The Pete's blog/

I'm all for convergence but does a site like this really need to allow people to blog, too?  I think this feature actually takes away from this site.  I may never use this feature just because it's like a third arm or a thousand chanels on TV.

I suppose one day I might need this, but not before I ditch my own website.

---

Orignal From: Project365 2007 11 07

(utterz)tinyurl.com/2dwojv Project365 2007 11 07: I don't think this one is too late for Project365 for 11/7 I mea

---

Orignal From: (utterz)http://tinyurl.com/2dw...

So, you may recall my post from last week about how the dollar is dropping in value while barrels of oil are rising in value. I've also been blogging about our ever-weakening economy for what definitely seems like years now. Well, now, whether she realizes it or not, one of the most beautiful women in the world (according to the free market, anyway) is agreeing with me. The former face of Victoria's Secret (apparently she was fired for gaining weight when she quit smoking), Gisele Bundchen will no longer be accepting American dollars for pay. Here's a cutting from a November 6, 2007 article from the Seattle Timesthat details Bundchen's bumping the USD to the side of the road:

When Bündchen, 27, signed a contract in August to represent Pantene hair products for Procter & Gamble, she demanded payment in euros, according to Veja, Brazil's biggest weekly magazine.

She'll also get euros for the deal she reached with Dolce & Gabbana in Milan to promote the Italian designer's new fragrance, The One, Veja reported.

Bündchen earned $33 million in the year through June, Forbes reported in July.

"Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros, because we don't know what will happen to the dollar," Patricia Bündchen, the model's twin sister and manager in Brazil, said in September from São Paulo. She declined to discuss details of the arrangements last week.

Gisele Bundchen has a twin sister!?!?

Sorry...

Anyway, so this choice by Bundchen (and her twin sister!) to move from the USD makes perfect sense since I've been blogging about the dropping US dollar for a while now and over the past few days I've been contemplating doing the exact same thing as the beautiful Miss Bundchen. I have one guy I do work for who is based in Ireland and I joked about how he should pay me in UK pounds. He then, seriously, commented that I should look into getting a bank account online that is based in the UK Sterling (a cool way of referring to pounds). I'm still looking into it, but it was heartening to see that the planet's richest super model had the same idea. What cracks me up is the reaction she got from some people.

Fox News' Heather Nauert had this to say in a November 6, 2007 "article" at FoxNews.com:

Reason No. 853 to dislike supermodels: Not only are they vapid, self-important amazons, but it seems they are greedy, too.

Take the world's richest catwalker, Gisele Bundchen, perhaps best known for her Victoria's Secret work. She is worth an estimated $150 million and she's just 27 years old! According to Forbes, she raked in $33 million last year through fees and endorsements.

The Brazilian beauty has signed a contract with American company Procter & Gamble to endorse its Pantene line of hair care products. Here's the kicker: She is asking to be paid for her hard work in euros, not dollars.

According to Bloomberg, Gisele's sister and manager said that contracts are more attractive when they offer euros because the dollar's future is uncertain.

The dollar has declined 34 percent in the past 6 years and the euro is stronger. Economists predict that the dollar will continue to weaken. Smart move financially, say experts, but bad PR move, especially when she's working for an American company.

I'm all for people earning money, but here's what gets me: She is working for an American company selling an American product. She has at least one home in America (in New York). She is working here, yet she doesn't want to be paid in our currency.

HOLY CATS, that's hilarious!!

Does Ms. Nauert fault all those American businesses that have no headquarters in the US so they can avoid paying US taxes? What about the cruise lines that cater to Americans yet don't headquarter in the US so they can get around strict American laws that regulate cruise ships? HEY, HEATHER, WHAT ABOUT THE BOTTOM LINE?

She says she's "all for people earning money, but here's what gets me: She is working for an American company selling an American product." Yeah, so the fuck what? This is the planet Earth, lady--money is king. The only reason you're writing such an inflammatory piece is to get more people to read it so your company will make more money from the ads displayed on the same page as the articles. Funny, how your picture is also displayed prominently on the same page suggesting, quite overtly, that your own hotness just might have something to do with your salary and that you have a job in broadcasting at all.

Who's the shallow greedy cow, now? You bag on Bundchen and then turn around and do the exact same thing. Perhaps your just jealous? I can only theorize.

