The New Sleekness RSS

After installing reCAPTCHA in the comments, I no longer have to manually deal with 30 or so daily pieces of comment spam. And, we get to help digitize books. So, reCAPTCHA: keeping the internet human.

Well, it seems Metallica really is playing a different tune these days. According to the BBC:

Speaking on San Francisco radio station Live 105, Lars Ulrich said: “If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days.”

“It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days,” the musician added

Interesting. Lovely. So a quick check of Xtorrent and–yep, there it is. I wonder if it really is the oh-so-awaited return to form that’s worth buying?

[EDIT: Well, it's good on first listen! Back to form. Yes indeed.]

A little old school party rap to take you back to the days before imminent, tin-foil-hatted ragnarok:

And remember, kids: the shit goes down on 09 September. Set your calendars.

Wired reports that ‘file sharing’ is alive and well, despite so-called legal alternatives. Big surprise there. After all, the people who pirate want shows as DRM-free HD content in a standardized format, and that’s about the last thing the networks seem willing to give up.

…is my thriteith birthday. I’ve heard that the thirties kick ass. I’m looking forward to how this next decade will turn out. If I reach forty without losing any hair, buying an expensive car, wearing ties on a regular basis, or growing a paunch, I think I’ll have done okay.

Over on Tor.com: Soon I Will Be Invincible

And on The New Sleekness: More hand-waving.

From McSweeney’s: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as Explained by Popeye to Bluto:

POPEYE: I’m gonna explain ta yer that we’s is either dumb or not so dumb, accordin’ ta how ya figger out this allergorter. See, there’s fellers livin’ in a cave and they canst sees nobody or nothin’. They’s been there since they were little infinks and they’s got their arms and legs all locked up. An’ they canst move their necks, neither. So all they can sees is some shadders of gentlesmen what’s comin’ from a fire behind their backs. Garshk, it’s like bein’ in a puppet-show circus.

BLUTO: Argerghirrnama!

Via boingboing, the title says it all:

Here’s a wonderful animation based on the audio track from a recorded interview with John Lennon. Enjoy:

He just nails it. Below are a few gems, but do yourself a favour and read the whole piece. On content:

Discussions at the networks about what’s depleting their viewership tend to focus on familiar culprits: YouTube. The internet. Xbox. The iPod. Too many options. (Capitalism can be so unfair!) This leads to brainstorming sessions about making TV more like the internet,
resulting in a lot of overexcited press releases announcing how one-minute “minisodes” of your favorite shows will be exclusively available on a network website, or Twittered to you line by line as they’re being written, or beamed directly into your cerebral cortex via Bluetooth.

Enough already. Competition from other media is real, but it’s also a convenient excuse to not focus on programming. You don’t hear American Idol’s producers whining about how the internet is draining their audience, because they know that their audience is on the internet. Viewers go there to talk, read, kvetch, and gossip—about American Idol.

On being douches when it comes to niche, critically acclaimed, or shows with a small but devoted fan-following:

Broadcast networks routinely spend three months promoting a show that they then cancel after two airings. Or they get a few million viewers hooked on a serialized drama and then drop it midway through a season, leaving fans hanging. This simply never happens on cable, where if a
series gets a 13-episode order, those 13 episodes are damn well going to air, even if it’s just because there’s nothing else to take their place. Every time the networks reshuffle their grid in a spasm of quick-fix panic, they disenchant more viewers.