Matt Schonert

Razer Venom alone is enough to demonstrate that the LAN party phenomenon has brought us to the nadir of the modern computing.

Now you don’t have to worry about things like “sleep” and “food”. With Razer Venom in your veins, our serum additives like oxymialterxin and doctixilin keep your body nourished to keep you as fit as a fiddle – the food of champions.

Razer Venom comes in an intravenous solution bag for personal consumption or a nebulizer which diffuses the Venom solution into a green mist to be inhaled – perfect for a week long LAN party with your clan mates.

via Chase.

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BBC News reports:

An Israeli member of parliament has suggested a new law that would limit the price of popcorn in the cinema.

Cinema companies broadly condemned the idea, drawing on the argument that markups on concessions sustain the industry’s profits, while filling seats merely lets them break even.

If MP Carmel Shama‘s proposition gains traction with lawmakers, it should be accompanied a requirement that customers sweep up after themselves, because if Israeli moviegoers are anything like American ones, that’s where half of the popcorn ends up.

More to the point, as anyone who’s ever done business in the real world knows, the $2.50 premium compensates someone else for—among other things—the time and the occupational risks of cooking it, the cost of manufacturing and disposing of single-use containers, and the equipment and personnel costs associated with serving food and drink.

But best of all, it ensures that the total cost of seeing a movie remains low for people who have freed themselves from the need to eat incessantly while being entertained.

But I’m afraid Mr. Shama is beyond being reasoned with:

“We have to put an end to this. The public should not have to mortgage their houses for a snack and a soft drink,” Mr Shama told the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth.

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It seems every other day I see another news story about surveillance in the United Kingdom.

Continuing the trend is Form 696, which the London Metropolitan Police are requiring managers of musicians to provide in advance of live shows. It was introduced in response to violent incidents at some larger performances, but the information it collects hardly seems relevant:

The form demands that licensees give police a mass of detail, including the names, aliases, private addresses and phone numbers of all musicians and other performers appearing at their venue, and the ethnic background of the likely audience. Failure to comply could mean the loss of a licence or even a fine and imprisonment.

Clearly, the police are using collective ethnic profiling to forecast expectations of violence at live shows. Because such forms of statistical discrimination are so politically offensive, I suspect this is why the police collect so much seemingly irrelevant data (residential addresses and personal phone numbers of the musicians), perhaps in an attempt to make it less obvious. The original form is not available for critique, having been pulled from the Met’s website following the Independent’s November 21 story.

Another side effect is the disproportionate effect this bureaucratic obstacle poses to independent musicians, much like a similar (but more restrictive) measure proposed in Chicago this year — the Promoters’ Ordinance. The costs of complying with the regulation impose a greater cost on independent musicians and promoters than they do on professional firms.

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