The New Type of Thief

So there's this article on how Avatar broke all Blu-Ray sales records... and also pirating sales records.

Tom's Hardware article

Now, there's a strange and disconcerting trend among many of the savvy PC users these days. Put simply, they have an entitlement complex. They reason that if they don't like the product (whether it be movies, music, game, software), they shouldn't have to pay for it. And the only way they would know before they purchase that product... is to pirate it. In some twisted way, they justify it in their minds.

What a load of crap. Perhaps I'm taking more offense at this type of attitude than usual because soon, I will be part of the group of people that produce these things, as well as consume them. And it's going to hurt people like me, and many of my friends. That's firstly.

As for dismantling the flawed logic these self-centered geeks have, it's simple: we can use any other type of product for this example, so let's use food. By their logic, one should be able to walk into any restaurant, and eat for free. And if at the end of their entire meal, if they didn't think the meal was worth the price listed, they could simply walk out the door without paying. If they somehow thought it was good enough, they would pay. Does this in any way sound reasonable? What about clothing ("it didn't get me enough dates, I don't think i'm going to pay for this shirt"), jewelry ("this didn't have the luster I thought it would, I'll just keep it for free"), anything.

Pirating is stealing. It's simple as that. Why these people have an easier time justifying it is because it's all so out of sight, out of mind. They download the media, and it's there. It doesn't feel like stealing to them. It's the same thing as walking into a local Best Buy, picking up a few movies, putting them under your shirt, and walking out the door. And maybe out of the 4 movies they steal, if they would like 1... would they really walk back to the store the next day, and say, "Hey I stole this movie yesterday, and it was actually pretty good. So, here's the money. Thanks!"

It's unbelievable. Of course, I'm sure everyone at one point or another has been tempted, or even done a little downloading of a song or two. But the normal person would feel at least some kind of remorse for it. It's the community of people with this twisted sense of entitlement that bother me. I mean, I have downloaded stuff, but it's pretty much TV show episode that I have missed, something I can see for free on Hulu or on television. And even then, I sometimes feel bad. I don't understand how these people continue not only to do what they do, but then spout this nonsense as if they have a right to do it.

All black is depressing

I really should change the color scheme of this blog.

Journal - THG APR 5 Article

Article -- Apple Moves Over 300,000 iPads on Launch Day

I was walking from WonderCon in the Moscone center in San Francisco over the weekend, and wondered at this line that was formed downtown. As I got closer, I realized that this long line out the door of this store was extending from the Apple store, and it hit me that these people were waiting to buy the iPad.

Now, I do admit that I'm pretty biased against Apple in general, but that's for another story. Aside from that, even looking at this in as neutral a light as I possibly can, I still cannot see how this new toy can garner this much attention. Is it the first tablet computer ever created? No. Does it factor in new hardware and add functionality in a new way? No. Can it even make phone calls? No. There are so many No's in my own list of what it couldn't do, that I figured I should have made a shorter mental list of what it could do.

What I could only assume is all these people in line were the opposite of me; these people loved Apple and would buy almost anything Apple made. Even with that broken logic, I can't accept it. The iPad is ugly. Its bezel is big, an eyesore. The entire thing really doesn't have any aesthetic appeal, unlike it's smaller and sleeker iPod / iPhone brethren. The thing just looks like an oversized digital photo frame. And really, it doesn't do all that much more than the photo frames.

So the company manages to move 300 thousand of these useless things in a day. Well, that's remarkable that you could sell that many of these things, at half a grand each, that nobody really needs. That, I think, is the real story here. The American endless hunger for pointless consumption.