For those of us who were born before the mid '70's, one of the outstanding universal experiences of soul-deadening enui was the trip to the DMV, where one could spend a day in a poorly air-conditioned cattle pen, shuffling from arrogant, sullen bureaucrat to bureaucrat, trying to straighten out endless paperwork, just to be able to drive one's car or motorcycle. The absolute lack of any compassion - or even bare competence - defined the hell one endured at least once a year.

One of the high moments of the Rodney King riots has to be the burning of DMVs. In fact, I think that the only government building attacked in Orange County was one of the DMVs. I don't think that any government buildings other than DMV were targetted for serious damage in L.A. County either.

Since then - and I have to think partially in response to the utter loathing that typical citizens felt toward the institution - DMVs have become streamlined, civilized, and even friendly to the citizens.

The title of most loathed now, however, has not been abandoned to Animal Control, but rather rests with the libraries. As I type here at the Costa Mesa Tech Branch of the O.C. library system, the same librarian who regailed us loudly for an hour or so about her mid-Western unbringing a week or two ago, is carrying on a running conversation with someone doing some kind of game machine installation.

I WAS trying to read an online paper on the philosophical grounds of quantum mechanics, but any serious thought is not permitted. I've noted the prevalence of gang-bangers, psychos, and SCREAMING babies at other library branches. At Costa Mesa Tech, however, we don't even need to import the problems.

August 25, 2007: Well, I decided to bite the bullet and get a new laptop. After all, the Orange County library system offers free WiFi, and I can't run anything on their stupid computers but what they choose to allow, which doesn't include ANY modern image processing software, nor now even the ability to see the code on one's webpage. Like their initial disabling of copy and past, they have also disabled notepad now, and there is no longer any way to look at the html.

I bought a nice dual-core Turion AMD HP machine with 2 gigs of RAM and all the supposed connectivity that one could ask for, and at a good price as well, during Office Depot's Back-to-School sale. Of course, it had Vista Home Premium installed.

I should've asked. After an hour and a half of seeing that the machine was registering a good connection, but not able to bring up an actual online webpage, I finally asked the library personnel, even though none of their techies are here today. I finally mentioned that I was running Vista. "Oh, then that's the reason! The library doesn't support Vista. We're hoping that maybe sometime in September they will get around to fixing it."

So now, having waited for three months while someone in the library administration played with the intro to Second Life book before finally letting it go throught the system to me, who was first in line for it, I'm just guessing that whoever played with 2nd Life is probably still playing while the library patrons are stuck waiting for them to get around to actually doing their f***ing job!

And naturally Windows Vista tells me that if I want to install a previous version of Windows, then I should've done that first. Of course, how stupid of me to think that Windows would make things simple or logical. I could in theory run Linux, which I had planned to do anyway in order to run Second Life, which doesn't run on Vista either, but now I'm guessing that the library probably doesn't support Linux either, especially since they spent all that money putting all the standard MicroSoft office products on their computers, when they could've put the superior Open Office on them for free.

Now imagine a whole economy run like the library system. Remember Russia under the commies?

August 21, 2007: Yesterday I actually got lucky. Nobody sitting next to me using their cell until I finally had to call in the library gendarmes, which happened both three and four sessions ago at the Tustin branch. Or, two sessions ago, the guy who looked like a reject from death row, truly awesomely coldly nasty big old brutish character, who turns to me without warning as I start my session and in a mockingly sweet voice says, "I just LOVE the way YOU GUYS scratch your beards."

Then he follows me around the library, lagging a few minutes, but always showing up and muttering God knows what. Still not sure if thought I was gay or al quida... Or both? Have to ask Osama if there are gay terrorists and what kind of virgins do they get, next time I see him.

So, yesterday, nothing. Actually able to get some work done, despite a little interlude as a near fight broke out over some guy who left to use the phone and then came back ten minutes later and wanted to eject the guy who was next in line after him. That only lasted for a few minutes. The run of good luck could not last, of course. The libraries, like any "free" resource, naturally attract the bottom feeders.

