Unfunny Actors

Is it too scandalous to say that I don’t find any of these actors particularly funny? Well I don’t think they are. The poor souls…

Ben Stiller

Sorry, but the whole Avatar thing is cliché. And I wasn’t entirely thrilled with Meet the Parents.

Jack Black

Dare I say…the worst actor of all time? Tenacious D left me slightly scarred. And despite how much my old roommate Andrew might love it, Pick of Destiny was—by far—the worst motion picture production I’ve ever had the misfortune the witness.

Owen Wilson

Maybe it’s the curse of Ra from Night at the Museum and its sequel, but Owen Wilson has always bored me. He seems so fake. All the time.

Will Ferrell

Don’t get me started. This guy tries too hard to be funny and ends up unintentionally coming off as an ass. I’m really tired of laughing at you, Will, and want to laugh with you. Please?

Cool, that’s all I wanted to get out of my system. Thanks for staying tuned.

Dear Google

Hey Google, it’s me Basta. Just wanted to drop in and give you a little advice.

You see, there’s this huge “war” over HTML5 video formats going on. Apple and Nokia are pushing H.264 (which is a beautiful format, don’t get me wrong) and Mozilla and Opera are pushing for Ogg Theora (which I have very little experience with, mostly because I have zero reason to interact with it). We all know Microsoft is going to vote for Windows Media Video format or uncompressed AVI or some dumb shit like that, so nobody even asked for their two cents. So now it comes down to you. Sure, you share a bunch of code with Apple and Nokia (WebKit) and you probably won’t end up paying the five million dollar licensing fees to use H.264, but everybody loves open source! And Theora is free regardless!

Now internally, you’ve got your YouTube guys saying that Theora would crash the internet, but at the other side of your offices, you push for open standards and a more open web. That’s a tough choice to make: on one hand, you’ve got a beautiful, efficient codec, and on the other, you’ve got your principles and community-centric values. Tough choice indeed, my friend.

Ah, but wait! Didn’t you just spend an exorbitant amount of money on…what’s that…a video codec company? Google! You sly bastard you! Now, you’re sitting here with the format that you could only hope to ever possess; the holy grail of video codecs! VP6! It’s the same guy that powers Flash (flv), which just so happens to be the driving force behind YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler…hell, even Xtube uses your new toy.

Back on track: I’m certainly not the first person to think of this, though I may have foolishly assumed I was. It’s simply genius. You’ve suddenly come into possession of THE SINGLE MOST POPULAR CODEC EVER TO BE CREATED, and you just so happen to be in a war which will effectively DETERMINE THE FUTURE OF VIDEO ON THE INTERNET FOR THE REST OF THE CENTURY. Now I’m no Howie Mandel, but I know a deal when I see one. Here’s the plan: make VP6 an open source codec. No charge to consume it. You’re already charging boatloads to implement encoders for it; why charge to actually consume it?

And not only do you have VP6, but you also have VP7 and VP8, On2’s latest codecs. They apparently do a kick-ass job (Skype is using VP7 for video conferencing and ABC and Fox are using it in their episode players) so far, so I wouldn’t doubt that they would make good choices for open sourceability. Let people use them. Consider how quickly you’d become the dominant force in online video! Adobe would surely implement VP7/8 if given the right to freely. Now you’ve got Adobe using the codec of your choosing in practically every browser on the planet. Apple and Nokia would KILL to have those codecs made available to them, so you can count on their video element tags supporting your new toy.

Mozilla and Opera will likely be more wary. Mozilla is a big fan of “open” stuff. Theora is “open”. Somebody owns a patent for it, but they promised not to sue anyone. Did you know, though, that Theora was once actually On2’s [now defunct] VP3 codec? That’s three versions behind what Flash uses (and tweaked to hell by open source devs), but it’s still a load of once-On2-now-Google code! Convincing these two guys that the new formats are better to use than Theora shouldn’t be a problem at all

So what would happen here? Well, first off, you’d have all the HTML5 goodness that you could possibly want (well, there’s still IE…but come on. it’s ie). Second, you’ve got yourself a stake in practically every browser on the planet. Third, every video production platform suddenly wants a license to encode the ON2 codecs. Sure, Apple’s going to be a little pissed now that H.264 is done, but it’s not like they have bigger problems or anything.

Anyway, good luck with your decision, Google, and give me a call when you get a chance.

With love,
Basta