Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/19/11

They say that there are cultural and societal factors that influence a persons decision to pirate software. China is frequently used as an example, due to the cultural feelings of segregation from their authority figures. However, have any of these researchers studied the cultural impact of their own culture? Everyone's always interested in other countries, but never their own.

In Europe and North America, the common excuse for piracy is "because the game is too expensive." But they don't actually have to play the game at all. It's a conscious decision, but they choose to break the law. I think people use this excuse because they really don't understand the underlying reason WHY they are pirating in the first place.. without deep introspection, it's just the best answer that makes the most logical sense.

The reason people pirate is because it's easy. And you have been trained since birth to always take the easy path. In fact, the same people who tell you it's acceptable to pirate are the same ones who punish you for pirating.

* Our society encourages over consumption, self entitlement, and excess.
* Music encourages us to take the path of least resistance. Life is easy, do whatever you want, do what makes you feel good, always take the easy route.
* Movies, books, TV, and advertising (Nike's "Just Do It") all tell us the same thing.
* You're beautiful, so you don't need to work hard for anything in your life and everything should be handed to you.
* Educational and school systems have been systematically manipulated to make it easier for students to advance in grade. These changes were made due to the laziness of teachers and parents, neither of them want to put in any hard work to fix the student.
* Television raises our kids because it's hard work to play with and raise them ourselves. This is the same television that also bombards us with messages of easy living and avoiding hard work.
* Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs to make life easier.
* You don't need to work out or even word hard to lose weight, just use this easy exercise device or eat this pill.
* Laws are relaxed to make it easier on justice and enforcement systems.
* Video games are given difficulty levels to make it easier for certain people.
* Video games have built in cheat codes to make the game easier. Game developers leave these cheat codes in, and encourage players to take the easy path.
* Kids shows tell children to relax, have fun, enjoy life, do whatever you feel like.. but don't work hard.
* Kids shows also teach that it's perfectly acceptable to copy someone's work or art. "It's okay to copy, because that makes it extra special."
* More increases to social assistance; let's help even more people who don't want to work.
* Tools are created not to make a job more efficient, but rather to make it easier for the worker.
* Blizzard constantly nerfs World of Warcraft to make it easier for more players. It's too hard for them boo hoo :(
* It's so common everywhere else that the term "nerf" has entered mainstream language.
* Our society idolizes people like Mark Zuckerberg for theft and lack of work. More and more people want to be like him.. who needs an education or work hard when you just take the easy way out and steal it from someone else who worked hard? Fictional and non-fictional gangsters are idolized in the same way.
* Television and film glamorizes self entitlement, being lazy, and doing everything as easy as possible.
* There are popular books on how to marry rich and make your life easier.
* Lotteries, gambling, fortune telling, horoscopes, mediums, etc.
* Illegal drugs are an escape from reality. In order to make your life easier, you actually make it worse.
* We're taught to take credit for other people's work. That's just how the corporate game works after all.
* We're taught that if it's too hard then just give up.

Steam is a very good example of how making something easy has reduced piracy.

I wonder if any of these researchers have studied piracy within hard working families? I can tell you one thing; when you come from a hard working family, you're taught to earn your keep and nothing comes free. When piracy does happen, it's usually rare or due to ignorance.

Here's what I see;

You want to imprison or punish me for pirating.. but, I'm just the way you made me. And then right after you punish me, you tell me it's okay to do it again and again.

Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/13/11

I have no idea how many viewers the show has, nor do I even know where to go to find that kind of information. I've also only watched the first episode, but I figured it set the pace for the rest of the season.

In order to determine the success of a show, I simply watch torrent traffic. I find that torrent activity is a huge reveal on the popularity and potential success of TV shows, films, games, and any other form of entertainment. And right now, The Nine Lives of Chloe King is not doing very well at all.. even when it's free and easy to download, no one wants to watch it.

When the cancellation announcement does come, I'm sure you'll also see many online publications exploiting the "Nine Lives" title as humor. It's just like the ever predictable "fail to the king baby" DNF jokes after the reviews came out.

While I'm on this subject, if you have the skill and ever wanted a highly successful web app, you should look into a torrent traffic aggregator. Nothing that actually links to torrents, but rather captures historical torrent traffic details (seeders, leechers, time/date) on a daily basis. Torrent traffic is great way of measuring potential success of TV shows especially. If NetFlix incorporated newer streaming TV shows, it would also be a great source of predicting success.

Once you've established some historical data, it makes it much easier to determine a scoring system for each TV show, game, or film. If you want to get fancy, you could also include ratings or reviews, how many people rated the item (more important than the actual rating itself), twitter chatter (are people talking about it?), and miscellaneous comments made about the show.

