Alrak's Parallel Universe Blog

AOL, RIAA and Embroidery - Oh! My!

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:29:16 +0000

http://www.eff.org/news/

And, you know, it all boils down to one thing: greed. I could go on and on about how all the bad things that happen in this world can be traced back to greed. OK, except for those that can be traced to power...

Glad to see the EFF is out there, fighting the good fight.

Get ready for Microsoft, cable and phone companies, and quite a few other people to know a lot more about what you do on your computer...

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:09:00 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/pcrzq

"It's supposed to protect you from predators spying on your computer habits, but a bill Microsoft Corp. helped write for Oklahoma will open your personal information to warrantless searches, according to a computer privacy expert and a state representative."

Perhaps only immediately relevant to folks in Oklahoma, the rest of us need to stay aware of what is going on all over.

Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 05:07:23 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/6ouey

"This document collects a number of reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors."

"Trek" Rediscovered by "Lost" Creator - Yahoo! News

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 04:26:49 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/krtsq

[Hey, it's not an anti-RIAA post ;-)]

Oh! Happy Day! Another Star Trek movie!!

Ever since the summer of 1974 I have been enamored of Star Trek. My first serious crush was on Mr. Spock (I can still recall the intense jealousy I felt against Nurse Christine...that b...well, you know :-D) The Next Generation or Voyager or Deep Space Nine crews didn't do much for me - give me my politically incorrect space cowboys!

In fact, I may have to go put Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on the DVD player now...

Texas Sues Sony Over Spyware

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:11:00 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/7etg3

"Texas is seeking civil penalties of $100,000 per violation of the state's Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act, which was enacted earlier this year. ... "Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak and dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers," Abbott said."

[barely suppressed snickering giggle]

WinMX No More

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 08:09:00 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/7cdnv

The RIAA has perhaps won a battle, but not the war.

Hollywood triumphs in piracy fight - Jun. 27, 2005

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:56:22 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/9pp6j

As if the US Supreme Court didn't already admit being bought and sold with the really misguided eminent domain ruling last week...

Better go get that iPod/DVD burner/TiVo/VHS Recorder/Fax Machine now before making them becomes illegal :-(

And never stop fighting against those who would stifle innovation just because said inventions mean the entertainment cartel cannot control our minds.

Music industry sues 83-year-old dead woman

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:48:46 +0000

http://tinyurl.com/5mrla

As the EFF put it, "RIAA Sues Dead People" (okay, so if you hadn't heard of the movie The Sixth Sense that might not be so funny...)

"More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name 'smittenedkitten.'"

Interesting Discovery Regarding the Link Header Element

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 04:44:54 +0000

One of those "lightbulb"ish moments...

<link rel="next" href="yourpage.html"> will actually load the "yourpage.html" into the browser cache and send "yourpage.html" as part of the Server Variables along with the script name of the container page. I knew this element used with rel="next" was supposed to speed up the browsing experience for the user and now I know why.

As the documentation states: "User agents may choose to preload the 'next' document, to reduce the perceived load time"

Firefox does recognize this element with the "next" attribute, but Internet Explorer 6 does not.

EFF: Press Room - Music Industry Must Respect Privacy of Filesharers

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:27:21 +0000

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002178

A victory for the good guys!

Betamax, Democracy and Calling Senators

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 01:52:21 +0000

On September 14 I got to be a participant in the democratic process! I signed up with http://www.savebetamax.org to call Senators Hatch, Leahy and Hollings, as well as the two Senators from my home state of Nebraska, Hagel and Nelson. The purpose of the calls was to state my position (and reasons for such) against Hatch's "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" or S. 2560, commonly known as INDUCE Act.

I have to say it was scary dialing the phone and waiting for someone to answer. Not that I thought a Senator himself would answer, but I didn't know how the staffers would respond (over 5000 folks signed up to call all day). To my surprise and relief, staffers were very cordial and noted my [lengthy] concerns (such as that it's not fair to blame technology for any misuse of such - after all, a car could be used in the commission of a bank robbery - are we going to outlaw cars and sue GM now?) The staffer from Hatch's office, in particular, said she had learned a lot that day. Now, I suppose it's a matter of "hide and watch" - and being prepared to fight this monstrosity if it's brought up again.

If any of you all own any of the following: VCR, CD-burner, DVD-burner, TiVo, iPod or tape recorder, this potential legislation is very pertinent, really. Links to some informative and amusing reading:

http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/005003.php

http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/004563.php

A fond farewell to background music...

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sat, 22 May 2004 16:30:58 +0000

Back in 1997 when I first decided to stake out my claim on Geocities (hey, it was free! I needed it! ;-), the world was a different place: nearly all Web pages were terribly boring, or terribly tacky. I have to reluctantly admit that for my personal pages I erred on the side of tackiness: animated gifs, shockwave files and background sounds merrily caroused about my sites - I believe there was even a marquee or two...

When I redid Alrak's Parallel Universe earlier this year, I jettisoned the animated gifs on the intro page (well, they went to their own parallel universe, the indexb.html page...). With a pang of reluctance, I've come to the conclusion that background sounds are, well, scary. So, I'll be removing the Star Trek: First Contact background sound from Alrak's Blog.

Never fear, though: I'm learning Flash! ;-)

(And I've still got colored scrollbars :-)

Tech Training Tax Credit Bill Introduced

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Fri, 28 May 2004 01:59:49 +0000

Representative Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) introduced a bill into the U.S. House of Representatives last week that, if passed, would make technical training tax deductible.

The "Technology Retraining And Investment Now Act of 2004" ("TRAIN ACT," HR 4392) would allow individuals and companies to receive a tax credit for up to 50 percent of technical training costs up to $10,000. Expenses can include training classes (private or public), certification exams and other expenses "essential to assessing skill acquisition."

[See the official version (pdf format) here.]

ok, I had to test it one more time

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sun, 16 May 2004 04:12:21 +0000

Why would it be that it's easier to blog via email than in the blog window? Must be one of life's great mysteries, up there with why a day can drag on endlessly but time accelerates rapidly as a deadline approaches.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

So, we'll see how this one formats...

Dreamweaver Bug/"Feature" #2 or "Score Another One for Notepad"...

alraksparalleluniverse@gmail.com (Karla Carter) — Sat, 29 May 2004 06:31:54 +0000

Dreamweaver's XHTML Validation feature will complain if it finds an ASCII character higher than 127 - most of the foreign letters, such as �,�,�,�, etc. fall into this category. "OK, fine", one thinks and proceeds to escape them with the appropriate ampersand-code-semicolon set (such as ü for � - there's an Insert menu for Special Characters).

Oh, one would think...

But, Nooooo! Save the file, close the file, re-open the file...Hello ASCII characters higher than 127!

Yes, folks, they come back, on their own. Those carefully encoded ampersand-code-semicolon sets are gone. Bye bye.

Grrrr.

Never fear; there is a solution: Notepad.

And actually partly Dreamweaver - remember that Dreamweaver is known for not rewriting code it gets from someplace else. You use Notepad as your "someplace else" and put those ampersand-code-semicolon sets back in using Notepad and when you re-open in Dreamweaver they will be preserved.

Yay!