Something awesome at DMI

A couple weeks ago the weekly task on Dunder Mifflin Infinity was to create a music video for the song "That One Night" by The Hunted. The song was featured in the episode The Dinner Party, and it is excruciating. The company wide vote, which is open to the public, has now begun. Fortunately, some of the music videos created by DMI participants are nothing short of incredible. Here are links to my favorite videos:

dabaum (Hilo):


Clockwise (Ypsilanti):


loadedteapot (Canton):


Amethyst (Medford):


Redbarron (Drummondville):


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Here is a link to one more video. Clearly it is not in the same league as the rest of the videos I posted above, so why am I posting it here? Simple, because it's mine!

happysmilepatrol (Corner Brook):

Last night's The Daily Show

While The Daily Show is always good, last night's episode was especially insightful and hilarious. Definitely one of the best overall episodes in a long time. In case you missed it, here are TheDailyShow.com's videos from the show.

Video 1:


Video 2:


Video 3:


Video 4:


Video 5:

Grand Theft Auto IV

Fact: Grand Theft Auto IV officially goes on sale at midnight tonight.

Prediction: Crime rates will increase over the next 3-5 months.

This prediction has nothing to do with Grand Theft Auto IV. Instead, crime rates will increase because the economy is tanking and also because crime rates typically increase in the summer.

In fact, if anything, Grand Theft Auto IV's effect on crime rates will be to decrease them since a whole bunch of people are going to be playing the game for many of their waking hours over the next few months.

But I doubt this will stop the media and morons like Jack Thompson from attributing it to the video game.

One more prediction, this time one that is attributable to Grand Theft Auto IV: A hell of a lot of people are going to be calling in sick to work the next few days.

Boob Tube Speculation

I try to avoid TV show spoilers at all costs, so what follows is my spoiler-free speculation on what might be happening next on my favorite TV shows. Those who do read spoilers will probably know if these speculations are close to the truth or way off (probably the latter), but it's fun to guess.

The Office

The one exception to avoiding spoilers I have is that I allow myself is to read the titles of upcoming episodes. If possible, I would avoid even this information, but OfficeTally has the titles of upcoming episodes in the upper right hand corner of the page, kind of making the decision for me. At one time I thought about using the Firefox extension greasemoney to try to block just that box, but that probably wouldn't work without messing up a lot of sites, so I gave up on that. So from this I know that the title of next Thursday's (5/1) episode is Did I Stutter?. My first guess for what this episode might be about, which I had a few weeks ago, was that Ryan was going to fire Michael. Then after Chair Model I thought that in this episode Jim might propose to Pam. Then after Night Out I thought maybe in this episode David Wallace would fire Ryan, send him back to Scranton, and Jan would get her old job back. My best guess right now is that Jim is going to propose to Pam. And I have a bad feeling that she's going to say something other than "Absolutely, I do." In Chair Model, when Jim and Pam started talking about marriage at her desk, the way she had trouble finding her words explaining things and then the way she watched Jim walk back to his desk with a little smile on her face like she was waiting for him to turn around and indicate he was joking suggests to me that another engagement and marriage are not on Pam's mind for the immediate future.

The episode after that is titled Job Fair. For some reason I think this episode might be similar to The Convention. This title obviously suggests someone is going to be fired or quit their current job, or maybe Dunder Mifflin is going to have a booth at a job fair looking for some new employees.

For the past few weeks the season finale was just listed on OfficeTally as Season Finale, but I just noticed that it's been updated on OfficeTally (within the last 12 hours) to an actual title, Goodbye, Toby. OMG, Toby is really leaving! Hopefully he's going to go to the corporate office or something like that so he'll still be on the show. The Office would not be the same without Toby Flenderson, if nothing else as a sponge for Michael's contempt. The scene in The Deposition when Michael pushes Toby's tray of food off the table is one of my favorite scenes from Season 4.

LOST

Wow has this show picked up the pace in Season 4. One of the big mysteries in the Season 3 finale was the identity of the person in the casket. I originally thought it was probably Ben. But after watching the Season 4 episodes that have aired so far that does not seem very likely. And perhaps almost as important as the Season 4 episodes in changing what I think will happen on lost is Lost: A Theory on Time Travel by Jason Hunter. This is fan speculation explaining many of the central questions about LOST. While I don't agree with many of the details, I think a lot of the central ideas are probably mostly correct. It's so good that after reading it I wondered if I made a mistake, since even though it's just speculation and not technically spoilers, some of it is almost certainly correct. So if you haven't read that yet, and you don't want spoilers, maybe think twice about doing so. Because once you do you can't go back in time and undo it.

So, like I said, after watching the Season 4 episodes and reading that, it seems unlikely that Ben is the one in the casket. My current best guess is John Locke, with Michael being my second guess.

Another huge thing is what happened to everyone else that's not one of the Oceanic 6, especially Claire and Jin. My guess is that most of them are still alive on the island.

Regarding what's going to happen during the rest of Season 4, I don't have too many ideas besides what we know, that the 6 are going to get off the island somehow, plus a bunch of things that seem likely based on the basic ideas in Lost: A Theory Of Time Travel.

