Anime Article in Fortune Magazine

An interesting article in Fortune Magazine concerning the business practices of Anime/Manga firms in the US.

An interesting lesson to be learned. The Anime industry caters to fans, treating them well. In return, the fans become (rabidly) loyal and the industry gets a lot of profit for a minimal investment.

Other current industries... let's use the mainline movie and music industry as an example... not only doesn't cater to fans, but actively treats them like criminals. It also seems to assume it is owed money, even when the content has become crap. Its fans become alienated, and the purchasing declines. When they see their incomes shrink, instead of saying to themselves "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's start to accommodate our fans and offer them better content," they say "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's load up our DVD's with even more restrictions to prevent piracy, and we better heavily advertise more pointless unoriginal crap because original content is too much of a risk."

Hence, we get "Mission Impossible 7" loaded with Digital Rights Management software that melts down your computer if you have ever even thought about having an Internet connection. They are shocked and outraged that no one will buy it, and assume it is because of piracy (not the lack of quality or bite-the-hand-that-feeds business practices), and gets even more irate with every passing iteration of this cycle.

Meanwhile, mostly unconcerned about piracy because fans tend to purchase real copies anyway (either out of loyalty and support of the product they enjoy or because they want a better quality item than the one they downloaded off the Internet) and understanding that loyalty and trust is a two way street, the Anime industry makes sure to cater to fans. These few Anime companies are quietly make a killing, relying almost totally on word of mouth to carry their product. And it works. That, my good people, is a nice business model.

Rock on, kids.

The System Is Down!

This post has nothing of relevance to anyone but me. But just in case my three or so readers are wondering where the hell I've been:

Back on Friday, I was just getting home from the bar and I was going to blog on how I almost hit a herd of stupid deer (there was at least six doe, just milling around in the middle of the freaking road!). I came in, sat down at my desk, and flipped on my computer. Then this popped up on the screen:

"Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupted: C:\Windows\System32\Config\System"

Oh beautiful. The system file is broke. There's some major anal pillaging, right there. So Automated System Recovery requires floppy disks (whoops! I no longer have a floppy drive! Haven't needed one since the invention of thumb drives with several hundred times the capacity of floppies, you know...), so I can't use that. The windows recovery console? It's just an emasculated version of DOS. Seriously, utterly useless in my current predicament.

Reinstalling. Oh, there's some good news. Fortunately, I had a spare hard drive lying around. Installed Windows on that drive, and I still have all my files on my old drive intact. Fresh clean install, connect to the Internet... Ten minutes, I was hit with spyware. I hate those people.

I was hit that fast because I was using the original release of XP Pro. No security updates, and there was some pretty big holes in the first release. Thankfully, I have an Microsoft Developer's Network subscription. Mmm. New releases. Slap SP2 on here, and I'm good to go. Not fond of SP2 due to some of it's changes, but it's far better than getting bombarded by people using the security holes to send me "CLICK HERE NOW!!!!1!" popups.

Operating system is reinstalled, security patches in place, Antivirus and Antispyware all back on and updated. (Oh yeah, and I patched Ultima Online back up too. Must have games...) Had to lug my tower over to a friend's house to hook up to his DSL connection to get all the stuff (Dial-up just won't work for that sort of thing anymore, too many megs per download), but I'm finally back up and running. My harddrives are running pretty hot for some reason, though. Need a casefan. Other than that, smooth sailing.

But I'm still fairly mad. I shouldn't of had to waste all my time reinstalling everything. Random file corruptions shouldn't happen. Am I really that far out of line to ask things to work reliably? I think not.

They just need someone like me in Microsoft QC. I'm show them what's what. :)

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a good Holiday, kids. Enjoy the turkey. (Or the tofu, if you are inclined to vegetarianism.)

On Paying Thousands for the Xbox 360

Not that any of my whopping three readers are scrambling to buy an Xbox 360 in the next three days, but for those who stumble upon this considering shelling out three to five thousand dollars on E-bay for one... This is directed at you.

People... Just wait a month. No, really. Stop E-baying. The console is NOT worth 3,000. There are maybe two games worth playing right now. There really isn't a rush. Wait a few months, and there will be whole slew of shiny new games for your enjoyment, and a much cheaper 360.

