About Thoughts of a TechnoGeek: This is where I'll post my thoughts, interesting articles, or anything else I want to. If you don't like it, don't read it. David L Brenner my email Subscribe Links
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Thu, 17 Jun 2004
I love this. These guys did scientific research, collected the data, analyzed it and came to the "startling" conclusion that MP3 downloads do not in fact hurt CD sales. According to their research, MP3 downloads may have actually helped sales. I could have told you that. IMHO, the real problem is that the record companies have been putting out a bunch of crap for years. That's why sales have dropped. The only things selling are the one or two "good" things that are released. The recording industry tries to use a formula to determine what is a good song and what isn't. They aren't willing to take chances to try anything new. Every once in a while something unique comes out, and then it is copied by every artist out there. The problem is the market isn't big enough to support 1,000 Brittany sound-alikes. Give the consumers what they want. That will fix music sales. Let them buy the individual songs that they want without needing to shell out $15+ for the one or two good songs on an album. That would force the artists to put out good music or perish. It would also provide immediate feedback as to what consumers want. I often find that the best tracks are the ones that aren't released as a single. Wait a minute, didn't Apple already do something like this??? And isn't it successful?
I went to see this movie today. After hearing all the hype, and wanting to see what the big deal was about, I went to see the movie. The hype machine worked. You all know what the movie is about. There is no surprise ending. There were several problems that I had with the movie. The first is that it could absolutely be taken as blatantly anti-semitic. The Roman governor is actually portraited as a "good guy" caught in a bad situation. The Jews are the "bad guys". More specifically, the priests at the temple, because they feel threatened. Maybe thats the way it happened, maybe its not. To me it feels like a situation where the victor gets to write the history. All it did for me was reinforce who was in charge when the New Testament was written: The Roman Catholic Church. The next problem I had was the brutality and violence. Yes, a guy getting tortured and crucified is a brutal and violent thing. If this was ANY other subject matter, the MPAA would have rated the movie NC-17. I think that it is inappropriate for children of any age. Hell, I think it was inappropriate for most adults. Just to put this into perspective, Scarface had to be edited to get from NC-17 (or X at the time) to an R rating. I've seen the movie several times and it is graphic in spots. The Passion made Scarface look like a fucking Disney film. No shit. Even Reservoir Dogs, which has a lot of blood & violence, didn't actually show the mutilation on screen. In this movie, you got to see the flesh literally ripped off Christ's body. You got to see the spikes driven into his flesh. It was over the top. If I was a Christian, which I'm not, I would have found this movie worthwhile. According to them, this is the way it happened, and this could be something to remind them of their Savior. For me, it was not at all worthwhile. I hope I never see it again.
As most of you know, I think that Apple is a great company. They have innovative products that just work. My PowerBook and my iPod are two of my favorite techie toys ever. Some of you also know that the Pixies are one of my favorite bandsever. So when the first new track from them in 13 long years is available, exclusively on iTMS, I had to buy it. Here comes the problem. Apparently, they are having problems with their new expansion into Europe with iTMS. When I tried to purchase the song, I got an error indicating a non-descript problem and it said that I should retry later. So I did. This time the site cleaned out my shopping cart afterwards. When I tried to add the song again, it said that I'd already purchased it. Okay... maybe things are a little wonky, but I'm game. So I tell iTunes to check for music that I've purchased and haven't downloaded. It started to download the song... great. But then it stops and says that it can't confirm that I've paid. It deletes the song, and wishes me well. Alright, I'm not as happy now... Then I get the email thanking me for my purchase with an indication that I've been billed. Not cool. So, I file a complaint with service, and they say they'll get back to me in 24 hours. The time clicks by, and no response. I try it again, same result. So I decide to check with the discussion groups. Apparently, I'm not the only one having issues. Others have run into the same problem. Not being one to give up, I decide to call them and talk to a human. They pick up and tell me that the only way to deal with it is online. I indicate my displeasure and ask to talk to someone in Customer Support because billing someone's credit card w/o supplying them with the purchased merchandise is illegal. That gets me transferred. The next woman was very pleasant and listened to my complaint. When I asked how to resolve the problem, she responded and indicated that I would need to submit another email and that it might be slow because of the additional volume from the recent