 |
29 January 2003 |
|
25 January 2003 |
Big Music Labels Dying
Very interesting commentary.
In summary, 75% of music are published by the big 5 record labels and
their subsidaries. Last year all of them were either losing money or
barely broke even. They blamed music privacy and file sharing. We
think otherwise.
This commentary pointed out something new to me. Since earlier 90s all the music labels were pushing those boy
bands and girlie bands to teens. None of these bands lasted more than
a few albums and music quality were generally rather poor. They could
not keep those fans as the fans grew up, and were replaced by other
boy bands and girlie bands, which would attract teens then, but could
not attract the now grown-up fans. Fans who have grown up stopped
buying music, or buy a lot less music than before. The cycle
continues, and now there is a whole generation of 20-30s who don't
listen to much music. Every few years a new generation joins this
class of non-consumers. The situation would only get worse. They say the big labels either radically change their business model, or go out of business, within 5 years.
The situation in Hong Kong for Canto Pop isn't much better. The most successful record companies such as EEG actually act as managers for their artists, and take a big cut from every dollar their artists earn, e.g. TV adverts, product promotion, concerts and shows, etc. I discussed this with a friend, who told me that albums don't sell all that well these days, as a lot of fans just buy cheap pirate copies. It's tough being an artist.
9:16:04 AM 
|
|
|
23 January 2003 |
The Shutdown Yesterday
The housing estate I live in has had its penta-annual electricity check yesterday. No electricity for most of the day, so my computers were all shut down in the morning before I left the house.
Well it is all back to normal now. I hope.
8:16:37 AM
|
|
Po's Gig is Back
Here.
For US$40/HK$320 a year, Radio is very good value. Folks probably pay more for 40MB of web space alone. It really is a very good way to host a weblog.
8:06:16 AM
|
|
|
19 January 2003 |
Fight Spam
Some very smart people met up on fighting spam. Slashdot, as usual, has a follow-up This comment is most interesting. I use a few DNSBLs, and althou this blocks most of the spam houses from my mail server, there are quite a few false positives (the so called collaterial damage). I use services from godaddy and paypal, and both are blocked from my mail server because their IP addresses appear in some of these DNSBLs, meaning that I would have to manually put their mail servers into my accept list before I could receive email from them, and I won't know about such rejects until I look into my maillog.
Something worth investigating.
10:46:24 PM
|
|
|
16 January 2003 |
Collateral Damage?
We snapshooters shoot each other. A lot. We also share our pictures. Roy shot Po awhile a go, at a canteen we visit often, and posted the picture on news://news.freeforum.org/interest.photography. Normally this would be total unremarkable.
However, a loser of the name passer-by-02 stole the picture, put a mosaic on Po's face, re-posted the picture onto a web bulletin board, claimed to be the person in the photo and challenged others to break the mosaic. It seemed that this loser also happened to be Public Enemy No. 1(TM), and his post created a lot of responses. The mosaic was broken in no time, and the original picture of Po was reposted. Then other losers started doing the Photoshop jobs and put Po's face on foul things.
Normally this wouldn't worry Po or Roy a bit. However, rumours had it that quite a few folks wanted to get hold of this passer-by-02 to settle some odds. Po was in no mood to settle any odds on behalf of this passer-by-02, so he made an announcement to clarify that passer-by-02 stole the picture, which was taken by Roy, from the freeforum newsgroup, and that he was not passer-by-02. Stupid people are stubborn. Let's say the community of passer-by-02-alikes were so stupid and not convinced. You have to give them credit thou that they came up with the theory that this passer-by-02 had a split personality, and was acting as passer-by-02 and Po at the same time.
Po contacted the operator of the web bulletin board, who agreed to meet Po and Roy at the Police Station, but did not show up, and could not be contacted again. Very fishy I think you would all agree.
The Station Sargent at YT Police Station was very friendly and explained the situation to Po and company from the Police's point of view.
Things have since quiet down. The crowns who wanted to get at passer-by-02 apologized (sort-of) to Po on the web bulletin board. Po is however still pissed off about this passer-by-02 roach. We are meeting tomorrow evening at the canteen to discuss this mess and generally be amused at Po's expenses.
