The first shared award in history —at least 26,000 winners and counting— and the first one that’s going to keep being awarded, continuously, to everyone who joins the fortunate mass.

Very easy to become a winner too. No special web design or marketing talents needed, no Windoze box required (on the contrary, all you need is a Mac —which is exactly what makes this a “special edition”— and a torrent client), no outstanding skills necessary. Just follow these easy, simple steps:

1. Launch your favorite torrent app. Anything will do.
2. Download bootlegged software, like “iWork ’09” or “Photo$hop ¢$4”. It’s free —fuck Appl€ and Adob€, they’re not gonna get your money today— and you can start using it right away, no authentication required.
3. Install the downloaded software on your machine and make sure you give your admin password when required by the installer. This is important!
4. Go to your preferred discussion forum and complain about the trojan you’ve just installed on your machine. Breathe through your mouth while observing that you’re not the only one; at least 26,000 other people are on your side, breathing through their mouths exactly like you do, hating everyone who trolls your threads with flames like “you had it coming to you” and worthless comments like “you can’t fix stupid”.
5. Panic and buy antivirus software. Or better, download pirated copies :)

And then come over here to get your award.

You don’t even need to drop by, actually; the award is yours automatically. How’s that for convenience?

For a bonus prize, spreading the word about the Mac finally becoming as vulnerable to viruses as Windoze will do. No need to know the difference between a virus and the trojan freshly installed on that box; let the pros at SecureMac and the likes worry about the details, that’s their problem ;)

Web Design Stuff

First things first, yeah, the redesign for this blog is done; it’s been done for quite a while now but I forgot to tell about it. The header graphic is still a place holder —couldn’t come up with anything shiny and cute— but it’s just eye candy, so it can wait until I find something better. I think I managed to clean up all the posts too, no more XHTML stuff to fuck up the validation —if that matters anymore. Bottom line, the redesign is done, everything’s black and sexy, all tags are closed and the CSS purrs softly ;)

And since I was at fiddling with them anyway, in the process I managed to redesign the portal, the photo archives and some of the other projects too. Just because I was feeling bad for neglecting them for such a long time :)

Fooled around with this old–new thing called HTML 5 too —out of curiosity mostly— but decided against it for now; it’s not ready for proper use. I mean, it might be ready, but the browsers aren’t ready yet, so that’s something I’ll postpone until the internet grows up.

Speaking of browsers, the two main dissidents have just released pre-release previews [sic!] of their next versions, namely Firefox 3.1 β2 and Opera 10.00 α. To which —for a change— I actually have something nice to say :)

Both, a massive improvement to the current stable versions, both a definite step forward… at least as far as CSS support goes (which is pretty much all I care about when I talk about web browsers).

Firefox 3.1 β2

Among others, finally support for web fonts, through the @font-face thing and proper display of text-shadow, which I applaud :)

Then, the implementation of shadows for block elements, which is another thing only Safari has been doing so far. A little half-assed though, since it’s being done via the proprietary -moz-box-shadow (exactly in the same half-assed way Safari uses App£€’s proprietary -webkit-box-shadow) but at least they got it right. Opera is not there yet, but hopefully one day they’ll catch up too… Anyway, proprietary, standard, it doesn’t really matter right now; the feature is there —which shows it can be done— and I’m pretty sure these details will be polished later on, once 3.1 exits “beta”.

To my surprise —well, not really, but I didn’t expect Firefox to beat Safari at this— there is now support for the “nth” family of selectors (:nth-child, :nth-last-child, :nth-of-type, :nth-last-of-type, :first-of-type, :last-of-type, :only-of-type and the likes). Pretty neat; this —in theory— will be a great deal of help in getting rid of a ton of markup bloat; Opera does it too —incompletely, but accurately for the most part— so, as soon as the WebKit team catches up, I guess this is really gonna mean something.

One blooper though… Not CSS-related, but immediately noticeable: certain PNGs are displayed in a cyan-tinted monochrome. Something to do with the graphics engine —I don’t know for sure— but it’s definitely a fuck-up and I hope they fix quickly.

