The Gamechanger

I've mentioned this a few times over the last 2 years, the changing landscape of our business, and the major technological advances made in the entertainment industry since my arrival here in 1997.

This article from Wired is about one of my favorite current subjects, the RED camera.

I was fortunate enough to be on the frontend of the digital cinema revolution here in Hollywood, with one of my first producing jobs being the Sundance film fest short, shot by Allen Daviau; where we shot with the then "new" Sony VX1000 MiniDV camera in PAL format for an experimental short film that ended up at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001.

"Sweet" was my second producing job ever, following on the heels of an over-inflated 20 minute short film shot on SUPER35mm film where the filming and post production were both challenging, slow, and about as expensive as you could get working in film. The opportunity to work on "Sweet," as I look back, really did seem like a coming-of-age moment. If I remember right, it was that year that Apple's Final Cut Pro first came out as well.

This was the year I was still working at New Line Cinema in post production where we still would use a sync block and a film splicer to cut film and then tape it back together, and a flatbed to view it on. I was 24. To be fair, this stuff was on the way out, and Avid's were fully in use. The fact remained that we had this gear in the offices and it was used.

This was also the year The Orphanage first began testing their "film look" process as a service that eventually made it's way to a plug-in for software. Their major contribution to the film is reflected in their "presenting" credit to this day on "Sweet."

While what we achieved with that film was just a sliver of what RED now represents, it's encouraging to finally see our industry really embrace this type of change. I hope someday soon the productivity and cost/benefit gains that this camera represents will extend into the actual physical production processes that happen at the organizational level of making films & television. We're still struggling with antiquated, crummy software that doesn't allow for quick, easy, cross platform sharing of the information we use to schedule and budget projects. Those budgets and schedules are often the things that make a project work, or fail, and well... we're still failing there. (side note: There are a few options for this, but they are expensive, and kludgy; this is, of course, something I've been working on for some time, and there's good stuff happening behind-the-scenes:)

It's interesting to see RED finally hit the mainstream (if WIRED is mainstream? I like to think so...), and it will be a gamechanger for Panavision and Sony. Thankfully, Kodak saw the writing on that wall a couple of years ago and began realigning it's businesses appropriately. (though I never will forget one of the preeminent film labs in town taking Allen and I out to a Lakers game with some sweet box tickets and treating us to an awesome dinner (thanks John!) and talking about how Allen liked to call up Kodak and ask for specific emulsions on his film stock to experiment with...).

Only 4 months ago, I was approached by two new-to-Hollywood young filmmakers contemplating their first short film project who were looking for an "old hand" to guide them through their production. Their first undertaking? They had gotten on the waiting list and bought their own first full RED package, lenses, support gear, and all. No more begging for free or discounted gear from Panavision or Arriflex (Otto Nemenz) they were out to produce their own cinema quality films, on their own terms. I hope, and believe we'll only see more of this.

Personally, I can't wait to buy my first RED package one of these days (though by that time, it'll likely be 6k, or 8k...).

Panavision Camera? $25,000/month to rent
Red Camera? $17,500 to own

A new generation of storytellers with the tools to tell their own stories in grand cinematic vision?

Priceless.

Latest

Couple weeks ago, got an interesting call to put together something for MyDamnChannel, and below is the result.



I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the result, if not perfect. Terrell, J and Paul were all a pleasure to work with, and they made it easy, and 13,000+ views in 2 days online? That's not bad either!

It's also a cool format idea to have celebs sit down and have a conversation with each other and see what they say and we had fun making it:)

Seek First to Understand

A game creator recently took the brave step of directly asking people who pirate his games, why they do so, and to open a dialogue with them about it. (as an exercise, anywhere you see the word "game" replace it with movie or television show and chew on that a while).

A few days ago I posted a simple question on my blog. "Why do people pirate my games?". It was an honest attempt to get real answers to an important question... This is what I found:

Introduction

Firstly it's worth pointing out that there were LOTs of responses (and they are still coming in now), hundreds of comments on the sites listed, a ton of comments on the blog (despite it crumbling under the strain) and hundreds of emails made it through to me. I read every one of them.... Here is what they said:

The semi-political ones

I got a few people churning out long arguments about whether or not intellectual property is valid, and claiming that it was censorship, or fascism and other variations on this theme...

Money

A lot of anger was directed at the retail $60 games, and console games. My games were $19-23, but for a lot of people, it was claimed this was far too high. People talked a lot about impulse buying games if they were much cheaper.

