MarkDrago.com

It’s not easy being the angry son-of-a-bitch that my coworkers claim I am. It is a rarity that anyone sides with me when I get into one of my rants. I suppose that might be because agreeing with me will likely only lengthen the time that I bitch about something. But regardless of the reason it’s difficult to go on complaining when no one agrees with you. Well, I found a post by someone who is very respected in the technology community who actually whole-heartedly agrees with something that I have said. Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification (amongst many other accomplishments), recently wrote about his dislike for the word ’solution’. To quote his post (which is so short that this quote is like half his post), “This is so freaking retarded, can there be a living human being who believes anyone will be more willing to drop the $450 on their box because it’s described as a ’storage solution’?” That is pretty much my argument as well. When I read something that describes a product as a ’solution’ I feel like someone is trying to push feces down my throat. When someone uses the word ’solution’ I assume that they either think that I am a total idiot or that their product fills no real purpose and thus can only be labelled with the word ’solution’. Everything is a solution. I wouldn’t use the word ’solution’ to describe a product because I wouldn’t want a potential customer to think that I consider them an idiot, and I would rather explain the exact purpose my product serves instead of making it look like it serves no exact purpose at all.

On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and how much the overall situation really sucks right now. We’re in a quagmire of legality and lawsuits that basically puts a sleeper hold on our culture and allows record companies to own practically everything that is recorded. I wish I had more time to expand on this topic, but if you want to understand how I feel, give this panel discussion with Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweety a listen. Brandon describes it as the “shadier side of online piracy” and I can’t disagree more. I believe that what Jeff Tweety and Lawrence Lessig are talking about has very little to do with online piracy and it certainly doesn’t “tell you it’s not so bad”. Lawrence Lessig actually attacks people who pirate music and other content because it muddies the argument. The worldwide discussion about this should not be about online piracy because the cost of music and the availability of it isn’t really the problem. The problem that I see is that the wrong people end up owning copyrights that last nearly forever and it isn’t very easy to build on past art. I personally have stopped downloading music that is not licensed in a way that makes doing so legal. This decision was not an easy one and it is something that everyone has to decide for themselves. I don’t want to push my ideas on anyone. However, while I am actually buying CDs now, I’m also very much in favor of artists using things like the creative commons to license their work in a way that makes the most sense for them both financially and creatively.

I wish I had more time to expand on my ideas. I’m sure I will at some point. But, Nak got tickets to yet another Mets game today and we’re leaving in just a little bit. I took 2 pictures last night that are available on my flickr account. Nak had a great quote last night. After we both finished eating footlong chili dogs he said, “I felt like a porn star eating that thing”. Classic.

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