The inner chaos of a web guy's mind.
Why & How
Things that make you ask Why? or How?
I am that guy….
Nov 27th
You know how everyone has ‘A GUY’ that knows a guy that can get something done, or has the answer to a question?
Well I have come to a realization in my life that I AM THAT GUY! When I was a kid my parents used to call me a know it all because I had an answer for everything and was able to solve most problems. I always looked at everything and wanted to figure out how to make it better than it was. Through my years I have never really owned anything that I left stock. Always tweaking, modifying or editing things to make them better and function the way I wanted them to.
As I got older and began working different jobs I was always able to look at process and procedure and figure out a more effecient way of doing things. I was never shy about giving myt opinion or answering a question for people. Most of the time I was just ignored when I gave my opinion on a topic or a situation. If not ignored many people just said things like “What do you know?”, “It is what it is!”, “Your too young, in a few years you will see that this is the best way.”
A few years have past and I have said the words “I told you so…” far too often for my liking, so for a while I stopped giving my input and helping people. The funny think is though that my phone keeps ringing with people asking me if I know how to do something or if I can help them with something. I am that guy that people call when they need an answer to something or to ask if I have a connection. I have come to welcome the fact that in my years I have learned a lot about many things. I am not a specialist in anything but a “jack of many trades” as some would call it.
Being in the computer industry I have people constantly calling me or asking for assistance in specific areas or to figure out how to do something. There are so many people that I meet in my business that initially don’t beleive the amount of knowledge I have and the ability I have to design/redesign procedures to make them more efficient.
Other than tooting my own horn of course I have decided that to help unload this knowledge and share it with people I will start using this blog as a place for anyone to ask me a question about anything and I will offer up my opinion or solution to a problem. If you have a question or a problem that you need a solution for then feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will try to offer up my solution. Take my feedback, use my advice or just ignore me it really does not matter but the offer is there!
Just me trying to give back a little to the world…
How today’s society is killing the “Nice Guy”…
Nov 2nd
A rant I wish I didn’t have to make. Some people in society never cease to amaze and disgust me.
The expression no good dead goes unpunished has never meant more than it does today. The fact that we have degenerated to such a low in our society today that anyone doing something from the goodness of their heart comes under attack by barely human individuals that have nothing better to do than to try and discredit the actions of another.
Recently a tragedy hit my company (Mk2 Business Solutions) where my lead programmer/best friend’s sister was in a tragic car accident and is in ICU. I am not going to go over any details here as this is not the forum for the topic. I decided to use my companies hosting server and resources to create a website for my best friend to help the rest of the out of town family to keep up to date with his sister’s progress. The site also takes donations to help her in her recovery process. Everything was built and setup in a transparent nature and we even contacted a local newspaper which ran a story on her status and the launch of the site to help create awareness for her situation.
I thought nothing of doing this to help my best friend and his family during this terrible time. My heart goes out to him and his family and I wanted to do something to help them through this crisis. It is impossible to sit idly by as someone so close to you is going through so much pain.
Within 1 week of the newspaper article people that are of no blood relation at all to my best friends sister are PUBLICLY questioning the intentions of the site and where the proceeds are going. Upon hearing this news my heart hit the floor. I could not believe that people believe that someone cannot do a good deed without having to try and slander them publicly and question their intentions.
I know who these people are and as much as I want to return the favor you have done for me I refrain. See I wanted to do something to help a friend in need and you have tried to discredit me and my company. That is disgusting and low, lower than low. You have no morals and are barely human. It is people like you that have caused the death of the “Nice Guy”. No one wants to do anything out of the goodness of their heart anymore because people like you cause them pain and anguish for their actions.
The good that comes from this is that THIS nice guy is not dead, you cannot shut down the site and as far as the credibility of the site goes. BRING IT ON! There is nothing sinister or treacherous here, well aside from you that is. This site in question is jennymaguire.com and yes WE know exactly who the slandering parties are!
From one nice guy to those that try to stomp nice guys down. You haven’t crushed our will and we will continue to do good things even though disgusting creatures like yourselves try to discredit us.
