obfuscated.org

The AFI has a 10^th anniversary top 100 films list out. I really haven’t seen too many of these, although the ones I have seen have been (for the most part, excluding “Titanic” which was absolutely awful) very, very good.

Some quick pulls from the list:

My favorite from this list:. “Dr Strangelove”

From the list that I’d most like to see: “On The Waterfront” (Can’t get enough of those HUAC subtexts)

Most surprising omission: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

(Seen it, haven’t)

1. “Citizen Kane,” 1941.
2. “The Godfather,” 1972.
3. “Casablanca,” 1942.
4. “Raging Bull,” 1980.
5. “Singin’ in the Rain,” 1952.
6. “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.
7. “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1962.
8. “Schindler’s List,” 1993.
9. “Vertigo,” 1958.
10. “The Wizard of Oz,” 1939.
11. “City Lights,” 1931.
12. “The Searchers,” 1956.
13. “Star Wars,” 1977.
14. “Psycho,” 1960.
15. “2001: A Space Odyssey,” 1968.
16. “Sunset Blvd.”, 1950.
17. “The Graduate,” 1967.
18. “The General,” 1927.
19. “On the Waterfront,” 1954. (Seeing High Noon but not seeing this seems like it should be some sort of a crime)
20. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 1946.
21. “Chinatown,” 1974.
22. “Some Like It Hot,” 1959.
23. “The Grapes of Wrath,” 1940.
24. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” 1982.
25. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” 1962.
26. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” 1939.
27. “High Noon,” 1952.
28. “All About Eve,” 1950.
29. “Double Indemnity,” 1944.
30. “Apocalypse Now,” 1979.
31. “The Maltese Falcon,” 1941.
32. “The Godfather Part II,” 1974.
33. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 1975.
34. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” 1937.
35. “Annie Hall,” 1977.
36. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” 1957.
37. “The Best Years of Our Lives,” 1946.
38. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948.
39. “Dr. Strangelove,” 1964. (Should be much higher than #39, but that’s just me)
40. “The Sound of Music,” 1965.
41. “King Kong,” 1933.
42. “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1967.
43. “Midnight Cowboy,” 1969.
44. “The Philadelphia Story,” 1940.
45. “Shane,” 1953.
46. “It Happened One Night,” 1934.
47. “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1951.
48. “Rear Window,” 1954.
49. “Intolerance,” 1916.
50. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” 2001. (I will lose all of my nerd kred when I say: I really didn’t get in to this one all that much.)
51. “West Side Story,” 1961.
52. “Taxi Driver,” 1976.
53. “The Deer Hunter,” 1978.
54. “M-A-S-H,” 1970.
55. “North by Northwest,” 1959.
56. “Jaws,” 1975.
57. “Rocky,” 1976.
58. “The Gold Rush,” 1925.
59. “Nashville,” 1975.
60. “Duck Soup,” 1933.
61. “Sullivan’s Travels,” 1941.
62. “American Graffiti,” 1973.
63. “Cabaret,” 1972.
64. “Network,” 1976.
65. “The African Queen,” 1951.
66. “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1981.
67. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, 1966.
68. “Unforgiven,” 1992.
69. “Tootsie,” 1982.
70. “A Clockwork Orange,” 1971.
71. “Saving Private Ryan,” 1998.
72. “The Shawshank Redemption,” 1994.
73. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” 1969.
74. “The Silence of the Lambs,” 1991.
75. “In the Heat of the Night,” 1967.
76. “Forrest Gump,” 1994.
77. “All the President’s Men,” 1976.
78. “Modern Times,” 1936.
79. “The Wild Bunch,” 1969.
80. “The Apartment, 1960.
81. “Spartacus,” 1960.
82. “Sunrise,” 1927.
83. “Titanic,” 1997. (I am ashamed to admit this)
84. “Easy Rider,” 1969.
85. “A Night at the Opera,” 1935.
86. “Platoon,” 1986. (The best Vietnam movie of the middle 80’s)
87. “12 Angry Men,” 1957.
88. “Bringing Up Baby,” 1938.
89. “The Sixth Sense,” 1999.
90. “Swing Time,” 1936.
91. “Sophie’s Choice,” 1982.
92. “Goodfellas,” 1990.
93. “The French Connection,” 1971.
94. “Pulp Fiction,” 1994.
95. “The Last Picture Show,” 1971.
96. “Do the Right Thing,” 1989.
97. “Blade Runner,” 1982.
98. “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” 1942.
99. “Toy Story,” 1995.
100. “Ben-Hur,” 1959.

