I went looking for balsa wood planes but Neargaurd pharmacy's toy shop only had Gayla styrofoam and sticker planes. As much as I love the powered balsa wing gliders these are top notch!

It was written in response to someone who really didn't want a friend of a friend staying at their house, but didn't want to be rude and say no.

This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture.

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't even have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you're a Guess Culture person — and you obviously are — then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you're likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you're an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.

Obviously she's an Ask and you're a Guess. (I'm a Guess too. Let me tell you, it's great for, say, reading nuanced and subtle novels; not so great for, say, dating and getting raises.)

Thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signalling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you'll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise you'll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at (pace Moomin fans) the Cluelessness of Everyone.

As you read through the responses to this question, you can easily see who the Guess and the Ask commenters are. It's an interesting exercise.

I also think people, even worthwhile people can be dicks sometimes regardless of why.

Image via Wikipedia

I hate the feeling of being sold.

I've been getting a lot of emails and letters in the mail from my Alumni Association asking for me to update my info. Let me correct that.

I've been getting a lot of emails and letters from a book company that my Alumni Association has sold my information to. If you're a Brooklyn Technical High School alumni you've probably been getting them too. So I called them up, give them my info they so desperately needed.

They said I'd probably be surprised to know how many other Alumni might be in the area of Brooklyn that I live in. I told them, "No I wont, everyone is on facebook." Going downhill from there, I was hard sold on the $100 book (two easy payments..) and then the $80 softcover book , and then the $40 CD-ROM.

I can't honestly figure out why they're selling a CD-ROM.

I guess I can, most of their customers are going to be older alumni. (Like my dad, who didn't buy the book either. Hi dad!) I can actually think of a few good reasons to own the book, like getting in touch with older alumni mostly. But I can't justify spending that much for a list of names with pictures and stories.

I figure if they're going to use my info for their business I'll use my info for my business.

My education at Brooklyn Tech gave me an extra edge when I entered college and the workforce. I have applied the lessons I learned there, in both classes and  clubs, to my work and my life. Notably, founding BTHSnews.org taught me what it takes to lead a team of people, and the CCNA classes taught me how to take care of complex networking issues with ease, allowing me to concentrate on higher level problems when I started Wizard Computing, LLC, my computer consultancy.

Seeing the directions the people I met in school, and continue to meet though BTHSnews.org, are going makes me proud to be an alum.

Yesterday we reported that a provision in the revamped French “3 strikes” bill will allow for the punishment of ISP account holders for the copyright infringing actions of others. Now a group of hackers has set out to compromise WiFi routers en masse, in order to create an environment of plausible deniability.

I very much like this idea. It goes to show they're missing the point. They can't stop people from downloading movies and in trying to they're creating toothless laws, who will disproportionately hurt a small segment of offenders and be ineffective at stopping the behavior.

It's similar to clients asking me to lock down their computers so their kids can't get to porno websites or so they can limit their Facebook usage. I can do it, and have, but I tell them the kids will find a way around it, it's much better handled though social rather then technological methods. Educating the kids about the net is a far better method for keeping them honest, but happens to be a tall order when their parents often don't quite understand it themselves.

Recently I've found a rather effective web monitoring method that instead of blocking sites it just reports to the user how much time they spend on the site. It's meant for offices and is called webspy, and works on the theory that people don't want to spend all day at work browsing the web, they want to be "good" but just need to be kept in check. It follows the principal that when you know people are watching you'll do a better job.

I'm not going to touch on the internet piracy 3 strike laws, but I'm glad in France they're making sure a judge makes the decision to cut someone off the net and not the accuser. The overhead in that is so immense it probably wont happen. Who wants to jail their own community anyway? If everyone's committing the crime is it a crime? If it's "considered harmful" like crystal meth for example, what do you do then?

There's a big meth problem in a lot of towns and cities in the united states, I'm wondering if "Jail" is the answer. If you have a large community doing something harmful to itself, (that may actually be a crime as well) how do you recover from that? Obviously there needs to be a group effort, and some level of amnesty. I'm curious what kind of effort would be effective.

Going back to something a lot less "harmful", what about file sharing and copyright infringement? I don't consider it to be harmful to society, people are making other business models work in regards to music and movies, and there's a lot of room for growth and discovery in those directions. But lets for the sake of argument say that our current/old business models were the only ones that could work and if we want art we need to stop infringing on copyrights so artists can afford to be artists. Do we jail all offenders? Do we punish them and keep them from being able to communicate with society? Or do we find a way to convince our consitiutents that they need to come together to fix the problem?

