I just sent something similar to this to a few friends:

I know most of you read slashdot either directly or indirectly (via email from friends). Today, an article was posted about an informal challenge issued by Lawrence Lessig. You can find out more by checking out Slashdot for 11/25 or by looking at this URL: http://luke.francl.org/lessig-challenge/ .

I let my EFF membership lapse and kept putting off joining the ACLU. Well, this gave me the motivation to get off my duff and finally do something. Today, I joined the EFF again and donated $100. I joined the ACLU today as well, donating another $50. In the spirit of the challenge, this means I will go without buying that new video game I wanted, and putting off buying some DVDs.

At the very least, please consider joining the Action Center at the EFF. It’s free and allows you to choose which issues are important to you. When you see something that is important to you, you can take some action. Every fax, letter, and email adds up.

As Lessig put it, there are a number of Congressmen and Senators looking out for the consumers’ interests. We should do what we can to make sure that their work isn’t for naught.

Saw this on MacSlash today: Apple has posted two new Will Ferrell Switch Ads. These are nowhere near as good as the original that I had the pleasure of seeing at MacWorld NY this past summer. Watch the original first, if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s absolutely hilarious.

My name is Sujal Shah, and I’m a software engineer.

I have my new, definitive method of telling whether a movie sucks. Just watch it again a few months later. For example, I just got Episode II on DVD. Now, mind you, I didn’t think it was all that great in the theater. The Yoda fight scene at the end and the Jedi battle made up for it, since it was on the big screen and we had the crowd though, so I walked away thinking it was alright.

Well, watching it on DVD the other night just made it so clear how painfully bad that movie is. I mean, it sucks. Horribly. The story is miserable and the movie plods along painfully between action sequences. Lucas can’t do romantic scenes or decent dialog.

Anyway, I’ve come to realize that this is fairly consistent in determining really bad movies (it doesn’t work for figuring out if a movie is good, though… how else can I explain watching Lethal Weapon 4 about 8 million times). Some other movies this works for:

• Tomb Raider
• Star Trek: Insurrection, or any Star Trek movie with the next gen cast for that matter
• Episode 1
• The World Is Not Enough (and it pains me to say this about a Bond flic)

Of course, I own all those on DVD (what that says about my taste in movies is another issue).

There is this group out there that I cannot stop listening to. They are called Control Machete, and are a sort of rap band from Mexico. They most infamous song comes from that Levis commercial, called Si Senor. Their acutally album is quite interesting, though on the whole very angry. Great to listen to if you are having a bad day!

The first group to make my all time “They Fucking Rock” list of artists has to be Basement Jaxx. Creative electronica, both danceable and musically interesting all at once. They Fucking Rock. Take a listen to Broken Dreams, Romeo, or Red Alert to hear some of my favorite stuff. I usually have a lot of their stuff on my iPod, so just bug me if you see me on the street.

I’ve been hooked on In The Car (lyrics) by the Barenaked Ladies. All these old, weird memories of high school and college, growing up, and dating. Songs like this make me wish I had some musical talent…

Now, if I could just find my Yoko Ono, I could give up my, um… musical genius.

No, that’s not a typo in the title.

I caught a bit of Crossfire this evening and saw, of all people, Jerry Springer. In case you didn’t know, Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati once upon a time. What surprised me was that he actually was quite interesting to listen to.

The Democrat host asked him what he thought of the election results last week. Springer pointed out that the Democrats made nothing their main message and as a result had no issues. Personally, I believe that the Democrats need better leadership at the top. I try to be independent, though I am a registered Democrat (I was also once a registered Republican…), but I have to agree with Springer. The opposition party opposed nothing this past election. In fact, I can’t think of one thing that the Democrats put forward as a defining issue.

Massachusetts was particularly painful for me to watch. I can’t think of one issue that O’Brien ran on that was significant. I was more against what Mitt Romney was putting forward. That’s generally not a good way to win an election.

I can’t believe I was enlightened by Jerry Springer (er, the person, not the show )

Interesting perspective on Spam…. (courtesy of Jeffrey Rayport, CEO of Marketspace)

Just had an interesting conversation with Pete Blackshaw, founder and co-chairman of PlanetFeedback/Intelliseek. We were talking about what he and his colleagues are seeing regarding the impact of e-mail spam on consumer perceptions of marketing and advertising. His view is that spam is a cancer of the business world – and not just the online world, at that. ROI-oriented marketers love the tactic of outbound e-mail marketing because it has near-zero variable cost, and its impact is entirely measurable as click-throughs or conversions.