Game Quality

This was a big complaint too. And this also surprised me. Not a single person said they had felt ripped off by a game due to substandard visuals or lack of content. The consensus was that games got boring too quickly, were too derivative, and had gameplay issues. Almost everyone had a tale of a game that was bought based on hype which turned out to be disappointing.

DRM

People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.

There's more on his site, go read it.

Today, he posted his conclusions, and they are an excellent window into the things the market that we create and sell film, television and music for.

It's worth reading the summary of responses, and what he's going to do about it.

There's a good lesson to be learned here.

I Have Seen the Future of Storytelling

This post on TechCrunch shows video from a new 3d engine that does all it's rendering in "the cloud" and provides for photoreal environments ostensibly to be used for gaming.

What I see in this demo video? I see shooting a scene on a deserted stretch of Pacific Coast Highway (as shown in the video) without the cost of police, shutting down the highway, all my lighting crew and camera crew and bringing in talent to do voices that are blithely happy they don't have to sit through make up, sit through lighting changes, etc in order to act their roles.

With tools like this it won't matter how much money you do or don't have, it will matter how well you create characters, and write, and set up your shots to convey the emotions you want in your story.

This is my prognostication - OTOY, and cloud rendering that makes any photoreal environment available anytime for the purpose of telling story, will radically change our art.

Shell Vacations - Hawaii

I usually don't use my soapbox (blog) to complain, but once in a while there's something I think people should know about, and avoid.

We recently took a trip to Hawaii, and stayed in Kailua Kona. While walking the boardwalks down by the beach, you'll notice LOTS of "discounted stuff to do" vendors, who will sign you up for a timeshare presentation in exchange for discounted things like snorkel cruises, helicopter flights, etc.

One of those, is Shell Vacations Club. When we signed up for the presentation, we thought, "Hey, we'll take an hour and a half and listen to what they say and at least think about it a bit." Especially in light of the fact that right on the contract it says "If you decide not to attend, you'll pay the difference between the discounted price and the full price of your chosen activities."

So we figured we could take a slight hit if we couldn't make it.

It also says in HUGE letters right in the office, TIMESHARE NOT REQUIRED.

Well, we ran out of time, and ended up going on one lame activity (the rest of our trip was much more satisfying self-guided stuff), and when we told them we couldn't make the timeshare presentation, they proceeded to to charge us full price for the activity we did go on.

This was a doubling of the price from what the contract clearly stated. When I tried to raise the point in person, then further over the phone to get them to honor their agreement, they refused.

When I wrote to their corporate office about what happened, they've refused to respond.

So, case in point, for anyone considering going to Hawaii, either avoid these guys altogether, or at least be just fine with paying full price for your activities if you choose not to go to the presentation. Shell Vacations Club will not honor the agreement you sign with them, and it can cost you.

Sony HDR-SR11 Workflow in Final Cut Pro Studio

Now that I'm working with the HDR-SR11 camera ingesting footage for editing and display on our home theater system, I figured I'd take a minute to outline workflow using this camera and FCP Studio for Blu-Ray compatible playback files.

A few things worth noting.

1. I record all files on the camera at (FH) or AVC HD 16M (which is 16mb/s). This is the highest picture quality this camera records, at 1920x1080i, and with their AVC encoding still results in over 300 minutes of record time for the onboard 60gb hard drive.
2. I'm using Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 and Compressor 3.0.3 running on a Macbook Pro 2.4ghz C2D with 4gb RAM.
   

OK, now for getting footage off the camera. Here's the single biggest design drawback of the HDR-SR11 and that is the fact that the only transfer option if you're using the onboard hard drive, is via USB cable.

FCP Logging
Once hooked up to your system, and USB connect enabled on camera menu, you can open Final Cut, and use File>Log & Tranfer to access the hard drive and select in/out points and do your logging here.

With the USB speeds, I found that the computer would consistently choke and crash if you are attempting to ingest footage from one clip while scrolling through other clips on the camera hard drive for logging.

The camera desperately needs a faster interface for getting stuff off the internal hard drive. Firewire 800 would be great, but I can see where the 9-pin connector of FW800 would be a problem to incorporate into the tiny camera body, so I'm not sure if there's a good solution.

Unfortunately, it seems that even if you record to Memory Stick, the Express34 card readers all run at USB2.0 speeds as well.

FCP Transfer

Now, once you've set your in and out points and are ready to drag media in the transfer queue, it's time to go grab a cup of coffee, or maybe the whole pot, because you're going to wait a while.

