Even US marketing would do better in Japan. Our cards say Pokemon, theirs say Pocket Monsters, because pretty much anything American (or in English) is 'kewl' there...whereas we just want their Anime.;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
May I humbly suggest Sutur as a band to check out there. They are put out by Elemental Media, who have a bunch of other no-big-label bands to choose from.
And of course, you could always support humble little me.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
.....I feel your pain. These types of expos are used to measure interest. If you and me and other geeks had been there asking them about *nix, they would know there was a market for it. So how do we remedy that? Hire our own reporters and correspondents?
(Also I just have to say, Photon Mapping blows my mind.)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
You know, I thank the stars that I was able to dork around with computers and teach myself Photoshop and HTML and that I can hack JavaScript enough to make my customers happy. I worked to get where I am but I also realize that luck has always been a factor. So you are right, some folks aren't that lucky. SO WHAT. Life sucks for some people, it's always been that way. America is moving at breakneck speed trying to homogenize opportunities for its citizens, far more than the rest of the world. But someone will always be on the bottom. You eat fast food? Your office have a janitor? You can't turn every sad case into a techno-jillionaire, that's not the way Life works. There will always be people who don't get a 'fair shake' or who live in shitty conditions and die without ever realizing their potential. The REAL issue here is that most of us geeks aren't paying attention to politics enough to protect what we've built. And if it comes to pass that we have our precious online freedoms legislated out from under us then that's our tough luck and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Selfish? Nah. Arrogant? Absolutely. We've worked hard to earn the right to be.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Interesting. I logged on today to see this: You are a moderator with 0 points. Um, thanks? What kind of crap is that? (I've never been a moderator before but.... Does that happen often?)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Absolutely. People are used to downloading for free, right-click and it's mine, etc. Everybody that says they'd pay for a song, well, they have 10 friends who are gonna ask to get a copy of it for nothing, so you have the same problem all over again.
Bands who have really good interactive sites will ride out the storm. Beastie Boys, Phish, Nine Inch Nails, they understand that you can give away preview videos and songs for free and the fans will continue to buy CDs and come to shows.
"I know all the sites that have my bootlegs and all my MP3s. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck." --- David Bowie
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Re:We can't vote on every single thing...
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 2
I would agree with you, mainly because I don't think technology IS ready for voting by the masses. As a previous post pointed out, the Internet as we know it today is still vulnerable in many ways. I see online voting technology coming of age around the time that the 'digital divide' is bridged, and both are coming quickly. Getting people interested in voting again will be a harder task to accomplish, but I've seen lots of figures regarding the websites of elected officials and candidates, and overwhelmingly people are calling for them to post their voting records. This stuff is publicly available but most of us (me included) don't have the resources and/or the time to look it up through conventional means. I think the web can do wonders for voter turnout in that respect. Now, I don't think getting rid of Congress is a good idea, either, but getting rid of corrupt Congresspersons and all the fscking special interest parasites sounds great. The question is, what will happen when the lobbyists move from pestering Congress to spamming citizens? Ack!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Sadly I agree. Trying to write code so that everyone sees the same page the same way is an absolute nightmare. What the users want I think is twofold: The surfers just want stuff to work and not have to be bothered with plugins and adjusting font sizes. The workers want their company website to look and act the same on everyone's machine, regardless. These two goals are hand in hand, and I'm hoping this release will go a good way towards realizing them. (Broadband would be nice, too...sigh...) This is not to say that IE is perfect (CSS?!) but as you say, it is prevalent and that's what counts right now.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Well now, first you say mp3s are about piracy, that true audiophiles don't listen to them, then you say you watch vcds cuz you're a cheap bastard. What makes that different from the teenyboppers who would rather spend their allowance on weed than the new Matchbox 20 CD? I do agree that most of what's being traded online is shite, and you know what? That gives me hope. Wouldn't it be great if Brittney and NSync et al lost money and fell victim to mp3s?! Oh wait, no, they're richer than ever. Piracy or not, ethical or not, record sales are UP. Well, record sales of mainstream bubble gum crap are up. I guess I'll just shiver in a corner with my Pixies tapes and wait the whole mess out... As for movies, global broadband access ain't here yet. I know I wouldn't sit through a 5 hour download for another Julia Roberts disaster...and watching it on my monitor? Ack.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
You are absolutely right. Why is Internet filtering so popular? Not because parents don't want their kids visiting the National Democratic Party homepage (which sometimes gets blocked - I love that) but because they don't want them finding pr0n. People have sex. People think about sex. Anybody who pretends otherwise is full of it.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Seriously, I agree with you for the most part. The most interesting angle of this debate to me is the whole robots.txt thing - As someone above said, it should be obeyed, regardless. If you want to publish prices from eBay, you go through like any other surfer and copy-paste by hand.;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
It's bad enough when I go to a site that opens up ten windows I can't close, now they want me to use a system that opens and closes apps for me? Fsck that! I want CONTROL over what I'm doing. It goes back to the saying 'just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.' "Where do you want to - oh, never mind. You'll go where we take you."
