Tsk Tsk, OU

No, this time it's not about the Sooners. It's the other OU. That's right, Ohio University: you're on notice. They decided to ban all P2P activity on their network. This may sound reasonable, but note that it also encompasses legal P2P, as in for buying stuff from BitTorrent. It's a freaking university, since when did it become the RIAA's stooge? What happened to the rights and freedoms of your students? The solution to helping stop piracy is not to hit it with a gigantic mallet, despite popular belief nowadays. I don't know what pisses me off, the fact that a place of education and supposed open-mindedness is doing this, or that the RIAA so readily exploits college students, who are already dirt poor and obviously can't usually afford the appropriate legal advice. I much prefer the idea of ads in P2P clients like Limewire that would gain you legal copies of the music you were trying to pirate. Now there's a positive solution, and I think we're screwed if we don't explore more of those. If more universities follow this policy, it could spell doom for further research into the legit uses of such technologies and for students to make use of it, and that would truly be the travesty. Still, I don't think that'll happen, because P2P is too big already to be squashed like that.

YouTube is looking to start making itself more worthwhile to Google: they're going to try ads after certain videos this summer. I imagine that they'll start this out with content professionally produced by companies (television networks, movie studios, etc) and then propagate to more premium contributors if that works. Should be interesting to see how the community reacts.

Once again, Steve Jobs is insisting that they will not turn to the subscription-based model despite rumors and pressure from the industry. I actually agree with him that people would prefer to own their music, but he often does stuff like this to throw us off the scent (like for the iPhone). If you look at their profit margins, they'd likely be able to afford a subscription-based model, but the problem is that I presume it would mean doing away with the current pay-to-own model, which would suck. Unless they could get them to work side-by-side, I'd prefer them to not allow subscriptions, either.

Do you hate calling tech support? Well, then you may sympathize with this phone call recorded by a firm researching people's opinions on tech support. This call was to HP, and I humorously (or sadly) enough had almost an exact scenario a couple of weeks ago when my Internet was acting up. I literally dealt with them for 30 minutes, largely because I was being redirected in loops to people who couldn't solve my problem and kept asking me for the same information. Do companies not realize that people are getting pissed off about this? People remember bad tech support, and tend to talk about it with friends. Outsourcing really doesn't work for this stuff either.

People are starting to see a recent Google facelift adding news hits to searches, as well. You can see shots of this here.



Doesn't that look cool? I think it should be the future of keys. It's dubbed Keyport and would hold several keys in that one rectangular box there. Plus, it may include RFID capabilities and alarm remote functionality, as well as a flashlight. How nify would all that be? I hate dealing with my keychain, especially since two of my keys look the damn same!

Jack Valenti, creator of the MPAA, has passed away at the ripe age of 85. Yeah, he was definitely pretty old, and a lot of people definitely don't like the MPAA, but he definitely did a huge thing to help the film industry in creating the MPAA. It may not be perfect, but I don't think it was a flawed idea. Anyway, I'm sure his name will live on forever for his political fame and status in entertainment.

Quentin Tarantino spoke to a British magazine about the financial failure of Grindhouse but that he's still proud of it. Apprently, he'll tack on 30 minutes to his movie, Death Proof, for its individual release in the UK, and that version will also be shown at Cannes. I feel ashamed that I've heard all these great things and still haven't seen it! I just don't want go alone for it. Anyone want to come with, this weekend?

Lastly, I just think it's funny that Lucy Liu has subjected herself to the lead role in a vampire movie, one named Rise: Blood Hunter no less. Honestly, what was she thinking?

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

What are your 3 favorite types of music? Why?
Rock/Alternative, Hip Hop, and Salsa. I just love the energy in Hip Hop, Salsa is ridiculously fun to dance to, and Rock/Alternative is great when you're just chilling out.