I say constituents because it's our elected officials that pass these laws to police how we act. These are questions they should be asking, and that we should be making them ask.

And with that I'm lost in my own rant, so I'm done. Feels good to write even if it is dribble.

(if that link ever breaks)

He strives to be a model for a way to have an industry that doesn't strip the earth of its resources but keeps control of the entire cycle of it's goods and byproducts. Of course he does a much better job explaining it. My favorite axiom from the speech is a simple one.

If it exists then it is possible.

Download mp4 in Standard Def (54MB) or HD 480p (195MB)

https://www124.americanexpress.com/cards/loyalty.do?page=expresspay

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/19/rfid-credit-cards-easily-hacked-with-8-reader/

http://www.difrwear.com/

I own a dirfwear wallet, and while it isn't perfect at blocking rfid tags at close range (3–4 inches) its a dam good walet and will stop distance and opportunistic sniffing. Like near a turnstyle or door frame. I met one of the creators at the last hope and played with a machine he had there setup for reading rfid cards at a distance.

I present to you for your viewing pleasure, my slider test! I couldn't help but use some of Sara's throwie pictures.

And let me tout the video anyway.

It went over well. (Photo Credit Jeanette Hayes)

Now two years later I'm faced with my approaching 25th birthday. This year I'd like to do "throwies year two". My only problem is that this year I don't have the funds to buy throwies for everybody again. So after talking it over with my friends and going over what it takes to get the parts for hundreds of throwies, I've decided to put throwies up for sale at cost. I'm still looking at suppliers but it seems that I should be able to get you about 25 throwies for $20. I'll know exactly how many after I see how many people get involved (you save in bulk of course).

My party this year will be on Friday the 20th and will have a $20 dollar cover which will include around 25 throwies. I'll order some pizza and soda. We'll meet at my place at 6:30pm to eat and build the throwies and then around 8pm leave for the east village tagging the city as go. Later in the night we will be stopping at a to be determined location to warm up and get something tasty. If you were there last time you might find this familiar.

So either pay me in person (please let me know if there's a problem before the party!) or just use the paypal form below.

Packs of throwies

~13 Throwies (econ pack - you'll want more!) $10.00

~25 Throwies $20.00

~40 Throwies $32.00

~50 Throwies (and godlike status among men) $40.00

"Francis, I need help on making website."
"Well.. what are you up to? "
"I have an idea of something I'd like to sell online."

Usually it's cookies, sometimes it's t-shirts, a lot of times it it's services they want to offer. Most of these people have zero programming or html experience. If I told them paypal had an api to allow your site to create invoices and process payments they wouldn't even understand the non technical part of that sentence. When you get into the advanced parts of how the web works, they glaze over. I usually end up telling them about Shopify which can have you up with professional looking storefront with very little time and effort and as you go you can learn how to make it very pretty and you don't have to worry about the perils of doing your own web hosting. Personally I'd rather use that $20 a month for my own server slice and spend a lot more time and money on it, but that's not actually very smart if I wanted to grow a different business that wasn't web hosting.

The real problem they want to solve isn't "I want to know how to do a website." it's "I want to know how to start a business on the web." and the core problem there is usually "I want to start a business." which is usually formed around "I want to have more money". And wanting more money is not a bad reason to start with, but because you like to do something or make something doesn't mean starting a business around it is a smart idea. Most of the time your business will take you away from doing those cool things you like and force you to spend all your time doing something else you wont, running the business.

There's a book I love that will either discourage you or encourage you to start a small business. Either way it will teach you a bit about what you actually have to do to start. I tend to give this book to people who I think it will encourage, as it usually doesn't take a book to discourage people who would be discouraged. It's called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber, and it's like $5 off amazon used so it's worth the money, Its worth the read even if you hate the author's writing style (figure a pound of gold in ten pounds of fluff), and it's worth your time if you ever thing you might want to go into business. The E-Myth being the Entrepreneurial Myth that a technician can take their idea/product and just start a successful business around it. Most people do that without learning how the rest of the business works.

