Diary of a Wolfeman

It’s been a while – time for a little rant.

Portland is known far and wide across the land for their progressive take on public and alternative transportation. Those of you that live or visit here know that the city is quite proud of it’s Pro-Bicycle stance and the things they have done to make things easier for bicyclists.

What they have not done, however, is sat all the damn bikers down and explained to them the laws actually governing their use on public roadways. This has gotten to the point that your average bicyclist thinks that none of the regular traffic laws apply to them. You want to know what the absolute rarest sight in Portland is? A cyclist stopping at a stop sign.

So, without further ado, this page lists all of the ordinances that exist in regards to riding a bicycle on public streets and sidewalks. I’ll be going through the most important ones to explain and amplify.

So today, Da Wolfe did his civic duty and showed up for Jury duty, and was pissed off inside of 45 seconds. Jury duty is of course served in a courthouse, which is high on the list of places you’ll be subjected to what people say is keeping us safe – the mass-annoyance of everyone who has to go into the building.

This wasn’t always so, as evidenced by the design of the building, which has an entryway juuust wide enough to put an X-Ray luggage scanner into, so the prep area where one is supposed to put their keys in the bowl is in this tiny vestibule that is almost outside – which today meant 2 degrees above freezing while I was forced to divest myself of jacket, cell phone, keys, thumb drive, change, bluetooth headset, cap, wallet, watch, belt and my fucking shoes.

Thank you, oh shoe-bomber for that last bit you fucking asshat.

Then I got to sit around until noon, when they let us out for lunch. “Oh, and you get to use the Employee Entrance when you come back!” (She said it with Capital letters) “It’s easier than the public entrance.” Cool, I thought, I only have to want to rip their heads off once today.

Riiiiight.

The Employee Entrance? 10 feet down the sidewalk, only it doesn’t have the vestibule, so I’m taking off my jacket, cell phone, keys, thumb drive, change, bluetooth headset, cap, wallet, watch, belt and my fucking shoes a second time with a freezing-cold breeze blowing up the back of my shirt.

Y’know, if this is all to ensure my safety while I’m in the building, I’d rather be mildly unsafe. And I sure as shit won’t be flying anytime soon, because there’s no way I’m getting through airport security without punching someone.

This makes me happy.

[Judge Emory A.] Pitt wrote: “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. ‘Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes’ (“Who watches the watchmen?”).”

Thank you, Your Honor, for having the intelligence and wisdom to see to the heart of this matter. May all of your brothers and sisters of the black robe agree with you.

Got a letter from a lawyer’s office today, which is always a bit freaky. “what the hell did I do?” you think to yourself.

It turns out, it was more of what I didn’t do. Apparently, in 2004, I was supposed to have paid $9 in income tax and didn’t. (News to me, I have no recollection of 2004 at all). So, since I was so late with it, they added a $10 penalty.

And hired a legal firm to collect.

Now, it probably took said legal officers about 15 minutes to set up an account in their system for me, print out the letter, hand-address an envelope, run it through the postage meter and then drop it in the OUT box. With my understanding of the average legal fees, that probably cost the county $25 to collect $19.

Oh, wait, make that $18, there’s a discount for paying online. I hope the County gets a bulk discount for the other 20,000 people that owe them 10 bucks.

Okay, I understand that the legal firm is probably only charging the County a percentage of the funds collected, but still. It seems kind of a silly way to go about it, since the County could just as easily have tasked an intern with calling or mailing people to let them know they owe something before sending them to collections.

Cuz really – 6 years, and this is the first I’ve heard of it? Oi.

Okay boys and girls, time to pay attention: the Fundies are doing their damndest to rewrite the schoolbooks that our children will be reading for the next ten years. See this post from February and this newer post for more details, but here’s the gist:

The two states that buy the most textbooks are California and Texas. The California school board can’t put a majority together due to their own diversity, so they don’t really have much of a say in the big picture.

In Texas, on the other hand, the fundamentalist religious groups have managed to secure a majority of positions on the state Board of Education, and have an almost free reign on what they want to put in the curriculum. Since Texas buys so many books, the publishers like to limit their own work and so will endeavor to just publish one version of their textbooks – built to meet the Texas guidelines.

Yes, this is the part where you get scared.

