I read about Gamespy’s latest article today on Penny Arcade and just had to check it out myself… Donkey Kong Country overrated?! Surely they jest! What else do they consider overrated? I just had to check it out.
Well, I usually avoid Gamespy, and now I see there’s been good reason. Pompous one-sided arguments galore! (I’m not being a hypocrite because I never claimed my blog was a source for impartial news and reviews).
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Here’s this week’s:
1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?
I don’t really have any one favorite, I do have several that I find I like the majority of their music (not to mention a few that aren’t mentioned there, I just try to keep my lists of ‘favorites’ <= five at all times), but I like lots of other individual stuff a whole lot as well.
Basically, what I like really depends largely on what I’m in the mood for. Yesterday, for instance I was really in the mood for William Shatner music :)
2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?
I am really not a fan of Dave Matthews at all, not necessarily because I think their music is bad but because of negative associations developed in my freshman dorm. I also really dislike boy bands, but that is because of quality :)
3. If your favorite singer wasn’t in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?
I don’t follow any individual singers closely enough to answer this. Frankly, I don’t give a damn :)
4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?
Yes, I’ve been to a few: the Bacon Brothers, the Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffet, and Flogging Molly, to name a few (not to mention a few ska/punk shows). I’d have to say that out of these, the performances I most enjoyed were Flogging Molly and Professor Plum (a local NJ Ska band,now defunct). Most of the others I actually had no interest in seeing, it just kind of…. happened :)
5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?
I have no problems buying music if I feel I am buying a quality product. I have never regretted buying a Flogging Molly album, for instance, they are quality products and I am satisfied. Compare bands like Harvey Danger, and other one-hit wonders. This stuff pollutes the radio airwaves, and while some of it is catchy, those songs are usually found on substandard albums that I don’t even want to admit I own only 3 months later.
Now, both of these cost approximately the same- $15-$18 dollars/album. I see a problem with that. Quality has nothing to do with price, neither do the raw materials involved ($0.02?). I want to get my money’s worth, and I usually don’t with most of the music available these days.
Another big issue I have is that very little of the money goes to the actual artist… most of it goes to the record label. I think that in this day and age, record labels are deprecated entities- they exist but don’t really serve any meaningful purpose anymore. Once upon a time they got music out to people who would have no other way of hearing it, but now the media is so cheap it is possible to circulate music without them (meaning actual good music may flourish, instead of what some record exec thinks would do well on MTV).
Basically when we buy CDs we are paying an elephantine organization to do nothing but exist and perpetuate horrid music. It would be much more prudent to support the actual artists you appreciate, either directly through merchandise sales or indirectly through concert tickets.
Consequentially, I don’t think it is necessarily immoral to download music, especially if one is using the downloaded songs as a sample to determine whether they like more than just an artists ‘popular’ songs, and hence whether an ablum would be worth the inflated price. If you find yourself downloading a lot of music by a particular artist, and you have the means, then yes- you should buy the album. If you only have a few songs, then no- it’s not worth it. Maybe this will pass along the hint that only good bands turn a profit, so the bad ones will be less prevalent……. naaaah. People in general, especially teenagers (also in general), don’t work that way- if they are told something is popular and good, they buy it :)
On the other hand, downloading hoards of music and never buying any of it (assuming you are financially capable of buying it {and if you are not capable now, you should buy it later on when you are}) is wrong. That’s just stealing, there’s no way around it.
Putting all this together: Is the RIAA wrong? Yes, by virtue of them being the RIAA, their existence is wrong. But, seeing as they already exist, blatantly taking everything you can for free is also wrong. Punishing filesharers or outlawing filesharing is not the way to fix this however- if you want the problem to go away, you first must address the root cause. Make CD prices fair, in regards to the quality of the content, and I believe a large majority of the problem will start to right itself.
p.s. Oh, and blaming decreased sales on filesharing is
1. ignoring the real problem (increased ratio crap : not crap)
2. using an unfortunate economic crisis for your own twisted and evil purposes. For shame.
I really should watch South Park more….. I’ve seen the first season, and a few other episodes here and there, but that’s it. I just always forget to turn on the TV :/
I am familiar with Tweek, at least, otherwise I wouldn’t have put him on the shirt!
Step 1: steal underpants!
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Today I went out for a celebratory sushi dinner for a friend. I usually don’t like sushi, but I am trying to rectify this, so I ordered a tuna roll. I’m proud of myself- I ate five out of the six pieces, and never got the urge to retch even once! I am doubly proud of myself because I ate the entire meal, both the sushi and the chicken lo mein that followed, using only chopsticks. I feel dextrous now.
I decided chopsticks are cool, and now that I can actually use them successfully a little bit, I decided I want to use them more often. So, I went out to the store and bought some, which I plan to use whenever practical. I also bought some rainbow cookies, which seem to be perfectly designed for use with chopsticks- they are like little chocolate sushi!
Another cool thing I’ve appreciated for the first time today: the anime Escaflowne. I’ve only seen the first 4 episodes, and already it’s one of my favorites. It may even *gasp* surpass Trigun, but I’ll have to see more to judge for sure. Anyway, if you like Xenogears or Final Fantasy, you’ll like this series. It’s almost a given. There are a bunch of parallels, and the story is really cool, to boot.
