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Monday, April 19, 2004 |
Look at yourself in the mirror. Do not move your head. Move only your eyes. Can you see them moving? Of course not. Weird, Ah? That's the kind of stuff that usually goes through my mind...
10:38:31 PM 
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Will trade passwords for chocolate. According to this Security Pipeline article, nearly three quarters of office workers in an impromptu man-on-the-street survey were willing to give up their passwords when offered the bribe of a chocolate bar. Heh. Heaven only knows what they'd fork over for venti latte with extra foam. Link (Thanks, Mitch!) [Boing Boing]
Actually, in my experience, you don't need the chocolate. You just need to ask. You don't even need a reason... Just ask. Is that simple. Of course, the corporations are the guilty party because they do not explain the real consequences your password have. I have made this experiment with both men and women: Give me access to your computer for half an hour and I'll find something valuable or embarrassing... I win every time...
7:40:53 PM
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ESC-key chairs. 
This German company is offering $90 stools shaped like giant ESC keys: "the perfect pouf for all victims of the new media collapse!"
Link
(via Engadget)
[Boing Boing]
Do i even need to say I want them?
4:47:22 PM
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Criticism in Japan for "Lost in Translation". Interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor on reactions in Japan to the film Lost in Translation -- which is evidently not translating so well.
[T]he film is under attack for cultural bias, and for maximizing its humor by depicting Japanese as robotic and cartoon-like. The question is: to what degree is the film insensitive - and to what extent is this the kind of "poking fun" that some ethnic groups now ignore? Until now, none of these voices or questions has come from Japan. Indeed, while "Lost in Translation" opened all over the world last fall, it opened in image-conscious Tokyo only last weekend. Some sources say this is deliberate. Japanese decorum on culturally sensitive matters precludes angry protest or high-volume misgivings about images that might be considered unfair or "unpleasant," to use a local reviewer's term. But it is telling that the Academy-award-winning "valentine" can be seen here only in a small 300-seat theater in Shibuya, and critics warn that the film may hurt the feelings of ordinary Japanese. Link, and Link to background on earlier inter-cultural criticism of the film (via Joi Ito) [Boing Boing]
After catching a glimpse of Bill Murray's acceptance speech at the Globe Awards, I looked forward to watching this movie, even twisting my wife arm to watch this before Mystic River. I hated the movie. First, the plot line was not very deep and didn't sound truthful to me. Second, the jokes were all on a stereotyped version of the japanese. I don't know if I would call it racist, I'll even admit that a first time visitor to Japan may get away with an impression similar to that of the film. But it is certainly true that the film is Culturally Shallow, for example, it doesn't make fun of the foreigners in Japan. Why is the japanese director funnier than the run down american actor? I didn't get it. And the joke about the japanese talking a lot and the translation being very short is so old it isn't funny anymore. I think the movie lacked imagination. It had pretty pictures, but it would have done better if it had try to present a foreigner either funnily lost in Japan (as the title seems to imply) or trying to understand it. What we saw was Japan lost in a foreigner.
10:52:33 AM
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Harvesting Different Fruit. Being shown the money isn't what drives Steve Wozniak, who retired from Apple after its initial public offering, having engineered Apple I and Apple II. By Robert Johnson. [New York Times: Technology]
Woz is my all time favorite Apple guy. I so get him...
10:12:32 AM
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Condensed, snarkified Pericles. Francis sez, " My Shakespeare reading group got around to Pericles on Sunday afternoon, and the plot was so far-fetched, even by Shakespearean standards, that I felt it needed documenting. So I wrote a condensed, snarkified version of the entire play."
HELICANUS: What's the matter, my lord?
PERICLES: Oh...the king of Antioch is sleeping with his daughter and now he wants to kill me because he's afraid I'll tell everyone about it or something. (He leans out the window.) OH, IF ONLY I HAD NEVER LEARNED HE WAS SLEEPING WITH HIS DAUGHTER.
HELICANUS: I can see how that would be a problem. Maybe you should leave town until he cools off, or dies, or whatever, since it's pretty easy to find you here.
PERICLES: Since I'm prince and all.
HELICANUS: Exactly.
Link
(Thanks, Francis!) [Boing Boing]
It reminds me of a literature course I took in college, we had to resume an important book, but your grade would be inversely proportional to the number of words (so the less words the better). Of course I got the highest grade, my short version of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was all of one sentence: "Anna Karenina was a bad girl, then she died." I do think it captures the spirit of the book.
10:09:02 AM
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© Copyleft 2005 Alfredo Octavio.
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Photos of ultra-creepy Japanese dolls. Sort of "Silence of the Lambs" meets "Dream House Barbie." 
Diccionario RAE (Click Here)