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Michael Duff offers an interesting and insightful opinion about the American effort in Iraq.

And that’s why I think this effort is doomed. We need to establish a minimum level of security over there, host the best election we can under the circumstances, and get the hell out of Dodge while the Iraqis have their civil war.

I had another look at my comment to E.C on this post and it evolved.

Somewhere along the way I think that music industry seriously failed the musicians. To a musician, his music is his art, the thing he does to express himself. Really, it’s the same thing I do here, like any blogger. Nobody has to like it or be willing to pay for it as long as I keep getting to do it. If others gain from it, well, shiny.

Years ago, the wealthy might think your art had merit. They would greatly desire good talent. They might hire you to beautify their lives with music or works, maybe even become your patron, paying for your living expenses so you could go on making nice things without the worry of having to make some other living (and in the process, bring increased status to the patron).

It worked this way up until the mid-twentieth century, near as I can tell. Today, an artist is still free to do all the art he wants. There aren’t all that many patrons floating around these days, but there is a whole market of affluent people for an artist to transact with and sell to. If he’s lucky enough or talented enough, people in that market will pay money for the work, perhaps even enough to make a living on. So for physical artists and performance artists, there hasn’t been all that much of a change.

The modern media industry promised something different to its artists than the patrons of old did. Like a patron, they promised to help pay for things like production and promotion. In the early days of the modern industry, they promised “we will make us rich, because you’ve got the talent and I know how to sell it to people.” Pretty quickly this evolved into, “you make the goods and I’ll sell them in the market.” Today, the deal seems to be along the lines of, “I’ll hire you to make me money.” In a couple of generations, many musicians and writers have gone from being unique treasures to mere employees in some industrial enterprise.

This might explain why so much of the popular media these days is all the same. Quality control in any industry is all about standardisation and uniformity.

I think what the media industry is still trying to wrap its head around is that their entire “industry” might not be the optimal way for art to be spread around a society. If you have founded an entire money making industry on controlling and monopolising the output of unsuspecting artists, the idea this could be wrong might come as something of a shock.

The media industry can’t not know just how good it has it right now: every book and every album is a potential gold mine to be exploited, a guaranteed monopoly with all the wealth being funnelled back to one source — them. So much with the shareholders and the stock options and the money. . . you’d better believe they’ll hang on to it for as long as they can.

Obviously, I feel that the idea of art as an industrial product is wrong. I contend that the best way for the artist to carry out his love is to just do it, whether it is commercially successful or not. Maybe he can attract some patrons, in one form or another, and do it full time, maybe not. I concede this is not the easiest thing to do in this modern age. The Internet can help, I think, to connect with those patrons. Perhaps one of the things our governments can do for us is try to form a society that discourages 2 hour commutes and sixty hour work-weeks. This might give artists more time to do their thing so they won’t have to rely on the big, bad media industry.

John F. Kennedy was the man. I only just remembered the anniversary of his death was last week.

Even though he was an American, I think he believed in the utopia of peace, order and good government that Canadians have strived for ever since Confederation. The idea was so important to our people that we put it in our constitution. JFK also figured it out:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

It’s a such a powerful and obvious idea, yet one I think is lost on most world governments as of late, particularly the current U.S. administration. Such a seemingly simple thing for humans to ask to live in peace.

He was the last great leader the U.S. had. And for all the shock of losing one of America’s great leaders prematurely, it is easy to forget that Kennedy was also a husband and a dad, making his murder that much more of a tragedy.

It’s a funny thing: I buy coffee from a joint called Balzac’s every day, yet I know nothing about the man it’s named after.

Here’s a good quote for you from Cary Sherman, the president of the RIAA. It tells you a little bit about what his people think about Sony’s rootkit and of you, their consumer.

The problem with the SonyBMG situation is that the technology they used contained a security vulnerability of which they were unaware. They have apologized for their mistake, ceased manufacture of CDs with that technology, and pulled CDs with that technology from store shelves. Seems very responsible to me. How many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they’ve taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?

So in his mind, the problem isn’t that they cracked out their customer’s computers, but that they did it poorly. Incredibly, he compares this to bugs in application software. I am truthfully amazed by this deduction. The big, big difference between Sony and the various makers of application software is the application vendors don’t set out deliberately to compromise the security of your computer for their own ends. When Microsoft produces weak, crackable products, they aren’t doing it on purpose. They are doing it because they are dumb. It is an issue of culpability.

Sherman makes the argument:

If a gun manufacturer encouraged a gun owner to use the gun in the commission of a crime, you can be sure that they’d be liable. The Supreme Court said that Grokster could be liable for actively encouraging or inducing its users to commit copyright infringement.