When I got back from my meeting (bleargh) today, I have a Priority Mail package waiting for me. Apparently, someone read my blog, and decided to get me a present.
I have my suspicions on who it was, but no conclusive evidence as of yet.
But the who doesn’t matter so much as the THANK YOU!!!!
There’s a sort of stigma in the computer geek/programmer world against web designers. Of course, I do most of my web design for free, so maybe it doesn’t count. Ah, who am I kidding? Can I be both a real programmer and a web designer? I really like both, you see…..
Anyway, the most recent site I’ve added to my long history of dong stuff and not getting paid for is for my friend Peter. There’s not much there yet, but he does have a working blog, so hopefully it will be changing relatively frequently.
Speaking of his blog, I decided to go with Movable Type, because I wanted to give Peter a more mainstream solution than PSG (don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I wanted to give Peter something different). I think I like Movable Type, it’s pretty, and it’s nifty, and Wil Wheaton uses it (he’s cool therefore it too must be cool). Another reason I chose Movable Type over blogger is because I had read something about standards compliance, well, existing in the former, and not in the latter. Anyway, it was surprisingly easy to set up, and Peter is perfectly capable of maintaining most of it himself, even if he needs to learn a bit of HTML in the process ;)
On a bit of a tangent, if you use Mozilla Firebird and you make web pages, the Web Developer extension is really friggin’ cool. If you don’t use Firebird yet, this is a great reason to switch (not to mention the other cool features, like search plugins!) You may notice I got on a bit of a design kick, and changed some of the fonts and such on my own page (inspired by Movable Type), and using the Web Developer toolbar to make sure everything validates and looks good in different resolutions is great fun. The fact that I think it’s great fun probably just goes to show what a big dork I am, but oh well :)
Anyway, I’d best be going to sleep, as I have to get up in approximately 7 hours to get ready for a meeting (bleargh!) Later!
ELN ∝ s
where ELN is the Leonard Nimoy Excellence Quotient, and s is the amount of salsa he eats.
Yeah, I mostly posted it because I really like the equation. But it’s at least humorous. :)
Well, I’ve yet again managed to spontaneously give a cat a bath (he doesn’t clean himself properly, you see- he ends up becomming a big mess) without getting scratched in the process. I’ve also managed to fix some other stuff (and have received a promotion!). Yay me.
BTW, if anyone knows where I can get one of these Mario dolls, (such as an online store) please let me know (I found this, but it is a bit different and the site is a bit shady). I’ll be incredibly grateful.
I had to get up early today and go to a rather silly class for work, and here are some of the random things I jotted down on my sheets of notes to help maintain sanity (such as it is).
Seminars=>”boot camp”…. Does calling a class “boot camp” make you think it is cooler, or does it have the same effect on you as it does on me (fight or flight reflex)? Where did this tendency come from? And do “normal” people have a different reaction? They must, or the practice wouldn’t continue very long, (Marketing Darwinism). I guess that last question can’t be answered until we are sure what normal is anyway.
The Patron Saint of Real Estate…. You bury it in your backyard, and it ensures that you are able to sell your house. ……..Yeeeaaaaah.
New postulate: caffeine+game==success
“Organic Soil… Completely Animal Free!” The idea of claiming that any soil is completely animal free is ludicrous. Soil, by definition, is made of decayed organic matter. Even assuming that going one level back in history there were no animals involved (unlikely, especially if you consider the invertibrates that aid in turning plants into dirt), surely you cannot assure that all previous incarnations of the soil in history involved no animals. Unless of course you pulled the soil off of the moon (which still wouldn’t be definite, considering it may not have originated there), it is a fair assumption that at one point at least some of that soil used to be an animal (even if it was thousands of years ago). Anyway, my point is simply that mking broad claims like this merely makes you wackos (a term of endearment, apparently) look like you are trying to trick yourselves into thinking that you are ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ more than anything else. Why bother? If we weren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
Anyway, enough of that. Whatever shall be, shall be. (Yay, tautology!)
Mood: amused
Music: Douglas Adams – Salmon of Doubt
…said appoximately 1 second before he got it. “It” being the solution to the “Find the Two Identical Penmen” poster (that would be 19,8 and 33,11), and “he” being Bobby. The method? Pure entropy (randomly placing two fingers on the poster and seeing if you’ve gotten a match). This is exactly like having bogosort work perfectly after only a few iterations.
Anyway, on to this week’s Friday Five….
1. Is the name you have now the same name that’s on your birth certificate? If not, what’s changed?
Yes, it is.
2. If you could change your name (first, middle and/or last), what would it be?
I don’t think I would… it would be a much bigger pain in the ass than it’s worth (I probably won’t even change my name if ever get married for the same reason). Anyway, I kind of like ‘Teri’ :)
3. Why were you named what you were? (Is there a story behind it? Who specifically was responsible for naming you?)
I don’t think there’s a story…. though my Mom’s middle name was Theresa. I should ask my dad one day, but I’ll probably forget :)
4. Are there any names you really hate or love? What are they and why?
I don’t think so….. What’s in a name?
5. Is the analysis of your name at kabalarians.com accurate? How or how isn’t it?
I tried both ‘Theresa’ and ‘Teri’, and here is what was said:
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