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friday
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thursday
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One of my most out of the blue memories has to be something that has stuck in my mind one time when I was on vacation with my parents, years ago. We'd drive cross country to, wherever, I have no real idea why my parents always wanted to take a summer vacation, but I suppose it was fun to get away and see other places, etc.
Anyway, one time we were driving down a small highway, one of those areas between point D and point E, you know, and it was raining. The coolest thing about this was that they were huge rain clouds, not the kind of sky-coating gray clouds we get around here. We were driving faster than the clouds were moving, so you could watch the sky, and every minute or so you'd emerge out from underneath one, into an entirely different world without rain, and sunshine.
You could watch the shadows on the pavement and it was beautiful to me. Just amazing. It was a dramatic race between nature and my father driving to get out from underneath of these huge billowing clouds of hard rain, trying to get to the next patch of sunlight for however many seconds it might last until the next cloud attacks.
l Posted by Stuy Parker at 12:11 PM.
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wednesday
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tuesday
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I finally got a new design finalized. Only fear is that I wont be able to HTMLize it correctly and it'll look all fucked up, or it will run really slow for someone with a crappy computer, (like, say, Jason), and no one will like it. But, that's ok. I'm happy. I found a source of hatred and anger so deep to tap that others just might be able to appreciate it.
But not really.
I've found that hunting for Beta Band lyrics on Google has weilded positively no results what so ever. I found a few, but they stop after the first two song, so I'm bitter. Everyone has lyrics for the album "The Beta Band" though, but nothing else. Bastards.
She said to me,
Keep yer head up,
Never show up,
Keep it all in never dream alone.
I'm starting to think that half-way ignoring them while they were opening for Radiohead was the best thing next to see Radiohead live. Thank you Thom for bringing them along. I wish I had more than just their three ep's CD though. I say though a lot, don't I? Even though, I do enjoy the word. Though, though, doh, though, dough, etc. Yeah. I'll go work in Homesite now. Anyone have Homesite 5.0 to download?
l Posted by Stuy Parker at 12:58 PM.
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monday
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Zike clued me in to a trend in the blogging community that I had absolutely no idea about... Google searching. Oddly enough, EB is on top when you search for any variation of "Stuyvesant Parker," "Brad Root," but not "Alfred Turner." I guess I say my name enough.
Odd thing is, I feel saddened by the fact that Zike missed out on the hay-day of blogging. OK, the hay-day of crappy pathetic teenagers whining about how much they have to say and never get heard. Sure, I was at the top of that crowd, and had a buttload of people visiting, but it was never enough.
Self-centered blogging is an accidental medium that fell upon all of us in a strange manner. We were bloggers that broke the definition of the word, "blog." To us, our blogs were simply mediums to bitch and talk about ourselves. I only linked to outside sites to either call them stupid, or to use in reference to a friend I talked to online.
The problem with blogging these days, is the fact that while everyone loved reading our rants and our whining, they never said anything. The people who did say things were the ones who hated us, generally those "savvy internet professionals" who seem to levitate around age 24 who think that us kids, being only 16, have shit to say. Sure, they're all bankrupt now, and live desolate pathetic lives, while we flourish in the knowledge that those stuck-up bastards are now making soup daily, much like mine.
I'm going off on a tangent. The reality is, I'm pissed that Zike probably wont ever be able to write about EB, and the entire underlying society that once existed for all of us young adults, children, and even the few of us who were 23, but didn't feel like blogging about the latest dot-com merger like so many current bloggers do.
I don't want to toot my own horn, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that EB is entirely responsible for the current line of teenage bloggers. We, the former pack, made it cool to be angry, to write about pointless shit, and to just enjoy our keyboards in the most juvenile of manners... And it was all worth reading in the end to a large number of people.
The sad thing is, we make up the majority of bloggers. We are still shunned and ignored by the "adults" of blogging. Even the few of them that read us daily wont ever admit to it. A little-known secret was, back in the day, that Ev used to read EB. He'd never blog us, or mention us, but he'd hint towards it. The truth is, they're ashamed of what we have.
Adults have a natural fear of speaking their minds. We don't. We can insult whoever the fuck we want, whenever we want. And, heck, we swear like sailors! And do we care? No. We're not trying to sell our webpages and writing. We're not trying to get hired for a big business. We're doing it for ourselves, and a lot of people hate that. That's why we'll never be mentioned on Zike's site.
