(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

LET ME tell you about the mental abuse that I have had to endure this past week. Well, it sure felt like abuse! Classes, methods, constructors, abstraction, inheritance, hash tables, vectors, POLYMORPHISM. Stop! Enough! Yes, I have been in Java class. This was actually my second round of Java class. The first class left me down on the mat bleeding from my ears just a few weeks ago. I barely got back on my feet when it was time for the second class. Ding ding! Pow! Ugh! Right in the brain again!

Going to class for a whole week can really throw your routine off. We have classes in a different company office located about 20 minutes from our office. It’s not a very big place. But our classroom is on the second floor, down a tremendously long hall with nothing on the walls. There is a real inconvenience at this place in that the bathrooms are at the very opposite end of the second floor near the stairwell that you enter through. One realizes the true length of that hall on the first time you take a class there and drink a cup of coffee first thing in the morning! Those bathrooms seem like they are miles and miles away then! I’ve learned to adjust to this by beginning the long trek to the men’s room when I am just half way done with my coffee. By the time I get there that half-cup is just about all the way through my system.

A certain friend of mine back in the office helped to lighten the anguish of class by sending emails to me at various times during the day. That kind of kept me in touch with the real world somewhat. Once she sent me a fairly off-color picture hoping that someone would be sitting behind me and see it when I opened it up. Her plan worked unfortunately. The funniest was the email that simply said, “Hey LOOPY HEAD!” While heavily under the influence of Java in the middle of a lecture, that line struck me as so funny that I nearly blew snots on my monitor trying to hold the laughter in! (Yeah, I know. That’s kind of gross.)

THE BUILDING where we have class is located in a nice area. Down the road from the place are a few farms. I made it a habit to walk during lunch each day. It has been a little hot here lately. I think we reached 91 degrees yesterday. But even in the heat it was a nice break to walk for about a half-hour and just take in the scenery. There were a lot of different birds in the fields: geese, red-winged black birds, hawks, swallows. The sky was blue. The sun was hot. But my brain appreciated the relaxation and my body certainly needed the exercise, especially after eating lunch. Ah, lunch! Let me tell you about lunch!

There is a deli here that makes the world’s best cheese steaks. It is right around the corner from the building where my class is. Nearly every time that I am here for classes I go to that deli for lunch. I went there three days in a row this week! I strolled on in there, strutted my way up to the counter, spurs clinking, and said to the waitress, “Gimme a cheese steak with fried onions and ketchup, little lady.” With a wink, “Coming right up, cowboy,” she replied.

The second day that I went to the deli, I sauntered on in as usual, ordered my usual, and was standing there feeling rather manly when the door banged open. In walked a huge construction worker, his dump truck tethered outside and his posse of laborers close at his heels. I, in my Levi’s Dockers with my cutesy little work badge clipped to a belt loop and my comfy little business casual cotton/polyester shirt, suddenly found myself surrounded by sweat and tattoos. There I stood a tattoo-less programmer. But when the waitress called out, “Cheese steak ready!” and I stepped up and laid my money on the counter, those fellows knew that I was a true carnivore! Oh yeah! They could tell by the look in my eye that I was no vegetarian, despite my nerdy appearance. I could see the envy on their faces and the growls from their stomachs as I walked on out of there with my half pound of fried flesh. I rode off under the blazing noon sun and thought if I ever got a tattoo it would be one of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of the Carnivores!

Okay. So I would never get a tattoo because I can’t stand needles. There it is. The truth is out. Yup! I’m one of those guys that pass out if I see a needle coming my way. I feel kind of queasy just writing about it! A nurse once told me that there is actually a term for the fear of needles. I forget what it is. She said that it usually affects men more then women. I just wonder if I still qualify as a cowboy if I am afraid of needles.

Okay. So I am not really a cowboy either! I am just a geeky programmer who has just received the second phase of a Java lobotomy! No horse. No guns. No spurs. And I happen to like my Dockers! Thank you very much! And now I have a web page to make! So if you will excuse me, I will be on my way now.

BY THE WAY… You might notice that the picture on this page is rather similar to the picture on the previous entry. It’s amazing what can happen to a guy after just one week of class! It’s even more amazing what can happen to a guy’s picture when one of his friends is armed with a web browser and Paint Shop Pro! Actually, I am looking more and more like this photo these days. Just ask my kids! And the whole pig and frog thing… Now there is an idea for a tattoo!

(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

WHEN I am asked to speak up about an unfairness that I feel rather strongly about, I usually do. When I am asked to speak up about an unfairness that has been laid at the foot of a person that I admire and respect, I do not only speak up. I tend to raise my voice and wave my arms around a bit! So sit down and listen up! A friend of mine has been wronged and I am a little bit bothered about it.

As some of my readers know, I was greatly inspired by another online journalist to finally produce my own online journal. The journalist that I refer to is named Yen. Her site [was] at www.nostalgicthoughts.com. Before I even started my site I had recommended Yen’s site to some of you. I told you of the professional quality of her writings, page layouts, and graphics. Over a period of several months, she and I exchanged several friendly emails. Then, with Yen’s promise to be my first reader, I finally presented this journal to the world while on vacation at Christmas time 2000.

Okay. Let me cut to the chase.