Of course, Bundchen isn't the only rich-as-fuck person bailing on the USD, check out what that first Seattle Times article I linked to had to say about other famous folks fleeing American cash:

Like billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Bill Gross, the Brazilian supermodel is on a growing list of rich people who have concluded the currency can only depreciate because Americans led by President Bush are living beyond their means.

...

"We've told all of our clients that if you only had one idea, one investment, it would be to buy an investment in a non-dollar currency. That should be on the top of the list," said Gross, the chief investment officer of Pacific Investment and manager of the world's biggest bond fund.

The dollar fell 0.8 percent last week and touched $1.4528 per euro, the weakest since the euro's debut in 1999. The dollar lost 2.8 percent last week to 93.47 Canadian cents and 1.8 percent to $2.09 per British pound.

BNP Paribas chief currency strategist Hans-Guenter Redeker, the most accurate foreign-exchange forecaster last quarter in a Bloomberg survey, said the dollar may drop to $1.50 per euro by year-end.

...

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Buffett told reporters in South Korea last month that he is bearish on the U.S. currency.

"We still are negative on the dollar relative to most major currencies, so we bought stocks in companies that earn their money in other currencies," Buffett said Oct. 25.

Jim Rogers, a former partner of investor George Soros, said last month he's selling his house and all his possessions in the U.S. currency to buy China's yuan.

"The dollar is collapsing," Rogers said last week. "I'm moving to Asia because moving to Asia now is like moving to New York in 1907 or London in 1807. It's the wave of the future."

The dollar is falling as investors seek better returns outside the United States. Developing Asian nations including China and India will grow 9.8 percent this year, compared with 1.9 percent for the U.S., the International Monetary Fund said last month.

"The world has learned to live with a weak dollar," said Jay Bryson, a former Fed analyst who is a global economist at Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank. "It's not worried. It doesn't rely on the U.S. as much as it once did."

Looks like it really is time to jump ship, folks.

I wish I was wrong, but I haven't been in the past and the big boys who are supposed to be experts are now saying what I've been going on about for a while.

---

Orignal From: FREE MARKET'S HOTTEST WOMAN SAYS NO TO US DOLLAR

Man, I'm so psyched about the XO, it's like when I first got the money together to buy my 3g iPod back in the dark ages of 2003. I've been eyeing the calendar, watching the day on which OLPC, the non-profit behind the XO will allow us to place our orders for the XO laptop. Then, today, I got my reminder email! Check it out:

Click the pick to make it bigger.

The main selling point for me of the XO, itself, is its long battery life which is 15 hours, depending on how you use it, of course. I'm sure if you surf with wifi a lot or use the built-in webcam a lot you're likely to run down the battery a bit faster, but hey, you're still talking hella-longer than the average laptop. Hell, my beloved MacBook only goes for about three hours. I can't wait to use a laptop wirelessly all day.

Then, there's the added benefit of putting one of these in front of a kid in a 3rd World country. If it weren't for that, I'd probably be putting this purchase off. Living pretty much anywhere in America means you're likely to be in the to 15% of money makers in the world. I know it sounds weird, but the world's wealth (and therefore its education) is wildly and unevenly distributed. The XO laptop program, the OLPC non-profit and all of the copycats (eee pc, Classmate PC) are working to change all that. So, support the XO and OLPC and you support education around the world. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

For more on the XO, check out all of my posts on the OLPC laptop or check out www.olpcnews.com which is an independently run blog about all things XO-related.

My only question now is, once we place our orders, how long until they ship???

---

Orignal From: OMG!! I Got My XO Reminder Email!!

Wow, it was sad to see TV parodist Stephen Colbert nixed from the run for the President of the United States of America so quickly. I was not too surprised, but saddened that the South Carolina couldn't see their way clear to hold to the American idea that ANYONE could be President. Hell, Conan is governor of California and hasn't totally wiped us out. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that Stephen Colbert could have done a better job than George W. Bush. The question is, would he really have had a shot at winning the Dem nomination? Well, according to a November 6, 2007 article at CNN.com some of Barack Obama's supporters felt Colbert just might prove a threat to their candidate:

Two prominent supporters of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign in South Carolina called state Democratic Party officials and urged them to keep funnyman Stephen Colbert's name off the primary ballot, according to party officials and Obama supporters.

The Obama campaign denied any connection to the phone calls.

"Democrats in South Carolina, including supporters of ours, had strong feelings on both sides of the ballot issue, and ultimately it was South Carolina Democrats who made this decision," said Obama's South Carolina communications director Kevin Griffis.