And this is where you go to contact your local State Representative to say something about it. Speak loud and speak often my friends, or your children may have some very different views of the world.

So any of you out there who have been paying attention to the other side of ‘The Pond’ know that England is awash in CCTV cameras, watching millions of people all the time. What you may not know is that those cameras, which were purchased and installed by the Government in an effort to abate crime, well, it turns out those cameras are hardly ever watched.

At all. Over 4 million of the little buggers, and only one in a thousand or so actually gets watched in any meaningful way. So, what’s a country to do with all this built-in surveillance?

Why, they should launch a Reality-TV spinoff out of it, of course!

Internet Eyes is the brainchild of three gents who want the people who run the cameras to pay �20 a month to have those cameras uploaded to a game server. Game players will then log in and watch the CCTV feeds, hoping to spot a crime in progress. If they see one, they then report it and the operator of the camera can investigate. Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to �1,000.

So the first question that comes to my mind (which was also mentioned in the article): what’s to stop criminals from signing up as players, and using all of that juicy surveillance footage to case out a target?

“Oi, look! That’s old Bisby’s store on the feed! There’s the man ‘imself, too! Wait, what’s this? He’s pulling a painting off the wall…and look! There’s ‘is safe!”

Brilliant!

So the Bossman takes a moment this morning to read my response to La Grenouille to the entire crew at our weekly meeting. Said crew makes approving noises, and then Bossman slides a fifth of Captain Morgan’s Private Reserve across the table at me.

I love my job.

Carrie Vaughn is one of my current favorite authors (she writes about werewolves – go figure) but she recently posted an article comparing Obama to Kennedy that raises some good points.

…I heard something like this: �I don�t like either candidate. I want to vote for someone I�m excited about. I want to vote for someone like Kennedy.�

But in 1960, John F. Kennedy was not Kennedy. He was a young upstart senator with the audacity to run for president against an established, experienced politician. And to, astonishingly, win.

That age mention is one of my major sticking points. It seems that politics is the only career where you are not expected to retire by 65 or even 70 years old. Sure, these people have lots of experience to guide them, but they are also (in many cases) hopelessly blinded by that same experience and less able to see the changes around them.

Why did 9/11 happen? Because old men couldn’t grasp the true possibility of the event. It had never happened before, and it was inconceivable in their hearts that someone could do such a thing.

Why has nothing the government has done to protect us really done anything more than inconvenience and upset the people they are trying to protect? Because those years of experience have made them forget what it is like to believe in something so completely that nothing else matters. When you were a teenager, or even a 20-something, when you fell in love you fell all the way. No holding back, no brakes, the pedal went to the floor and stayed there until you crashed.

The people we are currently fighting are in love with their beliefs, and they are deep in the throes of a teenager’s love. They will not listen to reason, they will not compromise, and they will not give up til their dying breath. And the current establishment has no idea how to deal with that. They have forgotten what it is like.

We need a younger generation in power so they have a better chance of dealing with change and understanding the world around them. This is the way monarchies have been operating for centuries – the old King dies or retires, and the young King steps forward. Yes, he is guided by the experience of his older advisors – but it’s still the King’s decision.

This evolution in government has powered some of the greatest nations the world has known, and it is time we remembered this. America was built upon a revolution with the idea that Revolution may be needed in the future to change things. Let us face a simple fact: there is no possibility of a successful revolution in the United States today. There are too many people, and the government has too many resources at its disposal for any group of Americans to overthrow the government without the aid of an outside military force. This just won’t happen without bloodshed on a massive scale.

Our only hope for change then lies within the system itself. It will take upstart young Senators and the people who vote for them to bring out any significant change in this Nation. If you don’t like the way things have been and are currently going, you must exercise the one Right they have not truly hindered yet and get off your ass and vote.

Either that, or figure out how to build a practical stardrive so we can get the fuck off of this rock.

Yeah, I thought so. See you at the polls.

Con Zymaris posts a pretty well-reasoned treatise on why we need to take regulatory action and force manufacturers to stop bundling Windows with new computers.

For the most part, I heartily agree with him. Where I disagree, is his closing statement:

Question: How is it possible to provide for both consumers who demand Windows and also ensure a fair and open marketplace for competing platforms?

