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Oh, for the record: Wash, scrub, dry, then slather in oil and salt. 400 degrees for an hour. Delicious!

In other news, Battlestar Galactica is the best television show in existence.

That is all.

...you realize you just googled for "Baked Potato Howto."
...and you realize you just used made "google" into a verb.

No, really, I bought a bag of potatos and all the fixins today, but I realized I had only the foggiest ideas of how to actually bake one. I know you wash it, and it goes in the oven. No idea at all about temperature, time, other prep, etc. The surprising thing is that it seems howtos for cooking are just as prevailant as ones for various computer tasks. My search for "baked potato howto" was just as useful as "Linux VPN Howto."

Anyone else want to share some of those moments when you realize just how geeky you are?

Good to hear! As for "higher standing members" getting more invites... that's kind of the idea. Respect (whuffie) lets you do more things. Of course, inviting a bunch of people, means of bunch of people you're somewhat responsible for. To quote, "With great power comes great responsibility." :-)

On the overall social concepts, I hope to model a lot of it on true democracy, and some of the founding american ideals. For example, we have a congress and a senate. In the congress, big states get more votes. The senate balances that by giving every state the same number of votes. Since bills have to go through both, it maintains the ideals of majority rules with minority rights. Of course it won't be "states" in the case of an online community, but rather members and subcommunities. While "big players" will get more power, there will be plenty of safeguards to make sure they can't abuse it, the most important of which is that such power is actually given to them by the community. You can't remain popular and respected if you do a lot of unpopular and disrespectable things. The currency for the community will be respect, and that's something people have to earn.

Yes, you and everyone else... That's why they're disabled. You've already got an option to upload an avatar... graphical signatures just become a waste of space, often larger than the post itself.

Right, well, I'm gonna start at the top of my bookshelf and go down. It's a lot, so I'll group stuff.



Michael Flynn: Firestar series (4)
Hard, epic, near-future sci-fi. Actually starts in the mid '90s and shows how a few simple changes could've had us exploring other worlds by 2020

Nancy Kress: Probability Moon series (3)
The first major science fiction series I've seen that manages to give equal importance and attention to quantum mathematics and sociology. Yet it's still highly enjoyable and accessable reading.

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash and The Diamond Age
Great satireacal science fiction. A mostly anarchist future america, where the mafia delivers pizza, and just commuting to work requires an armored car and three passports. Filled to the brim with social and technical speculation, and delievers some really great moral points as well. Very good reading.

David Brin: The Uplift Series (6 books)
Excellant (soft) space opera. Epic stories spanning galaxies and lots of fun and fanciful ideas. Genetically engineered dolphins and chimpanzes have been "Uplifted" to sapience. Furries, in a sense.

Alaistair Reynolds: Revelation Space series (3)
Really good, epic hard space-opera. Unlike Uplift, doesn't posit 'magic' alien tech, and has hard science solutions from humanity instead. "Hyperpigs" fill the furry slot in this one.

Lisanne Norman: Sholan Alliance series (7 and growing)
More epic space opera, even "softer" than Uplift... more like a fantasy story, but in the guise of science fiction. Magic, sword fights, gods, demons, dreams... but all set in a future with space ships and aliens. Also, the Sholans are "furries." Bipedial, sapient cats anyway. This is a series I really enjoy a lot, and I'd point it out to anyone who wants to know what my idea of a furry is.

S. Andrew Swann: Moreau series (4)
Hard-boiled, science fiction, detective noir... with furries. This time we're talking genetically engineered hybrid soliders, and the author handles the questions around that the way a lot of "robot-gains-citizenship" stories do. It's a rather dark, and mostly serious vision of a future with an overcrowded earth, where racism now focuses on the leftovers from the great genetic arms race.

Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials (3)
Best Fantasy Ever. I've called it "Harry Potter done right." It's theoretically a young-adult fantasy story, but it's much more serious, and actions actually have consequences. There is no Deus Ex Machina (or dumbledore ex machina) to save the day. The sad parts are truely sad, the creepy parts are really frightening, and the ending left me thinking about little else for the next week. Oh, and it's got furries as well... a talking polar bear, and the various shape-shifting daemon-familars.

Robert T. Bakker: Raptor Red
Bakker is a world famous palentologist, and the guy who the Dr. Grant character from Jurrasic Park was based on. Amazingly, he's also an excellant writer. Raptor Red follows the story of a female Utah Raptor though a few years of her life. While that may sound like a dull nature documentary, I assure you, anyone who's interested in dinosaurs at all will find it a very enjoyable and amusing story. I'm not joking when I think Bakker made a better and more enjoyable character out of a raptor than most authors can do with people. While there's no "disneyfication" with talking dinos or anything, the character show great emotion, joy, sadness, anger, etc... There's actually a plot to be followed, and by the end, you find yourself really feeling for Red. This is science-fiction in it's truely hypenated form. Not fiction where science is an adjective. Yet I'd still consdier it "furry."

