Socially Unhealthy Text Messages?

I saw this article on Techdirt (http://techdirt.com/articles/20051007/082252_F.shtml)

"Last week, we noted that China had come out with new official rules for online news sites, saying that they could only report on news that was socially beneficial. It appears they're going beyond just news sites to personal communications as well, saying that mobile operators needs to start blocking socially "unhealthy" text messages. Apparently, these text messages have "polluted society and spread very bad influence." Sense a pattern here?"

Analysis? What is socially unhealthy? Even the term SPAM is contextual at best. An SMS offering me viagra is spam and not socially healthy IMO, however if the goal of a society is to survive, it demand procreation which in turn may be saved by viagra if some men have troubles with ... uhh .. you know what.

So what is socially unhealthy and what is not? How would you rate the following SMS's:

1. Asking you out for a date (same or opposite sex)?
2. Introducing a new band to you?
3. Advising you that some song by that band has been censored by your government?
4. An invitation to eat at McDonald's?
5. An invitation to do nude yoga poses while watching reruns of Baywatch?
6. An invitation to watch Pamela Anderson doing (nearly) nude yoga poses in Baywatch?
7. An SMS from Pam asking you if you want to go on a date, then do some naked Yoga poses?
8....

The point is that each of these may be healthy or unhealthy based on your own metrics. I would certainly presume that yoga is much healthier than eating at MacDonalds. No government should try to force ideals upon its citizens or censor their activities. I wonder why some of them still do?

Didgeridu, Djembe and Guitar

Last night I had the pleasure to perform live with Wade Imre Morissette and Kirsten (lastname??) for an event at Unlimited Yoga. Playing music is my first love and the reason I moved to Vancouver. I love the way it clears your head gets rid of all the buzzword laden drivel inherit in the high tech world. Speaking of which, I guess I need to eventually either post something techie-ish on this blog or change the name to something else. Hmmm.

The night was really cool. My wife lead a 5 rhythms for the first hour, then we switched to Kirtan, a repetitive chanting with Sanskrit lyrics. Not really my style of music to listen to but I found it immensely fun to play. I felt like I had been performing with these guys for years. Sometimes in music you just sort of "click".

We are performing live again Oct 24th. http://www.wadeimremorissette.com/lululemon.html

CGI Movies with Live controls?

I wonder what would happen if someone got really creative and made a movie based on Computer Generating Images (CGI) that also allowed members of the public to randomly control aspects of it real time during screening? Think about this. The technology is there today. So how could it work?

Certain characters in the movie would be controllable via an API. People could bid for the right to control those characters during certain time frames when they know the film would be seen by friends etc. The glyphs would only be able to interact with certain aspects of the 3D environment and would have to be constrained not to affect the overall movie plot, yet they could perform some pretty cool stuff (such as driving cars in the background of a movie) or even playing a small role such as deliver a pizza. Glyphs would be controlled similar to online gaming.

To me, this would be an interesting social experiment. I think it would be funny to observe how some would try to maximize their appearance and notoriety within a movie while others may actually use it for embellishing their acting resume.

So there is the idea. Someone go out and implement it. Send me a royalty check if you feel compelled for the idea ;-)