I have been using RB since version 2.2. I am a “Pro” user [at least in terms of the license I bought] since version 3.something. I have paid for every single upgrade that came out. A faithful customer is an accurate description, I think…

Now, something I wasn’t too aware of, is that RS [RealSoftware] forces European customers to buy RB from European distributors, who are supposed to provide localized versions and manuals, justifying the extra expense. It is even the case for countries like Australia, where there is definitely no need for a localization.

Now, at least in France, the successive official distributors haven’t done anything so far regarding promoting the product, much less about localizing it. So they just get money for being French. And we are supposed to pay them extra just because we live in the same country? Twenty-first century, the age of Internet shopping? How retarded is that?!? Somebody said that all users from a country [he meant Germany, but anyway] should pay the extra bit – and you’ll see below that the extra bit is kind of large – in order to finance the translation of the software… Like a tax or something!?! If the market is not large enough, well, it just doesn’t happen. But locking all [potential] customers in one country or area to a distributor in order to make sure this distributor makes enough money, and produces a localized version even some may not want, doesn’t this smell reek of 20th Century East-Block communism?

As you can see here a new “Pro” license costs $399.95 (that’s 325.5€). As opposed to here, where I am supposed to shop, 441.32 € (that’s $542.26). Do the math. That’s 142 bucks more, for the same product, a whopping 35% margin! To buy the US version, to boot [and I wouldn’t buy a French version even if it existed]. It’s like Amazon.com forcing me to buy a US book, in English, from their French site, at a markup, because they have a French site… Wait. Isn’t this eaxctly what Apple forces us to do, too? Hmmm…

Moreover, I am not a new client, so I don’t need to buy a new license, I just need an upgrade. $199.95 on RS’s online store. Unknown on Alsyd’s store, since they don’t even carry it! So the service is not even there. Denial of service is usually a good enough reason to drop a provider. RS is dangling their online store at me, daring me to purchase from them, like the Gum department store in Soviet Moscow. So I have two options: cheat on the online store, say I am based in a country where RS has no distributor, and buy direct from them. PayPal, Visa card, whatever. Or I can pester them until they accept my purchase. Why should I plead a company to accept my money and sell me a product, especially one which is one step forward and two steps backwards [repeat after me: buggy as hell! I should know, I have all the beta versions, being a member of their closed beta list]?

So I am taking option 3: not “upgrading” until A/ I can purchase a license # on their online store, and B/ the product is more stable.

Apparently, Guy Delisle, a Canadian citizen, is a cartoon supervisor, like my friend Gilles. He visited NK for two months, on a work assignment, and relates his “tour of duty” in a fascinating, very humorous, although very bleak, 100+ pages. He also visited Shenzhen, apparently, but couldn’t read the book, as all copied were shrink-wrapped…

Definitely worth a read…

More balloney from the great defender of Democracy and Internet. Today it’s not Google, it’s M$. Easier target I s’pose…

Look, there’s nothing in the basic workings of the free market, nor in U.S. legislation, that says MSN can’t be Beijing’s bitch to buy some bloggers. But remember, it is a free market, on this side of the Pacific. So first, I suspect there’s a lot of people—the kind of creative, independent-minded people that Microsoft needs—who’d generally rather not work at a company that does that. And second, there are a lot of other people who’d prefer to avoid buying products from one.

As opposed to that, maybe?

A few snippets:

Chinese Police Armed With U.S. Equipment

The Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP) is also well equipped with U.S.-made equipment to track, identify and quickly jail any dissidents. Sun Microsystems has a contract with the Public Security Bureau to make use of instant computer identification of fingerprints.
The Great Firewall of China

In November 2004, Amnesty International named 33 companies including Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems that it said were providing the Chinese with technology to achieve its Internet censorship aims.
Software rams great firewall of China and M/Cyclopedia

“The authorities are running outdated Sun Sparc and SGI Irix workstations and many of the servers are labeled as firewall servers, so they were pretty easy to find.”
China: The Great Firewall

Ah well, if it’s outdated kit, it makes you a lesser bitch, I suppose…

Some of those bicycles look new.

It seems the owner of the Family Mart in front of Nishi Tachikawa station does not take kindly to commuters using the FamilyMart customer parking space as long term/all day parking. Which is understandable. His or her solution is simple, just clear the offending bicycles out in the morning.

So be careful, you city slickers, we won’t be putting up with your modern, free-wheeling ways.

Of course, the way the Korean equivalent of this shop owner would deal with this situation is basically the same [with probably more aggravation, swearing and damage] and a sign saying something like “Next time you park here, I’ll fucking bash your cunt face in” or something equally vile [and if you don’t believe me, I can point you to a similar sign painted on a wall somewhere in 合井 that says “쓰레기를 버리면 대갈통 부셔버릴 거야!” So there.

A dear friend of mine is of the idea that swearing doesn’t advance your cause. Au contraire!, as Garfield would say. Countless examples show that Koreans themselves, especially men in my age group, are aware that being foul-mouthed is usually the only way of catching the attention of a person who is being rude, ignoring you, and otherwise behaving in a way that is not acceptable, but with a good-to-high probability to get away with it.

Basically, what happens with such people when you crank up the abuse volume, is that they stop ignoring you, and listen. That puts a stop to one of the problems. Actually, two of them, for they are usually shocked into silence for a duration proportional to the abuse and the level of respect they expect to get. Which gives you the time to finally open your own trap, and make your point of view acknowleged [I didn’t say agreed to, yet…].

What happens next is anything from a bar brawl to a lengthy arguing to abdication. Depends on how many people are around [the fewer the better] and how low you yanked the offender’s pants down. I’ve seen gramps fighting each other over a seat in the metro, to finally shake hands and seat together [another seat had just been freed] and chat as if nothing happened after a while [one of the guys just surrendered and apologized]; a “journalist” [abusing terminology here] kicking the hell out of a vending machine, swearing like a madman, because his boss had told me things he didn’t care to hear; a housewife making a very ugly scene in Tongdaemun Market over 1,000 won [0.8€], hair flying, p’odori breaking up the fight; a bar being totaled because a drunk had called another customer’s girl a whore; another guy [same bar, different time] being lifted in the air by the throat and apologize mid-air before sharing a beer with his attacker; a landlord being called words too foul to reproduce here, because she refused to give back the key-money, suddenly more interested in forking over the money than dealing with the irrate ajŏsshi; etc…

In Korea’s modern [?] individualism, agression is omnipresent. Anger management is a non-issue. In the old days, older people used their social status to clamp down on rebellion [just as violent methinks], whereas today people need to be violent, at least in words, to assert themselves. Is there a need for me to point out the surge in 씨발/minute ratio in movies – and thus in kids speech – in the last 20 years?

So, even if this image at the beginning – and the underlying behaviour [the shop owner’s and/or the freewheeling bike owners] – seem rude to you, relax. This is a civil way of dealing with people…

Next Tuesday, Kevin Marks of Technorati and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr will be kicking off the inaugural meeting of Tag Tuesday. Tag Tuesday (TaTu) is a monthly meeting organized by and for cutting edge implementers of tagging software, services, standards, and systems, what practical lessons we’ve learned, real-world challenges we’ve encountered, and how we can all work together to empower users to make the most of this tagolution.
in Introducing Tag Tuesday

Pointer by my favourite tortoise and Java coder (ain’t too many of those). Sait-il au moins que la tortue, on en fait de la soupe, là où il habite ?

As Jack the Ripper would have said “Who shall I cut on the edge, next?”