expansion into Europe. I indicated that this was unacceptable. Then I got a lot of "uhuh....yes, I understand your displeasure...uhuh." That pissed me off. Then when I expressed that I got the feeling that I was boring her with my complaint, she had the nerve to say "But Sir, it's only $0.99". Wrong move. See the problem is, I'm not the only one this is happening to. If you add up all of the false charges, it adds up to real money in a hurry. If you ask me, that wasn't very good customer service. This has turned into more of a principal thing than anything. I feel that if you pay for a service, you better get what you pay for. I want Apple to succeed. For the most part, they make products that I love. I've been really happy with iTMS since they opened the service. But I can't stand the bullshit customer support attitude that I'm not worth dealing with because it's only $0.99. The falacy in that arguement is that future sales are a lot more than only $0.99 and if they blow it on customer support, they don't have customers. Now the question is, what is my next step. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
This "proof" has always been one of my favorites. It's an oldie but a goodie. A couple of days ago, Alan Greenspan made one of his famous speeches and got people excited. He indicated that the Social Security system is in trouble and something needs to be done about it. I know I was shocked too. ;-) It is covered in these articles: here and here. No surprise to anyone, it turned into a way to differentiate the political parties. I don't think anyone is looking at this right, except for Mr Greenspan. The thing is, you got this Ponzi scan going on and the number people to feed into the system is declining. The social security system is really big government at its worst. This system is based on the idea that the Government is going to provide sustenance for your retirement years, or if you get a disability. I don't think that this is the Government's job. We each need to have personal responsibility for each dealing with how to pay for our own retirement. If you can't afford to retire because you haven't saved enough, then guess what, you shouldn't retire. I don't have any illusions that the system will be providing me anything when I retire. I think the system will be insolvent long before I reach retirement age. I do feel a little bad for the people that have counted on this benefit because the Government has said it would be there. But if you've been paying attention at all, you should have realized that it wasn't possible to sustain this type of program. Don't get me wrong, there are certain groups of our population that deserve help from the Government. People that are unable to work due to disability (what qualifies as a disability is a whole other entry). Children who's parents have no means of supporting them deserve assistance because they can't help themselves and are not responsible for their situation. As far as I'm concerned, if the system says that you are entitled to a benefit we need to take a close look at what that benefit is and why you are entitled to it. Most of these programs are a way for politicians to get re-elected by giving you less than you already had. If we took all of the money that is fed into the system and gave it back to the taxpayers (its funny to think of it as giving when really its not taking) people would need see how much they have and plan appropriately. Before Social Security, families supported each other. Everyone needed to take responsibility for themselves and their loved ones. It was a group effort. No one counted on the Government to bail them out, because they wouldn't.
I've seen a lot of articles lately on displaying or finding information in different ways. Some of the details are pretty interesting. This page goes over an interesting way of displaying the relative quantity of news about a particular subject. It is using a technique called treemaping. It is a way of showing a hierarchy in the form of a two dimensional grid. Color coding and relative sizes show differences between the items. Larger items have more stories, in this instance. Darker colors indicate that the most recent story is older. I've seen similar techniques used to show directory structures on your hard drive. Directories are represented by nested boxes. The larger the box, the larger the file or collection of files. Its a neat way of determining where all of your space is going. The other group of articles I've seen lately are about ways of finding information. As you are all aware, there is so much information available, and the biggest problem is finding information and determining what is reliable. Google clearly has a good search technology. There was an article in the March Technology Review is about Google and the other folks looking to break into the search space. It is worth reading.
Every once in a while I run across an article that says something interesting that I think I should share. One interesting site I've found is Rand in Repose. I think the site made my list because of a funny article he wrote about the different types of people in meetings and how to get the most out of the time spent there. In his archives there was an article about why you should create a blog. Its an interesting read. Also, its very short. I think I agree with him on most of his points. I need to ponder it for a while.
