Well, the team that was in the worst physical shape, Debra and Steve, was eliminated in the first leg of the Amazing Race 4 last night. The race took the teams from Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to Milan, Italy. From there, they travelled to the Italian Alps and did a grueling Detour in snowy peaks at Cinque Torri. Debra and Steve trailed the beginning and never recovered. They got lost in traffic in Los Angeles as they traveled from Dodger Stadium to LAX. They got on the last plane to Italy with a bunch of other teams and the other more athletic teams eventually overpowered them at the Detour in the Italian Alps. |
Microsoft is to pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner as part of a settlement for an antitrust complaint filed last year. AOL Time Warner contended that Microsoft used its monopoly to to push Netscape (now owned by AOL Time Warner) out of Internet browser market. In addition to the cash, the settlement includes the following key points:
In my opinion, this settlement won’t hurt Microsoft, which reportedly had $46.1 billion in cash last quarter. Microsoft management probably sees this settlement as a $750 million “marketing pact” with AOL to push Internet Explorer and Microsoft Media Player products worldwide. Notably, Microsoft will finally get MSN Messenger and AIM to interoperate, which just means less reason for consumers to install the AIM client. The MSN Messenger is already integrated into Windows XP and will probably be a part of future Windows versions. AOL was already working on integrating ICQ and AIM instant messaging clients, which means that Yahoo! Messenger may become a solitary island in a sea of interoperable clients. If this all comes to pass, I foresee Yahoo! also joining the dark side to create a global instant messaging platform. As the emperor, Emperor Palpatine not Bill Gates, would say, “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen …” |
EBay lost its pending patent lawsuit on Tuesday and was ordered to pay $35 million in damages to Thomas G. Woolston. Woolston, a patent lawyer and founder of MercExchange, filed for the patents in question in April of 1995, several months before EBay was launched. The patents are for EBay’s “Buy it now” functionality and its Half.com business model. Talk about being at the right place at the right time. When Woolston filed for those patents he had no way of knowing that a huge and successful Internet company would eventually infringe on them. You got to admit, a $35 million payday is not bad. Sad thing is that he needs to beat EBay twice, since an appeal is almost inevitable. |
Who needs enemies? A kid in Ohio decided to scratch the muck off the bottom of the gene pool and create his very own one-hour Jackass video special. The problem is that to film it, he threw boiling water on his “friend” while he was sleeping. Result–second degree burns and criminal charges for the budding young director. Maybe they’ll change the Ohio state motto to “With a camera, dumb things are possible.” |
Well, now that Memorial Day weekend is over, I decided to do a little Spring cleaning. Hey, I know it’s the official start of Summer, but I didn’t get around to it in the Spring, so there. Anyway, I decided to sell some stuff on EBay, including a HP Laserjet 5L, a Sony SAT B3 DirecTV Satellite Receiver, and a Sony STR DE-805G Receiver. If you are interested in any of these, please do not hesitate to bid. |
Larry Wachowski, co-director and creator of the Matrix films, including Matrix: Reloaded, has had his assets frozen by an L.A. Superior Court judge as part of a bitter divorce battle with his estranged wife, Thea Bloom. Ms. Bloom stated in a court documents, “Larry has been extremely dishonest with me in our personal life, and I believe he is hiding information from me regarding our financial affairs.” Oh! What a bitch slap! I can imagine the court room scene. The judge is a smiling Agent Smith sporting sunglasses and a black suit underneath his robe, saying, “Mr. Wachowski, it is a pleasure to see you again…” Man, I bet he wishes he had Neo in the courtroom with him. Moral of the story: divorce is no fun. |
LeBron James, the high school basketball phenom, just signed an endorsement deal with Nike worth over $90 million over seven years. This comes just two days before the draft, when James will find out where he will play with his new shoes. I wonder what it must be like to know that you’ll make $13 million a year for seven years, guaranteed, above and beyond your salary. In contrast, Michael Jordan’s first shoe contract in 1984 was worth $2.5 million over five years. Jordan got only half a mil a year! This kid will be making 26 times more money than MJ did 20 years ago–times really have changed. I hope this kid can live up to expectations, or people are going to want their money back. |
According to the Associated Press, two weeks ago Michael Jackson burst into a congressman’s field office in Solvang, CA wearing a Spiderman mask to ask why there weren’t any fast food restaurants there. When he was told that Subway was the only restaurant in town, he replied “I love Taco Bell.” WTF!? This bitch is crazy. |
I had the opportunity to view Comandante at the San Francisco Film Festival earlier this month (see entry). In response to HBO’s choice not to air the film, Oliver Stone has recently flown back to Havana to obtain additional interview footage from Castro regarding the most recent incidents. These new scenes will now be incorporated into the documentary and the new film will air on HBO at a later date. Having already seen the original film, it will be interesting to hear Castro’s thoughts on the recent executions and the brutal repression of Cuba’s dissidents by his regime. If you are even remotely interested in global politics, you must watch this incredible film when it is released. |
The U.S. bumped the terror alert level up to orange because there’s intelligence that says some Al-Qaida mofos may be planning an attack on U.S. soil. This means that we are to be a little more afraid of biological threats today than in a “normal” day. Let’s hope this is another case of Tom Ridge crying wolf and nothing actually blows up. |
Disney announced today that it will start renting “self-destructing” DVDs to the public that do not have to be returned. The DVDs will change color due to a chemical reaction to oxygen once the packaging is opened. This chemical reaction will turn the DVD surface from red to black in 48 hours. During that time, the DVD will be able to be played, or even copied, just like a regular DVD. Now the only hurdle is to get the public to accept this new technology. |
Big ups to Maria Labos, my friend Santiago’s sister, who graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law earlier today. We wish her luck on her upcoming bar exam, but most of all, we wish her continued success and happiness. Congratulations, Maria! |
Our friends, Meerenai Shim and David Warren, tied the knot earlier today in a beautiful ceremony held among beautiful redwoods in Old Mill Park in Mill Valley. Meerenai did an excellent job at arranging the music for the ceremony, which included included I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll by Joan Jett, Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, and a couple of Elton John standards. The reception was held immediately after the ceremony at the Mill Valley Community Center. It was awesome. Melissa and I wish Meerenai and Dave a lifetime of happiness. Mazel Tov! |
The Matrix has you, and me, and him, and her. Apparently it has almost everybody. The theatre house that I saw it in was packed to the gills, and it was a Friday afternoon! I wonder if anyone has tried to correlate drops in worker productivity to major theatrical releases. Or at least, drops in technology production when sci-fi movies are released.