Battlestar Galactica

Over a year after the incredible Season 3 finale, Season 4 has now finally started airing. Even though 4 episodes have aired, few questions have been answered. Most notably, of course, the identity of the 5th cylon. So far they've been stringing us along, making us think it's a certain individual, only to then show it's probably not them, and then making us think it's someone else, and so on. It reminds me a lot of Season 3 of Nip/Tuck, and the mystery of the identity of The Carver, and it ended up being the obvious person (along with a second person who occasionally helped, who I did not think was as obvious). The person who, might I add, I originally suspected, the second he said he had previously been in Sudan helping war victims. The problem with figuring out the final cylon is that it's not as obvious as that was. The first few Season 4 episodes first made me think the final cylon might be Starbuck, and then Baltar, but now I doubt it's either of them.

A few days ago on Digg there was an article with speculation on who the final cylon might be. While I think the article is creative and the author is willing to think outside the box, I think his guess is completely wrong. The article did contain one helpful bit of information, however. There's a promo picture titled Battlestar Galactica: The Last Supper. According to the article, the final cylon is not anyone in the picture. This would mean that it's not Starbuck, Baltar, Agathon, President Roslin, Admiral Adama, Lee Adama. While searching for the link to that article from Digg, I ran across this article detailing why it makes sense that the final cylon is Lee. But since Lee is in that last supper picture, then it can't be him, right?

So that leaves it to be one of the secondary characters, which I don't like nearly as much as if it had been one of the main characters. Hopefully they handle it in a way so it makes sense and doesn't involve a lot of trickery / deception before it's revealed.

One big mystery about the final 5 cylons is why they're separated from the other 7 cylon models, and why the 7 aren't supposed to talk about them. My guess is that there was a big disagreement between the 12 about something a long time ago (relatively speaking, anyway; the skin jobs haven't been around for that long, have they?), and the 5 went their own way, ending up in the fleet. While it's not clear if they're covert agents or they wanted to join humanity, or if the 5 cylons in the fleet are the only versions of the 5 cylon models, or if like the other skin jobs there are many copies of them somewhere else. I would not be surprised if the fleet finally finds Earth and it's populated with millions of copies of these 5 cylons.

One final guess I have, which I came up after watching the first episode of Season 4, is that Lee is going to become the President after Roslin dies of cancer. That's probably the most obvious thing in the world, though, after the scene where Lee told his father that there was "a position" opening up in the government that he was going to take, and since then has become more outspoken as a member of the quorum. If that happens, that would certainly make things more interesting in the seemingly unlikely event that Lee does indeed turn out to be the final cylon.

New Music

My current Winamp playlist:

1. Alanis Morissette - Underneath
2. Nine Inch Nails - Discipline

The worst episode of South Park ever?

For my favorite television programs currently on the air, namely The Office, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and Family Guy, almost all of the episodes are very good. Sure, some episodes are better than others, but very few episodes are downright bad.

The same cannot be said for South Park. It seems like half the episodes are awesome, and the other half are simply awful, with few in between. To be sure, there have been some incredible South Park episodes that are both hilarious and insightful. These awesome episodes include Starvin' Marvin In Space, Cherokee Hair Tampons, The Biggest Douche In The Universe, Cancelled, Good Times With Weapons, Woodland Critter Christmas, and Free Willzyx. But there have also been some episodes which are unfunny, idiotic, and simply painful to watch. These awful episodes include Rainforest Schmainforest, Jakovasaurs, Butt Out, Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow, Smug Alert!, and ManBearPig.

So far 4 episodes of Season 12 have aired, and the episodes are decidedly mixed. Tonsil Trouble, the season premiere, was decent, Britney's New Look was bad, Major Boobage was pretty funny, and Canada On Strike, the most recent episode, is easily one of the worst South Park episodes ever.

The episode attacks the recent Writer's Guide Of America (WGA) strike as not being worth it. To make the point, the episode features a fictional general strike of all of Canada, with them demanding "some of that Internet money." To show how ridiculous the idea of "Internet money" is, the episode features the cartoon likeness of some people that have been in some of the most popular and well-known Internet videos, including Tay Zonday (of Chocolate Rain fame), Ghyslain Raza (AKA Star Wars Kid), Chris Crocker (the leave Britney alone guy), Tron Guy, the dramatic chipmunk, as well as a few others, talking about how many "theoretical dollars" they would have if they were able to make money off of all the views their videos have gotten on YouToob (the show's version of YouTube).

Obviously, there's a world of difference between a YouTube video that becomes an Internet sensation, and a professionally produced weekly television show. Most of these viral videos that became Internet sensations cost nothing to create. Most of the viral videos which propelled each of these people to Internet fame are very brief, lasting only a few seconds to a few minutes. Also, it should be noted that not all of these Internet stars wanted the fame that they got, such as the Star Wars Kid. But for the willing, uploading your video to YouTube represents a clear and conscious decision: The chance at fame (the vast majority of user created videos on YouTube obviously do not give the people in them even a little bit of temporary stardom), at the cost of possible fortune. They could of course instead put their videos on their own sites along with advertising to make money when people watch them, but putting the video on their own obscure site would get them significantly fewer people watching the video. In this case the video would probably never become a hit in the first place (although if it's good someone would probably just upload it to YouTube anyway), and then they'd get neither fame nor fortune.

