Journal
Three new songs
I’m currently in Brussels, for interviews with law firms, and this was the perfect occasion for me to… record music! Indeed, during my stay in London so far, I have been somewhat productive in musical terms, and it was about time I recorded a few of these pieces.
As such, I invite you to take a look at the music page, or to view the relevant pages directly:
Intellectual property and the world today
The more I study intellectual property (IP), and the more I see its daily uses, the more inadequate I find the prevalent IP systems.
It’s frustrating, because I hope to work in this very field (I find it fascinating), and all I seem to see are the manners in which people have been slowly destroying the system by acting in a way that they believe helps the system.
A new literary favourite
In my life so far, I have read books in too great a number for me to judge, and over the years, my tastes have evolved (as with films, music, …). I have enjoyed many books, adored some, abhorred a couple (some of which I was forced to keep on reading for school), and it seemed to be firmly established that the books that most captured my imagination were Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
But today, something strange happened: I had tears in my eyes upon reading the ending of another book, a newly discovered gem of literature.
Tears in my eyes! When faced with writing, the only time this has happened to me was while writing certain sections of the Arpia novel.
I must conclude that this book, which I found hard to set aside, has conquered my heart.
Its title? Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini (an Italian gentleman who wrote in English).
Its content? The tale of a young man who goes from the robe (lawyer) to the buskin (actor) to the sword (maître d’armes) around the period of the Révolution française.
Go read it. Now.
A poem for womankind
Our world is like a garden,
Eternally in blossom
The saplings grow,
The flowers bloom,
And no plant can be forgottenThey come in all colours and sizes,
A feast upon the eyes
As I walk among them,
As if in paradise,
It is I that each one mesmerisesAt first glance all I see is beauty
Superficial and yet so true
I draw closer and see
What they shall live to be
And behold them in all their gloryIt is like being close to a phoenix
Or an angel whose heart is pure
When they shine like the sun with goodness,
With a smile any ill they will cureBetween passion and admiration,
Both in doubt and feeling too sure,
I cannot help respecting and loving them,
These beings with the power to lureWhat would the world be without them,
With no such treasure to discover?
If we live, if we die,
These words are no lie:
We exist to serve these women.
Tutorial: Multi-page, multi-column web pages
At some point in the redesign process of Arpia.be, I started to consider the idea of a “book-like” feel, where the content would be presented in two columns, and users could flip to the next page of content seamlessly.
The way I see it, this is something that has so far only been done using Flash, so it may be of interest to web designers & developers to see how they can achieve this without Flash, in a cross-browser compatible manner.
Cyberlaw – an area of law?
Short essay done for class – because it’s more opinion than anything, I thought I might share it. Warning: legal stuff.
What is cyberlaw? Cyberlaw is the law applicable in ‘cyberspace’, a seemingly ‘global-economic zone, borderless and unregulatable’ (John Perry Barlow in 1966, quoted in Reed, 2004). Yet, as Chris Reed argues, it is possible to proceed to a localisation in the ‘physical’ world of the constituent elements of any given activity in cyberspace, and national laws will therefore apply, in accordance with rules on applicable law (such as the Rome I and Rome II Regulations, at the level of the European Union).
Therefore, there are as many legal orders in cyberspace as there are national (or supranational) legal orders.
Having made these preliminary remarks, the original question, to which the introductory statement refers, remains: is cyberlaw an area of law?
Arpia.be design refresh
As 2010 kicks off, it is time for me to unveil a new website design on which I have been working for a few months. It was a long process, involving several radically different ideas and long hours getting it all to work (especially on Internet Explorer), but here we are, finally.
I recommend trying things out, to find the hidden easter eggs and so on, to get used to the new functionality.
[Tested in Firefox 2-3, Safari 4, Google Chrome 4, Opera 9-10, Internet Explorer 7-8]
But to truly understand the design, I think a more extensive portrayal of the design process is in order.
Holidays!
Term is over, holidays begin, and just a quick word to wish all a few weeks of happy holidays.
I haven’t been writing a lot over here, but rest assured that it’s with good reason! One of these reasons is something that I might be unveiling soon-ish, on this very website, if I manage to tame Internet Explorer’s awful CSS support and if I force it to do my bidding: I’ve got something very nice lined up for which most of the theory works on all other browsers, and if I get this right for IE, arpia.be could be facing a redesign within the coming weeks.
In random news, I highly recommend that any and everyone go see Avatar, the new sci-fi/fantasy film, if possible in 3D (and if possible IMAX 3D), because seeing it a 3.40 a.m. in IMAX 3D was simply mind-blowing and awesome.
Now, off to do some more Christmas shopping‚ …
Re: Enquiry A8992bc8-1114EE
Persecuted, shunned, hunted down like prey. No longer human, no longer living, just a curse to be wiped off the face of this planet, Stradio.
A monstrosity, that’s what they are. Freaks of nature.
This is their story, this is their tale. This is their suffering, this is their pain.
Filtering information on the internet
While the world discusses Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize (I’m on the “what has he done so far?” side), I wish to draw your attention to something entirely different: law and technology.
I am in the process of finding a topic for the 15,000-word dissertation that I shall write during this year, and therefore wish to lay out my current ideas, in the hope that one or two might give their opinion.
When using the internet, most of us feel free: we can type anything in Google, and find our way to a million different results. We can go to Amazon or eBay, search for anything, and probably find one or two things of interest to us. We can read a blog, click on a link, and find ourselves reading articles of diverging points of view. A seemingly infinite realm of information is available at our fingertips.
However, all is not golden in this world of apparent freedom. In many States (from China to the UK), users are limited in their use of the internet by “filters”, which are meant to block access to specific (categories of) websites. Certain items of information are blocked in a more specific manner at the level of websites, when the website owner/administrator/moderator applies censorship. All in all, these intermediaries control available information.
As such, when user tries to access content, such access may be denied. Sometimes, the user is fully unaware of the existence of the information in question, but not all the time. Does this hinder freedom of access to information? Does this hinder the information creator’s freedom of speech? Whence does the right to censor/block information come? Is the creator or intermediary liable to the user if illegal/offensive/… material isn’t blocked? Is the intermediary liable to the creator or to the user for information wrongfully blocked? Does the creator not have a right to access the information created by himself?
This is the kind of question that I believe I would ask and try to answer. Concerns of legitimacy and effectiveness must be addressed, though the focus would be the legal point of view.
Any thoughts on the matter?