Changing the Mail Guidelines for SonicGear

This is not that fascinating of a post but it's important.

TLDR:
Do not leave your mail subject line blank when you submit something to the site or it will get thrown out without being looked at, from now on.

The mail guideline for SonicGear item submission will be CHANGING in 1 way, as of like, now. The changes will be posted to the "mail guideline / how to" page too but this post is just here to elaborate / rant.

What is changing?
The "Subject Line" requirements. Ever since the start of that whole "virus that takes over your inbox and then spams ALL your address book people with trash & viruses forever" the Gear inbox has had well...lots of garbage in there. There's 2 reasons:

1. People don't know they have it. These things don't announce themselves, so unless a friend tells you, or you suddenly get a "Mailer Daemon / Mail Failure" notice to some defunct address you had in your book for BUY VIAGGGRAA that you know for a fact you didn't send...it just stays there spamming people.

2. People know they have it, but won't do anything about it.
This is mostly little kids. What they do  is abandon that email. So if they were SonicFan45@wherever.com they change to SonicFan46@wherever.com and just LEAVE the old address ACTIVE to spam all their old contacts forever with garbage. These things are scripts. They're viruses. They don't ever stop, or know that whatever has been abandoned. They'll send for eternity.

Philosophy: Well with this new address, that virus isn't MY problem anymore! Who cares about anyone else's mail box! Mine's new!

Yeah, well, people care. "Making a new address" doesn't stop that thing from tormenting everyone you ever had on your address book.

There's been something like this before, but now the retaliation measures are going to get serious. Before, I'd still open a few things if it "looked likely" but now EVERYTHING that looks shady (as per examples) is going right into the trash. There have been too many porn/spam/virus/password grabbers in these things to risk it any more.

Examples of what's going to get thrown out, according to what appears (or doesn't) in the email subject line.

Nothing in the subject line
RE: Re: re
Work from home!
My great day
Look at this
I'm better now
RE:
Did you try...
It's new
Look at this new

So it's totally incredibly easy to get the mail right. All you have to do is put in the subject line something about what exactly it is that you're sending in.

Found a new Sonic Tee at Sears
Is this Sonic plush fake?
Jazwares toyfair photo shows ___
Terrible holiday Sonic plush
Here's a new Sonic sticker set
Look at this prototype photo for the Jet the Hawk ___
I found my old Tails ____
FYE Sonic Items new for May 2012
There are a billion Sonic related / news related things that are so easy to put. Just don't leave it blank!

Mostly the people who ARE sending legit things all do this anyway. But about every other week, someone will forget to put something in the subject line. Those blanks? Are going to get thrown out from now on because the "mailbox takeover" virus creatures LOVE to use that to get people to open it.

Also VERY generic things like "Look at this new" I must mention because that's a really popular one for the viruses to send out. New......what? Of course you open in and bang: Rrroooowwlllexxx Replicazz! Or the very creature that took over the poor senders' inbox is in there. But people send this and then there's a genuine Sonic thing in there and it's like........50/50. Well, that sort won't be opened any more either.

So...if you've sent something recently, don't see it, never got a response, and aren't SURE you put something in the subject line, freely re-send it. It might have gotten thrown out.

This isn't the fault of anyone but the virus making fools. It's a hassle to have to do.

BAD Names!
If there's an email that sends zillions of these spams & is clearly abandoned, it's going to get black listed by the Gear mailer. No one reading this would have to worry about such a thing, I don't think.

A few 'bad apples' make it rough on everyone.

Photo Improvement Update

This second update for the week sees some interesting improved photos.
Mainly, for the super expensive SA1 & SA2 large Japan plushes. SonicTeam...about the only people who seemed to have afforded these things did some fantastic shots, especially of the rare Hero & Dark Chaos (That EVERYONE wants--yet magically no company ever bothers to make...!) So those went on as a part of the whole 20th Anniversary preservation project.

Then there's more phone cards...including one card that raises more questions then it answers and probably isn't a phone card anyway.

Japan Decor gets a page 3, too...which is pretty impressive considering how rare a lot of the stuff is/was. MIP curtain Sonic? That'll be a new one for many people/not something anyone thought they'd see.

Remember how that Jeepers Media Anti Sopa video made it look like there was some kind of secret motivation / hidden agenda behind SOPA?

Why would companies invent pirate software, tell people to pirate with it, and then get mad when they do? It was acting like a "set up" so that they could blame the internet for what they'd done. This guy here may have figured out a "why" ...at least 1 of them.

http://zerogov.com/?p=2550

To stop slavery.
I'm not in the music biz, but I didn't know that "new artists" are essentially slaves working for free at record labels for years before they get to real money. But I do know that keeping slaves or acting unfair is a bad business practice.

If you do business the right way:
Provide cool value for the customer's money, act polite, don't rip people off, treat employees and customers well, and produce items you can believe in/services that really work you won't have anything to worry about.

If you do bad business:
If you steal from customers, abuse employees, make garbagey products that don't work and rely on trickery, scams, slave labor, thieving and duping people, then you'll need oppression, lies, dictators, enforcers & etc to try and force the bad method along despite everything. Good business flows, bad has to plow down everything in it's path.