The film is visually stunning. An amazing spectacle of special effects wizardry intermingled into an admittedly weak storyline. The first Matrix movie was fresh and unexpected, since we didn’t know what the Matrix was then. When Morpheus says that the Matrix is the world that has been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth–we were shocked, we cared, we were interested. The plot of this installment is simple, in the real world, the machines are making their way down to the city of Zion to destroy the city and its quarter million inhabitants. Morpheus says that the prophecy states that Neo will bring end to the war between the humans and machines, and destroy the Matrix. Neo goes into the Matrix to speak to the Oracle about fulfilling the prophecy and destroying the Matrix. There he finds out that the Oracle and other entities in the Matrix are actually rogue programs created by the machines that inhabit the Matrix. He also finds that Agent Smith is no longer an official agent of the Matrix, but is now a also a rogue program that is intent in gaining revenge or power from Neo–his intentions are never made perfectly clear. In fact, the intentions of all the rogue programs are never made clear, and there are a bunch of them in this film. There’s a lot of things about this movie that don’t make perfect sense. Do we even care about the people in Zion? What’s so great about Zion, anyway? All they do is rave and bicker with each other, except when they are not worshipping Neo like the next messiah or having raves next to lava pools and shit. Morpheus is preachy in this one, really preachy. Hell, even the Architect of the Matrix is preachy. By this point you almost want the Matrix to be “reloaded” and Zion to be completely destroyed, fuck ‘em. There’s absolutely no denouement–it is the first of two parts that will be continued when the next film, Matrix: Revolutions, is released in November. Reloaded is weaker than the first in storyline and frustratingly preachy in parts, but still a visual delight worth watching. It is a landmark film that must still be seen to be believed, but it falls short of capturing our imaginations as the first one did four years ago. Update (5/19/2003): Be sure to read Larry O’Brien’s review. |
They say all good things must come to an end, and so it was tonight. As the moon disappeared from an eclipse, the Lakers saw their dreams of a fourth title fade away at the hand of the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs were hot for most of the game, but just burst into flames in the third and fourth quarters to extend their lead past the 20-point mark. It became clear that there was no coming back from this one. There would be no last minute run, no athletic alley-oops, and no buzzer-beating heroics for this game. I congratulate the Spurs on a well-played series and retire my Lakers jersey to the closet until next year. Lastly, if we can’t win it, neither can the Kings–go Mavs! Peace. |
Microsoft admitted today that they were full of shit and that the iLoo crapper was not a hoax. For the record, I called bullshit on their “fake” press release story yesterday. Microsoft now says it had relied on bad information from an employee in the UK who said the iLoo was a hoax. However, after more talks with people in London, the company determined that it was a real project after all. The project has since been flushed, no pun intended, since Porta-Potties do not flush. |
An amorphallus titanum plant named Mr. Stinky started blooming in Miami, Florida yesterday, attracting massive crowds to its massive display. In case you are not familiar with the amorphallus, its bloom smells like putrid flesh to attract carrion beetles which help polinate it. Additionally, while the stink is making patrons nearly pass out the amorphallus exposes himself to the world in the most phallic of ways. You sick bastard! That’s right, Mr. Stinky’s manhood is a staggering 85 inches high, dwarfing last year’s stinky bloom in Encinitas by several feet. Check out last year’s blog entry for some real amorphallus titanum fun. |
A county hospital in Oregon seeks a Klingon-English interpreter to communicate with some of the mental health patients that refuse to speak anything else. I thought this was fake when I first read about it, but lo and behold it was picked up by the Associated Press and got on CNN. That’s what happens when geeks snap, so don’t push them over the edge or they’ll go Klingon on your ass–Kling Kling, Aaargh! |
Microsoft announced today that the iLoo product that they officially announced on May 2nd was just an elaborate April Fool’s joke. Who are they kidding with this shit!? First of all, if that were true, it would be the first time in Microsoft’s history that they have issued a “fake” press release, even for April Fool’s Day. Second, why would the joke be released on May 2nd, over a month late, and in Britain? Who knows? Anyway, that’s their story and their sticking to it. If you ask me this “fake” release explanation is just a ruse to cover up what can best be described as a major fuck up. Reading my blog entry about the crapper still makes me crack up, and this explanation is just as funny. |
Phil Jackson did not coach the Lakers today and was recovering from an emergency angioplasty he had yesterday. Lakers fans breathe a collective sigh of relief, since it appears that Phil Jackson dodged a potential heart attack by having the procedure.
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