When ingesting into FCP, the automatic ingest settings (that I've not found a way to change) are to transcode all the 16mb/s AVCHD encoded footage into Quicktime files using Apple ProRes422.

The good news about this, is the resulting files look spectacular.

The bad news about this, is that it almost doubles the data rate from the originals.

The 16mb/s of AVCHD turns into roughly 25mb/s in ProRes 422. This means you'll need about 1.5GB of storage per minute of footage you'd like to bring into the system. Needless to say, plan ahead for how much space you're going to need.

Editing in FCP

Now, for some more good news. Once ingested in this manner, your files will NOT need rendering once placed in the timeline. FCP 6.0.4 works flawlessly with dropping ProRes clips into the timeline, and even plays back simple transitions and reversed frames without rendering.

Edit as usual:)

Compressor Output for Blu-Ray compatible playback

Our home theater setup is built around a Sony Playstation 3, connected via component cables to a Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY.

While Compressor only comes with settings for HD-DVD compatible file output, as noted in the threads over at Apple's FCP boards, there's a simple check box in the Inspector that will change the file suffix from .m2v, to .m2t, which is all that is needed to create an MPG2 file format with HD playback rates on the PS3.

Here are a couple of screen grabs of the settings I use in Compressor.

Since most of the stuff I'm editing in tests is fairly short, I'm using really high bit rates to get the most out of it.

These will be the .M2T files I'll post later in the week that you can download and test for playback on your PS3 (or other compatible device) and for checking out the image quality from the HDR-SR11.

Under the "Extras" tab is where you'll find the option for "Multiplexed MPEG-1/Layer 2 Audio"; checking this box will change the file type from .m2v, to .m2t - Voila!










I have not yet figured out if there's a way to encode Dolby Digital 5.1 in this file type, though that's something I hope to experiment with soon.

At any rate, there's the way to do it, check it out, and if you have anything I got wrong, or a better way to get through it, feel free to drop me a line!

Update on the Timed Power strips

Well, as per an earlier posting, we installed CFL's and timed power strips to completely shut off components of our home theater that were supposed power-suckers in "standby mode" and I don't think we'll really get an accurate picture for a while.

We just got the power bill from the last month of using these, and compared to the prior month, our bill was actually more - due to higher AC usage. Sooo it's pretty tough to figure out if they're saving us any electricity or not.

Ah well - tis a good effort.

Sony HDR-SR11 - almost obliterating the consumer/professional line

Well, I didn't think I'd be dumping my trusty Panasonic DVX100B camera that has served honorably and well in Standard Definition, shooting things that have ended up on Broadcast television in more than one place.

I especially didn't think I'd be dumping a semi-pro-sumer camera for a *gasp* consumer-grade camera.

But I did.

Just after going on vacation, we found a deal we couldn't beat at Costco (in Hawaii, where everything is supposed to cost more, but didn't - even gas was a full 20-30 cents/gallon cheaper than in Los Angeles...) on a Sony HDR-SR11 HD camcorder.

It had a great zoom (that only got better), and so that I could maintain some semblance of pro-gear interface, it has a line mic input that I can hook up to a Beachtek DXA-6VU and add two balanced XLR inputs with level meters.

In the next few weeks, I'll post some video from the camera for folks to download and check out. For a vacation, I did manage to put the camera through it's paces in some challenging lighting conditions including underwater shooting (using the Sony SPK-HCD, which worked reasonably well; also look for more on this later), capturing lava eruptions from a long distance in total darkness, shooting fireworks, and using it's HD nightshot as well.

Upon returning from the trip, it was with some small bit of sadness, but lots of enthusiasm as well that I ditched the DVX kit on Craigslist after looking at the footage coming off the HDR-SR11.

I can say I haven't seen footage look this good off a consumer grade camera... well, ever. At any rate, if you're in the market, these cameras can be had for under $1k, and they're worth checking out.

Proof forthcoming in other posts.

Energy Conservation in real life...

So, we're all trying to do our part to reduce our energy usage at home right?

Er... well... uh... not really. Our energy use in our home has roughly doubled in the last year as we added new gadgets and electronics, which of course means a [more than] doubling of the electricity bill as use and rates rise.

As I started researching the biggest "power suckers" in our home, a few of the devices it turned out drew nearly as much electricity while in standby as if they were on 24/7.

