Marketing

posted by pfunk on 2006-07-26 01:38:31 I only watch Comedy Central on TV. I enjoy cable internet, but I'm forced to pay for cable. And if I'm paying for cable, I might as well get the one channel I actually want to watch. There are a couple commercials I've seen a lot lately on Comedy Central. The first one is surreal. If you've seen it, you'll recognize this: <blockquote> HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead. </blockquote> The grating repetition. The serene zombie-like expression on the woman's face. The cheap sci-fi looking grid background. I want to change the channel, but I can't. I'm //mesmerized//. The second commercial, I won't even give the privilege of naming the company. It's an ad about student loans, where a young guy is talking about how expensive college will be and is not sure how to pay for it. As if student loans where some novel, innovative things. As Jake puts it, "How about a loan... for students... student loans. Genius!". This commercial is annoying because in the span of 30 seconds they manage to say FIVE TIMES that you don't have to pay until after you graduate. I want to claw my ears off when that commercial comes on. permalink and replies (2)

[no subject]

posted by pfunk on 2006-07-25 00:28:33 <blockquote> We have always been at war with Eurasia. </blockquote> permalink and replies (1)

Second Blog

posted by pfunk on 2006-07-24 15:06:19 I plan on setting up a second blog under digitalartisan.org. Currently that URL simply points here. I will use it as a //professional// blog, mostly to cover digital privacy/rights, copyrights and patents, and goings-on in the open source world. To have something to add to the topics, I intend to do my own fact-checking and keep tabs on my local congressfolk (and on the congressfolk who introduce or play key roles in new bills). I'll also use the site to promote my own portfolio/resume and offer GPL code and Creative-Commons content. permalink and replies (4)

Nerdgasm

posted by pfunk on 2006-07-21 04:02:58 PFunked is back after being offline yesterday for upgrades. Did you miss us? I know you did. The upgrade put me from Fedora Core 2, MySQL 3.23, and PHP 4 to Fedora Core 4, MySQL 5, and PHP 5. That gets me: actual OO in PHP, subqueries and views and stored procedures in MySQL. Plus I got PDO set up in PHP5, so I'm going to rework my code to use PDO prepared statements and bind parameters. I need to alter my roadmap to FunkyBlog 1.0. I don't need a ton of OO in this blog, but encapsulating and properly scoping some vars and funcs will add to the nicety of it all. I plan on using all prepared statements, to practically eliminate SQL-injection (I do a ton of checking now, but why fight the problem when you can eliminate it entirely?). Plus this'll mean my blog will support any SQL92-compliant DB that has a PDO driver. I'll still use MySQL for now. I want to try the latest features, and really clean up the structure to a finely-tuned DB (proper constraints, FKs, etc.) permalink and replies (8)

Hoarding Abundance

posted by pfunk on 2006-07-19 21:33:34 I was reading a Slashdot thread about [http://backslash.slashdot.org/backslash/06/07/19/1739244.shtml Netflix Queues] that had some interesting commentary. When faced with abudance, do you still have the tendency to want to hoard as much of it as you can? - When Napster was big, did you download more music than you could possibly ever listen to? Did you pour more time into renaming and organizing it than listening to it? - Using the above mentioned example, have you used Netflix and then felt guilty because you weren't watching and returning movies at the maximum humanly possible pace? I've been on kicks where I have the means and I get a whole lot of something, but then never really use it. I've got stacks of video games, books, LEGO bricks, DVDs, CDs.... I used to have gigs of stupid videos from the internet, etc. etc. Someone suggested on [http://slashdot.org Slashdot] that we're biologically used to dealing with scarcity, and we really don't know how to react in the face of abundance. One person noted that we painfully stuff ourselves when we eat at a buffet, because we think the quantity of the meal is more valuable than the enjoyment of the meal. It's sort of a cycle of excess and consumption, but then quick boredom of what we gather. It's baffling. I think I could justify pawning off every one of my DVDs (except probably Fight Club, which I tend to watch at least once a month. Even then, I should just rip it and lose the hard copy). At least DVDs have resale value. I've got tons of PC games that have no resale value. Maybe I need to do some EBaying before I leave PB. permalink and replies (0)