There exists lonesome wall which make customer service monkeys cry. It is so blank and sad truly.
The magnificent high group ruled we need special thing from you! We need your things that are sent in antique mail and are level and small. It is postcard yes! Not email no!
READ THIS: Send us a postcard! Every week, our customer service monkeys will choose their favorite, and the winner will receive a $50 gift certificate, appear on our website, and get mentioned in our newsletter. The only rule: entrants from outside the US aren't eligible for the gift certificate part of the prize. The address is below, and our IRL mailbox is excited!
When postman deliver your awesomeness to headquarters, monkeys pleased! Monkeys will affix message to blank wall for to fill it up!
The accumulation of postcard with your gorgeous nonsense we call it WALL OF AWESOME HAPPINESS!! and will cause us to be smiling rainbows.
Every week our customer service monkeys read your obedience and discuss awesomeness of every one. Most especially postcard receive $50 gift certificate of loving and as well posting on site and picture in our big email we send! We love it so much!
The rule: Postcard from outside U.S. cannot to win the monies and can win only love. (We do love outside U.S.!) Sorry please understand and cooperate for your safety.
Attention you!! We have special limited offer for a time: they are giving first 10 postmails into ThinkGeek office $25 gift certificates, or maybe super secret prize of stuff!
Fastest wins! Go send to here:
WALL OF AWESOME HAPPINESS!! c/o ThinkGeek 11216 Waples Mill Rd, Suite 100 Fairfax, VA 22030
Remmembering write your email address on your postmail! It will give us place to tell if you won.
Our blue faces require your awesomeness completely! Rush!
(Do not understand what is here? It is okay. Read this in a box.)
With an offer that reminds me of the OLPC "give 1, get 1" promotion (but hopefully without the delivery complaints), Digg is selling a Digg-branded shoe, made by TOMS Shoes. For those who haven't seen its commercials, TOMS Shoes has the catchy promise (called One for One) that for every pair of shoes it sells, it gives away a pair of new shoes to needy kids in developing countries.
This bit of marketing is brilliant because it ties together a nice "reason to buy" story with a physical good (the shoes), and the whole story promotes both Digg and TOMS Shoes. Eventually, I assume Digg and TOMS could also easily create a Threadless-like store for more custom shoes (instead of T-shirt designs). The current shoe design was created by a Digg employee, but it seems possible that Digg users could submit shoe designs of their own. And apparently, TOMS shoes sells T-shirts, too, so Digg users may get to Digg/Bury some T-Shirt designs someday as well.
Quite a few people have pointed to the story about a Swedish company that has trademarked The Pirate Bay logo, and plans to sell USB keys with the logo included. The company claims that this is fine because The Pirate Bay had not registered the trademark itself. In the meantime, some folks associated with The Pirate Bay are saying they're going to try to overturn the ruling.
I don't know how Swedish trademark law works, but at least in the US there is a concept of a "common law trademark," which is supposed to prevent others from registering a mark on a brand that someone else is using -- even if they haven't registered it. It would seem like quite a silly trademark law if the Swedish trademark law doesn't include anything like that.
As for those who think it's ironic or even hypocritical that The Pirate Bay guys are somewhat bothered by this, you need to understand a few things. First, they clearly state that they have no problem with anyone doing anything else with The Pirate Bay logo. So, if this company just wanted to sell those USB keys by itself, it could do so. The issue they have is with this company "locking up" the trademark so others can't use it. That seems entirely in support with what they stand for.
Separately, it's worth pointing out (yet again, because some people still get confused by this) that trademarks are wholly different beasts than copyrights or patents. Trademarks are not about protectionism, but about preventing consumer confusion over who actually made or offers a specific product. It's a very different concept.
Here in the US, there's an important legal battle going on over whether or not you can patent genes. Not surprisingly, we're very much against such a system, which gives a total monopoly to certain companies on doing certain types of genetic testing. It also makes no sense at all, as patents are supposed to be about promoting invention -- not finding something in nature that others can also find. Down in Australia, however, there's a similar debate going on, but in the legislative branch, rather than the judicial. Reader sinsi alerts us to the news of a recent panel discussion in Australia where a bunch of patent attorneys predicted the virtual collapse of the biotech industry in Australia if firms weren't able to patent genes.
This is, of course, ridiculous. First of all, much of the research on these things is often done via government and university funding -- and it's often done for reasons other than locking up a monopoly on the technique. Reasons such as helping people live better lives (*gasp* -- what a concept!). Or, more to the point, it's done so that firms can sell an actual product. If they have to compete in the marketplace, that's a good thing, as it pushes them to be more efficient and offer a better overall service, rather than just jacking up prices. And how do they offer a better overall service? Oh yeah, often by continuing to do more research and creating new breakthroughs.