Don’t even get me started about personal responsibility. Are we really the mindless sheep these people think we are? Everybody using eMule, Grokster, Limewire, Morpheus, Bittorrent, etc. . . knows exactly what they are doing. But it cuts both ways. It is not the job of a plaintiff to exact a punishment on a defendant before a trial. We have an entire court system for that. If a gun maker made a firearm that blew up when it thought it was in the hands of a criminal, what do you suppose would happen? They would be charged with murder, that’s what.

I must be sheltered or naive. I am amazed that there are still people in the civilised world who think like this Sherman guy. The ruthlessness, the arrogance. . . this is a person who has long ago stopped seeing customers as people and sees them as factors, numbers on the spreadsheet to be manipulated and controlled. Much like the Mafia of years gone by, maybe even worse; the Mafia could often be reasoned with. But not with these people. No, if you are their customer, then you are their bitch.

Aggregated nicely by Malbela

Today is the only part of winter I like. The part when we are introduced to snow again, properly, and not in volume.

Small, tiny snow falls from the grey sky. It swirls around like white ribbons in the wind, seeking a place to rest. Blowing past the smooth ones, it dwells in the angular places of the world. It dusts the grass like icing sugar on a dessert. It nestles up in the corners of windows and doors. It gets caught in the nooks and crannies of the street, filling in the edges of the lawns, the cracks on the sidewalks, and the pockmarks on the road. It fills in the dirty cracks of the world, making it look cleaner and newer.

I started up a comment to another blogger who has been following the ongoing saga of the Internet Summit (and thank you for reading!) It kind of grew into a post reiterating my views on the matter.

The international community failed to convince the U.S. to give up it’s control over the net. Nobody is really complaining, mind you. The Internet runs as it should and everyone is happy, even though the U.S. is still running the show. At this moment, one would be hard pressed to find a problem with the U.S. controlling the all of the root servers. It’s a strong, powerful, stable country, well defended from its foes. America is also willing to take on the job; that counts for something too.

But all of that is right now. Twenty years hence, it might not be so simple. Although most Americans are reluctant to consider it, there’s no guarantee that a future America will be the happy place it is today. Any number of bad things could happen to the nation. Economic hardship could go down, forcing the government to drop things like the Internet in favour of food and shelter (that deficit is pretty big). Internet services might be disrupted by war, maybe not with another nation, but perhaps internally (wouldn’t be the first time).

These things aren’t likely to happen. What is more probable is the social climate in the U.S. will change to the point that American politicians might start to believe it is their job to enforce American ideology globally. To some degree this happens now, mostly through unintentional means such as media and literature. The move toward an Americanised Internet starts with the enforcement of intellectual property, patents and the like — this already happening now. International enforcement of libel and fraud laws will follow. The containment of hate and kiddie porn will be welcomed and applauded throughout much of the world, but once the politicians in the U.S. figure they have a global mandate for content control it won’t stop there. Controversial content will get banned globally (to protect the children!) The enforcement of American sensibilities will mark the end (because everyone knows the American way is the best way).

All of this may well be done with the best of intentions. America doesn’t have to be malicious to wreck the Internet. Just paternal. The day when the American Congress decides it’s time to use its power to regulate content on the ‘Net is the day the Internet as we know it is toast.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Western thought and the Western way of doing things. America is all about that too. But as soon as a single group of people think something is theirs to control it gets all homogenised and stupid and useless. And we can’t have that with the Internet. The ‘Net is too big and too important a thing to have any one nation control it, even a nation as big and powerful as the U.S.A. I don’t fault the American government for its efforts today, but I’m not convinced that America can protect the Internet from America in the future.

Kitty apparently has an appetite for cables.

Although thoroughly chewed, this monitor cable is still functional. The cat didn’t get far enough through the braided shielding to actually damage the thin data cables inside. A bit of electrical tape and it’s fixed right up.

Fortunately, kitty seemed to prefer the low voltage data cable over the power cable. It could have been interesting otherwise.

Xavier Aeon has more style than me.

Here is a vendor that actually expects you to pay fifty pounds just to see the specs of some of its products.

Since I find this to be outrageous, I can only assume I am not their target market.

You know, I am soooo in the wrong business. I need to be in a business where rich people pay me obscene amounts of money for shiny, gold plated, diamond studded computer peripherals.

Who is this attractive, sophisticated young woman?

Why, it’s Avril Lavigne, the Punk Princess! Not believing this at first, I actually spent a bit of time comparing this picture to a bunch of other known pictures of her. The same person, as near as I can tell.

So it’s true then: Canadian girls must pass through an ugly larval phase before they go on to become the most beautiful women in the world ;)

Picture from Boink!