Share the Wealth, Creative commons

With the invention of the internet, the ability to copy or protect an item has become really easy or really difficult. Some people or companies the put copyrights on their work and upload it to the internet, naively thinking that it is safe. Well they are completely wrong. It is so easy to copy anything from the internet and use it for personal use. videos, photos, documents, programs, anything is free game on the internet as far as I am concerned. If your web designer and IT guy can properly protect it before its uploaded, then it is too late. It will be downloaded and it will be used.

The creative commons license however is something that I respect and I would hope all other net explorers would respect as well. Creative commons licenses generally allow one to download legally a document from the internet and use it for personal or non-commercial use. Because there is no rule saying that you can't download it, that takes away 90% of the people who would normally only try to pirate something because they want to "fight the system", "stick it to the man" and call them self a hacker (though I doubt copying an image from a Google search counts as being a hacker).

Looking at the creative commons license from a student point of view, I find that it is awesome that people are selfless enough to upload their books or photos to allow students and schools to use them for educational purposes. As you may not find any school in Japan suffering from a lack of funding, you will most definitely find that school in America or any 3rd world country. There are schools that stress over how to get enough money for text books and supplies to last that school year. Letting the internet be a free source of knowledge is probably the best thing that we can do for mankind. The more knowledge we share the more innovations and advancements we can make as a species. If Memes can become a new international method of communication, then creative commons can be a new international method of education.

Here's a question. On Flickr, what does the creative commons license allow for someone to be able to do with someone else's photo?

Oh Noriko

Noriko is one of my friends girlfriends. She is a Japanese girl that was raised in the States for a bit before being moved back to Japan. She is unreliable, untrustworthy, lazy and lies all the time, but she is the funniest, most relaxed, and real person on earth that I know. She like weed and isn't afraid to tell anyone that she does. One day when she was visiting her boyfriend's family in California she put a picture up of herself when she was really tired. I thought she looked high and decided to make a new picture for her to post.

Basically that face is her morning face.... try not to be alarmed!

Once again I used Adobe Photoshop for this!

My prezi

http://prezi.com/ptctgum1-n8l/digital-stories/

My First JCRC Tour of Japan race!

November 13th I participated in my first JCRC race. Located at the foot of Mt. Fuji, there was beautiful scenery with the changing leaf colors and the snow capped Mt. Fuji. It was very cold in the morning, but the sun was out and as the morning progressed it got to a very decent temperature. 11月13日に僕は初めてのJCRC自転車大会参加しました！ 富士山の西湖でJCRCステージ５に走りました！観光はとてもきれい！ 紅葉がきれいで、雪が富士山の上にあった！ 朝はちょっと寒いですけど天気は晴れだった。 少したつと暖かくなって良いレーシング日和だった！ I raced in the X-Class, an open class for first time riders. Depending on how an X-class rider finishes, they get placed into ranked classes (SS-S-A-B-C-D-E-F). In an X-class race you don't really know what to expect. There are riders with no expirience and riders with a lot of expirience. I have been told by many riders that the X-class is full of crashes because people don't know how to ride in a peleton (large group of riders). Riding with other cyclists 2 centimeters away from you at high speeds is very scary for the first time and because of that many people panic and cause a crash. 僕はX-クラスに出ました。X-クラスはビギナークラスです。 レースの結果によってランキングもらいます（SS-S-A-B-C-D-E-F)。 X-クラスは皆、ビギナーだから、何が起こるか分からないです。 X-クラスで事故がいぱいあると聞いた。 経験がないですから、みんなとラインを合わせられなくて、ぶつかって事故が起こります。 My race went very fast. The race was 20 km long and I finished just over 29 minutes, placing 14th overall. As you will see in the video I was at the front for most of the race until the last 2 kilometers. The race ended in a bunch sprint, which I am not strong at. I am more suited for long stages where endurance is important. But with a 14th out of 120 finish, I was very happy with the results for my first race! 僕のレースはとても速かった。 20キロで29分過ぎ終わりました！ 120人で14番目に完了しました！ とても嬉しかった! 最後でスプリントがあった。僕は強くないスプリンターですけどよく出来ましたと思う！ また、来年やりたい!

Malicious Malware

Anyone who has been on the internet has probably been infected. No, not you body but your computer. Malware is everywhere and it spreads faster than germs at a McDonald's play place. You could be downloading an innocent email from a friend and all of a sudden you get infected. You may not know it at first but maybe days or months later you will realize your computer is running a bit weird. Your anti-virus picks up the scent of Malware and tries to delete it but its too late. Not only have files been corrupted or stolen, the virus has learned how to defend itself from anti-virus attempts at deleting it. One that I have personally fought with was a Trojan that I received when downloading from Steam, an online video game store that allows you to download full games and save your game data at their site. The Trojan was easily detected but the anti-virus could not delete it because it was appearing as a system critical process. I found out that when I located the file manually, it had blocked the Administrator (me) from doing anything to the file but reading it. The only way to get rid of it was to change owners of the file and then delete it.

Malware has now spread from computers to your cell phones and GPS units taking all your personal data. I use GPS and an iPhone to navigate the countryside of Japan but now I am afraid that one day my gadgets will fail me when I am lost. I found that my GPS had a virus similar to the one infecting Tom Tom where when I plugged into my computer, a back door was trying to be opened by some tiny bit of code. Thankfully it wasn't too complex and was quickly deleted.

Now I am just wondering, who the hell are these jerk offs that want to steal my info or destroy my PC files. Do they not realize how many hours it takes to get all items and challenges beat on Call of Duty?! This blog will seem more like a rant rather then informational but how do these dusche bags even justify what they are doing? Have they just been bullied at school too much and are retaliating? Are they getting their influence from movies and video games? Most of these people watch the movies Hackers and want to be cool like it's 1995 again? All I want is to be able to surf the web, play online games, and use my GPS with out fear of having it get hacked and infected... what's wrong with that?

Bike love

Bike Love Haiku

"Lindy in the Rain" by Bruce Turner

梅雨が来た

水着着て乗る

ロード愛

The rain now has come.

Wear a swimsuit and ride.

Road bike love.

I wrote this Haiku because I ride in any weather. Unless there is a snow storm and it's -10 degrees,

you will probably find me on my bike. One day, while getting ready to ride to work, I realized that my clothes would be soaked before I even got 2 blocks down the street. So on that day I decided to try something new. It was a relatively warm day for a Japanese November so I put on my swimsuit and rode to work. Everyone I passed on the road thought I was crazy. It was raining like a typhoon and here I am cruizing down the road in a helmet and swimsuit. When I got to work my messenger bag was still dry on the inside thankfully and my work clothes were all dry and warm. My manager was not to pleased when I strolled into work with my soaking wet attire. He thought I had planned to work that day in my swimsuit, dripping wet. He was really relieved when I told him I had more clothes but I got a laugh out of his reaction to seeing me first walk in the store.