Beauty has a name

And its name is: Rainmeter. A dear, dear cousin of mine turned me on to Rainmeter some while ago, and though I played around with it at the time, I didn't realize what all it can do. Here is my current desktop configuration, using Rainmeter, and her cousin Rainlendar (which took me forever to figure out was a portmanteau of Rainmeter and calendar). The ever-so-sexy application dock that looks similar to a Mac is a program called RocketDock.

Although you can't tell here, the ocean tide also breaks in a moving desktop sort of way, so the combined configuration takes a total of 40% CPU processing power on my little old Compaq laptop. It's pretty, but I don't know how long I will be able to sustain it. I guess beauty never lasts...

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal

The above link is for a cute little cartoon that sums up the overall printer experience (big picture), but fails to depict my feelings of intense rage at KMart this morning when I paid 60, yes SIXTY, dollars for a print cartridge (specific instance). A replacement cartridge, I would like to point out, for ink that HP decided I was no longer able to use because I had owned the previous cartridge too long. So to HP and to KMart: a plague on both your houses.

Gregory Brothers

Usually when I find a video that is worth sharing, I simply share it, without taking the time to research its source. Notable exceptions include Professor Brothers, and BentTV's Star Wars Gangsta Rap. However, in this case, I really think the creators of the videos below might go places, so I am going to follow them, and possibly even contribute financially. The good brothers have taken the two latest internet memes: Antoine Dodson and Double Rainbow, and auto-tuned them into quite catchy songs, also available for download through iTunes. For the record, of the two original videos Double Rainbow is WAY funnier, and of the two songs, Double Rainbow is catchier.

Actually, now that I take time to think about, it was my good buddy from Texas that showed me all of the above. So, Good Buddy From Texas, perhaps you should start one of these "repository of cool and neat-o items" thingys, also.

IT'S SO INTENSE!! ALL THE WAY!!

What is information?

This is probably the post that, throughout the entire Digital Age, will probably have the fewest number of readers (due to it's incredibly boring content). However, I have spent so many patrol hours thinking about this that I wanted to get it down for posterity. So read it if it interests you, ignore it if it doesn't.

I have had many conversations with others about who information belongs to. This creates a series of questions that I feel have at least enough validity to warrant serious debate: does the creator if information have an inherent right to profit from it, and if so, do they have the SOLE right to profit from it? Does the creator of information retain ownership, or does ownership pass to the person who purchases it? What about the others who either contribute to the information (such as contributing authors, or sources that are cited), or directly facilitate the distribution of the information (such as recording labels, publishers, and studios)?

In order to answer the question of who owns information, first information should be defined. I think of information as media belonging to one of 3 categories: 1) entertainment media, such as books, movies, and music; 2) informational media, such as news (print and digital), articles, blogs, and magazines; and 3) functional media, such as software, firmware, applications, and basically media that can be used to build other media.

Of the three categories, the way entertainment media is viewed in this country makes me the maddest (I'm pointing at you, APPLE),the way informational media is viewed scares me the most, and functional media, frankly, confuses me more the others.

First, entertainment media. Let me be clear: THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR FILE SHARING. I agree that the organizations that distribute entertainment media have a right to realize the profits from their product. I will also stipulate that attempts to circumvent paying for the use of the product is both immoral and unethical. But, I do question that they have the sole right to realize profits.

When I buy a Craftsman lawnmower, I am free to use the lawnmower to mow my home lawn OR my business lawn, and I am free to use my mower to make money mowing other people's lawns. Why is this not so with entertainment media? Why do I have to pay one small license fee to play something in my home, but have to pay ridiculous licensing fees to play the same thing in my place of business? If I purchase a song, it is mine, just as if I purchase a lawnmower, it is mine. Entertainment media companies should be prohibited from actions that artificially place value on their product, such as requiring me to pay for different uses of the same product.

