@weikaolun well you are a lameski that’s behind in the txt revolution, so w/e.

The ‘txt revolution’ struck me as an interesting concept. First, ‘txt’ means text messaging, for you non-twenty-somethings readers (although I hope by now you would’ve learned that, at least ). A text messaging revolution has two connotations to me.

First, the idea that text messaging is a revolution, which is really kind of has been, like many technologies before it. Ultimately I suppose it’s relatively similar to telegrams, except much more individual. You don’t have to go through a company to send a text message. But unlike a telegram, or really any technology before text messaging (save for maybe email, I’ll get to that), text messaging allows users to fire off a short message to anyone who has a cellphone, at any time. The message itself doesn’t cost the cell carriers anything (people are pointing out that it does cost the carriers something, which is technically true. The amounts are negligible, however). It’s an entirely new level of connected-ness that even cell phones prior to text messaging couldn’t match. Talk to any 15 year old, and I can guarantee you that they’ve sent a text message to someone during class at some point. Try doing calling someone during class and see how long that lasts.

The reason I saved email for later (now, really) is that it’s intended purpose is different. Originally, email was intended to be a replacement for what we call snailmail now. The idea was that email was instantaneous, and significantly faster than using the postal service. This is all true. Email requires that you be at a computer to read it though. Yes, there are ways to get email to your phone, but originally, there weren’t. Also, it usually requires some sort of data plan, and that’s expensive. Text messaging still costs extra, but less than a data plan, and doesn’t require that the other person have some way to access email.

The second thought that popped into my head when I read ‘txt revolution’ was a revolution via text message. Clearly this wouldn’t be a real revolution, with guns, and taking over the government and things. However, what if some sort of underground grassroots movement were done via text messages? I guess this is one of the points of twitter, because it’s better than sending one text message to 300 different phone numbers. Even with twitter however, you have to be ‘following’ the person who is tweeting though.

Consider the concept of viral marketing (marketing via something interesting, and word-of-mouth). Often times viral marketing shows something very ambiguous as to the intent (in that it’s not clear it’s an advertisement), and it creates buzz because no one is really sure what it is. Now apply this concept to text messaging. I’m sure text messaging is one of the mediums that is used by people spreading the viral media. It’s just an intriguing concept, something going viral via text message, and it affecting people’s political views, or it riling people up.

I’m not advocating starting a revolution, it’s just intriguing. There is a lot of power in mass communication, particularly when the majority of the people are always connected via text message. We saw something similar with the Obama iPhone application in the App Store, but even that requires an iPhone. That was also a concerted effort by the Obama campaign. What I’m envisioning is something for the people, by the people.

This post doesn’t really have a point, beyond that the phrase ‘txt revolution’ triggered a thought process. I apologize if this post isn’t terribly coherent, as it’s 1:20 am. and I’m kind of awake.

“Why?” you ask? Well, ultimately it comes down to ideals, and what you want others to be able to do with stuff you create. Technically, if you keep all your rights, someone owes you money every time they distribute your image. Or, if they want to use your image for something, they have to get your permission. That seems like a hassle, first off. Secondly, it just seems to make more sense.

If we look at the recording industry, for example. When an artist signs with a record label, generally the record label gets the rights to any music the artist produces within the contract period. The record label then maintains the rights to the music indefinitely. Does the artist get to do what they want with the music? Generally not. This is an excerpt taken from Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture (a book released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license)