Answer:That’s the $64 billion question, isn’t it? Here’s how it can be done.

All hardware manufacturers should ship personal computers with no pre-installed operating system. They should include within the packaging of the computer a media copy of the then current Microsoft Windows recovery CD. They should also include a copy of one of the main Linux distributions which are freely-redistributable at no charge.

Upon unpacking the computer, the consumer must then make a choice of either:

1. loading Windows from the Windows recovery media, then using the brochure included with the recovery media to contact Microsoft and through some form of financial transaction, acquire a licence to use Windows, or

2. load the Linux operating system from the CD/DVD included, and use it as their computer operating system.

(Legal bits:Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document, provided this permission notice is preserved on all copies.)

I have two major problems with this statement:

1) The average computer user is not skilled enough to install an operating system. You’d like to think that they are, but having worked in both retail and corporate computer support, I can tell you truthfully that John and Jane Doe are clueless about the procedure, and more importantly don’t want to learn.

They can barely get through unpacking it and plugging all of the color-coded connectors in the right place. Once they’ve gotten that far they just want to be able to turn the thing on and have it work. Shit, have you ever looked at the installation manual for a Dell computer? It’s a glossy color poster with pictograms on it because that’s all the average user can manage.

2) Mr. Zymaris keeps referring to a Windows “restore CD”. A restore cd is typically a digital image of a hard drive that has had Windows installed on it and configured for a fresh user, then packaged into a nicely useful two- or three-click install procedure. And those three clicks are usually “Are you sure?” A Linux install CD, however, is packed with options and choices that John and Jane Doe won’t know the answers to.

If you really want to level the playing field, give them a restore CD for Windows and another one in a popular Linux flavor that has had equal care given to the configuration. Better yet, do what Dell has (grudgingly) done and offer either OS pre-installed. There is no reason the user should be forced to do the final install. Have you ever seen a car dealer that would sell you an upgraded stereo option – and then make you install it yourself?

On top of that, the manufacturer should provide the same level of support for both OSes. J&J D might be willing to give Linux a try if they knew they could call someone for help – and it needs to be real help too, not the typical “oh, you have installed unsupported software on your system so now I can’t help you” bullshit.

So what I would like to see is three options for configuring a computer on the manufacturer’s website: No OS, Windows, or Linux. That way you have the choice of rolling your own, taking the safe road, or taking the scenic route and seeing something new.

We will likely never see this happen though. At the retailer level such as Best Buy or CompUSA, it means they have to devote more shelf space to each individual product to showcase both factory-supported options, which will cause some griping and foot-dragging. At the manufacturer level, the same grumping will happen due to the increased training and staffing required to fully support a second option. Combine these two, and you have a lot of lobbying dollars going toward backing up Microsoft and maintaining the status quo.

If the un-bundling were to happen, you would not see a reduction in price for probably a couple of years as the manufacturers and retailers paid for the extra training and shelf space.

Just my two cents.

This shit has gone too far. In the UK, the Performing Rights Society (which collects royalties for songwriters and performers) is suing a chain of auto shops for allowing their employees to play their radios loud enough that everyone around them can hear. They say this amounts to “public performance”, and is therefore a violation of copyright. The PRS is seeking �200,000 in damages.

O_o

Okay, now if we combine that with the RIAA’s claim that “making downloads available” (I.E., having music in a shared folder accessible by a P2P client) is just as bad as actively uploading / downloading music, then there is only one possible next step: the music labels will be banding together to sue anyone who owns a radio capable of outputting a signal to anything larger than a pair of earbud headphones.

Because, obviously, having speakers larger than earbud ‘phones means they could conceivably be turned up load enough for the neighbors or passers-by to hear, which is the equivalent of “making available”, so those people have “made available” their music for public performance. The same would go double for car-stereo owners equipped with amplifiers powerful enough to make the music heard beyond the confines of the car.

I hereby urge all musicians to use whatever means necessary to extricate yourself from any recording contracts you may have and use the technology available in the marketplace today to self-publish, because obviously the major labels are bent on completely alienating your entire fanbase. In years past, having a contract with a label was the only way to be heard; in this day and age, there’s no reason you couldn’t self-publish or deal directly with iTunes and other distribution points.

Ye. Fucking. Gods.