Caduceus vs the rod of Asclepius

I'm sure you've seen the caduceus before. It's on all sorts of places like clinics, doctor's offices, medications and so on. The thing is though, is that they are all wrong. Ambulances have it right with the "Star of Life" because it contains the rod of Asclepius. Asclepius was the Greek god of healing and medicine. The caduceus is the rod of Hermes, the messenger god, clearly not concerned as much with healing. So now you know. Be sure to bring it up next time you see your optometrist or dentist if they have a caduceus on their sign.

Caduceus: the rod of Hermes

Star of Life with a rod of Asclepius

Sheska

CPU: AMD A8-3870K
Motherboard: ASUS F1A75-V Pro
Case: NZXT Source 210
PSU: CoolerMaster GX 450W
RAM: Crucial 2x4GB DDR3 1600
SSD: Crucial M4 64GB
CPU Heatsink: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus
Plus incidental fans and cables.

Total bill of materials was $399.71, provided my get my two $15 refunds. It took almost a month and a half to get all the parts on sale, which saved me almost $150. And then the very next day after buying the last two items, even better sales come along. Such is life.

The case is simple enough; I didn't want anything flashy or with any lights.It has a removable back panel so I could route the cables back there without blocking airflow. And I filled 5 of the 7 possible fan locations. Lots of wind.

The PSU has each of its cable bundles have a sleeve. Oriented as it is in the case, it has its own separate airflow, sucking in from the bottom and blowing out the back.

The CPU is actually an APU. AMD put a quad core processor on the same chip with their Radeon 6550 graphics chipset. It may not be as powerful as getting an Intel i5 and a discrete graphics card, but it certainly is cheaper. Even though it's an inexpensive product line, I opted for the most expensive option, to be able to overclock it, which is why I bought a new heatsink. So far with just using the ASUS auto overclock option, it's up from 3GHz to 3.3GHz.

The motherboard is a higher end one for the APU line. ASUS is generally good, and it has plenty of options for overclocking and customization. My first experience with UEFI too. Shiny!

RAM is cheap, and I almost went with 16GB but reading around, it seemed unnecessary. I can always add more.

The flooding in Thailand has really pushed up prices for HDDs and I've always wanted to try SSDs. Now they are the same price! 64GB isn't much, but aside from media, I don't think I'll need much more than that. A secondary HDD for storage is also on the potential upgrade list.

I loaded it with Lubuntu, a lightweight version of Ubuntu. I wanted Ubuntu for it's ease of use, but not with Unity, its new desktop system. I tried that on my laptop for a while and got annoyed with the sidebar. So a lightweight version it is! People say it's for old computers but I could never tell why I should go for something "heavier". More shiny? It's shiny enough! And I've installed bunches of software. Ubuntu's package management system is really awesome. If you haven't used it, it's like the App Store or Android Market for your computer.

Booting up takes about 35 seconds. Shutting down takes about half that. Programs open nigh instantly. It's fast. It runs cool with all the fans I have on it. I still need to add more software, but so far, so very good.

And its name is Sheska.

Storage Space

My current project is to build a $400 computer. Well, I'm almost there but I'll leave that for another post when it's finished. I've had another computer project floating around for a number of years that I've wanted to do. I'm going to build a NAS (network attached storage) of my own. Currently, all of my files are on a secondary hard drive on my computer with only the irreplaceable files backed up to an external drive. Even then, I haven't updated the backup for a some time and a drive failure would probably destroy some pictures I'd like to keep. I could buy one or more external hard drives, but then I don't like that solution. It's too restrictive and...easy.

Phase one of this project is to build the computer. Nothing fancy, except the number of HDDs (up to 8). Prices for HDDs has been prohibitively high as of late, restraining me from building my machine yet. FreeNAS is some free software that installs onto a thumb drive and lets you run the computer in a corner without a monitor or keyboard. You can access it using your browser for configuration and if all goes right, you can mount the storage it provides as a network drive on the computer, making it appear like your local drive.

The idea with this is that any device on the network can access the files. I can watch movies on my phone, listen to music on all computers (and I have a lot of computers, with more to come), and store and access home videos and photos. True, there are web services that provide some of these things, but this is mine. Faster access, lots more space, and more possibilities. The NAS can also provide protection against hard drive failure. If one breaks, it can be replaced without loss of data.

True backup doesn't put all the eggs in one basket, even with the aforementioned drive protection. What about house fire? Theft? Meteors? Welcome to phase two. Here, multiple machines are created. These machines are then housed with others where they can use them for their own storage. It is then easy enough to have each of them synchronize the data between machines at night (the details are unimportant!). Now, any machine can be lost and the data remains on the survivors. The data can also be encrypted if so desired.

The point being that hard drives fail, computers die, and the internet is slow. Plus with my future computerized house, I'll need to keep my stuff somewhere.

Creative Commons

I was about to write a post when I found that Blogger has been assimilated into Google. Of course Google has owned Blogger for some time now and my accounts were linked, but they finally made the transition to uniformity, much like Google Reader did a month or so back. Blogger (from the inside) looks like Google+ now with orange buttons and thin frames. It also looks like it has incorporated various other Google+ traits like location posting. Well, what fun.

Anyway, the point I was getting to is the copyright issue I wrote about a while back about SOPA. In case you didn't notice, protests against SOPA and PIPA in the form of website blackouts (notably Wikipedia) happened on Wednesday. Now, the two have been "shelved" according to my sources and hopefully trashed in the future.

In learning more about this issue, I found a book called Free Culture by Laurence Lessig wherein the history and recent developments (as of 2004 anyway) of copyright were detailed. It was an interesting read and showed me how copyright, and how it is viewed by the public, has changed over the past 40-50 years or so.

Where copyright once only prevented publishers from printing a book within 14 years of the author filing for copyright, it now covers all works from any unauthorized use for up to 120 years (it'll probably get extended again come 2020). Hence the phrase "All Rights Reserved." The copyright holder reserves any and all rights to the distribution, dissemination, or modification of the work. Sure there's "Fair Use" but that's often only applicable after defending it in court against multi-million dollar corporations.

This presents a problem (a number of them really, let's look at these ones). 99% (or so) of the works created since 1930 have no commercial value but are still under copyright. If I wanted to use any of them (an old film, a forgotten book, a dusty vinyl, a random photograph, a certain webpage) for any reason, I could try my luck and use it anyway (illegally), or I would have to track down anyone who might have a claim on the work. Normally I wouldn't have to worry because after the copyright expired, it would fall into public domain and I could use it freely. Instead, I probably won't use it and no one else will ever see it.

That's why I licensed my blog under Creative Commons (co-founded by the aforementioned Laurence Lessig). You can see the license at the bottom of the page. CC (their phrase is "some rights reserved") aims to clarify limits and allowances for distribution, modification, and commercial use. I opted for the free distribution license, just so long as they link back here and give me credit. Obviously for some silly blog (3200 views over four years or so), it doesn't really matter much, but if I were to write a song or a book, I could apply a non-commercial use license so that I could earn some money off my work.

My understanding of how this works is that CC sits under United States copyright law. Because all rights are reserved for me for my work, I can choose to give up certain rights that I don't feel are necessary. CC gives me the legal jargon (written by lawyers) to effectively control my work with less ambiguity. I really think there would be far less copyright infringement if media companies were just more open on the matter but I don't get the feeling they want to give access of their property to commoners. They seem to prefer litigation.

So that's my take on it. Note that this isn't about piracy. Piracy is illegal. Unfortunately crossing into illegal territory happened long before while still in fair use land. That kinda takes the edge off of being a felon.

Dollars!

I wrote a while ago about all the dollar coins sitting around. The number has reached some 1.4 billion of them of Congress decided to take action and save money by removing the dollar bill from circulation. What? That didn't happen? Oh right, they went the other way and saved a little money by stopping the mint of new dollar coins. And I was so looking forward to spending some Teddy Roosevelt coins.

Since they are on a roll, why not halt pennies next?

Update: I suppose I should say that I was doing my part by withdrawing a roll of dollar coins every month. Are you doing your part?

SOPA?

I've heard a lot about PROTECT IP and SOPA recently. Being a regular resident of the internets, it's usually vehement opposition. It did get me thinking about copyright though, and I have a few observations.

First, consider the following situations:

1. Buying and watching a movie

2. Renting and watching a movie with a large group of people

3. Copying a movie

4. Downloading a movie

5. Quoting a line from a movie

6. Reenacting a scene from a movie in a video

7. Recording a video where a movie is playing in the background

8. Posting a scene from the video on Youtube

9. Posting the entire movie on Youtube

10. Making a parody of the movie

11. Singing a song from a movie

12. Performing a song from a movie in front of an audience

This could be arranged in some order of legality, if that's possible, but that gets confusing. Expand it in your head though. Consider these alterations to each. How much copyrighted content is involved? Did the audience pay to attend? How large is the audience? Is that audience over the internet? What about music or books instead?

So then, which are legal and which aren't? Obviously #1 is and #4 and #9 aren't (although on #4, some argue otherwise). #5 is pretty innocuous but what it were a book and you quoted a paragraph, a page, a chapter, or the whole book? The others would seem legal (by my common sense anyway, unless you get paid) but might not be. It depends, I suppose? It would less of a problem if it were possible for the casual user to request permission to use content and pay royalties but there's no easy way to do that.

From what I've learned about SOPA is that it grants copyright holders to more easily decide where the line is and then enforce it by blacklisting sites. They already can submit DMCA takedown requests and sites that don't comply can be taken down. Blacklisting involves blocking the site entirely by removing references to it from search engines and other sites plus blocking it's revenue sources and domain name. It probably won't work against the targeted piracy sites; they'll find a way around it. It'll probably block small, personal sites though. And since #7 is apparently enough to get a Youtube video pulled in the current system, I'd expect a lot of sites blocked.

And do you know how long copyright lasts? Life of the author plus 70 years. Or 95 - 120 years for anonymous or for-hire works. Nothing created in my lifetime will be ever be free domain by copyright expiration. Probably.

Half Year

So it's been about six months since we both graduated and moved on with life. And here we are. Now we have a scooter, some furniture, and no debts. That's right, all the student loans have been paid off resulting in exactly $1.59 of interest, a nearly free loan courtesy of the establishment.

In case you're interested, the average graduate that carried any loan at all owes around $25,000. That seems mighty excessive for me, but my off-the-cuff estimate for personal collegiate costs are around $50,000 (I did an in depth study of this for my exit survey where I calculated the percentage of each source of funding. Unfortunately, it is lost) while national average for 5 years at a public university would be closer to $75,000. So it's relatively right, I suppose. I just don't understand the $100k loan for a degree in studies of dead languages. Sure, do what you love, but didn't anyone teach you to do a simple cost-benefit analysis?

Like my scooter. Sure I could have paid more and been spared the hassle of owning a Chinese piece of junk that I have taken apart, and will continue to so, and replaced various parts of it but what is the fun of that? At least I know how a carburetor works now. I might be forced to dig into the engine too ere long. Doesn't start or idle very well. Fun to ride though.

So that's where we are at coming into these holidays. It's good times.