Opera 10.00 α

One major thing and, as far as I’m concerned, the most important on the list, is the ability to display alpha transparency through RGBA and HSLA color values, via the […]color:rgba([…] and, respectively […]color:hsla([…] rules. This is awesome and it’s one of those “what the fuck took you so long?!” things, since Safari and Firefox have been doing it for quite some time now and translating RGBA values to RGB just for the sake of Opera was time consuming and pretty frustrating :)

They’ve got support for web fonts too now (same @font-face as above) and this is cool, but I wonder, how long before copyright lawsuits will make these browser makers “fall back” to not supporting this feature?

Anyway, the new Presto 2.2 has got other tricks up its sleeve, but most of them don’t interest me yet and —for what I care— I’ll soon be able to design my websites to look pretty in Opera too.

So it’s all good.

Except, of course, for that piece of shit Int€rn€t €xp£or€r, which brings me to:

M$I€ 6.x

Or <!--[if lte IE 6]>, which is exactly how I’m gonna stop supporting M$I€ 6. Most of my websites are already plain vanilla when viewed in versions older than 7, except for the main sites for the studio but those are going to follow pretty soon, as soon as I have enough time to go through those style sheets again and come up with a naughty nag for the M$I€ 6 users >:)

I€ 6 is dead, everybody agrees… I don’t know why I should waste anymore time butchering my CSS just for the sake of that piece of shit…

Goggle’s Chrome is still a half-assed, incomplete job so there’s nothing worthy mentioning about it and, since I already seem to have exhausted everything nice I had to say, time to move on to the “told you so” forecast…

Politics

More exactly, the idiotic frenzy I keep seeing on TV and the internet, about this “historical” event that just happened: the enthroning of Obama.

I can’t say “I’d hate to rain on their parade” because, if I did hate it, I simply wouldn’t write this. Truth is, their parade asks to be pissed on, for two simple reasons:

1. The incessant broadcasting of American politics turned my TV into the most boring and annoying piece of hardware in the house. I switch to the news channel so I can watch some “news” and there it is, on all channels, the big herd waving flags and screaming “yes, we can” like there’s no tomorrow. A fucking circus…
2. The credulity of these people is so unbelievable, so un-fucking-believable, that it makes me lose the last tiny bit of hope I had left… Which, in turn, ruins my day, so I guess this makes for a good enough reason, right?

So I’m standing here, pissing on their parade and asking: Do these people really believe anything is going to change?!? They’ve just gotten a new president, nothing more.

A new name and a new face, a new “Bush”. Nothing more.

The head of the government, not their friend, not their ally, not their representative; just the spokesman for a corporation whose sole purpose is to keep the masses obedient and suck them dry.

“Yes, we can” my ass.

Big words, brain-washing, miracle pills. As long as the war goes on and Bush is not being judged and convicted for the massacre, as long as there are military bases in Okinawa and everywhere else, as long as they spend more money for missiles than cancer research, as long as their economic fuck-ups make people all over the world lose their jobs, as long as you can’t hear half of Eminem’s lyrics because of a self-righteous piece of shit censoring away behind his desk at MTV’s, as long as people have to give up their money to fund the government through this yakuza-like mulct system called “tax”, as long as they continue to make so much fuzz about the new president being black while casually mentioning that their society has overcome its color and race problems, while the governments keep tightening their grip on our necks in the name of whatever greater cause, the president is nothing but just another spokesman for the tyrants. The enemy, the one who brings the bad news on TV, the one who smiles at you while you bend over to take another one in the ass.

Why have people forgotten all these? How can they forget so easily?

Has all this flag-waving sight such a strong, overwhelming hypnotic effect that people not only forget what the government really means, but they even applaud and cheer it?

Has Bush brought them so much desperation that the mere perspective of not having him around anymore is enough to blind them and intoxicate them to the point of actually celebrating the enthronement of a new one?

Color me stupid, but I don’t get it.

I know one thing though, and I’ll definitely taunt people, as soon as the present tense becomes accurate, with this: absolutely nothing is going to change.