His book of course is not a blueprint of how to start a small business, grow it, operate it, and sell it, it just tells you that you'll need one, and what it might look like. I'm rather new at this so it blew me away. The amount of planning and the possibilities you can come up with to make a business work is breathtaking. Its the kind of thing I love. It's something I'm going to have to write more about. Not to give advice but to share experiences. I can only tell you there's more to it then you probably know, but in sharing experiences you pool what you learn. =)

–Francis

PS (It's been too long since I've been writing, feels good, but I'm also embarrassed at the writing style I presented above. It's a silly feeling.)

That's as original as I can find it, its a 64x64 px gif that best as I remember came from a PHP-Nuke forum pack. It's been my buddy icon, my profile pic, my tag. It's probably one of the oldest piece of digital information I have. I even lost it at one point and had to find old backups of bthsnews.org to bring it back. Yesterday it was suggested to me by Andrew that instead of just blowing it up I should try to spruce it up a bit. I had tried to "smooth" it out by editing it by hand once. I got about halfway and gave up, it wasn't worth it. This time I enlisted the help of Vector Magic which was a school project turned commercial venture. They've got a wonderful system (best I've ever used.. only I've ever used ;-)) to work out how to take that blocky pixel art above and turn it into this.

Which I happen to like quite a lot. Hopefully it will hold me for another 5–10 years. =)

–Francis

Compare it to me around that age.

My dad looks like a cross between my brother and myself. My grandfather… well he just looks young, and quite happy. This photo and a few others came from a new cousin that found us from Kansas City Missouri. I want to publish his collection. It's not one we had ourselves. Also kudos to the kid with the Brooklyn Tech shirt, it's still the same one they use for gym today =)

–Francis

PS I overlooked the 2 on the cake, he was two :-p I guess that's closer to me looking like this.

I also revamped the fluff part on the bottom right. Since I don't buy groceries that often, I thought I'd make the links more clear.

This happens to me a surprisingly large amount of times.

–Francis

So what's in my non roborooter history?

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

(I found some memories, you don't have to read most of it, you can skip to my realization that I was not expecting to do a journal type post and that none of this shit matters, down at the bottom. I like most of my posts to have a point. This one is different.)

Well a brief look showed my social security number, in a lot of places, on a lot of forms. I'm sorry to say (only sorry for history's sake) that I'm going to be shredding any form with that number, not that anyone would probably want to read it now anyway. It was interesting to note that while College's incorrect and illegal use of social security numbers may have taught myself and so many of my friends our own numbers, that blatant misuse of the said number stems from much earlier on and I was just unaware. I'm going to save stuff for my Baby Book too and hope my parents keep it. I always figured this was more their job as they would remember what went on back then better.

IEP: The Individualized Education Program — is a document I have many copies and versions of. Thousands of man hours went into this document over the years. There are multi page letters from my parents writing in concern for specific provisions the IEP grants both for not enough enough help and again for too much unneeded help. Resource room, educational waivers for languages, assistant teachers, and untimed tests are part of evolving plans the school and my parents set out for me. I only really remember the untimed tests, it helped in math because if I didn't know the math I could take the time to figure it out using the questions as clues and English because I wrote very very slowly and had a hell of a time with spelling, grammar, and getting my letters in the right order. The first version I have here is from 3/8/95, I was 11.

*SHREDDED*

I've got an old faded fax on heat transfer paper from Anthony J Alvarado Superintendent who apparently had letterhead with two fonts on it. April, 1995.

Dear Parent/Guardian:

District Two is please to inform you that your child ("Francis" is scrawled in) has been accepted to the NYC Laboratory School for Gifted Education for sixth grade beginning September, 1995.

It goes on but I hated that school. Here's an excerpt from a "MID-SEMESTER PROGRESS REPORT" during I think my second year there, so 1996. It was the only comment I got, and the form states clearly and underlined "Unless noted below, your child is doing a satisfactory job." so I think I was pretty top notch. Subject: Spanish, Teacher: Mr. Pena didn't agree.

Francis needs to make an effort when it comes to class participation and paying attention in class. Up to now, he has shown none. I'll do the best I can to help him with his work.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: CLASS PARTICIPATION, COMPLETES HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS ON TIME, TESTS/QUIZZES/PROJECTS

Thinking back he was probably my age and I had trouble with languages and he had no experience with kids who didn't learn the way he was taught to teach. But as it turned out his best was getting fired for biting another student while wrestling later on in that year. I had managed to schedule my resouces room to whever I would have his class so I didn't even know until a day after he never came back. True story: I hate a bodega on Vanderbilt Ave. because it's named "Pena's. My report card had a couple of comments, but mostly praise in math and science, and even a good word in Spanish albeit a lower grade then everything else.

