rob’s blog

Walt Disney has become the first Hollywood studio to take smoking out of all of its films.

I didn’t notice any smokers in Ratatouille, and I couldn’t see them in a new traditional film from Disney either. But the FT article goes on to state that Bob Iger’s position is that “the company would also ‘discourage’ depictions of smoking in films made by its other studio labels.”

Disney’s owns Bob Weinstein’s Miramax Films which has released a ton of adult-oriented features including Tarantino’s, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino makes including cigarettes in his movies a recurrent presence. Iger goes on to say that argueing with filmmakers working under his roof about excluding cigarette smoking is a “confrontation we are certainly willing to have.” Continue Reading »

Counting page views as a measurement tool for traffic ranking of websites is out. Average visit length is in. Want a metric? According to Google Analytics, my Dave Matthews Band fan site, Weekly Davespeak had 8,806 visits between July 1st and July 8th. Each visitor averaged six minutes and 27 seconds drifting from one page to the next. Running off that average, the human race spent thirty-nine and a half days reading about Dave Matthews Band on my site this week. I wish I had a site about recycling that was that popular. (via Micropersuasion)

Cloverfield AKA The Parasite AKA 1-18-08 had its teaser trailer break on the web today. You need to check this out, it looks awesome. The movie comes from Paramount pictures and Lost director JJ Abrams “shrouded in secrecy” hoping for free hype no-doubt. It is a disaster film of some kind supposedly shot through home video cameras. (via Quicktime)

Research In Motion’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie has been clowning on AT&T for giving away the farm with the iPhone. He says that AT&T is helping turn carriers into a commodity rather than a brand. Right now carriers create exclusive deals with phone companies to pull customers for the most popular types. There is some irony in Balsillie’s comments coming now–RIM just released its newest greatest phone, the Blackberry Curve 8300 under an exclusive contract with AT&T. (via BlackBerry Cool)

This is some pretty big news in the realm of consumer media. A hacker going by the name of Arnezami has retrieved keys critical to unlocking HD content. Using a USB sniffer, HD-DVD playback software WinDVD, an XBox 360 HD-DVD drive and a Mac he was able to find the Processing Key for the Advanced Access Content System or AACS.

AACS is the standard system used to protect both HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs. It was developed by a variety of entertainment and technology giants including Intel, Microsoft, Warner Brothers, and Sony.

The most effective attack on the system prior to the retrieval of the AACS Processing Key was performed by a hacker named Muslix64 who created a software utility that allowed anyone to decrypt AACS content and thereby copy select movies where the Title Key was known. A large number of Title Keys are known and are available on the website AACSKeys.com.

This past weekend’s new attack by Arnezami published the Processing Key for AACS on February 11th, 2007. The key can be used to decrypt any HD-DVD or BluRay disc that has been published through today. The hack requires the Volume ID for each release to be known. Interestingly, Volume Keys can be easily guessed at this point. The publishing companies have been using simple information such as the date and time of the release or text from the title of the film. Continue Reading »