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| Could social networking please die already?Monday, April 27, 2009, 10:37 PM
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Fair use wins big with animated ethnic slur fest
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 11:36 PM
Business by John
Finally, for the luv of gawd, can we please put to rest the moronic notion that parody author owe royalties to original authors??!
I understand that Fair Use is a debilitatingly simple concept. You see, if I remake a work in a meaningfully different way, such as a parody that insults an ethnic group in ways the original author would find vile, I probably don't owe the original author squat.
Now, I was pretty sure when I took 400-level Commications Law in college that this was settled. Parody is protected. Period. And, big surprises here, the courts agree because every US court has always agreed with that interpretation. Jeepers.
But, rights owners a mean lot. To brutally paraphrase Upton Sinclair's famous line, it's hard to convince a man he doesn't have rights to content when his living depends on believing he does.
Seriously. Get into a shooting match sometime with an aggrieved rights owner. It's obnoxious. Also, they are the most self-sure critters roaming this planet (OK, maybe cats are a little more self-sure, but you get my point).
I don't know what it says about modern culture when we celebrate the perpetuation of established case law as a big victory. I guess. A win is a win. Especially when the enemy is this radicalized and fundamentalist.
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Stop blaming the internet for the death of newspapers
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 11:22 PM
Business by John
Stop it. Here's what really killed newspapers:
- AP Copy. Every newspaper on earth is about 60-80% frickin AP copy. It sucks, because people want more local content. Instead, they can expect their local newspaper to resemble every other newspaper on earth, which in turn are all running stories 24 hours later than every website on earth that also runs AP wire copy.
- Costs. Printing presses are expensive.
- Pay. Writers at all but the top tier papers work for nothing. I've known people who were years into the newspaper biz who were making barely better than minimum wage. If you're gonna make crappy pay, disappearing to some other medium (blogs) or some other occupation (fry cook) seems like a winning proposition.
- Respect. When was the last time anyone said anything nice about any newspaper.
- USA Today and the New York Times. The big, essentially national newspapers, were already pushing down other newspapers for a looong time before the internet came along.
- Quality. Read the Washington Post. It is the nasty bit of political bootlicking know to humankind. It's a joke! Why would anyone want to read some politician's BS when they can just turn on CNN or C-SPAN, or better yet, just log on to the internet and look at cat pictures?
But what did they do?
Well, many bought expensive printing operations and diversified further into print! Many started churning out piss-poor local features magazines that do nothing but grab advertisers by the ankles and shake more money from them.
And this is minding you that advertising does not work. Advertising, especially in certain mediums such as newspapers, is a flat-out waste of cash.
Big surprise! Advertisers have stopped forking over cash to a dying industry that never was helping them.
But, let me dwell a bit more on printing presses. I mention it because presses don't come cheap, and they're not cheap to operate. They need daily love and real skill to run.
It sure seems to me that about the time a newspaper is coming up to replace its printing press would have been a good time to go all internet. Then you're talking about a stop-loss. You've stopped the financial losses incurred by the damned printing press.
But, newspapers are, at the heart of it, PAPER. Maybe it's too fundamental to their identity. Maybe it was too much to ask them to abandon their giant papyrus scrolls and go all digital. Maybe paste-up is endemic that to ask a newspaper to think of web page layout is asking too much.
After all, you take the big scary job of Newspaper Editor and reduce it to assignment editor, since its a fair bet that the web editor would get more say on layout.
You can fire any paste-up people you have. Classifieds can easily be rolled into sales. Night editor can probably be given to the senior editor, since he now has free time not committed to paste-up. Section editors are only meaningful at big newspapers. Pretty much you're all local at this point.
And all local is where the real hurt occurs.
You see, newspapers have been peddling a fraud to local advertisers forever. That fraud is selling a localized product that is littered with nationally syndicated content. A huge number of paid ads plop right down on pages that have zero local appeal.
And advertisers pay for it because advertising is a lie that people want to here: marketing is easy! Just pay us a ridiculous fee, and you'll never have to think about sales and marketing ever again.
And that's the problem.
The internet has exposed all of the underlying frauds about newspapers. They're not really local. Worse, half the local content goes on pages with little or not local advertisements. They don't convert readers into sales. They don't do much of anything.
So, print journalism will be burned to the ground. And good writers will reconstitute local journalism on the web, with lower costs and less BS and no debt burden left over from winding down poisonous print operations.
