blog.bagaki.com

Well unlike video cameras where the government is watching, there is always someone in the sky that is watching…. God Is Watching ™

How many of you have seen or currently have a plastic bag from the grocery store or local mass retailer lining a garbage can? Maybe you are too cool for such a thing, but grandma sure isn’t. You have to have seen this being done in some elderly persons house, you know what I am talking about. Even I have used them from time to time to line the ol’ bathroom garbage. I mean hey they are free, we all seem to have them and don’t have any real use for them, and oddly enough most people save them. Why is it that people save these things? We’ll save that topic for another day. So back to the problem at hand, advertising in the garbage.

You know I hate coming from the grocery store or discount retailer and having to advertise as I walk into my building. Why is it that I have to be a walking billboard for a store and truly get nothing out of it? Sure I supported my local chain of discount or mass retailers, but do I really need to advertise for them? Isn’t my decision to spend my hard earned dollar at their store enough? They employ entire teams of marketers and spend billions on advertising, how come I am not getting a cut. Every time you see that brand name on a billboard, television, or in print do you really think someone let them put their logo there for free? Hell no.

Trust me, there is a great value in printing logos on bags, especially at the mall but that is another story too. Why do you think they do it? Those teams of marketers know it makes a difference, otherwise they would use what I am almost 100% sure would be cheaper, the plain white bag. But why do we as consumers let these mega corporations use us this way? Why do we accept this over saturation of brand logos and colors and sounds? What is wrong with us?

So they spend the extra 2 cents a bag and laden it with corporate logos and colors. We walk home with them, we parade around not realizing we are walking advertisements, not thinking about what is happening around us. We unpack the bags and toss them under the sink or into the closet, not to be thought about again. Whew, no more brands to look at, no more exploitation of innocent consumers as billboards, the battle with brands is over…. or is it?

Next thing you know it you empty the bathroom garbage and need a replacement bag. You reach under the sink and pull out that bag from the grocery store. You drop it in the garbage without thinking and BAM, that extra 2 cents just became an even better investment. Now every time you stop to “do your business” and you look over at the garbage and see your local retailers brand or logo know that they too are doing business. They are subtly reminding you of their name, or that you need groceries and that you would like to shop at that store again.

I simply ask that you start to take notice of what is happening around you every day. What types of messages are you being barraged with? Who is saying what, and why? Pay attention to the size of the shopping cart, the temp of the store, and the brightness of the lights. They are all that way for a reason, usually to make you spend more. The simple logo on the plastic bag from the grocery store that you don’t ever think about has its place and reason. If it didn’t it wouldn’t be there, trust me.

If you take anything from this article let it be the idea that you should really pay attention to what is happening around you. Don’t let things “just happen”, otherwise you never know where “they” will lead us.

Ervin Dank
Cynical Bastard, Otherwise Nice Guy

I wanted to post this entire piece because I think it is very important and worth reading. I looks at a few of the major questions at hand with video on the web and internet tv.

THE FUTURE OF ONLINE VIDEO

Openness Matters. RSS Can Help.
by Nicholas Reville, September 14, 2006

I want to convince you that if you care about open standards, open source, deep linking, and all the other things that make the internet wonderful, you should care about where video online is headed.

We are living at a moment when media is converging rapidly onto the internet. Will television move online in an open and accessible way? Or will it remain centralized and controlled by a few large corporations? So far, things aren’t looking good.
1: The Two Key Questions

This essay started as an email to Mike Hudack at Blip.tv. Blip is an excellent video blogging / video hosting service. My goal was to convince Mike that they should feature RSS subscribe buttons more prominently on their site and that they should explicitly encourage their viewers to watch videos via RSS feeds. Of course, I would be especially pleased if Blip promoted watching RSS with Democracy Player (which is developed by my organization, the Participatory Culture Foundation), but any support for video RSS is good. Good for my organization and, I believe, good for the future of media.

As I was writing to Mike, I realized that there were a lot more people that I wanted to say this to, so I decided to turn the letter into a public essay. I’ll start with the two questions that I think will define the future of video online:

QUESTION 1: Will internet video viewing be primarily web-page based or will it be primarily RSS based?

QUESTION 2: Will internet video be centralized in huge services like YouTube or Google Video, or will it be more broadly distributed (like blogs and web pages are), with huge (youtube), big (blip), medium (rocketboom), and small (average video bloggers on their own site) players?