So, just to make up for yesterday, I suppose, tonight I get a guy next to me at the Costa Mesa Tech branch who interspirses his actual typing with drumming loudly on the table, and interleaves that with picking his nose, or the running sores on his face, wiping his fingers on his pants and then resuming typing. I understand that they disinfect the computers here, once a week. Thus, in lieu of getting any real work done, I'm adding to this blog... That's my policy, BTW, which I encourage others to emulate. If the socialists want to demonstrate how wonderful their scheme is, then let's make sure to let them know how it's going!

Yet more: August 18, 2007. I had checked out an external USB CD drive for sale cheap yesterday, and wanted to know if it would work as a CD source on the library computers, knowing that I would never be allowed to install the native drivers. No. No CDs are allowed. Period.

Meanwhile, my nephew has just done his first website and wanted me to check the code out. Unfortunately, while, oddly enough, it is possible to view the text contents of a site in Excel now, there is no longer any way to view the HTML source. The View Source hack that I incorporated in the corporate website so that I could check things out from other computers to ensure the site was working no longer works itself. Notepad is no longer available at the library.

In the past, I could have just dumped my nephew's site to a floppy and taken it home to view on one of my antique pre-USB computers. But the new library machines no longer have floppy drives. The Tech branch here does have a USB floppy for just this kind of problem, but I don't have any floppies with me, as I assumed that I would be able to run notepad and print out the HTML.

Bottom line is that the library systems operation is on a par with the traffic control division of your local township. They have to do something, anything, to demonstrate that they are needed, and most of what they are actually capable of doing has the effect of impeding traffic, not facilitating it, and so traffic is never sychronized and you're lucky if the traffic lights even vaguely reflect the actual traffic, and the consequence is enormous waste of everyone's time.

I note that the computers at the library at UCI do not have any of these restrictions, and the users can be completely anonymous as well. Somehow they survive.

It continues: Today, August 7th, 2007 and, after nearly three months of wait, "Second Life, the Official Guide," finally got to me. Note that I was the very FIRST person to put a hold on the book. It took THREE MONTHs for the library to get a book that tells you up front that it is already out of date before it was even printed to the very first patron in line for it.

Now, logically, were there three man-months of work involved in getting a book that was already in the library's possession onto the shelf? Obviously not. So, what is actually the case is that there is a two-to-three month backlog going on. Backlogs are expensive, as any businessman can tell you. You lose customers, you waste time. However, the library has NO direct incentive as a socialist bureaucracy to do anything at all beyond what is necessary to have their budget renewed.

However, the typical wait, according to the quite competent staff person who finally handed me my now out-of-date book, is only two months at most. As we inspected the book, however, it became obvious that more was in play here. I had paranoically envisioned the library sysop, ensconced in his pleasure cave, wallowing in glee as he pored over my on-hold book.

Could it be true? As the librarian noted, the book showed all the signs of major prior use. And this was supposedly a BRAND NEW book!

Since this is a rather long blog, with a number of updates, I suppose I should warn the readers what they're getting into. This is an ongoing examination of socialism in action in the U.S.A. I.e., the public libraries, and particularly how they have dealt with the information revolution here in the "Second Silicon Valley," the OC.

I have a particular interest - some might say, "Ax to Grind" - in the issue of the general idiocy that invariably accompanies top-down hierarchal systems and the way that the "free" libraries have been used in a clever pincer movement - together with the virtual outlawing of cyber cafes - to control thought in the OC, especially thought that might lead to political action.

Interested readers may also enjoy some of my essays on anarchism and law, or my coverage of how the "War on Terror" is being used on a daily basis to smash innocent victims who made the mistake of opening their mouths or trying to organize opposition to the current state/corporate regime throughout the U.S. - and the failure of the corporate media to report on such.

Be warned that there are a LOT of examples, stretching over several years, of the unbelievable idiocy of the library management and its nearly complete failure to correct or learn from mistakes, along with the ubiquitous contempt shown to the library patrons at every opportunity. So, now you're warned, which is better than the library would have done, I can assure you.

