Corollary to Proposition 22 from Spinoza’s Ethics
, part four (1677):

The effort for self-preservation is the first and only foundation of virtue.

(Translated from Latin by R.H.M. Elwes in 1883)

I noticed something strange while looking through my referrer logs to see if Google had indexed my archives yet. On August 18th, someone at the IP#66.1.141.41 used Wget to download my entire site. All of it. I’m wondering if they found my Wget semi-tutorial and decided to try it on me, or if they wanted to read something on a plane and sucked down my site through an incoming link by mistake. Kind of creepy, but what’s the difference really. If the anonymous downloader is reading this, I’m curious to know why you wanted a copy of my site and what you ended up doing with it.

update: It was probably an accident, the entry point appears to be the Final Cut Pro Resource Directory.

Fascinating historical overview of a people I didn’t know anything about, even though I’ve probably got some of them in me: The Jews and the Khazars

Good news for digital content:

• DVD Region Control is failing (Slashdot discussion)
• ISP bans the RIAA. (Metafilter discussion)

Last week I noticed Michael Buffington had posted some of his old blog entries from 1998, one of them linked to my site. It turns out that Michael also wrote me that day and I still had his letter and my responses. Taken together and in context, the letters form an interesting history of what we were both thinking and doing back then.

Update: Michael’s response

I didn’t realize until today that the DV-L discussion list was back. DV-L was a huge part of the DV revolution, I remember reading it back in ’97 or ’98 when I was struggling to use a 180Mhz Mac 8500 for DV. The list was a fascinating mix of people using and making tools, a lot of today’s DV products were influenced by discussions on this list.

I walked by Michael Eisner in Aspen tonight, I wish I’d said something. “Excuse me Mr. Eisner? I just wanted to tell you that you’re on the wrong side of the future. Trying to outlaw content is going to fail one way or another. There’s way more money to be made in all the various uses of digital media than there is in paying congress to try and outlaw those uses. “

A few hours later I remembered Free The Mouse. If I was 17 again I probably would have screamed that from a block away. And then thought I was a badass rebel for doing so.