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By Dave, July 24, 2005 4:52 pm

Treehugger: Escalante bamboo speakers

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These look NICE! I’d love to hear them. I bet the bamboo does some interesting things to the sound quality. Nice interesting that is…

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By Dave, July 24, 2005 3:54 pm

Hazy Cloud of Saharan Dust Nearing U.S. – Yahoo! News

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The assorted colds and respiratory crap that usually follows one isn’t a really problem and I’m sure it’s all in my head (and chest or will be soon). And there isn’t any global warming either…

I really do hope it stays south of here, these hot summer days have limited my mobility to nill already.

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By Dave, July 24, 2005 3:48 pm

Treehugger: Case Study for Flushless Urinals

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Good general overview on the current art and cost savings of switching to a waterless system.

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By Dave, July 24, 2005 11:51 am

I’ve been looking for something that would streamline the links and the dropdowns at the right do that just fine. Now to modify the layout with the addons the way I had the old one and add a theme switcher so you can make your choice instead of putting up with what I want to look at. 😉

Anyway, feedback is appreciated either in comments or email…

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By Steve, July 24, 2005 8:10 am

User Friendly the Comic Strip – The Daily Static
Very nice tribute to Jame Doohan-remarkable man, veteran of D-day, father at 80, most celebrated engineer in Starfleet history. RIP, Jimmy…..

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By Dave, July 23, 2005 11:28 pm

Got tired of looking at the refrigerator ice so threw this one together out of some pix I took while making some hammers and mallets in the barn last month. Old machine tools work great with wood and allow for fair precision to boot. 😉 I’ll try to put a post up about them and the shovels that I have been making too.

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By Dave, July 23, 2005 6:17 pm

Fisherman in Virginia charged with killing alligator – Wikinews

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So remember folks, next time you’re in Virginia fishing and you hook an alligator and kill it, just don’t tell anybody.

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By Dave, July 23, 2005 4:34 pm

TimesDispatch.com | Roanoke Wal-Mart halts ‘Singles Shopping’

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Bet they got tired of the “Cleanup on aisle 5, 7 &19″…

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By Dave, July 23, 2005 10:20 am

Mysterious disease kills nine in China: report

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Not good. No contact between the folks. Scary…

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By Dave, July 23, 2005 9:12 am

Print Story: White House threatens veto on detainee policies on Yahoo! News

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And more evidence that the current administration is totally out of control and has no regard for human rights or the will of the people.

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By Dave, July 22, 2005 10:02 pm

BOFH: Chuck it and leg it | The Register

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New and innovative ideas for equipment disposal…

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By Dave, July 22, 2005 11:36 am

cancel that last post… I have heard from the host and they have found and corrected (I hope) the problem. We’ll see. I bought the new master domain name bluespringsbazaar.net earlier after the latest outage but had been thinking about it buying that one anyway just to keep anyone else from getting it. I’ll point it to the bluespringsbazaar.com site for now.

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By Dave, July 22, 2005 9:52 am

GROKLAW
Now, some artists don’t want to share, viewing intellectual property, as they like to call it, as property, just like a dog with a bone. Those who think like that view creative works as their meal ticket, and they want to extract every last dime, not only for themselves, but for their grandchildren as well.
They are free to squirrel their works away in a hole in a tree, if they wish. And they can erect as many gates and pitchforks around it as they like.

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The meal ticket part is what screws with my head.

A hard or paperback book costs what it does mostly due to the labor involved, not in writing it but in printing and then shipping, warehousing, advertising, and then sitting in a store taking up shelf space.

Same with music, and video.

The creative part that is the reason for all of this massive infrastructure is actually about the least part of its personal whole as far as effort and cost.

Lets step back 5 hundred years.

None of this exists. The books that do exist are produced by and mostly owned by the church. The average person and in fact most people cannot read or write. Story tellers were their writers and radio and musicians were regarded as thieves and whores.

Fast forward 4 hundred years.

In cities a fair number of folks could read and newspapers and penny dreadfuls were sold on the streets by urchins.

And then comes radio.

Then TV.

Then the internet.

Today an artist can take a picture and upload it to the internet at a cost of only what the connection and online storage cost. Then the world has access.

If I look at that picture as MY property and MY meal ticket then I need to restrict access to it. But I don’t. Unless you want to make money off of it. If you want to look at it, fine. Use it on your web page not a problem. Collect my pictures and print a book and sell it – Problem.

My writing is the same. Use it as you wish. Unless you make coin I care not. You make a profit on it, I want a piece.

But here again is a rub that I wonder about. In my life I have mostly done work for hire. I fix stuff. Someone pays me for that work. I don’t fix something once and folks keep paying me for it.