Update: July 15th. I got to the Tustin library right at the noon opening, and, for a change, there wasn't the rush to grab every available computer. However, this incredible idiot woman then sat down next to me, with her supersized drink (not allowed for good reason, especially not at the computer stations), who then proceded to take a call on her cellphone (also not allowed, for good reasons).

When I asked her to get off the phone, as it was making it impossible for me to concentrate, she simply told whoever was speaking to her that, "oh, someone is asking me to get off the cell," and continued, at which point I went to the information desk, where the lady in charge informed me that people were allowed to use their cell phones so long as they were discrete and quiet about it.

After a further exchange of words, and after I started raising my voice to reach the info person from the computer station, she told me that "only if the cellphone usage was disturbing someone would they intervene." Oh. So, my getting up and missing several minutes of my little one hour allocation wasn't evidence that I was being disturbed? No. So, I said that, "well, it's disturbing me," at which point she told the lady to get off the cell phone, which she eventually did.

This is hardly the only example of patrons who use the library to assault a captive audience. Quite frequently a group of teenagers or adolescents will decide to party around the computer, and then it's a constant barrage of styfled laughter and snide remarks back and forth, the same syndrome that makes it so dangerous for teens to drive with more than one or two in the car.

The library's position is that whoever makes the trouble is at fault. "Trouble," however is never defined in terms of "disturbing the peace," or "violating the rights of other patrons," but rather, who has the immediate majority in the situation, or who is likely to cause them the most grief. Thus, complaints about the 5-month-old screaming baby, or the toddler who completely screens out her mother's occasional demands for him or her to be quiet, or the gang wannabes, or the nut job who literally spends two hours in the men's restroom here every Sunday, brushing his teeth 500 times or more, are met with, "well, it's a PUBLIC library, and everyone has a right to use it." (Except the patrons who come in to actually use the library as such.)

A company like Barnes and Noble, of course, can make a decision on the basis of actual profits and losses long term, in the best of scenarios, anyway, and then stick to their policy, hussling obnoxious, disruptive clients out the door in favor of the majority who is footing the bill via their purchases. Of course, a library as such could be organized on similar principles, renting material on a profit making basis, instead of depending upon a set, one size fits all, fee, plus tax dollars taken from the general public, leaving them with less to spend at their favorite bookstore.

Update, July 12, 2007

From another patron at the Costa Mesa Tech Branch: This guy reports that a couple of days ago some man was looking at porn - or at least nude women (I wonder if it's OK now for me to type "nude" or worse "porn" or if I may be censored for doing so??? - and the lady who is now in charge called to him on his way to the printer and demanded that he get that filth off his screen.

He reportedly objected on free speech grounds and allegedly her response to him was that there were children present. He pointed out that the children were at the other end of the library and could not possibly see what he was looking at, especially as he was using a privacy filter over the screen, and she responded that they could if they were on their way to the bathroom, which is at the extreme rear of the large room, where the computers are that the porn watchers ususally use.

Note that this is possible, but only if the child was directly behind the computer, due to the privacy screen, and the problem would be easilly solved if the computers were not set up for minimum privacy, an open invitation BTW to identity thieves, who could easily lurk behind a patron and capture passwords, etc., by simply videotaping with a cheap digital camera.

A further altercation reportedly then ensued, with the man telling the library manager that she was only reacting to him that way because she was a woman, and she finally telling him that she didn't care who else was aware of what he was looking at. SHE was aware and it offended her and she wasn't going to allow it.

This reminds me of an incident a couple decades ago, when I attended the Libertarian Party's convention in San Diego and bought what I thought was an amusing bumper sticker from some group promoting nudist rights. It simply had a happy face, yellow on black, and the caption "Have a Nude Day." So I put it on the rear bumper of my little Datsun pickup, and in the next few days several people attempted to force me off the road, one of them sideswiping me on the freeway and hitting the bicycle that I had on a rack up front.

Max Stirner would have had a ready explanation for this. From his "The Ego and Its own," he discusses how people make what they cannot control into a divinity. Thus, the pagan Gods were forces of nature, or closely related to them - Thor or Zeus with the lightning, etc. The Christians came along at a time when civilization had begun to seriously challenge Mother Nature, and people no longer feared the beasts of the wild or the storm's fury. So, they elevated the "Idea" to the divine. They hypostatized ideas into "spirits." The WORD was sacred.

