3x Thursday: 05/27/y2k+4: Music For The Masses...(Propaganda Style)

(3xThursday )

It's that time again. Time for 3XThursday, compliments of Missy Williams

1. What do you think about car companies using popular music (take Cadillac and them using Led Zepplin) in their commercials? Do you think it's right for them to take a well-known song and use it for their own profit?
   I don't really see the problem... The car companies (and any company that uses popular music) is just trying to bring a good association to their brand. I'd only have a problem when the car company pays the group to have a custom version of a song that lauds you to buy a product, but that's a problem I have with the artist/record companies.
2. What is the trend lately with electronica music (triphop and breakbeat type stuff) being in commercials? Do you recognize any of it? Does it bother you?
   Shane and I probably recognize (or own) 90% of electronica that gets played on commercials these days. I personally don't mind it because a couple of commercials have actually pushed me to go out and find the artist. I discovered FC Kahuna because their song "Nothing is Wrong" was in a Hummer H2 commercial and got me hooked (Hummer was nice enough to list on their web page who does the music for their commercials). My only really problem with it is that the commercial version is heavily edited down a lot of the time.
3. Depending on what the product is, do you think that companies use certain music to cater to certain age groups? Does it work? Is it morally correct? Why/Why not?
   Absolutely... Shane and I had a theory about targeted ads. When the ad is targeted to a specific group that you don't belong to (whether that be because of age, gender, race, etc) you say "well if I was X, I might care about this". When the ad is targeted to a group you do belong to you just go "man, what a great fucking commercial!". Now, I don't know how well that actually translates to sales, but the commercials do stick in your mind. I don't see what the big moral issue is with knowing your audience and playing to it. Don't get me wrong, advertising is getting more and more invasive as we get better and better at ignoring it, but that is completely independent of targeting the ads to a certain demographic.

Bonus: For the music geeks out there: What's the meaning of this week's title for the 3x Thursday?
I can only presume that it's a reference to the Depeche Mode album....

An interesting six months

(personal life )

Six months ago today, I went out on a date with a woman named Jen. Ever since we've been seeing each other fairly regularly. Most of you who know me well enough know that I spend about half my week at her apartment in Nashua. My moving to Somerville has made the relationship more difficult to maintain, but it has been worth it.

I've been severely burned in the past, which is part of the reason that this is the first time I've mentioned my relationship with her, but I feel comfortable enough with the permanency of the relationship that I can talk about it more publicly now. I don't want her to think that I take her for granted. She's a terrific, understanding, and loving girlfriend and I'm happy that I found her. So here's to six wonderful months, with hopefully many more in store.

I'm officially a Masshole

(personal life )

As of last Friday, I am now officially a resident of Massachusetts. Unfortunately MA vanity plates are restricted to 6 characters, so I didn't get a MA TURACMA plate, but I finally have a MA license that has a picture that looks more like me. My last updated NH license was taken right after I moved to Nashua and the whole fiasco with my-ex happened. I weighed well over 300 pounds at the time and was sporting a full beard. Of course, I've lost a bunch of weight and look much different now then I did then, so whenever I got carded people were always very skeptical that it really was my license.

I'm actually still waiting for my official license. All I have now is a temporary paper one (but it does include my picture). I should get the real one in the mail before the end of the week.

Doing some work on the side

(work )

The job search is ongoing, but has as of yet, yielded no results. In the meantime, I've been working with a coworker on a side project. He first approached me regarding helping set up a database application for a client of his web consulting business. He's an extremely accomplished graphic and web designer, but when it comes to actual database configuration, administration, and population he was a fish out of water. So when his client asked him to set up a mirror to a NH real estate database, he didn't know how to handle it. That's where I came in. I put together an application to set up and mirror the data from the centralized DB (running MS SQL Server 7) to a local DB (running mySQL). It was a good test of my JAVA skills and a chance to familiarize myself with the JDBC interfaces.

The best part of the deal is that my coworker seems to think that this could possibly mean some residual income for us both, as there are a few other customers he has that may need a similar setup. I'll never complain about extra money...

Don't take away my free lunch!

(computers | internet | thoughts )

Here in the Boston area, Comcast recently "fixed" an issue that was allowing some subscribers to have free cable channels. The customers had a grandfathered plan that was suppose to offer the over-the-air broadcast and local-access channels, but were getting other cable channels like ESPN for free. This upset a lot of customers claiming:

"It's a behind-the-scenes, stealth, sneaky way of imposing a price increase. It's really a sleazy operation."

In the computer world, Microsoft announced that SP2 for Windows XP would not work on pirated copies of the software. This has caused a lot of outrage that it would leave a large number of systems unprotected from the recent exploits found in the OS. Finally in the blogging world, SixApart has announced that MovableType (which this site currently runs on) would change its licensing policy. For the long awaited 3.0 version users would no longer have a free reign to use the software without payment. If a user (such as yours truly) wanted to run more than 3 weblogs or have more than 1 author, they would need to purchase a license under their new price structure. This has caused many in the blogging world to nearly have kittens.

Why is it that we as a society get so mad when we're expected to pay for something? Don't want to pay for cable? Use an antenna. Don't want to pay for Windows? Use Linux. Don't want to pay for MovableType? Use Blogger. Each of these products has a completely free alternative. Yes, they don't offer the same level of service or the same features, but the point is that there is a free alternative. If you want the extras that these services provide, maybe you should consider ponying up some cash so the product can maintain the level you've come to expect. Expecting that you can have a perpetual free lunch is extremely short sited.