GeekLimit

I’d be shocked if anyone reading this hasn’t seem Office Space. I mean, come on - it’s practically a prerequisite. But you probably haven’t seen this.

Office Space: the horror movie?

Read the rest of this entry »

I remember back in the day (not that long ago) when VH1 had the show ‘Pop Up Video‘. The idea was that while showing the video, there were many little tidbits of information that would “pop up” on the screen and tell you more about the production of the video, the artists involved, or anything else remotely interesting.

Later, DVD’s would come out and do the same thing, but offer information such as translations of the dialogue to director’s commentary.

There are a few players out in the web-video world that are working to provide the same kind of functionality to users who want to add more to the videos they share.

Mojiti isn’t very well known, but they have easy-to-use tools for providing your own annotations for videos hosted on YouTube, Revver, and Google Video.  For a good example of how Mojiti works, check out this YouTube favorite where someone has found and listed the exact dances being shown. Cool!

via mashable 

So I’m teaching this 6th grade class once a week, for 40 minutes, on ‘Computer Technology’. I also happen to be reading ‘The Long Tail’, and highly recommend it.

So far, Week 1 was Richard Sears and the railroad vs. Amazon.com and the internet. basically, we talk about how the internet is a business-changing communications medium, just like the railroad was in 1886.

Week 2 was on the merits of Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britainnica. We learned that Wikipedia is a great place to go first for information due to it’s great variety, but due to the unknown expertise of the authors, a more reputable source of information should also be used.

Then came Week 3.

Today we talked about RIAA’s historical role in the music business, and their right to protect artists’ work. We also talked about how the RIAA oversteps their bounds and are countered by the EFF. We finished up with a short quiz and some Q&A on what’s right/wrong with different music-related scenarios.

The thing I love is the answers to my extra-credit question on the quiz. The question was

If you were the RIAA, and your job was to promote music, how would you do so? What would you do to keep people from taking music without paying for it?

Of those who bothered to answer, there were the obvious ‘Put it on the radio, make people pay for it’ answers, but also a few great ones. Here are the standouts, but please feel free to answer the extra credit question yourself in the comments! What is surprising is that some of their suggestions are exactly the type of stuff RIAA pulls to try and enforce themselves…

“I would put a place to put your house on a website with a camera so I could see when people were stealing”

“I would make them download a popup that wouldn’t go away until they paid for the song, and after 3 days it would make a continuous horn that couldn’t be turned down”

“I wouldn’t sell it online”

“Search the internet to see if they are stealing and if they know other people [that are stealing]“

“Let them keep 3 songs for free, and sue them if they have any more than 3″

“I call the police to track them down not myself” (AWESOME)

“Sell [music] in music stores and if people steal it track them down [through the music store]“

I’m seriously starting to love the internet these days.

[youtube]1ioKEDgnfs8[/youtube]

Check this guy out. He took ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast, and instead of yelling, actually sings. And he’s good! Now, I don’t have anything against any type of music. In fact, I listen to everything from salsa to 70’s disco. What I like about this guy is that it’s a perfect example of the internet facilitating a large audience for someone with talent, contrasted with a hit that was churned out by the corporate machine. The Long Tail, indeed.

Anyone know of any other examples of covers surpassing the originals?

Amateur filmmaker Solomon Rothman has released a full-length open source movie called ‘Boy Who Never Slept.’

The movie is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license; this allows people to use, edit, or share the movie in any way (except commercially) as long as they credit the creators.

All of the raw unedited footage, including audio files, is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license; as long as the creators are credited, users can do whatever they want with the files privately or commercially.

The open source movie and original files are available for free download or streaming from a variety of sources, including direct downloading from the Internet Movie Archives, video distribution sites like Google video and Veoh, via file sharing networks like BitTorrent, and more. The full list is found on the official movie website.

The film centers on the life of an insomniac writer who meets a teenage girl online, and a friendship that grows into an unlikely love story wrapped in harsh reality. The movie deals with various issues, including the romanticization of love, age-related issues in relationships, like statutory rape (he’s 23, and she’s 16), and the idea of love in the online realm.

Rothman, a writer, amateur filmmaker and web designer, lives in the Los Angeles Area. He wrote, directed and produced the movie with his partner, A. Brown. Producing the movie for $200 while they were in college, they used friends as actors and later sold the camera on eBay to recoup the expense.

Rothman has spoken about the importance of exploring new possibilities in filmmaking, especially for amateur filmmakers, “I believe that everyone has the ability to tell at least one good story and I wanted the world to see the power of the Internet Community as a distribution source for amateur filmmakers. I released “Boy Who Never Slept” as an open source movie to encourage new filmmakers and to reach the largest possible audience on a budget absolutely anyone could afford.”

The movie is unrated; it explores adult themes and contains graphic language and brief nudity.

More on this movie

What is the future of free culture? This fascinating documentary about the invisible war on free culture features perspectives from such luminaries as DJ Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman, and many others

While the U.S. Congress changes the copyright laws under the behests of a few powerful corporations, individuals across the United States are losing their digital rights. Activists are working together to change this oppressive regime and create an alternative of freedom.

Two filmmakers uncover the most important legal battles of our time: Copyright Law and Digital Rights Management. Featuring interviews with DJ Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig and more.

This movie is as said based on the U.S. political climate but losing digital rights can be happen anywhere. Let’s hope this movie will be shown outside the U.S. also.

This is very strange. One of the places I usually look for feedbacks on movies, including documentaries, is the IMDB site. So I opened their site did a serach on Alternative Freedom title and came up with no results … strange. I think a movie such as this should be scoring above 7 on IMDB ratings.

As far as I understood the movie is licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5, so downloading this movie via torrent should be legal. But as of now I wasn’t able to find it anywhere on famous torrent search portals. The DVD version should also be soon available.

More info, news, links can be found on Alternative Freedom website