Copyright threat

The "orphan works" copyright legislation proposal is claimed to be a trojan horse. This artist (audio interview) says that nothing at all will be protected if not registered.

I hesitate to report on theses kinds of scary stories, because most of them turn out to be a storm in a glass of water (as the Danes say, I guess the English expression is "tempest in a teacup"). But Brad Holland in the audio interview sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

On the other hand, this article pretty much completely contradicts it. Strange that I got both links from the same newsletter.

So maybe you can just regard this, just like 98% of all those scare stories which seem to be part of the human condition.

Eric injected:
It seems like people are too damn scared about their work being used in ways they won't like. That's the risk you take when you produce something. Art and ideas aren't solely the property of the person that creates them and you're not always going to be given your proper dues when your creations are shared. Creative people stifle themselves when they're always thinking, "what am I gonna get out of this?"

I'm not saying it's right if you produce something, somebody claims the entire work as their own and you never get any credit for it. Artists and writers need to eat too. It's just that so much effort is expended to ensure something can't be "stolen" when really what they're trying to do is prevent the natural process of integrating a piece of art into the mass consciousness. That's something to embrace, not for commercial purposes but because it means another human voice has been immortalized in expressions that go beyond the individual ego.

From what I understand of this potential law is, as has been pointed out, that isn't being finalized by lawmakers and, if it does become a law, the effects aren't going to be as drastic as some would have you believe. My understanding is that when, and only when, the original creator of the work cannot be tracked down but it's been made available to the public it can then be used as we want to use it. That actually seems pretty sensible to me, at least in theory. The next part of the discussion is what constitutes an effort to find the creator, how much effort is enough (How many e-mails need to be sent? How many phone calls need to be made?), and how much time should be allowed between when you attempt to make contact and when the work is freed for use.

"Folks, the world as we know it is not going to end today. Sorry to disappoint you. As consolation we're handing out pictures of dogs in funny hats. There's only enough for half of you so please trample each other on your way to claim them."

I have long said that copyright is one of those things, like love, that you want to hold not too loosely and not too tightly, like an egg or a bird. If you find yourself crippling your production or your works in order they don't get stolen, maybe you're holding too tightly.

In early days of Domai, a lot of the material was found orphaned. Unfortunately some of it was "orphaned". Cough. But this was not because I was unwilling to pay for it, but because in those days there was a dearth of good simple nudes to be found, so I used what I did find. Fortunately after the millennium that situation started to change, and in recent years my problem has been quite the opposite: how to have the heart to reject all the fine work which I can't buy. I think that happy situation happened due to at least two factors: the fame of the site itself and what it expired, and the advent of affordable, quality digital cameras.

Passenger 'moons' at speed camera

Passenger 'moons' at speed camera.

"Not only is it disrespectful, but distasteful and offensive, particularly to children who may have been exposed to this nonsense."

Automotive?

This must be the strangest email I've ever gotten from Amazon.
To the best of my recall, I've never ordered anything for a car (assuming that's what "automotive" means in this context), or anything related to solar power.



And by the way, I had no idea solar power technology was in mass market sale like this.

Japanese sex dolls

Japanese sex dolls, youtube link. I think such are not only made in Japan though.
One of the Japanese manufacturer's site. Quite expensive for a masturbation aid, but one has to admit a lot of craft has gone into the little ladies.

I think it's an interesting sociological phenomenon. Is it disgusting? Perverted? Evil? Trivial? Is it an attempt to replace real women?
Personally I don't think so. Sex is just sex. The important parts of relationships are communication and love.
These things just are to some men what a vibrator is to some women. It's just a mechanical aid for release of tension. And if a woman wants to satisfy herself with such a thing, and just talk to me, more power to her.

Walden

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

That resonates with me, so I've just bought Walden. (If I'd had my eddication in the US, I'd probably have read it already.)

I'm curious about how Walden can be as famous and influential as it is, given that it goes totally against the grain of what 99.9% of people feel and believe. Giving up status and property for freedom? Unheard of, practically. He must have been one hell of a writer to make that idea sound appealing to anybody but the tiniest "lunatic" fringe.

The Scott Adams dilemma

Scott Adams (Dilbert) decided to blog less because it did not help his career.

He did get personal satisfaction from blogging. But it did not push Dilbert, which I think he should not have expected anyway. Dilbert brings audience to his blog, not vice versa. If Madonna wrote a cookbook, her singing/fame would bring (some) audience to the cookbook, not vice versa.

