SOPA, C-11, ACTA. The entertainment lobbies are doing a ton to fight piracy through the US Government, instead of addressing their old-world issues and getting on the digital bandwagon. Piracy has and will always exist in some form, but for the common consumer the real issue is getting what they want in the cheapest and easiest way possible. In today's world that means entertainment on-demand and as cheap as possible.

Apple (via the iTunes model) has changed most of the landscape already, but Louis CK is doing more than any single person (in my mind anyway) to change things from the inside.

His show Live at the Beacon Theater was the first big (read: commercially viable) performance to snub a nose at the entertainment establishment and it's antiquated business/distribution models. It was also hilarious. I highly recommend paying the $5 and downloading it from his website (warning: it's fairly offensive).

Today he's shaking things up again. Everybody hates Ticketmaster, and can't help but love the following email I got today:

I'm going on the road

hello folks!  I'm going on tour this  year from October through
Feb.  I'll be all over the goddamn place.  This year, I'm trying
something new, building on the fun, success and fan-benifit of
selling my content online.  We are selling tickets to this tour
exclusively here on louisck.com.  I only wanted to do this if
there was a way, like with LIVE AT THE BEACON, that  it could
bring the price of tickets down and make them easier and less
complicated to buy.  We figured out a way.

Making my shows affordable has always been my goal but two things
have always worked against that.  High ticket charges and ticket
re-sellers marking up the prices.  Some ticketing services charge
more than 40% over the ticket price and, ironically, the lower
I've made my ticket prices, the more scalpers have bought them
up, so the more fans have paid for a lot of my tickets.

By selling the tickets exclusively on my site, I've cut the
ticket charges way down and absorbed them into the ticket price.
To buy a ticket, you join NOTHING.  Just use your credit card and
buy the damn thing.   opt in to the email list if you want, and
you'll only get emails from me.

Also, you'll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for
anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel
your ticket (and refund your money).  this is something I intend
to enforce.  There are some other rules you may find annoying but
they are meant to prevent someone who has no intention of seeing
the show from buying the ticket and just flipping it for twice
the price from a thousand miles away.

Some of these rules may be a pain in your ass, but please be
patient.  My goal here is that people coming to see my shows are
able to pay a fair price and that they be paying just for a
ticket.  Not also paying an exhorbanant fee for the privalege of
buying a ticket.

Tickets across the board, everywhere, are 45 dollars.  That's
what you'll actually pay.  In every case, that will be less than
anyone has actually  paid to see me (after ticket charges)  in
about two years and in most cases it's about half of what you
paid last year.

The benifit for me is that I won't get angry emails from anyone
who paid a ton of money to see me due to circumstances out of my
control.  That makes me VERY happy.  The 45 dollars also includes
sales tax, which I'm paying for you.  So I'm making more or less
depending on the state.

Another benifit to me is also one to you.  I get your email
address (if you opt in) when you opt in.  You don't have to join
ANYTHING to buy these tickets and if you opt in, youll only hear
from me once in an old man's jizz-cycle.

Obviously  none of this means anything if the shows aren't good.
So that's up to me.  As I do every year, I'll be performing a
brand new hour (or more) on all of these shows.

Lastly, it was a real challenge to find venues around the country
that could work with our exclusive ticketing service under these
perameters.  It means I'm playing in very new places.  I really
appreciate all of these theaters that are letting us give this a
try.

Setting up this tour has been fascinating and difficult.  this
ticketing service is a brand new thing and I really fucking hope
it works and that there aren't any problems.  If anything comes
up, please be patient.

