Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Very interesting, but does it matter?

Over at Anarchangel, one of my daily reads, and probably the best original (original writing) gun blog going, Chris seems to want to sign on to a crafter's creed involving blogging.

Such creeds are as old as organized crafts, and were the original basis for craft unions (the Colonial silver and copper smiths are an example of that), which became labor unions, which became, generally, a P.I.T.A.

I'm not sure about this on several levels. Chris' explanation of the Creative Commons License is simple enough to understand, but tying one's work to a legal standard, when the medium it is displayed in refuses to accept such standards, seems to me to be a contradiction in terms.

Now, some who blog seem to feel strongly about their blog being personal property, and a few of those "some" actually hope to turn their blogs into a profitable enterprise. I'm not one of those. My blog costs me $7.16/month to operate, plus a few pennysworth of electricity to run my computer, and that is a negligible cost to me. I don't feel it necessary to sell space here to recover my cost, and I fer damn sure wouldn't want the Infernal Revenooer Servants to come calling because they thought this blog was a goldmine operating under their snoopy radar.

The way I see it, I have thoughts which I want to share with the world, and this blog is the best way to do that. There is a remote possibility that one or two of those thousands of thoughts I've shared might be commercially valuable, but probably not valuable enough to make me independently wealthy, so I don't even consider putting a leash on those thoughts so I might yank them back from freeloaders.

The thing about the Creative Commons License that gravels my ass the most, though, is just the idea that some folks think blogging needs CONTROLS.

Here's my weak analogy: I own a well. I pump water from my well, take a cup of it and throw it out in the street. Is that still my water as it lies in the street? If it is, does that mean I could charge you money if you ran your tires through it and carried it away on the inside of your fender-wells?

I don't think so. I think that when I took my water and threw it in the public thoroughfare, knowing that I had little to no control of it after I did so, I gave up my claim of ownership of that water.

I can understand the principle behind most claims of intellectual property rights, especially where prior record of value can be established, but ordinary expressions of opinion don't count, IMHO. Yes, we have all seen a blogger or two claim that their every thought, connected to reality or not, which they ever posted on their blogs, is intellectual property with a finite value, but where the rubber meets the road, where reality must be assessed, do such claims ever stand up?

The way I see it, the cash register is king. If you think your blogging might be valuable, prove it by selling it to the public. Put up a turnstile and charge admission. Some bloggers do, and Bill O'Reilly probably pays his Long Island mortgage with those fools' money. Such sales are the only way you can ever establish proof of the finite value of your opinion as an intellectual asset. If you're unwilling or unable to sell it, well then, you don't really need control over the rest of us with a license, do you?

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UPDATE: 122109 2317 PST: Chris Byrne has an interesting take on imputed licensing in publishing a blog. See his comment below. I have no quarrel with his facts, but my point remains: I don't give a rip. If you think your words have value, do what you want to protect that value. My words don't carry a money price tag, those are moral scruples to be exchanged, not rubles. Somehow, I don't think the First is at risk in my words, either.

Be patient with the Analog Kid

...as he says, he's had a work-month from Hell, and some personal financial tangles to live with (I hate re-fi), so I guess the last Extenze spam-comment put him over the top, and he plugged in Kaptcha and comment moderation.

I had to do that once, meself.

He's still one of the brightest lights on the Left Coast, and always worth a read.

Taking the rest of the month off

...from blogging. It seems that the give-a-shit factor is so low that no one comments anymore (last comment was 10 days ago and I made it), and since this is a TEACHING blog, meant to inform and make it easier to learn about world events, no feedback means no one cares to learn.

I could write a few pages on why it bodes VERY bad for the conservative culture to clam up, but since evidence shows that no one would read it anyway, I am not going to waste my time.

Here's an assignment, readers (yes, I'm in full didactic mode here):

Take a post I have written in the last couple of weeks, and tell me, in comments, either on that post or to this article, why you like or dislike it.

If I see enough critical thinkers out there, I will continue this blog. Otherwise, I'll probably just stop publishing it, because it costs me some money each month, and Twitter is free. I don't tweet much now, but that could change quickly.

BTW, if you want to follow my presently-feeble Twitter output, I'm "04283" (without the quote marks). You have to subscribe to my account, but if you're interested enough to push the "ask to subscribe" button, that's good enough for me.

Widget request

Does anyone know of a widget for bloggers which will pick up comments as you write and post them and store the log of them in one easy-to-access file?

I comment on others' blogs a lot more than I write on mine, and I suspect most bloggers do, so keeping track of your posted comments by some means other than cutting and pasting the text into a folder would be nice.

