The Monday Post: Datamancy, or How to find personal information online

I had an interesting experience of the weekend, and got a chance to you some old skills that haven't been touched in years. A good friend of mine, to remain nameless, mused about an old friend they'd lost contact with after high school. Cracking my knuckles I decided to see if I could have any luck in finding that person's whereabouts.

Surprising No One, Blockbuster Files for Chapter 11

This one picture tells the tale of a company that failed to adapt to a changing market. I actually have fond memories of Blockbuster as a child. Not many, but reting old NES games while SNES/Genesis were major players in the console market.

However, for all those memories, I also remember on very important thing about businesses, or just life in general: Adapt or Die. This is true in both a social context (Health Care Reform, DADT repeal, Racial Desegregation) as it is in business.

The above picture is a clear illustration of how NOT to do it. The moment Netfix or even RedBox came into being Blockbuster should have shit their collective pants. The RIAA certainly did when Napster came knocking at their doorsteps (and for what it's worth their reaction paved the way for much of the Bittorrent world of today).

But, back to Blockbuster now. This is a classic example of what happens when you fail to either anticipate or adapt to a change in the market. Netfix started in '99, plenty of time for Blockbuster to have changed their business to adapt. But in this case it wasn't aggressive enough, as they took a full 5 years to realize (2004) to bring a similar product, Blockbuster Online, to bear.

5 years, in this day in age, is an eternity. During that time Redbox came into being, meaning ol' Blocky had not a game of one-upmanship but a full fledged war (Two's company, three's competition). We've already seen the fall of Hollywood Video years ago. Slowly but surely the further fall of big name brick-and-motor video stores will follow. If there are any left.

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There's a nice writeup at WSJ about the Blockbuster filing. Shows just how bad the company has gotten in the past few years.

Ever wonder why your $10 keyboard is crap?

Here's a good list. Admittingly 'good' is not a word that should be used.

My take on the RIAA and DRM-Free Music

So on other forums a person asked "Why is the music industry STILL taking its sweet time about this [moving away from DRM laden music]?"

I present to you below my full answer, which also includes my own view on the background to the current stance the RIAA (and MPAA for that matter, whom I affectionately refer to the Music and Film Industry Association of America, or the MAFIAA) takes to the digital medium.

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I consider the old experiment of putting a frog in boiling water vs cold then slowing boiling them to death. The idea is the frog gets use to latter and won't jump out even when it's near death.

The RIAA, on the other hand, reacted like the former when presented with Napster. It existed, almost literally, under their noses. They had no "warming up" period to the idea of digitally available music. Because of the initial knee-jerk reaction they whole of the association is still reeling from the notion that anyone could rip them off in a few clicks. The slowness is due to the hard coding of the idea, in executive heads, that the control of the physical media the music is listened to on is paramount. Given that you can rip tracks from a CD or convert files from one format to another and from one device to another, this isn't possible. Draconian is my usual word for mentality because of this. They missed the boat for the digital age and are slowly dying at an industry because of it. A very slow death, but a death nonetheless.

Buy out AOL dialup? A sinking ship?

Explain to me if this actually makes some sense: Would you buy a sinking boat from someone because you collect/user these kinds of boats yourself? From what I can guess that's Liberty Media's plan here. Buy AOL dialup from Time Warner,  and reduce it down to just that: Dialup. I would think this great if it wasn't my feeling that the only reason dialup still exists is because there are persons out there sitting on their hands, delaying the penetration of broadband. This shit should have been up and running at the turn of last century (how weird it is to be able to make this statement, time wise). Now, nearing a decade in, we still of people in Podunk, PA and Toadlick, AR that have little to no access to even rudimentary DSL. Sad when you think about it.

Train crash avoidance

So I'm getting my hair cut at the barbers yesterday and discussion turned to the recent tragedy of a LA commuter train ramming into a freight. Right now the investigation is focusing on the MetroLink conductor that may or may not have been texting on his phone at the time.

But I'm not really concerning myself with this. Something else tickled my brain. As I and the barbers started talking the question of how the two trains didn't realize the others location came up. "There must be some GPS in there, right?" "I think so, don't you?" "Yeah, I'd thinks so." That was the gist of the talk.

Come to find out, rooting around, that there actually is one on the table, already tested in a few locations, that could be rolled out in 5 years. Moreover, the system in question would also have a last ditch kill switch which would have stopped the tragedy now faced.

I'm not for more rules. I know they're talking about banning cell phones from train operators. That I can live with. But why on fucking earth will you sit on your hands and not get something like a simple GPS installed in the trains? Cost? Please tell me the Fight Club's little adage of "A times B times C equals X" applies all the way to the point you have your head in the sand AND up your ass.

Go To Hoopstick.com

Or at least go once the site is back up from being crashed. They have a deal right now that if you buy a sticker, they are throwing in a 500gb Sata 3.0gb drive for free. Bought my sticker for $1.25. Yes, buck and a quarter. 

Well, we're still here

So, the LHC hasn't killed us yet. We're not being sucked into a black hole. There are no head crabs, gelatinous blobs devouring everything, abnormally large breasted nymphomaniac aliens....

>.>

<.<

>.>

I've really got to stop watching hentai >_<

Topics

So this post will remain until I use at least one of the 'labels' *cough*tags*cough* below, mostly as these will be the main tags I use (all others will be secondary)

Guess I could fill this post up with what they mean:

• Technology: things that make the IT world go around
  
• Games: I play way too many, and have opinions on them
  
• Music: Releases, controversies, karaoke
  
• Politics: Decline To State liberal and how I see htings
  
• Life: Things happening to me, where I'll be, things I'll do, shit like that.
  
• News: General news items, or things that don't fit the next catagory (or the above ones)
  
• Oddball: Oddball his hosted by our good friend Sum Ting Wong. Things in the news, tech, life et. al. that are not quite what you would think they would be.
  
• Parting Shots: Kinda my 'followup' tag... I mean label. Used when I do a post, well, following up on a topic I've previously posted about.