That’s right, the same Blender’s 2nd Open Source Movie, the Peach Project, aka, Big Buck Bunny, that I previoulsy spoke before the premiere of in Amsterdam, is out and in hi-def, as Alex blogged:

Big Buck Bunny, the latest open movie, modeled, rendered, and composited entirely with Blender, by the same team as Elephants Dream. Licensed CC BY 3.0.

Great stuff, especially in high-def, easily rivaling Pixar and classic WB Merry Melodies.

Even better, since the entire film is Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licensed, the film is usable in so many contexts as long as attribution is given to the project (I’m assuming to http://bigbuckbunny.org, but that is something to seek clarification from Ton and the Blender crew, fellas?). And, now, all the source files which were used to make the final video, are available as well to allow for translation, remix, education, re-purposing, you-call-it! This is brilliant and further answers the question I had ages ago about what Hollywood could do for education and training by releasing a film like the Matrix and its source files (all the files used to render the film). Well, Big Buck Bunny is cooler and better than the Matrix, and as Barry Threw, Kid Kam and I decided at dinner last night, the first Matrix’s (Matrices?) effects look old now and come on, the film is cheesy! (The part in Matrices 3 when Neo gets his eyes burned has to be one of the all-time cheesiest scenes EVER!)

Come to the water friends, companies, and .orgs and release your source files under a Creative Commons license and get more points for doing under liberal license like CC Attribution 3.0 or CC Public Domain dedication like we do over at Open Clip Art Library.

If you want help coming to the water, contact me

Originally from Open Source Movie Big Buck Bunny Source Files Available

I’ve blogged about my favorite rapper, artist, musician before, Lil Wayne, when he consciously leaked tracks prior to his upcoming album in understanding the effect that would have on spreading his music, encouraging sales, and more commerce around his entire existence. Wayne embraced piracy, or as Gilberto Gil calls it, “peer-acy.”

Well, now Lil Wayne’s latest album, Tha Carter III has been leaked 10 days before the album is to be released on June 10 (and through btjunkie its quite easy to find). So, who did the leaking? Since he leaked, er, released, er, leaked tracks prior to Tha Carter III back before Christmas 2007, these are supposedly the real tracks that some DJ released out of anger for Wayne dissing on DJ’s. The Wikipedia article clarifies:

On May 30th-31st, Tha Carter III was leaked internationally. The first of the leaks were distributed on May 30th at around 8pm where five songs from the track list were available on the internet. Hours later on May 31st at 12am-1am the whole album was leaked and posted on various websites for free download. The DJ responsible for the leaks was DJ Chuck T who retaliated for an interview conducted by Wayne, where he discredited all DJ’s and the mixtape scene days before.

Do you all think this is true? Wayne owes mucho to DJ Drama and the entire mixtape scene. I find it hard to believe that Wayne would diss DJ’s without a good reason. I could think of some good reasons to diss DJs after seeing gramps DJ in Beijing a couple of weeks ago. I’m talking about DJ Cut Chemist mixing music from 20-30 years ago! Yes, that is how old Hip-Hop is now! Amazing.

Originally from Lil Wayne Carter III Really Leaked May 2008

Ok, the title pretty much says it all. Lu bought me a new 250 gb backup drive for locking down my backups while on the road (and I already have a halfway solution at home thanks to advice from readers). I’m curious what is the best option for syncing up my 80 gb thinkpad x61 to a partition on this drive, which can act as a daily backup, and be used in the event of something bad? I run gentoo on my computers currently, and want to just do more than just rsync to this drive in that I want the content encrypted.

Please help me lazyweb! Another option is to pay for a service like mozy.com or carbonite, but I want to stay in commandline realm and where I don’t need network access..

Originally from Dear Lazyweb, Need Simple Encrypted Backup Method to USB on Linux

Yes, I do get paid by Creative Commons, but I’m speaking in a personal capacity in response to the post on i, quaid about using CC licenses.

My answer is yes, using CC is better than using nothing where anyone would have to ask you for permission to use your work which is locked by default in many jurisdictions, including U-S-of-A. And, if you want to contribute to the solution you and others seek, use something like CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication. New things like CC Zero coming down the pipe are good to with a system in place to encourage social solutions per community (called “social norms”) rather than legal solutions, like the NC, SA, ND conditions, which I have been super excited about for some time and pushing hard, because that is what we have been doing with Open Clip Art Library for ages by using PD and encouraging attribution.

