Sa Kabilang Dako ng Simbahan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThj5jiac6I
Pinal na Proyekto sa asignatura ng Panitikang Filipino 17, sa panuto ni G. Mykel Andrada, AY 2006-2007, ika-2 Sem.
... sobrang babaw ng analysis sa DVD trade sa Quiapo! Bwiset!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Where Do CDs Go to Die?
Where Do CDs Go to Die?
EcoGeek Blog
Dear EcoGeek,
Is it possible to recycle old CD's or DVD's?
Thanks,
Rob
The perpetual scourge of EcoGeekiness is obsolescence. We pay good money for what we see as a good product, and then five years down the line we're surrounded by useless junk!
But I can't help but answer this seemingly straightforward question with several different answers.
First, I'll actually answer the question
Yes, you can, but it's not as simple as curbside pickup. CDs and DVDs do contain valuable materials (CDRs even sometimes contain gold) and there are techniques to harvest that material for reuse, but those same materials make them too complicated for regular recycling centers. Unfortunately, the materials aren't expensive enough that someone will pay for them. To recycle CDs you'll have to ship them to a special recycling center. Several are listed at the bottom of this post.
Second, Destroy the Data
Whenever you're trashing something that might contain personal data, always take the time to wipe it clean. For CDs, this can be accomplished with gloved hands, scissors, a hole puncher or, for a more entertaining (and dangerous) destruction, microwave on high for two seconds.
Third, Dubious Re-Use
The internet is littered with cheesy ways to reuse old CDs. Give people lemons and they'll make coasters, disco balls, clocks and maybe even miniature hover-craft. However, this isn't really helping anyone. At the very least, it's delaying the landfill for another few years. It's fun to play with trash, but this kind of re-use doesn't make much environmental sense.
Forth, Stop the Cycle
As with any article about obsolete materials, we'd be fools not to mention how evil forced obsolescence is. The good news is, nowadays we don't need to buy physical objects anymore. We can download pretty much everything we need straight to our hard drive, consume it, and throw it into the virtual trash can on our desktop. Whenever you can, go digital. But avoid the temptation to burn all your files to DVD. You'll just be staring at them in five years wondering what the heck you're going to do with all those coasters.
http://ecogeekblog.greenoptions.com/2007/06/28/ask-the-ecogeek-where-do-cds-go-to-die/
EcoGeek Blog
Dear EcoGeek,
Is it possible to recycle old CD's or DVD's?
Thanks,
Rob
The perpetual scourge of EcoGeekiness is obsolescence. We pay good money for what we see as a good product, and then five years down the line we're surrounded by useless junk!
But I can't help but answer this seemingly straightforward question with several different answers.
First, I'll actually answer the question
Yes, you can, but it's not as simple as curbside pickup. CDs and DVDs do contain valuable materials (CDRs even sometimes contain gold) and there are techniques to harvest that material for reuse, but those same materials make them too complicated for regular recycling centers. Unfortunately, the materials aren't expensive enough that someone will pay for them. To recycle CDs you'll have to ship them to a special recycling center. Several are listed at the bottom of this post.
Second, Destroy the Data
Whenever you're trashing something that might contain personal data, always take the time to wipe it clean. For CDs, this can be accomplished with gloved hands, scissors, a hole puncher or, for a more entertaining (and dangerous) destruction, microwave on high for two seconds.
Third, Dubious Re-Use
The internet is littered with cheesy ways to reuse old CDs. Give people lemons and they'll make coasters, disco balls, clocks and maybe even miniature hover-craft. However, this isn't really helping anyone. At the very least, it's delaying the landfill for another few years. It's fun to play with trash, but this kind of re-use doesn't make much environmental sense.
Forth, Stop the Cycle
As with any article about obsolete materials, we'd be fools not to mention how evil forced obsolescence is. The good news is, nowadays we don't need to buy physical objects anymore. We can download pretty much everything we need straight to our hard drive, consume it, and throw it into the virtual trash can on our desktop. Whenever you can, go digital. But avoid the temptation to burn all your files to DVD. You'll just be staring at them in five years wondering what the heck you're going to do with all those coasters.
http://ecogeekblog.greenoptions.com/2007/06/28/ask-the-ecogeek-where-do-cds-go-to-die/
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Quiapo Cinematheque
The Quiapo Cinematheque
By Eric S. Caruncho
Inquirer
First Posted 09:15am (Mla time) 06/24/2007
MANILA, Philippines - Information wants to be free. Or at least, cheap. Nowhere is this dictum more apparent than in the bowels of Quiapo's Muslim district, now known to all and sundry as "Deeveedee."
