Jenn and I enjoy Netflix.
Partially it’s the lack of late fees. We, OK, I was always late returning rentals to Blockbuster in North Hollywood, and even one day late made a rental go from a fun thing to “we spent how much money on that crappy movie?”
Partially it’s the selection. Good luck finding Bullitt in your local video store, unless your store is located in 1968.
And partially it’s the convenience.
But Jenn went on a binge when we first started with the service, watching the movies the moment they came in, and sending them back out the same day. After a while, she started noticing that it was harder and harder to get the “hot” movies the company carried. While I don’t think most people are getting 20 or more Netflix movies a month (although maybe families with young kids are), if you get a dozen or more movies a month from them, you’re in a less-profitable category of customer for them (they want you to enjoy the no late fees thing and leave your DVD on top of the TV for months and months while paying that monthly fee) and they throttle you back a little, forcing you to watch less-popular older movies instead for a bit. (You still do get the hot movies eventually, though. You’re just in line behind the 1 movie every six months guy.)
Currently waiting at home for viewing this weekend: The final disc of Sopranos Season 5, Wedding Crashers and Just Like Heaven. (Guess which one is the Jenn movie.)
(And Borelli, if you’re reading this, sign up for Netflix already.)
Daily Press editor Don Holland’s decision to run the Danish cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban has raised some eyebrows in the media, both regionally and nationally.
The mindless violence by Islamic radicals is par for the course. But what is incredible is that the Associated Press, which distributes news stories and photos from across the globe, has decided that you shouldn’t see it.
The Daily Press is one of the very few American newspapers that is publishing the cartoon. The point is not whether it is offensive or not. The point is that it is part of a worldwide news story.
The fact that radical Muslims are going berserk over a cartoon says more about their mindset than it does about a cartoon.
AP’s Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll says AP won’t “distribute content that is known to be offensive, with rare exceptions.”
What is offensive is that AP fancies itself to be the guardian of good taste for thousands of American newspapers rather than letting individual newspapers make that decision.
AP’s philosophy also strikes at the heart of a free press and the elementary principles of libertarian thought — that individuals have the God-given right to read what they please and decide for themselves what is and isn’t offensive.
AP has distributed countless controversial images, presumably without intending offense. But some could argue that the historic image of the Saigon police chief executing a Viet Cong spy was offensive. Years ago, the Daily Press received numerous calls when we published a photo of victims of the Rawandan genocide. Certainly that was a newsworthy, albeit disturbing, image.
To be fair, I’m not surprised that Don ran the cartoon. I’m mostly surprised that so few other newspapers have.
The old guard media-on-the-media publication, Editor & Publisher, specifically mentioned the Daily Press as one of four American papers listed to run the cartoon:
* A California paper, the Daily Press in Victorville, became one of the few to publish a Muhammad cartoon–the one with the prophet with a bomb in his turban–today, with its editor in a column knocking The Associated Press for refusing to distribute the images. Another small paper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, also published two of the cartoons, and also complained about the AP stance.
* Eric Mink, commentary editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, explains in a column today: “If a government controls what can and cannot be distributed, it’s called censorship. If a media outlet decides for itself what to include and exclude from its products — whether for journalistic or economic reasons, out of respect for possible sensitivities of some readers or concern about possible impact on its community — it’s called editorial judgment.
“Here in the United States, at least two major newspapers in the last week — the Austin American-Statesman and The Philadelphia Inquirer — chose to publish one of the original Danish cartoons to illustrate stories about the controversy and violence. Other papers, including the Post-Dispatch, have decided that the images aren’t necessary to communicate the story. It’s called judgment.”
The truth is, it’s not a particularly good cartoon. It’s only designed to upset Muslims, which it did. The Danish newspaper, which apparently has a history of these sorts of stunts, isn’t particularly heroic. If they were a poster on an Internet message board, they’d be considered a troll.
But the response to the cartoon is news. And to dance all around the thing that triggered the response is counter-intuitive and, in my opinion, shirking journalistic responsibility. As Don mentions in his editorial, this isn’t the first offensive image to run in a newspaper, because of its real or perceived news value. It likely won’t be the last. I think we will be poorer as a nation if our journalists refuse to cover news that makes them uncomfortable, even when it’s inarguably a real news story.
Geekgasm: Apple has posted Quicktime World of Warcraft trailers (including one for the Burning Crusade expansion) for use with the iPod Video.
(Mmmm, links.)
Oh, the fleeting nature of celebrity. One moment, you’re standing before television cameras in Baghdad, insisting that US forces are not, in fact, entering the city, the next, you’re a Trivial Pursuit answer.
Fortunately, one site remembers Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, also known to some as Baghdad Bob.
In addition to letting us know what he’s up to (no new news since the capture of Saddam and Bob going to work for Al-Jazeera), we have a great record of classic quotes, including “God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.”
I have to admire a quote machine like him.
“I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”
I was looking for a new keyboard — my old cramped Vaio keyboard was the munged-up leftover from a long-gone computer — specifically one with a full-sized keyboard that can stand up to fast and furious typing. I type approximately 110 words per minute, and banging on many keyboards, such as the current Macintosh keyboards (an issue for me at work), means a frustrating slowdown, and even typos.
The Saitek Eclipse Keyboard
is the sort of solid keyboard I was looking for, with a heavy weight overall, good “key feel,” home keys that can be identified by touch and includes a limited set of additional features. I don’t need a dozen extra buttons to do what I can already do with software. (I know how to start iTunes and Thunderbird just fine as-is, thanks.) The only additional buttons on the Eclipse keyboard are a row of four small buttons over the number pad: Volume up, volume down, mute and cycling the lit keyboard from bright to dim to off.
As for the lighting — and this was certainly one of the deciding factors in buying this keyboard — for day-to-day use in a lit environment, the glowing keys will likely be hard to notice. For gaming in a dim or totally dark room (I play World of Warcraft, among other games), the keys are bright without being overwhelmingly so.
This was an excellent purchase for me, although I know people who like additional features on their keyboards might want to get one of Saitek’s higher-end keyboards above the Eclipse. But for people whose desired feature set resembles mine, I’d say this keyboard is a must-buy.
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