If the music/movie industry really is running off slaves and phoney price inflation or something...that's a bad biz. It's like how Netflix stopped people pirating shows & movies because it:

gave customers good service at a good price
put the shows & movies easily in front of them
works most of the time
doesn't give you a virus like a torrent

Same with itunes. Who wouldn't buy a song for 99 cents? It's so easy and cheap, AND it supports the artist too...so if you want more music/to encourage them, it's the obvious choice. Instead of going berserk with SOPA, they should of given all the money to an invention arm that'd make cool stuff at a good value for the industry & the consumer too.

In the mood for reading?
This is a longer article, but the guy seems to know what's going on:

http://joshuawise.com/28c3-transcript

Almost Through the 20th Photo Dump

Well, it's been weeks & weeks...
But the site is almost through with the 20th Anniversary photo dump that SonicTeam had on their anniversary site a while back. That gallery thing was a prime candidate for getting taken down once the anniversary passed, so all the photos (that werent already on) were preserved.

This week sees the number of remaining items hitting almost the bottom, which is great. The mail had so many things in it each week that extra stuff slowed down the effort at getting everything posted. So it'll be a good milestone, and a nice blast of cool stuff to see this all finished off.

Naturally, since it was ST itself, they had a hold of some cool/rare things which you can see this week and likely next as well. They've been sprinkling onto the site since the gallery was uncovered. And no, it wasn't just Japan items, they had stuff from all over the globe, which is also to be expected as well as interesting.

The last of the stuff will see some really good all-around shots of the famously expensive chao plushes, more patches, some phone cards and still more prizes / watches.

There also should be a 2nd update this week.
The 2nd update will see more variety as it digs into the mail that came in for the week and tries to fix up some stuff as well. Fix what?

Knitting Pattern (you know the story....on wantedgear)
Papercraft external hosted links

Well, with the papercraft, everyone knew those would go down eventually too. Networks are fickle by nature and have to take away anything that's not relevant to what they're showing right now. It appears that the time has come and they broke the links. But, as usual prediction helps with prevention of loss! The files to make the crafts will switch to  SonicGear's hosting instead and the links will be re-established for fun.

SOPA's still a threat so here goes more news against it. (Remember, it'd kill blogger too because if 1 blog links to something it shouldn't, they can close the whole site. They can still close it even if no blog links to anything, just by making false accusations too)


SOPA Junk of the day:
Just how out of touch with reality are the pro-SOPA fools?

Look at this guy here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111230/10300517237/lamar-smith-out-touch-with-internet-still-thinks-its-just-google-that-opposes-sopa.shtml

"Google oppose sopa because they get their money from illegal downloads".
WAT.
Srsly. WTH dude?

No they oppose sopa because it'd shut down the majority of the internet, and they make money by being a search engine OF the internet. If it gets down to 5 stupid sites no one wants to visit, well then there's not much need to search then is it?

"The State Department doesn't want SOPA"
Well gee. Their whole State Department agenda of trying to discourage crackpot dictators, country oppressors, rulers who the people didn't vote in & etc ...doesn't fit in with 'shut down the internet so that the people can't speak to get rid of anyone oppressing them'. Of course the state department doesn't like it. They're trying to promote freedom everywhere! They'll look like morons if they try to promote freedom while the other hand shuts down freedom. It's dictatorly, it's what they're trying to stop elsewhere--why let SOPA get away with it here?

China doesn't want the communists to learn about democracy, so it censors the internet. Wherever was having a revolt didn't want the people to revolt so well, so it wanted to block twitter because they were trying to use it to coordinate against a badguy. Is stuff like that oppressive? YES. Would SOPA be? YES. And not just because of what it is, because it's already been proven that people will get away with abusing it left and right.

You don't even have to do anything bad.
You dont have to break even 1 law.
All they have to do is SAY you did, and you'll spend so much with court costs that you'll go out of biz forever even if you were right all along and 100% legal. Veoh died as proof:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111220/11021717143/veoh-still-perfectly-legal-also-still-dead-due-to-bogus-copyright-lawsuit.shtml

The story is a bit long but worth a read.

More SOPA Fighting & Helpful Link

This update is on time too...
Trying to turn over a new leaf for the new year! Get the mail under control, get all the items on in a timely manner...and still have time for Sonic Games! Well, that's the goal at least. It seems to be off to an all-right start so far anyway.

2 new pages this week to celebrate the new year:
Japan Phone Cards
Japan Electronics

These 2 pages were a long time in coming, the 'jp misc goods' area had been a bit too big (at 4 pages) so it was time to get more specific/get items off those pages. There's still another to go (hygiene) but it won't have very many things / no new thing (as of yet) when it goes on.

SOPA is still a danger:
Last week's post talked about it in depth, and thank you to everyone who is doing something against it. Remember: SOPA can only win if people are too lazy to do something against it. They're counting on everyone not paying any attention and thinking that it can't take away all their favorite websites. How much of 'not pay attention' are they counting on? Look at this to get mad now!

