Mr Potato Head gets a new look. I think I’m going to have to ask for one of these for my birthday!
Jan
15
Jan
14
The first picture of Titan, captured during Huygens descent, has been released. Current reports indicate that more pictures will be released in a couple of hours. This shot seems to show trenches that might be made by flowing liquid.
Jan
11
Seems I have been neglecting some of my blog duties. On 12/29/2004 Karlyn and I had our second sonogram for the baby. It wasn’t until now that I finally found some time to scan the pictures. But, better late than never. So we have officially found out that the baby is a boy and we have even decided on a name: Shaun.
Here is Shaun showing off his manhood in all its glory:
Jan
11
2 days 16 hours till the Huygens probe begins its descent into Titan’s Atmosphere. God speed…
Jan
7
Bill Gates is just like George Bush: they should not let the man talk. Mr. Gates seems to have learned how to shoot his mouth off from M$ CEO Steve Ballmer. First I’m a music thief, now I’m a communist. In a recent interview with c|net’s News.com Mr Gates had the following to say:
“No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.”
He is referring to people, such as myself, who believe in Free Culture, Open Source, and Creative Commons. He is rather inacurrate in his statement that we are communists. I myself am far from a communist. My political stance is that of a libertarian; I believe first and foremost in individual liberties. And I believe that it is important to keep a careful balance between intellectual property rights and individual fair use rights. This is far from the standpoint of the communist nations that exist today. None of them are interested in consumer freedoms.
The problem with IP extremists like Mr. Gates is that they believe that every idea must be strictly controled. And in the digital world this kind of control becomes possible. But just because it is possible does not make it moral, ethical, or right. The founders of our nation were very careful when writing the original copyright and patent laws. They specifically designed them to contain the balance between intellectual property protections and fair use. This balance has slowly been eroded away by IP Extremists. I simply believe we should put that balance back in. I do not believe we should completely get rid of IP protections. These thoughts do not make me, or anyone who shares my opinions, a communist. And I think Thomas Jefferson would agree:
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
Funny, I don’t hear anyone calling Thomas Jefferson a communist…
Here’s a few of the things I think could be changed to return balance to intellectual property law.
- Require registration for copyright protection, just like the original copyright law did.
- Do not allow copyright terms to go any longer than the authors lifetime. Currently, copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. Copyright law was originally intended to encourage new works by offering a temporary monopoly on the author’s work to the author. A dead author no longer requires an incentive to create new works.
- Do away with software patents, or lower the time allowed for a software patent to 1-2 years. Current patents currently exist for 20 years. Computers and computer software changes far to quickly for this to be a reasonable time limit. Software changes quickly, with new innovations happening every couple of years. Software patents are dangerous to both proprietary and open source software.
These are just a few of the ideas that I agree with. They hardly sound like communist ideas. Mr Gates seems to show his lack of intelligence by calling people such as myself communists. How disappointing…
Jan
7
Troubles continue on my hosting account. Yesterday the server went down from 11:00 am till 3:30 pm. It took till 3:30 pm to get one of the owners on the phone. When I told him that the server was down for most of the day, he said he was unaware of that. His next statement was “I don’t know what you expect me to say.” What?!?!? I expect you to say “I’ll get right on that sir. I’ll track down the problem and get that fixed as soon as possible. And I am very sorry for the inconvenience.” How hard would that have been? These guys need a serious lesson in ‘Customer Service 101′.
To top it off I had to spend the rest of the day going back and forth via email trying to get one of the scripts on AkronBugle.com working again. The cause: one of the php.ini settings was not the same as it was on the old server. You’d think you would document that kind of thing carefully before you moved to a new server. These guys really need to think things through completely before the execute a server change.
Finally, I found out today that they failed to copy over the old log files so that the web stats would remain up-to-date. Now I’m unable to see any stats for the past year. I have no way of doing any kind of traffic analysis. It’s like the web site just went up. This has me very angry. These guys really need to think about their customer’s business and marketing concerns.
If I have one more problem these guys are going to here those now famous words: “You’re Fired!”