The Code Cave

Do you remember all the fuss made about Ralph Nader during the last election? Did you know that he hadn’t even make it onto the ballot in all 50 states?!?! 34 isn’t even close, and it’s no wonder people think the two party spiral can’t be broken when someone as gung ho and well known as Nader can’t even make the ballots. ( Read more about ballot access laws )

This year, the landscape is already different. So many people are voting for their candidate because he’s NOT the other one. That the 50 ballot hurdle has already been conquered.

On Aug 1, former Congressman Bob Barr turned in one thousand pages of signatures to the government of the state of West Virginia, to get state #50. (And yes they are still counting and verifying, but even more signatures have been collected since then, making it a pretty sure bet that WV has been won.) That means that he has already collected over 867,134 signatures from backers across the country.

So, now, people like me, who don’t think Obama has the experience required to be a strong independant president or that don’t believe McCain represents the core republican principals he’s asking to represent, now have a real choice.

If you are one of the people that count the cost of a third party vote, as we all should, consider this: what is the cost of continuing in this two party quagmire. If you vote for EITHER Democrat or Republican, you are voting against fixing the ingrown Federal system. How many times have you heard people say “There’s no difference between them. They’re all crooks.” Well, then maybe it is time for those people to do something about it. The two parties are already working to eliminate our choice. For example the debate rules have been changed so that for a candidate to be included in even the first debates, they must have enough ballot access to win and be at 15% or higher in the current polls. So your vote, if nothing else, is buying access.

Here is what I am suggesting. Reserve judgement. Find out what Bob Barr represents. Find out if there are any positions at all of his that you disagree with. This is a good place start: http://www.bobbarr2008.com/issues/ And when asked in polls and surveys, mark that you are considering Bob Barr. It doesn’t mark that as your choice in November. It only says, “I am think this person is a valid candidate and I want to hear what he has to say and I want to be informed of what he has to offer.”

Those are my words on the subject. I recommend you stop hear and go to his site to find out more. http://www.bobbarr2008.com/about/
But if now is all the time you have, here is a 1 paragraph quote from his staff:
“Bob Barr spent eight years in Congress as a Representative from Georgia. His intellect and leadership skills were quickly recognized. He rose to prominence as a result of his courageous commitment to principle. Bob Barr was and is a strong defender of your civil rights. He will fight to protect our privacy against “big brother” and he’ll defend our right to keep and use firearms. Bob will cut government spending, and taxes. And, he’ll balance our budget. Bob’s plan to tackle our national energy crisis includes embracing new technologies and conservation - but also, more domestic production and refining. ” http://www.bobbarr2008.com

You’ve probably seen this by now and I’ll admit I watched it a few times to help me decide whether or not it was fake or not.  Here, I’ll let you have a go at it to see if you can spot anything,

I keyed in on the obvious, from my perspective.  I’ve never seen  someone as close as the fans were to that ball, not fling themselves out and almost fall onto the field to catch it. 

Those people hardly reached at all and stopped before the ball was really caught.

However the catcher is the clue to this one.  I’ll show you two frames and see if you catch it:

Catch it?  Kudos to the commenters on the original video (reached by clicking the embed above) who caught this.  If you go there you will see that the description of the video is “Baker [Smith] directed these viral spots for Gatorade from ad agency Element 79 and Partners.”  See the half empty Gatorade bottle by her chair at the end?

Friends don’t let friends double click…

Next in series

I was involved in an email discussion this morning and once again I realized that I’ve transferred my creative energies from writing new and interesting blog articles over to email discussions and forum posts.  So I’m sharing this with you and will hit post instead of send.  (Oh and btw make sure to save as a draft in Windows Live Writer before pasting from an HTML email.  Some formatting causes WLW to go into an infinite loop.  As a result you have to rewrite your brilliant and concisely worded opening paragraphs again.  And they are just never as good the second or third time through and your daughter will get upset because you told her you would do her swimming lesson at 11am and that is already well passed.)

At b5media, Inc. we no longer allow the use of copyrighted images unless the blogger has obtained permission from the copyright owner or a representative thereof.  The use of copyright images is not something that most Bloggers bother to think about.  If you see a neat wilderness photo you want to share, you post it.  If you see a picture of an actor doing something… unusual, you might just toss it up on your blog.  If you write an article about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, of course you’ll want a head shot above their name.  If an image is used on another website, it is considered polite to copy the image locally to your account so that you are not stealing bandwidth.  Most people certainly want to respect the rights of a photographer and want photographers to be paid, but those thoughts usually don’t enter our mindset.

Well for a blogging network of well over 300 blogs, image concerns are amplified.  Respecting creative rights and intellectual property is extremely important to us.  Heck, we make our living from IP too.  OK and yes, admittedly the $20K fine for each image in violation of the law could add up to a sum that would leave anyone weak at the knees.  So, liability is of course a concern.  If b5 takes a hit, that could affect the livelihood of hundreds of Bloggers.   So this is matter we take very seriously.  We have to. 

There’s been some discussion by our Bloggers and Channel Editors this morning on the subject of image use and here is my contribution:

COMMON SENSE DISCAIMER: Everything in this email/post is only the personal opinion of a geek and is not said in my capacity as a b5media employee. It may or may not be the opinion of the powers that be in b5media, inc. Therefore, nothing in this email has any relation to b5media, Inc. policies. Anything that you believe says or implies otherwise should be ignored. 