"One woman wanted to pass SOPA because...'she was bored'"

Yes that's EXACTLY how much your representatives are paying attention when dealing with like...the whole livelihood of the internet. Do you know how many people will be out of a job because 'they were bored'? The whole thing is just ridiculous.

But you can get them to pay attention with this here:

http://americancensorship.org/

It contains push button tools for IN and OUT of the usa. It's so easy, it takes like 2 minutes to press them. If everyone presses it, neither SOPA nor it's stupid hiding-in-the-bushes PIPA will pass, and the internet won't get ruined. SonicGear (& loads of other places...like...all of them) will stay.

But what else will it do?
If both of these can be shouted down it'll frustrate/stop/prove wrong the clowns that want to ruin the internet because they somehow think it will give them more money if they do. (Yes, I'm sure all those jobless people will be buying bluerays & entertainment as 100s of companies fold up)

So everyone who pushes those buttons counts, that's what they're for. By the delay (SOPA was originally supposed to be a 2011 thing) it gave everyone more time to yell it down & realize what was going on/how bad it really was. So this is like a bonus time to get free hits in vs it.

This week:
Expect another update. Going to clear up some mail by doing another one this week, there may also be another (more Sonic related) blog post.

Fight Against SOPA for SonicGear

So you've probably heard of this SOPA thing.
Likely on the internet because it doesn't seem to make the newspapers or the TV news despite how big & bad it is. So a quick run down of the facts you need to know before getting into what it'll do to SonicGear.

1. It's some kind of huge conspiracy. I mean it's seriously bizarre. I've never seen anything like it before outside the realm of sci-fi reading material or comic books. Don't think so? Check out this video

http://youtu.be/WJIuYgIvKsc

Yes its Mike Mozart (FAILToy guy) yes he's loud / obnoxious etc but he is succinct AND very factual in a speedy manner. You can look up all of his facts via youtube if you suspect tin foil hattery. As the video goes on, it just gets weirder and weirder.

The bottom line TLDW:
Giant big money corporations purposely create & release software that steals their own content, tells people to steal the content with the software, then acts mad when people do as they're told. They want to enact a law to ruin pretty much everything entertaining that happens online.

2. WHY do they want to do this?
Videoguy suspects that it's to force everyone off the net, return the status of the world to the 1990s era, and make everyone use only regular broadcast TV to entertain themselves. But can that really be the real reason?

3. What will it ruin?
Damm near everything. It holds providers responsible for ANYthing users do. So if 1 troll uploads 1 wrong thing to somewhere..........say the host of SonicGear, the law can shut down anything owned by the host. So like youtube would die if 1 person puts 1 copyright video up. (well you know someone's going to...) Every review site, video site, music site, anything with usergen content (photo bucket, flickr, etc) link places (like Reddit, Tumblr, forums) they'd all get the ax.

4. The most IMPORTANT:
This will only pass if everyone sits around. Every single person regardless of country CAN help to stop this. It won't pass if everyone yells loud enough at their state and country rep. Send letters, make phone calls. Yell at the government & send emails. You absolutely can do something. Even if its' tweeting or posting this blog post (copy paste it / parts of it)

Things to do:
Send that Mike Mozart video to your state rep
Send it to Obama
Send it to the governor of wherever
Send it to whoever is relevant in your country if you're outside the USA
Go here: http://fightforthefuture.org/ (it's a site to help you contact, it takes like 5 mins)
Send it to the newspaper

The SOPA fools are counting on everyone being too lazy & self absorbed and just ignore it till it passes. Yes if it does people will get mad but then its too late.

What About Gear?
Gear's host, 1&1 is proud to stand against SOPA, as it should. However, it hosts millions of pages, under millions of companies, individuals & whatever else. 1 person infringes, and the whole thing could get killed. There's no server here. 1&1 is Gear's only host. You like Gear being view-able? KILL SOPA.

Gear Directly:
Sonic is copyrighted, but if anyone were to directly attack Gear, probably the video, ad, & music pages would be erased. They show clips & previews of copyrighted matter that'll be under attack first. (The killing order is video > music > art > words) each thing will be attacked in order till it's all gone if it passes. It fits the meme of "I stood by as they took my neighbor, now there's no one to stand up when they took my son"

SOPA is the WolfCry
Watch out: SOPA is a crying wolf.
What lots of people don't mention is that SOPA fits the meme of "Dont Cry Wolf". They propose this 'big bad destroyer' so that it gets shot down. Everyone wastes all their effort on this sham, then whatever's next, people are too tired of fighting, so they just let it go. They're tired of hearing 'the boy who cries wolf' so they ignore the real wolf.

What's the wolf? PIPA
PIPA is a toned down SOPA. It's like
"We're going to shoot the puppies!"
followed by
"We're going to make adult cats uncomfortable for an extended period"

NEITHER one is good, but the 2nd one doesn't sound so bad, after you read the first, does it? That's what they're counting on. Its 1 boss monster after the next. As soon as SOPA dies (if it does) PIPA will spring up and then must be defeated with the same vigor. Don't let the red herring in the way. PIPA is still bad news--especially since it's bad enough that they'd throw SOPA down in front of it to distract everyone.

You DO make a difference. Tweet. Email. Blog. Call.
Tell everyone you know.