Meewella | Fragments

The Life of P

“Ban ki Moon is coming to town”

I was gutted that I could not find any footage of Ban ki Moon at the UNCA ball, which was to form the central story of today’s post after glimpsing him on the news late last night. Not only did the tuxedo-clad South Korean Foreign Minister open with, “I am Ban, but not James Ban”, he then proceeded to sing his own rendition of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, inserting his own name. Whether the future Secretary General has made a list or, indeed, checked it twice, is questionable but if he can keep this up the next few years should be a riot. If you spot a video online, please let me know. In the meantime you can read Global21’s proper coverage on the UN transition.

EDIT: Thanks to Bing for providing this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6180573.stm (click on the link on the right)

Sony’s (year of?) advertising woes just seem to be mounting as their latest attempt led to a swift admission and removal. The unwieldy site alliwantforxmasisapsp.com purported to be the work of two teenagers in an effort to convince their parents to buy the device. In fact it was revealed to be Sony’s attempt at viral marketing which failed spectacularly as it coincided with the FCC announcing an investigation into veiled marketing practices such as this. Sony fessed up and the site seems to have been removed. The boys at Penny Arcade were none too amused, pointing out that viral marketing necessarily was transmitted by users own interest and could not be engineered injury is the release of the SplitFish MotionFX, an attachment that adds motion sensing to a PS2 controller, making it better than the PS3’s “revolutionary” sixaxis because they’ve found a way to maintain the device’s rumble feature. Apparently Sony were too rushed to make it work…

And yet the weirdest news actually came from Microsoft. Distinguishing between the software giant and its illustrious leader is often difficult as he really is Mr. Microsoft, his immense charity work notwithstanding. I am not used, it is safe to say, to agreeing entirely with what he says in public. However he recently went so far as to denounce DRM as having “huge problems”, suggesting consumers buy regular CDs and rip them instead. He clearly stated his view that this was legal (where the RIAA may disagree) and one only wishes this had been reflected by Microsoft itself in developing the Zune. Refusal by Microsoft to bow before the temple of facetious RIAA claims (“we are the music industry and so deserve a cut from your product’s sales”) could have been a real blow to them.

6 Comments

  1. So did the FCC doing an investigation mean they had to claim the site? Surely it isn’t breaking any rules until they decide to make one.
    Which is silly NEway.

  2. No, I don’t think they were forced to remove it. It just looked embarrassing once they’d been found out so soon in the campaign.

    We’re talking trash like this and this .

  3. Aw, your website is so pretty and festive! 🙂
    Merry Christmas, darlin.

  4. i have looked for ban’s ‘coming to town’ audio clip for hours. could not find it either! i have written the un and cbc radio (which played it) – will let you know if i have any luck.
    cheers,
    geoff

  5. Awesome, will share this in a new post shortly.

    Cheers!

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"Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has."

(CC) BY-NC 2004-2023 Priyan Meewella

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