These sorts of claims of industries collapsing are moral panics and folk devils put forth by patent attorneys who are really afraid that it's going to hurt their own business. There's simply no evidence at all that it harms the overall biomedical profession if they can't patent the finding of naturally occurring genes.
In this struggling economy one would think that high-end gaming computers were a thing of the past. Not so, according to the people over at Origin PC. They haverecently launched a couple of new high-end computers to make gaming enthusiastsdrool at the opportunity to own one.They are known as the Genesis Desktop and the EON18 [...]
So this is interesting. The folks at The Pirate Bay have shut down its tracker for good, and switched entirely to a distributed, decentralized system, called DHT. As others are noting, this is quite a milestone, but I actually wonder if it will also have legal implications. Basically, using such a distributed system takes The Pirate Bay even further out of the equation in terms of its role in the sharing of content, and in theory could impact the ruling against The Pirate Bay. Of course, the entertainment industry will say it doesn't matter, and the courts (who don't seem to understand these things very well) might not realize the difference, but it is meaningful in terms of how involved The Pirate Bay actually is in the activity that's happening.
But, of course, even if this makes no difference in how the courts view The Pirate Bay (as expected), it does show the inevitable trend of these things: making them ever more and more decentralized and harder to shut down. When the RIAA shut down Napster, what came out of it was even more decentralized and harder to stop. Now the same thing is happening with the attempted shut down of The Pirate Bay. Even if you don't like what sites like The Pirate Bay do, at some point you have to wonder what good it does to keep shutting down these offerings when all it does is drive people to the "next" offering that's even more difficult to stop? At some point, someone is going to get the message that you can't stop this stuff. So why not figure out a way to use it to your advantage?
After Alienware updated their m17x gaming laptop it was safe to assume that the m15x would get the same treatment. And with the Area-51 m17x becoming the M17x it was no surprise when the Area-51 m15x became the M15x.Now M15x has landed at Geek.com and above is a preview of the computer. It gives an [...]
crcb alerts us to the bizarre situation where the son (and heir to the copyrights) of poet Louis Zukofsky isn't just brandishing the copyrights against those trying to republish his works, but he seems to be demanding fees from anyone quoting his father or writing about him -- even academic dissertations. It doesn't appear as if Paul is doing this to protect a legacy or anything (if anything, it sounds like he's not a fan of his father), but he does want cold hard cash:
"I hardly give a damn what is said about my father (I am far more protective of my mother) as long as the name is spelled properly, and the fees are paid."
The full copyright notice is quite a doozy, where the son basically seems to think copyright law means he alone gets to determine what is acceptable and what is not -- and, for the most part, his view is that he doesn't want you ever quoting or discussing his father, but if you must, then he wants money. He also seems to think that fair use is as he defines it, rather than what the law actually says.
All Louis and Celia Zukofsky is still copyright, and will remain so for many many years. I own all of these copyrights, and they are my property, and I insist upon deriving income from that property. For those of you convinced that LZ would find my stance abhorrent, the truth is that he kept all copyrights (initially in his name) as he had the rather absurd idea that said copyrights would be sufficient to allow for the economic survival of my mother, and their son. My stance is congruent with that hope.
Despite what you may have been told, you may not use LZ's words as you see fit, as if you owned them, while you hide behind the rubric of "fair use". "Fair use" is a very-broadly defined doctrine, of which I take a very narrow interpretation, and I expect my views to be respected. We can therefore either more or less amicably work out the fees that I demand; you can remove all quotation; or we can turn the matter over to lawyers, this last solution being the worst of the three, but one which I will use if I need to enforce my rights.
Except that, no, fair use is somewhat broadly defined under the law, and just because Paul wants it narrowly defined, it does not follow that this is the case. As Paul's father, Louis Zukofsky once wrote: "The best way to find out about poetry is to read the poems." Apparently, Paul would like to make that a lot more difficult and a lot more expensive. And, yes, Paul, quoting that was fair use.
As you may recall from last month, UPS recently asked us to create a series of videos, where we explain some of the stuff we talk about here on Techdirt on a regular basis in under two minutes, using a whiteboard. The first video was about the economics of abundance and got a great response. The second video is now up, and it's an attempt to explain the Innovator's Dilemma, based on Clayton Christensen's must-read research. If you're unfamiliar with it, it explains how difficult it is for many companies to adapt to changing markets, and is a good framework for understanding both why some companies are so slow to adapt. More importantly, it provides a good system for thinking about your own company and understanding how to adapt and implement new ideas rapidly:
Again, with only two minutes, I had to simplify things down a bit, but hopefully it will kick off another good discussion on the innovator's dilemma and how to deal with it. We still have one more video to go, which I believe will be posted sometime next month. And, yes, once again (though, it should be obvious), UPS sponsored these videos, though we had free rein in creating the scripts -- which should be quite obvious as the topic is one we talk about here frequently enough.