The South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Council voted last week 13-3 to block Colbert's bid for the Democratic primary.

...

At least one member of the executive council, who requested anonymity, told CNN he felt "pressured" by former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum to oppose placing Colbert on the ballot.

...

"She said it wouldn't be fair to the other candidates. That he {Colbert} wouldn't be sincere. That he was only running in one state," said the executive council official.

The official added: "The Obama people, they just didn't want him at all."

Tenenbaum disagreed with characterization that she lobbied to keep Colbert off the ballot for political reasons.

"I think lobbying was too strong a word," she said in an interview with CNN.

"I called them to see what they were thinking and if they had made up their mind. I am a volunteer in that campaign, and so I am not a staffer. And I thought it could have taken votes away from a lot of people."

Another Obama endorser who regularly appears at campaign events, state Rep. Bakari Sellers, also made phone calls to members of the party's executive council about Colbert, according to Sellers.

"I placed the calls as a concerned Democrat, realizing that we are a country in despair," Sellers told CNN. "It is not a time for games or to make a mockery of the process."

AHHHHAHAHAHA!

I love it when people say crap like that. No, we don't have an election system that allows us to count every vote, nor can we guarantee that each of our votes will actually go to the person we want to vote for, we have Republicans owning a stack of ballot machine companies, serious issues with poor counties around the country being under equipped to support their communities and this fool is talking about making a mockery of the process??

It's ALREADY a mockery!! No effort is required to make the system already look more sad than it is.

And like I said, you really think Colbert would be worse in the White House than the current occupant?

'nuf said, I think.

---

Orignal From: OBAMA SUPPORTERS SCARED OF COLBERT

MySpace.com - Emergency 411 - - www.myspace.com/emergency411

Emergency 411=funny

Tell your friends.

 

---

Orignal From: Emergency 411 - myspace.com/emergency411

Emergency 411 = Funny

Tell your friends

---

Orignal From: Emergency 411 Cartoon

(utterz)tinyurl.com/2htxbu Project365 2007 11 09: It's hard to tell, but this is TheWife and I crossing the street

---

Orignal From: (utterz)http://tinyurl.com/2ht...

---

Orignal From: Project365 2007 11 09

So, one of the things I have been hearing for a long time about the OLPC XO laptop is how the thing was designed for low-power consumption. This made sense seeing as the target audience for the lappie is in the 3rd World where a regular supply of electricity may not always be easy to find. To stop the XO from sucking too much juice, the following features were included in the XO:

1) no hard drive, no optical drive--this basically removes all moving parts from the device.

2) slow processor--a 433mhz processor means less juice consumed.

3) a display that easily switches from color to black and white and can also easily switch to a lower resolution--both allow for less energy to be used.

4) a processor that will shut off after 2 seconds of non-use and start back up with 300 milliseconds of notice and doesn't need to be active to keep things like wifi running.

In previous posts on the XO I said that the battery life I had found on the XO wiki was claimed to be 15+ hours. With the above features, this sort of made sense to me. However, I couldn't find anything definite. The 15+ hours number came from the battery section of the hardware page on the XO's wiki. The catch there is that I misread the part where it claims "16 watt-hours." After looking up what a "watt-hour" is, I discovered that it's the amount of watts it can supply in an hour. With that in mind, I posted a question to the XO wiki's Ask a Question page. Here's the exact question I asked and the exact answer I got:

Battery life?

---

When I unplug my MacBook from the wall, it tells me how much battery time I have left. Usually this is around 3 hours. Does the XO do this and if so, on a full charge, how much time does it take during heavy use for the battery to discharge fully? In other words, how long does the battery last, worst case scenario? Thanks!

It does not tell you remaining time in minutes, but in percentage of charge; currently, if you do not use any power saving modes, it would last roughly as long as your macbook. Sj talk

So, while that's a bit of a let down, it's a fairly specific length of time for the battery life. That's significantly lower than the 15+ hours I was quoting and I apologize for not being thorough in my previous posts. The however, here, is that it's still a pretty cheap laptop and using the power saving modes Sj mentions in his reply will extend the battery much longer. Someplace (sorry, I'm lame for not remembering where) I read that with all of the power saving modes engaged the XO could function for the better part of a day without being connected to the wall. You can bet that I'll be testing this theory out.