Which is where most people still are today. Thus the rage against the apostate, the person who refuses to recognize the sacred IDEAS of whatever cult one belongs to, whether Dixie Chick or simply the driver of a beat-up little pickup with a simple bumper sticker.

HEY YOU IDIOTS! Just an idea: (actually, from Mr. Natural comix) Did you happen to realize that EVERYONE is naked under their clothes? Of course not. If you don't see it or hear about it, then it doesn't exist. Right? Wow. I'm sure glad that our leaders who have their fingers on the buttons of armagedon don't think that way... (That was a joke, BTW.)

My personal take. Zen atheism. I search out whatever thoughts I find scary and embrace them. I can do that, because I am not a slave to my ideas, unlike some of you reading this. I am not a disembodied floating consciousness, separate from my body, as some of you doubtless think of yourselves. I am a human animal, and my brain/mind/feelings are part of my animal nature, not some ghost from another dimension. From that perspective, I do not have to fear any mere idea.

I wonder now what's next in this little odyssey at the library???

It is curious that the same library system that carries on its shelves books like the manga version of "Battle Royale," one book of which depicts in lurid detail the rape by a psychotic teenage girl of a much younger boy as he is dieing from her earlier attack, is censoring non-violent images of nudes.

Update July 9, 2007

And more news. Now, in spite of the little confrontation of months ago, in which the Russian mafioso types attempted to jump the line to the internet stations, and the library information person tried to mediate between thieves and regular patrons, now it seems that whatever arbitrary and immune idiot is setting policy here has backtracked again. Now, it seems, if you are not here when a computer comes available, regardless of having signed onto the list and waiting for an hour or so, you not only lose the shot at the available machine, but also your place in the queu altogether.

Previously, the policy, as explained to me by a senior information person, was that you only lost your immediate place. I.e., if you didn't show by the time the next machine had rebooted and someone else logged on, then you had to wait for the next one. Today, however, I witnessed the information person crossing off several people who I knew had just left to use other library facilities. When I asked her about it, she acted as though a piece of dog doodoo had just somehow developed a voice. Who was I, a mere patron, to be questioning library policy.

I was in here yesterday as well, and managed to finally locate someone dear to me who had dropped out of sight, and sent material from her website to the printer along with a receipt for an EBay purchase that I needed to get in the mail. Of course, when I logged onto the printer computer there was nothing, nada, zilch, zero there at all. The information desk person offered to make a special exception and let me log back in when another machine came available, but of course there were several people waiting ahead of me, so I lost my print job.

Update July 7, 2007

Oh, new news. The browser history is no longer available. Now how did I find that out? Of course I forgot to save all the twenty steps in a path to a site that I accidentally closed and then realized that I needed. Oops. So, go to history and find the site there. NO problem.

Oops. No more History. Yes, I'm sure it's still there, but now, on one computer the history comes up as a blank area. Or, if you already have "folders" open, clicking history invariabley takes you to folders again. Someone decided before turning on their brain that History was another frill, like the previously disabled copy and paste function.

Or, perhaps someone stupidly used an internet facility that allowed them to enter private information and left it there for other patron to later find and steal - or alter under their name? Solution: auto-clear history every time the browser reloads. Right? Or depend upon the user to clear it before they leave...

Except that that function is disabled as well.

So, just eliminate the history altogether. Wow. Problem solved...

Interesting that the brain-dead CyberCafe next door, even though the computer illiterate woman who runs it is absolutely clueless (and hostile as a general policy), still has no problem giving its clientel access to both history and clearing of history.

