Sunday, August 25, 2002

I posted a piece Fri Aug 23 about improving how we present our weblog material, which Alison Fish commented further upon.  Steven Levy Has A Blog About Writing About Blogs. says [Ernie the Attorney] Steven suggests that we need to be more self displined about our categories, separating different kinds of writing: Sharing interesting links and insights. More or less original content. Pundit commentary on what we see in the news. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] from Steven Levy original source. For the moment, Al's focus is on separating stuff by type of subject content - computers, history, using this technology, etc. Another focus is trying to get away from habit of long essays that might have only limited interest to people. Aug 20 I showed what I am calling John Patrick's technique worth emulating, then I used it here and here. I need to get into the habit of using good techniques like this. [Alison Fish of Blogfish] QUOTE I love the three styles of weblog writing listed above. What would be really cool is to come up with a way of formatting the weblog posts that indicates which of the three types of posts it is (sharing link discoveries, original content, pundit commentary).  Oh, so much to do. Save this goal for a later date. UNQUOTE [Alison Fish of Blogfish] I like the original idea from Steven shared by Ernie, and I like Alison's suggestion also. Perhaps this is a template theme style topic. Elsewhere in Radio Wishes, I have noted that people can lose track of changes made to our Templates - a tweak here, a minor change there, then we are afraid to experiment with alternative Themes, or Radio upgrades, because of how they might conflict with our changes.  Well I want a net change tool.  Our Radio software knows what base theme we are using.  Radio Userland knows where that base theme is stored with the standard stuff that comes with it.  The net change tool would compare our template settings with the default settings for that theme, and place it in a special place as a form of backup.  We then try out alternative themes, against which we can apply all the changes that are sitting in our special place.  With this technique, we could then apply changes that are like themes and tools. Below our radio posting box there is a set of categories to check off WHERE this is to go. Above our ratio posting box there is a set of style control boxes. One place or the other, we need a new set of check off controls (I favor up top). This next text is a quote - please apply my style rules for quoted material. This next text is my original text - please apply my style rules for my original text. This next text is intended tongue in cheek - please adorn it with smiley faces. There would be a page in the preferences for us to select style rules from several suggested standards. 6:35:20 PM

V of TYR told me about Crop Circle Communications? 5:53:01 PM

I have a new theory for how come my Radio Weblog had a major melt down this weekend.  People have been inventorying which Congress Critters: Seem to be in favor of the Hollywood hacker virus legislation; Have accepted campaign contributions from Hollywood lobbyists; Are coming up for re-election; Have opposing candidates who are pro-Internet. Tara Grubb is getting support because of this. Her weblog is getting a lot of hits by pro-Internet people. I had link to her weblog on mine but that was one of the things lost in the melt down. Hmm, I wonder if Hollywood had anything to do with that. They probably did not like my remark about Horse and Buggy Entertainment Industry. From now on, when my PC has problems, Hollywood is added to the list of suspects. 5:49:20 PM

[Ernie the Attorney] QUOTE By the way, his article is copyrighted.  That means you can read it, examine the ideas, and discuss them with your friends.  You can't reproduce his words in any significant part without permission from him.  That's the way copyright works.  Pretty much only he is allowed to make money off of his words, but you can examine them if you'd like. UNQUOTE [Ernie the Attorney] Do we need enhanced multi-author derivative copyrights?  Here are some cases to illustrate my meaning. A non-profit club newsletter is copyrighted.  After publication, copyrights revert to individual authors.  How is someone to know that is the situation if they want to reprint something?  Safety is to see permission from both individual article writer and editor publisher. Similar situation with Internet discussion group.  You want to reprint something, and keep it legal.  Is the copyright that of the individual person who posted what you want to reprint, or the owner moderator of the discussion.  Like the club newsletter, it appears shared.  This is obvious when there are multiple people writing into the discussion you want to reprint.  Copyright is shared by all the contributors. There are many analogies in other kinds of copyrighted material. Someone creates a copyrighted work. Second person adds to it. The addition is also copyrighted. You cannot use the second piece without also using the first piece. Examples Software Package or structure developed. Additional programmers add additional features to the core application. End users can't use the new features independently of the original art. They can run the original without the new features, but they want the enhancements. Original package can compete better in the market place, if it is enhancement-friendly. In other words, the original copyright holder makes things easy for people to improve the product. Music or Poetry May other people add verses beyond what the original artist composed? The original artist might think some parody demeans their work. Original artist may demand approval before add on person's stuff is published. Game Design purchased by many enthusiasts who meet to play and discuss. Some players add new rules, scenarios, variants to enhance their enjoyment. They publish their suggested improvements and try out other people's ideas. Part of the fun of the game is figuring out how to grow it from the basic original. Fact Essay Commentary, more opinions by other people. May in fact be hostile counter point to original author. Novel creates a set of characters in a universe or reality. Another author writes a sequel. I think the new author needs permission from whoever created the story universe. Not copyright law, but publishers seeking to avoid any lawsuits. Compare result of rules imposed by original copyright owner on people who would add to their software creation worlds. Microsoft is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but it is Open Season on what will continue to work.  In any future MS upgrade, surprise, MS changed the standards, now something that worked on the old MS version does not work on the new, and it may be that only parts of an application got broke.  So for the end users, things are fragile, and we do not know why collisions are occurring between parts of our PC software.  For the developers in the MS world, it is like quicksand, the foundations, that you build your applications upon, are at risk of collapsing under you without warning. IBM is somewhat Open to anyone writing any software that will run on their Operating Systems, but IBM imposes rigid standards.  IBM guarantees to their customers that any software written by an approved vendor will not break their computer.  Everything will run fine, or we will fix it (IBM and the software vendor), guaranteed.  What is an approved vendor?  One that obeys IBM's standards. Now there are vendors out there that break IBM's standards.  IBM warns its customers.  If you install that vendor's stuff on your IBM computer, then your IBM contract is null and void.  If it breaks, we won't fix it, unless you agree to have that vendor's stuff removed from the computer. Do new upgrades of IBM operating systems drop support for stuff that was in earler versions.  Yes, but they announce in advance to their approved vendors what aspects are going away, so that the vendors know what to re-write, and the customers are given a list of what will no longer work, so they have choice of not doing the upgrade, or replacing the software. It is a different world, and it is governed by the behavior of the original copyright owner, within framework of what the government allows, to permit other developers to add to their worlds, and set rules for the additions. 2:03:03 PM

