Archive for April, 2006
April 27, 2006 at · Filed under mobile, politics
the wsj had a story today of a preemptive move by Cingular and Verizon Wireless to prevent the FCC from starting to regulate mobile content. so in order to stop the regulator from getting involved, they came up with their own set of rules, which seem much more restrictive than what is applied to network television and broadcast radio.
Both carriers have draft policies that go into what types of content is decent enough to be accessible to their subscribers. they also list words/phrases that can not be used in ringtones. for example, according to Cingular’s new policy a ringtone can not include the following words (partial list…):
Ass — Balls — BJ — Breasts
Condom — Corn-hole — Fart — Fornicate
Fudge packing — Insemination — Laid — Lesbian
Masturbate — Naked — Nipples — Nutsack
Orgasm — Pee pee — Penis — Piss
Porn — Puberty — Ruby red bag — Scrotum
Semen — Sex — Shit — Sit on my face
Sixty-nine — Smegma — Teabagging — Testicles
Uncircumcised — Uterus
Verizon Wireless had an even more exhaustive list (with many terms i did not understand..)
it must have been interesting sitting in these meetings and debating whether to allow users to hear a ringtone that has words like “camel jockey” or “spank the monkey”. there must have been heated debates on the merits of each phrase.. now that’s the type of brainstorming i’d like to take part in. they probably brought in teenagers as experts on the subject matter, to make sure something like “poontang” does not escape their blacklist.
they go into further detail, defining what type of images may be displayed (”no nipple, no nipple covers, no nipple shadow…” - it seems they really investigated the nipple issue in this post wardrobe-malfunction world), what could be included in the name of the images (no “Bootylicious”), what names for ringtones (no “Grandma pregnant with uncle” ??), what type of video content (i thought the quote from the title of the post is great).
it seems like a very tough task, keeping up with all the indecencies around us. and how to cast a wide enough web to catch them all. Verizon Wireless tried to address the challenge by dividing the problematic content into categories such as “Lingerie - Female” and “Medium Short Rear Nude - Female”. For example, in the definition of “Medium Short Rear Nude - Female” it says that the image “can include a full rear view, but not with legs up or apart”.
i think this is INSANE and troubling. probably the best example you can get of why the carriers should not have such a level of control over the network. just to be clear, this is not talking about the content that the carrier publishes, but rather rules that will apply to ANY content provider that wants to offer content to the subscribers of the carrier.
it is also a good example why the most affective form of censorship is self-censorship fueled by fear (e.g. China..). the carriers are taking an ultra conservative approach, just to keep the FCC off their backs.
i think a much more reasonable approach would be to require content providers to notify subscribers accessing their site that it includes explicit content, so they can choose to go somewhere else. that’s it. without going into the details of defining what is decent and what is not, and censoring free speech in the process.
April 27, 2006 at · Filed under movies
Jim Emerson put together a list of 102 movies you “must” see before you can call yourself a “movie literate”. i never claimed to be one. but here is the list with ‘*’ marking a movie i have seen.
* “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2″ (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
* “Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
* “Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
* “Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
* “Bambi” (1942) Disney
* “The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
* “Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
* “Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
* “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
* “Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
* “Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
* “Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
* “Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
* “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
* “The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
* “Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
* “Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
* “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
* “E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
* “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
* “The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
* “Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
* “Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
* “Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
* “The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
* “Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
* “GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
* “The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
* “Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
* “Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
* “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
* “Mad Max 2″ / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
* “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
* “Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
* “Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
* “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
* “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
* “North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
* “Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
* “Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
* “Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
*”Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
* “Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
* “The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
* “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
* “A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
* “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
* “Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
* “Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
* “West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
* “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming
April 26, 2006 at · Filed under mobile
a US research firm just published results of a recent survey into adoption and usage of video handsets (see NY Times article).it seems that over 25% of users now have a mobile phone that supports video, but only 1% use it…
i think the 1% is actually high, considering the fact that:
- the video services are outrageously expensive
- the content sucks
- the network speed is not great
- you have to also pay for the traffic
the research also found that the video handsets and video services are not causing people to switch between carriers.the mobile carriers are getting it all wrong again. they need to lower the cost of the service, bundle in the traffic cost (so it’s not a separate charge), and focus on the right kind of content.the most natural video content, and the one the carriers focused on, is bringing in the TV broadcast and cable channels. sounds like the right thing to do. but i think it may be the wrong type of content for a mobile device.
