Day: January 18, 2012

This Blog is Blacked Out

Google has a good link describing SOPA and PIPA, and why you should care. Lots of other sites have gone black. I would, but am feeling lazy and don’t want to muck about with CSS.

My major objections are two:

  • piracy and copyright violations are already illegal, and RIAA/MPAA have been pretty successful at identifying and prosecuting pirates.
  • the Internet works and promotes innovation by virtue of simply defining itself as a transport mechanism and peering agreements. Changing that to require deeper inspection changes the ‘Information Superhighway’ into a train station, where you can’t get on unless you’ve got a ticket, and can’t get off unless there’s a station.

    • I accept that the Internet as it existed in the 1990s and earlier does need to continue to evolve and change. However, I object strenuously to changes that don’t preserve openness, flexibility, and end-user control of data. These laws remind me of gun control and cell phone laws – it’s already illegal to pirate copyrighted works, shoot people, and drive recklessly; making it more illegal isn’t going to stop the activity.

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    Go pro or go home

    So, a couple of weeks ago, I caught a tweet about VeloInk. Having had a desire to have my name on the toptube ever since Trek started offering the Project One line during Lance Armstrong’s reign.

    Anyway, Matt at Veloink was amazing. Within an hour or so of me placing the order, he’d dropped me an email to confirm that, yes, indeed, I really wanted the Nutmeg state flag, rather than something that’d be clean at the resolution his machine could print. I said “Yep”, figuring that it’d either be funny to those who recognized the flag, or an obvious but inside joke to those that didn’t pick up on it. And mostly, it’d be an attention grabber to pimp this website. And maybe, just maybe, a theft deterrent.

    I went with plain white with black letters – not quite original, but there were plenty of other choices.

    They’ve been sticking solidly to my commuter for 3 months in the cold and rain.

    Eventually, I’ll have my dream of a custom frame with custom paint and lovingly hand-lettered “Jank” on the top tube. However, that’s somewhere about a decade away (Got to get the kids into college before my marriage will survive the request); till then VeloInk rocks. $18 well spent.