Ramblings & ephemera
In Clay Shirky’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007), he takes on the persona of someone talking about what new changes are coming with the Gutenberg movable type press. At one point, he says, “Such a change would also create enormous economic hardship for anyone [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, art, business | No Comments »
From Roger Ebert:
“Because the movie all takes place during one day and Roxy is being chased by a truant officer, it compares itself to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It might as reasonably compare itself to “The Third Man” because they wade through sewers.”
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Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, art, business | Comments Off
From Entertainment News, 21 March 2004:
“Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office”
(About Dawn of the Dead and The Passion of the Christ)
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Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, overheard | Comments Off
We went to see Troy last week. At the end of the movie, the Trojans drag the Trojan Horse into the city. They party, celebrating what they think is the abandonment of the war by the Greeks, and everyone collapses into a drunken stupor. Cut to the waiting Greek ships, hidden a few miles away, [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
From Farhad Manjoo’s “iPod: I love you, you’re perfect, now change” (Salon: 23 October 2006):
Levy writes that when this happens, the music becomes a “soundtrack” for the scenery, which is a good way to put it. The iPod turns ordinary life — riding the bus, waiting in line at the post office, staring at a [...]
Posted on October 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, art, business | Comments Off
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Tough Guy: The mystery of Dashiell Hammett” (The New Yorker [11 February 2002]: 70):
In March, 1928, [Hammett] had written to his publisher, Blanche Knopf, about his plans to adapt the “stream-of-consciousness method” to a new detective novel. He was going to enter the detective’s mind, he told her, reveal his impressions [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, art, business, history | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “Hollywood Sign Security” (Crypto-Gram: 15 January 2005):
In Los Angeles, the “HOLLYWOOD” sign is protected by a fence and a locked gate. Because several different agencies need access to the sign for various purposes, the chain locking the gate is formed by several locks linked together. Each of the agencies has the key [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From Nate Anderson’s “Hacking Digital Rights Management” (Ars Technica: 18 July 2006):
AACS relies on the well-established AES (with 128-bit keys) to safeguard the disc data. Just like DVD players, HD DVD and Blu-ray drives will come with a set of Device Keys handed out to the manufacturers by AACS LA. Unlike the CSS encryption used [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From Nate Anderson’s “Hacking Digital Rights Management” (Ars Technica: 18 July 2006):
DVD players are factory-built with a set of keys. When a DVD is inserted, the player runs through every key it knows until one unlocks the disc. Once this disc key is known, the player uses it to retrieve a title key from the [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business | Comments Off
From Adam Goodheart’s “10 Days That Changed History” (The New York Times: 2 July 2006):
APRIL 16, 1902: The Movies
Motion pictures seemed destined to become a passing fad. Only a few years after Edison’s first crude newsreels were screened  mostly in penny arcades, alongside carnival games and other cheap attractions, the novelty had worn off, [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, history | Comments Off
From Improv Everywhere’s “Missions: Best Buy” (23 April 2006):
Agent Slavinsky wrote in to suggest I get either a large group of people in blue polo shirts and khakis to enter a Best Buy or a group in red polo shirts and khakis to enter a Target. Wearing clothing almost identical to the store’s uniform, the [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From Dashka Slater’s “Lights, Camera, Lockdown” (Legal Affairs: May/June 2003):
The first two Alcatraz films, Alcatraz Island and The Last Gangster, arrived in theaters in 1937; the most recent, Half Past Dead, came out last November. In the 65 years in between, Alcatraz has been the subject of some two dozen movies and has made guest [...]
Posted on May 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From John Swansburg’s “The Shawshank Reputation” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
Yet even King didn’t think [The Shawshank Redemption] stood a chance at the box office-and he was right. Though the movie got good reviews, and seven Oscar nominations, Shawshank in its original release grossed only about half of the $35 million it cost to make.
The movie [...]
Posted on May 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, business | Comments Off
From John Swansburg’s “The Shawshank Reputation” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
Fifty-eight movies have been adapted from his writing, not as many as from Dickens, but more than from any other living author.
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Posted on May 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | Comments Off
Modern tragedy in film: one man’s death invites the gaze & sympathy of millions, ignoring the other deaths that occur all around us all the time.
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Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Musings | Comments Off
From Clay Shirky’s “File-sharing Goes Social“:
The RIAA has taken us on a tour of networking strategies in the last few years, by constantly changing the environment file-sharing systems operate in. In hostile environments, organisms often adapt to become less energetic but harder to kill, and so it is now. With the RIAA’s waves of legal [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Social Software, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business, law | Comments Off
From David L. Hudson, Jr.’s “Update on the Internet and the First Amendment“:
For example, as First Amendment scholar Rodney
Smolla explains, when Gutenberg developed the printing press
circa 1450, the Archbishop of Mainz created a censorship body,
and the Venice Inquisition issued a list of banned books.
The expansion of printing led English officials to pass
restrictive licensing laws that [...]
Posted on January 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history, politics | Comments Off
From Yahoo! News (March 2004):
Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North American Box Office
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Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, weird | Comments Off
If fiction can be regarded as a culture’s subconscious, then it’s clear that we are a nation obsessed with the very rich. From avaricious caricatures like The Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns to literary character studies like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, our culture — both high and low — is littered with images of billionaires and [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Cool Stuff, business | Comments Off
Another image that enters my mind unbidden:
My brother and I are spending the night at Grandma & Grandpa Scott’s house. We’re pretty young … I might be 8 and my brother 6 or 7. It’s the mid-70s. At our grandparents, we go to bed pretty early … say by 10 p.m. This night, Gus [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, history | Comments Off
Bookmarked 2 links
Added 2 products to their wishlist:
Bookmarked 2 links
Added a product to their wishlist:
Shared an image: like a record...
Bookmarked a link: 10 useful jQuery plugins :: ENHANCE
I now have one week to finish my book on Google. Freak out mode has officially begun. (I'll finish it ... I'm just gonna freak out during)
Bookmarked a link: FILExt - The File Extension Source
Just had two Wash U students & a HS student stop by asking me to help the Obama campaign. I said yes. Good to see kids involved in politics!