Such a widget would also offer the necessary proof to confront a comment-deleting blogger with who just pretends to have an open commenting policy but in reality censors comments.

There are so many blogging widgets out there, and I, for one, do not keep track of them.

Any help is appreciated in advance.

Editing progress.

Editing proceeds apace. As of 1640 today (Tuesday, 20 January 2009), I am 10% complete in the first phase.

I will keep updating this post with the progress.

Thank you all for keeping up your interest.

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UPDATE: 012209 1940 PST: As of now, I am done back through '07. 40% done.

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UPDATE: 012309 1007 PST: As of now, I am done back through '06. 60% done.

Commie-Tastic

I have Comcast (to be referred to by it's correct name from here on out) as an ISP. You may have read the news about 3 months ago that ComCrap decided to put the brakes on high-bandwidth users.

Here's an interesting write-up of THAT annoying process.

My problem with them tonight is a bit different. I have put on a new hat with my yacht club, that of Newsletter Publisher. Once a month, I am going to write and publish the club's newsletter, some members receiving it by email and some by snail mail.

Day before yesterday, I formed a distribution list in Outlook and yesterday I decided to test it and ask for replies to confirm the addresses. I was quite intense about getting the mass email sent out, but overlooked the "subject" line, leaving it blank. One of the members who replied noted that empty subject lines could be detected as spam by those with tight antispam controls set up.

Tonight, I get an email from ComCrap's "Customer Security Assurance" division. This email informs me that I have been identified (doesn't say by who) as a spammer, and says that I have to click on a link to restore my full emailing privileges. I have no way of authenticating this email without doing a long and boring "whois" lookup, so I just go to their chat room and chat up a support person.

The chat was interesting, if primitive. I was using better chat software than ComCrap uses when I first started computing in the mid-80's. Theirs won't even word-wrap a sentence, and with this VERY chatty tech, there were some looooooong sentences. Never mind. I quickly established that yes, I was accused of spamming, and I then established that I could clear my good name with this chat service, but they tended to hem and haw a lot, so I played the trump card by asking them if their flagging my account was an attempt to force me to use their antivirus software suite. It is the horrible MacAfee, and I attempted to use it when ComCrap first started giving it away free to customers several years ago, but after three attempts to install it, the last time with the help of their support system, and never getting it to function in any manner than slowing my computer to a crawl, I gave up and went back to AVG Free, where I sit snugly to this day.

Right after I threw down the trump, I got a curt message that my account was restored. It may not be, since I haven't been able to send a message to my other account at Yahoo! Update: a second visit to the chat room was required, and this time they had me reset the outgoing port on my Outlook from 25 to 587, and that cleared up the block. I guess they blocked port 25 and can't really undo the block, so they had to have me reset the port to another one. I wonder why the original support tech didn't think of that?

This may push me over to Verizon Fios, which is now available in my town, but was only approved by the city gummint last week. The company still isn't sending out any fliers confirming the TV availability.

Any other abused ComCrap victims out there? Feel free to discuss, with the only limit being no terrorist threats against the company, please.

Thin Skin

...and VERY poor memory.

(contentious paragraph deleted at the request of a third party).

Now Mr. KdT "flames" me on his site, painting me as some sort of Vandal who fails to respect private property rights. Actually, I have GREAT respect for PRIVATE property rights, but when you post something on a public blog, in full knowledge that it is available for public consumption, and in full knowledge that mirror sites exist, then you try to make those postings go away, it's a bit ridiculous to rail at the one guy who made an effort to publicly preserve your fine work. If Kim DuToit's (fortunately) unique attitude were to have prevailed down the course of recorded history, well, there wouldn't have been any history recorded.

The strange thing here is that I have agreed and still agree with just about everything the man has ever written: he takes the side of GOOD in the culture wars.

I WILL make one severe criticism of the man, though. Over the years, he  has asked his readers to support him financially for various reasons. On at least two of those occasions, I sent him money.

This is my thanks for that support.

Far from being the genteel advocate of civilized society as you would have us believe, Kim, you, like the underclasses you rail at constantly in your blog, also bite the hand that feeds you.

You have assumed the mantle of a gentleman, but fail to understand that a gentleman's FIRST duty is his manners.

Shame on you, sir.

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UPDATE: 080408 1623 PDT: Comments proceed apace on this post. For the most part, they are fine comments, worthy of the type of folks I try to write for in this blog. I didn't make one important point very clear in the above post though, so here it is:

Back in '05, I tried to take the lead and form a group to preserve Kim DuToit's writing after he announced he was closing his blog. That attempt failed, and Mr. DuToit asked me to desist, and remove my post on the subject, which I did, BACK in 2005! Since then, I have only linked to Mr. DuToit's blog by way of referring to GGP's and/or writing to comment on posts which he has written, much as other bloggers have done (and don't get yelled at for).