Neil Gaiman: American Gods
Dark, yet funny. What if gods are generated by belief? In ancient times you'd get a god of fire, or one of rain. In modern-day america though, the gods have names like "Media" (you have her alter in your home already) and "Tech" (you're at his alter now.) And what if the old gods didn't feel like being pushed aside any more? Also contains the best "Quoth The Raven" saying ever! (And yes, I'll argue the raven is a furry.)

Terry Pratchet: Discworld series (1.2 Hojillion)
If you haven't read discworld, there's something terribly wrong with you. The most fun you can have while reading. Includes furries as well. A talking dog, an intelligent cat, and an entire army of sentient rats. I highly recomend "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" for a first go. It's one of the "children's books" in discworld, but doesn't assume you've read previous stories as much, so it's easier to just jump into. It's basically a weird combination of Puss in Boots and The Pied Piper as only Pratchet can tell it. The cat can talk, and the rats can to. (One should never live near the trash heap from a magical university.) The part that makes it really good is the philophical questions it makes about what it means to be sentient. The cat, for instance, now has to ask any mouse he catches if it can talk before he's willing to eat it. And the rats... One of the young rats becomes afraid of the dark. "Whoever heard of a rat that was afraid of the dark?" But... well I don't want to give it away. Suffice to say that he touches on some of the very key points about what it means to be human.

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchet: Good Omens
The funniest apocalypse ever. It is for fantasy what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was for sci-fi. It's got all the humor of Discworld, and all the philosophical questions of American Gods. And still it's just the story of a boy and his dog... Except he's the anti-christ and the dog it's a hellhound. I was laughing out loud just reading the "Dramatis Personae." "Crowly (An angel who did not so much Fall as saunter vaguely downwards)" and "Dog (Satanical Hellhound and cat-worrier.)" (And furry.)

And, best for last...
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy (5 books.)
I can hardly think what to say here. If you haven't read it, I can't explain it. If you have, then no explanation is neccessary. I'm not exagerating when I say this book changed by life. From the advice on the cover (Don't Panic!) to The Answer (42) read this somehow gave me a new way of looking at life, and I have enjoyed it much more ever since. It was originally a radio drama, then all these books. Recently the made a movie out of it, and you find references to it everywhere. A few weeks ago at work I was given a password for the main router/gateway for major overhaul we were hired to do. The password was "hhg2tg." Just last week I got a fortune cookie that merely said "Don't Panic!" (in large, friendly letters, of course.) I guess what I'm saying is that "Cult Classic" just doesn't do it justice. Once you read it, and understand all the in-jokes, you'll start seeing references to it all over the place. Not reading it would be a grevious waste.


Now, in the interest of brevity, I've left out a lot of good books. Dune, Illumanti, Xanth, LotR, Harry Potter, Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, etc... There's so much stuff out there, it's wonderful. God Bless Science Fiction! :-)


Also, a quick note. Save the Sholan Alliance and Moreau series, none of the other books are really furry books. I just like to point out that there's a lot of great, mainstream fiction out there with furries in it. More than most people realize. I mean, Harry Potter has several dozen. From animagi, to werewolves, to centaurs, to talking spiders... and I've only finished the first 3 books. Too many people have this wrong image of furries that's been perpetuated by all the talentless freaks and "furverts" you see online (or on MTV.) Though I realize I might be preaching to the choir here. Everyone on these forums seems pretty intelligent and open minded, so I apologize for the subtle crusading. :-)

True... I personally think colored text is for highlights, or sectional divisions, not just the whole post. Then again, I never owned glitter gel pens, so maybe it's just me.

I'm confused, "His Dark Materials" is by Phillip Pullman. Is "The Wishlist" a new book by some other author in the same universe?

Yeah, I too ditched soda and carbonated/artifical beverages for the most part. I originally tried to go a full month without one, and it was easy and I felt better, so I really just don't drink 'em at all anymore unless I _really_ crave one... Or if I need something to mix with my rum. :-) I do prefer orange juice for the latter though.

As for feel-good food. I don't like "healthy" food so much as just "good" food. That is, a steak, baked potato, and a salad are so many times better than a burger or taco. Only drawback to leaving home... I miss home cooking.

Colors of Sovereignty sounds the best to me

Oblivion's Indigo sounds goth-heavy, "The Story Of..." sounds dull. "Worlds to Rise Above" is too long, and "Rise Above" is a cliched phrase. Colors of Sovereignty really sounds like something I should be trying to figure out as I read it.

Scooter! Ashley just introduced me to Scooter the other night, and now I've got the complete discography. Oh, and after I mentioned that one particular song reminded me of the lemur rave in "Madagascar" she made this. Hilarious!




Right now I'm listening to an album called "Punk Goes 80s." Buncha awesome covers! Although I'm disappointed that "I'll Melt With You" is the one from Sugarcult, and not the one from Mest that was on the Sky High soundtrack.

Ya ya ya... I've been recompiling most of the server software today. Minor outages across the board as usual. Nothing wrong in the long term. :-)

So yeah... What bands are your favorite. I don't want the huge list of all the bands you like, but just those that really hold a special place in your heart. The music you listen to when you're drunk and you can lay on the floor and raise your fist at the sky and just be happy. The songs that let you cry and scream and boast... the music that gives you strength to get through the day... the melody that lets you continue the fight.


For me, that changes depending on my mood. But right now, it's Social Distortion. On the long term though, They Might Be Giants, Iron & Wine, Enya, Loreena McKennitt, Bowling for Soup, and Less than Jake usually cover it.

Actually no, no matter what, the art is your intellactual property.

That's not always true. While there are several protections in place to ensure that entry-level artists (and other creators) have copyright in their favor, it is legally possible to give up, sell, or transfer copyright ownership to another person or entity. This is pretty common practice in the music industry, where the record label owns a copyright, not the individual creator. Also it goes for most movies as well, which is why Disney pushed so hard to have copyright extended for another 70 years. There are several writers I know who got burned by this. They got taken in by scam "publishers." They thought they were just selling publication rights, but because they didn't read the contract, they were actually selling the copyright itself.

Now, I skimmed over the new DA agreement, and it doesn't seem like they're doing quite that. They've got a clause specfically saying the artist retains full copyright, but as noted above, they are setting it up so that they can do whatever they want, with anything you post, with no compensation. Most likely this just means they're going to offer to sell on-demand prints of the art there to make money... without paying the artist of course. Worst case scenario is that they resell the whole archive to an art and photo stock company who in turn sells it to something like microsoft, and suddenly your art is packaged with MS publisher's clip art, and a copy is on millions and millions of computers around the world, and you haven't made a cent. Or if they were really evil, they could take your art, draw scribbles on it, and post it in some show somewhere about "The Stupidity of Teenagers and Wannabe Artists" with all sorts of nasty comments about how stupid you are and then give everyone your personal information.

Don't expect that to actually happen though.

The rest of the agreement looks like a pretty standard CYA agreement. All those other "evil" clauses that were bolded... well, most of them are there to protect them from lawsuits. A lot of it was devoted to absolving themselves of responsibility for damages if other people "steal" your artwork and such. That's pretty much a neccessity, as they can't actually prevent other people from taking it and using it.

The only other bits of note are basically saying they can advertise the site, do interviews, let your page show up in screenshots, etc. Basic advertising CYA. If CNN interviewed them, and someone at the office had your page open in the background, you could possibly sue them if that wasn't in there.

In my opinion, it's a lot less evil then people seem to think it is. It just looks evil because lawyers are involved, and they always have a bad smell about them. I also think that too many amature artists get way too uppity about their art. My favorite examples are the completely awful artists who draw like 5-year-olds yet put watermarks the size of Rhode Island over their pictures, and have copyright warnings that take several paragraphs at the bottom of each page. Imagine the number of complaints a place like DA must deal with everyday. I'd want a lawyer and his big words watching my tail too. I honestly should have a similar agreement for the services here, but frankly, I still hold out hope for humanity, and by refusing to put in a bunch of legalese, I like to think I'm doing some small part to keep the world a friendlier place.

Sorry I'm just now replying. I read this at work one day, and then got interrupted by a client before I responded. Then I kinda forgot about it. Anyway...

So, let me see if I understand... the comic isn't going to be hosted here, but rather you're just going to have a homepage here, and then link to the comic elsewhere? I know most people don't read the all the various forum threads to keep up with things I've said in the past, so I don't blame you for not knowing this already, but... I generally frown upon "portal" sites that mainly just link to content elsewhere. For one, if you already have a site elsewhere with the actual content, what's the point in me spending time/energy/money to give you another? Secondly, I find that such sites are rarely updated, as most of the content is elsewhere to begin with, and short of browsing through everyone's site on a regular basis, I have no way of knowing when they're actually updated.

Sorry if I sound a bit harsh, it's just that I've had a lot of trouble with similar things in the past. I've put a lot of work into making a system where each account has nearly unlimited privleges in what they can run/store/host. Also, I'm working to make xepher.net a truely unifed place where people can come and find quality content. There are hundreds of hosting services out there, and I don't want this place to be just another loose amalgamation of disused home pages and forgotten file storage.

Now, I'm not telling you "no," but rather I'm asking you to think about what I've said. I want to build a community here, and I think that goal is achieved much better when members focus their efforts on a single, unifed site. I apologize if it sounds controlling, but the fact is I spend a good deal of my time, effort, and money, trying to make this place the best I can. In return, I ask that members do the same when it comes to their sites.

Heheh... It happens.

FYI though... that's a bit heavy on the cussing. I'm don't like to play censor, but do me a favor and at least put a warning at the top of posts or content that's going to have that. We have a lot of underage users here, and when I get sued, I'd like to be able to tell the judge that they were at least warned. :-)