Taxes will continue to be taken from people and, most likely, will grow too. The number of jobless and homeless people will continue to grow, while the mercenaries will keep dying in the name of lies and money. Censorship will become more and more aggressive, to the point that they’ll probably have to reinvent the language and the so-called anti-terrorist measures will keep eating away at our rights and freedoms, while the internet will lose more and more of its independence and neutrality. Religion —oh, this fucking plague— will continue to cause death and hatred while, unfortunately, the number of bible-huggers will keep growing. Costly computer generated graphics will continue to maintain the “man on the Moon” lie, while enormous pressure will be put on the Chinese to not expose the fact that there’s never been a stars and stripes flag on the lunar surface.

Nothing is going to change, on the contrary.

And I hate myself for being the asshole who pisses on their parade, but the idiocy and credulity of so many people has become unbearable.

Religion

More like a “notes to myself” aside —carefully trimmed down to something that won’t make absolutely everyone hate me— but I have to let it out so here it is:

Someone who thanks some god for their achievements and does so before —or without— thanking their parents is an ingrate. An ungrateful drone.

Someone who attributes their own achievements to some god’s will and not to their own efforts and virtuosity is a fucking idiot. The same someone who attributes their fuck-ups to Satan or their own weak nature and forgets to blame god is a fucking hypocrite.

Someone who misspells “god” on purpose (where by “on purpose” I mean “out of fear of celestial punishment”) while bashing your head in for misspelling “your” and “you’re” is another kind of hypocrite, a special kind of hypocrite who deserves having their head bashed in… at least figuratively >:D

Is a friend really a friend when he won’t believe what you’re saying unless you swear to his god, while knowing that to you that doesn’t really mean shit?

Ugh, trim, trim, trim, the world ain’t ready yet and the sound of fingernails on a blackboard annoys me too, so it’s time to hit “Post” and get some sleep. I’ll be back with the “told you so” elbow-to-face move sooner than you think, I promise :)

But before I sign off, I can’t help but wondering: how the fuck do I always manage to produce “hate” lists longer than “love” ones‥?

Yesterday, by accident, I came by this website, called TheTattooAlbum.com, who sells cheap tattoo flash (for people who want to be someone else’s clone). And —surprise!— there’s a page for Dali Rău too, complete with a profile photo, a tag line, a short description and some contact information, links to my website and no less than eight drawings on sale, for prices ranging from 4.90 to 14.90 American dollars.

The only thing is that it isn’t me and those shitty drawings are definitely not mine!

Well, the name is mine, the description is mine —a few paragraphs copied from my profile page—, the shop address is mine and the links do point to my domain, but the rest is fake. That creep in the photo isn’t me, the tag line is not a quote of something I ever said and those drawings aren’t fucking mine.

So what we got there is a charlatan using my name and my internet presence to pose as a real tattooist, so he or she can sell a few cheap drawings.

I’m sure the people at TheTattooAlbum.com had no idea about this sham —and, by reading their terms of use, I understand they never bother to verify the authenticity of the items before publishing them— so there wasn’t much they could do to prevent it. At least, I hope it was like this, otherwise they’d end up looking pretty stupid for promoting that kind of cheap stuff by allowing impostors to sell it through them…

So, What’s Gonna Happen?

Well, of course, I contacted them right away and told them about it. I chose to use their regular feedback channel and I chose to refer to this as a publishing error, because I’m not the kind who’d start spraying knee-jerk cease and desist threats —if I hate something more than tattoo flash, I hate this whole “legal” approach— and I hope the owners of the website will respond in a positive manner, saving us all the unnecessary trouble of having to go through lawyers and all that shit…

Haven’t gotten a reply so far —at the time I sent the e-mail it was too early for someone there to be at work— but, as I write this, I think I’ll be seeing one pretty soon.

I’d also like to meet the little piece of shit who used my name to sell their stuff, so I can attempt —in the most unpleasant way— to tear him or her a brand new shiny asshole… But I know that’s not gonna happen, so —for now— I’d be satisfied with a prompt and appropriate response from the owners of TheTattooAlbum.com.

I’ll probably put something on the website too, so that those who visit through those links know that the drawings aren’t mine and they were (about to be) sold some cheap fakes… But probably, as soon as the people at TheTattooAlbum.com get my message, there won’t be any need for this, so I’ll postpone it a day or two.