The problem comes in that a lot of these interdependent devices have settings that are lost if you completely cut off the power to them. But a number also retain their settings. With that in mind, I went searching for some kind of digitally timed powerstrips to plug stuff into and set power timings on them.

Imagine my surprise to find that what's out there for timed power strips are... well... kludgy at best. There's nothing out there at all that you can plug into your computer and set timings, or create "whole house" energy timing policies with.

The options I did find, were literally impossible to find locally, and I ended up ordering a few of these powerstrips from Intermatic with digital timers on them. While not as elegant a solution, these actually worked out pretty well. We now have about 500w of standy appliances and electronics that power all the way down each night during non-use hours.

We'll be interested to see how these help reduce energy usage (or not) over the next couple of power bills - I'll post results here when the data comes in.

Cato on Copyright

Great article today over on Cato about copyright being stretched until it's broken. In many comments around the web, the sensible reaction is "well, let's abolish copyright."

I don't necessarily disagree, even as a content creator.

I thought this bit in the article was really important:

Adding more “content” will strictly speaking produce no value — whether culturally or economically. What’s valuable is supplying a context where people can come together to create meaning out of abundance. The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth.

The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth. Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, has recently captured it well: When copies are superabundant, they become worthless, while things which can’t be copied become scarce and valuable. What counts in the end are “uncopyable values,” qualities which are “better than free.”

This "frame of reference" in the first paragraph, and the "uncopyable" values in the second, I really think are the key to the next for-profit generation of entertainment.

It's important to note that "for-profit" segment, as the not-for-profit content creation market will continue to explode, and erode the ability of a large segment of people in the entertainment industry to make a living. This is simply the way the world changes.

So how are you going to evolve your style?

The Future of Storytelling

Over the last 100 years, the motion picture has changed our world, and our storytelling frameworks from what had preceded it for thousands of years. Stories used be told either verbally by local story tellers or by the presentation of plays.

The more I watch the films we produce any more, the more convinced I become that in another 100 years, or perhaps sooner, we'll look back at passive films as a quaint storytelling medium.

I don't think that all storytelling become active gameplaying experiences, but I do think there will be a medium of exploration and of shared discovery that will lead us to create new forms of storytelling. These new forms will grow from the mediums that become possible.

As the last 100 years we've been restricted to the visual storytelling of those that had access to celluloid. Then to television, and now to digital cameras. A progression of the art, to be sure - and there is more progression to come.

What will it be?

It's up to any and all of us who dream of telling great stories, to stretch our imaginations beyond the story arcs, beyond the character development, beyond the visual styles we use to communicate our ideas and themes and our innermost hopes and fears of the human experience, and find news ways of weaving these into the mediums now evolving.

And for those of the new generation that understand the possibilities now blooming before us, and the opportunities to create things utterly new - there's a new wild wild west of storytelling laid before us.

Got yer spurs?

Goodbye Plaxo

After years of having Plaxo screw up my address book updates, they've finally graduated to aggregating enough data about what I'm doing around the net, to make me nervous.

To have that coupled with the fact that Comcast bought them, which adds another level of discomfort, I've decided to delete my Plaxo profile.

To all of you have my contact info from having directly worked with me, please don't take it as a slight to any of you, and please feel free to stay in touch (y'all know how:).

I'm still (for the time being) on Linkedin (only approving those people I have had actual; real-world work and contact with, thanks).

Sometimes, making your world a bit smaller, makes it a bit more manageable in the big picture.

Flashbacks & Flashforwards

A good friend of ours has scheduled a series of 80's movies screenings at his home throughout the summer, and we love going.

The classic films we grew up with are always great to revisit. From Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the Goonies, and more - a lot of Spielberg and a lot of Lucas. It's Flashback city.

As we continue to evolve what entertainment is, and the more I get into new media, the more quaint the storytelling structure of a traditional narrative film seems.

I'm coming to firmly believe that the film business is really missing the boat in just taking our old, tired, 2 hour passive story structures and the only thing "cutting edge" about them is either the visual effects, or in some cases, online sales or streaming of the same old format.

The storytellers of Hollywood really haven't even begun to explore what new story structures we can create in the brave new world at our doorstep. But story format isn't static; and there will be a new generation of storytellers who step forward in the years ahead to present formats that will be totally new, engaging, and groundbreaking.

I'm excited about the possibilities.

Power to the Producers

I think sooner or later we have a couple of game changing things we need to be aware of as content producers.