Someone once told me that Viacom's top lawyer, Michael Fricklas, has been known to read Techdirt on occasion. I have no idea if this is true, but it still is interesting to watch him give a lecture to some Yale law students where he offers a somewhat nuanced position on copyright issues (thanks to JJ for being the first of many to forward the video to us), but which repeatedly seems to leave out certain pertinent facts:
He starts out by saying that he's a strong supporter of fair use, and doesn't like the idea of having to get licenses for creating new works -- but is concerned about the "exact copy" problem. So, basically he's in favor of fair use for creating new works, but not direct distribution.
He discusses copyright vs. free speech -- and insists that there's no "tension" between the two (despite many recent studies suggesting the exact opposite). Of course, he does a bit of a twist there, by saying that copyright is pro-free speech because it creates incentive for speech. The problem with this statement is that while that's the theory, the evidence for it is somewhat lacking. However, there is tremendous evidence of cases where copyright is used to stifle speech -- and of all the massive extensions and changes in copyright laws over the past 200 years, almost all have served to stifle more speech than they have encouraged.
He then trots out the industry's own numbers claiming how much copyright contributes to the economy, even though those numbers are based on a variety of questionable assumptions, including the idea that all content covered by copyright is only created because of copyright. Along those lines, he also credits copyright for things like the iPod and the Kindle, saying that no one's buying those devices just to look at them. This is correct -- but note the trick. He did not say that it was content that drove the iPod and the Kindle, but copyright. He's wrong. It's content. Not copyright.
He notes that some say that "unlicensed IP" might drive this innovation, but he favors "sustainable innovation" (as if anyone doesn't). And then he makes this odd statement:
"A more sustainable innovation is one where, if you make an investment, you have the opportunity to make a return."
Now, that's a great (by which we mean, useless) statement, because it's obviously true. Who would ever deny that? But it's a sneaky and disingenuous statement, because it implies something that's simply not true: that without copyright or without restrictive licensing, the investors do not have an opportunity to make a return. As we've shown over and over again, plenty of content creators who "free" their IP have not only made a return, but have made a better return than they did under older models that relied on copyright. But it's a sneaky trick that's often used by folks in this debate. You set up this strawman argument and then knock it down, despite the fact that no one ever made the argument, and you argue that something is fact (that you can't make a return) when it's empirically false. It's frustrating that this argument still gets made and people should really start calling the folks who make it out whenever they state such falsehoods.
Later, he talks about the "losses" from piracy, insisting that the findings come from a "sophisticated" analysis, not just from counting all downloads as lost sales. Of course, these numbers came from the same study process that led to some results that even the MPAA (of which Viacom is a major member) had to later admit were bogus. This is also the same "sophisticated analysis" that includes ripple effects in one direction only, so it's actually double, triple, quadruple, quintuple counting some numbers, while totally ignoring how those numbers actually help the industry in other ways. So, sorry if I don't take those loss numbers seriously, no matter how "sophisticated" he thinks they are. They're not. They're only "sophisticated" in how misleading they are.
He does have a short discussion on RealNetworks' RealDVD offering, which he implies enables piracy -- even as he admits he wants the functionality, where he could move a copy of a legally purchased DVD to his hard drive for backup or other viewing, but says his "concern" is that people would do this with Netflix DVDs. He believes that the problem with this is that RealNetworks had to break the encryption put in place by the studios. Notice, again, what Fricklas conveniently leaves out. First, he leaves out the fact that it is already legal for people to make backup copies of content they legally own -- but, thanks in part to Hollywood lobbying, Hollywood itself can block that right, simply by putting encryption on something and then saying that you can't circumvent it without breaking the law (thank you, DMCA anti-circumvention clause). He also leaves out (conveniently) the fact that RealDVD doesn't actually "break" the encryption and that the resulting copy still includes DRM that prevents copies. The fact that he's "concerned" about the Netflix model is of no consequence whatsoever. McDonalds is "concerned" about Burger King, but that doesn't give them a legal right to block them from being in business.
Then he pulls out the ever popular "$200 million movie" myth, which I thought was a favorite of NBC Universal, but I guess Viacom is going with it now as well. It's not a myth that there are movies that cost $200 million. The myth is that people want movies that cost that much. No one watching a movie cares how much it costs. They want good movies, no matter how much they cost. I'm sure people would like some $1 billion or $100 billion movies as well, but that doesn't mean we need to grant Viacom extra special legal privileges to make sure it can make a $1 billion or $100 billion movie profitably. People like good movies. Viacom wants to make profitable movies. We agree. But the $200 million number is meaningless. There are ways to make good movies for both less and more than $200 million and there are ways to make profitable movies even in the face of piracy. The claim that piracy undermines the $200 million movie, which is some sort of "necessity," is simply not supported.