These are not entirely distinct questions, and that’s a central message of this essay. If video online is mostly web-based (question 1), the biggest centralized services have huge advantages (question 2). If centralized services win, many of the wonderful things that can come from TV meeting the internet will evaporate.
2: Are We Moving in the Wrong Direction?

So far, the answers to both of these questions have gone mostly in what I believe is the ‘wrong’ direction: towards two huge centralized services (YouTube and Google Video) and towards browser-based viewing.

That’s not to say that video RSS isn’t doing well. It is. We’ve seen the number of channels in the Democracy Channel Guide increase 6 fold in the past year and channels are getting created faster and faster every day. But there’s big and then there’s BIG. YouTube is gigantic in a way that video RSS doesn’t approach right now.

YouTube doesn’t need defending, but I want to to be clear about exactly where my concerns are focused. As a service and a universe, YouTube is amazing. It has become a visual search engine of human experiences. So far, YouTube has done more to democratize video online than my organization or any of the companies, organizations, and advocates that are working for open-access and open-standards.

But –and this is crucial– YouTube is spending money like crazy. At some point, they’ll need to make it all back. I’m nervous about how they will do that. Do YouTube executives have any option other than to hold viewers and creators hostage to ads on videos?

Furthermore, I worry that the near-monopoly strength of YouTube’s network effect is dragging along people who don’t actually want to use the service– “If my video isn’t on YouTube, how will anyone find it??” In the social networking domain, MySpace is the best example of this un-resistable social pressure in action– how many web 2.0 gurus cringe everyday when they try to login and update their MySpace page? MySpace, by the way, is trying to be the next YouTube (if you’re looking for a real dystopia for online video, it’s that).

The network effect of online video services doesn’t just endanger creators and viewers, it also stifles competition. Smaller web video services that don’t have YouTube’s network effect will become backwaters.
3: Put Viewers at the Center, Not Companies

How do you avoid a world where YouTube is the arbiter of all video content? You do it by centering the video experience around viewers rather than around video hosting companies. That’s not what the venture capitalists want, but blogs aren’t what they wanted either (they wanted web portals).

Putting viewers at the center means giving everyone who wants to watch video a homebase where they can access videos from any hosting service or website. For miscellaneous videos, like the ones that have made YouTube so popular, this means a search engine that gives results from any service and let’s you watch what you find without jumping around from site to site.

For more serious videos– stuff that’s produced by known creators on a regular basis (like a daily or weekly show)– the best homebase is an RSS aggregator. The can be a desktop application (like the one we make) or a web-based aggregator. The important thing is that viewers can pull together video from anywhere on the web.

This separation of hosting services and viewing services is crucial: viewers could care less where the video is hosted, as long as they can watch it. A separation leaves publishers free to choose the hosting service that fits their needs best. If they like the elegant user interfaces of Blip or Vimeo, they go there. If they like the opportunity to earn money with Revver, they go there. If they want to offer ultra-high resolution video, they might host torrents on MoveDigital. Or maybe they want to control their videos even more closely and host them on their own website (as Rocketboom appears to do). With RSS, publishers can be in control.

All that said, I understand why services like Blip have been reluctant to push feeds. Websites are the bread and butter of most internet companies and page views are next to godliness. Promoting your RSS feeds is counter-intuitive: why would you encourage users to leave your website? You should, because small services can’t and won’t beat YouTube and Google and MySpace at the web game. Those companies are too big, too well funded, and have hired too many talented people that will continue to improve their service. You are better off getting your viewers to subscribe to your content while you have them. In this way, video RSS lets hosting services innovate to attract publishers.

This is not strictly an either / or choice. Smaller hosting services and individual video creators can start pushing video RSS while still offering a great user experience on the web. In the long run, however, video RSS will be the key to success for small and mid-sized hosting companies.

Here’s one more way to look at it: most viewers will go to YouTube if they are just looking for something to watch. It makes sense– YouTube has the most stuff. So when you, a video hosting service, do happen to get a viewer on your site (because they followed a blog link or someone emailed them a video) you want to try to keep them connected, even if you don’t expect them to spontaneously come back to your website. Getting them to subscribe to a feed is the best way to do that.
4: How You Can Make the Future of Television Open and Awesome

If you cringe at the thought of online video becoming a ‘walled garden’ like MySpace is or dial-up AOL was and YouTube wants to be, start pushing things in the right direction it.