The problem is that the volume of such e-mail spam is rising to extraordinary levels, as we all know from the deluge in our e-mail in-boxes. The explanation is simple; from a marketer’s perspective, it’s free media, and what’s not to like about that? What’s happening, however, is akin to the “tragedy of the commons.” Everyone is putting a cow in the pasture because the cows can graze for free; but when that happens the grass in the commons gets rapidly depleted and then no cows can graze at all. In marketing terms, consumers are developing an increasingly negative view of advertising and promotion, because, in part, they are exposed to so much spam, spam is loathsome, and spam is invasive. That animus towards spam is spilling over into other media, including traditional media like television.

So what Pete and I were thinking is this: How much of a leap is it from a user perspective from deleting spam in your e-mail in-box or filtering it out of your e-mail stream and deleting TV commercials or filtering them out?

Is it me, or do a lot of people out there need more of a life.. I think this is taking the gaming world to a new degree of weirdness…

need life

Lets take a vote. Who liked the jelly beans and who did not. i thought it was far more interesting to have them on the page. Obviously sujal the Tyrant / dictator did not and took it down. I say down with dictatorship! Lets bring back democracy and decide together on the fate of the jelly beans!

One of the other points that was made in BFC was that the US is a country that very openly uses violence in a response to anything that goes against their current agenda. Some examples were dictators that we install who decide not to be our puppets anymore, or countries that decide to follow a government that we don’t like. On top of this, we seem to have a trend of finacing wars in other countries just, some would say, to continue selling them our weapons. What does this teach our children? That it is ok to blow up thousands of people just because they are not playing our game? I am not personally sure how much of an influence this is on making the US such a violent country, because honestly I don’t believe that most of the people here even know what is going on in the world, or why. Still, I believe this very black and white, good vs evil idea that Bush is promoting (the evil doers!) does teach our children hatred, that it is ok to hate a mass group of people just because of a certain difference.

I recently watched a movie (that a friend suggested to me after I talked his ear off about these issues) that covers the American involvement in El Salvador during the civil war. It is a pretty depressing movie, covering the involvement of the US in sending millions of dollars in aid to the goverment, to contine the war with the “guerillas”. The point made in the movie is that the guerillas were in the begining just common citizens who were opposing the military dictatorship, who used very violent tactics to rule the country. The media’s invlovement in twisting the facts presented to the US at the time is also shown, such as glossing over the brutality that is going on on the government’s side of the war (there were these death squads that would pretty much shoot anyone out past curfew, using tactics taught to them by the US training camps). The sad part is the war lasted in the end 20 years, largely due to the US’s constant funding towards the Salvadorian government, and managed to ruin what was one of the most developed countries in Latin America. The bright side is in the end both sides agreed to just stop fighting and form two political parties, as well as combine both armys. So, now they have one of the largest armys in Latin America…

I went to go see Bowling for Columbine on Sunday. If you like to think every now and again, definitely go see this movie. It was really entertaining, very accessible, and well paced. While I loved the movie, I do have some issues with the point he was making. What follows is a little critique of that part of the film.

Bowling for Columbine (BFC) is about gun violence in America, to put it quite simply. There are a number of reviews out there, and I’ll add links to them as I get time. I really loved the movie, and may look to add it to my collection once it hits DVD. Michael Moore is as entertaining as he is informative making this documentary feel like a funny (better than) Dateline story. It moves quickly, and keeps hitting a variety of different topics.

BFC examines why the gun death’s in America are several orders of magnitude higher than they are in other industrialized countries. Assuming I remember these numbers correctly, the U.S. had something like 11000+ gun deaths for last year. Canada, Britain, and Germany had 2-digit gun death totals for the same period, far fewer than can be explained away by population differences. Moore focused on using Canada as a counterpoint in most of his examples.

(Click here to read the rest of this post)

So, another coworker just added to the halloween candy pile. This is killing my new diet plan.I have decided that I am really fond of the new Reeses Stixs, however the Reese Fast Break is not so tasty (better to eat the Snickers Crunch).I think I have made my last meals (friday and today) consist entirely of candy. At least I am saved by packets of sugar free hot coco…:)

All I have to say is, “Go John Lackey.”

I have to point out that many folks criticized me for starting Lackey over some of my “proven starters” during the regular season. Clearly, this guy sucks. I mean, all he did was win Game 7 of the World Series.

Who knew of the endless posiblities
mac mods

I finally found it, my theme song!

Theme song

So finally after two years of not getting a cold, I am now officaly sick. I don’t understand the point of leaving work early, because it is not like going home made me feel any better yesterday. I just stared at the wall and felt restless.
No trick or treaters came to my door either. Not sure that i expected them, but at least I had candy and was prepared. I have also realized that excess amounts of candy don’t help colds much either, just makes you feel sicker.