There are times where I manage to get outside myself. Where I can stop thinking about my issues, stop thinking about the things that are hurtling towards me. And even the things that are of concern to me.
Let’s face it, even those commercials asking you to feed starving children in Africa appeal to your desire to feel like you’re helping someone less fortunate than yourself.
I still think of myself as the boy from a small town; but I don’t know how real that is any more. I first noticed in college that I have a certain amount of adjustment time whenever my environment changes. For the first couple weeks of school, I was running into walls, tripping, and knocking stuff over. Not so much later, though, I was smoothly moving through the dorms, half asleep and half nekkid, with no problems. Now I see myself doing that in DC. I can really walk the street and feel like I belong there. Hell. Just the fact I feel anything but paranoia on the street is a major change, since I was assaulted.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling really. Very peaceful. Very alive. Very “just is”. According to the quote taped up to the wall over my desk, I guess this is happiness.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Every so often the people fighting sharing slip up and tell us what they really think. Ed Felten points to an article about a program that lets you copy DVDs. “It’s like somebody selling a digital crowbar,” said Patricia Benson, an attorney for the studios.As Felten points out, crowbars are available at the local hardware store, even though they can be used to break into private property and actually steel things, as well as attacking people. Last time I checked, you didn’t need a license to get one.”
to the fine gentleman driving the black sedan earlier tonight…
no, I wasn’t watching the green light in front of you. mainly because I was on the sidewalk, and pedestrians aren’t governed by the streetlights.
Even if I was, which I normally do, the light was with me, and I being on foot, must have started into the intersection much sooner than you to meet you there. Which, of course, makes me think of that whole “pedestrians have the right of way” thing.
but boy did you put me in my place when you stopped traffic behind you in rush hour to yell some sarcastic, half intelligent insult at me.
Sadly, it was frickin cold out and you just weren’t worth the trip back to your car to spit in your face through the window.
Kiss my ass, you accidental-ejaculation.
I feel better now.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
“The patent (6449344), originally filed in 1997, and granted in September this year, gives AOL instant messaging subsidiary ICQ rights as the inventor of the popular IM Internet application. The patent covers anything resembling a network that lets multiple IM users see when other people are present and then communicate with them. “
— CNET.com
The problem with this, as anyone who ever used the Talk or Phone functions under Unix of Vax will tell you, is that the idea of messaging people is not new, and was not even when ICQ first appeared.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I was just reading an article about potential ways to ensure digital device user’s privacy, even against TIA-like systems.
Mainly what they propose is use of one-way encryption similar to UNIX psswrd files.
But as I sat there reading it, I was wondering why we even need to go that far? What you really want to do is prevent the buildup of information in central databases to begin with.
So why do we have to rely on central databases?
On the web, most sites store a cookie on your computer to identify you with a record in their database. Why can’t it work almost in reverse.
When you connect to a service, wether it be a web site, a toll booth, a check out counter, or a library desk, the service provider supplies an unique identifier. Your personal digital device then pulls up all it’s records on said service. If you need to send them money, your device makes an Electronic Funds Transfer. You have control if your device needs to send out personal information. It knows your preferences and desired set-ups.
Even customized advertising would still be possible under this arrangement. After all, the holy grail of advertising is knowing your customer so well that you can show them ads that really interest them, rather than taking pot shots or best guesses. Your personal device can tell the service exactly what things you are interested in, and possibly even items you are actively seeking out at this time. That is advertising I can get behind. (Any time I don’t have to sit through a commercial for maxi-pads, I’m all about that).
I thought for a second that maybe it makes your information too vulnerable. What happens if your information device was damaged or ran out of juice or something? But hell, this can all happen with the existing centralized databases. Very likely, you wouldn’t be using just one info device anyway. You would have your computer at home. And maybe one in your vehicle. ANd a mobile one in a jewelry of some type. And they would redundantly back each other up via a Bluetooth type technology. And the issue of theft is easily bypassed with a dead-man’s-switch of some type. The moment you can no longer prove your identity to your info device, it stops providing any service with information. In fact, the very next time it is attempted to be used, it sounds an alarm.
Imagine a device as simple as a watch or bracelet. Lets face it; the amount of info you truly need to run your day to day life can now fit on something as small as a button.
You could drive right through toll booths without ever stopping.
