Via Slashdot: "WarFlying over SanDiego reveals hundreds of WAPs, and some very interesting statistics." 189 out of 437 were Linksys models.
jkb at 11:00 PM

[This is a guest spot, from my longtime friend Ed Clark, who helped me buy and rebuild my first car ("Here's a 13mm socket, figure it out"), was the best man at my wedding, and with whom I've had far too few conversations in the past few years - something I hope to rectify now. This is for all the dads out there that wish they had the answers so that their children could feel safe and sleep well at night. - JKB]

The Sun =>
April 4, 2002

Joyce [Ed's wife] was gone for the evening at a meeting. Emma and I had about an hour before her bed-time. I suggested she get a book and I would read it to her. She came back with a book about Corduroy the bear. It consisted of two short stories. Since time wasn’t an issue, I read the stories carefully with much animation and drama. She was completely absorbed in both of the stories.

After, she sat on my legs while I laid on the couch and we sang any song that came into our heads. The Barney song, Row your boat, Frere Jacque, London bridge, and several others. Then I asked her if she remembered the words to America The Beautiful. I taught it to her shortly after the terrorist hijackings. After I started, she quickly remembered the words ands we sang it out loud. I could tell she was trying to sing it and not yell it. We sang it a couple of times and smiled. Then for some reason I started to sing here comes the sun by the Beatles. I told her it was one of my favorite songs. She asked my who wrote it (I swear I’m not making this up) and I told her I was pretty sure it was George Harrison. For some reason I mentioned that he passed away recently and she asked if he was with God and Sandy. I told her I was pretty sure he was with God and Sandy, along with lots of other people.

Well suddenly Emma was remembering Sandy vividly and asked if God would give Sandy back to her. She was looking at me as though she expected an answer. I tried to explain that I didn’t think God could do that. That Sand needed to be with God now. Emma grew upset and started to cry. She said she wanted to fly in a plane and bring Sandy back. She kept talking about going up in the sky and getting Sandy. She wanted Sandy back from God and I really didn’t know what to say to her. I’d said too much and now there was no way out. There ‘s very little in the way of comfort that you can give a three year old because you can’t reason with a crying child. Emma sees god as a person that you can visit. Heaven is up in the sky and Sandy used to be down here with us. How do you explain that she can’t just go up and get him?

I’m sitting there with my arms wrapped around Emma . She’s curled up in a little ball and cupping my face in her hands. We’re rocking back and forth. I started to think about all of the parents with children in the world that are trying to explain to them why mommy or daddy won’t be coming home. There are likely THOUSANDS of children in different parts of the world, living in filth, eating shitty food, sleeping on dirt floors and missing their mothers or fathers because they’ve been hacked to death with machetes, or blown themselves up trying to inflict a similar pain on the children of others. I want to make my little girl feel better because She misses a dog she barely knew. I the meantime, there are children trying to fall asleep with the sound of tanks rolling by, wondering if daddy will be glorious in martyrdom and thinking that this is somehow a good thing. You know in their hearts they’d rather have daddy reading them a story before they go to sleep. But instead the sleep in fear at night and get brainwashed by day into thinking killing pedestrians, shoppers and other people’s children is a religious goal.

One freakin thirty year old song and now I’m feeling the weight of the world’s perilous situation. Is there a sensible way through this madness? Are our children going to grow up to see a world at war unlike any before? I’m I even being rational right now? Do you guys think about this too?

[All the time, Ed, and since when has rationality had anything to do with parenting ;) I often find that when I try to comfort my children in a bad situation, I come to realize that I'm the one seeking comfort, but because I don't have an all knowing parent figure to "make it all better" now that I'm grown and out on my own, the act of putting my child at ease becomes a conduit for soothing my own battered psyche.]
jkb at 7:44 AM

David Reed has more to say of interest on the whole Winer vs. Lessig copyright discussion. Relevent quote:

I like copyrights for software for two reasons. First, you can only infringe a copyrighted work by looking at it (that's different than patents, where you can infringe even if you come up with the idea while sitting on a desert island, isolated from contact with culture and technology). So bad action is very clear. Second, the idea is excluded - only the expression matters. That is, what the user sees and values is protected directly and as a whole

He then goes on to discuss what he doesn't like about the intellectual property system. Seems like copyrights and patents are a 19th Century hammer that is being (mis)used to deal with 21st Century Technological and Scientific fasteners (i.e. a cordless drill or tube of epoxy might be more appropriate under the circumstances).
jkb at 6:26 PM

Copyrights vs. Patents =>
Dave and Doc talk about copyrights and Lessig's assertion that copyrights for software are bad for the software ecosystem:

"The copyright system protects software without getting any new knowledge in return. When the system protects Hemingway, we at least get to see how Hemingway writes. Software is different."

My take? (disclaimer - I'm not a software developer): There is a difference between copyrighting a work in order to reasonably recoup for time and effort taken to produce the work, and patenting the system used so that no one can use your developed knowledge to create new and more interesting software. Big difference in my book. It's the difference between the Beatles maintaining copyright over the words, music and performance of their works, and the Beatles holding a patent for bands using vocalists, two guitars, bass and drums, or any music written in the key of E minor.
jkb at 7:42 AM

---

About me and this site =>
My name is John Bordage. I grew up in Maine, went to college in Boston, then moved to San Diego county, where I live with my wife, two kids, a cat, a roommate and his dog. I divide my attention between my family, my steady day-job as a carpenter, my freelance work as a tech consultant, playing drums in two bands, and staring at a computer screen for amusement and edification.

This site was developed using Dreamweaver 3, though the code was mostly writen by hand or cut-and-pasted from other examples. Work was done on both a Celron PC and a Mac G4, depending on which one my daughter was using at the moment.

Disclaimer =>
All opinions writen by me on this site are mine alone, and not those of my employer, my clients, my family, my bands, my mother, my pets, or any other person or entity that is not me. In fact, some of the opinions stated within are not even mine (sometimes I just like to say crap to see what it sounds like).

If you are easily offended, ill humored or just plain ignorant should avoid this whole affair, as I will probably say something to offend just about anyone at least once, unless of course you like to be annoyed, in which case read all you like, see what the fuck I care. Asshole.