1. Audiences are (mostly) unwilling to pay for content.
   
   Movies are still an exception, but only when priced fairly. The collapse of the movie rental industry (in their $3.99 Brick and Mortar incarnation anyway) is a clear sign of this. As is the drop in attendance at movie theaters the last few years (though gaining in overall dollars as ticket prices are hiked - again, at odds with the continued perceived decline of the quality of the product).
   
   
2. Advertisers are willing to pay for access to the audience that wants our content.
   
   Unfortunately, I know most of us really hate advertising, but in lieu of a better way to pay for the cost of the creating content in the first place, this is about as good an option as we have.
   

In light of those facts, Chris Anderson over at The Long Tail has put up some great data on Ad CPM's that I strongly believe are a leading indicator of putting power back into the hands of the producers.

The data shows that higher traffic websites (eg - bigger distributors of content), receive far lower CPM's than smaller traffic websites that deliver more focused demographics.

The vast majority of content created today really *does* fall into niche categories - and niches where even a (relatively) small number of viewers could potentially turn a profit for smart producers.

It also means that as producers we have to be more savvy about *where* our audience is, what their interests are, and how to engage them, and how to earn enough revenue from them that we can survive, maybe even thrive.

It means we have to be smart enough to adapt and learn more about business than maybe we did in the past. It may mean extending your product "brand" to finite goods ahead of seeing if you have a hit movie or not. With low/no cost on-demand product fulfillment these days, there's absolutely no reason you can't launch your new online series with a shopping cart and backend vendor already set up to sell t-shirts or mugs or whatever with your show logo on them or catchy phrases from your script (think: "I drink your milkshake").

This is all usually way out of bounds for producers, as studios took that to run with themselves, but as our business models change, so must the things we do to keep our livelihoods lively.

Why do commercials cost so much?

I'm working on an ad campaign at the moment, and it's an interesting break from the more traditional film, television, and new media stuff I've been doing over the years.

I forgot that 10 years ago when I got my first "break" in the business, it was working on a couple of commercial sets in Seattle.

I never went back to working on commercials after moving to Los Angeles. Not that there were some points where financially, I wished I could have, my energy just never really worked in that direction.

Now that I'm at least being a tourist back in the commercial biz, I find that a lot of people in the business hate what they're doing, or just seem to be totally deluded about the importance of advertising (or the creative that goes with it).

The more I examine it, the more convinced I am that the exorbitant costs of producing commercials is more a product of self-loathing than it is based in any rational logic.

The director's who'll create a feature film and spend a year or more of their life on it for $50k, or even DGA minimums of $300k, and won't take a commercial for less than $10k PER DAY. There are a number of commercial directors who do movies at $5m for a year or two of their lives, and demand $50k a day to shoot commercials.

The producers - who on the feature and television sides often work tirelessly for years to see a project through, often with paydays that average out to less than $100k/year for the years they put into a film (again, this is referring to the 1% at the top, not the averages by any means), and their commercial counterparts who arguably know less about real filmmaking, pricing themselves at $50k for a month of work.

This reaches all the way down the line too. Cameramen that I could hire on features and TV for $500/day or so, won't set foot on a commercial set for less than $700/10 - meaning that in the guaranteed overtime of a commercial set due to noodling by a tent full of ad agency execs, his day rate will come close to, if not over, $1000 for the day.

Watching the actions and words of some people in the commercial business, it's clear that a lot of them hate advertising and commercials as much as the average non-industry person does. They know deep down that what they create is an uninvited, often infuriating intrusion and a meaningless distraction in the world at large. And in order to make it ok, they try to make sure it generates enough money they can buy their souls back.

Old Media, Meet New Media

In the grand scheme of things, it's hard to fault new media for attempting to duplicate what old media used to do.

In fact, there are many things old media has done for so long that its way of doing things works very well. There's a reason it takes "x" number of people to get things done. It's very, very difficult for one, or two, or even three people working together to create a broadcast ready live gaming solution including:

• broadcast operations center (from scratch)
• set design AND construction
• show formatting & creative structure (game operations, titles, content, and structure)
  
• show graphics
• physical operations (crew hiring, payroll, coordination, etc.)
• host casting (posting for, screening, meetings, etc.)

Anyway, that's not one person overseeing, that's one person DOING all those things.

While I agree wholeheartedly that there are layers of operations in Hollywood that aren't necessary in New Media, there's a good number that are for sheer number of hours in a day vs. the number of things to get done.

Now, as the last portion of the VS. Los Angeles is the most difficult, most expensive place in the country to produce content. This is something I've espoused for a long, long time, and have always made known to anyone who wants to ask.