I haven't stolen a thing from Mr. DuToit, ever. Hurling accusations of theft at me is a non-starter. As I have pointed out, Mr. DuToit can take all of his screed and line his birdcage with it, and I won't care. THAT IS HIS RIGHT.

It is absolutely un-arguable that I have done FAR more for Kim DuToit than he has ever done for me, and if this keeps up, I will prepare a list of it and publish that list. That will be called a reminder. I shouldn't have to do that, though.

Let's just say that Mr. DuToit had a bad day and leave it at that. I am beginning to see his point about the futility of blogging, though.

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UPDATE: 080608 0034 PDT: Comments are closed on this post. The points made above have all been supported in comments (two of which were redacted after their authors published them automatically), and not well refuted, so I conclude that I have made my point. Thank you to all who have contributed. I propose letting THIS sleeping dog lie...

Captcha is back

Sorry, the experiment of doing without Captcha (the little hidden number box you have to copy into another box to get your comment published) is finished. The spambots re-discovered my blog after less than a week, and I am getting them over a dozen at a time now. Typepad, my blogging engine, doesn't seem to be able to deal with them effectively at the server level anymore.

For those who don't realize it, spam is more than a nuisance. Spams carry a much higher level of viruses, trojans, etc than do ordinary emails, and I would hate to have someone click on a spam comment, follow a link in it and have their computer trashed. Not on MY watch, babe.

Captcha is re-installed. If anyone experiences a failure to post on a comment, just right-click the body of your message, choose "copy" go to your email engine and paste it into an email and send it to perspac@yahoo.com I will then publish it through my editing function. Don't forget to put in your horsepower (blogging name, email and website) if you want that published with it, as well as the post you want the comment attached to.

Gotta go, but all y'all have fun out there and try not to run down any neurosurgeons, I might be needing one soon and I want to have a good selection of them, heh.

Blogger's introspection

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LAST UPDATE: OK, I surrender! Any idea of hanging up my spurs is now shelved! You lurkers have me convinced! I apologize for thinking all of you were just after the Boobage. But that remembers me, I haven't published anything to Boobage in a while, have to remedy that little FUBAR.....

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UPDATE: 042308 2149 PDT: OK, I turned off Captcha....we'll see how much spam I get in comments. BTW, I'm IMPRESSED with the response so far...

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OK, soul-searching time.

I am asking myself who I am writing this blog for, and the answer comes back, myself. That's how it should be, since a journal is about recording what is happening around the journalist.

I get 700-800 reads on most days, but the vast majority of them are looking for the tit and ass in my "Boobs" section. I probably get 50-100 reads from people looking for my opinions and the facts I present along with them.

Even that's OK, because I get some feedback along with those reads.

Make that, USED TO get some feedback. I must have been asleep when a law was passed prohibiting commenting on Rivrdog posts, but the effect is there, my comments have fallen off to near zip.

I guess you could say that without the feedback of the comments, I have no way of knowing if I'm just whistling in the wind or how my opinions are received, and yes, I care how they are received.

So, I have decided to put myself and my blogging on probation for 30 days. If my writing brings an appropriate level of feedback, I'll continue, but if not, I'll announce a closing date, far enough in advance so that interested folks may peruse the blog and copy such items as they see fit, but at the end of THAT period, I will close my doors, ending this four-year experiment.

I have a typical writer's depression at having too little feedback. I had to give up on my novel because of legal (criminal) liability involved with the project as I was writing it (and I refuse to water it down with hyperbole so it wouldn't land me in jail as a terrorist), so I don't have that outlet for myself. I kept on with the blog, hoping to stimulate a few minds out there, but those minds are either gone or as stunted as mine.

If I close up shop, you haven't gotten rid of me. I will simply revert to reading blogs and commenting on them (which I find myself doing anyway, I'll just do more of it if my blog goes away). I might open a Facebook page also, but I'm going to take the money I save and treat myself to 40 extra miles of driving per month. See the country. Bucket list. All that.

Ach! Der Knoppix!

Ach! Der CD ist in haltsverzeichnis!

Translating, I'm test-driving Knoppix, a Linux-based OS that runs off a CD. There is no Windows running on this Windows machine.

I'm doing everything off the CD, which is acting in stead of my hard disk to run the OS from. Sound familiar? If you've been computing as long as I have, you will have done this before, back in the day of Win 3.0.

I like it, for the most part.