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- no more cable tv for me. Saving $53/month!
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- just started playing Spore. http://raptr.com/djotaku
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Apr
17
Andrew’s post on Imus and his firing prompted a response from me. I decided that since I hold a dim view that other sites may exist in the future, that I will post select bits from his post and my full response. By clicking on that link you can see his whole post and my response.
…Sharpton and Jackson were both like piranhas when Imus made his offensive statement. But Imus’ comments were outright tame compared to what the average top 40 rap song has in it. Why aren’t they going after rappers more vehemently? Because they’re black, or are they afraid 50 cent’s homies are going to cap them for it?
The argument has been made that rap is a part of black heritage and should be immune to scrutiny over the statements it makes….
My response:
Imus – first all I knew was that he prevented me from watching the news on MSNBC in the morning. So I switched to CNN a few years ago. (At least for news in the morning) Then I saw part of the (semi?) biographical Howard Stern film when it was on network tv (or cable – I forget). I learned that Imus was originally his hero, but a real jerk.
Apparently, this isn’t even Imus’ first time doing this BS. There’s a [white] senator married to a black woman and he called the white guy Mandingo and played the song “Jungle Fever”. I’m surprised he hasn’t called Condi a “house n——”.
Anyway, Sharpton, when asked about rap, claims that he has been hard on them too. I’m not 100% sure about that, but I know there are others who don’t like it. Bill Cosby has been very vocal about it and, strangely, has been criticized for his stance.
While rap originated from the streets and was a way (like jazz and blues) to express the feelings of a people who couldn’t express themselves through the traditional outlets of rock, grunge, etc I think it’s time to outgrow this. I’ve heard a lot of “positive” rap including DCTalk’s cheesy (by today’s rap standards – think MC Hammer-type stuff) early albums and I could groove to it. Also, in the Christian realm, there are Gotee artists GRITS (they may have dropped the acronym and it might be Grits now) who has music with such good beats that I routinely hear their music sampled on Mtv and VH1 tv shows. (Including strange shows that have nothing to do with their positive image) There’s also John Reuban, another Gotee artist.
Anyway, I kinda started ramble in that paragraph, but my point is that rap does not inherently have to be about negative things. It can be about positive things. Or it can be indifferent – there’s plenty (ok, maybe plenty is stretching it) of secular rap music out there that is a ton of fun to listen to and doesn’t have too much bad stuff (other than perhaps some profanity). For some secular examples see Taleb Kwali, Nas (most of the time), and some of the other “underground” artists who are always rallying against the objectification of women.
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Apr
17
Looking back….wow…..
Category: Me, Site | 
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Today I was looking back through my original blog, It’s A Binary World (now 1.0), and it was interesting to see what I was writing about. I found some really fun posts. Here are links to the posts and some highlights.
When I started up this server and blog (of course it was on an old Fedora Core 1 machine back then):
Why does technology excite me so? I think because my knowledge of technology frees me from the slavery of others. I can run my own server with as much space as I want on it. I can post any content I want (as long as the goverment doesn’t shut me down q;o) and I can be free of paying for software that doesn’t work right out of the box -> by switching to Open Source alternative. Also…I’m a bit of a geek. q;o)
The first time I heard about the One Laptop Per Child project. (which is just now getting ready to deploy!!):
The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp.
The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux (emphasis added) software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution.
The first time I discovered Xvid (which I now use to encode all my videos) and also predicted the effects of a system like the OLPC laptop:
Yesterday I discovered the video codec Xvid. This is an opensource MPEG-4 codec that embodies the movement I have recently chosen to become a part of - the open source movement. Although I don’t know the ramifications of a true software economy based upon open source software (it only previously existed in the very early years of computing, but computers were crappy back then), I do know that I like the principles of open source software.
First of all, it empowers poor countries so that they can rise up to our technological level. Instead of being left behind because they can’t afford expensive copies of Win XP, they can get open source software for free. (Software is, after all, a large part of the price paid for new computers - the components barely cost anything) It also allows college students, such as myself, to be able to afford to have the lastest and best software.
And finally, some great quotes! Which I’ll just reproduce here:
“You feel a warm fuzzy heat unless you have the 10KW laser -then you feel tha tyour arm is missing” - Prof Pollock
“When you are young your stability is very large” - Prof Chiang comparing Humans and Power Systems
“I will show you my work and you can decide whether I am 3rd class researcher, 2nd class researcher, or 1st class researcher” - Prof Chiang
“Hydrogen is forever” - Prof Tiwari
“I’m waiting for my university to recall my degree since everything I learned is outdated” - Prof Pollock
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