Doing things this way means I"m making less than I would have
made if I did a standard tour, using the usual very excellent but
expensive ticketing service.  In some cities I've had to play
smaller venues and do more shows.  But I like doing more shows
and about a year ago I reached a place where I realized I am
making enough money doing comedy so the next thing that
interested me is bringing your price down.  Either way, I still
make a whole lot more than my grandfather who taught math and
raised chickens in Michigan.

alright, that's it, folks.  I'll be sending this message out to
folks on the opt-in list and sending a separate email that lays
it out much more simply with the proper links.  I am doing this
because when I emailed you about LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL, (which is
still on sale for 5 dollars!) about half of the people who got
the email really enjoyed the long, verbose, unedited message.
The other half HATED it and would have preffered a price, a link,
and me shutting the fuck up.

This way, you can read this if you like, or your can just see the
massive shit-ball of text and throw it in the garbage, and focus
on the simple email.

I hope to see you all on the road.

regards,

Louis C.K.

RGB Pen - I totally get that this is a novelty item , but it's still damn cool.

Sadly this is very accurate. I'm sure there's an app for this problem.

Source: http://catandgirl.com/?p=3143

The best part of this is how disappointed the husband is with his wife.

On second thought, maybe I'll just continue to do my best Richard Belzer impression when I watch the 3D.

To me, McAfee is at best a shitty organization. A company that makes shitty products and markets them to you in a less-than-honest way.

There are way better virus scanners out there for free or cheap (I use, and love AVG). The only thing McAfee is good for is bloating up your computer with dozens of small programs that use up your system resources, require constant updates and generally slow things down. Virus & malware protection isn't very good if it renders your computer useless. It's only saving grace is that it's slightly better than Norton.

I've looked like a performance-enhancing, computer genius among friends and family more than once by simply uninstalling McAfee and replacing it with AVG.

A couple of months ago I got an email from McAfee that suggested I buy some of their software to speed up my computer. That in itself is highly amusing to me - first, sell users (preinstalled) software that will slow down their computers, then sell them something that will speed it up. Very slick. Ethically, you'd think that if they found something to make McAfee infected computers run faster, they would actually incorporate that in to the offending software (their own).

A couple of days ago they trumped that by letting me know that my McAfee Protection has expired. The only time I ever paid for McAfee on one of my own computers was in 2001, and I only paid for a 1 year subscription.

On the face of it, emailing me a notification that my subscription just expired seems like a pretty underhanded marketing ploy. On the other hand, maybe the computers running their CRM software has McAfee installed.

Really neat idea but the name sucks.

Everyone knows that Apple won't be the only tablet manufacturer in the market... there are rumors or confirmations of every major cell/pc manufacturer and every OS software developer out there getting involved - Dell, RIM, Microsoft, HP, Google and so on.

Today the domain name BlackPad.com was registered by Research in Motion (aka RIM, the Canadian company behind the Blackberry). Just last week it was discovered that HP had filed for the trademark PalmPad (HP recently acquired Palm and is quickly integrating it's WebOS in to as much as they can).

Here's the thing: just a few months ago, Apple was a big joke because (a) they were releasing a tablet that was more like a big phone, than a computer; and (b) they had the word "Pad" in the name (causing a *flood of period jokes). *Sorry.

So why would all of these big companies all of the sudden be so interested in naming their products ______Pad? Obviously Apple's been successful with their tablet launch, but this is the first commercially successful product in what will become a new industry unto itself. There is still so much room to grow, there is a LOT of things that the iPad does not do (and I say this even though I love my iPad & it's capabilities). If other companies are going to want to compete, they will have to differentiate, and it starts with their brand.

HP had been using the word "Slate" in reference to their Windows 7 tablet... I think they should go that route. It would be so much more helpful if they can say something like "the iPad is a neat device that revolutionalized computing, BUT if you get the Slate you can do all of these extra things (I'm thinking front-facing camera (or any camera) and a USB plug-in as a start). PalmPad might even roll off the tongue easier than "iPad" due to the fancy alliteration, but it is still going to confuse itself with Apple's product. If someone tells my mom that the PalmPad has a camera, the odds are that she will still go out and buy an iPad - to her they will sound the same.

We'll see what happens, but so far I don't like the start that these other companies are giving themselves.

Ah, the future.