What’s Not Going to Happen

Assuming those drawings could be there on sale for some time now, I guess the little shit and TheTattooAlbum.com have made some money by selling those drawings (although those who paid money for that crap might deserve a new asshole too, just for being that stupid, but that’s another story) so I’d probably be entitled to ask for a reward or a settlement for abusing my trademark.

But that’s not going to happen. I’m not that kind of person and, sincerely, I don’t give a shit if they managed to make some money out of that fraud. I do work for the money I get and I have no intention to obtain some crappy cash for something like this.

All I want them to do is to remove this charlatan from their website. Period.

Conclusion

None :)

I mean, there’ll be one as soon as I get in touch with the owners of the website and that’s when I’m going to update this article too. But for now, the conclusion is not yet here…;)

And, since when this is over, the respective webpage —currently located at thetattooalbum.com/tattooartists/artist— will be taken offline and soon will die out in Google’s cache too, I thought it would be a shame not to record it for posterity… so I took a couple of screenshots, for your viewing pleasure :D

Enjoy :)

• Front Page (Artist Profile)
• Drawing 1
• Drawing 2
• Drawing 3
• Drawing 4
• Drawing 5
• Drawing 6
• Drawing 7
• Drawing 8

Update

Tuesday, April 8^th, 2008

I have received word from TheTattooAlbum.com and the matter has been resolved.

We have looked into the matter and taken appropriate actions against the artist. The user account is deemed to be in violation of your personal information. TheTattooAlbum.com maintains strict copyright and intellectual property policies. As such, the user has been suspended and the link http://www.thetattooalbum.com/tattooartists/artist/ will not be available.

For the record, we have tracked the IP of the user and withheld his payments. We will be glad to follow up or keep you posted on updates related to this issue.

Good enough for me. I will not pursue this matter any further so, basically, this is the conclusion I was looking for.

The owners of TheTattooAlbum.com have taken the appropriate course of action and I’m satisfied with it. The charlatan has been already torn a new asshole, so that too is good enough for me; I’m not gonna pursue the little shit any further.

My thanks to the staff at TheTattooAlbum.com for the prompt response.

Case closed ;)

Long story short, in their immovable servility to Yahoo!’s policies, flickr has finally toed the line and begun censoring content as well.
Do a Google search on “flickr censorship”, “fuckr” or “censr” for the whole thing.

Bottom line, to me this was the last straw, so I deleted all —but one— images I had stored there and will stop paying for a pro account.
When my current account expires I will also ditch the thorn-in-my-side that has been the @yahoo.com e-mail address and that will also be the last day I will ever have something to do with Yahoo!
Except —maybe— for the bashing and bad-mouthing I’ll give them here and there, on the net :D

The name of the game is boycott and I encourage you to do the same.
Or, at least, read the stories and then make your own mind ;)

Anyway, fuck’em all.
This is me standing and going against the grain.

P.S.: Oh, by the way, go get yourself a Gmail account… or whatever else. I’m one push away from adding yahoo. to my mail server blacklist :)

P.P.S.: For those who would want to join the boycott but are not too thrilled at the perspective of having to backup up manually, one by one, all their pictures on flickr, Flickr Backup will download them all to your computer in no time. It works on all platforms and it’s free.

About an hour ago I got this e-mail —sent through the feedback form on the contact page of the main website— from somebody signing as “800 spam mail” on a “yourspam” account from @aol.com, telling me that the respective feedback form is being used by spammers to send out bulk e-mail and suggesting a solution to deal with it.

Solution which was very easy to implement and, as far as I can tell, is quite effective.

So, what I need to do is say “thanks a lot!” to the dude at AOL. The solution you suggested worked as a charm; if I knew the cockroaches are using my mail form to spread their shit, I would’ve done it long ago.

And, of course, I have to say a(nother) couple of round, clearly pronounced “fuck you!”s to the scum of the Earth, also known as spammers.