I don't even think Jerwin will be blogged. And that's sad.
l Posted by Stuy Parker at 2:49 PM.
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Resistance is Not Feudal, by Jim Girard (from Lockergnome)
http://www.stoppoliceware.com/
A lot of people are excited about the SSSCA, a bill being put forward by a couple of U.S. senators on behalf of large corporate backers in the software and music industry, which would make it a crime (not just an actionable civil matter) for end users to copy certain kinds of information on their computers, or even attempt to read or play it, if the copyright holder didn't want it used that way. In company with the DMCA, this bill could conceivably make it illegal even to use software that COULD be used to accomplish that purpose (including open-source OS's, such as Linux).
If this bill were to be signed into law, it would represent the first such restriction on the individual use of intellectual property (at least in a Western democracy) since the Middle Ages. The medieval church, which was the primary institution of its day, comparable to the large corporations of the industrial era in its
ability to influence or even dictate the policies of governments, controlled what was read and who got to read it. All books were held in church libraries and copied only by monks, and it was necessary to take religious orders even to learn how to read. We call it the Dark Ages. Fortunately, culture was being kept alive by the Moslems.
Those in the Holy Land kept having to fend off attacks by ignorant, religion-crazed terrorists from Europe, called Crusaders, who believed that butchering infidels indiscriminately would secure them a place in heaven. The invention of moveable type made it possible for writers and readers to bypass the
church's control of information, and communicate with one another directly, which made it worthwhile for ordinary people to learn to read, and sparked the Renaissance. Ordinary people began reading the Bible for themselves for the first time, which sparked the Reformation.
The SSSCA (along with other measures being put forward by the people who now interdict the flow of information, for reasons of profit rather than religion) is almost certainly unconstitutional, and unlikely to become law. Although the current atmosphere, thanks to the destruction of the WTC, increases the odds a bit. My guess is that it represents a testing of the waters, to see just what degree of control the market will accept - and also a smokescreen, to divert the attention of those most concerned while less dramatic (but more pragmatically effective) measures slide through unnoticed, attached to bills ostensibly for other purposes. That's how things have been done for a long time now.
The biggest ally the RIAA and other such information middlemen
have, however, is not their influence in government, but the
degree to which people on the Internet - precisely the people who
ought to know better - are willing to accept what these
organizations tell them about copyright law and the ownership of
information without looking into it themselves. It seems
intuitively reasonable to most people that information property
should be treated like any other sort of property, and that those
who hold "title" to it (in the form of copyright) enjoy the same
kind of absolute property rights they do to, say, their cars. But
that's not true, never has been, and in fact is counter to the
whole point of copyright law (if it weren't, copyright law
wouldn't be needed).
If you leave your car in the driveway, with the windows down and
the keys in the ignition, and someone drives it away, that's still
theft. You're entitled to get the car back, and the other person
can go to jail. Not so with copyrighted property. The burden is on
the owner of the copyright to defend it. If he doesn't, it goes
into the public domain (and it stays there forever). There is no
way to recapture copyright to public domain works. If a big
company issues a CD of ragtime-era music, the music on that CD
doesn't somehow, magically, become the property of that company.
If it did, I could reprint all of the novels of Dickens and Twain
and claim copyright.
Copyright is a concept of the industrial era. It arose late in the
19th century, after the book publishers that evolved earlier in
the century had established the basic industrial model that people
now take for granted - large-scale packagers, distributors and
merchandisers purchase copyright from those who create
information, and resell it to the mass market of consumers,
controlling the creator's access to his audience, determining what
works will be available to the market (usually for purely economic
reasons), and dictating prices at both ends of the chain. Like
moveable type in the late Middle Ages, the Internet has introduced
a way for the creators and end users of information to bypass that
control and deal directly with one another.
Copyright did not come into being as a way of protecting inherent
property rights. Quite the contrary. Since the Renaissance, the
"natural" condition of information is that it belongs to society
at large. Even under copyright law, it is not the work itself that
is owned - even by its creator - but the right to make copies of
it. Copyright law came into being to allow creators of information
to support themselves in an industrial economy by exercising
limited, temporary, property-like rights with respect to what they
created. It has failed miserably in that purpose, by the way. Most
creators of information still cannot support themselves by that
alone. Only about 5 percent of PUBLISHED novelists make enough
from that alone to support themselves - not get rich, just support
themselves. The numbers in the music industry are comparable.