And, meanwhile, the real computer whiz who ran the Costa Mesa Technology Branch of the library system is moving on to a higher position somewhere in the bureaucracy, leaving a new person, an apparently largely computer illiterate middle aged woman, in his place. One of her first acts has been to try to shut down the guys who come in and put the privacy filters on their computer monitors so they can look at XXX sites without offending other patrons. Note that nobody is complaining about this behavior so far as I have observed. It is purely censorship on her part. Anti-sexuality being the state religion of Amerika... Update June 21, 2007

So, the new computers are in place. I'm suddenly in mind of that lyric, "here comes the new boss, just like the old boss." Somebody disabled the sound, altogether. Nice. Now all the instructional sites, etc., that use voice are useless. Imagine U-tube as silent TV. It's been over a month now and no sign that we will ever have sound again.

The printing is faster, when it works. Every night at closing, there is a crowd of angry users at the Costa Mesa Technical Branch, having just lost hours of work that disappeared in thin air on the way to the very fast printer. This has been going on since day one, and no sign of anyone trying to fix it.

Tonight I was working on a critical legal document and, due to prior problems of the same kind, was groggy from lack of sleep and forgot to save regularly. So, I had just asked the attendant, a new girl, to give me more time, and she did, supposedly. I go back to work. Suddenly I get the message to save or delete and about a half second later the system shuts down, losing the previous two hours of work. So, I had to go to the CyberCafe next door, which does not even have Word loaded, and use Wordpad to try to replicate everything, even more tired, of course. Do I sound pissed? If not, please forgive my failure to communicate effectively due to my state of fatigue.

Update May 13, 2007

The new computers are here!!! Without floppies, as the library warned us. And, while noticeably faster than the old machines, still with the same stupid glitches as before, such as the message that comes up if you try to open a new window, to the effect that that function has been disabled by the system administration. Hello? Is there a HUMAN somewhere in the library admin? To emphasize just how idiotic this is, it is still perfectly possible to drop back and punt - i.e., go back to the opening screen and start another session from there. So this only impacts the people who are NOT internet savvy, not the hackers or miscreants. Update May 8th, 2007

Notices are now appearing at presumeably all the OC libraries concerning their acquisition of NEW computers for the internet. The gist of the information, however, is in what they are leaving out. Namely, floppy disk drives. Patrons are being warned to be sure to buy some kind of USB memory device, as floppies will no longer be supported.

I won't speculate on the morals or intelligence of whoever came up with this hare-brained idea, but it fits with the overall lack of responsibility by our local socialist bureaucrats. First off, how much does a floppy drive add to the cost of a computer? I know places that will sell you floppy drives all day long for $5~$10 dollars. And memory sticks, while they are convenient and fast, still abandons that patron who has put dozens or hundreds of records on old floppies over the past decades. One floppy can hold a sizeable text-only novel. Sure, in general it's just an inconvenience, but I wonder if it ever occurred to the library administrators to ASK the patrons what they wanted?

What a radical concept... A library that actually responds to patron desires. But that would be virtual heresy. The library is a living testament to the concept of hierarchy.

Update: April 29th, 2007

At the Fountain Valley library today. Here, all in a row, with no sign-up sheet and only one chair for prospective internet users, are five (5) nice computers with LCD screens. Unlike the Tustin antiques, they don't take 3 minutes to reboot between users, and they don't cut off printing without warning 3 minutes before a session ends. There is also one additional short-term (15 minute max) computer for people who need to quickly check for email, etc., and there is a pre-scheduled computer.

However, there are still three computers in the row dedicated to the library book catalog. While there has been a continuous waiting line for the internet computors here, I have only seen one person use one of the book catalog machines.

From the wrecker theory of anarchist action, I suppose that I should actually shut up and just let the facts speak for themselves. Socialism doesn't work, and the library system is the perfect example. Any private profit-making company that ignored consumer demand the way the libraries have with regard to the internet would have long folded in the face of more responsive competition.

I note that some libraries, such as (at last inspection, which was several years back) the marvelous Huntington Beach Library, which is independent of the county system, actually charge a reasonable fee for internet access. One would hope that the charges are gauged to the demand and that additional computers and bandwidth would be added until the profit margin fell to close to cost. That's how a private business would do it. Why should we, the taxpayers, be forced to subsidize someone else's usage anyway? But then, that's free market talk, and we're dealing with the opposite, elitist socialism or fascism.