Ah, this collection is brought to you by my application to William Alexander Middle School 51, where I spent my 3rd and final year of Junior High. If I recall we had to argue with them to keep me out of the stupid kids classes, we couldn't get me into "Regents Rainbow" but I got into "Rainbow" it was the same thing but I didn't get to take the tests so I wouldn't have to repeat the classes the following year in high school. I can't tell you how much of my time was wasted over those years, that little tidbit isn't even the half of it.

To: Gulotta, Francis B.
Class: 142
From: Pupil Personnel Services
RE: SPECIALIZED SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL RESULTS
=========================================================
Taking the specialized High School Exam in Science represents a wonderful challenge and experience that you should feel positive about.

This year over 25,000 New York City students took the exam for only 4,000 seats (admissions). This represented a very competitive and difficult acceptance process.

Yadda yadda I got into "Brooklyn Tech" which wasn't a bad deal. The real winner of such an environment was Kaplan who states their goal the following way "At Kaplan, our mission is to help individuals achieve their educational and career goals. We build futures one success story at a time." I have to tell you, the amount of kids trying to prepare for that test was phenomenal. If you could afford to take that class and payed attention. You would probably get into a specialized high school. All they did (and they did it well) was to train you on basic verbal and math problems and let you practice taking tests about them over and over and over. They got our money we got into "special" schools and the Board of Ed got to create a cottage industry of people who could teach "examination skills".

I just found my "SBST" documentation for a meeting they had, that stands for "School Based Support Team" I don't know why I had one other then this one meeting. They were a diverse group a special Education Teacher (I didn't like her), a General Education Teacher (Leaves of Grass is all I need to say about him. I really didn't like him and he didn't like me, but thankfully he didn't let that get in the way of doing his job. I stopped actively hating him after this.), a district Representative, an Educational Evaluator, a school Psychologist, a Social Worker (normally, I apparently didn't have one, which makes me sad), and a Parent Memeber (My mom). They met on 4-4-2000 to discuss… oh well this document doesn't even say! I remember so never fear. Those 7 people and my Dad who waited outside managed to remove the language requirement for me graduating high school. I had tutors, extra books, private lessons in and outside of school, and I had worked my ass off royally to try to pass a single language class for a long while. And after that day I never had to worry about it again. I'd probably have my GED or some shit if it weren't for this.

I overheard someone I didn't know from that SBST say "Lets just move on this, I don't want to have to deal with his father." which was music to my ears. My dad didn't want to be there, or something about it bothered him so he was on edge. This is how I remember it anyway. He communicated these facts to this SBST member before their meeting. And while he sat outside during the meeting, his presence was obviously present inside. He half explained it to me later as "Sometimes you have to make them not want to deal with you more then they have to."

I just found a very nice letter from an old psychologist writing in support for waving the foreign language requirement. It's odd how you don't remember someone at all and then once you place the name or thought of the person, it's like opening a hidden box of memories. She was an interesting lady, I don't remember if I learned or was helped by her at all, but I enjoyed going to visit.

An updated IEP from 1999.

I got some odd forms here. One is an authorization from the Chancellor for my mother to be on the SBST, another is a declassification plan for me, and lastly a letter saying I'm classified as "NOT DISABLED". Oh and another version of my IEP this one from late 2000. And now I've found another meeting of the SBST with much less people but my mother still being the only one I know. A booklet about Parents rights and another one about Parents of children with disabilities rights. Man, who knew all this was such a big deal? I recall some drama over it but I mean, I was busy trying to make friends and get good grades. I guess taking on all this paperwork is another thing I can be forever thankful to my folks about.

I found here some statewide Student Performance Report for my bother, sticking him in the lowest range of students when it comes to reading when he was 10 years old. Ha!

Another IEP this one from even later 2000.

My parents writing pages of letters requesting that I be released from some special resource room brooklyn tech was forcing on me. That lady was annoying and I didn't need the help in math or science, but those were the only two areas she was trained in helping. My parents are pleading with her to remove me from her clutches.

Back to my first Junior High School. I've got a letter here written May 30, 1997 it's 3 pages long and it's from my parents to the school's "Co-Principals" (they sucked) let me quote the opening.

