In a study released today, two respected Economists (Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina) found that, at most, file-sharing resulted in one lost CD sale for every 5,000 songs downloaded. By their "most pessimistic statistical model", file-sharing resulted in a decline of sales of two million CDs in 2002 whereas the total decline was 139 million CDs from 2000 to 2002. This means that the RIAA's claim that file-sharing is the primary or even a significant negative influence on their business is utterly false. Another interesting thing that the researchers found was that "file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy..." I sincerely hope that this study puts to rest the 'file-sharing = stealing' equation that some have been quick to throw around on CH. Stealing implies taking something of positive value from someone without their permission. If file-sharing actually results in positive value being transferred to the author and not away from him then any comparison with common shoplifting is misguided.
This blog is a long time coming...I actually thought my blog had been shut down by a tyrannical Gene Wood several months ago only to be informed a week ago that my blog hadn't been closed and I could still post. So Gene...what did you do to my blog then?
In short, I've been meaning to chronicle all the things I hate in life for a while. There's just so many things around that range from causing me mild frustration to burning white-hot anger that I need some kind of outlet. My blog here seemed like just such an outlet and when Kris showed me someone else's Page of General Complaints I knew that I could wait no longer. Be advised that this is not a ranking of most to least hated items, just that I'm relatively sure that if I actually managed to get everything down there'd probably be around 10,000 hated items total. And without any further ado, onto the list:
1) Spongmonkeys - these things appear in recent Quizno's commercials singing a song loosely based on "Do You Love Me" by the Hollies. I use the term loosely because the noise that emanates from these little stuffed turds is much closer to the shriek of a dying man than to singing. Easily one of the most annoying commercials of all time. If I were Elvis (i.e. rich) I'd shoot the TV when this ad comes on. There was recently an article about the spongmonkeys on Slate.com in which the author, Seth Stevenson, gives the commercial an 'A'. Apparently, Seth likes it when his television ass rapes him. Well, I'm giving you an 'F' Seth Stevenson because you're a jackass.
2) Seth Stevenson [sic]
3) Microsoft. Despite it being somewhat cliche to mention, boy do I hate their asses. The European Union doesn't much care for Microsoft either as they recently fined them $613 million for illegal business practices. It doesn't really take much effort to find evidence of Microsoft's shady business practices. Evidence is everywhere. It's hard to say what the worst part about Microsoft is - the gestapo-like way in which they conduct their business, their lack of innovation, their shitty products or maybe it's just that Bill Gates' face kind of looks like a butt... I'm not really sure, all I know is that I've hated Microshaft for as long as I can remember. And like that guy from Red Dawn, I like the hate. It keeps me warm at night.
4) Cronyism (especially when it's passed off as meritocratism). Success is based on exceptional skill and hard work. Yeah, right. You can spend your whole life working your ass off and acquire a moderate degree of success, or you can just happen to have been in a frat house with the right people. When the corruption and hook-ups go all the way to the top, it's hard not to be a little bit bitter. On the bright side, I have an interview at Dolby tomorrow partially as a result of someone I know that works there - so the tide of cronyism may finally be washing over me.
5) Jim Breuer. This one is obvious. He's a no-talent hack. I don't really need to say much more here, The Onion already took care of this one for me.
Well, that's the first installment. Much more hate yet to come...