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NiCE 2005 Ditunda

Penyelenggaraan NiCE 2005 mundur ke bulan September, dari rencana semula di bulan Juli.

Book Tagged

Estimate the total number of books you’ve owned in your life.
Ouch! Before married, this will be much easier. But now, who owns what? :D. Well, let's see. I have a little bookshelf containing all novels not written in Bahasa Indonesia. (Why separate bookshelf? Because I haven't succeeded seducing my wife and kids to read them. Maybe only 100 books. I don't have many up-to-date, printed, technical books, because computers and internet provides much better alternative. Old tech book count is around 50, spread into dark room corners here and there. My wife and I also started to collect Kho Ping Hoo books. Maybe around 15 series now, each around 30 volumes. Another much bigger bookshelf contains Indonesian novels, maybe around 300 titles. So, total: around 900.

What’s the last book you bought?
Hmm. Kung Fu Boy 20, I think.

What’s the last book you read?
IIRC The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum.

Google Groups Could Be Better

Several enhancements I really like for Google Groups:

1. Informative feedback about which post was "rejected". When a mailing list reaches a certain level of activity (like, way too much junks :D), Google groups rejects some posting to slow it down. But the message sent to poster didn't say which post was rejected:

Hello andika at gmail dot com,

Your message could not be posted to the indonesian gmail group because there have been too many messages posted to the group recently.

In order to protect the Google Groups service, and the mailboxes of the members of the indonesian gmail group, we limit the number of messages that can be posted per hour to the group.

Please try posting your message later.

If you have questions related to this or any other Google group, please visit the Help Center at http://groups-beta.google.com/support.

Thanks,

The Google Groups Team

A copy of subject line will be a helpful hint to poster, if s/he want to try repost later, without having to check mailing list archive.

2. Mail notifications for moderated groups. When I set a mailing list to allow only member to post, spammers has made some effort to subscribe, then post his/her spams. One way to make this harder is by moderating subscribtion requests. But it need MUCH more effort for moderators to check mailing list management page everytime, to see if there are pending requests. Moderators could be notified by email instead.

3. Thumbnails for image attachments, like we have in GMail, in mail archive. Why does Google Groups treat image attachments differently? I have to download them, then open it using image viewer. Thumbnails will help Google Groups users reduce his/her bandwidth usage. Or maybe it is a trick from Google to make members not to choose "no-mail/web only" type of mailing list membership?

Fansub Membunuh Komersialisasi Anime?

Posting saya terdahulu memuji teknik pemasaran Anime yang relatif murah dan efektif:

Apa yang menarik? Well, tayangan TV di-grab, di-subtitle dalam bahasa Inggris, lalu disebarluaskan secara gratis melalui jaringan BitTorrent. Produsernya tidak protes. Karena hal ini adalah publikasi internasional secara gratis, apalagi sudah di subtitle. Tidak hanya satu-dua grup yang melakukan grab, subtitling, dan redistribusi ini, tapi banyak. Kelihatannya mereka menjajakan kemampuan penerjemahan ke para calon pembeli (studio TV atau publisher VCD/DVD diluar Jepang), sekaligus mengumpulkan massa / fans. Setelah seri yang mereka subtitle dibeli lisensinya, maka file-file tersebut tidak disebarluaskan lagi.

Efektifkah cara ini? Mungkin. Member www.narutofan.com saja sudah lebih dari 60.000 orang.

Jadi semua untung, dan ekonomis. Cerdik bukan?

Tapi rupanya ada juga yang tidak setuju:

Make no mistakes about it, fansubs are killing the anime market for the US. If you don't believe me, think about just how many anime DVDs have you purchased recently compared to the number of shows you've downloaded for free. I for one will admit I haven't bought any of the shows I've watched fansubbed yet. Now I would like to think that the reason for this is because none of them have been released yet ...

Tapi apakah masalah ini juga terjadi di Indonesia? Ada dua fakta yang berlawanan pengaruhnya:

1. Tidak banyak pemakai internet di Indonesia yang memiliki bandwith cukup besar untuk mengambil fansub, yang ukurannya berkisar antara 150-350MB per episode. Hal ini menyebabkan distribusi fansub lambat, sehingga mestinya apabila ada yang menjual anime dengan subtitle atau dubbing yang harganya terjangkau, para fans anime akan lebih memilih untuk membeli daripada men-download.
2. Di sisi lain, attitude pembajak di Indonesia masih sangat buruk, sehingga penjualan anime yang telah di-subtitle atau dub boleh jadi tidak meledak.

Bagaimana pendapat anda? Apakah bisnis anime di Indonesia masih menguntungkan? Apakah fansub mendukung komersialisasi anime di Indonesia? Atau sebaliknya?