I am classifying this under Social Restructuring, because the behaviour of passer-by-02 and his "friends" were just so appalling. If this is indeed the norm of the younger generation, Hong Kong has no future.
5:31:15 PM
|
|
|
12 January 2003 |
The Important Character Jar-Jaromir in The Return of the Kind
Funny.
9:14:34 PM
|
|
|
04 January 2003 |
|
25 December 2002 |
Christmas Day
The Lady has got the flu. It's her second year in a row that she can't make Christmas service. Oh well.
Nice chat with the family during dinner. I mentioned that we didn't hear news of congested border control points this time around like we used to during long holidays. Dad thinks it's because people are too poor to go anywhere, and are pretty much stuck in Hong Kong over the holiday. Mike was out last nite, and thinks that folks didn't know what to do last nite as they had no money, and as a result hanged around TST doing just... hanging around. Not a good sign.
This is funny. Highly recommended light reading.
Can't wait to go see Harry Porter and the Chamber of Secret. It's only $30 for a ticket at Tuen Mun Cinema. Probably going tomorrow. Cool.
Just received an email from Lucy and Richard. They are having an excellent time in Maldives. I do envy them.
With Jasper around, I am having 2nd, 3rd and 4th thoughts about going away, even to ZS. Sigh.
11:48:42 PM
|
|
|
22 September 2002 |
Many Health Supplements to be Banned in UK. While in the US, Microsoft is still fighting off the dissenting States over remedies for its antitrust violations, a far more sinister oligopoly is working in the EU and internationally to strangle its competition - and not only are the EU governments not acting to stop it, the European Parliament is actually a key, if unwitting (half-asleep?), instrument of this assault on consumer rights and public health. You've heard of the War on (Some) Drugs... well this is a War on Alternative Remedies and Supplements. [kuro5hin.org]
This is bad news for the bio-tech-wannabes companies in Hong Kong, who rely on concepts of researches into Chinese herbal medicines. The thing is the majority of resulting products will be herbal extracts, i.e. food supplements, rather than drugs. It looks like one big market will be gone for these companies.
So much for the "Chinese-medicine Port" concept of TGW's government.
11:48:34 AM
|
|
|
21 September 2002 |
I was at the City Hall earlier today, and saw a poster for this. No sh*t.
Our uni mate Andy is a great fan of marching bands. When I was in London we were involved in the local ATC, and he was the bandmaster. One of the kids in the marching band who played the clarinet used to shake and wave his upper body while he was marching. It was like Jack the Piper, and we had a good laugh of it. I still think it's pretty funny.
Oh the good old times.
1:34:51 AM
|
|
|
13 September 2002 |
With all the news about the 911 anniversary and about the pressure of Muslims all over the Western world, I suddenly think of Barda, on my way home today.
Barda was a course mate at university. He was born in Pakistan and grew up in Bradford, U.K. where there has always been a big Pakistanian community (not to mention recent racial disturbances.) Barda's father taught at the University of Bradford at the time. For no good reasons we were all rather rotten to him. Somehow I still remember him as the beer-drinking, ham-eating, cigarette-smoking self-proclaimed Muslim who also refused to practice fasting (no food during the day in the holy month). I imagine he would have been getting lots of shit since 911. I don't think anyone from the course kept contact with him. I wish him well.
Yes by the way I am quite fed up with all the mentioning of 911.
10:33:57 PM
|
|
|
16 June 2002 |
Tourist-friendly London
There is a reason why London is one of the most tourist-friendly cities in the world. Doc seems to be
enjoying it. I am talking about this.
Broadband Internet in Hong Kong is cheaper than anywhere else in the world. 802.11b equipment are selling like hotcats in Hong Kong. Yet of today I have still not heard of any local community wireless network efforts. Is it because we just don't stay outdoor for very long, and would rather stay in air-con'ed buildings?
12:21:53 AM
|
|
|
10 June 2002 |
It's cheaper on a CD!
An
article/weblog on physical object vs online distribution.
When I wanted to install Mozilla on my old man's computer (no broadband access, only 56K dial-up), the solution was so obvious: download it to one of my computers via broadband, and burn a CD. The blank CD costs about HK$1.5. Okay I waited about 10 minutes for the CD to burn, but that was all. Couldn't imageine how I would do it otherwise.