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
This parallel begs the question: Was X-Men produced and released because it would draw a comic book audience or an alienated teen audience? Perhaps they were COUNTING on the/. effect to make them some $$$...;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
So let me get this straight - I pay you for hosting a movie file that eats up half my hard drive and pretty much all of my bandwidth (not everyone has T3 access you know)?! Ok I'll bite...what's available? Hmm...a trailer for the new Julia Roberts piece of crap and a short montage of scenes from last year's Kevin Costner box office flop. Cool, where do I sign?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
I remember a show on PBS a while back about alternative energy sources, and this same argument came up. Electric cars are really not much better than what we have now, because the grand majority of our electricity still comes from COAL. You may as well drive a train. Solar power is no good because on cloudy days (or if you live near the poles) you get none. Wind and water are sorta promising, but they have their problems, too... Nuclear power is still viable, but too many folks jump up and scream "Not in MY backyard!" for it be widely accepted. If anyone can come up with something truly revolutionary I'll be the first in line.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
I agree with you for the most part but I still believe that we have the power to change people's minds without compromising their business. I worked for a little ISP a couple years ago and we had a client who was tired of his secretaries mucking up their computers with viruses and buggy screensavers, so we gave him a Linux networked office package. They use WordPerfect, and the office girls can't figure out how to do anything with their machines except the work they're paid for. They have no problems communicating with other offices/clients/businesses. It was hard work and all, but we believed in it (not to mention not having to buy a zillion copies of Win98 saved them a ton of ca$h).
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Everybody uses M$ Word, not because it's great, but because they don't know any better. You and I might use Star Office cuz we're 'in the know', but sitting back and wishing there were better standards or criticizing others for continuing to support M$ won't help. Walk around your office and preach the gospel. Convert the lost lambs.:-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
That's the problem with ANY rating system: a small group of people have to decide what a huge group of people will think about something. Kinda like/. moderation...;-)
The bloodiness of the game isn't really relevant, it's the fact that they're taking over the parents' job of paying attention to what their kids are doing. "Sorry Johnny, the Government says the Teletubbies are fags." It makes me physically ill how moms and dads can be so righteous in the face of legislation but then you see them with their 4 year old at movies like "Stigmata" cuz they couldn't get a sitter.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Slashdot Mirror
Even US marketing would do better in Japan. Our cards say Pokemon, theirs say Pocket Monsters, because pretty much anything American (or in English) is 'kewl' there...whereas we just want their Anime. ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
May I humbly suggest Sutur as a band to check out there. They are put out by Elemental Media, who have a bunch of other no-big-label bands to choose from.
And of course, you could always support humble little me.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Why yes, my boyfriend IS a Capricorn! Wow, you're psychic!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
.....I feel your pain. These types of expos are used to measure interest. If you and me and other geeks had been there asking them about *nix, they would know there was a market for it. So how do we remedy that? Hire our own reporters and correspondents?
(Also I just have to say, Photon Mapping blows my mind.)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
You know, I thank the stars that I was able to dork around with computers and teach myself Photoshop and HTML and that I can hack JavaScript enough to make my customers happy. I worked to get where I am but I also realize that luck has always been a factor. So you are right, some folks aren't that lucky. SO WHAT. Life sucks for some people, it's always been that way. America is moving at breakneck speed trying to homogenize opportunities for its citizens, far more than the rest of the world. But someone will always be on the bottom. You eat fast food? Your office have a janitor? You can't turn every sad case into a techno-jillionaire, that's not the way Life works. There will always be people who don't get a 'fair shake' or who live in shitty conditions and die without ever realizing their potential.
The REAL issue here is that most of us geeks aren't paying attention to politics enough to protect what we've built. And if it comes to pass that we have our precious online freedoms legislated out from under us then that's our tough luck and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Selfish? Nah. Arrogant? Absolutely. We've worked hard to earn the right to be.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Interesting. I logged on today to see this:
You are a moderator with 0 points.
Um, thanks? What kind of crap is that? (I've never been a moderator before but.... Does that happen often?)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Absolutely. People are used to downloading for free, right-click and it's mine, etc. Everybody that says they'd pay for a song, well, they have 10 friends who are gonna ask to get a copy of it for nothing, so you have the same problem all over again.
Bands who have really good interactive sites will ride out the storm. Beastie Boys, Phish, Nine Inch Nails, they understand that you can give away preview videos and songs for free and the fans will continue to buy CDs and come to shows.
"I know all the sites that have my bootlegs and all my MP3s. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck." --- David Bowie
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Thanks so much, you made my day. ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
I would agree with you, mainly because I don't think technology IS ready for voting by the masses. As a previous post pointed out, the Internet as we know it today is still vulnerable in many ways. I see online voting technology coming of age around the time that the 'digital divide' is bridged, and both are coming quickly.
Getting people interested in voting again will be a harder task to accomplish, but I've seen lots of figures regarding the websites of elected officials and candidates, and overwhelmingly people are calling for them to post their voting records. This stuff is publicly available but most of us (me included) don't have the resources and/or the time to look it up through conventional means. I think the web can do wonders for voter turnout in that respect.