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My computer doesn't have a problem! I HAVE ANTI-VIRUS!!
Thursday, January 15, 2009, 12:42 AM
Website design by John
If you're a hardcore geek you either just groaned or laughed a bit at that headline. Let me share a little exchange I had with a customer on one of our website:
ME (much abbreviated and paraphrased): Sir, your browser is jumping up and down like a Jack Russel Terrier on meth screaming, "I have malware, I have malware! I'm gonna run man in the middle attacks!" And our server's secure session system replied, "No frakkin way... I ain't lettin' you authenticate."
CUSTOMER (actual gorram quote, all emphasis is mine): Thanks for the tip but my anti-virus software says different. It runs everyday and there is also a firewall on this computer. It's funny that your site is the only one I have problems with a log-on. I guess I'll just shop elsewhere. Thanks anyway.
At the risk you ever wondered how malware spreads so far and wide, meet this guy. The ideal malware target, because he doesn't care as long as his computers says all is well.
"Thanks for the tip but my anti-virus software says different." Think about the raw stoopid involved in making such a statement. Think about the strong wish fulfillment component that requires. I'd rather think I am secure than actually be secure.
Antivirus has long since ceased to be meaningful. It's just there to babysit dim individuals who are still working from the security checklist their company's IT guy gave them in 1997.
The fact that users still think that antivirus is magical is downright disturbing. This, kids, is why you can't dismiss any type of attack as just theoretical. Because the average user is so frickin oblivious that the sheer concept of contemplating his own insecurity on the web almost requires that he insult a helpful person. And if the user is oblivious, why shouldn't the bad guys party with that?
It is by far the human flaw that most endangers the internet.
Human beings prefer to feel secure as opposed to becoming aware of insecurities and fixing them. The average web user would rather scratch his groin than be told by the doctor he ought to sleep with a better class of woman.
I have to admit, at some point all programming boils down to a basic truth: there is cure for stoopid; you can only hope to contain it.
And I say that while trying to remain starkly aware that blaming the customer is the resort of flawed businesses. I am aware that dismissing the customer out of hand is a bad idea. But, wow. Where is the limit? When does the customer become responsible for his own role in screwing things up?
Of course, based on the notion that a mature response is the basis of responsibility, the answer is a resounding "NEVER".
So, to all you oblivious customers I wish you good luck in all your unsecure web browsing.
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Playing with macro photography
Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 2:34 AM
Graphic Design by John
I was bored and decided to hack together a macro photography kit from a cheap pair of binoculars I bought at Aldi. Just shooting at night, with crappy yellowish room light, the photo to the right is an example of what I got for results.
The basic process is:
1. Remove both of the main lenses from the binoculars.
2. Tape the binocular lenses together.
3. Take four two-inch pieces of sturdy wire, and tape the lenses at the end.
4. Tape the open end of the wires to a 50mm SLR lens.
5. Practice adjusting the distance you need from the subject to the lens. This should be somewhere from one inch to three inches away.
That's it. Dirt-cheap macro lens.
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When did GoogleBot get this slow and lame
Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 12:23 PM
Website Design by John
As of noon, December 16, GoogleBot still hasn't picked up the individual item page for the 2009 Punxsutawney Phil Beanie Baby on the souvenir shop's website.
What's up with that? Maybe linking in to it will help.
And if you're a first time reader, no I am not some beanie crazy. I just admin the website where the not-normals go for this particular beanie.
From a web admin standpoint, I'm surprised by how slow GoogleBot is picking this guy up. Google Shopping already has it. Admittedly, that's because Google Shopping pulled the XML feed.
But, in the past it has never taken more than 15 hours for GoogleBot to sniff out a new page on one of my established websites. I gotta admit, more than 24 hours is a bit surprising.
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The non-tech classes you should take in college
Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 2:23 AM
Thoughts by John
Here's an interesting problem that comes up from time to time: You're a geek. You go to college to geek up more. But, once you get to college some rat bastard tells you that you have to take English and Phys Ed.
Being a geek, you decide you want to be utilize your required, not-your-degree courses to your maximum advantage? But which one should you take?
#1: Business writing.
I got to pondering this the other day. Of all the classes I absolutely use the hell out of day-in and day-out, nothing compares to Business Writing. I took the 300-level business writing class offer by the English department at Clarion University back in... oh, shit if I know... like eight years ago. I took the once-a-week three hour night class, which is always a fast track to a GPA-lowering B, especially when you live by them like I did.