Update: April 26th, 2007 - more idiocy at the OC library

Here I sit at one of the former book catalog computers at the Tustin library. I had planned to be elsewhere, but ageism dictated otherwise.

In brief, a friend of mine, who I haven't seen for some time, as she moved to New York to go to college, has just had her first novel published, with reasonably positive reviews. I used to see Robbie every Thursday night at the Pure Fiction League, a writers group that met and still meets at the Barnes and Noble in the Tustin Mall every Thursday night, and I gave much advice - probably largely ignored (but I tried) - on the writing of her "Better Than Yesterday," a passable first novel, IMHO.

So, the other day here at the library I noticed a big poster featuring Robby's pretty face and announcing that she would be speaking on how to get into writing tonight. I didn't want to intrude, but figured that I would at least stop by and say Hy, as I haven't seen her for a year or two now.

I had the option of free tickets to see "Rent" and passed on it since I didn't want to miss Robbie and had already sent her an email indicating that I would check out her talk. And I took one of her flyers from the Tustin Library to the Costa Mesa Tech branch for display there, to try to increase her attendance.

So, I showed up, and presumeably Robbie is here as I'm typing this, but when I went to the meeting room door, through which I could see any number of both teens, almost entirely girls, and a dozen or more older adult women, I was physically blocked at the door by a librarian, who informed me with what felt like real hostility that I could not enter, as the meeting was "only for teens or adults with teens." Note that I had not actually even attempted to enter the room at that point, but rather had stopped at the door and was trying to spot Robbie. I also note that the negative reaction to my presence was apparently shared, as I got a half dozen angry scowls from the crew of mostly obese middle-aged moms.

I could point to any number of sites that discuss the pernicious impact of the artificial segregation by age (and sex, as I'm betting that if a non-teen accompanied woman had walked in, no one would have said a word) that our culture endorses, and how that moral wedge segways directly into the unquestioning acceptance of all kinds of other, equally evil and stupid kinds of segregation and classist divisiveness, but the reader has access to google and a brain, one hopes.

For those who have not already read the rest of this piece, or at least a recent edition, as I tend to keep updating my stuff as I have more ideas, I will use this hateful little episode as a useful segway into a branch of the original topic that I've been intending to get into anyway, but kept getting sidetracked by my other commitments, such as the ongoing dialogues at my fave intellectual talk site - RebirthofReason.com.

To wit: the control of information. How the U.S. is quietly being moved into a Chinese model of social control. And on that note, I should mention something that I just heard the other night on the BBC. It appears that the utterly shameless Chinese authorities are now going to try to use the upcoming Beijing Olympics to force the world's hands into de jure as well as de facto acceptance of their hegemony over both Taiwan and Tibet. China is reportedly demanding that the Olympic torch be carried through both Tibet and Taiwan as though they are actually parts of China. (Right)

Somehow, I think thay got the timing a little wrong on this one. I don't think that this will sit well with the U.S., not in the wake of the mass pet (and probably human, as well) poisoning by Chinese food additive suppliers. The Chinese are not big into pets and probably have no idea just how angry this is making pet owners here, and just how many of them there are here.

In case you haven't been following this typical Chinese act of crass criminality, the latest word is that melamine was deliberately added to gluten sold to U.S. food processors in order to make it appear that there was more protein in the gluten, as the standard test for protein actually simply measures the amount of nitrogen, and melamine - a plastic used to make cheap dishes -has a whole lot of nitrogen in it.

Very likely hundreds of pets - and probably some humans - have died rather horrible deaths from kidney failure at this point, although it appears that the media have been told not to push the story, as the Chinese are holding a few trillion U.S. dollars... In fact, the first story in the OC Register on the Olympics manipulation by the Chinese government finally appeared two days after the BBC reported it, but with the opposite slant, implying that Taiwan was the troublemaker in the picture.