When I first started frequenting the place five or so years ago, when pirated DVDs first came out, they cost P100 each. There was only a handful of ratty pirated DVD stalls huddled in a kind of talipapa along one block of Elizondo St. Out back was the porn section, a warren of dimly-lit cubicles with dirt floors, quite literally in the gutter, on which squatted the occasional naked urchin. It was a Dickensian experience, to say the least: Video Store of the Damned.
A few months later, the price had gone down to P80 per disc, and the stalls had multiplied exponentially, crossing Arlegui St. into the adjacent block.
In the ensuing months, the price went down further, to P60, and finally to P50 per disc. Two new building, with air-conditioning, had opened to serve the increasingly upmarket clientele for the bootleg discs. Then a couple more. And a few more.
Today, the "Deeveedee" district spans several blocks running southward from R. Hidalgo St. all the way to the Golden Mosque in Globo de Oro, with DVDs that go for as low as P40 per disc, three discs for a hundred.
When I first started frequenting the area, it was, quite frankly, a pestilential slum, reputed to be a refuge for pickpockets, holdup men and all manner of unsavory characters. For the slumming suburbanite, that was part of the thrill, actually, as was the excitement offered by the occasional raid by agents of the Videogram Regulatory Board.
Today, a mere five years of the bootleg trade have given the area what decades of development planning by the city government have not: a veneer of prosperity. The traders have graduated from scooters to AUVs, and a service industry of sorts has emerged to serve the resident population: convenience stores, halal restaurants, hotels. (I am just waiting for Starbucks and a foot spa to set up shop.)
I know, I know. Video piracy is killing the movie industry. But i's also sustaining a growing community of migrants who depend on the trade for their livelihood. One “expose” by a TV network even suggested that the pickpockets, holdup men and other unsavory characters mentioned earlier have shifted to selling DVDs which, I suppose, is a good thing, or at least the lesser of two evils.
A friend of mine, a noted film director who shall remain anonymous here for obvious reasons, calls the district the "Quiapo Cinematheque," presumably because whatever else it might be, Quiapo is a haven for the discerning cineaste.
The Cinematheque Francaise was where the directors of the French nouvelle vague, the likes of Truffaut, Godard and Rohmer, cut their teeth on Hollywood classics, world cinema and American B-movies alike. It is the Parthenon of film geekdom, celebrated in that scene from Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" where the heroes watch a screening of Jean Luc Godard's "Band of Outsiders" at the Cinematheque and reenact a scene from the movie at the Louvre. (Incidentally, I have both films on DVD, bootlegs naturally).
"It's only an educated guess, but the next generation of Filipino filmmakers is, very likely, receiving the bulk of their education in cinema from bootleg DVDs, rather than from film school or Mowelfund or the occasional embassy screening as used to be the case. And just as Quentin Tarantino educated himself by working as a clerk at a video store and watching every piece-of-crap tape that looked interesting, these movie geeks could show us something tomorrow that we've never seen before.
One thing that anti-piracy advocates neglect to mention is the appalling lack of choice of titles in legit DVDs. Go to any legit video store and chances are, all you’ll get is mainstream Hollywood product.
Not so at the Quiapo Cinematheque.
The sheer diversity of bootleg product is staggering: there are stalls specializing in anime, film classics, concert videos and music films, telenovelas, and of course, porn. Cost aside, the strength of the Quiapo Cinematheque lies in its total promiscuity: slick Hollywood product, cheapo trash, undisputed classics of world cinema: it's all there, uncut. There's only your own inner censor to draw the line. In a couple of years of shopping in Quiapo, I've managed to make up for 20 years of being too lazy to go to those Alliance Francaise or Goethe Institut screenings. French new wave? Italian neo-realism? Film noir? Hong Kong action? '70s Japanese bondage films? Zombie cannibal splatterfests? Korean romcoms? Silent films? Got 'em.
The deeveedee district is also one of the few places in the city where the mainstream Christian populace can have a close encounter with their Muslim brethren, even if it's only their DVD "suki." In a society where Islam still represents the extreme of "otherness," such cross-cultural meetings are few and far between. Who knows what effect these small transactions might have on future relations between the faiths?
Of course, with the global media conglomerates pressuring the US government to crack down on Intellectual Property (IP) pirates worldwide, all this could vanish just as quickly as it came to be. As technology advances and broadband services improve and become more accessible, optical media might just become obsolete. Illegal downloads might overtake illegal discs as the IP police's chief headache.
Information, after all, wants to be free.
Or at least, cheap.
By Eric S. Caruncho
Inquirer
First Posted 09:15am (Mla time) 06/24/2007
MANILA, Philippines - Information wants to be free. Or at least, cheap. Nowhere is this dictum more apparent than in the bowels of Quiapo's Muslim district, now known to all and sundry as "Deeveedee."
