A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
“The presumption now has to be that he’s lying any time that he’s saying anything.” So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years.
When are the people of the United States going to seriously start talking about impeachment? At least an election is just around the corner.
In the realm of feature animation, the hand-drawn no longer rocks the cradle. Thanks to the consistent success of Pixar’s five computer-rendered theatrical releases, coupled with Disney’s recent failure to produce popular hand-drawn films, it’s easy to see why folks are favoring bytes and pixels over ink and paint.
Slashdot is offering up a great article and discussion thread about Disney’s abandonment of traditional, hand-drawn animation (which Disney has sworn, for years, it would never give up), in favor of 3D, computer-generated work.
Supposedly, all of their animators—even staunch traditionalists such as Glenn Keane—are being trained on 3D computer animation techniques. The last hand-drawn high-budget Disney feature scheduled for release is Home on the Range, which is due out next April. It appears that Disney is bowing to the supposed pressures of the market, even though the hand-drawn Lilo and Stitch was considered a success and the all-CG Dinosaur (done at Disney’s now-defunct FX house The Secret Lab) was not. However, I believe there’s another factor at work: Pixar’s contract with Disney is set to expire soon, and the revered CG house has been making their own demands of Disney for the contract’s renewal.
It’s no secret that Disney feels threatened by 3D Animation. “For the first time in decades, the entertainment giant that pioneered feature-length animation with 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” has no traditional animated big-budget movies in production.” Disney has not only fired many of it’s traditional 2D animators, but it has also been auctioning off the tools of the 2D animation trade, a sign that they don’t plan on rehiring new animators. “Among the items listed [for sale] was an animation desk for $1,299; a story board for $54.15; and a 6-foot-tall cabinet for stacking scenes for $64.95.”
I found a bug in IT’s security this morning. I’m no security expert bit I’m pretty sure it’s a fairly serious one. The school computers have screen savers that advertise things going on at the university. They create the screen shots in Macromedia flash and therein lies the problem. Anyone – whether they are a student or not could come up to the screen and right click the flash screen savers. A small popup menu appears. They could then click on the menu item called “About Macromedia Flash 6” and an Internet Explorer browser window pops up. From there they can access any web page or more importantly the hard drives of the computer they are working on. Now that I think about it, it’s likely not that big of an issue because probably there aren’t any melicious hackers at the University just waiting to strike but then again that’s if there’s anything to be learned from TV, it’s that there are hundreds of people just waiting to get a shot at “the man”.
I might tell told someone in IT.
Update: They said there were aware of the problem and it was going to be fixed soon.
Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen who operated a computer consulting business — was arrested by US officials during a stopover at New York’s JFK airport, then and deported to Syria by the US government. The FBI flagged him as a “suspected terrorist.” Arar spent a year being tortured in Syrian prison, his was beaten with objects including shredded electrical cables, and living in a urine-filled, rat-infested 3’x6’x7′ “grave”. Then one day they seem to have just decided he was innocent and safe enough to ship back to Canada. From Joi Ito’s blog:
Obviously, it’s probably easier for a Syrian national to get on a “list” than a Japanese, but this really scary. They say he had had a relationship with another suspected terrorist who is also being imprisoned and tortured now in Syria. He says he barely knew the guy. So what does this mean for us? If we meet someone, we should not “become friendly” with them until we are certain that they are not a suspected terrorist. What does this mean? We need to make sure they don’t hang out with other suspected terrorists. So if you believe in six degrees, it’s likely at some point you will be a suspected terrorist.
How do they know if you hang out with someone? Friendster? LinkedIn? Your email? We need to be VERY careful about the privacy of not just the content of our communication, but the privacy of who we are in touch with, often called sigint, or signal intelligence. Seriously though, this will cause a chilling effect on meeting, calling, emailing or otherwise “being in touch with” anyone who you don’t know very well that could land you on the “suspected terrorist” list.
Among questions being raised by Arar’s advocates: why was he deported to Syria, notorious for violating the human rights of prisoners, instead of being returned back to Canada — where he lived for 15 years, and owned a technology company? There are now calls for an open investigation in Canada — and in the US.
Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, blames the United States for Arar’s deportation. In Commons yesterday, and with his fists clenched he declared, “The people who are responsible for the deportation of this gentleman to Syria are in the government of the United States, not the government of Canada.”
As far as being a Canadian citizen is concerned, an article from Canada.com thinks it may have saved him from more severe punishment. Article has gone 404.
Update: Amnesty International has an updated brief on this story.
Tomorrow is my swim meet at the University of Calgary. Gary and I are still not speaking so I doubt he’ll show up to watch, even though I imagine he needs photos of the meet for the Gauntlet. Maybe he will send one of his assistants to do it.
Anyway I’m hoping for a best time tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.
Most likely Friday night we will go to see Doug’s play, “Not About Heros” at the Pumphouse Theatres. Anna is leaving for Edmonton to go on tour for three weeks and then down to Utah for another two. It will be a long month.
Tom Coates has been discussing strategic methods in dealing with message board Trolls on his Everything in Moderation site. An anonymous poster, claiming to be a notorious Slashdot troll, made some intriguing comments about why moderating “trolls” in secret can sometimes be detrimental.