On top of that, he tosses out the debunked claim that if something is "free" it means it's devalued. That's simply not true, no matter how many times people repeat it. If it were true, and the content had no value, no one would want it. Value and price are two separate things.
Then, he discusses the "Kanye West" MTV Video Awards "Imma let you finish..." example, by talking about how Viacom used various filtering tools to pull that clip off of various "unlicensed" user uploaded video sites. But he also talks about how they drove people to use the official Viacom clip, which allowed them to "participate in the benefit" of the video. Now, that's interesting, and it's great that they put their own clips up and made them embeddable. But, again, it's important to note what he left out. In forcing everyone to view the content through Viacom directly, it also increased Viacom's own cost in terms of bandwidth. The advantage of letting others help host and distribute the content is that it actually eases that cost.
His discussion on kicking people off the internet via a "three strikes" mechanism is getting much of the attention on other sites, because he mentions, totally in passing, that suing users "feels like bullying." This may sound like a big deal -- and certainly some other sites (and industry lawyers) are making it out like a big revelation, but it's not. The movie industry has never sued individuals for such things -- only the recording industry has. And even way back in the Jack Valenti days, he talked about why he didn't like the idea of suing individuals. So, this isn't a shift in positioning at all. Rather, it's a repeat of the new silly strategy of some in the industry to try to pretend that kicking people off the internet is "consumer relief." Not quite. Shooting someone in the leg instead of the head is certainly "better," but I doubt that the person shot in the leg considers it "relief."
Towards the end of that discussion, though, he makes another interesting statement, saying that: "there's no way to deal with this problem other than to move viewing into licensed contexts." Except, that's not true. There are other ways. It's called setting up a business model where people actually do have a reason to buy things, whether they view the content in a licensed or unlicensed manner. I recognize he's on the legal side, rather than the business side, but the idea that the "only" way to deal with piracy is to attack it, rather than embrace it, is a position that the industry long ago should have learned was a mistake.
His final point is discussing how DRM "enables new business models," and he more or less dismisses criticism of DRM as really just being criticism of "bad" DRM (of which there is plenty). However, what struck me, was how none of the "new business models" he described actually required DRM at all. You could do them all in some way entirely without DRM. All the DRM does is add restrictions. Of course, rather than adding restrictions, why doesn't the industry focus on employing new business models that give users more and make them want to buy, rather than trying to enforce artificial limitations?
On the whole, it is an interesting video, and well worth watching, but it conveniently misstates or leaves out important facts throughout. Unfortunately, the Q&A session that follows the presentation wasn't included, so I have no idea if any of the students challenged some of his assertions or pointed out some of the points that he left out. Anyway, maybe we can hope that Fricklas is, in fact, an occasional reader here and can stop by to address those questions and omissions.
It's that time of year again. The days are getting shorter and it's so chilly at night Timmy has to cuddle up with the server for warmth. But at least we have the 31st to look forward to.
Needless to say, we do Halloween up right: ridiculously detailed costumes, lots of candy-nomming, and this year we're going to try our hand at slaughtering pumpkins. But what to carve?
Which is why we're presenting our First Perhaps Annual but Let us Settle for 2009 Geeky Pumpkin Template Design Contest Extravaganza. Here's the deal:
UPDATERY: The winnars have been announced over here with carved examples! There's also a superlative list of other templates we hearted. Thanks to all who entered, and we'll see if we can talk the pumpkins into doing this again in 2010!
You design* a geeky pumpkin template (PDF, Flickr upload, JPEG on your blog, scan embedded in Google doc, whatever) designed to be printed out onto 8.5x11" piece of paper. We only want your template, not something you bought from a site. Or stole from a child. That's rude.
Describe your template and link to it in the comments attached to this blog post by October 29, 2009 at 12 midnight EDT. You can submit more than one template, but don't go crazy.
Meanwhile, we'll carve our pumpkins and Timmy will judge your templates. (Warning: He will not be accepting bribes this time.)
Contest winners will be announced during our October 30th Halloween Live Stream Monster Bash and Costume Contest (time TBD). Hurrah!
* Non-artists, please don't fret: we won't be awarding prizes based on your command of vector illustration tools. Do be clever, though!