What goes around comes around and I warn you KARMA is a bitch…
Net Neutrality – Concerns
Jul 16th
*Update*
I have received some information from a reliable source on Net Neutrality that the source of this post was not accurate and that this article was a hoax. For real information on the growing net neutrality issues please visit. 
I received and email from someone with this message in it so I figured I would spread the word. If Bell and Telus are really stupid enough to try this then it will be the demise of their companies. The internet is FREE to all and will stay that way. For government to try and make the internet like television is ridiculous. I could go on forever. Here is the article.
A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.
Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.
“It’s beyond censorship, it is killing the biggest ecosystem of free expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed,” I Power spokesperson Reese Leysen said. I Power was the first group to report on the possible changes.
Bell Canada has not returned calls or emails.
The plans made by the large telecom businesses would change the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and must pay to see each individual site beyond a certain point. Subscription browsing would be limited, extra fees would be applied to access out-of-network sites. Many sites would be blocked altogether.
“We had inside sources from bigger companies who gave us the information on how exclusivity deals are being made at this moment between ISPs and big content providers (like TV production studios and major video game publishers) to decide which web sites will be in the ‘standard package’ offered to their customers, leaving all the rest of the Internet unreachable unless you pay extra subscription fees per every ‘non-standard’ site you visit,” Leysen said. “We knew the source to be 100% reliable, but we also knew the story would be highly controversial if we released the information. We did it because we knew that we’d get more official confirmations once we’d come forward with it. And indeed that is what happened. Dylan Pattyn, who is writing the soon-to-be published article for Time Magazine, received confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and TELUS after we released the information.”
The plans would in effect be economic censorship, with only the top 100 to 200 sites making the cut in the initial subscription package.
Such plans would likely favor major news outlets and suppress smaller news outlets, as the major news outlets would be free (with subscription), and alternative news outlets, like AFP, would incur a fee for every visit.
“The Internet will become a playground for billion-dollar content providers just like television is,” said Leysen. “It won’t be possible for a few teenagers in their parents’ basement to start a small site like E-bay that then grows out to be the next big thing anymore. Right now the Internet belongs to those with the greatest ideas. In the future, it’ll belong to those with the biggest budgets.”
With plans in Canada uncovered, I Power thinks that companies in the United States and other nations are also planning similar actions.
“By 2012 ISPs all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” Leysen said.
Such a subscription plan could possibly restrict free speech far beyond even the current restrictions set by the governments of communist China. Not only would browsing be limited, but privacy would be invaded, as every web site viewed would likely be recorded on a bill in a manner similar to a phone bill.
Why would the ISPs institute such a plan? One word: money.
“This new subscription model is commercially far more beneficial to them than how it is now,” Leysen said. “If Fox wants to launch a new television show online, they’ll have to pay big money to all major ISPs to ensure that their new show will be offered and pushed in the ‘standard package’ of sites/services/channels that people will get through their Internet access. Plus ISPs will also gain extra revenue out of people trying to access the rest of the Internet, as they’ll pay extra subscription fees for every web site they visit.”
But it’s not just the big ISPs that stand to gain.
“Marketing and big budget ‘content-pushing’ just doesn’t seem to work on the Internet, and this is something that several industries want fixed. ISPs know this and will benefit greatly by fixing this for the marketing and entertainment industry,” Leysen said.
The ISPs are said to be confident they can institute such plans through deceptive marketing and fear tactics.
“The Internet will be more and more marketed as a place full of child pornography and other horrible illegal activity in order to get people on their [the ISP's] side once they start restricting it and make it ‘safer,’” Leysen said. “Unless we really make a stand for this and make sure that mainstream media thoroughly covers the issue, the whole thing will be eased in with proper marketing to make sure that most mainstream customers won’t make a big deal out of it. They will only realize what was lost long after it’s gone.”
Stupid people
Apr 24th
Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
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A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s head.
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A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film’s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.
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The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
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A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.
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Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.
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A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
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Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
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When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
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A Los Angeles man who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
Web designers that Rip off clients
Apr 17th
You know, sometimes there are times things need to be validated by members of the industry and this is one statement that I need to validate. Being the President, Founder and Lead Designer for a successful Multimedia company I have to get a few things off my chest.