Dear Ms. Breslaw and Mr. Menkin

The Lab School is failing utterly to protect the emotional well-being of its students or to enforce a climate of basic civility. The school does not avail itself of resources developed by the Board of Education in its mediation programs or Peace Process which might facilitate the psycho-social environment of the school. As a result the school has become a bastion of prima donnas and students who are afrait to act humanely because there is no encouragement to do so.

Wow! And my Dad(?) wasn't wrong. I blame this kid Alex. I don't blame him a lot because he's dead now. He had a disease that was going to kill him in a few years and only he knew it. He was the bitterest son of a bitch you could have met. He snapped at everything. Everything was a mortal offense. And I was his friend. I was also depressed (who knows why) and way overweight (I loved my milkyway bars) and had a dandruff problem I didn't know how to fix (discovering how to properly wash my hair probably saved my life, it's taken years but I now am able to leave the house without a shower if I want to with out fearing I'll return to *that* kid again) and who knows what else. I needed a big change of environment and people in my life and leaving that school did it. Reading this letter my folks wrote I can't blame them for being angry. In two years I went from bright and happy to failing and fucked up and I was like 12 years old.

I've seen my own son transformed from a popular, happy and well adjusted top student to a child who huddles into a ball with his teeth chattering from anxiety every morning before school.

Apparently the "Vicious tone" went beyond my memories of Alex and me being an easy victim. According to this letter, several parents brought this up for discussion individually during PTA meetings. And other kids are quotes as saying they go along with it because they fear being the next victim. Part of me wants to play my experience off as being whiney and lacking social tact, but reading though this letter shows there were a lot more problems there. I know I wasn't the only student to leave that year, but I had no idea the level of fucked up bullshit going on there. While it would have only had been a start the DOE's mediation program while intended for gang violence seems to have been the parents solution to the "white collar climate of harassment that is prevalent in the Lab School."

Our son may leave, but the problem remains. For the sake of the children, the staff and the students should receive [mediation] training.

I think I'll save that letter for my Baby Book as a reminder how to kick someone's ass across the pavement using a pen as a way to stick up for your child. I wish I knew these people who were CC'ed but there's a few of them.

More quips from Mr. Pena about how I'm falling behind in Spanish. A note from a math teacher saying that ever kid can learn math and I am no exception, I just need to be prepared for class and organize my notes better. I think by that point I had 1 notebook because I had to, but I was doing fuck all, all day long. I wanted nothing more then to die. Which is how I remember it. I didn't want to kill people or leave, I didn't think I could leave. I remember wanting to die. Fuck that school for making me think things couldn't change.

More notes about how I could do better if I prepared myself.

My special ed folder. All that from before wasn't even in the main folder. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Do you know how long it's going to take to shred all this crap? Ok I'm done. I had planned to write this about some funny Rowan Orientation crap I found in this mess. I didn't expect to find or write about the Lab School or how we had to work the system to get basic shit out of it. Old report cards, student loan documentation, how I was a depressed and suicidal 12 year old, fuck all of it. So much drama attached to it all.

It's funny how almost none of it is of any consequence.

When I try to get into the office its a RFID swipe card that beeps me in. The server room has a regular key. My laptop has a long password and keeps all my files (not my music) encrypted when its off, my desktop has nothing, no private data, just some games and movies, so no password. It doesn't even stay logged into my email.

During my day I type probably 5–10 different passwords a combined total of a few hundred times. Maybe not that much. I've started using SuperGenPass for websites so even though its one password to me, its a different password for each website. Which is very very good. I do a similar thing with my shell and ftp accounts (of which there are many) I generate a random password (often using this handy site) and save it to my OSX keychain. I still use a text file for passwords sometimes and even though its locked behind filevault (the encryption on my laptop) it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

My mail has a long, annoying and different password then everything else. I change it from time to time too, its annoying. But since almost everything else I use a password for will use my email to verify me its important. I've known that for a long time, I've only stopped using my 'legacy' default password for everything (which has grown in length over time but still plastered on any site that would have it) about 2 or 3 months ago. It was a sad and sorry state of things, but I changed it before it bit me in the ass.

I do use openID (check the source of roborooter's home page and you can see my provider information) which let's me log into any site using only my url and let me log into only my provider for the password. (So I don't have to trust or use a different password for every other site.) So far I use it for only a few things, but more all the time. Stackoverflow, livejournal, sourceforge, roborooter.com itself, and a hodgepodge of other sites I can't remember. I could actually check and remove access to my openID for some of those sites if I cared to.

