Oracle is buying Sun – $7.4 billion.

Tiny chance this could backfire …. Oracle software runs on every server; with them owning Sun, will HP, IBM, Dell, etc. rebel? Or is their installed base so secure that it doesn’t matter?

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J.G. Ballard, author of Empire of the Sun, Crash and a whole lot more, died yesterday. My one connection to him – 1992, when working for Barclays, they put me up in a service flat in London. Checking the guest register, I saw that Ballard had stayed in the same room immediately before me. So did sleeping in the same bed as him somehow transfer a bit of his talent to me? Nah …

Well, Coachella was this past weekend. Should I have bought a plane ticket to the US for this? Feeling too old to camp in a field for 3 days. But still ….

Friday …. Beirut, Conor Oberst, Felix da Housecat, Franz Ferdinand, Girl Talk, Leonard Cohen, M Ward, Morrissey, Paul McCartney, The Black Keys, The Hold Steady, The Ting Tings, more

Saturday …. Blitzen Trapper, Bob Mould, Booker T, Calexico, Dr. Dog, Drive By Truckers, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, Henry Rollins, Jenny Lewis, Junior Boys, M.I.A., Chemical Brothers, Killers, Thievery Corporation, Tinariwen, TV on the Radio, Joss Stone, many more

Sunday …. Antony & the Johnsons, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Devendra Barnhart, Groove Armada, Lupe Fiasco, Lykke Li, Mexican Institute of Sound, My Bloody Valentine, No Age, Okkervil River, Paul Weller, Perry Farrell, Peter Bjorn & John, Public Enemy, Roni Size, The Cure, Gaslight Anthem, The Orb, X, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and a whole lot more

So yeah, sometimes I feel like I live in a cultural wasteland.

Misc stuff:

HuffPo: You’re Fired, So Where Are the Jobs Now?

So many of the recently fired – exhausted by their search on the internet for jobs that aren’t there — turn to the free-lance life; consulting where they can, or trying to establish a new business of their own, providing they can find the funding for it – funding that seems to have been swallowed up by those great banking whales and AIG.

Gizmodo: Sorry Stereo, But Beatles in Mono Rocks a Lot More

But that wasn’t all. In the mono version you can hear stuff that is not in the stereo version. And not just bits, but quite a lot of things. Instruments, notes, even lyrics. Take the reprise version of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: It is full of shouting—Lennon going bananas at the end, and other bits at the beginning—that is not in the stereo mix.

Gizmodo: 50 Photographers Worth Checking Out
Links to here and well worth your time

TechCrunch: Hollywood Has a Great Online Distribution Model – If You Hate Selection

The fact that online distribution has to play in this foolish game of broadcast rights tennis, is of course, bullshit. The brick and mortar rental stores of yesteryear, like Blockbuster, don’t have to play by these ridiculous rules. Movies don’t vanish from their shelves because they’re playing on HBO for the next 18 months. If they did, Blockbuster would have been in trouble a lot sooner than its most recent woes (tied to its failure to get out in front of new forms of distribution).

AllMusic Blog: Best Classical Releases – First Quarter of 2009

Since the SCMP couldn’t be arsed to print all the winners of this year’s HK Film Awards (all 21 of them), here is the full list courtesy of screendaily.com

• Best film: Ip Man (prod: Raymond Wong / dir: Wilson Yip)
• Best director: Ann Hui – The Way We Are
• Best screenplay: Lou Shiu-wa – The Way We Are
• Best actor: Nick Cheung – The Beast Stalker
• Best actress: Paw Hee-ching – The Way We Are
• Best supporting actor: Liu Kai-chi – The Best Stalker
• Best supporting actress: Chan Lai-wun – The Way We Are
• Best new performer: Xu Jiao – CJ7
• Best cinematography: Arthur Wong – Painted Skin
• Best film editing: Yau Chi-wai – Connected
• Best art direction: Tim Yip – Red Cliff
• Best costume & make-up design: Tim Yip – Red Cliff
• Best action choreography: Sammo Hung & Tony Leung Siu-hung – Ip Man
• Best sound design: Wu Jiang & Roger Savage – Red Cliff
• Best visual effects: Craig Hayes – Red Cliff
• Best original score: Taro Iwashiro – Red Cliff
• Best original film song: Jane Zhang – Painted Skin
• Best new director: Derek Kwok – The Moss
• Best Asian film – Assembly
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Josephine Siao Fong-fong
• Professional Achievement Award: Ting Yu

The SCMP did find space to print this bizarre quote from best actor award winner Nick Cheung:

“When I saw [Barack] Obama winning the US presidency, I thought I stood a chance,” said Cheung, with tears in his eyes. “I waited for this award for a very long time.”

If it was an Asian man winning an acting Oscar, the above quote might make sense.

Speaking of actors who make no sense, Jackie Chan regaled an audience in Hainan with his wisdom over the weekend. The Standard says he said this:

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.

The SCMP translated things differently:

I don’t know whether it is better to have freedom or to have no freedom. With too much freedom … it can get very chaotic, could end up like in Taiwan.

Then, according to the SCMP:

… he said he would definitely not buy a TV set made on the mainland because he feared it might explode. If he wanted to buy a TV set, he would buy a Japanese-made one, he said.

If the Philippines could ban Chip Tsao from visiting there due comments in his column in HK magazine, if Macao can ban HK democrats from visiting because of what they might do or say while there, is it possible for HK to ban Jackie Chan?