This story, entitled "Taiwan complicates plan for torch relay," came from Stephan Wade of the Associate Press. Note that the "Orange Couty Register" is editorially a libertarian/conservative paper, but the editorial section has a major firewall between it and the news department, due to past decade's complaints that they were spinning the news. The spin of blaiming Taiwan for a fast one that the Mainland Chinese government wants to pull, forcing the rest of the world to line up on one side or the other of the issue of independence for Taiwan - and Tibet - would have gotten exactly the reverse take from their editorial staff, I am sure.

But Orange County California has one of the largest and wealthiest ethnic Chinese enclaves in the world outside of China. A lot of these people buy and read the "OC Register." It will be interesting to see if any protest comes from them. One can hope. Some idiot (non-Chinese) supervisor or something in Irvine, which I believe is about 75% Asian now, did some silly sister city deal with a mainland Chinese city recently, which involved a declaration implying that Taiwan is a part of China, and they got deluged by a mass protest by the outraged local ethnic Chinese, most of whom are anti-communist, and probably mostly from Taiwan or Hong Kong.

So, back to the OC library critique: Am I biting the hand that feeds me here? Here I am using the Tustin library computer to heap abuse on the Tustin Library. No, no, no, mon chere'. As it turns out, I actually pay taxes (at the point of a gun, to be sure). So, I have as much right to be here and bitch and moan as anyone. So there.

However, it would be nice to have alternatives, given all the problems and restrictions associated with this particular library and the OC libraries in general. It would seem, given the popularity of the internet, that one would see Cybercafes all over the place, offering super fast pipes and really nice computers with high-end graphics, etc.

NOT.

The reality is that all over the OC, various municipalities have passed all kinds of draconian restrictions aimed at outlawing public internet access. For example, in several cities in order to operate an internet cafe, or offer access to the internet in general for a fee, you also have to ensure that all internet access is under constant surviellance. You actually have to have continuous video monitoring of every internet station. This is to protect us against terrorism, and of course kiddie porn.

However, any yuppie with enough money to purchase a decent laptop with WiFi can go to any number of coffee houses or some entire cities, or even the libraries (!) and plot with Al Cuida or drool over naked kids to their heart's delight. So, what does this actually accomplish?

It locks out the poor and the young. It constitutes a gentrification of the very system that has brought us more nearly to a level playing field than anything since the printing press. The excuses for the mandatory monitoring - and the outright banning of internet access sites in at least one major OC city - were, of course, that the cafes and gaming sites were becoming gang magnets.

SO? CLUE: ANY site that attracts hoards of youths from all ethnicities and classes will inevitably attract the gang-bangers as well. Deal with it. That's why we have cops. But don't trash the entire Bill of Rights as a pre-emtive strike against what might be.

However, I truly don't think that the threat of gangs or terrorists or kiddie porn - all of which can be facilitated ourside of all these channels - had anything to do with it. It was the sight of all those kids getting together, of all colors, sexes and sexual orientations, from all ethnicities and levels of income, without adult control.

That's the connection. The destruction of the middle class in America, the division of society along ethnic, sexual, racial and income lines, are all a part of the move to destroy any possibility of the original American dream. Keep people separated by age, class, sex, race and you can keep them at each other's throats. The LAST thing we need is new venues where people can get together - except by special permission and appointment and only if you're the right age, sex, or class...

This is not a new phenomynon, although it appears to be accelerating. When I moved to Long Beach in early '76, I looked around for the coffee shops. Long Beach is a college town to a significant degree. Cal State Long Beach is a major university. There should have been coffee shops all over, as in any college town on the East Coast. But, California is different. The movie "Vanishing Point" paints a pretty accurate picture of the fascist model of government that rules in most of Southern California.

The cities and the local cops pretty much do whatever they feel like, knowing that they may occasionally get sued and will probably lose and get hit with some Federal Court injunction, but so what? They're playing the odds. Most people who they screw are not going to do anything because if they try then they will get hit with a dozen more bogus charges and end up bankrupt or dead or in prison.