This is my context when I walked up to the turnstile this afternoon and pulled out my keys. Or yesterday when I walked into the turnstile's bar and smashed it against my groin with a loud thump. I had already logged into my network account, why did I need to log into the subway again? For most people a metrocard is money, I pay a lot for (and use it plenty) a monthly card. I have unlimited rides, not a dollar amount on a card. For me my metrocard is just another form of authentication. "Hi, It's me let me in, I'm good for this month. What? Oh OK I'll log in again."

–Francis

(Now with better spellings, more links, and a recovery from DreamHost's databases reverting.. even with review, writing a post on my blackberry has it's disadvantages.)

"We used their surface and projected the truth onto it."

He didn't actually say that but the sentiment is there. They also got his age wrong. A few years prior they wrote an article about the high school he went to. The reporter talks about him a bit but only has once quote.

"So, is there a proposal, or did you just want to open the discussion?"

And again a number of years prior (this is like 10 years ago now) we have a quote from an article about the boy scouts in Park Slope.

"Not really"

I'm fairly certian he's mentioned in one more artcle about a town meeting her went to that was on domestic violence in specific communitites, but I'm sure I'll be corrected soon enough. The quotes don't do him justice, but the articles might, they're not bad reads. I'm proud of him. Not for being in the newspaper but for doing things that he believes in. It's just cool that they're newspaper worthy.

–Francis

PS (I got more updates in the works but I've been a bit sick.)

I do talk about things in public, to strangers, to coworkers, to family members, there is a place in my life for it. I don't think Roborooter is a good place though. I do however think that Roborooter is a place to talk about abusive copyright practices.

Take down notices are becoming a problem. A big problem. It started with a way to keep people from posting copyrighted materials on their personal servers. Send the server a notice and they take the content down. Sort it out later. No big deal.

When that started there was no way to know, to fathom, that every single person's computer could host content. At the time they were very effective. These days content makers owners who wish to protect their copyrights have to send out thousands of them to keep up with things like youtube and myspace (which is evil and must be destroyed) and the people that run content sites get flooded and instead of assesing what is valid and what is not they cover their asses and remove everything.

This means if I don't like your work, it is very very easy for me to have it removed temporarily and maybe even permanently regardless if I have cause or not. With the nature of the internet if you get removed from the net while you're popular you've lost out incredibly.

This leads me into a video created by the Students for a Free Tibet about their NYC Chinese Consulate Projection Action, which was removed from youtube because the IOC (International Olympic Comity) said it violated their copyrights. It looks like fair use to me, but even so, you can't watch it right now on youtube.

Vimeo on the other hand, has not responded the same way. Vimeo also has nicer higher quality videos that we can all enjoy.

NYC Chinese Consulate Projection Action 08.07.08 from Students for a Free Tibet on Vimeo.

I'll end with a link to the EFF's No Downtime For Free Speech campaign. Those guys owe me a hat.

–Francis

1. Make the Hacker Crackdown Available as a torrent file. (You can just grab the full download if you like.)
2. Educate about what comcast was doing (blocking torrents)
3. Complain that while the torrent's flowing nicely a bunch of specific people had trouble torrenting it. Specifically the Comcast customers.(Not a complete lie, the torrent had about 250 downloads as far as I could tell and at one point 17 seeds. But if you were a comcast customer using torrents you knew what was going on and wouldn't complain to me.)
4. Come clean, off the full download via http and remark that I actually do have the bandwidth to spare to host a large file. Probably enough to spare to host 10 full and popular audio books, but probably not 100, where torrenting could go into the 10,000's easily. If people were so interested.

For the record as of right now the torrent is still on The Pirate Bay and has 2 seeders neither of them are me.

I had goals.

1. To spread the hacker crackdown by Bruce Sterling.
2. To try to do a story arcing blog post.
3. To educate people about torrents and Comcast.
4. To be crazy like that.

I had poor execution.

1. I got distracted
2. I told people what I was up to and then no longer felt like I had to do it. Almost like success.
3. I didn't do it all at once — I'm not sure if that was practical but it would have gotten it done while I had the drive.
4. I never wrote down my plan until now.

For the record even without my help (ha!) Comcast got smacked around by the FCC. It's not law (and we'll have to fight to make it law) but it's a big first step towards net neutrality.