You could walk into a store, find something you like, and walk right out again, without any kind of checkout procedure. It would scan a chip on the purchased item and your info device would automatically send the store computer the correct amount of money. And if you tried to walk out without a info device, the doors would just plain refuse to open for you. Anyone who didn’t wish to use such a system could go through a check out where the purchased items would be deactivated, to allow them to successfully bypass the door.
Find the books you want at the library and just walk out. As you leave, the chips on the books let the library know what is leaving. Your devices start reminding you to return the books in the appropriate time. And if you wait too long, your device purchases the book with your money and has it shipped to the library, or refuses to allow you to remove anything else from the library until you resolve the issue.
Imagine the utter simplicity of it all. No huge databases anywhere, outside of maybe the banks. And I’m sure if I thought about it long enough, I could solve that issue as well.
I really like the idea that you become responsible for your own information. Right now, wherever you use any of the current systems that provide similar functionalities, it is at the cost of giving up some personal information to an outside source. Why.
No profit-minded company will ever offer such a service. But imagine what people could do.
Just my thoughts on reversing the trend of people becoming numbers in a system, and instead remaining individuals, even in a highly ‘advanced’ civilization.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
“Nearly 3,000 new luxury cars on board a carrier ship which sank in the English Channel are almost certainly write-offs, salvage experts have said.
— BBC
There is some evil little guy on my left shoulder reveling in all this. Any dumbass who spends the equivilant of a small country’s GDP on a gas guzzeling, poluting, wreck of a mode of transit deserves to see it end up at the bottom of the English Channel.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I took that picture of the underpass last night standing at the end of some construction work on the barrier wall. I balanced the camera on on of those collision barrels. They’re these giant tupperware things filled with sandbags, meant to keep people from causeing serious damage if they hit the end of the concrete barrier.
No big deal.
Walking to work this morning, it appears as though someone had a full on collision with the barrel and wiped it out.
Oy. Lethal photography.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Okay… newspapers officially all suck.
I usually respected the BBC for presenting more real news. But the fact that they had an article about the outcome of the Winona Ryder court case… there goes all my respect.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Is there anything on earth that smells better than the freshly washed and still damp women’s hair? I just wanted to grab the head of the girl in front of me on the bus and bury my nose in her hair. If ‘soft’ had a smell, this would be it.
Running a close second, of course, is fresh pepperoni. You sniff some fresh pepperoni and you know exactly why you’re a meat-eater. The flesh, the grease, the texture.
The books today are, in no particular order, Teenagers from Mars #’s 3 & 4; WildCATs Version 3.0 #4; Global Frequency #2; 100% #4 (fuckin’ finally!); Wolverine #183, Fight for Tomorrow #3; Wolverine: Netsuke #4; Uncanny X-men #416.
It is now, one month and counting, until BWM2003
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Since I bought my new computer, I tend to sit on the end of the couch typing. From that position, I have a direct view of the flight path leaving Washington National Airport. Pretty regularly, a plane takes off from there about every minute or two. Thankfully I’m far enough away so that the only time the sound reaches me is when the weather is right.
Just yesterday I was on those planes. After a seven hour delay in New York, I finally got back from my thanksgiving trip,
I noticed I was feeling much the same as I did after my last trip to see stacey, at her graduation in May. I remember more about small town life than the lack of shopping. There’s definite atmosphere to those places. While there’s never a lack of stupid people, there is much more common sense and decency. I tend to come back a lot less angry. I walk through town on my way back from the airport, and remember like some bad dream the pent up stress and anger I usually experienced walking those streets on any other night.
A great deal of it is caused by the utter insanity I call my job. As anyone about their job, and you hear about the projects they’re completing and the clients they’re dealing with. But not at DKG. You simply hear about the problems that exist with other workers. It’s insane. The sheer, utter, petty, useless infighting that goes on.
I once again very much questioned why I am staying there.
The problem is that question leads to oh so many others. If I did leave, then what? Do I travel again, and if so… to where? Nearer to my friends, who may also move again at any time? To another big city, or small town, where I again know no one? Back to Rochester, which I admittedly loved at the time, but find hard to look back on as anything but a quiet little town anymore.
I wanna get back on the plane. I don’t care where it’s going. But when you’re sitting there in the airport waiting for your plane, all there is to do is read and watch the tarmac.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
