orangeek's blog

UPDATE: Thanks to Jackie  I've modified the text below to correct the huge amount of errors I did. Sob. :(

Yesterday I saw "Marley & Me". It almost made me cry... I thought it was just a classic comedy with Jennifer Aniston, Owen Wilson and some dogs hanging around. I couldn't be more wrong.

For me it's quite uncommon to be really touched by a movie, let alone to cry because of a movie. I have seen a lot of movies lately (even "sad" titles, like Gran Torino, Changeling, Frozen River, Revolutionary Road and so on...) but none touched me as much as "Marley & Me". I don't know if it sounds weird to you but it's true. Definitely.

I think there are 2 likely (and interesting) audiences for the movie: people who have/had a pet and people who don't but who are interested in pet. The first would see themselves in the main characters in the movie and the latter... well, I don't know. They could either decide to get a pet :) or to have more respect for all the people who love animals.

After the jump some thoughts about the movie, about me, about Tex and maybe some spoilers: I don't think the plot in this movie is that important. The point is how it has been told, but be advised: I'm going to highlight the spoilers.

So this is the story: two days ago a terrible earthquake hit the area around L'Aquila.

The two major italians newspapers (Corriere della Sera and Repubblica) asked their readers to contribute with pictures, videos and comments. The approach seems to me quite normal and efficient since in such scenario the contributions of many people who are actually in the area are much more relevant than what could be provided by 1-10 journalist(s). 

So, what happened? Some guys had fun sending pictures taken after the earthquakes in Turkey and China. Corriere.it published the pictures on its homepage and some italian bloggers are taking the piss out of its journalists. 

PaulTheWineGuy is one of them : since he's continuing to remove my comments (2 so far...) on its blog [ ], I'll post my thoughts here (that's my blog gods-damn-it! :).

So, the point is either contributions in real-time without any "precautionary" filter (well, we're not talking about goatse here) or wait to update the website until every picture/video is reviewed.
What kind of review? Check on google image or flickr to see if some reader have sent fake pictures? I tried searching for "earthquake" on google image and none of the two pictures is in the first 5 pages.

Come on.

UPDATE 7 April 2009, 10.45: my comments have now appeared on PaulTheWineGuy's page...
UPDATE 7 April 2009, 14.52: Marco Pratellesi, from Corriere.it, write about this topic and explains why they had to refuse any additional contributions from the readers. Let's say a big thanks to the morons.

That they could rest in peace.

And good luck to all these people who are working hard to help who's still alive.

Earthquake hits L'Aquila, Italy [BBC]

I promise you'll not waste your time watching this video.

Bill Gates embedded into the Doom game for a commercial of Windows 95 and its DirectX feature.

Here a screenshot for your appetite and, after the jump, the whole video.