3:42:45 PM
|
|
|
09 June 2002 |
I send this in order to have your comment.
Good read
about the fun that comes with Windows viruses.
8:28:18 AM
|
|
|
30 May 2002 |
Star War funny. Enjoy.
7:55:52 AM
|
|
|
04 May 2002 |
Went to see the SpiderMan movie last nite with the Lady. We both loved it. Excellent. There is a Slashdot
review here.
8:51:03 AM
|
|
|
03 May 2002 |
Good argument for Open software. Blind faith on a black box is not the way to go for high reliability.
6:21:45 AM
|
|
|
02 May 2002 |
A possible
solution to spam from mainland China.
8:36:18 PM
|
|
|
06 April 2002 |
Sega doing Palm Games
Here. Download the trial games http://pda.sega.co.jp/index-e.html. Don't mind the poor English on Sega's site.
Be warned, these games only work on colour Palms, and rumoured to crash quite a bit. Hotsync your Palm before installation!
7:10:16 AM
|
|
|
05 April 2002 |
Read about the Cyberport on the dead tree version of SCMP. Response for the project was "lukewarm". From the article, it appears that the rent is about HK$10 per sq ft, and management fee is HK$5 per sq ft. Considering that the Cyberport is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, where other supporting infrastructure is seriously lacking, no wonder why. The SAR government is deeply involved in this project. Again, one of those sad plans and sad projects. Should have seen some head rollings, but as usual our CE is a nice guy.
The way I see it, it's another sign of social decline. I am tempted to open a new category called "Social Restructuring" for this sort of things.
11:55:21 AM
|
|
I have not written lately. Been busy doing other things. I even missed the excellent tutorial on macro photography the fine folks at NPC did.
A weblog is supposed to be a continuous journal. The theory is that the weblogger would be putting all thoughts and idea along the day. This is obviously not happening with this one you are reading. I average about a few entries each week. It's not that I have been idle. In fact, normally I only find time to sit down and do the writing when I have some spare time and free from other engagements.
I did consider doing the weblogging on my Palm. It works, as previously demonstrated on this site. I even found a place where they are selling a Palm III keyboard for HK$600, which is a reasonable deal. The problem is that I have some doubts about this investment. The Palm III form factor is near obsolete. This Palm III keyboard will only fit my Palm IIIx and the Handera 330. In view of the existing Palm PDAs Sony have been bringing out, I have doubts as to whether the replacement for my trusty IIIx will be a Handera, and I do not intend to replace it unless it is somehow destroyed. So the IIIx keyboard is likely to be useless for the replacement machine, and I'd have to get a new keyboard at a higher price.
(Which reminds me to do a HotSync for my IIIx.)
Anyway, weblogging with my IIIx is unlikely to happen.
The iBook is too big for lugging around for weblogging purposes. I am planning to buy a Powerbook for real work anyway, and I don't want to take this HK$30K machine with me everywhere.
I checked out a very portable IBM Thinkpad at the PCCW shop. It's nice looking, battery life is reasonable (nowhere near the battery life of Mac portables thou), and the price is okay, but there is only one problem: the keyboard is very small. I couldn't touch-type on it.
I think the keyboard of Sony Picturebooks are bigger, but they are also expensive and I am not sure I would like their tiny screens.
Oh well. The search goes on.
11:44:07 AM
|
|
|
25 March 2002 |
Got my Jabber server running again. The Windoz client I am using is quite nice. There are a whole bunch of them.
It's a bit like ICQ, only you don't (yet) get any spam messages and it's all Free Software. My Windoz client winjab does Chinese reasonably well.
If you like to try it out, connect your Jabber client to rollingegg.net, and open an account.
12:03:30 AM
|
|
|
21 March 2002 |
|
17 March 2002 |
Couldn't stop laughing about this.
11:26:58 PM
|
|
Did tons of writing and planning for some forthcoming presentations/sales pitches. Finished a BIG5 beautifier function/procedure for my WebCM package (well not quite finished, I had it working in python, have ported the code to PHP, but have no way to test it. Maybe I really should go buy that Apple TiBook.)
