.//csc

Ive seen a lot of commotion on Twitter, but what surprises me the most is the pandemics that spread via Twitter. Such as the swine flu commotion and such. One of these funny pandemics spreads like wildfire, or rather, faster than it, then eventually makes its way into the fallacy of mainstream media. After it reaches this stage, the trouble happens because the Internet-illiterates who don’t even know of the existence of Twitter, get wind of the pandemic that originated on Twitter. What amazes me is how fast this information spreads through microblogging, its just rather amazing. Although, all this inevitably causes the Fail Whale to appear on Twitter, which infuriates twit-whores. Who knows, maybe Twitter will catch on to more people..

Roughly six months ago, I collaborated with several people on creating an Archlinux package repository specifically designed for gaming packages and utilities. Shortly after, I stopped my activity in the project after starting up and preparing several packages and maintaining the wiki substancially. Most credit to this project’s success goes to Daenyth and Stythys however. So far, I have not contributed anything further to the project. As of now, I am preparing a virtual machine and will start aiding in the documentation, cleaning, and testing of packages for the x86 architecture. Kudos to #archlinux-gaming on Freenode for their participation and additions to the project and making it a success among small groups of archlinux users. Much thanks for getting one of my projects to succeed past the point of planning. Congratulations to those who qualify

But for some reason, I didn’t bring it back and continue using my ‘precious’ iPod like the rest of the world. The first thing I said when I put some music on it is, “Holy S**t, Microsoft gone done it right dis tiem!”. The device itself is rather nice, the UI goes rather smooth and the software is stable. Although, on the larger zunes, the UI is stretched and isn’t very pretty. One of the turning points was the fact that I didn’t need to transcode allof my AAC encoded media to WMA or MP3, it just worked. Aside from snide remarks from my inner anti-microsoft, this is a rather complain-free device in my opinion.

Although I don’t pay attention to Kevin Dean over at his blog Monochrome Mentality as often as I should, I just happened to look today and see his most recent blog entry (Hince the exact same topic, sorry kdean ). Awhile back before I lost internet, I followed government and other government related activities somewhat closely for lack of a better thing to do, but by doing so has turned me into a libertarian. What this has to do with the topic at hand, I haven’t the slightest clue..so lets get back on the soapbox. Kelloggs dropping Phelps because of his happytime wherever he was at the time, is wrong. Sure, you shouldn’t just be telling kids to smoke pot or whatever else you may find..pleasurable to smoke. Regardless, according to my biology teacher, smoking pot doesn’t kill brain cells, so if you want to turn this into something positive, “Just because you smoke pot doesn’t mean you can’t be like Michael Phelps someday”. I might not be writing a letter to Kelloggs as Kevin did, but I will, however, refuse to buy any of their products knowingly. In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger “Pot is not a drug, its a plant”.

Alright so I’ve been away for a really long time, it seems (I don’t feel like counting so, *middle finger*). I’ve rather neglected this blog for some time, even though i’ve logged in, I haven’t posted anything, although there ARE some drafts…in which I won’t post for….personal reasons. Anyway, expect more, different, posts in the near future. Im off to update wordpress, toodles.

<Twitter>

So for weeks, perhaps a couple of months, ive had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing. So I started snooping around my various disks, drives, and CD’s for something to do. Eventually I came across one of my favorite games that I used to play back in 04 and started it up again. Curiously enough, it was a cracked version as the company was rather accustomed to accepting only snail mail payments. I refuse to send any form of money through the mail. So after a bit, I got bored and just let the game run while AI dictated most of my units movements, ship designs, and other matters. Every once in awhile I would design a round ship (round as in multi-purpose or a scattered weapons platform) and deploy about 20 of them. Then I got bored, but as I was bored, I also got an idea of a story. After about an hour, I came up with one, and yet again, ive decided to attempt a bunch of writing, with the same group of predetermined characters, and unbore myself. Hopefully this time, I don’t trip and loose the pen along with the notebook…