Viewers: try a video RSS application like Democracy Player or FireANT. Both have BitTorrent support, can show high-resolution video, and have built-in video search. This isn’t just good medicine, it’s honestly the best online video experience you can find.

Creators: no matter where you host your content, encourage your users to subscribe to your video RSS feed. That way, they don’t have to remember to check your website, they’ll get your stuff delivered right to their desktop– you’ve got them for good. Serious video creators need rss because it lets them connect directly with their audience.

Hosting Companies: create RSS feeds for everything (users, tags, popular videos, etc). Put RSS subscribe buttons prominently on every page and explain to your viewers what it means and why they would enjoy watching with a video application.

Advocates: video online has had a 2nd rate reputation with the tech elite. It seems a little trashy and has tended to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But that’s changing. Truly excellent video channels are popping-up. Don’t forget that television is the most important mass medium in our culture– when you talk about open-source, open-standards, Firefox, net-neutrality, xhtml/css, blogosphere and netroots, you should also be talking about video over RSS.

Nicholas Reville is Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, which makes the Democracy Platform. Contact: nicholas-at-pculture.org. For more, read the Democracy Blog.

No, this isn’t a pledge drive where Betty White and Fred Rogers chase after you in the PBS van to claim the money you pledged. This is far more serious. President Bush is proposing close to a 25% CUT in funding allocated to The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which I believe to be a very bad thing. Just like community access or public access is a dieing venue for people to share their views on the TV, I fear the same might happen to PBS. We cannot let huge corporations with their agendas dominate what we see and hear. We need to start filling the airwaves with our agendas too, hell its out right.

If any of you have or have not heard of the news program Frontline, I strongly urge you to check it out. It is in my opinion one of the best investigative news shows on the television today. Frontline’s coverage of important news stories seems real compared to the fluff broadcast and cable news spit out “on the our, every hour”. Frontline’s true journalistic integrity is something that is fading in the politically charged, commercially sponsored news that too many people accept today.

Any what about Sesame Street and Mr Rogers Neighborhood. These are not trashy cartoons filled with 10 minutes of commercials for toys or candy. These are truly educational programs that air without continual bombardment of commercial messages trying to turn young children into mindless consumers of mouth rotting, mind numbing garbage.

I urge you all to take interest in public programming before it is completely gone and all our children have left to watch is McDonald’s Brand Chicken Nuggets teach the ABC’s. I am sure glad that the internet is ushering in a new era for video broadcast and is opening doors for small companies to bring truly beneficial programming to today’s youth. Now we can only hope that the cable companies (also the people that provide access to the internet) don’t close the door before we get our feet in and block “certain video programs” that might undercut their revenue streams from advertisers. What happens when small broadcasters try to use the cable companies pipes to distribute video over the web that takes viewers away from the cable company’s programming? I hope nothing, but realistically know that probably won’t be the case.

What happens when large powerful players on the internet (MySpace for example) start censoring traffic? The integrity of the internet crumbles. Here is a post from AskANinja.com about the topic. Ask A Ninja for those that don’t know is top ranked and highly acclaimed video podcast, one of the first big ones on the net.

Let me start off by saying we love all of our friends and fans that we’ve made through Myspace.

But sometimes Myspace the company does some gross stuff that violates the spirit it was created under and the values of the Internet itself.

Over the last few months there has been a lot of debate over Net Neutrality, which basically boils down to one company blocking access to to another companies servers in order to gain a business advantage. This debate has usually focused on the companies that charge for bandwidth like AT&T, but recently Myspace has pioneered a new form — blocking sites that users link to in their bulletins and profiles.

Right now if you link to anything at a site like “http://revver . com” (remove the spaces) Myspace will delete the link. Try it. That sucks right?

Revver is not the only site. There are dozens of smaller video and photo sharing sites that they are doing this to.

Why should you care?

Ask A Ninja was created because we were in control of where we posted the videos. That’s a big deal because if we’re forced to put them on MySpace video then FOX could take the episodes and make money off of them without paying Douglas or me anything. Which isn’t fair and takes away the incentive to create cool shows for you to watch.

Why is this against Net Neutrality? Because videos from Myspace Video and Youtube are not effected. It’s only these smaller, more innovative companies that haven’t been sold for billions of dollars.

Here’s what you can do:

Copy this bulletin. Repost it. Blog about it. Make Tom put up a little fix it bulletin saying he’s sorry.

