via youtube.com
Brilliant interpretation of a phenomenal scene.
Only 4783 views on YouTube? Seems unfair.
Christopher walken was very well-paid for his small contribution to Pulp Fiction. Perhaps Michael Caine would have been just as good :)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Marlon Brando apologizes for missing Charlie Sheen's birthday: "I'm feeling like a very large turd on a very thin stick."
MARLON BRANDO
Dear Charlie,
I'm feeling like a very large turd on a very thin stick. I'm holed up in bed and taking everything from sled dog urine to powderde East Indian vulva — maybe won't work tomorrow if I feel the same.
I really feel bad for not showing up at your birthday bash but I really feel shitty and best stay in bed. I don't have much of a selection. I'm sure it will be a kick in the ass and I hate to miss it —
Happiest of birthdays to you, Charlie
Love,
Marlon
Chrome drops H.264 codec for not being 'open' enough, but still ships with Adobe's proprietary Flash built in.
HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager
Apple has long been blasted for shipping mobile web devices without Flash support, despite the fact that the first mobile Flash implementation wasn't published by Adobe until three years after iPhone's first introduction.
Apple's publicly stated reason was the technological deficiency of Flash, and as a Mac user, I can attest to its historically horrid performance, battery drain and single-minded determination to slow, freeze, or most frequently crash my browser.
The unspoken reason was, of course, Apple's desire to control its products end-to-end, but that shouldn't be understood as a desire to own every aspect of them. Apple has a history of embracing open, or at least not-singularly-owned standards, often pioneering their mainstream use. USB, Firewire, and AAC (the successor to MP3) come to mind. It's no surprise that they chose the codec H.264 as the preferred means of web video distribution.
H.264 is a de facto web standard, supported by many more computers and devices even than Flash. It's protected by a strong pool of patents, licensed cheaply to software vendors and entirely free for consumers. It's proven efficient and has hardware acceleration built into numerous video cards and even mobile devices.
Google's alternative, the WebM codec they introduced some months ago, enjoys none of these benefits. No hardware support, extremely limited installed base, and a high vulnerability to submarine patents.
This means that if you use WebM to create video and at a later date a secret evil patent-holder successfully makes a case in court that WebM infringes on their intellectual property, it is legally possible (though practically unlikely) that you will share financial liability for your use of the infringint tech.
When Apple went H.264-only it was already a well-established technology and the ensuing years have seen a rapid transition to the codec in web video. This was fcilitated by the fact that Flash can actually play H.264 video, so after a video site has converted its content to H.264 it makes little difference to them whether a visitor accesses the video using the Flash plugin or a more modern, open solution like HTML5. Now, however, Google wants them to keep a second copy of those videos available, in WebM format, so that either codec can be delivered through either solution... weird.
Google's bold move to promote their 'open' codec by suppressing an established, 'nearly-open' codec like H.264 is a fair one. It suits their ideology to a T and they have every right to develop their products as they see fit.
But complaining that H.264 isn't open enough, and still shipping Chrome with the totally closed, totally proprietary, absolutely un-open Flash plug-in? Come on.
Stay classy, Google.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Lacking access to American currency, I'll have to take this $5 B-Boy Lincoln at face value.
Unless you, noble Internet, can provide photographic proof that it can be done?
Monday, January 10, 2011
"Tvor" is an AI lamp wins Czech design award. Looks like a single-tasking, wobbly forebear of Caprica's Serge!
http://www.youtube.com/v/SPPsCEis1lk?fs=1&hl=en_US
via ziveveci.cz
Aside from the creepy sound in the video, and the lack of utility, and the wobbling, it's actually a pretty neat idea.
Says the designer:
"Tvor (the creature) is a lamp endowed with artificial intelligence. With the help of sensors, it moves towards the darkest place in the room. It seeks out darkness relentlessly and its illuminating presence transfers the darkness to another place. Tvor is thus doomed to endless travel."
Yeah, that totally makes it less creepy!
Friday, January 7, 2011
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