“‘How To Spam’ For Dummies”

I know I probably ought to write this in Chinese —for maximum efficiency, if you know what I mean— but I don’t speak the language and anyway, the spam I usually get is in English, so I can take the freedom to assume that the target–so-called–audience can also read the language they so creatively use to fill my moderation queues and mail boxes ;)

I also know I probably ought to avoid singling out a certain country, since spam comes from all around the world and China is responsible for only a tiny slice of it, but you know what? Fuck it, spammers make me feel singled out most of the time, since the spam nowadays addresses you by your first name and the tentatives of getting spam comments through the blog filters are all based on friendly-sounding, on a first name basis sentences. Besides, I know I’m not discriminating, so I don’t care about political-and-what-not corectness :p

So here they are, two lists to help you, the in-danger-of-being-called-“lame”-and/or-get-fired-for-being-incapable spammer-wannabes:

How To Spam My Blog Comments

1. Posting more than one complete URL (e.g. http://www.domain.tld/directory/page.extension) —and this includes the URL of “your website” which you can specify when you sign— will automatically flag your comment as “possible spam” and stop it from being published, instead keeping it in the moderation queue, where I can read it and decide if it gets published or not. So you have to stick with only one URL per comment, either in your signature or in the post itself.
2. Using any of the words that are usually to be found on any black list —you know, names of under-the-counter drugs and keywords one can only find in the <head>s of porn websites, including their most common misspelled forms— will also automatically flag your comment as “spam” and kick it down in the moderation queue, without publishing it unless I say so :D Damn, this is a hard one! I guess it would be very difficult to advertise shit without spelling out its name… Hmm, lemme think about it for a second… How about anagrams? Or cryptograms? Or, you know, translations of the respective word in other languages? Of course, this will require you to change the keywords on your websites as well but hey, you don’t have anything to do anyway, so I guess it won’t be such of a big deal ;)
3. Posting a comment in English on a Japanese weblog doesn’t seem to work either. Not that I’m trying to be smart here, but 99% of my Japanese readers don’t speak English and less than the 1% who speak it ever feel like using it on my blog. Even if the blog is in Japanese, the blacklists are in computerish, so your keywords will be flagged no matter what. This, of course, goes the other way around as well; posting in Chinese —or Portuguese, for that matter— on my English blog doesn’t seem to work right either… But this one is pretty simple: stick with the main language of the blog. If the article is in English, paste the English snippet; if it’s in Japanese, well… get somebody to prepare a few snippets in Japanese, so you can use them when you need them ;)
4. Do your homework! Addressing me with “Jack” or “Christine” will definitely not work. My name is all over the blog —in the profile and in the signature of every single article I write— it shouldn’t be so hard to find, copy it and paste it in your snippets…
5. Try to be more creative! Well, I mean, ask the person who composes your snippets to be more creative. I don’t have anything to say right now… and I like your website! Thanks! are well out-of-fashion and, most of the time, already on some kind of blacklist. Try “LOL”, “WTF” and “OMG”, they might work for a couple of months… In any case, try —at least— to use one or two words that are as on-topic as they can be; if the article talks about tattooing, then use “tattooing” in your comment. Not that these will work —your comment will still end up in the moderation queue and, eventually, in the trash bin— but I guess it’s worth trying and I guarantee you it will improve your English skills ;)
6. This is the last one :) Never EVER paste gibberish! Writing a row of random words with -naturally— the keywords strategically mixed in at equal distances, picked out from whatever magazine you have on your desk at the moment, simply doesn’t work. Besides making you look like a stupid, illiterate fuckhead, it’s also making people like me think that you are, you know, Chinese :D

I know, it requires effort and a little time to get used, but come on, it’s going to be worth it! I promise :D