The system isn't vanishing tomorrow. It'll be around for another five years or so. Another month won't make too much of a difference, and will save you about $2,500 over buying it off an E-bay grifter. You shell out the big bucks now to rub it in people's faces that you have a 360 and they don't, in thirty to sixty days they'll have one two and will have a lot more cash than you do.

Patience!

A'ight. I feel like I've been ground up in the gears of life, so I'm off to bed. Rock on, kids.

CNN: Executed Man May Have Been Innocent

Link to the CNN Story

Cases like this are the reason I cannot in good conscious support capital punishment. The inherent imperfection of humanity lends itself to imperfect justice, and the fact that our justice system is imperfect makes the permanence of death an improper possible sentence.

IT Gigolo

I ran across this via Boing Boing. The IT Gigolo "Ray Digerati" (which is not his real name... and IT stands for Information Technology, by the way... computers and stuff) fixes women’s' computers in exchange for sexual favors.

I'll be dipped. Apparently, I've been going about this all wrong. But it just didn't occur to me that there would be women willing to trade sex for virus removal.

Of course, once word of this begins to disseminate... Two things will happen.

One, a large number of geeky people who are only talked to when someone wants their computers fixed will start asking for sexual favors.

Two, a large number of geeky people will be subsequently slapped. (But hey, it could be worth a try. :-P)

Rock on, kids.

Work@Home

Work is something I try to avoid mention of during the course of blogging, but today it's all I really have. There’s other stuff I want to blog on, but I don’t have the time.

I work for a software company, and we're involved in a "crunch time" situation. Product release is next week, so we have to work like mad to get everything done.

I was reviewing my ETC's (estimated time to completion) which represent how much time I need, and then thought about how much time I ACTUALLY have, and realized that "Time Needed" exceeded "Time Available."

By, you know, about two weeks.

Well, we can't have that. I sort of dig gainful employment, so I had to do something I didn't really want to do. Work at home. On my free time.

I could stay at the office, but I don't get paid overtime, after all, since I'm salaried. No point in it, all I'd be accomplishing is having to drive home in the dark, and probably end up with another deer through my windshield. So I bring my stuff home and work on my own PC in the comfort of my own abode. I can't do everything here than I can do there, but I can do enough paperwork and stuff to cut my time down by a good margin.

So here I am. And what am I doing? Procrastinating.

It reminds me of college, really. Only without the alcohol, women, and anything resembling fun. God, I miss college.

Oh well. Time to return to the work.

Rock on, kids.

Dialup: It's Craptastic!

I remember a day, long since past, where I would've committed felonies to get the 33k I eke out today. This is no longer the case.

One of the worst things about playing MMORPG's (That's Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games... Read this old post of mine if you still have no clue what the hell I'm referring to) is that if you leave for a while, you return to patches. Patches are fun little bits of code they have you download to repair problems in the program. ("Patches" fix "Holes" in the code, you see. Get it? Ha ha!)

Most programs have patches. The problem with an MMORPG is that if you don't have the patches, the game will not work. Everyone has to have the same code, after all, or it will be somewhat screwy. And the games change often. Very often. Statistic balances, race balances, class balances, new items, new monsters, bug fixes, exploit fixes, new features… When something changes, they patch it. The longer you don’t play, the more patches you have to download before you can play again. Downloading seventy six megs of patches on a line that does 33.3 is something that is NOT GOOD.

It took me four hours to download the first thirty one meg patch. When I found out there was a thirty five meg patch behind it... Yeah, there was swearing.

Whining done. Rock on, kids.

Access Denied!

There is nothing more annoying to a technophile such as myself than being denied access to the Internet. It is a semi-frequent occurrence to me, and the only problem I have with my Internet service provider. Other than this, my ISP is great. (As great as Dial-up can be, anyway. It's a downside of living in the sticks.)

After a hard day's work yesterday, I sat down at my computer and ran through the connection, only to be told my username or password was wrong.

Well, it's not my username. That's saved. So I must've mistyped my password. A rare occurrence, but a possible one. I carefully retyped my password and tried again. And again. And again, and again, and again. I certainly don't do it wrong THAT much.

So if someone at an ISP could explain why, at random intervals, the server decides to reject my password for hours, it would be appreciated and informative.

(And no, I did not constantly try for hours on end. I tried about once every twenty minutes for three hours before giving up and going to bed.)

It's not a good feeling, being denied access. And the less that happens, the better I feel (and the longer I'll continue to pay my ISP!).

