Wired News: A Burning Need for More Porn

If you could buy a porn video, download it in about an hour and burn it to a DVD that will play in any standard drive, would you do it? What if it had built-in digital rights management (DRM) code that only let you burn the file to disk one time, and one time only?

Vivid, arguably the most tech-savvy of the big adult entertainment studios, is launching a new Burn to DVD service on April 3 with the expectation that you, and millions like you, will.

“We expect the service to be extremely popular,” says Hirsch. “Just hit the button, download and burn.”

Continued….

Update: Here’s the .MP3 of today’s Sex Drive Podcast. And here’s the feed.

All this week I’ve had food cravings. Not for the standard donuts-and-chocolate, but for:

sesame balls
red bean paste buns
sushi
mango
honey walnut shrimp

I guess it’s all about the Asian comfort food this time around.

Mercury is in retrograde until the 25th.
Mercury retrograde, astrology’s Murphy’s Law

Computers crash, software develops unexpected glitches, traffic jams ensue, telephone service snarls up, letters get lost on the mail, machinery breaks down, new projects fail. Ah, yes, the trickster Mercury is up to his old pranks again. In fact, at least three times a year for about three weeks each time Mercury has his way with us.

- snip -

In general the effect of Mercury retrograde is annoyance. Little things get snarled up and a low-grade frustration emerges. Anything involving communications, verbal activity, technology, short trips and journeys, primary education, and siblings can be affected.

Here’s a list of what has crashed or broken in my tech world in the past 48 hours:

- Couldn’t print to network printers at the day job, had to call IT
- Wifi, see previous post
- Windows (well, duh)
- iPod (might have to do a full restore, which is fine except my 26G of music is backed up on the desktop back home, and I’m still away from headquarters with the laptop - but that’s okay, because I can fill it up with new podcasts to tide me over, if I can get it workin’)
- Kerry’s printer, which jammed, and after I cleared the jam and restarted everything, it refused to print again
- Skype
- Audacity (I think I have to make sure to un-mute when I shut down, because it seems like booting up with “master mute” on shuts off the mic input even if I turn “master mute” off)

I really should have planned this trip better. I ghost-wrote for an astrologer for years and while I’m rusty on what knowledge I picked up, one of my pet projects was writing daily “tech horoscopes” and I should’ve thought to check Mercury before I set my travel dates. LOL

How can I put this succinctly?

1. Our wifi router was out all day, at least when I was home.

2. I got brilliant idea to replace it.

3. I got it working.

4. I moved it to another room and re-assembled the network.

5. Three hours and two tech-support calls later, I gave up and put it all back in the box.

6. On a whim, I tried re-assembling the old one. It worked.

So yes, great, happy ending, we have internet again. And I’m just about over the combination of shame of having called tech support and frustration that no one at tech support knows more than I do, so it was no help.

But now I’m in absolutely no mood to look at a computer, much less work. And yet I have a column and a podcast due — both of which I’d hoped to finish during the three hours I was *ahem* otherwise engaged.

I’m thinking such bad words right now.

Can’t the media all get along?

It’s no secret the media is in the midst of a grand revolution. And like many of our society’s largest seismic shifts, the epicenter is here in the Bay Area.

The Well was dug from these hills. Craig Newmark compiled his list here. Steve Jobs’ Apple grew in the orchards of Silicon Valley.

More recently, we’ve seen the stumbling rise of “citizen journalism” and the crumbling fall of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, an august San Jose media corporation that was just forced to liquidate its assets by investors worried about their returns.

As with any major quake, the resulting damage has been severe.

More at SF Gate….

More evidence that seniors have sex.

Priapic pensioner becomes garlic-powered porn star | The Register

A Russian grandad who wandered onto a porn set has become the star of his own series of grumble flicks. David Bozdoganov, 75, apparently believed he was about to enjoy a “muscle man show” at the studios of Gorodcki production company, Ananova reports.

Director Alexander Plahov picks up the tale: “We were auditioning for a new film and had a number of couples on stage simulating sex when I saw an old guy standing at the back. I wandered over to ask him to leave when I saw this massive package straining against his trousers. I thought, now this could be an original idea.”

I just don’t get the garlic on the penis thing. (Go read the whole article to learn about the garlic.)

