Drop dead. On my blog, all comments’ urls have the nofollow attribute added. So, sincerely, stop trying to get comment spam on here. I hate deleting over 20 comments a day, all because they are spam. But because they come from botnet members I can’t just ban one ip and its all taken care of. Its a waste of your program’s efforts, my time, and your bandwidth to keep doing that.

I know that there is a website out there, that I could host, that generates infinite loops of links, infinite bogus emails, etc. Anyone know where it is? I can’t seem to find it.

Today just may go down as a monumental day in history.

First, Jack Thompson has been disbarred. Make sure you read the court documents and JT’s filings. A great and hilarious read, always.

Second, the White House said no to the Copyright Cops. This is huge. The government of the good ole US of A is actually acting on behalf of its people.

Third, the European Parliament has said no to a restrictive copyright bill.

This is a great day. All sorts of things that are restricting freedom, for their own interests are being defeated.

Today is a bit of a departure, for me, but I feel this will be well-liked. Its more than just sharing one video, but gathering several together, as well as my views. It is in essence, a bit of a musical journey.

First, was this video:

Which I can almost guarantee will leave you with a smile on your face.

So, I began exploring. I wanted to know just who the hell was this Matt Harding. And so, of course, up came the wikipedia article: Matt Harding.

And from there, I began to check out the other stuff. For example, Where the Hell is Afanukwa video is a touching reminder of how languages and cultures are disappearing faster than we can record them.

There are several other ways you could go, and by no means will it be similar to what I did.

For one, I checked out the Sweet Lullaby music video, which was nominated for several awards, is quite iconic and striking.

As well, here is the direct imeem link to the music of the Matt video above, Praan.

Praan is based off of the lyrics by Rabindranath Tagore, in his seminal bengali work, Gitanjali, one of the first non-Europeans to win the Nobel Prize.

Not only is it an interesting musical experience, its a bit of a history/culture education, as well as a massively entertaining video. Enjoy!

The title is related to my previous post, about how things are changing.

However, there are some things that stubbornly refuse to change. One of those is advertising. I recently purchased the last 40 years of the x-men since the first comic was published. Its been an interested read, and I’m now at the 1980 series. But one thing I noticed is the very large amount of ads in the comic. Issue 137(infamous for many, many reasons), has, across the top, a banner ad promoting a contest to win $2500. Then, in the comic itself are over 16 full-page, colorful ads. Several of the ads are mini-stories featuring other Marvel heroes, defeating criminals by using candy, or Hostess Twinkies. One two-page full-spread advertises back-issues of various comics.

The comic itself is 54 pages, of which, as stated, are 16, with a banner ad taking up 1/5th of the page. That is a full 30% of the comic! Gee… does that sound familiar to anyone? For example, the percentage of each hour given over to advertising during prime time hours is between 27% and 35%. Or, on web pages, with a 1/5 of the spread of each page given over to a banner ad, and then Google ads on the side for another 10-20%.

People think the web is absolutely saturated with ads. In reality, it was under-saturated, but it is quickly reaching the point where most other mediums stop. Some websites cross that limit(like PC Pro), where a good 60-70% of the page is direct and indirect advertising. Some websites have no advertising, and so this balances it all out.

It is an interesting historical perspective to realize that one of the biggest media booms of the 70′s and 80′s, aside from TV and music, was absolutely draped in ads. And the worst part is, these ads are just as ridiculous as that childrens book with Lex Luthor stealing forty cakes.

Take this frame. Even in context it makes no sense.

How is this supposed to work?

So be happy with have punching bag monkey ads, and ads filled with malware. At least they make sense. And, they can be blocked.