Steve Jobs in grains of salt

Grain By Grain, A Tribute To Steve Jobs In Salt [Video]
[Via Cult of Mac]

Incredible.

[via Bashir Sultani]

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Good reasons to stay away from Thailand

by puuikibeach

US Citizen Facing 15 Years In Jail For Linking From His Blog To An Unauthorized Bio Of Thai King
[Via Techdirt]

I’m curious if Thailand is purposely trying to kill off its rather lucrative tourism business. We’ve discussed in the past that Thailand has strict laws against “insulting” the king. These lèse majesté laws are used widely in Thailand to stop any sort of political criticism. They’ve been used to block entire sites including YouTube, and to arrest website owners for the comments on their site.

Lately, Thailand has been trying to use those laws against US citizens. Last month, we wrote about the case of Anthony Chai, a US citizen who had posted some anonymous comments critical of the king. In that case, the Canadian/US firm that hosted the site handed Chai’s identity over to the Thai government without question, and Chai was arrested recently while visiting.

In a similar case, US citizen Joe Gordon had posted a link on his blog to an unauthorized bio of the king… and was then arrested when visiting Thailand, the news has come out that after months of denying the charges, Gordon has decided he can’t take it any more and has agreed to plead guilty.

“I do not want to fight this case. I plead guilty to all the accusations,” he told judges.

At this point, I’m not sure why any US citizen would ever agree to visit Thailand again. If you merely link to an unauthorized bio of the king, you could end up in jail. Furthermore, I’m curious as to what the Thai leadership thinks it’s accomplishing with these actions. Honestly, without these cases, I’d never even know about the Thai king at all. It seems like each of these actions only brings greater negative attention on the king than if he’d just ignored such things.

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I probably can never visit Thailand just for writing this post. Sure seems like a pretty archaic way to do things and not conducive to the tourist industry.

Another instance of there being too many lawyers around

Woman Sues Over Misleading Movie Trailer; Wants To Make It A Class Action
[Via Techdirt]

Sure, we’ve all noted that various movie trailers may not be representative of the movie, but is that an illegal bait-and-switch? Sarah Deming apparently believes so, and somehow found a lawyer willing to sue over this awful deception (thanks to Will for sending this in). Her specific complaint? She expected the recently released movie Drive to be much more like The Fast and the Furious based on the trailer. You can see the trailer below:

The lawsuit claimed that the producers and movie theater “promoted the film Drive as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies.” And yet… “Drive bore very little similarity to a chase or race action film… having very little driving in the motion picture.” She’s arguing that this violates Michigan’s consumer protection laws.

Oh, and to make it even better, she apparently would like to turn the whole thing into a class action lawsuit, so in case you, too, felt ripped off… This whole thing is so ridiculous, you almost wonder if it isn’t a bad viral marketing campaign for Drive.

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Good luck suing Hollywood. They hire the best lawyers around.

Hard to sell if you are banned

Android Market banned in China
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Google is not faring well in China due to the government’s restrictions,” Star Chang reports for M.I.C. Gadget. “Now the Great Firewall of China has blocked the Android Market, the online app store for Android smartphone users.”

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This is what happens when the focus is not on the user. It certainly makes any Android handset less valuable in China if there are no apps. At least less valuable for Google.

Seeing Steve one last time

Steve Jobs’ last speech
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

On June 7, the day after his final Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance before the Cupertino City Council. He was seeking permission to build a new corporate headquarters for Apple (AAPL).

“We have a shot,” Jobs told the council, “at building the best office building in the world.”

121 days later, he was dead.

On Sept. 8 the city held a public hearing to discuss the environmental impact of the project. You can watch it here.

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Even as he was dying, he was a wonderful speaker. Even without a large stage or big slides, he was a great storyteller.

His very personal story about the property is so different from other CEOs. Then his putting ’12,000 people in one building.’

You know that Apple will be innovating again with the building. After he is done, I want to work in that building. Over 80 acres of landscaping. No building higher than 4 stories. Will generate its own power with cleaner fuels and use grid as a backup.

Conservative operative tries to incite riot

Reporter incites D.C. riot–to write about it | The Cutline – Yahoo! News
[Via Yahoo]

A reporter for the American Spectator–who says he “infiltrated” a group of Washington, D.C., protesters “in order to mock and undermine” their cause in his magazine–claims he helped incite a riot at the National Air and Space Museum on Saturday afternoon and was pepper-sprayed in the process.

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They call him a reporter but there is no indication he was wearing anything identifying him as press, something required by most authorities during demonstrations. Hard to infiltrate in order to  ”mock and undermine in the pages of the American Spectator” (his words) if everyone knows who you are.

He actually makes several comments that seem to indicate that the marchers were not being aggressive enough, that they stopped marching and he needed to help drive them.  So he pushed past the guards and states that he was the only one who made it inside the facility where he spent several minutes running away and hiding from authorities.

He then commends the guards for spraying him with pepper spray, something they only had to do because he was disobeying the law.

False flag events have been discussed before during protests. Here we actually see someone brag about it in a publication. I hope he gets the book thrown at him. Even if you are a journalist – which I am not ready to grant him – you do not get to ignore the law or incite riots without repercussions.