Story about Los Angeles selling the farm to developers:

South Central Farm: A Tribute
The South Central Farm is a 14-acre urban farm and community garden in South Central Los Angeles; it is considered to be the largest urban farm in the United States. After the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, the City gave the abandoned and trash-filled land to the families of the community. 350 families banded together and cleaned up the land, and turned it into fertile gardens, where they grow food to sustain their families, food to donate to the Food Bank, and food to sell at the Sunday Farmer’s Market. Most of the families who live at the Farm or grow food there are not able to buy the same food on their own, so the Farm helps them to be self-sufficient. All kinds of food crops, Mesoamerican crops, and medicinal herbs are grown at the Farm. It’s a very lively and interesting place, and in a location one would least expect to see a farm. It’s set in a neighborhood full of warehouses, shipping container loading docks, and rail tracks; it’s an agricultural oasis in a concrete desert.

More, plus GORGEOUS photos, at: Kosmonaut Photo Blog

I almost forgot to post this today!

Best Way to Date: Collaborate?
A new service for singles attempts to consolidate online dating services so you can spend less time managing your love life and more time living it. Commentary by Regina Lynn.

MP3

* Poetry from The Manly Geek
* Interview with Collaboradate founder

You can get a Wired column a day by subscribing to our podcast feed. Or search iTunes podcast directory for “Wired news.”

I don’t know what it is, but sometimes when I come to San Francisco, I am sad. Is it the fog and rain? Body memory of living here before and being depressed? The stress of trying to pull full-time hours at the day job while keeping up with Wired and book projects? I was born here and I lived here as an adult for almost a decade … but I think I’ve become an Angelino at last. The past three stays in my SF place, I haven’t felt like I’ve come home … I feel like I’m on a business trip.

Heavy.

There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

– H. L. Mencken

Got the podcast up now:

MP3

And the column:

Secrets to Cybersex Success
A webcam chat administrator gives guidance on how to be a lover, not a loser, in adult chat.

Senate Panel Blocks Eavesdropping Probe

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted along party lines yesterday to reject a Democratic proposal to investigate the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program and instead approved establishing, with White House approval, a seven-member panel to oversee the effort.

Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters after the closed session that he had asked the committee “to reject confrontation in favor of accommodation” and that the new subcommittee, which he described as “an accommodation with the White House,” would “conduct oversight of the terrorist surveillance program.” The program, which became public in December, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between U.S. residents and suspected terrorists abroad without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that handles such matters.

I don’t trust house-stuff companies without websites. That means painters, remodelers, contractors, plumbers, hardwood floor installers, and so on.

My initial hesitation about single-sex gyms has not only disappeared, it’s morphed into full-on support. I love having the day spa integrated into the experience even though I never have time to get services there. Its very existence delights me. Same goes for the sauna, steam room, and whirlpool tub even though bathing suits are required (hello, I thought this was California, what is this bathing-suits-in-the-hot-tub crap?) and I rarely have time to stay for a good soak. I sometimes do, and the idea of it makes it all the more fun to go to the gym, even when I can’t use all the facilities. Also, I like the last five minutes of yoga class, where all the women exhale and meditate or nap, the only calm in a woman’s day. BTW, I’m equal opportunity about this, if women can have no-men gyms, I don’t see why men can’t have no-women gyms.

A preponderance of the rainfall in LA happens on weekends, between partially cloudy or downright warm-and-sunny weekdays.

Mark Morford says it all.

S. Dakota Slaps Up Its Women / Another state you should never visit passes an appalling abortion ban, because they hate you

Attention all funky sexy single intelligent women of South Dakota (assuming there are any left):

It is time. Pack it up. Strip the bed, box up the cat, load the U-Haul, call your hip friends over in Minneapolis, move out West, or East, or anywhere with a mind-set not stuck like a bloody nail in the moral coffin of 1845. Let this be your clarion call. Get the hell out, right now.

Here is why: Your state hates you. Your state, apparently run by pallid sexless demagogic men who think they know something of God and morality but know only ignominy and the smell of sulfur and death in their nightmares, thinks you are irresponsible dumb-ass meat, unable to handle your own decisions, your own body, your sex. Your state’s leaders and your Republican governor, Mike Rounds, wish to treat you like meaningless, voiceless chattel. Get out now. You already know why.

Continued….

He likes yodeling cowboy music.

I’m listening to the album Total Yodel by The Wild West & Wylie while I work and it makes me feel close to dad.