Plight of the Fan Translator

When the UK audience got their first glimpse at Susan Boyle, they chuckled at her appearance and smirked when she spoke. But, when she began to sing, the audience at Britain’s Got Talent — and across the world, watched with mouths open in awe.

Watch the 47 year old church worker, turned overnight sensation shock you, just as she did the audience and judges, including Simon Cowell.

OK, this was quite the underdog story that caught my attention. There’ve actually been over 118 million cumulative hits on this video within the past two weeks… So what’s the big deal? Well, here walks out this 47 year old lady, a tad awkward, goofy, perfectly nice no doubt, but most likely was gonna make a fool of herself judging by her demeanor… or, so you thought… I too, just as the audience, was predicting/expecting failure and laughter to follow. She was all too easy to underestimate… But, who would’ve guessed she had quite a pair of lungs on her like that? Man, I haven’t seen something so interesting and captivating to watch like this in a long time. These talent shows are pretty awesome for moments like these, I gotta say!

Shock and awe: This church lady can sing
Frumpy 47-year-old stuns ‘Idol’ judge, catapults to sudden global celebrity
Will she be biggest YouTube hit ever?

Simon Cowell, the British-accented and sometimes condescending talent judge of television’s mega-hit program “American Idol,” is also one of the judges on “Britain’s Got Talent” who heard Boyle’s rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream.”

”I’m thrilled to bits for her,” Cowell told TV Guide. “That’s why I love making these shows. You can’t plan for it.”

Without a doubt, the absolute money shot is 2:00 minutes into the video where Simon’s eyebrows go up after Susan sings the first line, “I dreamed a dream in time gone by” making it abundantly clear she wasn’t going to be another trainwreck for the public’s amusement. Nope, quite the opposite in fact, much to everyone’s surprise…

Well, the rumor on the street is that FOX has terminated TSCC, a TV series that I recently have come to enjoy… I really hope the pessimists come out wrong, but the truth is that the ratings haven’t been good, at least the ones that count: Nielsen. It’s apparently done well when it comes to online viewership with sites like hulu.com, which is where I watched all of season 2, but unfortunately, this doesn’t count much as far as the bottom line is concerned. While typing this up, however, I did find an article that offered up some kind of hope: a scoop claiming that Halcyon and Warner Brothers have been quietly shopping TSCC around since the consensus, pretty much, is that FOX will be wiping its hands clean of this show… Negotiations are supposedly taking place with the SciFi channel so the show may continue on there, assuming ANY of this is accurate…

Anyway, I put up a pretty cool fan trailer if you’re unfamiliar with the series and some links where you can watch the season 2 finale, or what likely might be more accurately referred to as the series finale. Season 2, Episode 21’s “Born to Run” finale was pretty damn good and I wanted to direct some hits either to FOX’s site or hulu.com just in case it helps avoid the cancellation many of the chattering classes believe is coming. We’ll know for sure on May 18 though, when FOX announces its Fall schedule… (C’mon FOX, don’t forget the new Terminator 4: Salvation movie starring Christian Bale is due out this summer! If that’s a blockbuster and likely will be, surely it’d help the ratings of this series next time around, no?)

[SPOILER WARNING]
In this final episode, we learned for sure whose side the advanced, liquid metal, shape-shifting T-1001 model was on (played by Shirley Manson, of the Scottish band ‘Garbage’)… Her true agenda, motives, etc. was kept slightly ambiguous throughout the series by way of the fact that, well, she killed a lot of humans, and in some cases, rather creatively… Bottom line, it was a hell of a finale with plenty of action, and it left open many questions and possibilities; it definitely wasn’t written to be a series finale, that’s for sure. Anyhow, I invite you to watch it, if you would; it can’t hurt the chances of the show being saved.

(Unfortunately, you only get to watch these streamed episodes if your IP is of US origin; you’ll be blocked otherwise.)

http://www.fox.com/terminator/
http://www.fox.com/fod/play.php?sh=tscc – Season 2 Finale: “Born to Run”

http://www.hulu.com/terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67385/terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles-born-to-run#x-0,vepisode,1 – Season 2 Finale: “Born to Run”

This is the lovely Summer Glau of “Firefly” fame as well as the “Serenity” movie which was based on the same short-lived series. In TSCC, she plays a female terminator sent back to protect John Connor. Awwwww, isn’t she so cute there??

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/ap_en_mo/eu_sweden_pirate_bay
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.8aba50e95c349aa577eae5f144be1a15.321&show_article=1
http://www.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUSLH12337620090417?feedType=RSS&feedName=technology-media-telco-SP&rpc=22&sp=true
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6111777.ece

“STOCKHOLM – Four men linked to a popular file-sharing pirating site The Pirate Bay were convicted Friday of breaking Sweden’s copyright law by helping millions of users freely pirate music, movies and computer games on the Internet.

The Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison.

They were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

The Pirate Bay provides a forum for its estimated 22 million users to download content through so-called torrent files. The site has become the entertainment industry’s enemy No. 1 after successful court actions against file-swapping sites such as Grokster and Kazaa.

Defense lawyers had argued the quartet should be acquitted because The Pirate Bay doesn’t host any copyright-protected material. Instead, it provides a forum for its users to download content through so-called torrent files. The technology allows users to transfer parts of a large file from several different users, increasing download speeds.

The court found the defendants guilty of helping users commit copyright violations “by providing a Web site with … sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and through the tracker linked to the Web site.”

The court hearings, which ended March 3, renewed debate about file-sharing in Sweden, where many defend the right to swap songs and movies freely on the Internet. Critics say that Swedish authorities caved in to pressure from the U.S. when they launched the crackdown on The Pirate Bay in 2006.

The Pirate Bay’s supporters set up a Web site dedicated to the trial, and the defendants sent updates from the court hearings through social network Twitter.

The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty.”

Awwwwwwwwww. The poor little darlings were convicted and are headed to jail (hey, come to think of it, I can think of another Swede in particular that ought share a jail cell with these boys, heh-heh. *ahem* AHOY ALOY *ahem*)… Tsk. Tsk. In addition, these Swedish warez butt-pirating degenerates will be “forced” to pay millions in cash… The worst possible punishment I would say since it runs contrary to everything that they believe in… Hehe. But then, how does the court expect these fine gentlemen to come up with that kind of cash? They ran a warez pirating outfit, duh, which essentially is a defacto war on selling/profit/capitalism; they don’t make money, they cost OTHER people money… It’s all about making commercial digital products FREE-FREE-FREE at somebody else’s expense for warez butt-pirating degenerates everywhere!!! There’s usually no profit in that equation; only loss, wealth destruction as far as the victims are concerned… Don’t tell me they were actually somehow profiting off of such an operation and that now they’ll have to surrender much, if not all, of the gains that they had made… Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww… It breaks my heart, I tells ya… How tragic..

I’m especially amused by the weasel defense that they tried to pawn off:  “You see, your honor, it’s like this, *we* only host torrent links and NOT the actual copyrighted material!!! Yeah, OK, technically those links help somebody pirate copyrighted material so we’re merely aiding’n’abetting in piracy, however, the choice to actually pirate is in the user’s hands!! Hahahhhaha, yeah, you see? We’re innocent, we never ONCE hosted copyrighted material on our servers!!! C’mon, you hypocrite, I bet you’ve downloaded an MP3 or two in your lifetime, and hell, who hasn’t!! Let us off the hook, dammit!!! Purty-please!! Hey, we’ll hook you up with LOTS of great software/games/music, whatever you want!!! hehehehehehehehehehheh” – Hey, degenerates, did you forget what you actually named your site, you know, “The Pirate Bay?” Not very helpful to your argument, I’m afraid…

Anyhow, it sure is nice to see that justice has been brought to bear against bastards like this… It hardly ever happens, and this sense of “you always get away with it, nobody will come after you” has created a brazen, arrogant, warez culture where you’ll see douche bags actually bragging about what they pirated today, like they’re cool and edgy for having fucked someone over (I’m sure you’ve seen some of those idiots around and know EXACTLY what I’m talking about…), so really, it’s about time victims of piracy smack some of these assholes back and stuff ’em in a jail cell where they belong… Hmmm, “butt-pirates” sent to jail and perhaps running into traditional butt-pirates, as in, bend over, you’re *my* biotch now?? I smell some irony here! Heh.

Try as I might, I have no sympathy for these four ass clowns. They’re asking for it… They’re cocky, proud, arrogant, unremorseful, without any regard/concern for the damages that they’ve done to their victims, etc.. They’re sociopaths in that way; they even consider themselves “heroes.” Yesssss, warez heroes, to be exact – I know one of those myself (e.g. GF_Alt). I’m quite familiar with the concept nowadays… One who enjoys/takes pleasure in plundering somebody else’s hard work on behalf of the freeloading, thankless, spoiled masses out there… Normally, warez heroes get away with their crimes, that is, normally these assholes elude justice… NORMALLY, but NOT today, not in the case of these four!!!! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just PLAIN FUCKING AWESOME to see in my view… These four assholes, when hopefully their appeals fail, won’t be laughing that much longer despite the pretenses that they put up for their “fans” right now. Even if they win, all that trouble that they’ve been put through, the legal expenses that they’re having to bear, the burden overall, etc., they’re learning what it feels like being on the receiving end of their bullshit. Rot in jail you fucking assholes! ROT IN FUCKING JAIL!