“creator’s date of death plus 70 years”

BTW you can thank Disney for that stupid law. It irks me because it means that rare recordings of things like the Danny Kaye performances I like cannot legally be shared and so they become rarer and rarer parts of collections and eventually parts of our culture are lost. Why should a 65 year old scratchy recording of someone reading a story about an inchworm be unsharable? It’s all so that we don’t send around copies of a horrible black and white cartoon of a poorly drawn mouse driving a steam boat and so that stores on the beachfront in Miami can’t airbrush said mouse onto a shirt (or wait does that happen already?). The law in Austrailia is a generous 50 years and the US is trying to push the Ozz to move to 70 years as well.  We have made other countries do this already. And 70 is just a “Magic Number” anyway and one should always avoid “Magic Numbers”.  (A principle I was taught early on in my coding carreer.) 

Yes this is a hot-button issue for me J

Links:

An interesting article on the 2002 case that extended this law.

WikiPedia’s discussion on the various “free license” differences out there. It will be helpful for those put their own pictures on the various hosting services out there. 

The relevant part is here:

For image creators:

If you are the creator of an image, you can choose any acceptable free license. You can multi-license your image under different licenses, if you prefer. The license must not prevent commercial reuse or derivative works.

GNU Free Documentation License - GFDL-self - Written by the Free Software Foundation. People are required to attribute the work to you, and if they make changes or incorporate your work in their work, they are required to share their changes or work under the same license.

Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike - cc-by-sa-3.0|Attribution details - This is one of several CC licenses. This version permits free use, including commercial use; requires that you be attributed as the creator; and requires that any derivative creator or redistributor of your work use the same license. The desired attribution text should be included as a parameter in the template.

Creative Commons: Attribution - cc-by-3.0|Attribution details - Similar to the above, but does not require that derivative works use the same license.

Free Art license - FAL - A copyleft license for artwork; modification and commercial use are allowed, provided derivative works carry the same license.

Attribution - Attribution - The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed.

Copyrighted Free Use - CopyrightedFreeUse-Link|[http://www.yourwebsite.com/ Your website] - Same as above, but attribution is not required. However, as a courtesy, you would appreciate a link back to Your website.

Public domain - PD-self - The creator permanently relinquishes all rights to the work.

NOTE (TO B5 READERS): b5media does not fall into the same business category as Wikipedia. Should you see “fair use” stuff on various Wikipedia pages, just be aware that various points may directly contradict our policy. I personally wouldn’t try to argue using Wikipedia’s “fair use” policy after violating b5media’s image use policies.  That’s why I didn’t like to their policy. ‘nuff said.

Also the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) http://www.eff.org/ always has interesting reads (like this http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/ ) and advocate changing the laws rather than breaking them. I don’t always agree with what I read there, but it is always interesting.

Today is blog action day and a good reason to get another post up.

Blog action day is all about promoting the idea of being “green”.

The concept of being green has been interestingly twisted over the recent years in the political realm. Weird things have happened as the left and right have divided into camps. Somehow “Green” became a left issue as groups like the Sierra Club, to which I’ve belonged off and on have become known as “radical groups”. I don’t fully understand all of that and where the chips now lie, but I do know that even as a conservative, I have always done my part to help the environment.

Helping keep a clean planet doesn’t mean that you are worshiping the planetary gaia. In fact being a good steward of the planet is a mandate that transcends almost all religions.

Me, I do my part several ways that you possibly could apply to your life:
1. Participate in and help promote responsible outdoor activities
2. Take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints. Wherever I go.
3. Support those who try to make a difference.
4. Drive only the size of vehicle I need. This is one of the reasons I’ve ridden motocycles for far longer a time than I’ve had cars as my main vehicle. Still living on the North East/northern mid west, I’ve needed a vehicle. So have also driven a Suzuki sidekick. A mini SUV with a small footprint. And YES, I have used it off road on a regular basis and can justify having the 4×4 option.
5. Drive only as much as you need to. If you live as close as possible to where you work, you don’t have to drive much. Now I don’t have to drive at all and when I do it is on my bike or with the whole family in the minivan.
6. Reduce Reduce Reduce. Keep things turned off. We actually use a clothes line for towels and sheets (yes, they still make them). Don’t use what you don’t need to and buy less stuff with stuff in it be it packaging and cardboard or mono sudium glutimate and corn starch. It will improve your life and health. And reduce your footprint by using stuff longer.
7. Use FreeCycle and Cheap cycle to help those less fortunate than you and keep stuff in circulation till it is really ready to go.
8. Associate with those who can make a difference like you do. One of the great things about b5media is the impact we’ve had on the world. We’ve cooperated on investigations that have put some people behind bars that aren’t safe to be out in society, cooperated to fight breast cancer and today we are coming together to help promote a clean eath.

Here are just some of the blog action day posts that b5media has released:

• Hippie Sounds
• Offbeat Homes
• Tree Hugging Family
• Simply Thrifty
• Declutter It!
• The Golden Pencil
• Taxgirl
• Yielding Wealth
• Six and Out
• PittWatch
• Geeky Traveller
• Inside Motherhood
• Idol Stalker
• Daytime Talk
• Oz Music Scene
• The Sydney Traveler
• The Rock Dose
• Our Digital Music
• Copyblogger
• Problogger
• Quilting and Patchwork
• Alzheimer’s Notes

Source: http://daytimetalk.com/2007/10/15/happy-blog-action-day/

Have I missed any simple ways that you make your life green? If so please feel free to ad them to the comment field below.

Please see this excellent post by fellow b5er William Lehman (heh I couldn’t remember his last name right now… go figure!  It’s a tough one).

I definately plan to do some of this for my own use.

I have a dvd recorder and it would be great to take some of those shows I have on DVD.

Then I can watch them on my mp4 player.  plus some movies would be great for long trips…

Anyway here’s the link:

http://www.decloned.com/life/how-to-copy-movies-to-your-ipod-using-free-software-on-windows