How To Spam By E-mail

1. Blacklists are all over the place, so go back and read number 2. Even messages from my friends —or clients— get caught in the filters if they happen to talk about viagra or whatever-the-fuck-else ending in “-zepam” or “-nax”, if I’m not careful enough to whitelist their addresses. So again, I’d like to suggest anagrams, cryptograms or translation of the respective keywords in other languages. But be careful, because when I say “anagram”, I don’t mean adding a single quote here and there to change the sp’ellin’g of the word, I mean a real anagram! You know, like making “gariva” out of “viagra”, for example :)
2. Again, sending me e-mails in Chinese won’t work. Period. I mean, do you really think that anyone would ever click on a link inside an e-mail made of hieroglyphics they’ve never seen before?! Come on… Stick to English, it definitely increases your chances to make that buck and the overall possibility of me being clicky-stupid for a second. This goes for gibberish too. As the Chinese characters are —for most of the people— completely illegible, so is a piece of text that says ground Breakfast no 2003 without any big bucks!!! furthermore lorazepam for you $$$. No one will ever be tricked to click on any of the links, simply because the context is unreadable and there is no appeal, nor intrigue. Stick to English and make sure the sentences do say something, in a readable form.
3. With the risk of becoming annoying for repeating myself, do your homework! :D My name is not “Bob” nor “Emily” and you have zero chances to trick me into reading further when you start on the wrong foot. A mail to Bob is a mail to Bob. Dali will not read it, because it is not addressed to him and Dali respects Bob’s privacy… And since there’s no Bob around here, Dali trashes this mail right away, without even bothering to read the full subject line ;) I know you have my address from someone who harvested it years ago or stole it from some dork’s Windows machine, so I guess there’s not much you can do about it. You could always ask that someone, maybe they have it written down somewhere, but the chances are minimal. My advice: don’t write any name, stick with the handle before the “@” symbol. 99% of the time, that is my name so you have 99% more chances to trick me into opening your message.
4. Last on the list, try to be less creative with your own e-mail address; more exactly, with your handle. While there are chances I’ll open a message from, say, “Sandy Randomname”, the chances I open a message sent to me by “sldkfjgh@yahoo.com” are 0. Zero. Nil. Same goes for “i.m-here-to-make-you-rich@gmail.com” and the likes. Use simple names, names that do exist…

Again, I’m aware that these will require some effort and time, but please understand: what you do right now doesn’t work anymore, it is merely a waste of time and everyone else’s bandwidth. These lists I put together for you are definitely going to improve your efficiency and your chances to make more dollars. I guarantee you ;)

To make it all round and neat, I’m going to suggest a few things you might need to do in case none of the above work and your spam doesn’t get through.

For starters, you can quit using my oxygen. I mean, you don’t deserve it anyway, so why waste it when the only thing you give back is carbon dioxide? Right?

Also, when you go —that is, when you quit using the oxygen— you can also ask your boss and a few colleagues to join you. Ask them nice, of course… For example, kitchen knives or unscrewing the valve of the gas pipe (behind the oven) and smoking a cigarette can always be polite ways to ask ;)

If all else fails, die. Slowly, there’s no rush… Don’t let anybody tell you to hurry up, take your time, do it slowly and thoroughly.

Of course, there are other things you could do, like getting a real job or using those English skills to something creative, for example, but they’re kinda boring and bland, not to mention that there’s a risk you won’t be able to get the .5 dollars per day you’re making right now, so I guess they’re out of the question, aren’t they?

So have fun! Put in the effort, take the time you need to adjust and then have fun!

Dipshit.

For the next few months —I don’t know exactly until when, but it’s more like “the end of the autumn”— I don’t have anyone in here to pick up the phone during the day so, if you wish to contact me by telephone, please call between 10:00 and 11:00 AM or between 8:00 and 10:00 PM. Outside these time frames, since I have the gloves on most of the day, I am going to keep the answering machine turned on and I won’t be able to take any calls.

E-mail and FAX are, of course, as usual, any time of the day, seven days a week.

By the way, the answering machine’s message comes in Japanese —and I’m too lazy to start recording a bilingual one right now— so, basically, wait for the voice to end and the beep to beep :)

To Those Who Are Planning to Visit

Especially if you visit from abroad, please try to contact me at least three months prior to your trip to Japan.

The schedule is extremelly busy —at the moment of this writing I’m all booked up until the end of August and I have nothing available for the first three weeks of September— and I might not be able to find any opening to match your schedule during your stay here.

To Those Who Are Expecting Drawings

Give me a couple more days, I’ll get back to you eventually.