A prime example of what I am talking about is the recent legal battle between Redbox and the movie studios. The studios sued Redbox for their business model of charging $1 a day (when Blockbuster et al charged more), stating "These guys are simply grossly undervaluing our content" How dare they! Redbox purchased the material, it is theirs to do with as they please. It is not "your" content, it is "theirs". Additionally, the value of a product is determined by mutual agreement between the buyer and the seller. Now that Redbox has purchased the content, and they wish to sell it at market, the studio no longer has a say in the matter about the value of the product. The only thing Redbox should be legally prohibited from doing is to duplicate the content for additional sales, as this also artificially changes the value of the product. Interestingly, the trend is along these lines with hardware as well, e.g., Microsoft says that Wal-Mart may sell the XBOX, but only at the price Microsoft allows. Sorry, M$, but you are out of the market equation now. Let Wal-Mart sell it for the price that maximizes their profits.

Typically, when a product enters the market, and a transaction is made between the seller and the buyer, ownership is transferred. The paradigm in media is that the consumer is actually purchasing a "license for use" of the product. What bothers me most about the idea that studios, labels, and publishers retain control of the product after the product has transferred from the seller to the buyer is summed up in the question "Who actually CONTROLS the content".

This is my segue into my thoughts on the 2nd type of media: informational media. The control of information is so important that the Framers listed as number 1 the right to the press and to speech. This has been interpreted that not only do persons have the right to write and say things, but other persons have the right to access it. In other words, once the media has been established, it cannot be hidden. With due to respect to Rupert Murdoch, this means not prohibiting access to those who can't pay.

His argument is that quality media is expensive to produce, and therefore he must charge. Fair enough. In the days of print news media, there was overhead associated with distribution, and typically the newsstand price (mostly) covered those costs. Revenues, however, were generated through advertisement. During those days, if someone purchased a paper, it would have been lunacy to prohibit that person from sharing the paper with his neighbor or colleague simply because the neighbor or colleague did not pay for access. Does Murdoch's plan to charge for access allow for me to copy and paste the text to my blog (as long as I correctly cite the source)? I think the answer is no. This is particularly troublesome with respect to news and information, in that I cannot share it without fear of legal repercussions.

I cannot stipulate, as I did with entertainment media, that I do not support sharing. With news and information media, I do support it. The only ethical requirement I have is that I must cite the original source, and cannot pass it off as my own.

The last category, functional media, is the category that is most difficult around which to build an ethic. I wrote previously that if I pay for an item, it is mine to do with as I please. If I buy a spreadsheet and want to put it on my home computer, or if I want to operate a business with it, that is no business of the seller once I purchase it. However, companies like M$ exist to make a profit, and if they cannot, products like Office and Windows will never be created. I will write more as I develop ideas, however, let me end by saying the open source model works, and works well. Perhaps that is a good starting point, rather than an ending one.

Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGras...

Astrophysicists are cool. That may be on oversimplification, but reduced to it's base parts, that's my feeling in a nutshell. Additionally, Autotune is cool. Taking into consideration that best-selling fiction is cool, astrophysicists who write best-selling fiction would be cool^2. Let's not forget YouTube, so:

(Astrophysicists * best-selling fiction) = Autotune + YouTube = cool^2.

Here's the proof:

In Focus: What Every Catholic Needs to Know about the Church's uniqueness: Our Sunday Visitor

One of the most difficult things for me, as a Catholic, to understand (let alone explain) is the perceived belief that you must be Catholic to go to heaven. Nothing can be further from the truth, however, to many it then becomes cognitive dissonance that the Church is therefore even necessary. The explanation to this question is in this beautiful article. It starts out wonderfully, then keeps getting better as it describes the spiritual relationships different belief systems share with Catholicism, from furthest to closest (my favorite excerpt is included after the link):

In Focus: What Every Catholic Needs to Know about the Church's uniqueness: Our Sunday Visitor:

"1. Matthew 12:30: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (which the Church, the body of Christ, has always understood to imply that “Outside the Church, there is no salvation”), and;

2. Mark 9:40: “For whoever is not against us is for us” (which the Church has always understood to mean “We don’t know where ‘outside the Church’ is”).

This leads to two things. The first is the practical command of Jesus to not judge others. That command does not mean “Be a moral imbecile and pretend that nobody ever says, thinks or does evil.” Rather, it means “Don’t pretend you know somebody’s soul or eternal destiny.” You know neither. So fight crime and jail criminals. But also pray and hope for the salvation of the sinner, and work toward that end.�"