Generally speaking, good progress over the last couple of days. With no distractions, I work better.
Went to this place called Cafe E.S. Kimo for lunch. I have been off my daily routine of latte for the last few days. Had one there. It was reasonable. Cream on top was too thick, but that I could live with. RMB18 each, I don't suppose they sell a lot of those.
Quite a few sites have been blocked off by the national proxy servers, so I couldn't read about Paddy Ashdown vs Milosevic on the BBC website. I tried to setup an ssh tunnel use my server at home as a proxy, but couldn't get it to work. I am not going to spend more than half an hour of my precious time to fiddle with it, so maybe next time. I am quite annoyed.
Time to go for some food. Went to the resident's club last nite. Very quite, but food was okay. It's also gone much cheaper than before. It used to cost more to eat there than to eat out in town plus the taxi fare. Pity they have also stopped doing the buffets.
8:43:41 PM
|
|
|
14 March 2002 |
|
12 March 2002 |
ICQ hack theories flood into Vulture Central. Walking on deathrow [The Register]
You have been warned.
I stopped using ICQ a few months ago. I didn't want a bloated program running in the background on my aged-PII laptop with only 192MB RAM. I also used to get no end of Uh-O's while I work.
I tried out a few Linux ICQ clients. None of them work particularly well, given that I need BIG5 encoding support (at least read if not write). So I gave up for good.
I have "Investigate Jabber" down on my todo list.
9:03:18 AM
|
|
So, Asimov actually died from AIDS. He died at a very old age thou. For the link-lazies, no he wasn't gay. He got AIDS from a blood transfusion.
1:02:06 AM
|
|
|
11 March 2002 |
|
06 March 2002 |
I was working in the sitting room a couple of nights ago on my laptop, and was tripped over by the ethernet cable and hurt my foot. No big damage done, but it could have been the Lady of the House who was hurt.
So I decided to go get myself some 802.11b equipment to get rid of those nasty long cables. Visited Connexions at Wanchai Computer Centre, which I highly recommend as knowledgeable no bull folks. Bought the Buffalo set (access point plus USB unit) and a PCMCIA card. On the box the Buffalo AP claimes to be able to serve as an radio ethernet bridge (which means a pair of them can be used to connect two separate wired LANs together, not that I'll have any use of this at the intended place of use, but I like the flexibility) and the price was okay. The USB unit is good for the Lady's laptop computer, and the PCMCIA card is of course for my laptop. The Buffulo card is believe to be identical to the Lucent card. It has a socket for plugging in aerials, which again, adds to the flexibility.
It all works pretty faultlessly, which I must say, is a rarity these days. It's very convenient, now that I can use my laptop computer anywhere in the flat (except in the kitchen. 802.11b signal penatration is not very good, and certainly couldn't go thru the few walls between the study and the kitchen.) It is not ideal thou, as my laptop is kinda old, and could only run on battery for about 1.5 hours.
It does get rid of the long ethernet cable that connects the Lady's computer in the sitting room to my network in the study, which is a Good Thing (TM).
At the moment I have the wireless network totally separated from my home network. This AP also acts as a broadband sharer, connecting my wireless-connected computers to the Internet via an ADSL modem, making use of my Netvigator broadband, which I use as a backup and is vastly under-utilized.
I am trying to redesign my network so that the wireless network is somehow connected to the home network. I could throw them all together into one subnet, but this is no good, as I don't feel like the data going through my network leak out out to the atmosphere. I would like the connections to be encrypted and secure, while at the same time I would also like to be able to offer Internet access to my neightbours. The built-in WEP encryption of my equipment has been proven to be no good, and there are tools around which would reveal the WEP encryption key after listening to a wireless network for a few hours. Something like IPSEC is needed.
I have seen articles that discussed this. O'Reilly Net has devoted a whole section on 802.11b technology. I'll post the links as I go through them.
11:37:09 PM
|
|
|
02 March 2002 |
© Copyright 2003 tin_the_fatty.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| January 2003 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
| |
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
| 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
| 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
| 19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
| 26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
|
| Dec Feb |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