Scratch “eventually”. Replace with “as soon as possible” ;)

More like a post scriptum, but

To The Fucking Spammers

You can’t get your shit through. The filters work really well and all the crap you’re trying to smuggle in the comments is kept in the queue, never sees the light of anyone else’ screen. You are wasting your time and you are wasting mine, and it’s becoming a really boring thing to come by everyday and spend those few minutes deleting your stuff…

So stop doing it, you’re pretty lame.

Scratch “pretty lame”. Insert “absolutely fucking lame, you shitheads” :D

• schedule-related
• busy busy busy

What I’m actually trying to say is that — to all who expect e-mails from me — I have received all your messages, I have read them and done anthing I were supposed to, but I just haven’t managed yet enough time to send replies to you. Rest assurred that I will get back to you as soon as possible; I also hate having to wait too long for a reply and I’m doing my best not to make anybody wait too long for mine, but I can only do so much in one day and I’m forced, for a while, to reply in a “urgent/not urgent” order, as opposite to the chronological order everyone else does.

I apologies and I promise that I will contact you as soon as I can!

I will also try to update the calendar more often… as in “in optimum time” :)

This one goes not to my clients, but to those to whom I am a client.

If the only way you can accept payments is by credit cards, you ought to make sure my credit card info is not getting stolen!
“Stolen”, as in “stolen a couple of days ago”, hence the need to cancel my card and use cash until the new one is sent to me…

And, just a thought, but you might just want to stop using Windows (both as your computers and as the server software) when you handle delicate data like people’s private information… you fucking monkeys!

Caught by whom? By me, naturally ;)

“Caught”… as in…? “Caught” as in “undoubtedly deserving this issue’s ‘Cretins Of The World Wide Web’ award, for discriminating against Macintosh users by providing online content that can only be accessed through Windows Micro$oft Internet Explorer”.

As simple and annoying as that :)

Here’s the story…

Couple of days ago — trying to get tickets for the upcoming “The Prodigy” concert in Tokyo — I ended up at the Japanese official site of the band. From the first moment, the smell of “I-never-used-anything-but-Windows-in-my-life”-shit oozed from the screen, but I thought hey, fuck it, I’m not here to bookmark or anyting, just a quick in and out, get my tickets, sayonara! So I entered. Everything fine, I found what I was looking for, I did my shopping and was ready to leave… when I saw them promoting a brand new video, unreleased yet in the mass media.

And there I was, trying to have a look, as a good citizen, stuff-buying fan I am :)

Stupid me! How could I forget the shit stink that almost made me turn away from the website?! Here it was again, stronger than ever: 映像をご覧いただくにはWindows Media Playerが必要です。　Windows Media Player 300Kは、WINDOWSのPCのみでの公開となります。 (in translation, “Windows Media Player is needed in order to view the sample movies. The Windows Media Player 300K is available only for Windows PCs”).

Fine, no problem, I have both VLC and MPlayer installed, between them I should be able to view .wmv content easily. Clicky-click and here it goes, the horror! I get a Javascript alert message, telling me that ポップアップブロック機能が有効になっているため、サービスをご利用になれません。　Internet Explorerや各種ツールバーの設定の変更が必要です。 […] (in translation: “This service is inaccesible because you have the popup windows block enabled. It is necessary to modify Internet Explorer and the other toolbar types [!sic] settings […]”).

So, not only they provide content in a single, proprietary format, but they also ask you to open your legs for a popup fucking! Why was it so hard to link directly to the .wmv file, I don’t know… I guess it has something to do with the fact that the cretin web designer and his stupid boss wanted, at any cost, to have one of those cute, fancy popup windows open, so they can break your back button and “keep you on site” (puke).

So, I allow Firefox to open popups from this particular site and clicky-click again… only to be presented with a new horror, even bigger than the first one: the respective movie file is accessible only with Internet Explorer for Windows, no other alternative… Not even Netscape!

At this point, I’m already looking for the contact address, so I can send the “webmaster” a nice, poetic e-mail, but I decide to try one more thing. So I open Safari, I go to the “Debug” menu, switch the user agent to “Windows MSIE 6.0” and repeat all the above clicky-ckick once again.