NOT too long ago, Yen sent an email to me and asked if I would take a look at a certain woman’s website. She told me that the woman stole her site design and even copied some of her writing word for word! Sure enough! There it was! Someone stole Yen’s site, put a different coat of paint on it and said to the world, “Look what I made!” What an oyster! (Yes, honey, you get the oyster of the month award! Congratulations!) I do not have enough respect for this girl to put a link to her site in this article. I think that Yen did a very nice job in her journal entry on this issue. In her article she asked others to speak up about copyright infringement.

Now take a step back because here is where the arm waving begins! Let me talk to you about copyright infringement for a bit.

FIRST, a quick definition from Webster’s Dictionary is in order. COPYRIGHT : “the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish and sell the MATTER and FORM of a literary, musical, or artistic work.”

A “copyright” is the sole right of the creator of such a work to do as they wish with their work. They have the EXCLUSIVE right to reproduce their work. They have the EXCLUSIVE right to publish their work. They have the EXCLUSIVE right to sell their work. It is THEIRS. They have the RIGHT to COPY their work in whatever way they wish for whatever purposes they wish. And exclusive means that NO ONE else has the right to copy their work without their permission.

So what does Webster’s definition mean when it speaks of “the MATTER and FORM” of a person’s work? Well, the MATTER would be the basic “guts” of the work. The words of a literary work. The musical notes, melodies, etc. of a musical work. The individual aspects of an artistic work. The FORM is the structure and appearance of the work. The layout of a literary work. The way that notes, melodies, etc. are combined and also the way they are printed on paper. The overall design of an artistic work.

MATTER and FORM mean substance. I was once told that as soon as I put my thoughts onto paper and gave substance to those thoughts, I had the sole copyright to those words. Once someone takes their intangible thoughts and creative ideas and makes them tangible in some type of form that can be reproduced, published, or sold, they have the copyright on their creation. (I found a very good article on this at whatiscopyright.org.)

HOW does this apply to someone’s website? Well, let me ask this. What are the pieces that make up a website? Usually there is some kind of text on a web page that someone wrote. So there is definitely literary work involved. Usually there is artistic work involved in the form of graphics, page layout, photographs, color schemes, etc. These things are the “guts”, the MATTER of a website. But what is it that puts it all together and gives it structure and FORM? Well this would definitely be HTML, “Hyper Text Markup Language,” and possibly several other programming languages such as JavaScript. This HTML is a tangible thing. You can see it. You can print it out. The “tags” are arranged in such a way to give the designer the look and functionality that he or she has designed. The tags are combined and organized in such a way to give structure to the content of the web page, just as the notes on the score of a musical composition give structure and uniqueness to a symphony. It is an artistic and literary work combined. And the creator of a “web symphony” has exclusive rights to their masterpiece just as surely as Vivaldi had the exclusive rights to the “Four Seasons” (Oooo! My favorite!) when he gave expression to its beautiful movements on his piano and wrote the notes down on paper.

Now, it takes time to design a website and code the HTML, just as it takes time to create any other work of art. And for we “sickos” who do all of our coding in Notepad (That’s right, honey! Real men use Notepad!), it sometimes takes a considerable amount of time to hammer things out, make the material pliable, pound, scrape, chisel and tweak to get just the look we want. Though it has not happened to me (that I know of), to see your hard work being claimed by someone else as their own is something that would really get you mad! To see your website design on someone else’s site would really get you peeved! A cheap coat of paint cannot hide what is really underneath! An artist knows his own work well enough to see right through such a cover up.

YOU KNOW, the whole issue of copyright is an ethical issue of respect for another person and their work. What is yours is yours and what is mine is mine. If I give you permission to use something that I have created, fine. But until then keep your grubby paws off my stuff, man! Have some respect. The Internet should not be a free for all. You cannot just grab and take whatever you want. Have some ethics.

Why do we sometimes forget our ethics when we log onto the Internet? We hide behind our user ids and screen names. We shout insults at each other in chat rooms. We scream in capital letters in our emails. My how brave we are sitting on our soft behinds in front of our monitors with a loaded keyboard! We take advantage of the vastness of the Internet and misuse our anonymity. The Internet provides us with so many ways and opportunities to communicate, learn, grow and establish friendships with people that we would have never met without the aid of the web. We take that which should enrich our lives and draw us closer together and misuse it in our selfishness and inconsideration. I have heard it said that the more that technology advances, the more isolated we become as people. Some blame technology for this. I rather blame the innate selfishness of the human race for this. The ever increasing technological advances just make it easier to express our lack of love for one another on a broader scale. It is not the technology. It is the humans abusing the technology. We take something that is good, use it for our own selfish purposes while disregarding others and becoming less human in the process. It is an issue of love. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Ah! But who is my neighbor? On the Internet there are so many “neighbors” just a click away. My how the world is shrinking! A woman in California is neighbor to a woman in Japan. A guy in New Jersey is neighbor to them both. Let’s have some ethics. Let’s have some love. Lets’ have some respect for each other as artists, as web designers, as humans.

At this point, several people have written articles in response to Yen’s request. This is my attempt to shed some light on the issue of copyright infringement and, more importantly, to stick up for a friend. I checked the other person’s site just before posting this and noticed that she has made only a few minor changes to it. But the majority of her site still looks the same as Yen’s. I hope that she will reconsider her initial response to Yen’s request that she change her site and make noticeable changes. I am sure she will gain more respect, and perhaps even some readers, if she does.