the screen is small, the quality is low and most likely people will not tune-in at a certain hour (e.g. to trun it on at 9pm catch the Sopranos or Lost), so it’s more logical to focus on short videos, that can be accessed on demand. this is where i think the carriers will start seeing adoption going up, and some viral marketing scenarios (assuming they are going to charge reasonable prices).
will be interesting to see how long it will take them to figure it out.
April 26, 2006 at · Filed under internet
about 5 seconds were enough for me to decide that i hate the new Yahoo! Mail.
yahoo! today released the beta of their new yahoo! mail service to all US subsribers. the new interface is an outlook copycat (preview pane, folder management). it works pretty fast, too. but there is one MAJOR issue as far as i am concerned. the advertising.
they have a vertical ad bar on the right, and 3 ad buttons on the bottom left. at least on my laptop this takes too much of the screen real-estate, and the dynamic ad on the right is driving me crazy.
you can still use the previous version of yahoo! mail, but sooner or later this is going to be out of beta, i am seriously considering phasing out of yahoo! mail. i have been using gmail for a while too, but i don’t like the fact that they took this religous stand with regard to folders (they want to make users use tags and search rather than folders). i like filing my stuff into folders, especially with the amount of emails i get.
April 24, 2006 at · Filed under internet, politics
i just finished reading the Sunday Times and its feature article Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem).
it is an interesting piece which explains how the Chinese government is censoring the Internet. They basically have a Great Firewall that is enforced on all sites outside China. So anytime a user in China is accessing the Internet beyond the Chinese border it goes through the Firewall (which uses a blacklist as well as a keyword base censorship).
For sites that are ran within China, with local servers the government is making the site operators to sign up for a vague self-censorship policy, that leaves a lot of room for the people running the site to interpert what they should and should not censor. the penalties for not enforcing the policy can be harsh, and arbitrary.
it sounds a bit liberal. using a vague policy. but it is the other way around. by leaving it vague and letting the companies police themselves, the government is instilling fear. you never know whether you crossed the line, so you’re always in panic and you will probably take an even more extreme position, censoring even stuff that would have been ok with the government.
this is a big challenge for the foreign companies. and the major portals have taken different stands on the issue. it seems Yahoo! is the worst. complying readily with the censorship, and giving users’ information to the government (which in the past year lead to 2 arrests of journalists/bloggers).
Microsoft is taking the same approach as Yahoo!, but to date has not been involved in providing users information (i assume they were not asked..).
Google has launch google.cn, which is a censored version of google.com, but is not offering gmail, gtalk and blogger, in order to not be in a position where they may be required to give away users information, or participate in active users censorship. whenever they censor search results they inform the user that the search results have been edited to comply with chinese laws.
the latest news are regarding Skype (which has partnered with Tom.com to offer skype in china). and a weekend report by the Financial Times suggests that Skype is censoring the text messages sent on their system.
in my opinion Google took the most honorable approach. it avoided getting into the business of offering services, which may put them in a position that they will be required to cooperate with the government in issues that may lead to arrests, and it provides a disclaimer, which is in my opinion is very important, since it basically tells the user “the government does not want you to see this stuff”.
the US Congress actually called Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Cisco to testify in Washington about their Chinese policies. i watched some of the hearing at the time (a couple of months ago), and typical to these type of hearing the congressmen where more interested in sounding smart and getting quoted in the papers, than in the real issue. so they resort to superficial arguments that means nothing.
i am still reading the “clash of civilzations” (i am taking my time with it), and it talks about the rise of Asia and China specifically, and about issues such as modernization, democratization and westernization (too much “zation” for a sentence..). it is my belief that the Internet will have a profound effect on China, and that the next generation of the growing middle class and the leadership will be very different thanks to the Internet.
