The first independent film to gross more than $200 million, Pulp Fiction was a shot of adrenaline to Hollywood’s heart, reviving John Travolta’s career, making stars of Samuel L. Jackson and
Uma Thurman, and turning Bob and Harvey Weinstein into giants. How did Quentin Tarantino, a high-school dropout and former video-store clerk, change the face of modern cinema? Mark Seal takes
the director, his producers, and his cast back in time, to 1993.
What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.
“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are
very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”
“How pervasive is it? There are about 489,000 YouTube videos that say “no copyright intended” or some
variation, and about 664,000 videos have a “copyright disclaimer” citing the fair use
provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act”
2010 May 10, 8:59Iggy Pop interviews Shepard Fairey, including his Obama HOPE poster and AP lawsuit:
"... but the American public is generally pretty superficial, so an image like that just allows them to project whatever limited idea they have onto it. Obviously, not everyone is like that—I
actually think there were a lot of people who were bummed by the image because they felt it was shallow propaganda."
"If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that’s not cool. But the way I make
art—the way a lot of people make art—is as an extension of language and communication, where references are incredibly important. It’s about making a work that is inspired by something preexisting
but changes it to have a new value and meaning that doesn’t in any way take away from the original—and, in fact, might provide the original with a second life or a new audience." artlegallawipshepard-faireyobeyinterview
2010 Apr 21, 1:47So... There's Downfall a 2004 film about the final days of Hitler's life. Then folks take the most dramatic scene and parody it with new subtitles having Hitler yell about various things like his
cell phone or Burning Man. It becomes a meme and meta Downfall parodies show up with Hitler yelling about the Downfall parodies. Now the studio producing the film has sent DMCA takedown notices to
Youtube and many of the videos are disappearing. In response is a new Downfall parody in which Hitler issues DMCA notices to Youtube...censorshiphitlerhumorcopyrightdmcaefflegalyoutubevideofairusememewebinternettechnical
I've just updated Encode-O-Matic with a Guess Input Encoding feature. When you start Encode-O-Matic or when you use the 'Guess
Input Encoding' menu item from the 'Tools' menu, Encode-O-Matic will try out various combinations of encodings and guess at which set seem to apply to your input. For instance given the following
text, Encode-O-Matic will correctly guess that it is percent encoded, base64 encoded, deflate compressed text:
It should work fairly well for simple things but I did pick 'Guess' for the name of the feature to intentionally lower
expectations. It doesn't currently apply to character encodings but that may be something to consider in the future.technicalencodeomatictoolencoding
2010 Mar 12, 10:03Eschuk has fairly detailed strategy for last person on Earth scenario. Humrous comments follow.
itdest1983: "I hate to be a debbie downer and question this incredibly awesome and very intelligent plan, but my question is: Why? Other than sustaining life simply to avoid death, why? ..."
2009 Dec 2, 3:00"These are tough questions, but the horrific problems of the "Victorian Internet" suggest that government overreach isn't the only thing to fear. In 1876, laissez-faire "freedom for all" meant (in
practice) the freedom for Henry Nash Smith to read your telegrams if he didn't like who you supported for President. It meant freedom for Associated Press to block criticism of Western Union, and
even to put potential critics and competitors out of business. And it meant freedom for a scoundrel to hijack the system at his leisure."net-neutralityinternetgovernmentpoliticscommunicationtelegraphtechnical
2009 Aug 26, 2:30"Being fair is not enough. In fact, sometimes what's fair is wrong precisely because it's fair. Oooh! A seeming paradox! One of the top three rhetorical forms for essays!"technicalinternetdavid-weinbergernet-neutralitywebfair
2009 Jul 16, 3:28"I was up a ladder painting when I got the call from a lady with an American accent from Apple saying she was the head of legal affairs and that they wanted to acknowledge the work that I had
done" humorhistorymusicapplelegalpatentipodip
2008 Dec 29, 4:44Rocketboom makes Know Your Meme video explaining the history of various Internet memes with attached example links. Fairly humorous.humorvideointernetmemehistory
2008 Sep 15, 1:50This just in: people on the Internet are complaining. Also Radiohead has a remix contest. Neat. "No good deed goes unpunished. After letting fans pay whatever they wanted for In Rainbows and
releasing stem tracks via iTunes so that one of the songs on the record could be remixed, Radiohead is facing accusations that its "Nude" remix contest is unfair."musicwiredradioheadremixcontest
2008 Sep 9, 8:36"You'd better read this today, because it's possible the world will end tomorrow. Strictly speaking, the probability of doomsday isn't any higher than it is on any normal Wednesday, but there's been
a fair bit of kerfuffle and hullabaloo over the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and whether it will create a black hole that will destroy the entire planet."lhccernhumorwiredtechnologyscienceblogphysicsapocalypse
2008 Sep 9, 8:29Article on the data centers that backup the Internet Archive and handle CERN's LHC's data. "CERN embodies borderlessness. The Swiss-French border is a drainage ditch running to one side of the
cafeteria; it was shifted a few metres to allow that excellent establishment to trade the finicky French health codes for the more laissez-fair Swiss jurisdiction. And in the data sphere it is
utterly global."lhchistoryinternetcory-doctorownaturephysicsnetworkhardwarelibrarysciencecerninternet-archive
Google steps up to defend fair use, will fund Youtubers' legal defenses 
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