During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands
playing checkers. In one corner of the room was a television set.
Playing on the television set, while the stagehands played checkers and
the opera company played Wagner, was The Simpsons. As Else judged
95
it, this touch of cartoon helped capture the flavor of what was special
about the scene.
Years later, when he finally got funding to complete the film, Else
attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds of The Simpsons.
For of course, those few seconds are copyrighted; and of course, to use
copyrighted material you need the permission of the copyright owner,
unless “fair use” or some other privilege applies.
Else called Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s office to get permission.
Groening approved the shot. The shot was a four-and-a-half second
image on a tiny television set in the corner of the room. How
could it hurt? Groening was happy to have it in the film, but he told
Else to contact Gracie Films, the company that produces the program.
Gracie Films was okay with it, too, but they, like Groening, wanted
to be careful. So they told Else to contact Fox, Gracie’s parent company.
Else called Fox and told them about the clip in the corner of the one
room shot of the film. Matt Groening had already given permission,
Else said. He was just confirming the permission with Fox.
Then, as Else told me, “two things happened. First we discovered
. . . that Matt Groening doesn’t own his own creation—or at least
that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn’t own his own creation.” And
second, Fox “wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for us to use
this four-point-five seconds of . . . entirely unsolicited Simpsons which
was in the corner of the shot.”

I’d like you to pay attention in particular to the quote from Else

“two things happened. First we discovered
. . . that Matt Groening doesn’t own his own creation—or at least
that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn’t own his own creation.”

Yes, that’s right. The person who created The Simpsons doesn’t own The Simpsons. How is this sane? Matt Groening is unable to give permission to someone to use his own work.

This is not how things should be. First off, if the person who created the work gives permission to use the work, that should be all that’s necessary. Secondly, the people were trying to get permission to show a part of their documentary that had a 5 second clip of The Simpsons playing on a TV in the background. That shouldn’t even matter.

I’m not advocating removing any and all rights from the creator, quite the opposite. The creator should maintain rights, so long as their practical. The creator should be able to control the sale of their work, should they choose to do so. The creator should be able to give permission for someone to use their work, should they choose to do so. However, the creator shouldn’t lose rights to the producer, nor should anyone be charged $10,000 to license part of a work that is being used as a prop in another work.

Let’s think about how art happens. In any art class I’ve ever taken, we’ve spent time looking at works done by famous artists, , and then the project was to try and copy something done by this artist, be it the technique, or a similar image, or the media, or whatever. That’s how creativity works, in a sense. Many creative works are inspiring to someone (Person A), in some way. That inspiration can lead Person A to try and evoke the emotion that they’re feeling through some artistic medium. Arguably, that’s derivative work. Arguably, Person A have to pay royalty fees to the original artist (Person B). Except the original artist could be dead. That is, the original work from which this new work was derived could have been made hundreds of years ago.

Should Person A be disallowed from making art, if his or her art is in any way a derivative work (from Person B’s work, or anyone else’s)? No, that’d mean no one would be able to create anything anymore. Should a photographer have to pay royalties to some company whose logo he or she inadvertantly photographed? No, these logos are in public view. Royalties aren’t charged to people who walk by the business, why should they be charged to for people to see the logo when they’re not in the area?

The issues that surround artistic rights and creative control generally stem from trying to put what seem like intuitive ideas into a legal system with accountability. Clearly there are people who don’t believe artists should have any control over their works, and that everything should be public domain, but even if we accept this premise, it’d be difficult to legislate and put within the confines of a system. I don’t have an answer as to what the right balance is. I do know that the Creative Commons licenses seem to fit my goals as an amateur photographer and writer, and that I appreciate that others have licensed their works under Creative Commons as well.

UPDATE: Amazon released their second version of the Kindle recently. The Kindle is an e-book reader, allowing people to take books with them on the go, on one device. The Author’s Guild has said that the text-to-speech software that the Kindle has is illegal, and infringing on their rights. This is software infringing on author’s rights to provide an audiobook, according to the Author’s Guild. Audiobooks are considered derivative works, and because of the way copyright works, this software apparently is producing audiobooks. Stifling competition?  Perhaps. Author’s Guild being over-protective of their rights? Probably.

Should the author’s be able to maintain rights to produce audiobooks of their work? Probably, at least for some time. Should software be considered at fault for infringing on copyright? No. If the books were released under Creative Commons, this wouldn’t be an issue.

This intrigues me. It’s very clear that the recording industry is about making money (not sure you could call it an industry otherwise) and protecting their investment. However, Brother Ali is probably right. I know I would find myself significantly more interested in spending money on music if I were actually excited by the music being produced. I’m not advocating pirating music because you want to listen to it, but aren’t ‘inspired’, that’s not what I’m saying. I am saying that artists need to come up with something new. I’m not happy listening to the same old stuff over and over.