I have Re Published the whole site, and republished pieces.  My half dozen posts and additions are not coming back.  Radio Education lesson from this seems clear: If I key something in, and I see the post in the Desk Top editor, print a reference copy, so that if it subsequently disappears, I have ammunition to help me with later reconstruction if desired. 1:47:59 PM

Warning - this post is extremely geeky stuff related to something that went wrong that I am trying to figure out if it is fixable. Sigh, Microsoft IE lost connection to my Radio site, which is not unusual thanks to quality of PC software and Internet connection sometimes blips out and does not reconnect, so I ended IE session, exited Radio, rebooted PC, and now I find that I have also lost the last half dozen posts, including tons of links on humor, ASCII art, my revised home office info (what's there is a shell of what I had posted through rewrites), deep linking news, approx 3 pages worth in which I did not print a copy of all that I had done.  I wonder if it lost my updates to Radio documentation, since I had added half a dozen links wee hours of Sat Sun to additional sources.  Well that looks intact - I have 21 different places, including the latest additions: Alison Fish; Mark Pilgrim; Phil Wolff. Saturday Topics (before the big loss) included: Al (me), ASCII art and e-pictures in place of 1 k words, copyright, e-organization. The week's topics (before the big loss) that I had posted on multiple days of the week, included: copyright, current events, history, humor, great links, e-law, e-organization, radio education.  Sunday Topics lost included: Deep Linking news, English language grotesque humor, history, interesting sites that I had found through blog surfing, the latter was just Posted, not Published, since I though I might find some other entries before finalizing that post.  Of extreme annoyance is that I had e-mailed some people about the fact that I had posted reviews of their sites that I was waiting on them to upstream, and now that stuff is part of what is missing. I looked in Scott Johnson's http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/stories/2002/08/20/scottsRadioRadioExposedOrIDelveDeepUnderTheHoodOfRadio.html to try to figure out where the stuff might be that I could cut and paste what is missing before it is totally lost.  Well what I am seeing is not the way he is illustrating it.  But I do not know for sure if my problem is the same one he is describing.  I am finding a bunch of items in the root that it thinks were posted 8/25 except I am not seeing them on my site.  I need to Open Radio -> Radio -> Re Publish entire site and cross my fingers.  I suspect this will take a while to execute, since I am using 2% of my 40 Meg.  Since I have lost stuff and rekeyed it multiple times in the past, I wonder if the lost posts will now be duplicated here.  Sigh. Well I went through that process and it hasn't fixed anything.  I sure could have used some kind of progress indicator that was more meaningful than alternating time periods of hour glass vs. arrow for my mouse pointer.  Call that another Radio Wish.  Event log shows TCP/IP error code 10054, so it is possible it never finished the job. 2002-08-25 root shows Radio: 01 has 5 items; 02 has 21 items.  I wish I knew how to read this stuff.  I suspect there is some way to recover the missing posts.  I wonder if 01 is for 1 am, 2 for 2 am etc.  Window Weblog Data Root ... I looked through those and found several patterns, 136 was last one for 8/23, 137-140 were posts for 8/24, 141 is 8/25.  I had a Microsoft Blue Screen of Death while exploring this stuff.  Just my luck.  I'll try another reboot then Open Radio -> Radio Re Publish just this month. 2:05:16 AM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.