Ultimately, I still think this is an innovative little device. It's still uber-portable, can do everything I'd need it to do on-the-go (word processor, web surfing, webcam, instant message and, with the right added software, do flash). It also comes with a year of free wifi hotspot use from T-Mobile--which almost pays the complete $400 for the laptop--in fact, by some estimates, you'll only really be paying $40 for the XO laptop. At that price, if you don't like the XO, no worries--you can still use the T-Mo wifi on other devices.

Of course, the best reason to go for this deal is the fact that for $400 you're not only buying yourself a cool little ultra-mobile PC, but you're also buying one for a kid in a 3rd World country. If it weren't for that, I'd just be saving my money for a new iPhone instead, or I might go with the eee PC from Asus. The whole point here is that the OLPC group behind the XO is a non-profit and they're trying to help people around the world. How many for-profit companies can you say that about?

One last tidbit for today's OLPX XO laptop post: If you're curious about the SugarOS that runs the XO, you can try it out for yourself by using an emulator--check out the "Emulate an XO" page at the XO's wiki. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan on doing it in the next day or so. Watch for a report on how it goes tomorrow. Or try it out yourself and let me know how it works.

I'll still be there, at XOgiving.org, Monday morning at 6AM Eastern Time to order my XO and I hope you will be, too. It's a good cause, dammit!

---

Orignal From: DAILY OLPC XO LAPTOP POST: BATTERY LIFE INFO AND MORE

(utterz)tinyurl.com/2fcmzk 2 Old Tyme Fire Engines at Sunset and Cahuenga i: Wow, the things you see in Los Angeles

---

Orignal From: (utterz)http://tinyurl.com/2fc...

---

Orignal From: 2 Old Tyme Fire Engines at Sunset and Cahuenga i

So, I live in Los Angeles and have been for more than a decade. I'm even a writer here. Of course, since most of my success here has been in animation, I'm not in the WGA (don't ask why writing cartoons doesn't count) so I'm not on strike (from a job I don't have). Still I know the industry a bit and I know the technology that is the catalyst behind all of this trouble, so I may have something worthwhile to add to the discussion. Keep reading and see if you think that's true.

OK, my take on the strike is pretty damn straight forward. There are two sides to it, however.

The Here and the Now (short term):

The Internet and DVDs are making studios more money. Writers' contracts were not originally negotiated with so-called "new digital media" in mind. As a result, the studios are making more money and some of that should be going to the writers, though the studios (of course) don't think so.

I'm not sure what the take of the studios is though--in my mind it would seem like there are a finite number of viewers and whether they watch on TV, online or on DVD, the numbers don't grow, they just sort of shift from one medium to another. A good example of this is how Edward James Olmos told fans of his show Battlestar Galactica that they need to be watching the show on TV because NBC/Universal doesn't track when fans download episodes off of iTunes and/or Bit Torrent. This suggests that it's the same number of people who would be watching on TV, if that were the only medium the show was available on. The no-longer-updated blog MindJack.com has an interesting piece on how Battlestar Galactica killed commercial TV (www.mindjack.com//feature/piracy051305.html) that is an interesting read, I think.

The Down-the-Road (long term):

The fact of the matter is that the studio system is dying. It's a quiet undercurrent here in LA that no one really wants to be too honest about. Former "Cheers" writer Rob Long does a radio column for KCRW here in LA where he talks about being inside the industry and he recently started blogging--in one post he says:

The web is like Wal*Mart. And we in the entertainment industry are sitting in a store on a slowly emptying out Main Street, making our expensive handmade doo-dads and selling thirty-dollar rakes, and if we only listened, we could hear them putting up the super Wal*Mart out by the interstate, where it meets the state highway, where the traffic is. Where it’s easy for people to park and shop. And we’re sitting, in our little Main Street boutique with our quaint little expensive merchandise, wondering where all the people are.

In my mind, it doesn't matter what the writers get--they'll be in higher and higher demand in the coming years as the studios do their best to stay alive. Radiohead doubling their profits on their latest album by going it alone is proof that the studios are not as required as they used to be and it's likely they'll be less and less required as the years go on.