“Web designers” are everywhere, anyone with a copy of front page and the internet are calling them selves web designers, seeking out clients to make a living from selling their services. Everyday while surfing the web I come across FrontPage built sites with stick on animated gifs and bloated Microsoft html code. There was obviously no thought to the end user or design principle while these sites where in development. Open new word document >slap in some stolen gifs from the web > save as html and WHAMMO you are a web designer. NO YOU ARE NOT.
Too many times I meet with a prospective client and they show me a horrible site that they paid obscene amounts of money for and I mean obscene, some of these sites are 3 times what my company charges and they look like they were done by a no talent hack in the basement of grandma’s house. Seriously how do you sleep at night ripping people off like that. My rates are not cheap but my portfolio is large and I have a steady flow of referral business coming in. I even have repeat customers that have multiple sites. No wonder there are so many clients that I meet that get visibly sullen when I show them my company portfolio and quote them on a new site. How can I blame them? They paid more than double what I am quoting for the mess they have now. Many of these poor people convince themselves that they have a great site because their “Web Guy” told them that it was a great site and they got a good deal on it.
I spent years in school and training in art to do what I do. My credentials include a Multimedia Diploma with Honors, Certificate of Business Admin. Marketing and Sales Major, Sales management experience, 15 years of art training and practice. During my training I spent time learning about Humane Interface design, optimization, scalability, graphic design, color palettes and more. These are some of the many tools that a true web designer has in his or her arsenal. I am a registered Adobe client using the latest in graphic design software, my companies programming principles are strict and clean and we write our own code. (Some times we write out code in notepad just to make sure we don’t get reliant on WYSIWYG editing.) We know where the code editor is in Dreamweaver and understand the differences between different versions of IE, Firefox, Opera. We understand color wheels, beta testing, bandwidth, image optimization. This list could go on forever I think you get the point.
I am going to explain what a true web designer/developer does when dealing with a new client. Before I start on any project for a client I have a FREE (YES I said FREE) consultation meeting with the prospect. Instead of spitting out some arbitrary number to them and telling them what their site will do. I have a full interview with the client and educate them to the benefits of a website. Take the time to introduce them to new technologies available for websites such as blogs, news, CMS, flash etc. After this meeting which usually take 1hr or more, I thank the client for their time and let them know I will work out a quote for them and email it later that day. If the client insists that I ballpark a quote. I will ask a few more questions and ballpark a range based on other sites that I have developed that are similar. Once the quote is approved I layout a project guideline for the client with milestones and payment schedules at each milestone reached. This helps keep things scheduled and gives the client piece of mind throughout the process.
To those guilty parties out there, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You are preying on people that want to grow their business or are just starting out. All you are accomplishing is helping these poor clients fail. Before you start demanding exorbitant amounts of money for your services try going to school and taking a few art classes, at least now you will do your clients and your reputation justice. To anyone that is out there looking for web sites PLEASE do some research and make sure that your choice in designer is based off their experience and previous work. If they have no work to show you then you are well within your right to ask for a mock-up before signing on to have them launch your web site project.
Us multimedia people are not all rip off artists and if you find the right one for your business you could be developing a long standing relationship for the better of both parties involved. As mentioned earlier I have many repeat clients and referrals making it unnecessary to advertise. No newspaper ads, no billboards, no mass emailing. My advertising consists of a small link on clients sites that allow it, linking to my main company site. My phone rings from new clients and 9 out of 10 times it is because they got my info from someone who I did work for.
Here are some other posts that give prospective clients some insight into the minds of web developers.
choosing-a-web-designer
artist-vs-programmer
My company site is located at www.mk2solutions.com if you click clients there are links to work that I have done. For other samples you can always contact me through the contact form as I have lots of sample layouts etc that are archived. As busy as we are I am always open to meeting a new prospective client to discuss their project. Worst case I will put a team together to develop it while I oversee each phase to insure the level of quality is at a level that I accept.
Golf & Marriage
Apr 4th
The ever futile power struggle between men and women continues. We have countless lists of women’s rules for men. Like usual they change with the weather, don’t make much sense, and are frankly irrational most of the time. Seriously folks these lists are hilarious and they lighten the days when you get them in your email. However to all the women out there just because an email list says that women act this way it is not an excuse to ACTUALLY DO IT!.