So a few hundred podcasts, twelve hundred lines of code, writing a quarter of a novel, and a Palm full of todo items later, I arrive at the interwebs, pissed off and still bored. Through the course of days, ive written about five working segments of code, filled the todo application on my palm with 200 items, and torn through about three hundred podcast episodes. Still bored. Now im sitting here, waiting silently for Amarok to finish so I can do other things besides sit here with nothing to do but watch progress indicators. School begins Monday, which even pisses me off further. On the bright side, at least im doing something. Not. Im tired of not having a stable connection at home, nor even the slightest hint of wifi. Although ive come up with a handful of interesting ideas, both in writing and programming, I still find myself pissed off and bored. I don’t think my pissed off ego is winning the war for entertainment. Well, before I say something I shouldn’t be, adios.

Im leaving for awhile. Could be months. Ciao.

PS. Real story is my net’s getting shut off.

This reminds me of a rather foolish person who sat in #defocus, attempting to debate that buying an iPod was pointless if you didn’t buy music from the iTunes Music store. His logic was broken and he contradicted his own points left and right. He brought up the question: How will you stop piracy without DRM? Now, this person was annoying everyone all to hell, first with the “Paying for EFNet channels” and then the “iPods are useless without the iTunes Store or an FM Tuner”. But the question still remains, how will you stop piracy without DRM?

The answer is simple. Nobody smart likes DRM, therefore they will not buy it, thus not supporting the store that is offering it. Eventually, enough people won’t buy from this store, and the store’s finances will falter if the company behind the store does not have another source of venue. But that still doesn’t answer the question, how will you stop piracy without DRM?

If you take away DRM and remove the leash off of the music they purchase, there will still be the same amount of piracy as exists today. This is because piracy will never die. It can’t die, because the system is too large. In order to stop piracy, you would have to jail or fine a great percentage of Earth’s population. But why would you want to do that?

That answer is also simple, because without the veil that piracy is bad enough to sue for 900k over 14 songs, its because the record labels want to sit on their fat paychecks and not have to worry about living expenses. Sounds good, huh? Out of all the money you spend to buy an album from a physical store, only 23% is given to the artist. So what happens to the other 77%?

The other 77% is put into the record label’s bank to pay its workers and keep them living in the high life, because who doesn’t like living off of others sweat and blood. Its the main principal of taxes. So back to the question. What happens if you take DRM and throw it out the window? The consumer will buy more of the product and the record industry will be pissed because they can’t remake money off of things we already paid for. So lets introduce a new variable to the equation. Say a large group of artists producing out of their own homes, or studio release an independently labeled album. They do all of the marketing and get 100% of the profit. So how’s this work?

Its simple, the artist runs everything, and there is no middle man sapping all of the income. What people fail to see is that this is already proliferating on private torrent trackers and public ones as well. So what does the record label do? Nothing, naturally. They can’t. The artists aren’t bound by any contracts in the first place, but the record industry can try. They will most likely bribe the new artists or try to recruit them in some way, which will fail for strong independent artists.

In the bitter end, there is no end to piracy because it has been around for hundreds of years and will never be stopped. If you remove DRM, it will still be the same, because even if another store is offering DRM encrusted music, chances are your local shop that sells music isn’t.

So ive been thinking. What actually goes into ‘intelligent’ design? Usability? Eyecandy? Minimalism? Or is it something else entirely?

It could be that intelligent design isn’t really intelligent, because you have no clue what your users want exactly. You can attempt to please them all, but you will only end up with a pile of gosa afterwards. So, back to the question, what goes into ‘intelligent’ design?

Ive seen many complaints on different arrays of web architecture, and one thing I notice, no matter how much it doesn’t intrude into your user experience, they won’t ever be happy. Some may say its too glossy or too minimalistic and you try to satisfy their wants. Of course, you fail at those attempts and in most cases, the user complains more, which leads to the point about users never being happy. They can’t be happy because nothing can ever be perfect. You might as well just talk to a sack of doorknobs. The gut instinct you had when you created the initial design is probably better off than what hugely gets suggested. Chances are, the implementation will suck or a different group of users will be pissed.

So whos wrong. The developer, or the user?