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The Clubies

This is my own award program, designed to identify the newbies to clues in their own specific field.

It's not an annual award.

It's not a good thing.

It's just some venting over numerous issues I've been suppressing over the last [insert given time span]. It's designed to those who refuse to surrender to - often even acknowledge - reality. Sometimes that's brave: fighting the good fight et al; sometimes its misdirected effort. Yes, history will tell. That's for historians.

And the Clubie (?) Goes To:

• The RIAA: Get over it folks, the business model has changed. While I agree that Napster, Kazaa and other P2P (or whatever) Net delivery systems can be what I consider stealing, I don't appreciated the DRM systems that treat everyone as pirates. Example: I bought a CD. I can play it on my CD player (my stereo's); I cannot play it on my computer (hooked up to the Internet or not; it may be my only "stereo system"). That's just one example; there are many. As a writer/photographer, I understand - and am unsettled - by the whole digital way of doing things. But, while it erodes some old rights, it creates new opportunities. Right now, the RIAA is the maker of buggy whips who refuses to see the auto - or wants to tax it out of exisitence. The buggy whip industry died; some buggy whip makers adapted. Bad for the industry; agreed. So was the ocean-going ships to American Indians (for example). It happened. Hurt many. Helped many. Cannot legislate it out of existence/pretend it is not inevitable. That's the cluebie part.


• MPAA: All that separates the MPAA from the RIAA (I hope I have the acronyms correct) is bandwidth, which will be here shortly. Soon, a movie will download as fast as an MP3. Again, get over it: This is reality. And people will pirate; others will just want to transfer from home machine to their laptop for personal use. Adapt or die. This is a business model change, not just some black hats tossing pranks.


• Cell phone companies (connectivity): When are they going to learn form the well-established Internet example? People want: Connectivity with all (not just the own network for pics and cheap calls, for example); flat rate. No calculations; no waiting until 7 or 9 to call; no worries about sending your Mom a baby pic because she may have changed providers.....


• Cell phone companies (phones): When ya get the whole "I can actually use the phone well for speaking" concept down, well, then give me more features. Not before (yes, I win a Cluebie for not understanding/not agreeing with the market...)


• ISPs: Comcast just updated its download speed - for no fee - but the upload speed is capped at a very low rate. Why? There is dark fiber all over the place; make full, non-metered user a selling point. Also, Comcast has - in some reported cases - told users to cut back usage...without telling same users what the cap was. Huh?


• IM: As in Instant Messenging tools. This is another example of throw-back pre-Web silliness, when a lack of inoperability at least made sense: Since you were dialing into, for example, Prodigy's server, you could only e-mail other Prodigy users - not, for example, CompuServe users. As the two companies' servers didn't talk to each other. As SMTP grew and the Web connected all, this went away. Except for IM tools. Sure, I can IM anyone anywhere - using a tool tacked on top the Internet Protocol - in the world, but only if they also have the same IM (AOL, MSN, Yahoo....) tool. That's so stupid; it's like saying I can call anyone in the world...as long as they have the same brand phone or phone provider that I do. IM is a tool that is designed to facilitate communication (the M = "messenger", right?), yet it is explicitly designed to restrict any communications to one maker's tools. That is so assinine and Internet-phobic that it's hard to really comment clearly on it.

Oh, plenty more to come, but some things seems so silly to me so often...