around this?

GOLDBERG: That's a very good question. I think it has something to do with the media again. Republicans are less likely to believe or accept hook, line, and sinker what the media tells them. And liberal Democrats are more likely to believe it because a lot of the media is made up of liberal Democrats.

So, I think -- I think the filter that we get this global warming that it comes through is the media. And a lot of us on the right, we don't trust the media as much as liberal Democrats do.

And again, Juan, the media gets a lot of these things wrong. They got global cooling wrong. Why should we necessarily believe that they got this story right? And what bothers me the most about this is that they have absolutely fallen into line with Al Gore's version of global warming -- that it's manmade, case closed, I don't want to hear about it. Scott Pelley's example is the best one you can come up with.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, so you're an "Earth is flat" kind of person if you disagree with Al Gore. All right, let me move on --

GOLDBERG: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The fact that Microsoft will continue to offer consumers multiple versions of Windows when the company's new Windows 7 premieres on October 22, continues to stick in the craw of many who doubt there's any real demand for a less-than-complete edition of the operating system. Retailers continue to require a three-tier marketing approach, although Microsoft's choice of the name "Home Premium" this time around to refer to the lesser of its good/better/best tiers, continues to raise eyebrows.

But the questions about what's so Ultimate about "Ultimate" have only resounded more loudly, especially after CNET's Ina Fried brought the issue to a head early this morning. Since the only two differences that Microsoft's Web page mentioned between the Professional and Ultimate editions are the inclusion of BitLocker drive encryption and the multiple language pack (typically included with Windows' business licenses), prospective customers are asking what it is that makes Ultimate really worth $120 more than Professional.

One of the questions from a customer on Microsoft's own Web site reads, "So first we Vista Ultimate users pay a huge price for a Vista version that is not in any way worth the money and now we have to pay a even more for an upgrade? WTF? At least make the Ultimate upgrade cost as much as the Professional upgrade. Otherwise it's like double tax!"

Betanews asked Microsoft this afternoon, what are the extra features of Windows 7 Ultimate that will justify the extra investment on the part of everyday consumers? "For customers who 'want it all' and customers who want enhanced security features such as BitLocker that are in Windows 7 Enterprise Edition, we offer the Ultimate SKU," a company spokesperson responded to us today. "An important thing to keep in mind with Ultimate is that it is a very niche SKU," the spokesperson remarked to Betanews, "and Microsoft anticipates most consumers will run Home Premium -- which is why this is the SKU that is the most discounted compared with Windows Vista pricing...That said, when you have a customer base of more than one billion, two SKU options can't satisfy all of their varied needs."

FOR MORE:

• Vista and Windows 7 price comparison chart

The standard upgrade price for the Windows 7 Professional SKU is $199.99, but under the terms of a pre-order discount program expected to expire on Sunday, July 11, Microsoft is knocking $100 off that upgrade price, for a total $200 discount from Professional's full retail MSRP of $299.99. No similar discounts are being offered for Win7 Ultimate, and its upgrade price is essentially unchanged (except for ending in .99 rather than .95) from the Vista Ultimate upgrade price.

There actually are several features in Ultimate that are brought over from the Windows 7 Enterprise SKU, that are not to be found in Professional. Their usefulness in a typical consumer-oriented home setting, however, may be extremely limited. For example, AppLocker is designed to provide administrators with a group policy tool for specifying explicit rules for which applications can be run in the OS environment and which cannot. BranchCache enables users of corporate intranets to retrieve files and other data from locally stored caches that are nearer to the client, in networks managed by Windows Server 2008 R2. And DirectAccess is a phenomenal new feature that enables a Windows client to access a company network directly (again using WS2K8 R2), by way of a secure IPsec connection, without having to rely on anyone's VPN scheme, without any tunneling, and without having to sacrifice the client's own local network or homegroup connection.

These are all wonderful features indeed, but try explaining them to the fellow who's considering Ultimate as a platform for World of Warcraft. He may actually never use them -- he may "want it all," but he'll probably discover he doesn't need it all.

