RasterWeb!

If you’ve been reading this site for a long period of time now, you may have noticed that I often complain – I mean – bring light to, issues involving licenses, agreements, and terms of use/service… Fire up the License Investigator, here we go again!

The good news is, the issue I brought up has already been resolved! See this post at 43 Ideas/Things as well as this one to the yws-maps group.

In summary, I brought up a question, got some confusing information, tried to clarify the information, and now have even better information. It’s a win-win-win situation, baby!

I do understand how it can be difficult to lay out a terms of use/service agreement. You want to be open and sharing, but not so open you share yourself out of business… I think companies should take the time to re-evaluate their terms of use/service agreements now and again and see if they make sense to people who are not lawyers, and if they seem rational to the everyday (as well as very technical) user.

This event also highlights what can happen when companies take the time to have a dialog with their users/customers and actually respond quickly. Any company that just provides a feedback form that you’ll never get a reply to could learn a valuable lesson here.

Hmm, ah, yes… Seems I’ve been asked to write about books, which is so oddly appropriate that you don’t even know. Well, one person knows. On to the thingy:

On the shelf: Well, as far as an actual shelf, there is one at work, and it’s got maybe 20 books on it, all computer programming books and software manuals. Besides that there are boxes and boxes of books at home, probably over 100. If you count children’s books, then maybe over 200. If you count comic books, then maybe over 300. Or maybe I’m way off and it’s more like 100 total. (I don’t count ’em, I just move ’em every few years…)

Last purchase: I bought an empty notebook recently. Other than that, probably iMovie3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual, which I got used for less than 5 bucks.

Last 5 read:

1. An untitled art book I made many years ago. It consists of various collages done in a variety of media. Only one copy exists and it’s at my house.
2. An alphabet book I made many years ago. It consists of 26 pages, one for each letter of the English alphabet (or is it the Latin alphabet) combined with photos from a 1950’s textbook on driver’s education. Again, a one of a kind book.
3. I started reading Watchmen (again) last month…
4. Perl Cookbook
5. Various manuals for appliances, electronic devices, and othr things I own or use…

Ah! Also, someone read a book to me last week… A Really Super Book About Squirrels Does that count?

I’ve moved… My desk has once again been moved, and so I once again have moved…

I now sit behind the IT department, and the only way to get to my desk is to walk through the IT department. This leads to some interesting developments. For instance, when all of the IT guys are out to lunch (or wherever they get to) people stop by and do things like ask me for CD cases, or people mention to me that the printer’s output is of low quality. I think people believe I am a member of the IT department, which is not the case…

Not that I dislike the IT department, they serve a purpose (fighting Windows virii and security holes) but it’s not what I do, and I’m not one of them, and I can’t help you with Windows, or your email, or printing, or anything else those guys can help you with. Crazy Perl Hacking, sure, but you’ll get no General Computer Support from me dear friends…

I heard someone use the term Old Skool when referring to the method of the past of writing poorly formatted and invalid HTML.

I think the proper term is deprecated. In fact, I think the term deprecated should be used more in everyday language. For instance, any time you are talking about something from the past, that is decidedly not cool, feel free to call it deprecated…

Basically: s/old skool/deprecated/g;

Example: “Check out that punk kid with the green mohawk, man, he’s deprecated!”

I rarely watch things like CNN, or any television news really (Hello Internet!) but today I happened to see a bit, and there was a reporter in the field reporting on something, and the video was shot using a videophone!

The quality was poor, but as often is the case with breaking news, being at the right place at the right time, is more important than a polished, high-quality end product.

(Now all we need is more people to realize that they can be the reporter in the field, creating rather than consuming the media…)