So, they'll cut their own salaries and give creative-types more money to keep themselves a viable part of the equation. They'll be like agents and managers are now. So, ultimately, I don't think it matters what happens with the strike now because in the long term the results will be the same. Studios will be marginalized and the creatives will be the new sheriffs in town. Won't that be nice? I'll have to move back to LA when that happens :)

(After all, the reason I'm where I am is because people have looked at my better ideas and wondered just what the hell to do with them without risking too much. Thanks to New Digital Media (NDM) I can decide that for myself now.)

Since the end result will be the same and it really won't make any difference how much or how little the studios give writers, the studios might as well start being nice now before writers get too bitter and vindictive about it.

Resources:

So, that's my take on things. There are some great resources out there about the strike. The KCRW radio columnist and former "Cheers" writer I mentioned above has a blog that he's been using to talk about the strike and you can check it out at RobLong.com. Long also points to a blog post by Marc Andreesen (you may know him as the guy who invented Netscape) about the strike which you can find here: blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/suicide-by-stri.html

Rob Long says Andreessen "gets it" despite the fact that Andreesen isn't even in the entertainment industry. I think Rob Long is mistaken--Andreessen helped invent the Internet as we know it and, as a result, helped reinvent the entertainment industry as we know it.

Oh and you can also follow twitter.com/writersstrike for the latest news and links about the strike. That's how I've been keeping up on things. That and having a close friend work on a major studio lot helps, too.

---

Orignal From: ThePete on TheWriters' Strike

---

Orignal From: OLPC XO Laptop Available Now!

Classic Microphone for the PC user on a budget

Brando is best known for super cheapy, (some would say crappy) gadgets so don't expect this microphone to be made of metal--it's $9 and you're likely to get what you pay for--a really cool looking cheap mic for your PC. :) 

---

Orignal From: Classic Microphone for the PC user on a budget

New auctions up and old auctions ending tomorrow--if you're a scifi geek like me, please swing by urltea.com/1rsj Thanks!!

---

Orignal From: New auctions up and old auctio...

@tewfiq That "living in 2000AD" post was brilliant--thanks for linking! tinyurl.com/36zvhj <--for anyone who missed it.

---

Orignal From: @tewfiq That "living in 2...

Will Life Be Worth Living In 2,000AD?

I don't know which is more funny--the stuff they got wrong or the stuff they got right.  o_O  An excerpt from a piece written in 1961:

oors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

...

Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift.

 

Good stuff ^_^ 

 

---

Orignal From: Will Life Be Worth Living In 2,000AD?

Of course, any kind of prediction needs a "probably" at the end of it (or at the front) just to save the face of the person doing the predicting. That said, I've kind of been right about a lot of stuff so far--not that predicting a disaster in Iraq or a dictator in the White House were hard to predict--but once again, others are confirming what I've been saying for a while now--our economy (and possibly the world's) is taking a serious dip. It seems like the Free-Market Globalism that so many people thought was the best and only way to go is eating itself from the inside.

Financial news reporter Will Hutton wrote a November 4, 2007 article at guardian.co.uk describing what he felt was "The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years." Have a gander at a cutting from his piece:

I have been following the financial markets for more than 30 years. Crises have come and gone, but the one unfolding since August and which intensified last week is the most serious. It is not just that its impact is cascading around the world because of the new interconnectedness of global finance, it is that the authorities, particularly in Britain and America, have lost control and do not have the means to regain it as quickly as we might hope. With an oil price approaching $100 a barrel, we are in an uncharted and dangerous place.

After more than 15 years of extraordinarily benevolent economic conditions worldwide - cheap oil, cheap money, growing trade, the Asia boom, rising house prices - things are unravelling at bewildering speed. The system might be able to handle one shock; it is undoubtedly too fragile to handle so many simultaneously.

Lovely, so a guy who's been following this stuff for 30 years says the end is nigh. Hell, I've only been following this stuff (and not even that closely) for about 8 years and I'm saying the same thing. The last time I blogged about how weak the US dollar was versus the Canadian dollar, the ratio was 1USD=0.93CD. As of today, that's changed to 1USD=0.96CD. So, the USD is stronger than it was! But sadly, it's still weaker than Canadian cash. My specific prediction here is that this is only a temporary climb and the USD with drop again. Generally, with the price of oil rising (despite that discover of oil off the coast of Brazil) the price of everything else will rise, accordingly. To combat this, more people will take out loans, essentially creating money from nothing, thus driving the value of the USD down even further.

It's like a roller coaster with a never ending drop!

Weee?

---

Orignal From: It's the End of the (Economic) World As We Know It (Probably)