Lumpy's Corner

First of all I wish to make one thing very clear. I DO NOT endorse, desire, nor support illegal activity. I do wish that people would abide by copyright laws and respect the legal protections of others. With that in mind, I must also state that I am even more against any branch of government or any other organization repressing, impeding or violating the rights of the individual. I consider these rights sacred, divine and protected by the highest law of the land. I consider myself blessed and fortunate to live in "the land of the free" and feel any breach of the rights of an individual's rights is a tragic wrong.

The Constitution of The United States of America is a beautiful document. It was and is the greatest piece of legislation to ever become actual law. The men who crafted it were bold visionaries who felt the rights of the common man were to be held sacred. So strongly did they feel this, that they risked literally all to bring that vision to reality.

Today is one of those "so far so good" days. Things could be going better, things could be going worse but at least they are going. I did manage to update my site, catch up on my e-mails, tweak my schedule, do my laundry, prep some good meals and deal with some other basic chores.

I hope to continue with this burst of motivation. (I am, to quote my friend Eric, having a bust of motivation amidst my typical state of apathy.) I need too, my Lincoln Essay is due soon and I have not even really started to make it very solid and still have mega-reading to do on his fascinating life. I am having a particularly hard time doing this essay because the theme is Lincoln as portrayed in the media. This means, movies, advertisements, magazines etc.,

Today was "mostly" good. I woke up early and got a good jump on my Lincoln essay. I watched a good PBS video regarding him. Dug through tons of archives to start my search for newspaper article regarding him and, basically, made a lot of progress and learned much.

Work was next on the day's agenda. I was on the bike and the weather was perfect. A nice cool breeze, little foot traffic on the campus and it was a good five hour bike patrol. Only minor schedule problems and a few students even complimented me on my web site and blog. I felt like I was on a roll.

Nightfall approached and I put the bike to bed and returned to reading Lincoln's writings. All good till the end of shift. Went home and found a letter from the IRS in my mailbox! Thus "mostly" good, at least I have all the gnomes to chat with and laugh about it with.

Tune in tomorrow for my next blog and be sure and watch out for "Lumpy vs. IRS" Later.

Well, I finally finished it. My Lincoln essay is done and my life can return to semi-normal. I am sorry I haven't blogged lately but one has to have priorities. Pursuit of a scholarship has to come first.

I will not go into too much boring detail but this endeavor has benefited me even if I do not get any scholarships. My writing and typing skills are now better than ever. Besides, I learned a great deal.

Short of writing, reading and rewriting not much else has been going on in the Lump's life. I am to take it easy tonight and enjoy a nice cold beer while I catch up with all the gnomies. Other than that, you will have to check back tomorrow.

First of all, my disclaimer, I do not endorse pirating music any more than I endorse shoplifting or any other type of theft. I am not a pirate. I do not file share and do not endorse it.

I do buy used CDs however; this would make me by the Gestapo standards of the RIAA a co-conspirator. I also copy music off my CDs and burn mixes. I even copy music to my hard drive to listen to. So, according to the Gestapo, I am a pirate.

I am aware that the RIAA has gone as far as to bot the web and look for any and all sites to see if they have MP3s on them. I have already ranted about how wrong that is. But I really have to hand it to them; they hire a suave, connected politician and proceed to bend every right of the individual.

I know it's been a few days since the madman has spoken. He has been a busy guy of the late. I seem to have this bug up my but over the RIAA of the late. Once, again I emphasize that I am not a pirate and do not condone copyright violation. But I cringe at mention of the violation of individual rights, even by law enforcement and, even more so, by Big Brother like witch hunters.

I have decided to join Mockie in an anti-RIAA endeavor. Mockie is setting up an anti-RIAA site and has already set up an anti-RIAA chat room channel .

Now if you want to try IRC, I would sugesst Trillian it is a great free program which integrates MIRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN and Yahoo. I downloaded the free version and installed it today. So far I like it much. I allows you to keep one buddy list, select skins, log conversations, customize the appearance and, above, seems to function very well. I have heard the full version is even better. I would highly recommend it and would love to see you in lockergnome or the anti-iraa room.

I am not going to on and on about the RIAA right here, right now, but I will do so later. Today is pay day, and today I am gonna take care of bossiness and then meet some Fraternity Brothers for a few drinks. I will rant more later.

One needs little filling in on this issue. It is now common knowledge that the RIAA is no longer going after the "Napster"-like entities. The reason is that they can't. This article is about why.

First of all, the legal stuff. The RIAA must prove a few things to win such cases. At best, they can only plea a case of "Contributory Copyright Infringement". This is because it is the service that such entities provide do not in and of themselves actually distribute the material. They do, however, provide lists of users who obviously do, some actually maintain central databases, most offer software and they have to be aware of what their users are doing. All of this makes it difficult to prove in court. Especially since our judicial system insist that a case be presented in the most favorable light for the defendant.

