On Piracy
Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve) says that pirates provide better customer service. How many times have you paid for a DRM license for something and the server goes down, or you travel across the border? I rented some episodes on Amazon of Dr. Who: when I went to Canada – I paid for them in America; I live in America – and they say, “You can’t watch it anymore because you’re not in America anymore.” That made me angry because I was being honest; I was an honest person. If I had stolen it, I would be watching it.
via Sean Bonner.
This, all day. We actually purchased some games for a LAN once, nice and legal. They didn’t work, and we ended up pirating the software from elsewhere. I have movies that I purchased that won’t work on some of my devices.
Wil Wheaton said in an interview that there are two classes of people here – those that will pay for something, and those that won’t pay for anything, no matter what. The problem is that the system they’ve come up with to thwart the latter isn’t working, and it’s actually discouraging the former.
My husband got a Droid recently, and wanted to put his music on it. It’s his music – he paid for it. The DRM settings, however, keep him from being able to move music (which he purchased) from one device (which he owns) to another device (which he also owns). For being an upright citizen and paying for things, he is rewarded with an impenetrable wall of frustration. His options at that point are to use a very roundabout system of re-burning and re-ripping a large chunk of his library, or to just download everything illegally from the internet. Which… DRM protection is supposed to keep you from doing? Well done, guys.
You’ve got a lobster, and you’ve got a magnet.
I’ve worked on some pretty weird stuff for John and his hockey crew. I think they were trying to see how weird of a request they could make before I’d say no, but instead, I made this:
Yes, they named their team Lobster Magnet. After this completely ridiculous/awesome (awediculous?) flash cartoon:
While I was cleaning out the external drive, I found the original sketches that I sent over to them. The lobster they picked looks significantly meaner than the other (and, thus, is much more suited to strike fear into the hearts of the opposing team).
So this is my design process, folks. Lobsters with magnet hands.
Random Start: If Only You Were Lonely
The Replacements may be a punk band, but this is a honky-tonk drinking song if ever I heard one.
Hear Me Billboards
The billboards I did for Hear Me are up around town! I got a few shots of the ones that went up in Brownsville:
If you see one, be sure to get a photo and upload it to the Hear Me Facebook page!
New Logo
You may have noticed a new logo up in the header these past few days. When I originally put my site together (at least, the latest iteration of it), I threw together a logo as a placeholder. Then, as is usually the case, client work took up most of my time. Well, the cobbler’s kids were complaining, and now Moore Design has a new logo!
My portfolio site got a minor update as well, including some content changes. You can check those out at www.mooredesign.us.
Hear Me
I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit lately, and it’s largely been in the interest of getting the new Hear Me site up and running.
There were obvious graphic changes, and some less obvious (but maybe more important) changes made to the functionality. Much more streamlined and easier to use, and it kicks off our new look. It took a lot of work between myself and our awesome programmer, but it’s working much better than our previous site. You can check out the changes at www.hear-me.net.
