Bill Bumgarner

Wardrobe malfunction, my ass.

So, if you look beyond the events surrounding CBS, MTV, and Janet Jackson's Right Nipple (nice metal work!)....

Did anyone else notice the cool "bullet time" effect that was employed throughout the game and the very close to real-time production pipeline that had to have been behind it?

Neat stuff. When the really long pass in the second half was completed for a touchdown, we pretty much assumed that said effect would be used twice in the playback. And, guess what, it was...

I would bet that next year's superbowl will have "realtime-bullettime" effects. In the interim, I am confident that we can all "enjoy" said effect across an ever increasing range of shows and employed with an ever decreasing amount of budget or effectiveness.

Update: Shows how much I watch football. Apparently the "bullet time" stuff has been around for a while. In other news, good to see that NBC is upholding this country's fine morality standards by putting up a censored slide show the uninvited guest at the half time show. Kind of like throwing a rock in the river to try and stem the flood after the dam already broke.

Speaking of standards....

So the FCC has launched an investigation into the whole halftime show. Apparently, the whole thing was just a collection of nasty sexual depravity that no one would have noticed without that catalyst that is an exposed boob. Throughout this, the FCC, CBS, etc.. have been acting all surprised that something so distasteful could happen in an otherwise totally family friendly show.

Huh?

Clearly, everyone at the FCC must have PVRs with which they skipped the commercials. Farting horses? Advertisements for shows about sexual predators preying upon children? Mike Ditka throwing footballs through tires while talking about drugs to allow the impotent to screw like crazed weasels? Oh, no, wait, that was a different drug that promised 36 hours of effectiveness but where it was mentioned that one of the side effects could possibly be a four hour erection requiring immediate medical treatment? I would love to have heard the explanation that some parents gave their kids after being questioned about that one.

But where are all folks protesting said "party drugs"? Or does the "moral majority" honestly believe that drugs that combat impotence are solely aimed at folks that either can't reproduce because of natural causes (is sex after menopause a sin because there is no chance of reproduction?) or aimed at people trying to spawn?

God forbid they actually discover the channel change button. During any given bit of primetime "family safe" television programming on basic cable there is a plethora of wonderful material like glorified brutal killings, marketing of overconsumption and greed directed at kids, implied sex acts that leave little to the imagination, overmarketed/overhyped lies being portrayed as "news", sporting events that might as well be a study in the benefits of performance enhancing drugs while also rewarding the poorest sportsman like behavior around.

All of that and one little boob w/a bit of metal on it causes all this commotion yet there is zero reaction all the filth, crap, violence, degradation, lies, and nastiness?

Pathetic.

Bush and the FCC are pushing to allow for much larger fines when accidental boobage and other such nefarious events happen. The fine is currently set at $27,500 per incident. In the case of CBS, they could face a fine of $27,500 per affiliate -- I believe there are around 200 affilliates. $5,500,000 may sound like a hefty chunk of change. It isn't. It is peanuts. Consider that Viacom's stock opened up over a point on Monday. In other news, Janet Jackson's new single hit the wire on Monday morning at 7am. The claim was that it was released ahead of schedule due to "unauthorized copies circulating on the Internet". What a crock of crap.

As much as I might believe that the "moral barometer" applied to determine what is and is not acceptable on public media is completely broken, I am all for the FCC having the power to fine an entity such as CBS/Viacom/MTV to a degree that it prevents such gross and disturbingly effective ploys to market product by violating the rules with the express purpose of causing a big stink.

Yeah, I'm on Orkut.

It is pretty neat. I have punted the invites to LinkedIn, etc, for a variety of reasons. I have been blowing off the LinkedIn invites mostly because they read so much like spam.

There are three features of Orkut that are keeping me interested in following, even participating, within the resulting community.

First, Orkut seems to have taken the "let's build it and see what happens" approach. Orkut doesn't enforce any particular kind of usage pattern or community structure.

Secondly, Orkut's approach to managing email is such that it is easy to stop orkut from ever sending you messages. As well, Orkut's messages state clearly exactly why the message arrived in your mailbox and don't seem to try and "hard sell" some kind of a "BE A PART OF THE FUN NOW OR BE SQUARE!!!" advertising message.

Finally, Orkut may ask for a boatload of personal information as you sign up, but it is pretty much all optional and you can easily customize exactly how your info appears on the pages contained within the site.

To me, the measure of Orkut's success will be its ability to connect me with folks that I care about. Through Orkut, I have already heard from a couple of folks that I haven't caught up with in far too long. By that metric, Orkut has been a wild success.