Now, I don't think getting rid of Congress is a good idea, either, but getting rid of corrupt Congresspersons and all the fscking special interest parasites sounds great. The question is, what will happen when the lobbyists move from pestering Congress to spamming citizens? Ack!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Right on! This marks the second of the only 2 reasons I'm proud to be an ODU grad! (The first was that Mr. Rogers spoke at graduation last summer.)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Sadly I agree. Trying to write code so that everyone sees the same page the same way is an absolute nightmare. What the users want I think is twofold: The surfers just want stuff to work and not have to be bothered with plugins and adjusting font sizes. The workers want their company website to look and act the same on everyone's machine, regardless. These two goals are hand in hand, and I'm hoping this release will go a good way towards realizing them. (Broadband would be nice, too...sigh...)
This is not to say that IE is perfect (CSS?!) but as you say, it is prevalent and that's what counts right now.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Howard! Oh my god! Ever since I read that book in college I've been waiting for you to sneak in my bedroom! ;-)
Back to the quarry I go...
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Well now, first you say mp3s are about piracy, that true audiophiles don't listen to them, then you say you watch vcds cuz you're a cheap bastard. What makes that different from the teenyboppers who would rather spend their allowance on weed than the new Matchbox 20 CD? I do agree that most of what's being traded online is shite, and you know what? That gives me hope. Wouldn't it be great if Brittney and NSync et al lost money and fell victim to mp3s?! Oh wait, no, they're richer than ever. Piracy or not, ethical or not, record sales are UP. Well, record sales of mainstream bubble gum crap are up. I guess I'll just shiver in a corner with my Pixies tapes and wait the whole mess out...
As for movies, global broadband access ain't here yet. I know I wouldn't sit through a 5 hour download for another Julia Roberts disaster...and watching it on my monitor? Ack.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
You are absolutely right.
Why is Internet filtering so popular? Not because parents don't want their kids visiting the National Democratic Party homepage (which sometimes gets blocked - I love that) but because they don't want them finding pr0n. People have sex. People think about sex. Anybody who pretends otherwise is full of it.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
...but you are certainly lacking in manners. If that guy is really a Troll then you shouldn't have to "prove" you're right by returning flame.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Yeah... how do you play Quake with this thing? ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
...but he's a great comic character, too.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
So you don't visit Napster, I guess... ?
;-)
Seriously, I agree with you for the most part. The most interesting angle of this debate to me is the whole robots.txt thing - As someone above said, it should be obeyed, regardless. If you want to publish prices from eBay, you go through like any other surfer and copy-paste by hand.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
It's bad enough when I go to a site that opens up ten windows I can't close, now they want me to use a system that opens and closes apps for me? Fsck that! I want CONTROL over what I'm doing. It goes back to the saying 'just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.'
"Where do you want to - oh, never mind. You'll go where we take you."
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
This parallel begs the question: Was X-Men produced and released because it would draw a comic book audience or an alienated teen audience? Perhaps they were COUNTING on the /. effect to make them some $$$... ;-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
So let me get this straight - I pay you for hosting a movie file that eats up half my hard drive and pretty much all of my bandwidth (not everyone has T3 access you know)?! Ok I'll bite...what's available? Hmm...a trailer for the new Julia Roberts piece of crap and a short montage of scenes from last year's Kevin Costner box office flop. Cool, where do I sign?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
I remember a show on PBS a while back about alternative energy sources, and this same argument came up. Electric cars are really not much better than what we have now, because the grand majority of our electricity still comes from COAL. You may as well drive a train.
Solar power is no good because on cloudy days (or if you live near the poles) you get none.
Wind and water are sorta promising, but they have their problems, too... Nuclear power is still viable, but too many folks jump up and scream "Not in MY backyard!" for it be widely accepted.
If anyone can come up with something truly revolutionary I'll be the first in line.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
I agree with you for the most part but I still believe that we have the power to change people's minds without compromising their business. I worked for a little ISP a couple years ago and we had a client who was tired of his secretaries mucking up their computers with viruses and buggy screensavers, so we gave him a Linux networked office package. They use WordPerfect, and the office girls can't figure out how to do anything with their machines except the work they're paid for. They have no problems communicating with other offices/clients/businesses. It was hard work and all, but we believed in it (not to mention not having to buy a zillion copies of Win98 saved them a ton of ca$h).
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Everybody uses M$ Word, not because it's great, but because they don't know any better. You and I might use Star Office cuz we're 'in the know', but sitting back and wishing there were better standards or criticizing others for continuing to support M$ won't help. Walk around your office and preach the gospel. Convert the lost lambs. :-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
That's the problem with ANY rating system: a small group of people have to decide what a huge group of people will think about something. Kinda like /. moderation... ;-)
The bloodiness of the game isn't really relevant, it's the fact that they're taking over the parents' job of paying attention to what their kids are doing. "Sorry Johnny, the Government says the Teletubbies are fags." It makes me physically ill how moms and dads can be so righteous in the face of legislation but then you see them with their 4 year old at movies like "Stigmata" cuz they couldn't get a sitter.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk