Wow, Obvious.
Information is a funny thing. Information is owned in our culture. Just what is information, and in what ways can someone controll it?
I have been reading the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, an authority on the topic of intelectual property. This book is interesting in the fact that it is well written, informative, insightful, and is distributed freely through a creative commons liscence. This book is seriously free to download and read freely as long as you do not use the work for any commercial gain, and always attribute the work to the author.
This system of retaining rights to information while still encouraging free use of the material is a transitionary step from the heavily regulated culture that we have right now to the open and free culutre that the Academics of the Internet tout. US culture, and more specifically, the legal system has grabbed ahold of the idea that all information should be owned and that any use of information without express permission from the �owner� is a violation of the information owners rights. Indeed, this book really opened my eyes to the deeper issue that so many people are not seeing in the entire piracy debate. The problem extends beyond the sharing of music files over a network. The problem lies in the fact that all information is owned in our society and that the owners of that material have the power to enforce their commercial desires upon the public through the government, even if it is not in the best interest of the public.
There is little doubt in my mind that the dinosaurs of the recording and motion picture industries will die off or be radically changed in the decades to come. Despite their best efforts to hold down the information revolution�s inevitable result, there will come a day when these corporations will not dictate so strongly what a consumer can and cannot do with digital information.
I hope to be able to express my thoughts on this matter more clearly after I finish reading the book. Until then I will just say that the freedom of information on the internet may be the single greatest driving force in social chane during the coming century, IMHO. 
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/26/2004 at 04:03 AM
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Idiots Guide
Here is your spring break wrap up� I have done my laundry, spent lots of time with Becca, visited my faithful listeners up in Orange City, and finally caught up on sleep for the semester. Now it�s almost time to escape from the parents who so joyfully feed me and give me a place to sleep.
In many ways I am ready to get back to the business of school. I have so many activities that I am involved in that I wish to get back into them and get some things accomplished, especially with Level 1 Media.
I got the opportunity to do some work for Midwest Technology here in town and it really made me realize that I am in the right major, and ultimately the right career path. I love working in Photoshop and with web-design projects, which is what I did for midwest for a couple hours yesterday, and I also enjoy doing tech-support, which is just a part of doing a job anywhere when people know that you know about computers. Any geek can sympathize with the plight of everyone constantly having questions for them about any little thing that they don�t understand on their PC. The odd thing is, I don�t really mind actually doing the work of fixing computers and teaching people how to do things for themselves. Even after working for the helldesk at UNK for a couple years I still enjoy getting to help people with their computer problems, it is very satisfying to solve some problems.
The one big thing that I have with this whole business is the money. I am not very good at knowing how much the work I do is worth. Through my experiences with Level 1, I have learned that many of the potential small business customers that I deal with are unwilling to spend any reasonable amount of money on the services that my associates and myself can provide. Then I get an opportunity to work for a small business that actually has a grasp on the reality of the technology market and I do not have a clue as to how much I should charge for what I can do. I get the feeling that sometimes I undervalue the work that I do for some people because of how easy it is for me to finish it quickly. And other times I feel like I am pulling teeth with small one person craft businesses that don�t even live on the same planet as the rest of the business world. The business world is tricky and full of pitfalls that I hope I will learn to navigate more adeptly with experience, but in the mean time I just wish I could find and idiots guide to being a geek for hire.
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/20/2004 at 02:03 PM
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Snow
Snow can be a good thing- snowball fights, sledding, an occasional reason to skip class, but during spring break it is completely unnecessary. It makes you want to jump in a car and keep driving until you see the beautiful sun and not your breath. But alas my car has virtually disappeared on the driveway so that is not looking like a strong possablity. I guess the tactic of taking home tee shirts and flip flops hoping it would be warm did not work and ended up being only blind hope. Ah well, hopefully it will stop soon so at least I�m not stranded in my house. Now is the time to start playing my heart bleeds for you 
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/15/2004 at 10:03 AM
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The Breaking of Spring
So spring has broke. Or something like that. Least ways, I am home for a week and it feels great to be away from school! Here�s the list of what I like best about the breaking of this season, in no particular order.
Food - Sure, I know that cafeteria food could be a lot worse, but it could be a lot better too. Mom�s home cooked biscuits drowned in turkey gravy reminds me of tastebuds that I had forgotten about since Christmas vacation.
Lazyness - I don�t have to go to any classes, or take any tests, or be responsible for getting any other of a million little projects done during this break.