I've produced in Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. Along the way, I've had to organize or coordinate shoots in Nevada, Utah, Georgia, West Virgina, Kentucky, and Iowa.

I've got a pretty good frame of reference on LA being the hardest and most expensive place to produce content after a decade of living and working here.

The lessons that New Media still has to learn is, Los Angeles doesn't have a corner on the talent market, overall.

Hire a good leader, and that leader will find the right people no matter where they are. That leader might come out of LA, since that's where they make the best living (if they are good at what they do), and rest can follow. But producing everything in LA, is about the worst idea new media companies can have (unless they have created great local infrastructure, which I've seen in about 1 of 100 companies, and it cost them a LOT of $$$$).

In my opinion, if new media is too succeed, it has to recruit key members from established places and let them find the local talent to move you forward.

Anyway, enough blathering. Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, I've been butt over teakettle trying to make a new media show work that probably shouldn't have ever tried to set up in so-cal (and I said as much in the interviews).... and yes, I have been building sets, and computers and show rundowns and motion graphics, all by my lonesome..

Oh heady days.

Cereal.. Serial.. Something?

Well, as I've always been working away with fingers into many different things from wine caves to digital art products to Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood, I've just been tapped to Executive Producer a spin off series for a new media web startup called Playcafe.

With an incredibly tight budget, and a window of opportunity to prove not only creative talent, but market opportunity, it's going to be an interesting and unique challenge to launch this new show and see what we can do to really take the audience participation and viewership to the next level.

I'll be posting more links and info about what we're up to as it happens.

Studios STILL trying to figure it out

So, apparently Paramount Studios is the latest to get into the "made for mobile" content game.

It cracks me up to see this being made as a serious play in the United States market. The equation of population who can watch stuff on mobile devices is tiny not because of technology limitations, but think about WHERE are we when we watch stuff.

Then think about where we are with our phones or mobile devices. We're in our CARS.

And we can't watch and drive at the same time.

America has a tiny, tiny fraction of it's population that uses mass transit, and those are not the high-use, high-revenue users that are going to adopt and pay for content while riding the bus.

The only mass transit really in use today in the US that has the demographics we'd be shooting for are on airplanes, and that's the one place that, oh yeah, you can't use your cell phone to make a phone call, much less a 3g or EVDO connection.

Asia, and parts of Europe are excellent markets for mobile content, and for companies who make plays towards those markets, they better have A) low production costs, and B) SOME kind of understanding of the cultural values of stuff those audiences want to see.

We have to understand that *watching* content on a mobile device has to compete with some high level tasks (like driving, walking, etc.) that are only set aside during times on mass transit.

So, mass transit = mass eyeballs.
Individual transit = no eyeballs.

There ya go.

Anonymous sites DOWN.

Seems that CoS is getting ahead of Anonymous.

Does anyone know what's going on????

http://www.remisser.com/attack.html
DOWN

http://711chan.org/i/
DOWN

http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology
DOWN

It also seems that there is rapid progress in removing "offending" videos from YouTube and other places.

There's been no "Anonymous" updates publicly in the last 48 hours or so. Wonder what's going on? Did they get taken out that fast?

The New Wars

I don't know about any of you, but I'm totally fascinated by the "war" just launched on Scientology.

This is a part of the future that I mused about a while back when talking about 3D printers and the fact that at some point in our lifetimes, the angry, isolated nerd from jr. high may just be able to go home and print up his own little weapon of mass destruction because he's having a bad day.

This new campaign launched by "Anonymous" is really the first time in history we've seen a orchestrated attack with no way to stop the attackers. There is no "head" to cut off. There is no stopping them. There is no identifying (most) of them.

So, should we be afraid?

I don't think so.

Should we legislate against this?

I don't think that's right either.

In this case, perhaps what's needed is a better definition of what a religion is so that we don't get into constitutional rights battles.

If religion we're defined as faith or belief in something (as it already is) and ADD: by the free will of the individual practicing that faith or belief. That just might make a clear distinction between cults, and religions.

Now then, proving free will may be difficult, but it's a whole lot more objective than getting into arguments about "freedom of religion."

But I digress, it's a fascinating world we live in. Instead of all running around scared and wanting "our" governments to protect us, maybe we should all get a little bit more objective about the differences and tolerances or lack thereof between us. I'll gladly tolerate your beliefs as long as they don't impinge on my superseding right to live.