Month: May 2004

Categories
Disney

Disney’s 71% Increase in Profits and Fahrenheit 911 Update

Things are looking up for both Eisner and Moore.

Disney reported a better-than-expected 71% increase in income for the second quarter which must come as an extreme relief for Michael Eisner who has been under pressure to improve performance or risk losing his job.

Meanwhile a Miramax spokesman has stated that Miramax will distribute Michael Moore’s new film, though not under the Miramax label.

Update: May 25, 2004: From the New York Post:

Michael Moore’s documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” could wind up costing Disney more than $100 million and go down as another Michael Eisner blunder.

The movie is poised to set a new record for highest-grossing documentary after its release in six weeks’ time.

The stakes are higher — and hotter — between Miramax and Disney, its corporate parent, now that Moore has nabbed the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, for the Bush-bashing documentary.

The post-Cannes publicity for the film only intensifies the battle over who will distribute it in he United States, and if Miramax can get back in the mix.

Update June 29th, 2004: If you are wondering when Fahrenheit 911 is coming to Lethbridge (I am too), try the Cineplex Odeon website. In the meantime, I recommend reading Plastic’s commentary on the film. Plastic is one of the few places, I know of – on the net, where you can get quality discussions.

Update June 30, 2004: An anti-Michael Moore website is encouraging people to download Fahrenheit 911 for free. They are offering the same version of the film that you can find at Suprnova.

Categories
games

The Game of World Domination

Last night I played Risk with Amos, Gavin, and a couple of other guys I hardly know. The thing about Risk is that probability is a major aspect of the game (hence the name). I’m not kidding anybody when I say I never really understood how to calculate probabilty, but a few years ago I became terribly curious about the odds of winning a battle in Risk. I created a small program that generated random numbers and then averaged out the wins and losses finding out the best numbers to have when attacking, defending, and whether to defend with one or two dice. Needless to say it was very inefficient.

Anyway the point is that last night is the first time I’ve played Risk since making the program. I put my strategy into action since learning how substantially more effective it is to put at least two or three pieces on each territory and worry more about defense than offence. When it came to the game last night it’s true that I didn’t control any continents until the very end, but when I began to attack, I dominated the whole world. For the Risk players out there, rather than make your own program (like I did) here is a better way (not mine) to calculate odds of winning: the Risk Calculator.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Google’s Own Blog

Along with the new Blogger updates comes Google’s very own “Google Blog“.

Categories
meta

Blogger Comments

I’m switching my comment provider to blogger, so for the next while please excuse any weirdness with the blog / comments.

Update: The new comments are up and running – though it’s still pretty sketchy. For now I’m keeping the old comments enabled in the archives. We’ll see how long I keep them.

Categories
Miscellaneous

One2host Web Hosting

Yesterday I received the following email:

Hello!

I found your e-mail address posted on a website complaining about one2host.com. I am e-mailing everyone who has been defrauded by them, because they need to be put out of business… and I need your help!

Please tell your story! Write it out once and copy and paste it into the forms if you need to. Yes, it does take a little bit of time – but think about it. If we can get them shut down, or if we can file a class action lawsuit against them, won’t it be worth it? If these agencies are inundated with e-mails from angry consumers all at once, they will realize what a serious problem one2host is and they will be more likely to act!

Legal Action:

The Internet Fraud Complain Center (U.S. F.B.I.): http://www.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp

International Internet Consumer Fraud Complaints: http://www.econsumer.gov

Class Action Lawsuits:

Case Evaluations http://www.bigclassaction.com

All three ask for similar information. This is worth the small investment of your time!

I also urge you to contact your government representatives (i.e. members of Congress or Parliament). They can be surprisingly helpful!

I am sending this as a BCC, because I don’t want your mailbox to get jammed with letters. However, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments or further advice! Also, you are welcome to forward this letter to anyone else who has been victimized by one2host.

Together we can take them down, my friends! It’s worth a shot. =)

Kristen

While I am still angry at the waste of money that One2host turned out to be, I do wonder whether what they did was illegal or just extremely poor service (something that is not against the law last time I checked). The hosting that I paid for was unreliable and their service department didn’t always get back to me, but a class action lawsuit? If what they did was illegal them I’m all for it, otherwise I just hope that I can tell as many people as possible that they are a REALLY poor option for web hosting.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Grass Beware (and 3 foot anthills)

I got a new mower.

Above is a picture of me with the new mower on Friday just after I had set it up. I’m barely over the fact that my mower got stolen last year, but I’m pretty happy to have gotten a new one. This one is even better than last year’s model – 6.75 horse power! I haven’t mowed with it yet but when I do the grass isn’t going to know what hit it.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Michael Moore Announcement Publicity Stunt?

Michael Moore refutes recent news articles about trying to create a publicity stunt with his new anti-Bush movie, Farenheit 911. He convincingly lays out the situation on his site, allowing you to be the judge:

“Michael Moore has known for a year that we will not distribute this movie, so this is not news.” Yes, that is what I thought, too, except Disney kept sending us all that money to make the movie. Miramax said there was no problem. I got the idea that everything was fine.

“It is not in the best interests of our company to distribute a partisan political film that may offend some of our customers.” Hmmm. Disney doesn’t distribute work that has partisan politics? Disney distributes and syndicates the Sean Hannity radio show every day? I get to listen to Rush Limbaugh every day on Disney-owned WABC. I also seem to remember that Disney distributed a very partisan political movie during a Congressional election year, 1998—a film called The Big One… by, um… ME!

Categories
Miscellaneous

New Job

I got the job working as a New Media Movie Camp Instructor. I’ll be working at the University for the month of July giving four, week long camps. I’m pretty excited about it but because it’s still almost two months away I don’t have much to say about it yet.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Andy Kaufman – Dead or Alive?

Remember Jim Carrey in “Man on the Moon“? He played the character of performance artist / comedian Andy Kaufman. LA Weekly shares a brief history of Kaufman while simultaneously sparking life to the idea (as portrayed in the film) that Andy might return from the dead. He died on May 16th, 1984 but he had mentioned the idea of faking his own death and returning 20 years later. One week from today marks the 20th anniversary of his “death”, and some people believe he might actually show up that night at the House of Blues show. Whether or not he shows up is anyone’s guess but either way, I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing more about this.

Categories
birthday

Happy Birthday Gary

It’s my brother Gary’s birthday today. So in honour of him being an old man – 27 years old, check out The Milner Blog.