The feud continues as it has for centuries with neither party understanding the other but still feeling a magnetic attraction to each other so they can enter into a life of slavery and never ending battles.
To the men out there we really do ask for it sometimes, I have forever been trying to figure out why men get married or play the game of golf. And for the record I am an avid golfer and have been married for 10 years.
Marriage:
Why do we meet a wonderful girl, have intense physical attraction, enjoy eachothers company and make some pretty awesome memories. Everything is amazing you are happy, she is happy the stars and planets are aligned, things could not be any better. The sex is great, few fights which usually end in make up sex. It’s a perfect union of two complete opposites,MEN and Woman.
Then it happens at some point knowing that everything will change ESPECIALLY our amazing woman, we go out, buy a ring and propose. Knowing full well that women marry men with the intent to change them, and men marry women hoping they dont change and they do. After the wedding there is a short period of bliss and then it begins. The car you had so many fond memories in with together is no longer condusive to a married man and she hates it. The pleading statements “But you always told me you loved my car!” are no help remember the woman in front of you now is not the same one you asked to marry you. Fights end in sleeping on the couch or 3 days of uncomfortable silence and strange looks from across the kitchen.And if you think that all the crazy wild sex you had in the past is going to continue you are sorely mistaken boys IT’s OVER!!!
WHY DO WE WILLINGLY PUT OUR SELVES INTO THIS POSITION! Well to all the women out there I received a great email from my wife that is a simple list of rules of men. Really its simple common sense stuff not so much rules but a guideline for peace and seriously the best way to get the most our of your man! PLEASE ALL WOMEN READ THIS!
Golf:
Just like marriage we fall in love with a game that is destined to put us in an early grave or at best drive us to the brink of insanity. We stand in a HUGE field and try to hit a litte ball with peice of metal on the end of a long stick. Just looking at the physics of what we are doing it’t HARD AS HELL! Then when we don’t defy the odds and make a bad shot we beat ourselves up about it. But week after week we return to the course and bet with our playing partners. The difference with golf though is no matter what happens on the course there is a Beer and a Hot Dog waiting on the ninth hole and we are actually outside getting exercise at the same time.
I GUESS US MEN ARE JUST GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT!
Sales Secrets – General
Mar 28th
Anyone that has read my resume will know that I spend many years in retail sales. Many of those years was in training new sales people and as a Sales Manager for a big box retail store. What I am going to tell you now is some secrets in the retail industry that are used to train the sales people how to play the psychological game of selling with you the consumer when you come in to the store. I trained and developed some top sales people in the company and managed top performing sales departments in two different stores. Here are some of the tools that I trained my team to use.
General Sales Process
The entire sales process from beginning to end is a game if you don’t agree with this try it out sometime. There is a winner and a loser in this game. The winner is the one who gets what they are working for in the end, the sales person get his/her sale or the customer leaves without purchasing the product that was trying to be forced on them. Sometimes the customer is going into the store to get something specific the game begins when the salesperson gets involved and tries to add the up sell products or extended warranties.
The best defense against these tactics and the up sell is not to get into a debate with the sales person or to demand a discount but simply ask tough questions designed to stump the knowledge of the sales person. Only the best of the best will be able to answer them all and if they can’t they will find out the answer for you right away. A sales person that in confident enough to say I don’t know but I will find out for you is someone that is worth dealing with and is generally going to be honest with you about your concerns.
Avoid like the plague that sales person who preys on the human need to get a “deal”. As I trained my sales people with a simple statement “A deal is only a deal when you get a quality product at a fair price”. Getting some no name 90day warranty brand for $200 less than the quality product is not a deal it’s a waste of money. You’ve seen them they litter the boxing day flyers and weekly sale flyers trying to get you into the stores to talk to a smooth sales person that will up sell you into something else. Its not bait and switch but really who wants the crappiest product just because it is cheap.
If you want to keep the sales people away tell them that you are not buying anything today you are just shopping around for some gift ideas and generally all but the eager newbies will go away and leave you alone.