Does that mean this customer would fall outside the "niche" of Ultimate buyers to whom our Microsoft spokesperson referred this afternoon? The company's response to us today would appear to say, yes.

Founded in 2001, FTD is the largest Usenet community in The Netherlands with around 450,000 members. FTD and its software allows members to report material they find on Usenet along with its location. This material could include movies, music and TV shows and this made it a target for notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

BREIN says that FTD operates illegally but the Usenet community and its specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm vigorously deny this and are now taking legal action the Dutch anti-piracy outfit. The background to the case can be found in our earlier article, and a more detailed report on the action against BREIN here.

Yesterday, while BREIN’s site was still supposedly out of action following an alleged (or Hoaxed) DDoS attack from Pirate Bay fans, it published a further report about FTD, which was hidden on its site away from easy public viewing. Strangely the same page at the time of writing is password protected and the report unavailable, but we have a copy and translation.

Entitled ‘BREIN Demands Closure of FTD’, the anti-piracy outfit went on to say that if FTD does not close it will require a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day against the service, in addition to compensation and full reimbursement of costs. BREIN said that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal.

BREIN then refers to earlier discussions it had with FTD, noting that it asked FTD to cease its “structural use of illegal content” in early 2009. The two sides had entered discussions to see if they could iron out their difficulties. Following on, FTD pro-actively modified how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.

“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought - but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”

The news saw BREIN declare that FTD was a criminal operation in an article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” and this led to FTD taking legal action against BREIN to try to clear their name by having their operation declared legal by a court. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD.

Tim Kuik from BREIN now says that it is clear that FTD “continued their abuses unabated” and that the modifications they made were only made to hide the “true nature” of the site.

“It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kuik. “FTD earn money with a system that exists by virtue of the huge supply of illegal content to Usenet.” Mirroring the disappointment felt at FTD, Kuik added: “It is disappointing but illustrates that BREIN’s outstretched hand has been cut off.”

So what exactly does this claim for 50,000 euros per day mean for FTD? Lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak that BREIN did not ask the court for damages. Legally they are barred from asking for damages - article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code says that an organization that represents the interests of a certain group can never ask for damages. They asked instead for a penal sum of 50k euros if FTD were ordered by the court to shut down but it refused.

“The idea is that a court can order you to shut down but you can ignore the court,” said Arnoud. “With the penal sum, you risk that the court will then sell your house or seize other assets. In principle that’s legal, but the amount is of course ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous also sums up my view of the BREIN counterclaim. Instead of addressing any of the points we raised, they simply repeat their standard rhetoric. Nowhere is the distinction made between uploading works and telling people that someone has uploaded a work for (legal) download. And downloading illegal uploads is legal in the Netherlands,” notes Arnoud.

“BREIN is not known for its careful handling of the truth,” he added. “They are a propaganda organization after all.”

Post from: TorrentFreak

Several marketing associations supported by Google have banded together and released seven principles that they believe should govern online privacy. Are you ready for a journey to the Emerald City? Because the principles are the online advertisers’ attempts to stave off government regulation around protecting consumers’ online privacy by diverting attention to the Great and Powerful Principles rather than the data scavenging that’s going on behind the curtain. Kind of like a certain self-aggrandizing wizard.

Given that Congress has been keen to see opt-in programs, and there’s no mention of that in these principles, my hope is that regulators won’t be taken in by this, and will still fight for better disclosure of advertising practices and an opt-in program. In the meantime, let’s pull back the curtain and check out what the wizards of marketing are telling us. Below are the marketing principles taken directly from the position paper — and in italics, what they really mean:

• The Education Principle calls for organizations to participate in efforts to educate individuals and businesses about online behavioral advertising. To this end, the digital media industry intends, in a major campaign that is expected to exceed 500 million online advertising impressions, to educate consumers about online behavioral advertising, the benefits of these practices and the means to exercise choice, over the next 18 months. (We’re gonna show you a lot of ads about how we want to invade your privacy, but since we’re making them, we’ll make sure they don’t scare you into opting out.)
• The Transparency Principle calls for clearer and easily accessible disclosures to consumers about data collection and use practices associated with online behavioral advertising. It will result in new, enhanced notice on the page where data is collected through links embedded in or around advertisements, or on the Web page itself. (Don’t block our ads or you may miss valuable information about how we target these ads to you.)
• The Consumer Control Principle provides consumers with an expanded ability to choose whether data is collected and used for online behavioral advertising purposes. This choice will be available through a link from the notice provided on the Web page where data is collected. The Consumer Control Principle requires “service providers”, a term that includes Internet access service providers and providers of desktop applications software such as Web browser “tool bars” to obtain the consent of users before engaging in online behavioral advertising, and take steps to de-identify the data used for such purposes. (Remember that notice near those ads you were blocking? You’re going to have to click through that in order to opt out. As for all you ISPs, web application companies and tool bar providers out there, you’re actually going to have to make users opt in.)
• The Data Security Principle calls for organizations to provide reasonable security for, and limited retention of data, collected and used for online behavioral advertising purposes. (Please ignore the fact that we’re not using anything descriptive here to define reasonable security, the type of data collected or how long we plan to keep it)
• The Material Changes Principle calls on organizations to obtain consent for any material change to their online behavioral advertising data collection and use policies and practices to data collected prior to such change. (When we decide to collect more information from you, we’ll tell you about it, maybe through an opt-in box that pops up right before you want to get access to something important, like your email. It could read: “Before we provide access to your inbox, click here to acknowledge these several pages of fine print about your privacy.”)
• The Sensitive Data Principle recognizes that data collected from children and used for online behavioral advertising merits heightened protection, and requires parental consent for behavioral advertising to consumers known to be under 13 on child-directed Web sites. This Principle also provides heightened protections to certain health and financial data when attributable to a specific individual. (We know there are some things that will really tick people off, like advertising to kids and selling ads based on confidential medical data, but since kids are so impressionable, if we can get them to ask a parent for permission then we’re going do it.)
• The Accountability Principle calls for development of programs to further advance these Principles, including programs to monitor and report instances of uncorrected non-compliance with these Principles to appropriate government agencies. The Council of Better Business Bureaus and Direct Marketing Association have been asked and agreed to work cooperatively to establish accountability mechanisms under the Principles. (It’s like relying on the Do Not Call List to block telemarketers. That always works out well, doesn’t it?)

To be fair, there will likely be some sites that go above and beyond these principles to protect users’ privacy, just like there will be some that will ignore them and troll for as much information as the gullible masses are willing to provide. I may be too cynical here, but in my experience, self-regulation doesn’t work when one side has a lot to gain and the other side is pretty ignorant about what that side is doing. I’m not going to put my toddler alone in a room with a bowl full of candy and expect her to self-regulate, just like I doubt that advertisers and Google are the best stewards of my privacy online.

Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 20th Century Fox, Remakes and Sequels

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p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- As expected, Jammie Thomas-Rasett and her lawyers won’t be taking the bizarre Minnesota jury decision that she owes the obscenely rich record labels $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs, lying down.

From the beginning, she’s insisted she’ll stand firm to the very end, whatever at the end may be.

And now she, Kiwi Camara (left) and Joe Sibley, the Texas lawyers representing her, will appeal the decision.

“The recent judgment begs constitutionality questions to be answered,” she told me today, going on »»»

Will they be answered in my favor?  I truly hope so because then every other person who has been targeted in the RIAA’s litigation campaign might have a better fighting chance.

I will admit this battle is wearing me rather thin, but I have to continue as I don’t know of anyone else to have ever reached this point, and we might help to establish a more fair set of laws in a new digital age.

I didn’t ask for this, it was thrust upon me by the RIAA and now they get to deal with the consequences of their extortion litigation tactics of using the law as a hammer to squish innocent bystanders in their war against everything new and not under their control.

