In a world gone mad..

ThePirateBay.org Raided

Lucky enough there’s always the world of IRC.. :)

Anyway, in context of this event, think about this: How many copies of the new Super Mario DS have been sold on the first day? How many copies of Oblivion? How many of Dave’s commercially released albums have I bought for about $30 each (because of overseas shipping)?

It would also be interesting to compare the numbers for Splinter Cell 2 and 3.. The latter with Starforce protection. I bought the first two versions of Splinter Cell. But not the third. Ubisoft fortunately listened to its customers and is not using Starforce anymore.

Also take a look at the box office numbers for the new X-Men movie. Problems with piracy anyone? Seriously: F*ck off! :) (But I do think it’s weird that people spend money on all these crap movies. But hey, that’s just me.. On the other hand, compared to the DaVinci code thing, the X-Men are probably good value for the money.. :)

Well, in a world gone mad..

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 5:46 pm under Rant,World
No Comments

It’s probably a good idea for you to spend some time reading this. If you think your time is too precious, just read the second and the last paragraphs.

Amen..

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 11:50 am under World
No Comments

Just stumbled across this: A New Blue Frog?!

Not sure if you followed the Blue Frog situation. Another perfect fit for thinking: “In a world gone mad..”

Anyway, I hope these guys succeed with the P2P approach. But I can already see some dark clouds moving over the participants. I wonder when the first ppl start dying.. Think about it. It’s all about money. And we “humans” tend to kill for lesser reasons.

Oops. Not trying to sound too dark and/or dramatic here. But..

I wonder if such a system could be tampered with by the spammers. And turned against the users. Just a thought..

Maybe more interesting than this another-pointless-rant™ that I just produced, is this:

I use a simple combination of ProcMail, BogoFilter and SpamAssassin in combination with Exim and an IMAP server to automagically create whitelists and update the bogo-wordlists from each user’s SPAM folder. I tell my users (which basically is my lady friend and I :) to move any spam that should slip through into the inbox over into the SPAM folder. We also have to check the SPAM folder from time to time to move out all new ‘contacts’.

Our ISP filters about 99% of the SPAM already. But I still receive about 20 SPAM mails daily. But they all end up in the SPAM folder before I see them.

Also interesting: I moved to a new ISP about half a year ago. And I have the feeling that the previous ISP did a better job concerning spam. Maybe one SPAM email per day. If at all. Without me having an own anti-spam setup. Must be a coincidence that the old ISP was more expensive, too :) However, the amount of traffic and the content of our web-sites changed. So it’s hard to tell if there aren’t other factors contributing to the spamicity of my email accounts.

My personal anti-spam setup, however, seems to cope especially well with these funny spam mails that embed images or use fancy HTML to spell something like L E V / T R A.. whatever that is.. :) And it’s funny that spammers think they can fool an anti-spam system by adding some ‘intelligent text’ to an email. As if I would receive such emails at all.. Easy job for bogofilter.. :)

In a world gone mad..

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 12:42 am under Rant,World
No Comments

Alright, ABC is offering TV shows for download now. With advertising. A day after they ran on TV. For streaming. For US customers only. (Or those who use an US proxy for surfing the web.) And they had some trouble with the load on their servers.

Here’s what I’m thinking: Embrace the Internet! Use it! Don’t fight it! And don’t abuse it! (With abuse I mean all that regulatory BS going on right now..) Why not – and yes I’m serious here – put your episodes – with or without advertising – I don’t care – online using the frickin’ Pirate Bay tracker. Seriously! Think about it! (And the Pirate Bay is just an example here. Simply choose a popular tracker of your ‘liking’.. :)

And understand: If someone doesn’t like advertising, a release of the show without the advertising will show up a bit later anyway.. Just make sure you (read ABC) provides the source, and not some ‘group’ recording the show on TV.

And to make things worse, here’s more of my BS thinking:

Get rid of all distribution contracts. Seriously! You only need one contract! With your ISP. (And maybe with Pirate Bay, if they start charging for using their tracker.. :)

Here’s more:

You want to make some money with the BS you’re producing? Take the money directly from the fans.. Provide a space (on the Net – of course) where fans can donate for their favourite shows. Put a pilot or a few episodes up on the Pirate Bay tracker and see if donations are coming in. If not, drop the show.. (It’s probably BS, right?) If yes, use the money to produce more episodes.. Think: Ten thousand fans donating $2 each. Enough for an episode. Just go low profile. You got a hundred thousand fans donating a few bucks each? Produce more episodes or add more effects, or whatever.. you decide.. and get the feedback from the fans an hour after you’ve put the new episode(s) online..

More? Here you are:

I love JMS. Babylon 5, Crusade and Jeremiah. How much better can SciFi get? Well, that’s me. Now, the ‘world’ decided it doesn’t want Crusade and Jeremiah. The world in this case was more or less == the TV studio. (Or something like that. If you can believe what’s written in the newsgroups..)

Whatever.. not important. Important is this: If JMS would produce new episodes of Crusade and/or Jeremiah or any other new show, put them out there via a popular tracker and put in a URL to his donation site.. Well.. do the thinking.. Who needs ABC?

And yes, of course.. you need actors, studios, etc.. Are you telling me you need ABC for that? Think! (Uh.. not that I would know about that kind of stuff.. I just love shows like Jeremiah.. or The Inside – for that matter.. shows that got cancelled.. What would I give to exchange Alias for The Inside.. And do I need a nice – and pregnant? WTF? – babe as a super agent? Or do I need a charismatic actor in an episode with a strong storyline?)

Alright.. enough for now.. I had to get this out of my system.. Sorry for the rant.. :/ I’ll try writing something useful next..

In a world gone mad..

tfdj

Filed by The.French.DJ at 6:45 pm under Rant,World
No Comments