Once you’ve reposted this, send a message to Tom (http://myspace.com/tomanderson) like this (or even better, write your own):

I’m sending this message to request that MySpace stop blocking videos from sites like Revver. Choosing the video-sharing service that is right for me is very important and is why you built Myspace. What I like most about MySpace is that I can generally do what I want here. I like that Myspace is a relatively open platform where I can communicate with my friends (and promote my stuff) in all sorts of ways. I feel good about sharing videos from Revver because I know they respect copyright and look out for independent artists. Please bring back Revver!

If you are a man, have you ever wondered why that girl across the way is so sexy, or why you are so stupid? Well someone somewhere did something and came up with these conclusions:

About 40 per cent of the world’s population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite’s eggs excreted by an infected cat.

This is what the men get:

“Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

And for the women:

“On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

“In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens”.

So I guess in short, men feed your lady friends infected cat shit or uncooked meat and they will be like sex kittens, just don’t get any of this Toxoplasma Gondii or you are doomed to be a stupid, conformist, unattractive, hermit.

Parasite ‘turns women into sex kittens’ | NEWS.com.au

How many times have you been in your car or out and about and needed a number and just couldn’t get to a phone book? How many times have you dialed 411 on your cell phone only to pay several dollars for that phone number, then maybe a few more cents for the operator to connect you? Well now you don’t have to pay with money, you can pay with your time and your ability to listen to an advertisement. Hey, its not all bad, they will connect you to the advertiser for FREE!!!

Simply dial 1-800-FREE411 and get the listing you need for free. It’s just like 411, only better because it doesn’t cost anything. So who pays, you ask? Our advertisers do. And should you be interested in one of their great offers, we’ll connect you free of charge.

I’m not downing the service, I haven’t even tried it. I just hate advertisements. But, as traditional 411 costs increase to combat user loss due to free services like this, an ad might be worth it for the phone number to that awesome Italian place in Chicago. Have a smart phone, no worries either. Stop over to the website free411.com and find everything you need there. But then again, if you have a smart phone you probably won’t need to use directory assistance, you let google do the work…. at least I do.

In a somewhat related story, Verizon, one of America’s largest scam companies is going to be exploiting your already ballooning cellphone bill. They think that the $76.88 a month you are paying for your mobile isn’t enough revenue for them, they want more, more, more!!! Now imagine ads all over you phone when you go online, as if there isn’t enough advertising online now.

Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said.

Now this next part just pisses me off even more.

Verizon officials said their initial foray would be a cautious one — they will limit where ads can appear, and exclude certain kinds of video clips — and thus may invite greater demand to place ads then they can accommodate.

Cautious one, not to scare people I suppose. You are already holding millions of users by their short and curlies with your over-priced products (and this goes for ALL cellphone carriers), and now you want to increase your revenue even more and give us a crappier product. Here is my ideal solution: if you add ads, drop our rates 40%. Then you won’t have to be cautious.

It just goes to show you how people will continue to over-pay for something that isn’t worth the money they are spending. Its like cable TV. Why pay $100/month for COMMERCIALS? If I have to pay for a service, it should be ad free. If I get a service for free, I should understand that it is probably ad supported. I hope Google starts giving away the farm and makes everything free/ad supported and puts the hurt on current mobile carriers. $19.99/month for unlimited national calling and roaming. $34.99/month for unlimited calls and unlimited data (with data speeds 25x what they are now). Then I will be happy, at least with my phone bill.

I was walking down the street yesterday and found a pack of lozenges or something on the ground. I stopped and picked it up to see what the heck it was. To my luck it was an unopened package of Aquadrops. I thought they were candy so I popped one out of the package and tossed it in my mouth. It tasted horrible. Some awful take on lemon-lime. Maybe they were suppose to be citrus. It tasted more like I was sucking on something flavored similar to how Pine Sol smells. Ish.

As I continued down the sidewalk, having spit out the horrid candy, I began reading the package. Apparently the lozenge I just purged from my mouth was actually a “hydration mint” that used a patented design to give me “unique dual-action” refreshment and hydration. WOW! I did notice that my mouth was now watering, although I was attributing that to the horrid taste. Maybe that is the trick with these “hydration mints”. They taste so bad that your mouth naturally produces saliva to wash the taste away.

That was just a pipe dream though, I read on. After getting through the marketing lingo, I made it to the ingredients. I wish I would have payed more attention in chemistry. I don’t know which of these “patented” chemicals actually made the candy taste so horrible.