A few days ago I raved about the pleasure of getting together with with my fraternity brothers. I promised that it was a segue into the next days rant. Alas, I wrote about something else... And then there was the power outage...Sorry. Let's just say I exercised my poetic license to postpone it.

I intended to talk about another room I frequent. That would be a chat room, specifically the lockergnome chat room.

I have been subscriber lockergnome for years. Not only has Chris Pirillo's E-zine been my largest single source of my online education but the man himself has been more than good to me. For starters, he actually replies to my E-mail s and, almost always, the next day, taking all he does into account, that says a lot.

Well now that the CAN SPAM act has been effect for a full seven months my inbox seems to be full of more garbage than ever before. I think it is an appropriate time to thrust a blunt, rusty infection laced spear into the soft belly of legitimate HTML publishers everywhere for SPAMERS now have legal rights. In an effort to combat SPAM, the US Government has, in fact, legalized it. This really is wrong and really bugs me. The few who don't give others any respect what they put in our in boxes are ruining it for those who actually put what we want into it and the government gave them "legal" grounds to do it.

This is why I switched over to RSS. (You can read up a bit on that here .) It seems that this is the way those of us who desire content and not trash are going to have to do. I am simply tired of my inbox being full of garbage. I also use spam assassin and some really heavy filtering.

It seems like the volumes of SPAM in my inbox have actually gotten worse this year. I think we can thank CAN SPAM for that. The act actually stands for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing". This is a classic example of our elected representatives pretend to do good and, in fact, offer, a weak solution intended to appease the masses on a political issue while at the same time appeasing the industries which lobby best. The reality is they only made things worse. The acronym %quot;CAN" SPAM is a better name that what the initials stand for.

With the new law went into effect the first of the year 2004, seven full months of my opening my inbox have convinced me that the law has made matters worse. My inboxes, at least those that I left "unprotected", are flooded. Worse yet, it seems like the more often I opt out of one spam service the more new spam services hit me.

Just in case you doubt the Bibles Creation Theory, you know have one more option.

God blessing hearts
Serendipity
Two paths touching and merging
Childlike giddiness

Smile
Warm, sweet and beaming
Pure, perfect, infectious
Nice epidemic

Untitled
Whispering calm
Passive honesty rules all
Awesome beauty

I do enjoy blogging.

I believe that is due to the fact that I enjoy writing.

However, it does demand time and effort. It demands time with internet access. Time demands also include proof-reading, checking facts, researching matters, validating your code, confirming old links are working and de-spamming.

As far as time goes, however, it seems like it is time for me to stop bloggin. My reasons for it are explained below:

Actually, WTG Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. I wonder if WordPress users feel Used?

This bugs me. I think it is SPAM.

While I empathize with having to pay for hosting and such, I do not think that covering expenses in the manner he did is an acceptable solution.

The damage to his reputation is likely to cost him far more than any revenue generated by this stunt.

I was reading the EFF newsletter and I learned that the Department of Homeland Security plans to place transmitters (via a mini-PC chip) on passports as an anti-terrorism measure. For about the lifespan of a quark, I though how novel. Reality, however, soon set in and shattered my naivety to bits. Nonetheless, I am confident that everyone involved had the best intentions. I am more confident that it is very risky and hazardous.

The brilliance of this plan was to transmit information, such as name, relevant ID numbers and nationality. This would allow tracking of every passport holder. This would give the US government the information on your location when you, the terrorist who gave legit information, traveling with a legally obtained passport despite the public announcement that each one is now a beacon, commit your heinous crime against America. (Even more amazing, as we shall soon see, other nations should easily be able to do so as well.)

Any geek worth his/her salt should read this post. Amy Gahran is very much driving the nail right though the board with this observation. (She often does this in her blog.)

I have mention several times before my love for IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I was cruising through my many feeds the other morning, commented on a post by one of my favorite authors regarding missing the conversation for the blog. It dawned on me that although I have frequently mentioned feeds as resource but have not, of late, made any mention of one of my more frequently used tools... IRC. Simpy put one of the best resources on the web for connecting with knowledgable people.

I beg the reader to read Amy's above mentioned article to better understand the context of what I am "bloging" about and, hopefully, what we are "conversing" about. (Actually, I recommended you bookmark her site and/or subscribe to her Contentious. It is good brain food.)

IRC is all about conversation. Unfortunately, many channels are only for purposeless chatter or ASL (Age, Sex, and Location). Others are dark corners of the web to be used for hackers, malware writers and pirates. I am not inviting you to that type of dialogue. I am a wyldrydeholic.

