Pakistan's Muslims Blow a Fuse Over a Facebook Page

Muslim anger prompts Pakistan to block Facebook - Yahoo News

LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan's government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook on Wednesday amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

These people are being outrageous, as this is not something actually created or endorsed by Facebook, but merely posted on Facebook by an individual. If Facebook were to cave in under pressure, it would signal that they are willing to censor non-pornographic content on shaky grounds.

As an American, even in a Christian dominated society, it makes me appreciate the freedom of the first ammendment and that fact that our government would not resort to censorship methods comparable with the Chinese government's censorship of the internet.

Oscar 2010 Picks

With so many excellent films nominated this year for various Oscars, here are some predictions in a year when any winner is possible.

Best Picture
The Hurt Locker
What should win: The Hurt Locker or Up in the Air
(If Avatar wins, then the Academy is just trying to appease the masses.)

Best Actor
George Clooney for Up in the Air

Best Actress
Gabourey Sidibe for Precious
Although Meryl Streep may add to her trophy case.

Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress
Vera Farmiga
Who should win: Vera Farmiga

Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker
Who should win: Kathryn Bigelow or Jason Reitman for Up in the Air

Best Original Screenplay
A Serious Man
What should win: A Serious Man or Up

Best Adapted Screenplay
Precious
What should win: Precious or Up in the Air

Best Cinematography
The Hurt Locker
What should win: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince or The Hurt Locker
(I wouldn't really call Avatar's CG visuals cinematography, so it should not win.)

Best Editing
District 9
What should win: The Hurt Locker or District 9

Best Art Direction
Avatar

Best Makeup
Star Trek

Best Sound
Avatar
What should win: Avatar or Star Trek

Best Visual Effects
Avatar

Best Animated Film
Up

National Geographic Solicitations

Body: The Complete Human (Amazon)

National Geographic has soliciting for product "10 day previews" by both phone and mail this week.

They called me several times, until today, I told them on the phone that I'm not interested in getting a trial movie sent to me (that I would have to pay for if it's not returned in time). If for some reason I did get the movie, that's what MacTheRipper and DVD Shrink are for.

Their mail solicitation was a half-letter size packet with what seemed liked six or seven inserts, advertising a "free 10-day preview" of the Body: The Complete Human book. The book looks pretty incredible, but is $40 for the standard edition. *They also don't disclose the extra charge for shipping and handling. No thanks, I'll wait for it to be half that price on Amazon.

Hold the phone. . . Amazon sells the book for $26.40 and free shipping. Another reason not to buy things from mail solicitations.

Blu-ray, back to multiple edition madness

It looks the first round of multiple edition Blu-ray movies are now being released. Hopefully distribution companies will have the brains to not make three editions of one movie (the movie-only version, the version with a few extras, and the expensive version with everything). If they do start using the three edition model again, consumers should not be as hasty to open their wallets.

No Country For Old Men. Regular edition and 2-Disc collector's edition
Terminator 2 Regular edition and better edition
Casino Royale Regular edition and 2-Disc collector's edition

With Casino Royale, both editions are ironically $20 on Amazon right now, probably because the collector's edition is still on sale. . . Wait, it looks like the MSRP for both is $38.96. Looks like they flubbed up.

Backing up Delicious Bookmarks

With the recent data loss from the social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia, it just goes to show that online data should also be backed up periodically.

I wouldn't recommend using a newcomer to social bookmarking, or a site that is not one of the top services in it's category. The major bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg probably have multiple backups of user data and use huge data centers with several layers of protection.

It's unlikely that a larger entity providing a service will suffer a major data loss and be unable to recover user data.

To backup your delicious bookmarks, go to Settings > Export/Backup Bookmarks.
The backup will let you save an HTML file with all of your bookmarks, including the tags and notes.

My backup of just over 3,000 bookmarks (all the bookmarks have tags and some have notes) is only 700k. Even on a slower DSL connection, this would download in under a minute.

Twitter flooded with link savers

I've seen tons of Twitter profiles that just have hundreds of updates, all with links. Why do this?

These people could be using Delicious or Digg to catalog their bookmarks and other sites that they want to revisit or make notes on. Not only that, but most of these profile are also using URL shorting services like TinyURL.com. To find a specific link, you'd have to scroll through pages and pages of updates to find your one link. Using a big-name social bookmarking site would make more sense. Delicous and Digg also have browser extensions to make saving links easy and unobtrusive. Twitter does not let you tag your updates yet, so what's the point?

Let's stop flooding Twitter with links, and use social bookmarking sites for saving links!