That’s enough for an introduction more specifics in price and negotiating tactics etc will be coming soon…If you are interested in more information or have a specific question please feel free to leave a comment and I will reply with an answer.
Video game morality
Mar 27th
I love video games, the escape and the entertainment factor of playing games. Half-Life 2, Homeworld, Blaster Ball, Call of Duty, there are an infinite number of game titles that populate the shelves of retailers of the world. A large number of these games actually teach our kids some great motor skills and a lot of them are very educational games that can aid in our children’s development.
There comes a time though when the moral question of “just because we can should we?” comes up. Society in general has failed to provide the right answer to this question on many occasions. Lets take one game that disturbs me to no end, which has pushed the limits of this morality question.
The Grand Theft Auto – Series.
OMG this entire series should be banned from all retailers and all copies systematically destroyed. Rockstar Games and Take-two Interactive the major publishers of this filth should be put under close scrutiny when publishing any new games in the future. The parents that allow their children to play these games should be forced into parenting classes. Come on people what are you thinking allowing your kids to be educated by this morally corrupt garbage. This game allows and even rewards it’s players for terrorist like behavior, assaulting innocent people and law enforcement officers. You get rewarded with money for luring prostitutes into your car and beating them in the back seat.
Come on people this is utter filth and pointless, why would any company want to be affiliated with a complete lack of morality praising the behaviors that we as a society are trying to stop. We try and teach our children morals and appropriate behavior but then allow them to play video games that they are exposed to are teaching them to complete opposite. Its like training to be a criminal, Microsoft came under fire for the accuracy in the flight simulator series after the 9-11 attacks. You have got to be kidding me about this crap, our kids are playing GTA and training to be total criminals and rewarded for abhorrent behavior but a game that actually educated and prepares out children for future careers in aviation comes under fire. Grab a freaking brain people how does a game like GTA stay in production and is able to release so many sequels. This a time when censorship is well needed and yet it fails to protect our youth from this utterly barbaric crap.
I know what some will say, what makes Half-Life, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, and many other Violent titles with a mature rating different from GTA. Well incase you can’t figure this out for yourself, I’ll spell it out for you. These other games involve surviving through attacks from alien races that DON’T exist, defending from bad guys (terrorists) in rainbow six, reliving previous wars in the Call of duty series and guess what you are penalized for taking an innocent life. If that isn’t enough difference for you these games have limits of what you can do in them. GTA has no limits of how morally corrupt the player can become.
It is our responsibility as adults and parents to teach and mold our children into the people that they deserve to be. Guidance and education, discipline and consequence where have these values gone when we are raising our children. Video games and television are major influences in our children’s lives and that is not going to go away. We need to make sure that what we allow them play and allow them to watch programming that teaches them correct values and helps them to make the right decisions in life. I’m not condoning complete censorship of everything as I am a firm believer of freedom of speech. However there should be some moral standards held when publishing products targeted at our children.
Esoteric Agenda Review
Mar 26th
Well in the spirit of controversy and conspiracy I though I would start up a post and inspire some commenting on a video that I recently watched on Google Video. Before reading the rest of this post please keep the following in mind about me, the writer. I have been involved in organized religion and chosen my own beliefs over what was forced upon me. I worked many years for a large corporation that brainwashes it‘s employees into thinking the world outside the organization is beneath them. I have been versed in many of the interesting theories and conspiracies put forth by others that keep an open mind.
You may choose whether to view the video before continuing to read this post or you can read the post and view the video after by following the same link at the bottom of the page.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1131942400352901009
Whenever the topic of government and religion comes up you can always expect difference and debate and often wars that are based off these two controversial topics. This movie 2hrs6mins long but worth watching has a completely different outlook on the entire world and us as a population. The premise is that all the powers that you see in media and the most prominent figures in the world are simply pawns to a greater super power that controls the destiny of mankind. It details connections to secret organizations such as the Luminati, Knights Templar and others that date as far back as the Myan empire. These organizations which ultimately are directly linked to the British monarchy control everything in the world today from what is in our food to what we see in the media.