“in short i believe that the people who must be treated with the most public, forthright, and open methods of censure are those who offend us the most. i do not believe that trickery is ever as effective as open methods because trickery is, at its core, dishonest to both the person being tricked and the online community you have secretly enacted policy for.” -posted anonymously by 20721 (link)
It was a good article and some really thought provoking comments. Worthwhile read if you are remotely interested in web administration and / or censorship.
Now on a personal note: a comment or two that I made may have incited some anger. Specifically it may have angered my brother Gary but I want to make it clear that I have never consciously posted trying to be a troll. According to SlashNET.org, “A troll is someone who seeks to deliberately incite anger, arguments, and disorder. A simple example would be a person who goes into #linux and extols the superiority of Microsoft products.” Metaphorically speaking all I did was ask the #linux users what Linus Torvalds would have thought about the copied code inside the linux kernel. Something that could have made some people mad but a valid question and certainly not trolling.
That wasn’t how my brother saw it. Although I wasn’t banned from posting at our family’s blog altogether, it was made pretty clear that I wasn’t welcome there anymore – at least by one member.
It pretty much started with my posts about same-sex marriage. My opinion was that all people in society should be offered the same rights, ie. the right to marry the person you love (same-sex or not). Gary couldn’t debate his point gracefully and instead of conceding defeat or just backing down he instead began attacking me on a personal level calling me such things as a sophist, a homosexual, and even a heterophobe.
I’m trying to be politically correct, but I was really insulted that he would call me “g-a-y”. It’s probably my own homophobia that has caused me to be upset.
Recently I decided to stop posting completely after the response to an “offensive” post (which you can decide for yourself if it is offensive) that I made.
Specifically on Friday, October 17th, 2003 I posted the following:
Black Person + Ethnic DNA Test = ?
I picked this up from metafilter.com:
After watching a 60 Minutes segment on the subject last year, Wayne Joseph decided on a whim to take a new ethnic DNA test. Being of Creole stock, and therefore on the lighter end of the black colour spectrum, he had developed a casual curiosity about his exact percentage of black blood. What he discovered was astounding.
I wonder what early Mormons would have thought?
Not really that offensive – in my opinion. In fact I think it’s a logical question to ask if you have been a Mormon your whole life – hearing all about how Mormons used to keep blacks from having the “priesthood power” bestowed upon them.
About the next day I received an email from my brother asking me if I was taking a shot at the church. “What exactly do you mean by [what early Mormons would have thought]? I don’t think I understand.”
I proceeded to answer his email but in my anger (still kindling from the same-sex marriage argument) I wrote an email that was decidedly too harsh and instead of sending it thought better of myself and resolved to write a kinder gentler explanation the next day. That email was never written but here for your reading enjoyment is the email I had originally prepared to send (brace yourself):
“Gary, as Dr. Phil might say, “It’s time to get real”.
Let’s face it, in the past church has been racist toward blacks. Since you don’t seem to remember the situation with pre – 1978 manifesto Mormons and blacks let me give you a short refresher. (Isn’t this safe to assume given your apparent lack of comprehension as to what I’m talking about?)
Here’s a little background that Brother McConkie so plainly articulates for us in Mormon Doctrine, p. 527 – 528, of the 1966 edition. “The Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, …but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of spiritual valiance of those concerned in their First Estate [the pre-earth existence].”
The DNA article just made me wonder if the early Mormons ever made any mistakes excluding someone that didn’t happen to have Negro blood err I mean lack of spiritual valiance in the pre-earth existence. IMHO a reasonable question because as you know the early Mormons didn’t have DNA testing to verify if someone was less valiant. Does saying this mean I was being antagonistic? I suppose, with your ultra delicate sensibilities, assuming that mistakes could have been made by “The One True Church”(tm) must mean I was “taking a shot” at it. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
I realize this email seems a little aggressive. However, I have been irritated lately with the growing feeling, based on the fact that you didn’t want our conversation to go out on the blog, that you had something to hide in our conversation or that you are worried about censoring my beliefs from the blog. Frankly I find that disgusting. I feel the same way about the same-sex marriages debate. As I said before, “it’s time to get real”. If you can’t handle it then don’t bother emailing me “why I would write something”, instead if you can’t respond on the blog then just take those thoughts and file them in your “I can’t handle the truth” directory.
-Jeff
So I decided not to send the harsh email. The next day I found my admin rights gone. I was trying to add some links in the template as well use some of the code directly from the template in a project I was doing at school. When I couldn’t get in I decided (perhaps in the heat of the moment) not to post on the milnerblog anymore. My dad figures we both need to grow up, but then almost in the same breath he adds that I am not to discuss my thoughts about “the church” with my younger sister and her freshly baptized husband. I asked him what I was supposed to say to her when she brings it up? She always brings it up. He simply told me not to discuss it with her.
So I said to him, “Do you want me to tell her that you forbid me to talk about it with her?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want me to say?”
“Just don’t talk about it with her, you can think of something to say.”
So basically he’s asking me to censor my beliefs from her. Basically he’s going against all that stuff they teach you in church about how if you believe something to be true it’s your responsibility to share it with others. Remember now – I wasn’t actively bringing religion up with her, just answering questions about why I no longer believe the Mormon church to be the “one true church”.
So it’s kind of like I’ve been politely censored. First from the blog and now from my own family. Of course I have the “right” to speak my mind – but not without the harassing comments of Gary or the guilt of disobeying my dad’s wishes.