Rock on, kids.

Urban Legend

About four years back, I played a real dumb joke on some people I knew. Four friends of mine and I decided we were going to walk through the cemetery near our college on Halloween night. Why? Because it was Halloween night! Duh.

Well, the cemetery was cold and boring. It's filled with dead people after all. They don't really do a whole lot.

So on our way back, one of my friends decided I should go sit in the Student Center, while they returned to our dorm and pretended not to notice I was gone until someone brought it up.

Well, I was sitting on a bench bored out of my mind, and I decided to crank my watch back an hour.

So my friends returned (actually a different set of friends. they were the "search party"), and amazingly enough, reported that some members of the gullible crowd of my dorm actually bought the fact I was missing. Ignoring the fact it was Halloween and that we were prank prone idiots.

Anyway, I returned with the search party, and acted indignant at them taking off without me. I also mentioned the time according to my watch.

Jaws dropped. Had I really lost an hour of my life? "Holy crap," one resident cried, "You went through a temporal vortex!"

Me, I was trying not to laugh.

Four years later, my friend (the one that originally suggested the prank) was walking by the selfsame cemetery. A group of kids from my Alma Mater were outside, looking in.

One of them was recounting a tale, in the same tone of voice as one would tell the tale of the Headless Horseman or whatnot.

"And when they got back to where they lost track of him," he said, "they found out he thought only a few minutes had passed! He was missing for an hour!"

My friend had to reach deep within himself to not yell "IT WAS US!!!"

The prank has passed into Urban Legend. And I, for some reason, am now ridiculously happy I decided to wind my watch back that fine evening.

Rock on, kids.

No More Vanilla Coke?! CURSES!

They're getting rid of Vanilla Coke!

This is a tragedy! Of epic proportions! They're canning (or rather, they're no longer canning) my favorite soft drink!

NOOOOO!!!

A tragedy, a travesty, and it is just plain unpleasantish! I certainly can't switch to Pepsi Vanilla... just doesn't taste right. They have too much sweetener in it.

Ya know, first my local Wal-Mart, may the chain be forever cursed, stopped carrying Tommyknocker Strawberry Creme. And now this!

I’m not a huge fan of Regular Coke, so there goes switching to the “basic product.” I suppose I'll have to go back to drinking plain old icewater. It's better for ya anyway.

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

November 8th!

GO VOTE!

Book Review: American Gods

Just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It was published back in '02, so it's not the newest book on the block but it's recent enough and interesting enough I'd thought I'd stick it up here.

American Gods follows the story of a man named Shadow. (His mother must've wanted him to get beat up in school.) Shadow is released from a short stint in prison, only to find his beloved wife was killed in a car wreck only a day or two before his release. Lost and alone in the world, he accepts a job as bodyguard and errand-boy for the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday, an aging con-man who has as many secrets as he has lies.

In his travels, Shadow finds out that gods and legends of old roam America. Odin, Anubis, leprechauns, dwarves, Loa, and a multitude more hide in plain sight throughout the country; brought over by immigrants through belief alone. And before long he ends up caught in a war of the divinities, the old gods versus the gods of modern day: the gods of Television, the Internet, cars, and technology.

The book is a highly unusual and interesting read, but is not without its faults. The premise is actually quite good, but the execution is at times fairly confusing and hard to follow. I can definitely see the meandering style as a major put-off to some people, but for those who decide to be patient enough to follow it (which may include some re-reading at points) will be pleased for the most part.

The disjointedness of the book, however, leads to an equally disjointed and somewhat dissatisfying ending, at least in my mind. The problem is not exactly solved, per se, but rather it just sort of goes away. And it's not the fact that it's not a happy ending that bothers me as much as it's not even bittersweet. Gods are dead, people are dead, and nothing really happens from it. It also reminds me a bit of the ending of Lord of the Rings. Not that it's anywhere near as good as Tolkien's epic, but it reminds me of it because of the way it ends. First, the problem is solved and the story ends. And then, it ends again. And then it ends again. And then again. Every time you think "Okay, it has to be over..." it's not. It just won't wrap up!

The literary digressions can also be a bit of a nuisance. Gaiman fits in secondary tales with very little bearing on the main plot. Two or so are interesting, but the rest just slow the story down.