Also I think he should not have expected to collect a great book from blog postings. I don't think that good blog writing is the same as good book writing. The content in a book is meant to be long, and polished, and thoughtful. The content on a blog is quick and dirty, and meant to be read in five minutes per post. Nobody is going to read a 20,000 word philosophical essay on a blog. They are just very different animals.

I don't think that anybody who is very successful in one area or another, has ever Expanded The Empire by doing something as frivolous as blogging. Such a person should realize that if he wants to blog, it should just be for fun, for the feedback, and for self-expression. Those who have become successful on blogging itself are few, and they work so hard that I doubt it's all that much fun anymore. And I don't think they have time for another career that the blogging can support.

Make a photobook in a month

Make a photobook in a month.

Also on Mike's blog, a good article about something I've touched upon myself, the devaluation of useful words, in this case "ignorant". (Also about race horses and how they can't be saved.)

The devaluation of words like "ignorant" (or "liberal") comes about from a words being used as a weapon in heated political (in the widest sense) debates. After a few years of that, the word becomes so tainted with animosity that it just can't be used neutrally in mixed company anymore.

Awkward moments in movies

Isn't it funny how when somebody in a movie needs to draw blood, they will always drag a knife across their palm? It's pretty much the dumbest place you can choose. Either you'll have to bandage the hand into uselessness, or it will take weeks to heal because it will spring up every time you use the hand.

Also when somebody walks into a room/apartment which they know has an armed killer in it, they never look behind the door they walk through.

And the body outlines on the floor. (And in certain movies, on the walls and the ceiling...) It's not done in real life.

Writers have this tendency to sit there in isolation and try to think up stuff. L. Ron Hubbard wrote this great article (the idioms and the numbers are a bit outdated, but heck, it's seventy years old) back in his pulp fiction days, about how one day of research in the real world (the Boeing aircraft plant) not only made his stories much more realistic, but also gave him material for a couple more stories he wouldn't have come up with otherwise.

OK, Hubbard had a huge ego, and he was always trying to appear larger than life, and the scientologists are continuing that tradition. But he was a very good writer, most of the time. And some of his articles are very helpful for writers.

New learning

Isn't it funny how you can keep learning? Sometimes without even taking in any new data, sometimes just by... I don't know, expanding your mind maybe.

For example, this morning I needed a web site I hadn't used for a long while. I knew what I would have called it, approximately, but exactly where I'd stashed it away amongst the hundreds and hundreds of bookmarks I've collected over the years.... ? (Arranged in folders, sure, but still.)

And then I realized that Apple has been putting Search boxes in absolutely everything in later years. Surely they now have a Search box when I'm looking at my bookmarks...

Lo and behold, I opened a bookmarks window in Safari, and there was the expected Search box. I typed in a few characters, and boom, there we had it.

Nikon D90 rumors

Nikon D90 rumors. Hilarious.
I'm reminded of my underrated iWatch article.

Iggy Pop interview

Iggy Pop interview.
I love it when he says his art is "Dionysiac". People expect a wild, braindead rocknroller, and he talks like a professor.
This was from the eighties, and it's funny how he no longer looks like the young Iggy, but not yet looks like the middle-aged, furrowed Iggy he became within a few years. He does not look like Iggy at all, in fact.
Here's an early one. He is not making it easy for the interviewer.
I guess he does not like that everybody asks him about bleeding and vomiting on stage, but the question is how much media coverage he would have without it. I like his stuff a lot, but I think that without the records where he was assisted in composing by David Bowie (Lust For Life, The Idiot, and Blah Blah Blah), he would not have much of any great compositions out there.

Update:
Joe Dick ventured:
I think some of the stuff he says is just having fun with the interviewer and can't always be taken seriously.

I'm sure you're right. Rock musicians are notorious for doing that, and worse. For instance Al Jourgenson said once that "The Mind Is A Dangerous Thing To Taste" was recorded in one day. And another time he said it took a year's worth of slavery in the studio. Having fun I can understand, but why would you lie to people who trust you and like you?
He also said once, being interviewed before a concert, that he was wearing diapers, and was pissing himself as he spoke. Diapers? Under the skin-tight jeans musicians always wear? And taking up the amount of pee a beer-guzzling guy is bound to produce? Yeah, right. But the female journalist seemed to take him on his word.

IBM Launches Pilot Program for Migrating to Macs

"As further evidence of the growing interest in Macs among enterprise customers, IBM’s Research Information Services launched an internal pilot program designed to study the possibility of moving significant numbers of employees to the Mac platform. The study has already found an enthusiastic response from participants and is helping to drive Mac support for IBM’s business applications."
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