Wish me luck.

We do.

Said Egan Orion in The Inquirer shortly after the ludicrous finding was made public »»»

Questions that didn’t come up in this trial include:

• whether the recording companies had valid copyrights to the tunes she was accused of having downloaded
• whether the RIAA’s ferrets at Media Sentry were licensed as private investigators
• what her own technical expert witness found
• whether the RIAA’s technical expert’s procedures and findings were sound
• what precisely were the legal elements of what she was alleged to have done and whether those were established by the plaintiffs, that is, actual “distribution” of copyrighted music files
• what facts the RIAA companies needed to establish in order to claim statutory as opposed to actual damages

That was a lot to leave off the table in such a trial, we would think.

Therefore, forget the courtroom theatre, including the RIAA cartel companies’ wailing that this defendant, at the time a single mother, somehow must pay penalties of nearly $2 million, and Thomas-Rasset’s performance as the defendant in the witness box where she showed her anguish at all of the one-sided proceedings against her.

No, this trial was merely the prologue for the real battle, which we believe will be played out in the appellate courts. Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s lawyers are, we think, playing a long game, and we’ll see how that all works out, over several more years.

Why was Jammie ordered to pay this huge penalty?

Because she’s alleged to have infringed the copyrights on 24 corporate music industry songs, and that they were each worth the absolutely ridiculous amount of $80,000 for a total of $1.92 million, here’s the play list »»»

UMG
Vanessa Williams - Save the best for last
Sheryl Crow - Run baby run
Reba McEntire - One honest heart
Janet Jackson - let’s wait awhile
Guns ‘n Roses - Welcome to the jungle
Guns ‘n Roses - November rain
Def Leppard - Pour some sugar on me
Bryan Adams - Somebody
Aerosmnith - Cryin

Warner Bros Records
Linkin Park - One step closer
Green Day - Basket case
Goo Goo Dolls - iris

Interscope Records
No Doubt - Hella Good
No Doubt - Different people
No Doubt - Bathwater

Arista Records
Sarah McLaughlan - Building a mystery
Sarah McLaughlan - Possession

Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Gloria Estefan - Rhythm is gonna get you
Gloria Estefan - Here and we are
Gloria Estefan - coming out of the dark
Journey - Faithfully
Journey - Don’t stop believin
Destiny’s child - Bills, bills, bills

And number 24 on the list is Now and for ever by Richard Marx for Capitol Records, owned by EMI.

“As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music,” Marx says in a public statement.  “I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels,” he said, adding »»»

These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets.

So now we have a “judgment” in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive.

“Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I’m ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.”

‘The RIAA is NOT owned by the Bg 4 labels!’

In Janury, in RIAA drops case against Michigan students, “Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA was finally forced to fire MediaSentry, its inept ‘private investigator,’ replacing it with Dtecnet, a Danish firm whose reputation is also less than sterling,” said p2pnet, continuing »»»

The RIAA says it’s trying to get US ISPs to take over as Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG copyright enforcers in a ploy also picked up in other parts of the world, notably in the UK.

Leaving aside the question why it would even need yet another private eye if, as it claims, it’s going to halt its sue ‘em all marketing campaign, a p2pnet reader says we’re wrong to add pos ’s’ to the RIAA.

“I would like to make it clear that thousands of record labels are members of the RIAA and that it is NOT owned by only four of them, as you wrongly state in every story in which the initials RIAA appear,” s/he says, adding:

“It is a trade organisation which acts for its members. It is not a subsidiary.

“Thank you.”

You’re welcome. But we beg to differ.

This comes up every now and then, as it did in the spring of 2008.

Here’s what I said back then »»»

Since I started running stories about the P2P file sharing travesty initiated by the major record labels, I’ve had four or five emails complaining about the fact I refer to the perpetrators as the Big 4, the organised music cartel/gang, and so on. And I had another yesterday complaining about that, and the pic I used for Maine students target RIAA ‘discovery’ machine.