But, that's not the point -- GPA obsession is a sign of true ignorance in a world run by C students.
The point is that on a nuts and bolts level, a good, upper-level bachelor's Business Writing class is the best bang for your college dollar in terms of building a toolbox of skills you will use in the real world. Day-in and day-out, I use business writing all the time.
Now, when I'm talking about business writing, I'm talking the art of writing decent memos.
There's a whole other branch of counter-productive crap that involves writing lengthy proposals that serve no purpose except to prove you took the same class as I did.
If you can find out about the class ahead of time, make a point of avoiding the one that is just a circle jerk of future administrative Nazis sitting around creating bullet-point plans that will be filed and forgotten. That class is useless.
But, the real, hardcore memo-writing class is a thing of Zen beauty. What I learned in business writing was to just shut up and say it. Whatever it is. Say in in three to five paragraphs, drop in a salutation, spell and grammar check the old-fashioned way (READ IT!!) and then fire that bad boy off.
In retrospect, there is a real beauty to business writing that rarely shines through in college classes. One, because it is an actual damned skill that everyone values. Two, because the basic skill itself is not natural and can only be learned.
About twenty minutes ago a fired off the following tech support email to a customer of one of my clients:
Hello (again) Mr -------,
I was looking through the server logs and saw that you had a problem
selecting an address for shipping.
I fixed a shipping address in the system that matches your billing address
(-------).
If you need to ship to an alternate address, please click on the "Add a
different shipping address" link on the "Select a shipping destination"
screen during checkout. This screen will allow you to add unlimited
additional addresses beyond the one you entered for billing.
I hope that resolves your problem. If the problem persists beyond this
point, please call the shop during business hours (9-5 Eastern time) to
place a phone order.
Thank you,
-------
If you have to take an English class in college, and you want to do more than just pass, take Business Writing.
I wish I had more classes to add, but I don't.
Maybe drawing? But most Drawing I classes are about breaking down formalism and teaching you to scribble like a brain-damaged ape.
Skip right past the economic and general business classes. They're beyond useless. Just intellectual masturbation and indoctrination into a failed brand of conservative ideology.
I'd say Stats, but in truth, I haven't done a chi square since college. Not useful.
Newswriting was a decent class, but unless you're going to write AP Style, it serves no purpose that Business Writing doesn't already fill.
I'd like to pitch my graphics classes, but beyond one lesson from a 200-level graphics class -- readability trumps all other goals in graphic design -- I really didn't learn anything that wasn't easily topped by most mediocre Photoshop tutorials.
So, that's my pitch: learn the hell out of Business Writing and never forget it.
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Re-familiarizing myself with Visual BASIC .NET
Monday, December 15, 2008, 1:14 AM
Other Stuff by John
First off, yes, I know I am a hardcore LAMP stack pimp. If there's a job to put together with LAMP, I'll do it that way.
Well, this particular job, integrating the brick and mortar retail side with the web store so that the inventory is one piece, only employs the MySQL part of the LAMP stack. LAMP just doesn't integrate very well with thermal receipt printers, cash drawer kickouts, scan guns and all the other toys it takes to scan a UPC, reduce inventory and print a receipt. Of course, I am madly in love with MySQL. MySQL is arguably the best database ever for quick and dirty solutions.
So, I decided to dust off some Visual BASIC for the first time in a couple years. Now, my initial survey of potential solutions made me realize something quick: however awesome my old copy of VB6 is, it is out-dated. So, I bit the bullet and got a copy of Visual Studio 2005 (acquiring older versions tends to be cost-effective; for example, new versions of Photoshop offer very little if any any bang for the many, many bucks you spend -- any version from PS6 up will do).
My primary motivation in finally moving to .NET was driven by the fact that the means of connecting MySQL to VB.NET are miles easier and more trustworthy than the means for connecting to VB6. Not the least of which, the main plugin is distributed by Sun.
In my rundown of problems with the connector, nothing was too difficult.
I have to admit, I found the incompatibility between non-query and querying SQL connections a tiny bit obnoxious. Obviously, doing the majority of my coding with PHP, it's a bit foreign to me to have to drop a connection, re-establish it, and then proceed simply because the type of SQL statement I wish to handle has gone from a SELECT to an UPDATE or and INSERT.
