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Coourtesy of Cyborg Democracy, I bring you: China's future colonization of the USA.
Yes, today, I am Link Boy.
Yes, today, I am Link Boy.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday evening sitting in TCD's Davis Theatre, listening to Fred "Piro" Gallagher talk. And, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't awfully impressed. He's a nice guy. He's very into his work. But he was supposed to be talking about publishing work on the 'net, and he really talked more about the history of Megatokyo, and wandered off in random directions, and wasn't all that coherent. I'm sure most of the people there were interested in the history of MT, and how it came to be, but I had just read all of that in the first three or four pages of Book 0, which I did indeed get signed for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
puritybrown (He drew Piro as well as signing it). So yeah. It was OK, but I get a bit twitchy when people ramble at me, and I can't ramble back at them.
puritybrown (He drew Piro as well as signing it). So yeah. It was OK, but I get a bit twitchy when people ramble at me, and I can't ramble back at them.I've seen a fair number of mails to mailing lists in the past few days from people wanting to publish stuff on the 'net, but not let people copy it - both text and images. This is driving me spare; some of these people are working on the 'net for five, six years, and it's plain that they just don't get it.
If I see something on the 'net - anywhere, the web, usenet, email, wherever - my machine has already made a copy of it. It is there, on my screen, on my machine. The internet is not some magic portal through which one can look but not touch - it works, all the time, by making copies. Once it is on my machine, you can't take it back. You can make it difficult for me to keep it, but you can't make it impossible, and it's fairly likely that you'll only piss me off by trying. Indeed, there's a fair argument that showing it to other people at all causes them to make a copy of it in their own heads - this isn't so clear for images or long text, but if you've written a short poem, I defy you to show it to people and not have them memorise it if they want to.
If you do not want people to have copies of your work, you can not place it on the internet - in fact, you're better off not showing it to anyone, ever. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
If I see something on the 'net - anywhere, the web, usenet, email, wherever - my machine has already made a copy of it. It is there, on my screen, on my machine. The internet is not some magic portal through which one can look but not touch - it works, all the time, by making copies. Once it is on my machine, you can't take it back. You can make it difficult for me to keep it, but you can't make it impossible, and it's fairly likely that you'll only piss me off by trying. Indeed, there's a fair argument that showing it to other people at all causes them to make a copy of it in their own heads - this isn't so clear for images or long text, but if you've written a short poem, I defy you to show it to people and not have them memorise it if they want to.
If you do not want people to have copies of your work, you can not place it on the internet - in fact, you're better off not showing it to anyone, ever. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
I have an innate ability to find missing objects. This is usually referred to among family and friends as locate object, as per the D&D spell. I think it's a combination of very good peripheral vision (despite the glasses), excellent pattern matching, and a memory that will, sooner or later, dredge up everything it's ever encountered*. Sometimes, however, I have to shove it to make it work, and this tires me more than anything else I know of, up to and including channeling. It works, though.
* This sometimes leads to me saying "Never heard of it", and then being an authority on the subject ten minutes later, because my memory has had time to spin up.
* This sometimes leads to me saying "Never heard of it", and then being an authority on the subject ten minutes later, because my memory has had time to spin up.
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