"I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan
The crazy guerilla marketing campaign for the new NIN album
Topic: Music
2:39 am EDT, Apr 2, 2007
An April Fools joke was taken seriously by a few MemeStreams readers due to its similarity to a number of realevents that have been discussed here over the past few months, a similarity that has now been acknowledged on the page itself.
This prank is connected with a massive guerilla marketing campaign for the new Nine Inch Nails album. Trent Reznor has been populating the Internet and the phone network with a complex collection of recordings and puzzles that would impress fans of the Da Vinci Code. Quoted below is a taste of the puzzle so far. Click the main link for more.
Ready to jump down the rabbit hole? Okay, here we go.
The year is year zero. The year is referenced as 0000 instead of the current Roman calendar. Through this image, we can see that 0000 is 2022.
The campaign started with a new NIN tour shirt with some of the letters brighter than others. Production malfunction? No, a clue to lead listeners to the first website. The letters spelled “I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE”, where iamtryingtobelieve.com is an actual site.
This site introduces us to a drug called Parepin, which the government has added to our water that will boost our immune system against the bioterrorist attacks that are currently occurring. However there are some that feel the drug has side affects resulting in hallucinations, twitches and placidness.
If you try to e-mail the webmaster of this website to talk about the side affects of the drug you get a very eerie auto-reply like someone was holding a gun to his head...
Second website was unlocked by a concert goer finding a USB flash disk in the bathroom with a link to http://anotherversionofthetruth.com/.
The website appears to be a propaganda page for a “New America” but with some drags of the mouse reveals a desolate landscape and a link to a very gloomy message board.
The phone conversation can be heard by calling the number (216) 333-1810...
Most frightening part of the conversation is when the receiver of the call says “I’ll call the cops” the caller says in a distressed voice, “The cops are already here, they are the ones that locked us in.”
Bush's long history of tilting Justice - Los Angeles Times
Topic: Politics and Law
1:42 pm EDT, Apr 1, 2007
I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
This afternoon I was happily geeking away when I heard a knock at the door. I went to answer and was presented with a local sheriff and two FBI agents holding a lovely search warrant (scans coming when I can get down to Kinko's in the morning).
Hey, hey... check it out... If you can handle beta-quality releases and are an unforgivable cheapskate, Google has the solution to your "why does broadband have to cost so much?" problem!
Thanks to Bad Religion, there is a theme song for this. Here are the lyrics:
Somewhere high in the desert near a curtain of a blue St. Anne's skirts are billowing But down here in the city of the lime lights The fans of santa ana are withering And you can’t deny that living is easy If you never look behind the scenery It's showtime for dry climes And bedlam is dreaming of rain
When the hills of los angeles are burning Palm trees are candles in the murder wind So many lives are on the breeze Even the stars are ill at ease And los angeles is burning
This is not a test Of the emergency broadcast system Where malibu fires and radio towers Conspire to dance again And I cannot believe the media Mecca They're only trying to peddle reality, Catch it on prime time, story at nine The whole world is going insane
When the hills of los angeles are burning Palm trees are candles in the murder wind So many lives are on the breeze Even the stars are ill at ease And los angeles is burning
A placard reads "the end of days" Jacaranda boughs are bending in the haze
More a question than a curse How could hell be any worse?
The flames are stunning The cameras running So take warning
When the hills of los angeles are burnin Palm trees are candles in the murder wind So many lives are on the breeze Even the stars are ill at ease And los angeles is burning
Bruce Sterling wants to fund the Industrial Memetics Institute.
"I'm shocked that I understood every damn thing Benkler's saying. Online experiences need to be granular, modular, and integratable. Furthermore, I didn't know about self-selection, humanization, and trust construction. I'd love to see that industrialized. Norm creation, transparency, peer review, discipline, yeah, all of that's lacking today. Internet institutions lack sustainability. They have the lifetime of my skin. They get bought out. The available platforms for self-expression are terrible. I use seven word processors, all of them terrible."
"Why are social applications businesses? Why aren't they political parties?"
"I hang out at a lot of gigs like this. Everybody's sticking it to the man; nobody's the man. What if the state of Vermont gets metal-spined ubiquitous broadband? If it leaks over state borders, are you going to sell connectivity? Will they make sure nobody in New Hampshire can 'steal' Wi-fi? What if New Hampshire becomes the next Baltic-style e-state, the next Estonia?"
What you build, you cannot contain or control. "I'm a cyberpunk. Information wants to be free. It used to be hard to find, but Google was my apotheosis. We now have this unbelievable tidal wave of information. There's no end to it. It's endlessly seductive. Suddenly, your skills at ferreting out obscure information are almost worthless. Now they don't want to pay you. I say, follow your bliss. I spend more time with Google now than with novels and magazines. I'm swimming in it. I'm marinating it."
"Follow your bliss into the abyss. That's my new bumper sticker. This is the abyss. This is where my explorations led me. You guys are the denizens of the abyss. I strap on my diver helmet and go into the internet as far as you can go. You're the guys laying the pipe. It's a cyberpunk Mariana Trench in this room. I have to cheer you. Thank you for having us here."
Fence firm hired illegals - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Topic: Politics and Law
3:06 pm EDT, Mar 30, 2007
The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.
Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (original template is here). Davidson gave the template code away to anyone who wanted to use it, but asked that he be given credit when it was used, and told users to host their own image files.
McCain’s staff used his template, but didn’t give Davidson credit. Worse, he says, they use images that are on his server, meaning he has to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain’s site.
Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution.
The Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer was released this afternoon. Unfortunately the video is way too short! 1 min. I will likely spring for a PS3 when this comes out.
