Nosce te ipsum

What can I say that hasn't been said already - another winner for Pixar, another great movie for kids and adults to enjoy together - what's not to love? Well, certainly these stuffed shirts can find something wrong with Pixars success! From the I can't belive it's not a reality show dept:

STUDIOS SUE PIXAR, DEMAND BAD MOVIE
"Stop making the rest of us look bad," demand Hollywood executives

Hollywood — The eight major Hollywood studios have filed suit against CGI animation company Pixar for its consistent record of quality movies. The complaint alleges that with its sixth consecutive profitable and critically acclaimed film in “The Incredibles,” Pixar is overturning a decades-long public relations campaign waged by Hollywood studios to convince the public that it’s impossible to consistently make high quality films.
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As a related follow-up from the I really wish I were kidding dept:

Disney to Make Toy Story 3 Without Pixar
Let's see, over the last decade your own films have continued to get worse by the year, revenues are down, you are no longer seen as the creative driving force in the industry you created from the ground up and now due to a battle of two enormous egos, you we're able to negotiate a new deal with the young cash cow Pixar so what do you decide to do? Exercise your rights to the Toy Story franchise and decide to make TS3 all by yourself? Oh God, how bad will this movie suck? I'm sorry but Disney simply does not have the wit and charm (not to mention the staff of PhD technical folks who bring John Lassiters creative visions to live) to do this movie justice.

How hard must it be to create something that's going to appeal to young and old alike all the while creating an instant classic sure to be loved through the generations? I'd say thats pretty high up there folks and not only has Pixar been able to do it - they've been able to do it CONSISTENTLY! ...and there's probably a damn good reason for it. They've managed to create an environment and team of people who really get it and are executing flawlessly on their creative vision. Given John's history, this is a vision nearly 25 years in the making and now that he's in a position to do on the world's stage - I think we've only just begun to see what they're capable of. If Disney truly does attempt to do this - I wish them well - and I sincerely hope they don't completely and totally mess up the fine history that is Toy Story. As usual, more interest banter on this topic on the Slashdot discussion to this story.

Personally, I've read 2600 for nearly 15 years now and while I certainly don't agree with everything presented, I owe Emmanual a great deal of gratitude for everything he's done over the years - he's certainly opened my eyes to many new things and God Bless him for having the balls to say the unpopular truths. I think it's great that WUSB continues to give him 2+ hours of airtime each week in the middle of the FM dial in New York. I can only imagine that's some pretty prime space on the radio dial that Clear Channel would love to own. Now if I can just convince them to podcast the two weekly radio shows (1 & 2) so I don't have to manually go download them every week - all in good time. Regardless, take few minutes and load up your ipod with some of the 5th Hope sessions - you'll likely be surprised by what you find and who knows, you might just learn something.

Pictures from Fallujah that probably won't be on your television.

Out of respect for the victims and their families, I've only posted one of the more non-graphic images but the look on this guys face says it all. Looking at some of these pictures absolutely breaks my heart to see these innocent little children missing large parts of their anatomies because of the war that rages outside their door - it's something that they are obviously too young to comprehend, much less be a part of - but even if they were older, is there really any explanation that makes any sense? On last night's Off The Wall broadbast from New York (WUSB) http://www.2600.com/offthewall/mp3files/2004/off_the_wall__20041116.mp3 - Emmanual talked about how the military restricted men between the ages of 16 to 60 were not allowed to leave the city in the weeks preceeding the US's taking of Falluja. Can you imagine that? Not being allowed to leave your town knowing full well that it was about to be the target of the United States Marines as they literally went house by house to clear the city. I don't care where you are from, that would be damn terrifying for anyone, knowing full well that they're going to assume anyone left in the city is an insurgent who poses a threat to them. Also on that broadcast of OTW, they played an clip that has been making the rounds on CNN where a group of Marines entered this masque inside the city (that apparently they had been through already previously) and there were bodies everywhere - you hear gunfire from the soliders, he comes out and tells the others: "there was a guy still alive in there on the floor" - "did he have a weapon?" - they reply and to that he answers "I don't think so" -- wow, talk about shoot first ask questions later.

What's interesting is how in this country, CNN has all of these retired generals on air trying to justify such actions based on it's context and environment but when you get outside of our corporate controlled media and listen to another viewpoint like the BBC, they're asking the tough questions like should this solider be brought up on war crimes? I don't pretend to know the answer to that but in my opinion, murder is murder, especially when it's cold blooded like that. From the video that goes along with that audio, the insurgent is laying on the floor with the other corpses, not even able to move, obviously pretty bad off but from what we could see through the camera, he was no threat to anyone. Then again, I'm not over there and these guys have apparently been doing some pretty nasty things like boobytrapping the dead with mines so it's only fair that the marines on the ground are treading with the utmost of caution and I hope they all come home safely.

The next chapter of the US Invasion of Iraq rages on (not for the squeamish).

Full set of images here: http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/

I support the men and women who are currently over there and I hope that they all come home soon. I think the 'war' is totally fucked and we have no legitimate business being over there but our troops are just doing what they signed up to do and are obviously just following orders. It still amazes me to think that in 2004 we still have 'wars' (or more accurately, invasions) in foreign lands (even more amazing is that we're in a time of war, the economy in the US is not in great shape, we've completely wasted away 50 years of hard won good will with the rest of the world so we can go play cowboy in the desert to take their oil assets.. but hey, that's a whole other story. Time to brings the troops home George (yea, like that'll EVER happen - I'm of the opinion that we're never going to fully get out of that part of the world).

Going into Iraq and converting it to a democracy sounds to me like the idea of taking some state in the middle of our country (let's say Ohio) and telling everyone there that from this day forth, they're all going to become muslims (while everyone else surrounding them is not) - that just doesn't sound like a strategy that's going to work in the long term.

This was posted on MacMinute this afternoon (11/17/04) and thought a few of you might find them interesting. As corny as some of these ads were, I had to admit that several of them that dealt with the programmers and sysadmins really caught my interest during those fateful days back in 2002 when I had endured a few too many Windows viruses and spyware and was in the process of building myself a new Linux workstation to avoid the Windows world all together.

Ironically, the Pre-OS X Macs were more of a distant fascination to me but I never seriously considered using one as my primary development machine until after OS X made its debut. A few years and several glorious Macs later, I can't imagine ever going back to that world ever again (hard not to say that sitting in front of a new Dual 2.5Ghz G5 with all the perks gazing into a beautiful new 30" Cinema display - the single most amazing display I've ever had the privledge to use (and now I get to use it every single day! Life is good.)

Jeff

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Never before seen Switch ads posted November 17 - 12:13 EST   Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker who produced Apple's Switch ads, has posted several never before seen commercials on his Web site in QuickTime format. Morris offers up Switch ads featuring many average Mac users, in addition to more famous ones like rocker Perry Farrell, comedian Wanda Sykes, cartoonist Daniel Clowes, and comedian Will Ferrell. Members of the Ellen Feiss fan club will be happy to find out that Morris has also posted a new spot featuring the teenager. Feiss received a lot of attention for her "questionable appearance" in her original ad.

http://errolmorris.com/commercials/apple.html