This one behind the scenes super power is doing this through manipulating the visible super powers in the world such as the United States and its leaders. Government, laws, media are all focused on one thing and one thing alone. The brainwashing and control of the 87% of the general world population that is susceptible to such mass hypnosis. Using the easiest motivator of the weak minded to control the masses, FEAR is the ultimate motivator for those that have difficulty seeing things for themselves or choose not to see the world and events for what they are and not we are told.
There are signs of this in every walk of life if we choose to look. Taxes is the largest controller of the populous, we pay a large percentage of our hard earned monies to the governments that wage wars on other countries and neglect to take care of economic issues at home. The general population are slaves to debt and to consumerist behavior of buying whatever is pushed into the forefront of the mind through media. The news is there to scare us into believing what the governments what us to be scared of so they can “protect us”. Protection in the form of new laws, that if you really look at just relieve us of our rights as human beings. Not the rights that are put forth by the governments of the countries we reside in but the rights as living organisms inhabiting this planet.
So why are government and religion the two topics that are best not discussed at the dinner table or with friends. Well it is simple these to factions are ultimately linked. Religion spawned government and government is just a tool to control the populations of countries. Really look back into past and ask yourself if some of what you see in this movie is fact that is shrouded in bureaucracy and news. This movie also describes the face that is global warning and the hype received by “An Inconvenient Truth”, I will have a complete post dedicated to this topic coming up soon.
This movie is a well spent educational 2 hours, yes there are some topics that seem unbelievable but that’s what is great about being human. The ability to have our own opinions on everything and be able to see the world for what it is to ourselves and not what the organizations in the world want us to see. Keep an open mind and while you watch this video but please don’t let it consume your life, remember it is just someone else’s opinion created by connecting the dots of history and forming a conclusion.
This post is my opinion and I took from this movie what I needed and chose to ignore certain parts and information. I am not an anarchist I just think that as a race human beings take everything to the extreme and we prey on those that are weak even if that means preying on each other . Below is a link to the video is question
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1131942400352901009
Piracy? My 2 Cents…
Mar 20th
Ok well this topic has been flogged to death over the years but man it bugs me how bureaucracy gets in the way of common sense all the time.
For years now I have been saying why doesn’t the Music and Film industry say to hell with it we can’t fight piracy and just offer the ISP’s a deal $5/Month charged to each client and it all goes to the industry and then make downloading music and video legal. Instead of spending countless millions of trying to pass laws and shut down torrent, ftp, and other files sharing sites why not just cut a deal with the ISP’s. Well now such a deal is in the works and I for one am all for it. $5/Mon to have access to all the music I want DONE DEAL! and you never have to worry about getting busted for downloading music. Now if the movie and television industry would just get on the bandwagon we would have some great internet freedoms and everyone is compensated.
To the people that say well I don’t download music, why should I have to pay $5 per month extra for my internet. Well let me ask you this: Have you ever downloaded a picture you found on the internet and used it in a picture frame, for a wallpaper, distributed it to a friend? Well thats EXACTLY the same thing and downloading music. The unfortunate thing in this scenario is that the artist that created that image will never be compensated for his/her work. It has happened to me and I know how the artist feels. I caught a company using my images from my website to sell their DVD of tutorials no doubt stolen from the internet also. I could not even get the company to respond to me and E-Bay did nothing about the copyright infringement. Taking it legal was not worth it so I chalked it up to the risks involved in displaying my work on the web.
The problem with the music and film industry is they refuse to embrace the future and be creative in dealing with the availability of distribution on the net they choose to fight it because they have the money to do so. To these industries I say EMBRACE the future save your money and put it into making a better product so that people will be more likely to go and see it in the theater and then buy the DVD.
I own a rather large STORE BOUGHT DVD collection because I like to contribute to the industry in the hope that they will start making higher quality products. I am not advocating piracy, but I can totally understand where the advocates of free distribution are coming from. But seriously folks waging wars no matter how small they are is futile and no body wins in the end. Sit down! Drop the EGO’s! and work it out for crying out loud.
Well that is my 2 cents on this topic don’t even get me started on the software racket my bang account is still reeling from the 3K i just spend on new software for the company. Maybe a later post 
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