Clearly there are wide ranges of sound, even within one genre. It doesn’t mean the music that’s being produced is exciting. It doesn’t mean that all these different artists, all trying to make a living, are really doing anything different.

On top of it all, the mainstream artists are selling their control of their music to a coalition of capitalists, that aren’t wiling or capable to/of change their standard business model. The business model that has, up until recently, been suing the pants off of people who are pirating music. This comes back to the control. People don’t want to buy whole CDs anymore, because most stuff on the album is bad. People really only want one or two of the songs. However, the services where people can buy these songs are so full of DRM, people can’t do what they want with their music.

Consider the recently shut-down Ruckus. This was a company that was targeting their service to college students. They were providing free music, paid for by ads, to college students. However, this free music they were allowing students to download was in the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. This meant that the music was only allowed to be played on the computer to which it was downloaded. Forget about putting it on your iPod, forget about giving your friends a cool song you found, forget about taking the file and modifying it in any way (ring tones for your phone, or even just changing the sound levels a little bit).

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Oh, right. Basically, large recording industry coalition forces artists towards giving up control over their music, which has two implications. One, artists get less and less creative decision making control over what music they produce, because the recording industry doesn’t want to risk money on experimentation. Two, people who do buy music legally can’t do what they want to with the music they’ve purchased.

They’re always either falling in love, missing a distanced love, angry and bitter about a lost love, or yearning for some old love that is no longer possible.

Says something about emotion doesn’t it? Seemingly, we aren’t as affected by emotion unless it’s sad/depressing. It’s almost as though the collective writings are suggesting that one can’t truly have love without pain, or longing. Do we, as humans, really ‘thrive’ on despair?

I’d be interested to know if other people have encountered writings (songs, lyrics, poetry, whatever really) that suggest that one can be happily ‘in love’ (not infatuated, or falling in love, but after some time), and that love isn’t really just pain and/or longing for a better time (distanced lover returns, finally able to move past lost love, old lovers are reunited, etc. etc.). Thoughts?

I miss my girlfriend.

Not quite. It has recently come out that the NSA (National Security Agency) was not only wiretapping those people that were considered terrorists either internally or outside of US borders (the NSAs claim for a while was that they were only wiretapping externally). No, according the The Register, the NSA was actively watching journalists and news organizations. What’s the difference between this and what they were known to have been doing before? Well, first, it has been thought that the warrantless wiretapping was automated, flagging people automatically using algorithms. Actively watching journalists and news organizations means going beyond using generic computer algorithms, and assigning human work hours to this task.

Why is this a bigger deal than warrantless wiretapping? For starters, it means the project was significantly further reacher than previously thought, which leads us to the question “Who else were they watching?”. Just because we only know of two instances (warrantless wiretapping, and watching journalists/news organizations) doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there. Universities maybe? What about ISPs or other tech companies? All easy targets with large amounts of data on their users.

Second, there’s the whole “First Amendment” thing, wherein “the Press” is granted the ability to report on anything, without fear of repercussion. Now, maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but if there’s a government agency watching journalists and news organizations, without said journalists and/or news organizations knowing, doesn’t that open a lot of doors for censorship/surveillance without any accountability?

How far does the word “journalist” extend? According to the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) bloggers’ rights page,

if you engage in journalism, you’re a journalist.

This means that bloggers very easily fall under the NSA program of spying on journalists. This means that high school newspapers across the country could have been targeted.

Where does this leave us, as citizens? Does it mean we need to constantly live in fear of our govenrnment, since we don’t have any way of knowing if they are watching what we say on the internet? Hopefully not.