Anne Stoke's Arachnoid by Noel-FantasyPumpkins.com
Stargate by GeekyOne
Mouse-powered pumpkin by LT55
Dalek by doctordonna
Binary Boo by xandi2549
Twenty-sided by backslashdave
Zombie vs Lumberjack by meizme
Cover of Brisinger by Noel-FantasyPumpkins.com
Barcode Happy Halloween backslashdave
Wifi backslashdave
Han on Tauntaun by pchanrocks
Autobot by jhliu
I am 10 Ninjas by jhliu
One Pumpkin to Rule Them All by PuckByter
MST3K silhouette by danhojan
To get those creative, pumpkiny juices flowing, check out these masterpieces:
A NOTE ON THE COMMENT ENTRY SYSTEMTRON 3400XS:We're moderating the submissions, so you won't see your entry posted immediately. Please take a deep breath and get a cookie because it will appear once we decide you are not an evil robot with laser eyes. Also, you'll need to create a username so we'll know where to send the prizes.
This August marked the 10 Year Awesomeversary of the monkey horde known as ThinkGeek.
In case you missed out on the celebrations, including our super exclusive zombie Timmy collectible limited quantity t-shirt (see happy torsos at bottom of post), you can relive some of the 10-year magic through our partypics. We'd send you a slice of our beautifully geeky Charm City cake but ... we gobbled that thing up pretty quick.
FYI, it didn't taste like Duff. Not that we'd know or anything.
Also: Our Random Happiness Machine XR42 has finally crunched the numbers and spat out (on tractor feed fanfold paper) the winnars of the ThinkGeek 10 Year Awesomeversary Sweepstakes of Win!
And, they are, in order of luckitude:
1ST PRIZE: Christopher Maidt of Edmond, Oklahoma, who wins:
$1200 ThinkGeek shopping spree
Tauntaun sleeping bag prototype
A spot on homepage for a day
A batch of homemade cookies made by staff (flavors TBD)
Small box of random doodads
2ND PRIZE: Troy Topp of Calgary, Alberta, who will hopefully enjoy:
$500 ThinkGeek shopping spree
His likeness on a future ThinkGeek shirt
Random TG office decorations, including 10" vinyl sleestack (pictured) w/ bonus Mardi Gras beads
22 old Atari 2600 cartridges
3RD PRIZE: Robert Cannon of Winter Springs, Florida, who cannot wait to receive:
$250 ThinkGeek shopping spree
His likeness incorporated into a future YouTube video
Pre-ripped wearable action hero cotton vest tee
Signed photo of Cisco, office dog extraordinaire
We hope the prizes--some of which are, let us be honest, ridiculously delicious--show our gratitude for letting us keep our lil' ol' website on the interwebs for so long. It's been a great 10 years and we hope for a trillion million more. Thanks, d00ds!
ThinkGeek will be 10 glorious years old on August 13, 2009, and wefigured what better way to celebrate than to surprise you with a newwebsite. But we're too excited to not spill the beans. So, um, here's your preview:
Keep your eyes peeled next week for the Official Launch o' Awesome. We hope you'll like it!
But there's no better way to take care of a pumpkin than throwing it three-quarters of a mile, so a ThinkGeek monkey did some recon at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin in Sussex County, Delaware where engineering meets pumpkin guts.
The championship started back in 1986, pretty much on a dare, and the winning pumpkin throw was just 126 feet. (The current World Record distance for any kind of chunk is 4483.51 feet, or .84 miles, or approximately 36 times more kickass.)
In all, there's 5 kinds of chunkers: Air Cannon, Centrifugal, Catapult, Trebuchet, Human Powered, and Torsion. The longest shot this year was 4162.65 feet by an air cannon named "Big 10 Inch," and "Yankee Siege" set a new world trebuchet record of 2034.21 feet.
Which is to say: it's amazing to watch.
Basically, they line up the cannons along two sides of a rectangular (formerly corn) field, and they chunk from 9 am to dusk for 3 days. Those who aren't chunking are almost certainly drinking--some spectators (coughcollegekidscough) brought couches, grills, and beer pong tables--and there was lots of fair-type food, including kettle corn, BBQ, sausages, and pumpkin funnel cake.
A few recommendations if you go next year:
Plan on the drive taking an extra hour or more at the end. Traffic was stop and go for 3 miles outside of the chunk on Saturday afternoon this year.
Wear stout shoes. You'll be walking in a furrowed field.
Be prepared for crowds. Drunken crowds. (Alternatively: bring booze.)
If you want a good picture of punkins in flight, bring a decent camera. They get very tiny, very fast.
Another option:
Watch Punkin Chunkin: Born to Chunk on the Science Channel this Thanksgiving. Apparently they're making a television event out of footage from last year's chunk. The footage alone would be worth the watch, but we're betting the local color makes for good viewing, too.
You might've heard from Consumerist, Gizmodo, Topless Robot or @guykawasaki that I've arrived safely at the ThinkGeek mothership. Who knew a few unboxing photos could stir up so much jibber-jabber?