“Meh, these things suck.” I was just about to toss them back to the sidewalk where I found them when I read something startling. There they were, in bold-faced capitalized lettering. The very words that send a tingling down your spine and give you goose bumps: “EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION MAY HAVE A LAXATIVE EFFECT” Geez, what in the hell?

I have heard of the potato chips that give you the shits, but never a candy. So I kept the package and have been giving them to friends and family as I see them. I never tell them about the laxative effect, but the taste pretty much eliminates that anyway. I just like to see their faces when they realize I lied about how good they taste.

Here are a few related stories:
Frito-Lay changes WOW to Light to sell more chips
Look at the African American Woman’s quote on the Pine Sol website
Buy enough Hydrating candy to defecate with ease

You know that Burger King animation that goes around the net every year, the kid standing at the register singing that stupid song. Man do I hate that. I don’t know how many people I have encountered that think it is funny and find the need to show it to me, yet again. It makes me want to stab myself in the eye with what ever is handy. The next time you see it in your inbox, delete it for me.

This has been a public service announcement from the office of Gurt T Luhrman.

Now this is a good one. After experiencing what was later known as an afternoon of angst, the FedEx delivery person arrived at the office. I ran down to grab the package and he asked me if I was “Travis”. I told him no, he then said “Oh, Gurturd?” I responded with a, “yes, thats me”. He looked at me, chuckled, and told me (and I quote): “I was just trying to trick you”.

The necessary evil these days are credit cards. If you don’t carry plastic you are severely limited in what you can buy. I won’t rant about how “big brother” and his ability to see everything you do if you use plastic, but think about it. Anyway, I was checking my statement online and I noticed this message.

Because of the careful way you manage your account the minimum payment due on this statement has been reduced to $10.00. If you prefer to pay your regular minimum amount due, it is $20.00. Please remember finance charges will accrue as usual. Thank you.

Those bastards. You see I never carry a balance on my cards, I refuse to pay interest on something, anything. If I can’t pay for it in full, I don’t need it. So I see this message and give it some thought for a moment. They want to lower my monthly payment so I will keep a balance so they can make money on me. It is funny what these card companies will do. Another one of my credit cards I carry recently mailed me a nice letter from some a-hole in marketing telling me about the benefits of my card and what it can do for me. Well, that was desperation because I only use that card about three times a year (and again don’t carry a balance on it). It’s 2% cash back is a joke, only after you spend thousands of dollars do you get 2% back on purchases, and even then you need to accumulate over $20 before they pay you. Don’t spam me with false promises and phony marketing ploys. Give me a straight-up 2% off on EVERYTHING I purchase, then we can talk about “what my card can do for me”. Jerks!

[BEGIN PISSED OFF RANT]

This Nazi consumerism is really pissing me off. Sure we are a consumer culture (which pisses me off), but come on people. The media shows hoards of people standing in line fighting with each other for PRODUCTS!!!! TVs!!! WHY? People are becoming soulless just for that great deal on a 50″ TV. They fight each other to spend their minimum wage so they can be “cool” like their friends and neighbors with their big screen TVs and stereos (When they can’t afford the stuff to begin with). Here is your free tip of the day, don’t use credit cards, they are evil and so are the banks that push them into the hands of Americans with NO MONEY MANAGEMENT SKILLS. C’mon people, you are going to be the downfall to this country, and I sure as hell don’t want you to bring me down with you. Have any of you seen the trade deficit this country has with China? And for those who are worried about China being “bigger” than the USA, don’t worry - they already own most of this county.

[END PISSED OFF RANT]

Happy Black Friday. I am spending my day taking photos, NOT BUYING ANYTHING, and enjoying my time with family and friends. I am also exercising today, like everyday, and living within my means. Fuck the corporate holidays, everyday is a holiday - wake up and realize it.

Hey if you thought Y2K was bad, wait 31 more years.

In computing, the year 2038 problem may cause some computer software to fail in or about the year 2038.

The latest time that can be represented in this format, following the POSIX standard, is 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, January 19, 2038. Times beyond this moment will “wrap around” and be represented internally as a negative number, and cause programs to fail, since they will see these times not as being in 2038 but rather in 1970 or 1901, depending on the implementation. Erroneous calculations and decisions may therefore result.

I hope those zany programmers get it right this time around and cause total world chaos with their time glitch. Lets all start building shelters and stocking up on food. More information can be found in the one and only Year 2038 problem - Wikipedia.