I know PHP is arguably the most forgiving programming language since QBASIC, but it still seems a little cumbersome to have to trash a connection and re-establish it like so:
conn.Open()
SQL = 'UPDATE sizes SET qty = qty +1 WHERE id='' & qry & '' LIMIT 1'
myCommand.CommandText = SQL
myCommand.ExecuteNonQuery()
Whatever the case, that's how it happens. In VB.NET, you gotta can your MySQL connection from your SELECT statement and start a new one before you can proceed with your UPDATE or INSERT. It's lame.
But, truth be told, you can be lame all you want as long as you're consistent. And VB.NET, for all its flaws, is consistent.
The other big item that annoyed me was the printer issue transitting from VB6 to VB.NET.
First off, let me say I completely understand Microsoft's motivations in trying to imrpove Visual BASIC's printer interaction. VB6 required that you dig deep into the system calls to accomplish anything beyond sending some text to the primary printer. And, of course, the primary appeal of Visual BASIC is rapid application development. Dicking around with system hooks isn't RAD. Not by a long shot.
That said, I don't understand the absence of reverse compatibility with the basic VB6 printer command:
Printer.EndDoc()
This was brain-dead easy to implement. And the vast majority of VB apps do not require advanced printing functions.
To Microsoft's credit, they did make it easy to shoehorn a solution in, using the Visual BASIC Power Packs. With a bit of code:
At the way beginning of your form's code:
Printer.Print('Whatever')
Printer.EndDoc()
Beyond that, once I shook off a little rust and learned a few quirks worth of difference between VB.NET and VB6, I was off and flying with my point-of-sale software. It now pulls names and prices and reduces or adds stock all in conjunction with the input from the scan gun. It kicks out a nicely formatted receipt to the thermal printer, which in its own turn kicks out the cash drawer.
It really is just that damned easy.
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Coping with the USPS outage
Thursday, December 11, 2008, 3:24 AM
Business by John
Nothing against the general notion of applications failing elegantly, but screw that!
We've started compiling and caching postal rates server side. Does that compound the problem for the USPS? Probably.
First, any orders that get a clean postage quote, those quotes go right in the DB for later re-use. Second, when the system can punch one through, it is sneaking a few spare quotes for random weights to random ZIP codes.
Yeah, that's right -- I'm cheating!
Right now I don't care. I have one goal: get through February without having to eat shit because the post office can't do its job.
Third party APIs
I've read a few articles about the USPS outage, and one recurring dumb thought people keep posting is a sort of "depending on third party APIs is dumb" meme.
Sure, I understand that any dependence on a third-party API is an invitation to trouble. But, really, isn't the entire concept of a postal system sort of a third-party app? Aren't you kinda depending on them to do a lot of things?
Beyond the quote itself, you depend on the USPS to:
1. Show the hell up.
2. Take the package.
3. Transport the package to some place far beyond the horizon.
4. Through multiple way points transfer the package to said far-off place.
5. Show the hell up there.
6. Not break too many of your packages while repeating this process relentlessly six days a week, every week, every year.
I've read a few discussions about the dependency aspect of the Webtools API, and I think the sort of down-my-nose-at-you view some programmers have about third-party APIs displays complete ignorance of the facts on the ground when it comes to shipping.
Most important fact: the process is entirely third-party after you slap some packing tape on the box and hand it to some dude wearing a blue uniform.
And, yeah, at most small businesses you're going to know said blue uniform guy, thereby providing a bit of a buffer against the third-partiness of it all.
But, the underpinning flaw in the logic of 'don't depend on third part APIs' is that an interconnected society engaged in global trade is nothing but several billion third parties constantly interfacing in the vague promise of survival, some return and mayeba little happiness.
To act as if one fairly minor quote system is really the linchpin in this is to sort of ignore the other 99% of the process.
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Welcome!
Wonder where to start with your web design business?
This blog follows along with my efforts to build and grow a website design business, Pro Content and Design.
The goal of this blog is to fill in blanks that may be empty as you get your business rolling.
This blog, particularly the source code section, is not intended for beginners. If you are not comfortable with databases, Ajax, DOM objects and other advanced methods, I strongly suggest you go take a look over at W3 Schools before even reading -- let alone tinkering with -- any of the code here.
I hope this blog has some value to web designers as they attempt to get their businesses going.
Good luck, and happy reading.
Thank you,
John Crawford
Pro Content and Design
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