I just wanted to check in on my journey from Hoth to Realitytown to let you know that all is well at ThinkGeek and they're being very nice, despite being a bunch of over-caffeinated monkeys.
They even treated me to a lunch of fungus and mushrooms that were growing inside their fridge. But I think that was an accident.
For right now, I'm keeping busy with WoW and helping Customer Service answer the phone (I like to pitch in) but I can't wait for my fellow Tauntauns to show up. I'm getting lonely. I mean, I love the attention, being the first one here, but it's not the same.
So thanks for all the well-wishing, and I'll keep you posted on what's happening here at ThinkGeek HQ!
Yours, stinkily,
First Manufactured Tauntaun
P.S. Apparently you can compete for me by entering ThinkGeek's Halloween Pumpkin Template Contest, and you've got until 10/29/09 to submit an entry. (Check out some of my favorites below--including one of me!)
We just asked our email subscribers a few questions about themselves--age, location, favorite OS, PC vs console, that sorta thing. (Didn't get the email? You should sign up!)
Some might've called it a "survey." We call it "holy crap you people are nuts and we heart you so much for it."
And to prove our love, here's a random sampling of your responses to our extremely opened ended question:
"Here is some optional space for telling us things we wouldn't otherwise know, like what you had for breakfast."
Cereal and milk with a shot of hydrocodone cough syrup. I'm ready for my day!
I have porridge every morning. It keeps you regular.
I had five buffalo wings and...three inches of a Spicy Italian sandwich from Subway. Because I wake up at four in the afternoon.
I live on Arizona tea and soybeans. I think I have a problem.
Bacon. I had bacon.
COFFEE COFFEECOFFEE!!!HEHEHEHEHEHEE!!!!!
Some were answers to questions we couldn't even begin to ask:
I enjoy rollerskating and going to Chick-Fil-A grand openings.
Urine is sterile, you can drink it.
Can you please provide to us, a simple, PC-based, artificial intelligence, for doing our jobs? Thank you very much.
I'm an electrical designer in the biopharm industry.
I met my girlfriend on my favorite torrent tracker.
my dsl is with a great company buy my service recently went from an already super-weak 170Kdown 30up to 22K down and 30k up... i havn't had much time to call tech support and find out what the problem is so i figured this survey was the next logical choice. I have done nothing and i'm all out of ideas. how should i proceed
I just dyed my bangs hot pink.
I'm considering joining a Buddhist monastery.
I test video games for a living. Not much of a living, but eh, what'er you going to do. *shrugs blissfully*
i drink dr pepper as if it is the only thing that sustains my life. and i'm currently on a search for a comfortable pair of non-leather cowboy boots.
H1N1 shots make you tired, just so you know.
I can put an arrow in your tires at a 100 paces so be nice!
Brilliant. Thanks for keeping it interesting, guys.
Unless you're from bizarro world, you probably realize by now that ThinkGeek enjoys fooling you all with impossible products on April Fools Day. We always try and make our ideas funny yet plausible, which tends to get us in trouble. Why? Because every year we seem to come up with something so weird and fantastic that you actually really really want it. This year it was the Tauntaun sleeping bag, an idea cooked up by Christian, the ThinkGeek designer monkey. The concept was made perfect by Hans's suggestion to make the zipper pull a lightsaber. Brilliant! To make the joke as realistic as possible, we actually had a prototype made by our uber geeky and crafy friend, Misty. Be sure to check out her blog post on how she made it. As you can see from our before and after, we had to tweak it a little in Photoshop, but Misty's prototype was amazing even before we modified it.
Some other fun April Fools tidbits: #1) The Squeeze bacon was actually made from frosting! We wanted something that would hold up well under photography and video conditions and not go rancid. A combo of shortening, powdered sugar, food coloring, wheat germ created the bacon-looking goo, while the bottle was from a product called 'Coco Real' which we just spray painted and labeled up. It was edible, but it wasn't bacon. #2) Our unicorn chaser was made using pink body wash and lots of glitter, and was decidedly not edible. #3) Those portal shirts took a long time to prototype well, and in our case, the cake was not only not a lie, but delicious!!
The Internet can be a scary place. Which sucks when you're at work and you want to visit those scary places! We've developed this handy flowchart to help you keep your job.
Everybody has them. Web sites that you loved a long time ago (10 -15 years ago, long in Internet years) when the web was still in itsinfancy. We have them, too, and we thought we'd share with you some ofour favorite lost sites.
Michael's pick:
AdCritic- In the heady days of the Internet bubble, AdCritic was a staple forbored surfers. AdCritic put thousands of TV commercials online. Thesite brought us classics like the EDS cat herders, wolves attacking amarching band, and the guy dropping his cell phone into the urinal.AdCritic shut down in 2001 and was later reborn as a paid subscriptionservice. Now it seems to have morphed again.