Those people who now say that "information wants to be free" are
not spouting New Age mysticism. They are citing solid western
legal and cultural traditions going all the way back to the
Renaissance. A society requires a free flow of information to
survive and advance. Cut it off and you get the Dark Ages - or the
Soviet Union - a stagnant society spiraling into ignorance and
poverty.
The members of the RIAA (to use a prominent example) are
attempting to create the impression that they own all music - and
at the same time attempting to create technology that makes that a
de facto truth, and to pass laws enforcing it. The truth is,
however, that the members of the RIAA (like other such entities)
only own the copyright to a small minority of all musical works in
existence or coming into existence. The vast majority of recorded
music is either in the public domain, or the copyright is still
held by the creator. Its members have commercial value in the mass
market. Not the best ones, in any sense. The ones it thinks it can
sell the most copies of, given the marketing structure it employs.
Make no mistake. There is a war being waged by the existing
information industries, and it has nothing to do with the actual
principles of copyright law, the rights of the creators of
information, or anything of that sort. It has to do with the death
of the mass market - the existence of large corporations who make
their money by controlling the availability of what is available
to consumers, and who rely on being able to sell the works they
select in large quantities, and in the ways most profitable to
them. The book publishing industry relies on the kind of mass-
market demand generated by national best-seller lists, and is
tightly linked to the film industry.
The big music companies make most of their money by selling songs
nobody wants - the other songs on the album, apart from the two or
three you really want. They are currently trying to give the
appearance of wanting to participate in creating some sort of
"legal Napster," but the truth is they only want to destroy that
kind of market if they can, because it would inevitably mean great
losses of profit. Is there any model that would induce you to pay
the same amount for downloading the two or three songs you want,
that you would pay in a store for the entire CD?
There is a widespread, mistaken presumption that stronger "digital
rights management," the kind sought by the various information
industries, also protects the interests of the creators of the
works. It doesn't. I'm a published novelist, and all my personal
income over the last decade has come from the copyrights I own,
and I consider myself very lucky to be living in a time when I
have the means to bypass the big publishers and deal directly with
my readers. Without the middlemen, I can sell a book for half the
price and make twice the money - but the truth is, I'd be happy to
give my work away if I knew it was going to the people who really
want it and appreciate it, and that was the only way I could get
it to them.
We don't need these big corporations between us anymore - and they
know it, and are doing everything they can think of to defend
themselves, including attempting to criminalize the use of other
models for the dissemination of information. A number of well-
known recording artists and groups are actually opposing the RIAA,
in its lawsuits against online organizations, by filing amicus
briefs. That's because most serious writers, artists and - I
assume - programmers are not doing it primarily to make a living
or to get rich. It's nice if that happens, but there are lots of
easier ways to make money, if that's all it's about. We do it
because it's what we do, and the real payoff is getting it to the
audience that wants it and needs it.
How many people who have worked for months, or years, to perfect a
piece of software that works exactly the way they want it to, and
that is unique, would sell it, for a million dollars, to someone
who intends to destroy all copies and make sure that nobody else
ever sees it or hears of it? Some, probably, but not many. And not
the best. Would Chris take a million dollars to wipe Lockergnome
off the face of the earth and agree never to create anything like
it again? I doubt it. The people who run the information
industries would pay the million - in a minute - if they thought
it would somehow increase the bottom line. Their interests and
ours are not the same.
l Posted by Stuy Parker at 2:18 PM.
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sunday
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Today's Cookin' with Stuy!
Today, I got to make home-made old style soup! I never made soup before, unless it came in a can and it was "Mmm' Mmm' Good!" So this was an entirely new experience for me, and wow, it was a wopper! A whole 2+ hours
Andrew's dad brought him bags upon bags of vegatables to him upstairs, and there was so much they practicaly gave us half of all the stuff they got. So he decided to teach me how to make soup out of... Corn, onions, brussle sprouts, celery, and chicken. It was quite an experience. He cut up most of the stuff for me before he left, because he felt like it... So, the boiling stuff up to me.
I had to boil a bunch of chicken legs for an hour while me and Jason fucked around, and then we took out the chicken and cut all of it off the bone and added it to the pot with all the vegatables and boiled that for an hour...
It turned out really good, tasted a little too much like celery, but otherwise it was damn good. Kim didn't like it but she never likes my cooking. So, that's ok. She was happier that I spent all day doing dishes. Still three more days of dishes for me to do.
l Posted by Stuy Parker at 10:44 PM.
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