Steal This Film II

  Steal This Film I & II are amazing documentaries about copyright, filesharing, and the internet in general. They are probably the most straightforward, down to earth views on the current crisis our society is facing whereas “intellectual property” is concerned.

I saw the first Steal This Film during my senior year of college. The only reason I found it was because at the time I found myself arguing against copyrights in several of my classes. I met with much resistance when arguing, surprisingly not from the professors, but from my fellow classmates, people who statistically are the largest group of pirates today. The professors surprised me however, recommending several books, and naming Lawrence Lessig. I ended up writing papers and giving presentations in at least 4 classes over the course of that year.

Then Steal This Film came out. The movie has a way of simply explaining the history of copyrights and arguing how the system is broken, and even how dangerous that is for our new internet based society. And now this week Steal This Film II has just been released which expands even further on the subject.

The underlying theme behind it all is that in this day and age with so much power being given to the computer and the internet the playing field is being leveled between creator and consumer and how frightened the industries that have profited so much have become. Technology has given so much power to artist who simply want to create and have their work received, and it is possible for one to accomplish this completely independently now.

The printing press, which was met with much resistance from publishers, led to the first enlightenment.  Now, with the internet, we can lead ourselves to a new enlightenment.  we just need to overcome the resistance.

XKCD

I’m pretty jealous of Randall Munroe. There I said it. We’re the same age and the dude has a very successful webcomic, worked for nasa, and now he’s lecturing to google. I wish I could say any one of those. The google talk is quite entertaining, and his google logo is awesome. Here’s a link to the talk. And here is the comic. I keep the comic in my rss feed and eagly await each posting. The dude is brilliant and quite posibly the best artist using the stickman artform. ….but yeah jealous….

The Barber and the Optometrist

    So I just went to the barber and came to a strange realization. I went to the eye doctor yesterday and the whole time I was talking to the optometrist about the different procedures he was doing, while the barber asks me “what do you want me to do with your hair ?” and i completely blanked. So while I awkwardly sat in the barber’s chair I pondered this a lot more deeply. 

I’ve never cared too much about my appearance, but I do try and look somewhat kempt. But I also care very little about optometry. I deal with machines, not biology. So why is it that I know about optical nerves, but nothing about how to cut hair. I used to cut my own hair, but that involved taking some clippers and a #whatever spacer to my head, not exactly rocket science (something I find quite interesting). However I could never do what barbers and hair stlyists do. I guess its sort of like how i can change my own contacts, but thats about where my skills end.

I guess I just find it odd that I sit in the chair of the barber, a person who in my experience makes a lot of small talk, and the chair of the optometrist, a person who in my experience is rather straight to business, and my actual experience is just the opposite. I guess the key phrase there is “in my experience,” but I had to wait a lengthy period at both places and noticed each performing just as one might expect.

There is no real point to this, more of just an observation that I found unusual. But then again the unusual is becoming quite the norm for me these days. Anyway, now I’ve got a decent haircut and a fresh batch of contacts, long overdue, are on their way.

So Far

So I recently passed the one year mark at my job. Its strange I’m almost like one of the veterans around here and I’m only 23. So many people have come in after me, I think its kind of funny.

My assessment so far is a little more so-so. I guess I expected to be more involved at this point I guess. I feel like the tasks I’m given are being selected for what I am capable o, not what I could be capable of, and thats not exactly what I signed up for. I was hoping for a challenge, but it doesn’t really seem to be going that way. Basically I’m bored. I find myself spending more time waiting for tasks, than accomplishing them.

Over the next week or so I am going to do my best to change this course, but I’m just a little worried since we are in the midst of the holiday season and every seems to be “checking out” little by little.

First!!!1!1

I recently decided to start a blog. I am a software developer about a year and a half out of college, and thankfully am one of the lucky ones who has managed to be gainfully employed for a year. I frequently read Jeff Atwood’s blog Coding Horror. I could not find the actual post, but I remember he gave advice for junior level people like myself, and one piece of that was to start a blog. I have been playing with the idea for a little while now and I finally decided to buckle down and give it a shot.

So here it goes…