Regan's picks:
Funny But No... - This was a section ofHallmark's site which was plugged as a selection of "rejected" cards.It ran from November of 1996 to April of 1999, but came back to livevia Shoebox Greeting's blog in April of 2007. Yay Undead Funny But No!
Movie Critic - Man, I loved thissite. It predicted with uncanny accuracy movies you'd like based onwhat other people who liked movies you liked liked. I think there werea couple more "likes" in the official algorithm.
Jacob's pick:
PixelTime! - This was an icon drawing contest hosted by Word.com and thequirky computerized PixelMaster. A Java applet gave everyone the samepixel-at-a-time drawing tool and wacky palette to work with. The siteand its art are mostly lost to time and Java bitrot, but see somesamples here and here.
Carrie's picks:
sharpeworld.com - Extant (mostly) between 2001 and 2003, Jennifer Sharpe's site was morelike a collection of jarred specimens than a blog in those heady, earlydays before chronological ordering. A zombie version of the site wasresurrected this winter, but it's not what it used to be.
The Spark - Before it was SparkNotes (now ownedby Barnes & Noble) and partially spun off into OkCupid.com, TheSpark was a -- what do you call them things? maybe an Internetmagazine? -- run by college kids. It might have started the obsessionwith personality tests, and for that they will burn in hell.
So tell us -- what were your favorite now-extinct sites?
The ThinkGeek monkeys traveled to the far reaches of the galaxy to watch the newest Star Trek to grace the viewscreen. Despite our red shirts, we found the theater inhabitants friendly and most of our team returned to the ship unscathed.
Our field report follows. Please be aware you may find slight spoilers, both real and imagined.
Staff reports:
"A genuine Trek, despite having too much Star Wars influence (Delta Vega monsters, Scotty's sidekick, etc), unnecessary exposition, action sequences chained to ridiculous lengths, and not enough time spent on character (re-)development. I'd love to see this Star Trek slowed down for the small screen." --Jacob
"Not enough red shirts slaughtered. But I liked how everybody died in the end." --Willie
"I honestly enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. The opening scene was very moving. The only thing I didn't like was the music. It was just kind of movie lame, rather than being anything grand and special. But all in all, not the Star Wars prequels disaster I thought it could be." --Chris
"Loved it! The nods to the character quirks were brilliant, and it had the perfect balance of action, tech and humor. The new love story was a little weird, but I'll let that one go." --Jen
"Nothing more (or less) than what I expected: a wild, non-stop action ride through space. The poorly written script bounces from one not-so-subtle reference to the cliches of its predecessors while Captain Kirk hangs off the edge of one thing or another. Still, lots of things go boom, bam, and zoom with undeniable eye-catching fun. So, if that's what you're looking for (and, really, who isn't?), you can't do better than Star Trek." --Ken
"I thought Kirk got all the chicks! I wanna see the Chris Pine/Winona Ryder scene on the cutting room floor!" --Fraize
"As a non Star Trek fan, I loved it. I was especially fond of the mocking of Kirk and Simon Pegg as Scotty. I <3 Simon Pegg. As expected from J.J. Abrams and his people, there were a lot of quick references, so keep your eyes peeled. Its definitely FTW. I'll go see it again." --Andrea
"I'm more of a TNG fan than TOS, but I loved it. Also, assigned seating on opening day FTW." --Regan
"Slickly produced with plenty of TOS-esque cheeseball. My favorite characters were Dr. Cameron, Sylar, Lydia, and Lens Flare." --Carrie
Reviews via the Twitterings:
@upsidedowndog: Hull integrity at 95%.
@LycoLoco: JJ Abrams did for the Star Trek series what Ronald D Moore did for BSG. It was a series reboot/reinvention at its finest.
@HugoMunsterberg: New Star Trek movie is like if Kirk and Picard had a baby. And that baby turned out to be a high-grossing summer blockbuster.
@Daffydil: Hallo, my name is James T Kirk. You killed my father, prepare to die!
@MattAlgren: The kid in front of me said it was "Awesome. Better than Star Wars III." I think that's good.
When we asked you guys to nominate your favorite sysadmins to our pageant, we didn't expect the tsunami of entries that followed. Among the 1,000-plus nominees: a sysadmin whorepaired a broken Slurpee machine that got in the way of refreshmentafter a hard day, one who braved raw sewage in waders and arespirator, one who brought in bacon-chocolate-chip cookies andmade mojitos, one who launched himself onto a server rack toshield it against a leak in the ceiling, and one who defendedher email server by redirecting junk mail from one spammer to another (not an approach we necessarily condone...at least, not in public where our lawyers can see).