While the Internet has long been a great place to get unofficial releases of television programs and movies, over the past few years the networks and studios have finally gotten their act together and started to use it to officially distribute shows. A few examples of official outlets where you can buy, rent, or watch TV shows and movies include iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Hulu, Netflix, and others. The services differ in what they offer, and on some you buy or rent digital copies of programs and movies, while on others you can watch episodes free of charge, but then they have advertisements that you can't skip.

Near the end of the episode, Kyle delivers this monologue summing up the South Park creators' point of view:

"We thought we could make money on the Internet. But while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn't matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to an extent that necessitates content producers to forgo their fair value in more traditional media."

In the episode, this monologue is spoken very quickly, probably to try to disguise how idiotic this line of reasoning, and therefore the basis of the entire episode, is.

The WGA strike was necessary because the networks are making money now off of the online distribution of television program by either selling episodes outright or by selling advertising that must be viewed when the episodes are watched, or both. Under their previous contract the writers didn't make any off of this new delivery method, and since the Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers (AMPTP) obviously wasn't going to give them a fair deal for these new revenues out of the goodness of their hearts, the strike was necessary. In the short term, the strike cost the writers and others who work in the entertainment industry more than they'll get in the first few years of the new deal. But as the Internet becomes an increasingly popular delivery method, and supplants traditional content delivery (i.e., TV), this income will increase and will be be integral to the their livelihood. If the writers waited until the Internet took over as the primary content delivery mechanism, then while they might have a better idea of what exactly a fair deal might be, they would then be in a weaker position to actually get it. By acting now the WGA avoided this negative risk.

The ironic thing here is that South Park episodes are available for purchase and download on the XBOX Live service, so you can download episodes to your Xbox 360. The first episode that was available, the fantastic Good Times With Weapons, was available for free for a limited time, but now the episodes cost money to download. While I couldn't find recent exact pricing information for South Park episodes, it seems that most shows on Xbox Live cost $3 an episode to download. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, are in a unique position in that they both write and produce South Park. Considering this, I'd assume that they make money on these downloads even if the WGA had not renegotiated their contract with the AMPTP. Needless to say, for the vast majority of writers this is not the case. Thanks to the WGA strike, however, now they will.

MIT Blackjack Team Sets Sights On DMI

Cambridge, MA - The infamous MIT Blackjack team has reportedly stepped away from the blackjack tables and turned their attention to an online game based around a popular TV show. Dunder Mifflin Infinity, or DMI for short, is an online game based on NBC's The Office. In it, people complete various tasks to earn SchruteBucks, the currency of DMI.

The MIT blackjack team's exploits are the basis for the new Hollywood movie 21. The movie is based on the 2003 book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich. Both detail how a team of students from MIT were able to use perfect strategy and teamwork to beat the casinos at blackjack, and sometimes walk away with over a hundred thousand dollars in a single weekend.

One of the team's members, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "With all the publicity from the movie we're going to have to lay low for awhile. DMI gives us the perfect opportunity to keep our minds sharp and earn some moolah on the side."

While the team was understandably mum about what strategies they were planning to use to conquer DMI, the team was not shy about discussing what effect they expected their strategies would have on DMI. One team member said, "MIT on DMI is going to be like an asteroid hitting the Earth, and MIT is the asteroid, and DMI is the Earth."

After a few boilermakers, one of the team's junior members let one of the team's secret strategies slip. He said, "First, we're all going to join the same branch. Then when a branch vote comes up we're all going to vote for the same team member's entry. Booyah! 200 SchruteBucks in the bank!"

At publication time it was not yet clear whether the MIT team understood that SchruteBucks could only be used to buy virtual items to decorate a virtual desk on one's DMI profile page, or that each SchruteBuck only has a cash value of 1/100th of a cent. DMI's current SchruteBuck leader, a person with the username dundermifflininfinity, has so far earned 9,180 SchruteBucks in the 6 months that the DMI game has been running. He has spent 4,120 SchruteBucks on virtual items for the virtual desk on his profile page, leaving him with 5,160 SchruteBucks, which are worth $0.51 US dollars.

Just as blackjack and other forms of gambling have their many critics, DMI is not without its critics, either. Critics contend that DMI is little more than a way for NBC to generate extra ad revenue with banner ads and exploit the good will, creativity, and free labor of fans of The Office to generate commercial products using their ideas without having to pay them in real dollars. The first task at DMI, create a branch logo, paid users 50 SchruteBucks (0.5 cents in US Dollars) for designing a logo for their branch, and 200 SchruteBucks (2 cents in US Dollars) if they won their branch vote for best logo. NBC later started selling various products prominently featuring the winning logos from each branch. The products sell for up to $600.00, of which the creators of the logos do not see one cent.