The latest movie from Quentin Tarantino is the follow-up to last fall's Kill Bill Vol. 1. This one is the end of the story started back in the first movie. Back when I saw Vol. 1, I thought that it was too long. This confirmed it. My assessment is the Tarantino is too enamored with all of the tools that you can use to make a movie. The film was originally supposed to be one movie. They split it into two because Tarantino doesn't know how to edit a movie to a reasonable length. Part of making a movie is parting with stuff that you really love in order to make the film better. Sometimes less is more. In this case I think that it would have been true. There were too many long scenes that lost their momentum. It reminded me of a bunch of 70s films (which Quentin loves) that had long drawn-out things just because it looks cool. One or two of those in a movie works... it doesn't need to be every scene. I found myself paying more attention to the film stock and the way he was lighting things, instead of concentrating on the movie. If you're doing it right, my attention shouldn't be drawn to how the movie was made. He was very into hitting you over the head with when there was a flashback or doing something very stylish. Probably the thing that is most disappointing with the whole thing is that the story is good. I wanted to enjoy it, and I think that I really could have if someone else had been in charge of putting his vision on the screen. Tarantino writes great stories. He's just not very good with the other aspects of film making. Last night's film was Hellboy, based on the Dark Horse comic. Overall, it was fun, but it lost its steam about half way through. As you are probably aware, it is the story of a secret Government agency, kind of like the Men In Black. Their agents are all beings with supernatural abilities. The title character, Hellboy, is the strongest and most supernatural of them. There were a lot of similarities between this movie and MIB. The secret hide out, some of the plot twists, etc reminded me of the first movie. This isn't a bad thing, but I've seen it before. When the movie started out, I was engaged. I was enjoying it. There were some cool fights, cool special effects, and you wanted to see what was going to happen next. Then about half way through, you hit this lull. I was bored for quite a while and then the sets at the end seemed over the top and didn't make a lot of sense. I want to read the comic to see how close it is, and try to understand why people like it so much. I could kind of tell that from the movie, but I don't think that it translated well. If they did the same thing to Hellboy that they did to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen then I can see why it didn't hold together. The other major problem I had with the movie is the overuse of obvious CGI. This has been a trend in the superhero movies and its getting annoying. They incorporate too much motion, partially because they can and partially to cover-up imperfections. Just because the camera can move in ways that would be impossible with a real camera doesn't mean that you should. Some scenes were just a blur of light for no good reason. I wouldn't spend full price to go to see it. It is a fun story with potential. But based on this one, I don't know that there will be a sequel. Gina and I watched School of Rock the other night. Since the movie stars Jack Black, I wasn't expecting anything spectacular and was pleasantly surprised. The premise is that an out of work musician takes a job as a substitute teacher in an exclusive private school. He isn't qualified for the job and doesn't take it seriously. He then has the brilliant idea to turn these kids into a rock band. From there, hilarity ensues. We found it very entertaining. It's not academy award winning material, but it is funny as hell. When I saw the movie Akira for the first time, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. One of the coolest things was Kaneda's motorcycle. I have never seen one like it, until now. Okay, that's not entirely true.. I saw one like it on the Discovery Channel once, but it wasn't the same just similar. I said that if one ever hit the market, I was going to buy it. Slashdot has this article about a Japanese company that actually built one. The big problem is, the links all have cool pictures, but no English text... they're all in Japanese. Unfortunately, even though I took Japanese in college, I can't read any of it. If there is anyone out there that can translate and find a release date, how to buy one, and a cost, I would be grateful. New blog softwareI was getting sick of the old software that I was using to manage my blog. I decided to try something new. The new software is a freeware program called blosxom. It was a little harder to get it setup, but it looks like it will be pretty cool once I get used to it. It works with plain text files for the entries, and then dynamically compiles them with a CGI script. It's light weight and seems to be fairly responsive. If you notice any strange behavior, please let me know. |