The Middle

When I was a kid, my form of rainy day entertainment was to watch Star Wars. It didn't matter which one, so long as there was a guy with a lightsaber coming up at some point in the next two hours. Needless to say, I saw Revenge of the Sith at the midnight opening.

After that midnight show, I was up in the air on how I felt about the movie, and it's place in the overall lineup of films. But each time I see it (that's my clever way of not embarrassing myself with the actual number, it's that bad) it gets better and better. Plot holes, horrific acting, and not quite right CGI abound, and yet I still can't get enough.

The lightsabers. The Force. The tie-ins to the original trilogy. The 'end of it all'.

I can't foresee me ever being this excited for a movie again, so I'm basking in it while I can.

There, just needed to get that down for posterity.

I work at IBM. They have an army of PR people, with whom am I completely unaffiliated. As such:

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Well, everyone and his brother has already posted the news about IBM encouraging employee blogging (link to Scoble, ironically enough), so it's nice to know I won't be summarily dismissed for simply having a blog (The merits of the content may be another matter, but we'll keep our fingers crossed). You can read the guidelines here.

I've skirted with a few of the guidelines on more than one occasion, but there's no reason to link to those now, let them search google for them.

Honestly, this was something I'd been waiting for for many months, as it seemed that every company except Big Blue had a corporate policy, if not an entire infrastructure dedicated to employee blogs. And no, the handful of guys on developerworks don't count.

Of course, the one thing that I've never done, and is now strongly encouraged, is to use a boilerplate disclaimer on my site. I'll be adding that to my about page real soon now, since I've grown accustomed to that IBM deposit in my bank account twice a month.

Yes, I think it's completely obvious that my rants about the MPAA and Ruby on Rails have nothing to do with my day job, or the opinions of the 320,000 other employees of IBM. And yes, it bothers me to no end that my employer feels it has a right to demand what get's placed on my personal, non-work related web site. But there are a million lawyers out there foaming at the mouth, and if there's one thing I know, it's to not start a fight with a lawyer.

So I'll cave and be a good corporate monkey, and add the disclaimer.

And my apologies for getting to this news so late, I was busy following the final guideline, "Don't forget your day job". Sadly, that spills over into my 'night job' more often than not.

According to slashdot and C|net, "the MPAA is working on new legislation" to bring back the recently defeated Broadcast Flag.

Remember the good old days when the people who wrote new legislation were called Congressmen? You know, those rich white dudes that we elected to represent us? Watch our backs? Strike down abusive monopolies? Protect us from evil corporations trying to line their pockets?

Those were the days.

(Last MPAA rant for awhile, promise)

C|net is reporting on the MPAA bittorrent crackdown, where MPAA CEO Dan Glickman whines about "stolen" content.

As it currently stands, I pay some absolutely insane sum to my local cable monopoly for the privilege of watching 2-3 hours of TV per week.

Can I tivo this content and watch it anytime I want, commercial free? Yes. Can I use the PVR supplied by the monopoly to do the same? Yes. Can I download it whenever I want and watch it that way? Not anymore, that's stealing. I pay for that content, and I have no qualms whatsoever in watching it the way I prefer.

If the cable companies really want to provide value to their customers and avoid distribution outside the intended market, then put up a website, charge me per show, and DRM the crap out of it. Otherwise, stop calling me a thief.

The big bad MPAA has finally gone after the major open bittorrent networks, which is horribly annoying.

Now I have to go find a new RSS feed for Azureus.

What are new internet services worth to you?

From the "um, duh?" department: Wired cracks the real estate 'code'.

Short version: Before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, check the public records to ensure that the overly-peppy woman with the wide smile isn't blowing smoke up your ass.

Thanks for the tip.