But despite it's flaws, the story still managed to suck me it. Shadow has an interesting run: His wife returns from the dead (only she's still dead), he has a barfight with a Leprechaun, robs an ATM with Odin, sings Karaoke with African spider-god Anansi, and enjoys the "company" of the Egyptian goddess Bast... not to mention he has to deal with the goddess of television hijacking every TV show he watches to try to get him to switch sides, while Men-in-Black (who exist only because people believe they exist) hound his every step.

A more experienced reader with a love for mythology and strange stories will really enjoy American Gods. Less patient readers and those without much interest in old religions will probably be put off, and may possibly think Mr. Gaiman was smoking something when he wrote this.

I, however, enjoyed it. My grade is a B- (or rather, a C+ with a few extra points for originality and effort).

Rock on, kids.

Good New on Eminent Domain

Well, it's not much, but this Yahoo news story on a successful House vote against property seizure is certainly good news.

Nineteen Years of Scouts

Sorry to my three readers, but I'm going to go all sentimental and stuff.

A little history.

I joined Tiger Cubs, the lowest level of Cub Scouts, back in around 1986. I was all of six years old at the time, and in Kindergarten. I honestly don't even remember it. But I went through the motions, got my Arrow of Light (Highest Cub Scout award) and moved on to Boy Scouts.

I joined Troop 50, and just sort of never left. I'm a bona fide Eagle Scout, and I could have left after I got that. It's the highest award, after all, nothing really else to get. But my Troop was in a bit of a spot. The scoutmaster at the time was... well, incompetent. Overly strict, and just a few French fries short of the Happy Meal. The boys didn't like her. She was also misusing troop funds and treating the scouting outings as a family vacation that she had to bring the Scouts to. (She brought her parents, siblings, etc. to our camping trips, for Pete’s sake.) She was killing the troop. So I didn't leave, I just stayed on (at first by just not going away, and then as Assistant Scoutmaster) and did my best to hold my troop together. By the time she was done, we had only two boys left, down from around a dozen. I took over the recharter that time and took some "Creative License" to make Council think we still had the five minimum. It was dishonest, but I wasn't letting my troop die.

Eventually, she was pretty much run out of town, and a few other former Eagle scouts took over for a while as a buffer between permanent scoutmasters. I couldn’t take over any capacity bigger than what I was already doing, because I was in college at the time, and it was enough of a problem just to keep myself involved. But eventually, we got a new Scoutmaster who did quite well. An honest sort, with a lot of time to spend on the troop and a vested interest in making it better. Eventually, we also signed on a second Assistant Scoutmaster. We’re now back to about a dozen boys. A bit low on the cash, but we’re not in dire straits. The troop is doing well.

Meanwhile, my life has become more hectic and a lot less fun, and I just no longer had time to sacrifice to my troop.

So after nineteen years as a Scout, almost fifteen of them spent in Troop 50, and with five years behind me as an adult leader, I was forced today to step down from my post tonight.

Four-fifths of my life has been spent in Scouting, either as a youth or an adult leader, and I honestly can't remember the time before I was in the BSA. And now it’s done.

I’m a bit bummed.

But that’s all I got. Rock on, kids.

Myst V

So here I am, playing Myst V. And not getting very far.

For those who are unaware... you poor slobs... Myst is a computer game. An adventure game, to be exact. The general idea is you have to make your way through these interesting worlds solving puzzles to progress through the story. They're real mindbenders. But it's the premise that drew me in. The premise is the characters in the game can write worlds... They have a language that, when written down, creates a "link" to the world described in the writing. I always loved that idea.

Anyway, me being an impatient fellow sometimes, I've never made it through one of the Myst games without looking up answers. In the original Myst, it was only one puzzle. In Riven, the sequel to Myst, it was two puzzles. In Myst III: Exile, I think I gave up about twenty minutes in and just cheated like a sonuvabitch. In Myst IV, I actually lasted surprisingly long, but eventually gave up. In the Myst spin-off "Uru" and its expansion packs "To D'ni" and "Path of the Shell", I would have done real well if some of the puzzles hadn't been "Stand still for fifteen minutes." What kind of puzzle is THAT? Honestly.

So anyway, Myst V: End of Ages is the LAST Myst game. Storyline over, c'est finis. So this is my FINAL chance to beat a Myst game without cheating.

And it really sucks. :( I'm stuck beyond ridiculousness. This will take me months.

Okay, rant over. Rock on, kids.