Not only would this be interesting for viewers, but this data would also prove to be highly valuable for the media networks, producers, and associated management teams. This even has the potential be a high performing paid service.

Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/12/11

I sort of wish I had created a blog before the last episode of Mentalist's Season 3. I had thought it was obvious that Craig O'Laughlin was working for Red John since he was brought into the show just before Todd Johnson was burned in that holding cell and then it was fully confirmed when he demonstrated no care for Grace's safety. There's still a lot left to theorize about though. :)

There are three things that stood out in the final season.

* The first is that things are getting really weird for J.J. LaRoche. He acts all suspicious, it appears that he hands off the cuff-keys (or a pick lock) to that terrorist (Gupta), then he acts all nervous like he's going to do something bad, and then suddenly Gupta is killed in the backseat of the car. LaRoche says, "He tried to escape, he went for a gun, I had no choice." Even though he never moved in the car, and the only closest gun was on the police officer sitting next to him. His holster, however, was on the right side of his body meaning that Gupta would have had to lean on top of him, reach over to the other side of the car, and try to unholster the gun.. but he never actually moved. I don't know how they could have made this more obvious that LaRoche didn't want him questioned about his connection to Red John.

I guess it makes sense that the writers rushed this so soon. If Gupta had suddenly been killed in Season 4 in another holding cell, then everyone would know that R.J. is still alive. But, they want everyone to think RJ is dead since he'll be making a "surprise return" later in Season 4.

The writers are trying to do too many things though, and they're just confusing the plot. It's really just getting silly now too; LaRoche frames Hightower, Hightower goes into hiding, suddenly RJ and all of this friends want Hightower killed even though she doesn't know anything. Now that Craig is dead and revealed to be the mole, I guess Hightower doesn't need to be in hiding any more and LaRoche presumably won't be suspected to be the mole anymore.

* The second thing that stood out is the "red shirt guy" in the final scene between Patrick Jane (PJ) and Red John (RJ).

Here's a video link to the scene I'm talking about: [LINK]

What's interesting about this is the scene where PJ stands up. The "red shirt guy" stands up and walks away at the same time. There is also a lot of strange hesitance when first standing up (gets up and down then up) as though we was waiting for the exact moment to stand up. Almost as if the director instructed him specifically what to do.

Second, watch all of the extras. It always fun just to watch all of the extras instead of the main actors. They walk back and forth and keep circling in the mall (before RJ shows up) and the scene over and over. Throughout the entire episode, the "red shirt guy" only makes this one appearance and he's not reused anywhere else. How very odd..

Third, the entire scene was built around the proximity of "red shirt guy" to RJ. "Red shirt guy" first entered the scene and sat down before RJ. Now, either the scene was initially setup wrong or the "red shirt guy" was added last minute. The two tables between the "red shirt guy" and RJ were moved very close together for that one shot and it's purpose was not to get a cleaner picture. Even their chairs were accidentally setup wrong during the relocation. "Red shirt guy" went from 2 chairs to 3 chairs space totally different, and RJ went from 3 chairs to 2 chairs.

I might be over analyzing this, but it appears that the scene was intentionally setup to bring the two guys very close together and the "red shirt guy" received special instructions from the director.

Since there was no need to ever move him in the first place, he's either there with purpose (another friend of Red John), he's a red herring (which means they have plans for more RJ in the future) or he's just a really bad extra.

* The third and final thing that stood out was the conversation between PJ and RJ.

This was an example of another contrived and unrealistic situation created by the writers. PJ is supposed to be a smart man, and yet he never actually ask for real proof proof that this man indeed RJ.

PJ would have asked a very specific question that only RJ would know. Instead, he just says "I don't know that you really are Red John" and then he provides information that the real RJ could have told him to say, just like everything else he's said until this point.

Red John is retired and he's all about manipulating people from a distance, never being directly involved or following people, and having them do his dirty work for him. Many of the "newer" Red John cases are probably just his friends following very specific instructions.

In order to receive real proof, PJ would have asked something specific. "That's all well and good, but what were they wearing? What music was playing? Oh, so you remember every smell with great detail.. but you don't remember what they were wearing or anything else?"

Seeing as how everything was very rushed in this episode, it's no surprise that the writers screwed the pooch on this scene and ended up with lazy and unimaginative writing. They practically screamed that this guy was not RJ.

I wonder if they'll remember to fully investigate the deceased (fake RJ) in the next season. The first couple episodes might just focus on PJ in jail awaiting trial (maybe even solving crimes while in prison), but RJ did have a gun after all and even though there were security cameras in the mall, PJ could have easily walked into a blind spot and just claim that RJ pulled a gun on him first and he simply acted in self defense. There are a ton of ways non-clever writers can write him out of his predicament.