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You Never Knew Me

You never knew me
 as you grew up on that farm
 watched the clouds roll by
 dreamed of life and love
 
 You never knew me
 when they stormed in
 shards of dark metal
 quivering as they cut
 
 You never knew me
 when you swore to fight
 and kissed your last goodbye
 to those who waved and cried
 
 You never knew me
 as you huddled in the grime
 cold and so alone
 wishing for the sun
 
 You never knew me
 baker that you were
 carpenter or farmer
 not a soldier born
 
 You never knew me
 but you cried out for freedom
 and defied the coming dark
 even as you fell
 
 And as I kneel by your cross
 I realize that I never knew you
 but I know you did this for me
 even though
 you never knew me.

I have a great deal of interest in (and concern over) incidents like these, primarily because they're a symptom of traditional publishing business perspectives clashing with the new. CRC Press obviously sees the web site as a threat to their revenue stream, which is fine -- publishing, like any business, is about making money. What CRC fails to perceive, however, is that the 'threat' is actually something that can turn into a powerful and useful element in their overall business model. This very website is an illustrative point: O'Reilly -- a publishing company that obviously "gets it" -- still sells boxes of UF books even though every single cartoon ever published in paper form is viewable on the Web. Not only is CRC refusing to adapt to the existing realities in publishing, they're damaging their reputation and shooting themselves in the foot in a real way: I suspect a large chunk of their target market would be people who use the website -- I wonder how many potential buyers they've just eliminated by pulling a stunt like this?

In all fairness it should be pointed out that margins in publishing can be fiercely thin, and recent changes in the way information is disseminated have created additional challenges for publishers. But changes should force companies to adjust their way of thinking and adapt rather than resist, a lesson I believe CRC Press is about to learn the hard way. The evolutionary process applies to all manner of systems, not just biological ones, and ignoring that process is the surest way to invite disaster into your environment.

We have a bunch of party suggestions that the lovely Kethryvis will be sending out to those hosting parties, just so we're not leaving you high and dry so-to-speak. Even if you don't have a web cam, but still want to host an IRC based party, please sign up on the host list and peg off the "no web cam" item. If you're stuck or need more information, email us at hosts@userfriendly.org and we'll do the best we can to help out.

For everyone else, we still have a couple spots available on the RSVP List for the Vancouver party. If you're coming in from out of town you had better hurry up! We have a great hotel giving out discounted rooms for those mentioning the UF 3rd anniversary. For details check out the Party Page.

In our newsletter, The Static Cling, we asked for your thoughts on Ghoulish Computer Associations in our DEV/URANDOM section. Our own TikTok reviewed the submissions. First we listed our ideas...

1. "Ghost" imaging 2. Newsgroup "trolls" 3. The "Hunchback"-up of Notre Dame 4."Monster".com 5. Mailer "demon" 6. Beta Lugosi 7. Mozilla ?? 8. "Phantom of the Opera"-ting System

...and here are some of the better submissions we received from our subscribers.

vampire.bat
DOSferatu!
WAREZwolf
Dungeons and "Drag-n-Drop"
Black CAT-5
spider WEB

Thanks to all who participated.

If you want to participate in next month's /Dev/Randomness... subscribe to the Static Cling! You can sign up for it thru your ARS account.