For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the last ten years of technology, or still use dial-up, digital media copyright battles are all the rave these days. Before the good ole' times of P2P software like Limewire, Kazaa, and Napster, or even more recently the BitTorrent scene, the worst news that could be found regarding Internet court sessions were some college students posting copyrighted material without permission and the occasional porn battle.  With the RIAA's sudden interest in every ten year old kid with an mp3 player, copyright investigations have gotten out of control, and now even touching digital media that "might or night not" have restricted copyright protection might just land you a hefty $300,000 fine.

Fortunately, a modern digital world has spawned a modern way of looking at these ancient laws:  Creative Commons. Initially conceived as a way to allow artists and small businesses to reserve rights on their material, yet still give freedom to those that would like to remix, re-post, or reuse it in their own way, CC quickly grew promoting the "Some Rights Reserved" way of thinking. Web authors and emerging musicians alike are able to freely use this new rights system without the oppressive nature of archaic copyright law.

Next time you go into your local supermarket take a look around at where goods are actually placed in reference to everything else. The random and totally nonsensical design to some of the big chain food stores never ceases to amaze. Having worked part-time, in the now defunct Grand Union, as a high-school student years back gave me a good deal of insight into the random layout and seemingly ad hoc nature of these stores. Store execs must actually sit down during planning and ask themselves, "How can we make our new branch even more confusing than the last?"

We all have at some point been looking for an item like ketchup, pasta, cookies, etc, and needed to ask a store clerk where to find it. The problem is, unless they've worked there way longer than is healthy, most aren't very sure either. Outside of the easy ones like produce and meat, your average 17 year old kid is going to have no freaking clue where to find what you're looking for, simply because he's just as confused as you. Most of the responses I gave people sounded something like this: "I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure where the pinto beans are, but I'm pretty sure they're between isle 3 and 10."

So, I finally decided to get off of my ass and turn this website into something useful (at least for me anyways). Since it's inception date on 6/9/04, digitalruin.net has been a place of random and mostly useless front pages, like the one you see on the right. This particular front page was a shining example of the best of the worst that the Internet has to offer; it literally meant nothing to anyone, incorporated only people I know, and uses a well beaten down Internet cliche. In fact, this image was so unimportant that I couldn't even find a copy of it on the server and had to pull it from an Internet caching site. Other great front pages included an early attempt at a blog written completely by hand in VIM, utilizing absolutely none of the easy publishing tools the Internet has to offer (I apparently liked making things more difficult).

Now with the booming age of Internet bloggers and self-proclaimed authorities on just about every subject, it only seemed right to join the ranks as another annoying and ranting idiot! ...If only to save the sanity of my co-workers (yes, you Eric) from hearing me bitch about current events, this complete face lift seemed like a great idea and a bit of fun. Why not actually put my skills (ha!) to work and add to the steaming pile of Internet trash. \m/ (><) \m/