When I first started frequenting the place five or so years ago, when pirated DVDs first came out, they cost P100 each. There was only a handful of ratty pirated DVD stalls huddled in a kind of talipapa along one block of Elizondo St. Out back was the porn section, a warren of dimly-lit cubicles with dirt floors, quite literally in the gutter, on which squatted the occasional naked urchin. It was a Dickensian experience, to say the least: Video Store of the Damned.
A few months later, the price had gone down to P80 per disc, and the stalls had multiplied exponentially, crossing Arlegui St. into the adjacent block.
In the ensuing months, the price went down further, to P60, and finally to P50 per disc. Two new building, with air-conditioning, had opened to serve the increasingly upmarket clientele for the bootleg discs. Then a couple more. And a few more.
Today, the "Deeveedee" district spans several blocks running southward from R. Hidalgo St. all the way to the Golden Mosque in Globo de Oro, with DVDs that go for as low as P40 per disc, three discs for a hundred.
When I first started frequenting the area, it was, quite frankly, a pestilential slum, reputed to be a refuge for pickpockets, holdup men and all manner of unsavory characters. For the slumming suburbanite, that was part of the thrill, actually, as was the excitement offered by the occasional raid by agents of the Videogram Regulatory Board.
Today, a mere five years of the bootleg trade have given the area what decades of development planning by the city government have not: a veneer of prosperity. The traders have graduated from scooters to AUVs, and a service industry of sorts has emerged to serve the resident population: convenience stores, halal restaurants, hotels. (I am just waiting for Starbucks and a foot spa to set up shop.)
I know, I know. Video piracy is killing the movie industry. But i's also sustaining a growing community of migrants who depend on the trade for their livelihood. One “expose” by a TV network even suggested that the pickpockets, holdup men and other unsavory characters mentioned earlier have shifted to selling DVDs which, I suppose, is a good thing, or at least the lesser of two evils.
A friend of mine, a noted film director who shall remain anonymous here for obvious reasons, calls the district the "Quiapo Cinematheque," presumably because whatever else it might be, Quiapo is a haven for the discerning cineaste.
The Cinematheque Francaise was where the directors of the French nouvelle vague, the likes of Truffaut, Godard and Rohmer, cut their teeth on Hollywood classics, world cinema and American B-movies alike. It is the Parthenon of film geekdom, celebrated in that scene from Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" where the heroes watch a screening of Jean Luc Godard's "Band of Outsiders" at the Cinematheque and reenact a scene from the movie at the Louvre. (Incidentally, I have both films on DVD, bootlegs naturally).
"It's only an educated guess, but the next generation of Filipino filmmakers is, very likely, receiving the bulk of their education in cinema from bootleg DVDs, rather than from film school or Mowelfund or the occasional embassy screening as used to be the case. And just as Quentin Tarantino educated himself by working as a clerk at a video store and watching every piece-of-crap tape that looked interesting, these movie geeks could show us something tomorrow that we've never seen before.
One thing that anti-piracy advocates neglect to mention is the appalling lack of choice of titles in legit DVDs. Go to any legit video store and chances are, all you’ll get is mainstream Hollywood product.
Not so at the Quiapo Cinematheque.
The sheer diversity of bootleg product is staggering: there are stalls specializing in anime, film classics, concert videos and music films, telenovelas, and of course, porn. Cost aside, the strength of the Quiapo Cinematheque lies in its total promiscuity: slick Hollywood product, cheapo trash, undisputed classics of world cinema: it's all there, uncut. There's only your own inner censor to draw the line. In a couple of years of shopping in Quiapo, I've managed to make up for 20 years of being too lazy to go to those Alliance Francaise or Goethe Institut screenings. French new wave? Italian neo-realism? Film noir? Hong Kong action? '70s Japanese bondage films? Zombie cannibal splatterfests? Korean romcoms? Silent films? Got 'em.
The deeveedee district is also one of the few places in the city where the mainstream Christian populace can have a close encounter with their Muslim brethren, even if it's only their DVD "suki." In a society where Islam still represents the extreme of "otherness," such cross-cultural meetings are few and far between. Who knows what effect these small transactions might have on future relations between the faiths?
Of course, with the global media conglomerates pressuring the US government to crack down on Intellectual Property (IP) pirates worldwide, all this could vanish just as quickly as it came to be. As technology advances and broadband services improve and become more accessible, optical media might just become obsolete. Illegal downloads might overtake illegal discs as the IP police's chief headache.
Information, after all, wants to be free.
Or at least, cheap.
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