I shouldn’t tell you what to use, but I do personally think that the NC condition is a gateway into the free universe. Without it, you will get a situation where less people will use more free licenses. And, in my experience as well, individuals are the ones using the NC condition more than businesses, which often times select the CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication for all content submitted to their site, like Digg.com (look at the bottom of the page). Please do conjecture about why this is, as I’m curious to why others might think this is the case.

With that being said, IANAL

Originally from Yes, Use CC to Free Your Stuff IANAL

There are many reasons why I am spending half of my time in China now including:

• My wife and her family are from China (Guangzhou specifically)
• Community and Business Development opportunities for Creative Commons and Open Source in Asia, China in particular
• The contemporary art and web startup scene is exploding in China
• China has the most number (>210 M) of people online and the longest overall average time spent online: “Chinese Internet users log an average of 2 billion hours online each week, while the figure for US Internet users stands at 129 million.”
• The dollar, pound and euro still stretches further here, at least for the next few years

And, CEO Ito (ok, just Joi, no longer Chairman Ito just posted a nice chart showing approximate growth of GDP where China will eclipse the US in approximately 2030. Diversify your investment friends and push hard on reforms in china on the evironment and lowering the transaction cost on several economic barriers and IMO, decreasing the number of dropped and/or reset packets on the internet. Finally, the GFW needs to be turned off. Imagine 210M+ internet users all fittting through a huge (tiny) bottleneck of filters…it is a horrible barrier to efficient business transactions.

Lu is about to post some interesting things about the anti-CNN movement coming out of China post-bad-Western-press cropping.

Originally from Why am I in China?

Isaac Mao has a great post about the Olympic torch:

It’s really bizarre recently after a series of blocking and un-blocking by the censorship system in China(GFW):
- Youtube was blocked after 3/14 tibet riot
- Youtube was released two weeks later
- English BBC News released 25th,Mar.
- Wikipedia English site found unblocked on 1st, April (not April Fool), including https://secure.wikimedia.org
- Wikipedia https://secure.wikimedia.org blocked again two days ago on 6th, April, because Chinese version of Wikipedia can be accessed via this channel
- Flickr picture farm1, farm2 found unblocked yesterday (7th, April)
Etc.

How do you think if the Olympic Torches behave the same?

In Amsterdam last week, Paul Keller, Jamie King and I came up with many great ideas such as the Don’t Drop the Olympic Torch video game. The objective is to not let the olympic torch hit the ground through crazy levels like the streets of Paris with mad beret wearing beats all around, Folsom street in San Francisco with tons of protesters in their hippy-outfits flanking, all the way to more advanced levels like Tibetan rioters vs Chinese Han. Of course, the final level would be bringing the torch all the way to Beijing and directly into the Olympic Flame. Who wants to fund this idea? I tried to convince Ton and the Blender guys to make this into their next Open Project…come on guys!

I have some other big ideas with olympic torches 2.0 whereby there are many copies of the torch so that torhces don’t get dropped. If lost, they only get rerouted Haven’t we learned anything as a society &mdash 911/WTC?

Also, note to self, pick up tons of fake Olympics memorabilia for future projects:

Hey, why does that bad knock-off Fuwa have a mic! Gotta catch them all!

<sarcasm>
Eureka! I have it! The Dalai Lama’s followers should clone him so that he can’t be stopped and once one is removed, then it is reincarnated further into more Dalai Lama’s, whatever form they take. What a nightmare for the Chinese leaders if this happens, or is it? The fake copies of the Dalai Lama would probably get out of hand by all the pirate copiers…
</sarcasm>

If this is not ridiculous enough, check out this awesome thing Paul Keller, myself, David Bollier and Meika saw in Amsterdam at a bar:

Originally from The Many Olympic Torchings of the Dalai Lama

I took a look at the intrade futures market trading on Obama vs Hillary, of which he has an 86.2% chance of becoming the Democratic presidental candidate. I thought, “Hey, this is a done deal!” Then I realized that unless I pushed more, then possibly that number might hedge. So, I donated to Nat’s already-over-the-goal pledge campaign of 10K for Obama. Go Go Go! Even if it’s just 10$ or 50$, help push! Its a good investment [1]

[1] Ask David Strauss about how most of that money is totally wasted during campaigning…hopefully, mine will be used for food or something necessary (coffee or other american drugs)

UPDATE

Also, I want to see Obama deal the deathly blow to same-as-usual-lady. Also, if I hear someone start another movement, it better be one that ends in the bowels Wired or Tired or Expired? Get over it, or work for jesus xinxai! 对不对？

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Originally from Go Obama, Go Nat! No More Movements.