What it does mean is that we need to modify the way our government thinks about our rights as citizens, and how these rights extend into the digital age. A while ago, Phi said

This could also open up a wonderful public discussion of security in general, which impacts everything from Facebook to ATM PINs to electronic voting machines, things that are woven deep into the fabric of our social, economic, and political lives.

in reference to Obama’s wanting to use his blackberry/email as a way to communicate. If we raise awareness among the populace, and among law-makers, as to what we want, we really could change the way security/privacy is looked at.

I’m scared. I don’t trust our government, particularly not the more clandestine organizations. The legal battles over digital privacy are still being fought, and so it falls upon us as citizens to take our digital privacy into our own hands until such time as the legal status of digital privacy has been vetted.

We have the techonology with which to secure our email interactions, and we have the technology with which to secure any internet activity at all. The issue with using either of these technologies is that nobody else uses them.

I can encrypt my email, but if the person on the other end can’t un-encrypt it, that’s useless. I can use services like Tor, but if only the techno-nerds are the ones using it, it doesn’t help anyone else, and the proliferation doesn’t spread.

I’m not normally one to get roused over the idea of constitutional rights, because generally speaking, I don’t feel, personally, my rights being infringed upon. It’s absolutely selfish, but it’s how I get through my day. However, this issue is bigger than me. As we move more and more of our lives online, “into the cloud”, we expose ourselves more and more. Not only to our friends (arguably one of the benefits of doing so), but to anyone with the know-how to access it, and the technology/political power to allow them to do so. What’s the cost? I could entirely remove myself from the internet, but then I lose out on the wonder of technology (and I’d have to switch majors). I could continue doing what I’m doing, but that exposes a lot about me to almost anyone.

Instead, I advocate pushing back. Take security into our own hands, force the issue for the government, the companies who’s products we use, the email services we use, and even our employers/universities to provide the infrastructure we want. The infrastructure we arguably need.

Now that I’ve flagged myself in an NSA database somewhere, I’m going to go hole myself up somewhere until they come for me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still people in the United States that think if they click the wrong button on their computer, it will explode. There are still people who just don’t want to use all the new-fangled stuff, and are perfectly happy with 10 year old cell phones. This doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be better off with a more technologically integrated lifestyle. Even those people who like their old cell phones will probably admit that having a GPS in their car could save them time (so they didn’t have to pull off the road to read a map).

Geeks have, for a while now, wondered why Washington seems to be so out of touch with technology concerns of the day. I don’t have an answer, and this does’t put new light on things, except that Washington really is in the dark ages. One Obama spokes person compared the experience as “going from an Xbox to an Atari”. The fact that this guy can even make the analogy speaks wonders about the current administration! We wouldn’t have heard anything of the sort from a Bush spokesperson (unless terrorism was thrown in 3 times. “going from a terrorist Xbox to a terrorist Atari, it’s like terrorism).

On top of all the challenges this new administration faces (global warming, the economy, two different wars, gay rights, abortion issues, etc. etc.), can they really pull off changing the system in Washington to allow for better implementation of technology? Rumors are saying Obama may be able to keep his blackberry for personal use, but has to use some ancient smartphone for business use. Granted, the dinosaurphone has been vetted by the NSA, but this was still 4 years ago!

Can we step back, chill out, and approach this problem from a new angle? Updating infrastructure won’t be fixed by going at it the same way Washington always has. Get some tech companies to submit products to the NSA to be vetted, keep the process moving along! This isn’t hard folks, you just have to step outside your little box.

There’s been steps taken, absolutely. The fact that Obama is even wanting a smartphone is a good thing. The fact that whitehouse.gov is all Creative Commons licensed is a good thing (as is this site, by the way). These are steps in the right direction, but these types of small steps won’t get you to the peak of the mountain that is the technology issue in Washington.

I’m trying to come up with constructive things to do, keep myself busy so I don’t have to too much time to think about things. That’s when I get myself into trouble, when I get too contemplative. For whatever reason, falling back into the same old thing always does this to me, regardless of where I am. I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s related to spending all my time on the computer, where there’s always something happening, always something new for me to see and experience. Maybe it’s because I’m never truly happy where I’ve been (wow that’s emo, enough of that). I don’t know, I’m just feeling kinda… blah.

