Thoughts for the weekend

Random cantankerous thoughts that I’ve thought this week:

People who feel the need to remind you how open minded they are, aren’t.

It’s probably time to bail when the association you work for decides that the very core of what it does, isn’t something they can sell to people and their own marketing people start looking at “revenue we can get from advertising on our site and in our publications” instead of spending time trying to sell memberships based on what we actually do.

There was a time when advertisers said that “half of all ad dollars are wasted, we just don’t know which half.” I think they will soon come to realize that it’s much more than half. Case in point, we bought a six pack of El Salvadoran beer a few weeks ago based on a coworker’s recommendation. I’ve never seen any advertisements for it. I see Budweiser advertisements everyday. I don’t remember the last time I bought Budweiser.

As much as blogging makes instantaneous publishing easy, there’s something to be said for processing your thoughts into a cohesive pattern before writing them down. That’s why, when I’m at Gnomedex I won’t be updating on the fly. I’ll be taking notes with pen and paper and typing my full thoughts out later that night.

How many people have written about the “evils” of Hollywood and the Recording Industry? How many times have you seen talk about how they just don’t “get it” and we were going to band together and make them see that we wouldn’t stand for what they are trying to do? How many of those same people lined up like good little sheep Thursday for Episode 2? Proving that living up to principles really isn’t all that easy when it interferes with a good time, right?

Speaking of the movies, how much can bootleg movies on the internet be hurting your business when you rake in 27 million dollars in one day? Which is what we really should be asking of Hollywood instead of making boycott threats that they know we wouldn’t follow through on.

As a last movie note, I don’t really care if Natalie Portman is “hot” in the movie. If a “hot” actress was the main attraction to a movie I might have actually liked Eyes Wide Shut, which I didn’t.

Lastly, just about everyone agrees that the way to end any dispute is to sit down and listen to the other side and understand them. What happens when the other side’s opinion is that you are evil and must be destroyed? Do you agree and let them destroy you, or do you kill them before they kill you?

Ok I gotta get some sleep, enough ranting for now :).

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