Sometimes, however, one of those sides is just plain wrong.

All the cool kids are wikigroaning these days. I can not pass up a fad, so:

Ninja : Real Ultimate Power

(I think Wikipedia does surprisingly well for this one.)

What’s your favorite wikigroan?

There was great news today on the insanity that is the Julie Amero conviction:

A judge has granted a new trial to Julie Amero, a former substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut who was convicted in January on four felony counts of risking injury to minors after she was unable to prevent pornographic pop-ups from showing up on a computer in a classroom in 2004.

The city’s prosecutors did not oppose the motion for a new trial, raising the possibility that Amero will not be tried again.

It’s about time. Her original conviction was one of the most insane things I had ever heard about. However, further down in the article, the computer forensics firm that analyzed the computer in question came up with something that really makes me cringe:

Sites analyzed a copy of the hard drive provided to him by Amero’s first expert witness, and found that computer was infected.

“There was definitely adware called new.net,” Sites said. “It was downloaded by a screensaver installed for Halloween by the teacher Amero was subbing for.”

Argh! If this is the same New.net that schleps domains in bogus TLD’s, then I worked for them back in the day. It’s the only job I ever walked off of, (I honestly hated every hour that I put towards their efforts) but still: I feel bad for having any part in them existing if their software in fact played a part in causing this to happen. So if this is the case: I’m sorry for not letting new.net die on my watch.

(Note: I have no idea if that particular New.net actually deals in Spyware. I sure hope that they don’t.)

Youtube videos of live folk covers of antiquated rap anthems is clearly what Al Gore created the internets for.

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

Dave Thomas has a fine idea for improving conferences by adding a focus on charitable giving:

Just imagine the difference we could make if, as an industry, we turned each of these conferences into a chance to raise much needed money for worthy charities. Imagine if, rather than getting yet one more burlap bag with a sponsor’s name on it, you instead got a slip of paper saying that the price of that bag was being used to buy vaccine for 5 kids, or a book for a literacy project. Imagine what could happen if a conference with 5,000 attendees raised just $20 per attendee. Then imagine $50, or $100. It starts to get serious.

As somebody who falls squarely in to the “I’m not going to use your Complete Enterprise Solution even if you give me a tote bag and a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo” camp, I think this is a great idea. Nobody needs another Sun-branded pen or Google Frisbee; there are lots of people out there who could make good use of a nerd’s pocket change.

09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63

I personally would have gone with f8 rather than f9.  F9 is so last year.

I’ve been getting several calls a week from (727) 541-0001 for some time now. The usual shtick is for them to claim to be from United Marketing or American Express, read me the last four numbers off of my credit card and try to get me to give them various pieces of identifying information. “Hi, I’m some scammy-sounding dude from Florida. I have the end of your credit card number and want to offer you a $40 gas card. What’s your home address?” Because I don’t have it in me to say something like “My home address is 4 GFY Lane in Get Bent, WI,” I’ve been trying various combinations of “please take me off of your phone list.” It hasn’t worked at all.

Oddly, I didn’t google the number until today. It turns out that this is a pretty well-known scam (More information on this scam). I called Amex just to make sure, and they confirmed that Amex is not offering gas cards in exchange for information that they already have on file.

So what are the best steps for me to take here? There’s part of me that wants to just mess with the people making the calls, but that would cost me money in terms of cell phone minutes, and I doubt that the people making the calls are even aware that they’re part of a scam. I doubt that the Do Not Call list would help. Above and beyond going over my Amex statements with an exceedingly fine-toothed comb from here on out, what should I do?

For fun, here’s a list of their last few calls. (My caller id only stores the previous 60 calls, so this is unfortunately all I have.)

4/24 9:12AM 4/23 12:02PM 4/21 9:23AM 4/20 3:48PM 4/20 9:23AM 4/19 6:05PM 4/19 12:00PM

And I have one listing for (727) 712-0382:

4/17 1:25PM