In breaks from refactoring large swaths of the ThinkGeek website source code to get it ready for this week's big re-launch, when we probably should have been sleeping, we codemonkeys read every one of your submissions and narrowed it down to a handful for the whole office to vote on. Then we wrote a little ballot-counting script using many a sysadmin's best friend, Perl. Its surprisingly verbose output (we didn't even use -v!) is as follows:
In recognition of his stamina, humility, and dedication, ThinkGeek's 2009 SysAdmin Pageant SysKing: His Most Excellent Majesty Keith Schincke of Dickinson, Texas (nominated by his wife, Sandra Schincke).
SysKing Keith's qualities of character were best exemplified when Hurricane Ike struck Houston last year. He and his family endured a week without power or hot water so that he could brave the receding floodwaters by car and then, when the roads became unpassable, by bicycle, to secure and power up the servers at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
In honor of her forbearance, diplomatic ability, and mettle, ThinkGeek's 2009 SysAdmin Pageant SysQueen: Her Most Gracious Majesty Ginger Spencer of Inglewood, California (nominated by coworker Jay Gerber)
SysQueen Ginger's qualities of character were shown on many occasions, from bridging relations between far-flung and sometimes adversarial regional offices, to waiting hours in the dark without any promise from the power company for the moment power would be restored so she could bring systems up as soon as possible, to arranging her IT manager's first interruption-free vacation in 20 years by coordinating staff to change escalation procedures.
Congratulations to our SysKing and SysQueen! Live long and prosper, Your Majesties!
Turns out that some of our new-in-box Sega Dreamcasts delivered to us magically via unicorn are a little love-worn. You might have seen the Gizmodo, Destructoid, and Consumerist posts about it.
'Cause, see, we don't really know where these Dreamcasts came from--could've been a liquidator, a Circuit City that had closed shop, or a 7-11. We just don't know, and it looks like returned merchandise is in the mix.
So now we've decided to QA/QC all the incoming Dreamcasts to ensure fresh and crispy game play.
Behold Hans working through a pile of consoles and slapping them with "QC PASSED" stickers when they meet muster, just like in the movies! He takes his job very seriously, hugging each console before snuggling it back into its box.
Today the ThinkGeek monkeys ventured into the wilds of Fairfax to harvest pumpkins suitable for slaughter. We managed to gather our samples and escape the herds of feral children before our ship jumped into warp.
The only thing left to do is hack into our pumpkin haul mercilessly and we've got a whole pile of great template ideas from our contest. We'll show some of our artistic handiwork on our Friday, October 30th Justin.tv broadcast.
Some of our favorites are below, and there's still time to enter to win a Tauntaun sleeping bag!
ThinkGeek HQ is ground zero for the first-ever biological virus to make the leap to computer hardware. That's right--today we had an outbreak of H1N1 in our database, and it caused our monkeybots to go crazy and give away some orders for free!
Ok, so we didn't really have swine flu, but we definitely had a glitch that caused some orders so go out at zero cost. You can bet that for a few minutes, the ThinkGeek staff were hoping to jump on the free product train, but we thought better of ourselves and decided to actually fix the problem instead. :)
Since we've always said that our customers are t3h awesome and we love you all so much, we let a bunch of the free orders go through. Heck, you deserve it, you had a rough day too, right? So enjoy your free--nay, priceless--goodies if you were lucky enough to get here in time. Since we plan on not letting that happen again, we hope you enjoyed our one-time only Swine Flu sale.
And since we did such a good job today both breaking and fixing the site, we're going to treat the staff to Star Trek tomorrow afternoon, though the database plans to stay at home to recuperate.
But we got more than 3 entries, and many of them were too good to pass up without showering them with blog affection. The best of the rest:
Most Helpful when Attacked By Goblins
d20 by backslashdave
Most Awesome 'Cause Timmy Says So
Timmy by whataslacker
Most Joss Whedon-Approved
Blue Sun by Shimo
Most Evil
Cthulhu by bobarobes
Most Clever Use of Negative Space (& Crow)
MST3K 3-D by littlebitocd
Most Complicated/Zombied
Lumber Jack vs. Zombies by meizme
Most Blatantly Childhood-Reverent
Thundercats & Transformers by jhliu
Cutest Couple (Awwwww)
One Pumpkin to Rule Them All by PuckByter & Eye of Sauron by Tinnurien
You might have heard all this thrilling news during our Halloween Spooktacular show on JTV last Friday, October 30th, but if you didn't, you may watch us yammer and parade our costumes and pumpkins, IRL:
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ThinkGeek HQ is ground zero for the first-ever biological virus to make the leap to computer hardware. That's right--today we had an outbreak of H1N1 in our database, and it caused our monkeybots to go crazy and give away some orders for free!
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