Smartwombat Blog

Is Piracy useful for the software industry?

And DRM? or content protection? Read this "Just enough piracy" from Long Tail. Good read!

"Instead, efficient software and entertainment markets should exhibit just enough piracy to suggest that the industry has got the balance of control about right: not too loose and not too tight. That number is not zero percent (which requires protection methods so invasive they kill demand), and it's not 100% (which kills the business). It's somewhere in-between.

The second reason the quest for zero-piracy is a mistake is an economic one: piracy can actually let you raise your prices."

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I 've been to the movies and watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It is really crap. I mean there are some funny parts, but it is boring at the beginning and annoying at then end. The funny party is in between the two. Very little .... It is a crap movie!

American Diaries III

After checking out Washing DC, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Dutch Country I got pretty tired and decided to finish with the tourist stuff and do nothing, go nowhere just lie down and watch TV, eat junk food and just go out mainly to the beach. Shame on me. I felt a little guilty about this, but I accepted the fact that this country is way to big for me to use the usual approach of checking out everything. Instead I will come back and continue visiting cities and being tourist some other time…

With this problem settled I turned my attention to shops and started visiting them as I was paid for this. I found some of them really cool, especially book stores, where I spent hours with going through tons of books and music. Some of the best music I found are the Blind Boys of Alabama, Nickel Creek and Motown remixed.

I was not really into Gospel, Country or Motown before but after listening these I think I will spend some time and money to get to know more about them. I also found this book called "On Writing" by Stephen King. I wanted to buy this one a long time ago, the book itself is half autobiography and half about how to write books.
 

Contest is over

I was just about to upload my presentation to onenotepowertoycontest.com, but I received this reply from the site

   Thank you for your interest, the contest is closed as of 11:59:59pm on 08/15/2005.

It is 8:11 PM 08/15/2005 right, I did work loads on this poweroy and I am a little bit disappointed right now, or I did seriously misread something.

American Diaries II.

As you know I am coming from a small country called Hungary and although it is a very small country, we are proud of everything related to our homeland, but one of the few things we are super-proud of is our education system and that we are really smart and educated people in general. On the other hand it is a well known "fact" that american people are not so well educated and not so smart in general. One of the often cited example is that they are often confusing Budapest with Bucharest (capital of Romania) when they are asked to tell the capital of Hungary. Doh! Even a toddler would knew this one...
Anyway. We were going out the other night for a pub crawl and arrived to a bar where the doorman asked for our IDs to check if we are over 21 and he can let us in. Unfortunately I did not have an ID with me as I do not like to carry around my passport when I am going out. I tried to explain him that I am not local and I do not like to keep my passport with me and I am coming from another country from Europe (did not bother to tell him the name as he would not know it anyway). Then he tried to tell me some German words - he told me they were German words. Then I had to explain him that there is another country in Europe called Hungary and I am actually coming from there and we are speaking a whole different language as well. Then he asked me a question what was really surpising to me. He asked me to name the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War in 1600s. Things started to turn to surreal as I had no idea what he was talking about nor who was the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s, as you know I am from Hungary and we are almost as proud of our knowledge of History as our Geographical knowledge. At least we did not mix up Washington with Wyoming. So, after confessing that I have no idea, who is this person he is asking about, he let me to go on my way and enjoy my beer. Later, one of my friend went for drinks and met this guy, who told him that now he remembers who was the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War and that the person called Gabor Bethlen. What should I say. I went to him and I told him that I am really impressed and mentioned that he is redefined my views on education and super-proudness. I intentionally forget to mention that my High School was named after Gabor Bethlen, just to keep my shock manageable. Respect!

Disclaimer: Please, note that English grammar and language is not something I am super-proud of, as it is not my first language, and I suck with grammar anyway. ;-)

American Diaries I.

After 9.5 hours long flight from Budapest we finally arrived to New York JFK. The immigration was quick and painless and got all the luggage back pretty quick. We spent the first couple of days wandering in New York (Manhattan to be precise) and went to the beach on Long Island. Here is some of the likes and dislikes so far.

Likes:

• Starbucks - I like Starbucks a lot.
• Cable TV - the cable TV is light years away from what we have here in Hungary.
• People - I am very impressed by the people here. They are helpfull and really nice.  
• Laundry - This is the place where you go and wash and dry your stuff all by yourself, amazing invention, no messing with your washing machine, in one hour you will get back your dirty clothes clean and dry. I want one of these...  
• Traffic - Easier traffic code and better roads than at home.
• New Yok - Central park is cool.

Dislikes:

• New York - I dislike big cities in general and this one is fairly big. 
• Cable TV, watching TV in general - come one, you must be joking, the amount of ads just zeroes the joy of watching TV. As the movie comes near to its end, it is interrupted almost in every one minute, I fall asleep...  

So it seems that I have much more good experience than bad and all in all this country is really cool. I am looking forward to see Washington and some of the smaller towns.