Congress protects our email… psyche!!!
In a spectacular change of position, our so-called elected representatives removed an update to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would have granted email the same legal protection as hard copy documents. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to include the email protection and require a warrant to obtain copies of email over 180 days old. (Right now, a warrant is not required.) Instead they decided to pass a trivial update to the Video Privacy Protection Act that would allow media suppliers to share, with user consent, the viewing habits of their subscribers.
Awesome… just what we were waiting for. Now we’ll all receive status updates from Netflix, Hulu and who knows what other video service about soft porn rentals from that guy from high school that we friended a couple of years ago. Not surprisingly, Netflix issued a statement saying what a benefit this new capability would be to its consumers. (Duh.)
Just between you and me, with all the automated posting of who’s-listening-to-what, who’s-been-where and who-likes-what, what we really need is a who-really-flipping-cares option!
BTW — I’d love to call out how our senators voted, but a roll call vote was not taken. So instead of accountability, we’ll have to settle for an amorphous, unaccountable blob of representation. I’m sure when it comes to protecting freedom, this is what our founding fathers had in mind. Keep Calm and Baryon — A pretty cool zombie indie has been recently released under a Creative Common license. The movie was created by Luke Thompson, a University of Manchester Ph.D. student. The movie was conceived after joking that the tunnels under CERN would be ideal for a zombie movie. (CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.) Two years later with a budget of approximately $3,200 and a cast and crew of 20, the feature-length movie “Decay” is born.
The film follows a small group of students (played by physicists) after a disastrous malfunction in the world’s biggest particle accelerator. As they try desperately to escape from the underground maintenance tunnels, they are hunted by the remains of a maintenance team, who have become less than human.
Let’s be honest… the acting is not great and the plot is somewhat predictable. In addition, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Higgs boson is anything but harmless. However, the backdrop of CERN creates an authentic apocalyptic experience. And zombie films are never known for their great acting (with all due respect to Milla Jovovich, of course).
“Decay” possesses all the components of a great zombie film: a plausible plot; a setting that encourages the suspension of disbelief; just enough gore to make you quesy, but not so much you want to vomit; and low budget, but effective special effects. I don’t know if its got what it takes to become a cult classic, but I highly recommend “Decay” to those that enjoy a good zombie flick. It won’t be a waste of your time.
Check it out at decayfilm.com. Until next time, I’m off the grid @gregory_a_baker.You Might Also Like:
