James Sapara’s Personal Blog

I’m often one for expressing my idea’s in such a way as to piss the most number of people off. Would it be… incorrect for me to say that chivalry is dieing or possibly dead? Yet, some things remain that could be… considered a part of chivalry. Obviously, one of these is the opening of doors. Now, I used to get kinda cranky when a lady friend would expect that sort of treatment. Now, I’ve changed my mind.

First of all, it reduces the number of decisions that have to be made. When a woman is with a man, there is no question that the man should open that door. Thus avoiding awkward moments where both try to open the door, or they both stand their with dumb looks on their faces waiting for the other to open the door. Really, this is just a subtle optimisation of how society works.

Second reason, is that if the door is booby trapped; or, the room contains some sort of… dangerous situation… Well, it’s best to send the bravest in first and let them deal with it. After all, we’re just lowly men who can’t really do anything for ourselves but eat and fart (and scratch our balls).

Now I realize there is a flaw to this system. What happens when, by chance, two men approach a door at the same time. Who should open the door? I often find that eye contact proceeds these sorts of encounters and our animal instincts kick in. We race for the door like it’s a prize to open; but, instead of opening the door and letting the other through… we quickly race through and let go of the door. Making the slower animal… er… man have to work harder to catch the door before it closes and open it again.

Now, I haven’t studied what happens when two women get to the door. Being more passive in their ways I can imagine one of two things would happen. The both strike up a conversation at the door waiting for a man to open it for them. Or, if they happen to be a a place were no man would enter/exit (lets say… a store that only sells tampons), then the following would likely happen: Lady A offers to open door. Lady B declines and offers to open door for Lady A. Lady A notices that lady B is slightly more overweight than herself, and offers again (politely) to open the door for lady B. Lady B notices that lady A is wearing high heels (and it must be killing her feet), so offers to open door for lady A. This process can probably last several hours on the worst of days.

In case you didn’t realize it, this is supposed to be funny. Don’t bother ranting at me or posting something mean in reply to it… I’ll just moderate it out (I’m the dictator of my own website, imagine that).

While short, this article (Id’s Kevin Cloud Says Piracy is Killing PC Gaming)points out an unfortunate problem. Video games for the PC are easy to pirate. Reducing the incentive for people to buy them. Which is leading game developers to make video games for console systems instead of PC’s. I’m not particularly bothered by this trend, since I don’t play alot of video games these days (WoW for the most part…). What bothers me is the idea that a subscription game is the solution. As it’s implemented now in games like World of Warcraft. I pay for game in a box, then I subscribe.

I think there’s a good chance that if it was free to download and all you had to do was subscribe it would be fantastic. A publisher could make a game available by free for a week (depends on the size and theme of the game) people would try before they buy. If they wanted to continue to play they would have to subscribe to the game. For a single player game it would have to either be a small amount of money a month (say $2 or $3), or a full fee at the star for access all the time. SteamPowered actually attempts to do this, but requiring full payment up front. For ANY online game like WoW, it only makes sense to distribute the game for free, give a week free play to get them hooked and then sucker them in with subscriptions. I would of been playing WoW the week it came out instead of waiting 8 months to start.

Anyways, it seems to me that the economy today is all about instant profit, not sustainable income. At some point the markets expendable income will become close to 100% allocated. Would you rather them buy you boxed game once, or pay you a sum each month. I think the answer is obvious. Not to mention I think alot of consumers would think less about paying $12 to try a game for a month, than shell out $70 to find out a game sucks. In the market of games, if you make a good game you shouldn’t have to worry about the number of subscribers you’ll get.

I’m on my way back from the mall today replaying the “OK GO” video in my head. It’s not particularly great for any reason, just slightly entrancing to see 4 odd looking men dance like that. I was nearly ready to purchase their album on itunes/amazon whatever, until I noticed they used “Capitol” records. Unfortunately that an organization ruled under the iron fist of the RIAA; who, just happens to be one of my least favorite organizations (Right below United States Government (no offence guys, but damn there’s some silly policy going on there (yes I know Canada has silly policies as well)) and above MPAA). Back on topic…

I used to just not like the RIAA… holding the little man down and all that. Today it just came to me (may of been obvious to others…) that the reason I shouldn’t support the RIAA it’s because it has taken the power from the artists. Every starting band seems to have problems with money. They don’t get paid much apparently, which is understandable. Here’s my problem: I’ve never heard of a record company exec being broke. Or that the people who run the RIAA are underpaid, or anyone else involved in that process. It seems that the priority for distributing the money leaves the artist last in this whole scheme they have. What I think some artists don’t realize (or are scared to test) is that without them, “the artist”, these people would have no jobs. The artist is effectively employing all these people, but not so willingly paying themselves poorly.

The solution is cut the the middle man organizations out. Back to basics for production, marketing and distribution. All these things cost money, and possibly in some cases more than what an established organization would cost. The difference is it would promote competition in that industry to provide the services artists need to be successful. No longer would the artist be paying for some RIAA chump (aka Cary Sherman) to make money off suing children, dead people or old people for downloading music. Not that I support that practice, but I feel the market has been driven to that by the business model the RIAA forces on us.

Anyways, all I want to do is buy an album and know that the artist is getting fairly compensated before everyone else does, because without the artists there is not music. With no music there would be no RIAA… just think about that Chad…

Basically it reads the mbox file and uploads it to the imap server. Simple and useful for systems where there are not alot of users and you just happen to know their passwords.

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