And this is were I have a problem with IP. If you are following me that is. Not sure I am at this point.

I go out and fix a car. I get paid. I go and buy a song and download it. And 10,000 more do the same thing. But the song still costs the same thing. Now the guy that wrote the song deserves something… But how much?

The one that wrote the book that just sold millions of copies on it’s first day out. Now she (no names) worked a few months or maybe a year to write that book. Okay, in that time it cost her a few thousand or a few 10 thousand to live. But she made so much more. But had she published on the web it would have cost almost nothing. And she could have gotten it to ALL her fans. And she would have been able to get ALL the money instead of just a few pennies on the dollar. But the HUGE retail sales infrastructure wouldn’t get their piece of the pie. And all those [thousands, tens of thousands, millions?] of gallons of fuel, used in making and shipping the paper, printing and shipping the books, customers going out at midnight to buy the book, wouldn’t have been consumed. And all the trees wouldn’t have had to die to print it on.

But she (read her lawyers and accountants) was scared that the business that she has become would miss out on a few pennies due to pirated copys.

So her fans buy the book and scan, proofread, convert to and ebook and have it available for free within 24 hours. Less time than it took to typeset the original. Now the courts get involved.

I don’t understand. I need enough for me to live on. I haven’t worked at a regular job in years nor do I ever expect to.

If I sell a used book I eat. If not I garden. Or write. Or work on sculpture. Which when sold is sold. No copies and the pictures are free.

Now tell me why I should pay for something that was originally paid for in hourly wages, again and again and again, just because it’s your Intellectual Property.

Folks, here is where I draw the line. I ain’t gonna do it. This whole Farking society is out of control and I will not assist in stopping its demise. In fact if, in any small way I can hasten the fall of big everything I will give my all in doing so.

Not gonna say I will steal from it. Not interested in anyones IP in any way. Not your movies, not your books (I buy them used, and sell them used, and no one but me gets any of it), and certainly not the RIAA’s farking music. I will not pay one red cent that goes into the RIAA’s coffers to allow them to sue more of the musicans fan base.

This has grown too big to be a comment but that’s what it started as and I guess that’s what it will end up as. Warts and all. I’m gonna spell check it and see if it reads somewhat coherent and post…

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 9:45 pm

bookofjoe

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Interesting stuff.

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 9:44 pm

Ravenous

Version 0.3.0 released. I need to download a copy and try this out. It sounds like a dynamic sitebuilders dream.

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 12:32 pm

New Scientist News – Chronic fatigue is not all in the mind

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No S#$%! Glad they have finely figured that one out.

The mechanism that they discuss is interesting.

My symptoms started with a month long bout of flu that left me unable to do much more than real short walks for weeks. That was about 17 years ago. I still have periods that I am unable to do more than just walk from place to place to sit again. Mental activity is almost impossible at those times.

I am coming out of a 2 to 3 week bad period now. This time the mental fog wasn’t as bad but still bad enough that things that I would usually spend minutes on has been taking hours.

Typing during these episodes is always interesting too as I seem to get short circuits between head and hands, so that the finger on the left that is supposed to type the letter will not work but the one on the right hand will do so instead. Or the speed with the nerves fire will seem to vary and I get a lot of “teh” and “ot” and other transposed letters.

I’ve been living with is as there is no alternative that I have found to this point but this sounds like it may have a direct impact on a lot of us…

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 12:18 pm

New Scientist Breaking News – Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda

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And lets rewrite history yet again. But as they say (whoever they are) history belongs to the victors…

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 12:02 pm

CNN.com – Quake sounds reveal Earth ‘ripping apart’ – Jul 20, 2005

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Makes sense. And may give a new way of either predicting or monitoring quakes.

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 11:58 am

Salt Lake Tribune – Utah
Really cool invention brings teens awards
Physics students: They came up with an environmentally friendly, economical air conditioner

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This is via Steve. Thanks for the pointer. I saw a link to this yesterday but failed to get through at the time.

This looks possible. Depends on how much electricity it uses. The Pelter devices I have played with were real juice hungry but they “were” older devices. I guess the first one I saw was in the late 80’s or early 90’s and they date way on back from there.

The article says they are using 5 of them so I’m sure they are getting a lot of cooling. The problem is going to be overcoming the initial thermal load of the hot air mass in the car as well as the hot mass of the car its self.

Will have to wait and see when more info is available.

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By Dave, July 21, 2005 11:52 am

Treehugger: Seeing the Future, Reflected in a Solar Stove

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Meant to post this yesterday but was not a good day…

This looks interesting.