I’m working to keep my grades up and good this semester, last semester didn’t go well at all. I’m also trying to keep myself busy outside of school work (extra-curriculars, jobs, creativity, etc.), so that I don’t have that much down time.

Down time is obviously important, but too much of it makes me stir crazy, and I can’t deal.

I don’t mean to whine, I’m just kinda… meh. Kind of in a funk, and I’m not terribly sure why. Regardless, it’ll pass. It always does.

With luck, I’ll have formed more angry opinions in the next couple days, and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Because of various events, when I was home over break, my parents and I had a recurring conversation about the educational system in the area where my parents/siblings live.

Part of this conversation centered around the way students (from kindergarten up through high school) are treated by teachers/administrations.
Let me stipulate, these are human students, not members of a dog obedience class, or anything else. Also, students here is synonymous with children (at least to a point, there’s an argument to be made about high school students).

Through my experiences with school systems, and I’m SURE I’m not alone in this, I’ve come to have the impression that on a general level, teachers don’t have a reasonable level of respect for their students. I’m being inflammatory again, but to a point it’s true.

There seems to be a dynamic between teachers and their students, wherein teachers, again generally, act as though they are significantly more intelligent than the student. yes, that’s why they call them teachers, and yes, it’s their job to teach the content they’ve been given mandate to teach. I acknowledge this.

That said, however, what happens when a teacher gets a student who disagrees with the teacher for whatever reason? It may just be that the student has a particular interest in the subject, and is more familiar with current information than the teacher. It may even be that the student has a different viewpoint on things (a native american in a history class taught from a white perspective, for instance).

At least at my high school, most teachers would have blown the student off. Why? I think it’s because teachers get used to being the one in charge, and get stuck on the “I’m the teacher, you’re the student, I’m right, you’re not” mentality. Now, I’m sure part of it is the way a student presents what they’re trying to say, and I’m sure part of the dynamic can be attributed to class management technique. This doesn’t excuse the matter however.

In a teacher-student relationship, respect and trust seem to be innately required. If a student doesn’t trust the teacher, what reason does the student have to believe anything the teacher is teaching? If the student respect the teacher, why would the student sit in class? This is a two way street, however. In order for the student to be able to respect the teacher, the student generally needs to feel as though the teacher respects them. I’m not saying put the student up on a pedastal, just give them the courtesy of treating them like humans. From this will stem student respect doe the teacher, and subsequently trust.

Let me look at a different example. From kindergarten up through (in some cases) 6th grade, students are told to line up. Yes, a queue is an efficient way to fit people in a space, and allows for easy counting of people. It can also imply that students are somehow incapable of managing themselves (waiting for the school bus is one example). Sure, there are some kids that aren’t capable, and yes, it’s one teacher managing 30 kids.

Many times lining up becomes “get in line, be quiet, and do what I say”. Again, probably a crowd management technique, but also not treating students like they’re people. Guess how they manage cows going for slaughter? Yeah, that’s right, lines. No, I kid, but on some level it’s true.

There’s a lot wrong with our public school systems, and I don’t purport to have all the answers. I do think that if teachers/schools start treating students with respect, the students will respond on a different way. If high schools start treating their students like the almost-adults they are, the students will start acting like it. Obviously not all, and I’m not saying give them free reign. I am however, saying that instead of racheting down, and implementing more and more policies to try and control students, high schools coils take the opposite approach.

• CSCI 1302 – $whatever- the-class-is-called

This class has changed names like four times, apparently. It’s essentially a discrete math course

• CSCI #### – Artificial intelligence and evolutionary computing

This is a computer science theory elective, which could be really cool.

• SPAN 3002 – Advanced conversation and composition

The second in a series of two Spanish conversation/composition classes

•SPAN 3101 – Introduction to Spanish literature

The description is in the title It’s a Spanish lit. class, I’m hoping it’ll be interesting, and not boring.

Now that I’ve done my “college student blogger” duty, I’m gonna go work on a more interesting post.