Observing in August
Posted in: Blogging, Observations, Philosophy, Politics | Posted by: rcornish | Comments: 0 | Date: 30 August, 2010
I have not put together one of these observation style blogs in a while. Had a couple of things that just screamed a short mention to me a little bit ago and so here are a few of them. I am all over the board with this list of observations, so without a theme I am going to hit dates in your blogs to have the tea-party been hi-jacked, and what is a libertarian? Hopefully all the varied topics will make for a good read. Addendum: After writing, most of this went in a political direction – enjoy!
As has been noted elsewhere I went to NYC several weeks ago with my in-laws for a vacation. While there several small lessons were learned or reinforced for me. This particular one had to do with my general dislike for Wal-Mart and especially the low end products that seem to dominate the shelves through out so much of the store. I am not completely sure why this lesson seems to slip away from me so often, but here it is re-inforced.
Some of you may have heard about the secret negotiations between Google and Verizon last week where Google basically took the stand that net neutrality is no longer something they are necessarily concerned about. It is the kind of thing that I have long been expecting one of the big players to move toward and my lack of previous faith in Google has proved to be a bit valid. Suppose though, before I get into it to far I need to probably define what is meant by net neutrality.
The last couple of months, as I think to have noted elsewhere, I have rediscovered an old favorite past-time – notably fishing! It has come about largely because a good friend of mine (Johnny) has asked a few times that I join him and additionally having a lake almost in the backyard makes it easy to kick back for an hour or two here and there without much effort involved. Thankfully, I had kept the gear from what seems like a different lifetime now and after a few times out and some work in the garage it is now in fair working order. I did however, purchase one new Zebco 33 to replace an aging one that I could not get to work immediately for the first trip I made out.
Play the game is perhaps a bit of an obscure title for this blog post, but if you are doing something, whatever it is, you have agreed to play by the rules of whoever or whatever it is. If you do not like or want to adhere to the rules, then play your own game but play it elswhere. I have seen way to many instances of late where someone does not like the rules, regulations, and in some cases even laws – so they simply decide to ignore those things they do not like and basically do whatever they wish to do. Most, doing so blatantly aware of what they are doing and even taunting the fact that they are doing so.</p> <p><img src=” />One case in point, which I am sure you are mildly aware of you do any of your own blogging or work with WordPress in anyway is the ongoing controversy between theme maker of Thesis and the makers of WordPress. Basically, WordPress is distributed under a GPL (General Public License) licensing concept, allow it to be freely copied and modified. Clear points in the license state that any derivative work (such as a plug-in or a theme) must also follow the GPL licensing. The GPL model does not limit the ability to charge for a product by the way, just the code itself is freely available and modifiable. Thesis maker felt that his work was so far beyond what WordPress had to offer that the licensing agreements somehow did not apply to him.