I wish to tell you about (and welcome your comments on) 3 things

1. A specific example of how I benefited from IRC
2. Reasons why I feel IRC is a valuable resource
3. A list of some topic specific IRC channels and, if they have one, their homepage

I found this article on how the RIAA litigates. Better put, I find it alarming and frightening. If you want a simple summary, they are taking fair and due process to the very edge. The edge of no longer being fair and due.

Here is what concerns me:

• As I have blogged about before, they are targeting the average individual. They are making no considerable effort to go after any entity that is illegally distributing recorded material. They are going after individuals who are downloading music.
• They are targeting masses. First they file papers against an ISP to attack John Doe's. They have little, if any, evidence of these individuals doing anything illegal. The individuals who are actually being sued are completely unaware that they are being sued.
• The RIAA, in fact, does not know who the individuals are. The IRAA will ask for an "ex-parte" ruling from the court. This means that the individual who are being sued are never informed, do not have any opportunity to interact with the court and, in short, are undefended.
• Once they have the judgment, they can get the names and address of the actual "John Doe's", drop the John Doe case and sue the now named individual.

That is about all the mentioned article covers. There is, however, more. Once they go after a named individual they intimidate them into a settlement.

What scares me and frightens me is that the United States court system is allowing these bully tactics to occur. So are out elected official. Legal downloads are skyrocketing and the RIAA continues to claim that these individuals are hurting the recording industry. The reality is that the recording industry is simply dieing.

They are bullies and nothing more. How long will they be tolerated?

Although I have always been a believer in supply and demand of economics, I think I might have to be changing my views on the matter. The premise of the supply and demand is that the price will be driven by the supply of the product and the demand for the product. In other words, a supply will not be able to dictate the price the consumer pays. The consumer will.

With gasoline, this seems not to be true what-so-ever! The oil companies report record profits, record reserves and rape the consumer at the pumps. What is frightening, is that the consumer has become so conditioned to the high gasoline prices that the Six O’clock New reports the there is "good news for the consumer with gasoline dropping to 1.99 a gallon". I hear co-workers saying the same in the break room. These companies are having the most profitable time they ever have in history.

Pavlov would have been proud. We have become so conditioned to high gas prices that, most of us, believe it. Next week they are going to ring bells and watch us drool.

I checked the save box when I came across this article on Scoble's blog. I finally got to read it and the links related to it today. I think one should readThe Clueless Manifesto for a new twist on the concept of being clueless.

The Latest IP Crime: "Box-Wrap" Patent Infringement. Copyfight: the politics of IP

I was just dealing with my backlog of feeds and happened on this post. I could understanding voiding your warrenty but a crime? What if Tuperware found I used their cake storage container for storeing my markes and pens? This is law to the ridiculous.

I have often, likely too often, gone off about how great a resource all of the Gnomoies are at Wyldryde.org in the various channels they host. One of them being the person behind this stunt. Before I saw that video this AM, I had already begun this draft. I decided to add this little intro because Chris Pirillo has been mentioned here before and, after viewing it, I just had to... too funny.---

Nonetheless, before Chris' production served as a drafting intermission, it had dawned on me that I have yet to mention one geek of lore here at Lumpy's Corner. Possibly, the worse "how could I ..." in Cyber-history. Actually, I have mentioned this individual here before but only in passing.

I have mentioned many a blogger, author, podcaster and tech gurus here. I mention a podcast almost every show over at Radiostatic.am.

So, a podcaster, an author, a blogger, a tech guru... hmm. He is all of that. Am I leaving anything out?

Just curious, does any one know what happened to SuprGlu? I have been checking my page since Friday evening. (I hope it being a Friday the 13th had nothing to do with it.)

I read this article over at Physics.org. It seem that there is a species of frogs that can tune their hearing. The summary also says that it is the only animal known to be able to do that. My observations have doubts about that. Observations are often the first step in understanding new correlations.

I have observed that parents have long been known to have the ability to tune their hearing. Unlike the frogs, I think it has more to do with post-eardrum processing. Regardless, I think we should study this matter further.

Remember the first time you asked Dad for the car? I know my father didn't hear me. There was silence, no acknowledgment... nothing.

I thought he had completely lost his hearing, seizing opportunity, I took the car. Apparently he did hear it start up. Unfortunately, convinced he was deaf and being a dumb sixteen year old with a one day old license, I didn't hear his screams over the burning rubber and revving engine. His hearing was perfectly normal in regards to me turn back into the driveway. Then, as I closed the car door, MY hearing was nearly ruptured by the verbal assault that ensued as if from one of the beast in the Book of Revelation.