I know, I know, we should get a cable modem. Yet there is so much else to spend money on....

(Playing it later.)

Hmmm. Not bad. Although it's odd to have cheap background music combined with intelligent word balloons. Interesting, if bleak, Kafkaesque storyline.

Is this going to be the future of graphic novels? Part of me hopes not. It's faster for me to read it...

Yet there is a certain atmosphere to the changing word balloons and the pacing that just reading the graphic novel won't fill...

I am getting so sick of:

" Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice
See you later. Thanks"

...Then a virus-infected file.

I wish I could understand people who construct viruses. Surely there is something else they could make that could help themselves or others...?

I'm just not an anarchist at heart, that's my trouble....

I love the Net. I love the quintillions of programs that you can download just for the love of it, of how thousands, even millions of programmers produce program after program just for the love of doing so...

Well, maybe to show off how smart they are...

Okay, maybe to have a free version to get people addicted to the program and make them buy the real version when the thirty days are up, or when they want to get rid of annoying reminders...like a proverbial pusher giving the first sample to the kiddies free to make them dope fiends.

(I've never seen a real drug dealer do that...but of course, I've never seen a real drug dealer having any problem getting rid of his wares...the last thing they needed was to sweeten the deal.)

So there are all sort of non-altruistic reasons to put out free software. It's still fun.

I wonder what will happen to a generation that has grown used to looking for, and finding, whatever they want? Maybe there is something to the Napster complaint, of a generation raised to look for and find anything worth pirating.

Everything worth looking for is out there for the smart to find, to pirate, to download...

Except money.

Well, I suppose that is, too, but I have the wrong sexual preferences to go to prison, and I have a 100% record of being discovered as soon as I do anything really wrong. (So does Barb. We can watch people speed all around us, but if Barb drives faster than the speed limit, or doesn't follow an odd local law, the police are there quicker than light...)

I mentioned, the other day, that someday people will be able to download their personalities into computers. Will other people be able to "download" such personalities over their own? Want the charisma of Cary Grant? The wit of Dorothy Parker? The drollness of Woody Allen? (Without the daughter-lust, please.)

If you can download your personality into a computer, copies can be made.

Everybody will get wittier and more incisive every generation. Download the brain of Einstein, the writing skill of Faulkner, the painting skill of Da Vinci...

But when everyone is talented, and witty, and smart, with borrowed skills, the only thing that will matter is...true originality.

In the kingdom of the (borrowed)-skilled, the original man is king. For originality is the one thing that can't be---downloaded.