Towels - My parents bought new towels and such for the bathroom that I use. I would feel really honored if I didn�t know that my bedroom and bathroom are now the guest bedroom and bathroom. I guess I am lucky that they still consider me a guest. The hitchikers guide to the galaxy informs us that a towel is the most important item to have with you at all times, no one should leave home without one. These particular towels are like wrapping yourself is soft, absorbant, fluffy luxury. Of course this is compared to the towels that I use at college which are hung up to dry and then reused for about a week. Which leads to my next point�
Laundry - I havent done laundry since last month, I really needed to do laundry last weekend, but it wasn�t worth the effort when I knew I could do it for free in a week back here at home.
Becca - Though she is the last thing I list here she is the first thing on my mind every hour of each day that I spend at home. I finally get to spend some real quality time with her again. It seems like forever since I had been with her last. This Thursday marks one year in our dating relationship, I cannot believe that it has gone so fast. I know that we will have many more years of this wonderful relationship, and I am looking forward to them with great anticipation.
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/13/2004 at 03:03 PM
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7th inning stretch
In only 3 days I will be on spring break. I cannot even comprehend the speed with which this year has flown by. After spring break there are 5 weeks of school, after that point I will be a senior. Unbefrickenlievable! I am very busy these days with my numerous commitments. Tonight there are several things I need to get ready for the crusade meeting tomorrow night, I am responsible for a funny skit for the meeting some weeks, other weeks I just try to come up with any sort of humor element that will appease the masses. Soon I may be switching responsibilities again within the Campus Crusade movement here, we�ll see what happens.
Don�t foget that tomorrow night there will be some great entertainment streaming live from the campus radio station curtesy of DJ Timbly.
Here is some random linkage for all of you, I think I will make a point of finding some blogs or other site for my readers in each post. Here you are, the first link is a blog primarily about print design, but they offered a really timely and useful guide for web-designers who want to print business cards. Business cards can get expensive but are a neccessary part of doing business. Myself and my partners at Level 1 Media decided to print our own business cards last week in a laserjet on cardstock, they turned out pretty good for as easy as the process was.
Another interesting blog I uncovered is a nice little blog from a christian with some thoughts on various issues. I know that description is quite vague, but sometimes random blogs like this are a good time killer. And I really like the name of his blog.
The parent�s banquet for the fraternity went well and afterwords I got to hang out at a LAN party hosted by the one and only Aaron. I think his name would be a lot cooler with some more a�s in it, Aaaaron. Even without the extraneous vowels in his name he knows how to throw a sweet LAN party. In case you were wondering, Unreal Tournament 2004 is very sweet, but there is no reason to play any game-type other than Onslaught. This fact highlights the complete awesomeness of the game Tribes, and its ill fated successor Tribes 2. Gameplay involving huge open air environments and the use of vehicles is what makes a team based first person shooter truly magnificent. When the next game in the Tribes series emerges from the dark game development womb at Vivendi Universal I imagine there will be great rejoicing in the gamer world.
There is no feeling quite like stumbling out of a computer filled basement just before sunrise after a long night of intense competition, and intense caffination.
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/10/2004 at 06:03 PM
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u too
The radio show Thursday night went well, in fact it was totally awesome. I had on two guys from St. Louis, they didn�t drive all the way here just to be on timbly�s radio show though. They were brothers, Tom Wehrle is a performer who was playing in the Union on friday night, and played some music for our weekly crusade meeting Thursday evening. Tom and his brother Jon were a lot of fun on the radio that night, we talked for a long time about pretty much nothing important, yet somehow it was entertaining.
Having guests on the radio makes the time go so much faster. And of course, the internet stream was fully operational. I checked the logs afterwords and I noticed two different IP addresses that I had never seen before, one originated from Rochester, NY. And the other was from Vancouver, in Canada! I don�t personally know anyone in either of those places so it�s a little interesting to see my show spreading to all corners of the world.
Last night I went to dinner with some friend here and then enjoyed music from Tom at the student union, and also at another cofee house here in Kearney, where a friend was performing. Of course in this town the cofee places close at 11 so we were forced to fend for ourselves after that. Movie Night! Rush Hour is always an entertaining flick, you gotta love the double threat of Chris Tucker and Jacki Chan.
Today is the parents banquet for the fraternity, and my parents are in town. They fed me an awesome lunch and bought me some stuff at Wal-Mart. You gotta love the parents.
I am considering going to play some LAN games tonight with Aaron and Adam, but I dont want to catch anything from their diseased computers.
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/06/2004 at 04:03 PM
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fear
A wise alien once said, �Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to suffering.�
I had feared that the stream for tonights show wouldn�t be working but luckily at the clutch moment Aaron came through with the save. I am on at 10:00 tonight till 1 am. So listen in.
Join the chat, and check out my new site design at timbly.com. I should have more to say later. Sorry about my lack of rantage lately.
Posted by
sirtimbly on 03/04/2004 at 09:03 PM
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