Wishful thinking! I get the exact same results, so I assume that the sniffer goes deeper than the USER_AGENT string, and there’s no possible way I can workaround that…

I sigh, I speak a little French, I send the e-mail to the soon-to-be-a-WWW-cretin — explaining to him, in the best combination of Japanese and French poetry I can manage, that the site is broken and fucked up, and that they need to get their shit together before someone kicks them in the balls for discrimination — I take the screenshots and “sayonara! motherfuckers, I’ll never ever visit this shit hole again”.

Frustrated and angry, here I am, handing this month’s “Cretins Of The World Wide Web” trophy to the web designer from Sony Online Music Japan, to his boss, to his boss’s boss and so on, higher and higher, up until the exact same cretin who brainfarted the idea of the rootkit installer on the latest Sony CDs.

Sony Music Records people, you’re all a bunch of cretins and you fully deserve the award!

Congratulations and here’s my finger, telling you that I’ll never ever again buy music from you, you leeches…

Post Scriptum: To the people who are in the mood for a reply: Do you think a worlwide boycott against hyenas like Sony Music Records, consisting in not buying a single product published by them for — say — a whole month, would make them suffer enough to reconsider their nazi policies? Would a boycott be such a hard thing to organize?

Tattooing is a privilege granted by your skills and your clients, and NOT A FAVOR YOU ARE DOING TO THEM! You get paid because you chose (or have no choice but) to sell your art, and NOT BECAUSE YOU ARE DOING YOUR CLIENTS A FAVOR!

A Portland, Oregon man who put a tattoo on the right arm of Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace is suing to stop Wallace from displaying the work in ads for Nike basketball shoes.

Matthew Reed from TigerLilly Tattoo and DesignWorks claims he owns the copyright for the design of the tattoo. Reed’s lawsuit wants the Nike ad featuring Wallace and the tattoo off the air and the Internet, as well as damages.

According to the suit filed last week in US District Court, Wallace, who was then playing for the Portland Trail Blazers, approached Reed in 1998, saying he wanted an Egyptian-themed family design with a king and queen and three children and a stylized sun in the background.

Reed researched the idea and came up with a design. Reed said the $450 charge was a small amount, but he expected to benefit from the exposure […]

But Reed claims he became aware last year of a Nike ad that centers on the tattoo and its creation. He claims the ad violates the copyright he holds to “the Egyptian Family Pencil Drawing” […]

Artist sues Wallace over use of tattoo (emphasis by me)

Lame, lame, lame…

Unfair, unprofessional, childish and stupid… that’s what this tattoo artist does here…

It is unfair to pretend you still own something which you already “sold”… I mean yeah, Adobe or Micro$haft can do that, it’s in their nature, but shit! it is so unfair when someone — who otherwise might’ve been a colleague or something — does it…

It is unprofessional to pretend you still own rights over a drawing which you did for a paying customer. I mean, what the fuck were the 450 bucks for?!? For the privilege of sitting in your chair?! Gimme a break..! When you create a tattoo, the drawing on paper is only a sketch, a draft, a starting point. You draw it on paper so you can refine it before you put it in the skin. Once the tattoo is done, that is your creation, not the drawing, which is nothing but a preliminary step. And if you are a flash artist — for whom every single drawing you ever COPIED from someone else is a treasure, because you can’t draw your own — then I understand why you might want to keep that piece of paper and “hold copyright” over it, but then don’t call yourself an artist, because you aren’t.

Childish, because I can’t imagine an adult — even more, a businessman — would even think about doing something like this…

And stupid, because that’s what I think about all this. Attention-whores might make a living on a chit-chat message board, but in business you’re doing nothing else but damaging your own image — if you ever had one…

Please stop! It’s a lame way to get attention…

I’m not taking sides with Nike or whomever else — to tell the truth, I feel good when I hear someone sues these corporate vampires or puts them in trouble — but, in this case, I think the dude is wrong and I think he’s damaging the image of the tattooing world with this crap…

Hmm, one has to wonder why he isn’t listed (anymore?) on any of the aforementioned tattoo shops websites…

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