Check the pic out, but if you don’t want to be bothered, it features a flock of vultures with the caption, ‘RIAA legal staff mull tactics over lunch’.

Anyway, “You are WRONG!!! - said the email among other things (more on that anon).

“There are a lot more than 4 record labels in the RIAA and they don’t own it, they are only members of it.”

Yes, there are a lot more then four companies listed as members but, “To all intents and purposes, EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) are the only record labels in town,” I wrote a while back, going on »»»

In much the same way Organized Crime is universally known as OC, p2pnet calls the Big 4 the Organized Music cartel.

Because what they say goes. Their demands dictate corporate policy and they’re principally responsible for instructing the many and various ‘trade’ copyright enforcement units such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) and CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America).”

Recording Industry vs The People has a list of the record labels which show up most often on the RIAA’s Frequent Plaintiff List.

They are: Arista; Atlantic; BMG; Capitol; Elektra; Fonovisa; Interscope; Lava; Loud; Maverick; Motown Priority; SONY; UMG; Virgin; and, Warner.

Separate companies. Right?

Nope. They’re part and parcel of the Big 4.

I did a by no means exhaustive search to see who owned them and here’s what I found:

* Arista is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony BMG
* Atlantic is owned by the Warner Music Group
* BMG is the German half of the Sony BMG partnership
* Capitol is owned by EMI
* Elektra is owned by the Warner Music Group
* Interscope is owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
* Lava is owned by owned by Warner Music Group
* Loud is owned by UMG
* Priority Records is owned by EMI
* Maverick is owned by the Warner Music Group
* Motown Priority is owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
* SONY is the Japanese half of the Sony BMG partnership
* UMG is Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
* Virgin Music is owned by EMI
* Warner Music Group is Warner Music

Only Fonovisa Records, an American Spanish language label, has the slightest appearance of being separate from the Big 4.

It’d be interesting to know exactly how many other companies on the long RIAA list are associated directly or at a distance with one or other of the Big 4.

Meanwhile, to go back to the idea that the Big 4 are the only game in town, in January, Colorado’s Law Weekly ran an article on Richard ‘Rich’ (he probably is by now) Gabriel, the Holme Roberts & Owen RIAA attack lawyer, says a link provided by a p2pnet reader.

Reproduced in full by HR&O, it extols Gabriel’s virtues in fulsome detail (I wouldn’t advise reading it on a full stomach).

It says, in part, “Gabriel’s - and the Recording Industry Association of America’s - case against a Minnesota mother of two has been called one of the most publicized cases in U.S. patent law in 2007. It was the first [and is still the only] case to go to trial against a defendant accused of illegally downloading music on the Internet. The record companies claimed Jammie Thomas, 30, of Brainerd downloaded 1,702 songs to her computer from the music site Kazaa. The record labels then sent Thomas a letter with a settlement offer. But instead of settling for a nominal amount (typically $4,000), Thomas declined.”

Four thousand dollars may be nominal to the multi-billion-dollar Big 4 and to Gabriel, who pulls $375 an hour, plus expenses and disbursements, for his labours of behalf of the organise music gang. But it most certainly isn’t nominal to Thomas or any of the other 30,000 also very ordinary RIAA victims, who include children as young as 12.

But to return to my thesis, me judice, the Big 4 are where it’s at and to all intents and purposes, they alone ultimately control what the various so-called corporate music industry trade associations say and do, and, using the likes of Richard ‘Rich’ Gabriel [now 'iz onor] as their fronts, they alone are responsible for putting their own  customers through hell, calling them criminals and thieves.

“Gabriel serves as national counsel to the recording industry association, as well as the specific record companies involved in the lawsuit, including Capitol Records, Inc., Sony BMG, Arista, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. and UMG Recordings, Inc,” says Law Weekly, from which I clipped a section of Chris Williams’ excellent photo of Gabriel.

* Capitol = EMI
* Arista = Sony BMG
* Interscope Records = Universal Music Group
* Warner = Warner

Say no more.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

July, 2009