And how many cop movie and cop TV shows have you see in which the hero cop cuts a few corners - as in, breaking into some bad guy's house secretly in order to get the goods on the perp. Of course, the evidence itself can't be used in court, but it can lead our hero to real evidence that can be. All in a good cause, right? They said that in Mussilini's Italy, too. And Gitmo (Guantanemo)? Hey, the CIA finally got kicked out of their illegal Europpean secret prisons, so NOW, finally, the REAL bad guys are being shipped there, so how can anyone complain? The several hundred totally innocent - and how can any MUSLIM be really innocent, right? - individuals have just be place holders while our heros in uniform (or not) sorted things out.

What I noticed in 1976 Long Beach was that there were NO independent coffee houses where kids could hang out. Nor was there any other alternative. I discovered that the Long Beach police had been running a little racket. Whenever someone attempted to open a coffee house, after a month or so the cops would show up and inform them that they were aware and had evidence to prove that they were selling or permitting the sales of illegal drugs on the premises. So, they could quietly shut themselves down, or go to jail.

Of course, as the Los Angeles Times documented in detail about a decade ago, there are literally thousands of people who make a living as professional snitches, both in and outside of jails. You want someone to volunteer to sell pot in a coffee house that might serve as an organizing site for anti-war or (worse) anti-Petroleum Club hegemony? No problem, dude.

And so the cyber cafes in the OC have largely disappeared or been severely restricted, leaving only the libraries. We should be SO GRATEFUL to have to use - for free, but with major limitations as discussed below - a facility that is mandated under the Homeland Security laws to keep track of our every web address visited. Right.

But then, there are always the jerks like me, who notice what's happening and open our fat mouths.

Tough. I work for a Chinese company. I KNOW what we're up against. I have a permanently ruptured cervical disk from two years ago when the company enforcer gave me a karate chop to the back of my neck as I was stretching in the chair from which I do their 1500 page corporate website - apparently because I made a tasteless, silly joke about the company president's daughter - who is actually a friend of mine. I can't sue, because Workman's Comp is taking care of it... sort of. And, as an anarchist, I don't believe in Criminal Law to begin with, so I would only press charges if it were a matter of self-defence. Meanwhile, I live with pretty much continuous pain.

We DON'T want to go there. But that IS where we're going, with the breakdown of trust in America. We are moving towards a Chinese model of face, appearance, deception and class, where you get the justice you can pay for, and your measure of wealth and power is precisely a measure of your corruption.

End of update(s)....

In an earlier blog, I used the local OC library system as an example of the problems of socialism. Recapping in brief, at the beginning of the library system's plunge into modern media, they offered unlimited free printing of web pages. Like the nearly free bread the Russians supplied under communism, the result was naturally gross waste and long lines.

After a year or so of unhappy patrons who had to fight for the still limited print time, with some people printing dozens, or hundreds, of free pages, thus locking out those who desperately needed to print out a simple legal document or a term paper, the powers that be restricted the free prints to five per day per patron, charging a meager 15 cents per page for more prints. The backups largely disappeared.

However, other problems persist. Note that the library system runs Windoze. For several years, only the MicroSloth Explorer browser was provided, and it was deliberately and severely limited by the library webmaster. Even the most basic functions, such as copy and paste, or opening additional windows were shut off, forcing patrons to try to type in 120 character web addresses from a handwritten note.

Even if there were computers available, the policy at all but a couple of libraries in the system was that each patron was limited to one hour per day online. Of course, this made it unworkable for many students who needed more time to find resources for their homework assignments. And there WERE other computers available - just not for web access. While the web computers were severely limited in number, typically many more computers sat idle, linked to the internet, but blocked from accessing anything but the library resources or a few large databases.

But, due to the abysmal quality of the management of the system generally (the webmaster told me that they just disabled every feature they could in order to make life easier for them), for several years it was possible to hack ones way past all the firewalls, etc., and get on the web from the library catalog machines. Typically a librarian would eventually discover the miscreant and intone "these computers are not for the web." Most people would acquiesce at that point. Some curmudgeons, however, would simply snarl like a junkyard dog and go right on with their web access.

And, for whatever reason - probably, "it was easier than thinking" - logging on is disabled at most of the libraries within 30 minutes of closing time. Now I have no great problem with the terminals shutting down within ten minutes of closing, but many has been the time that patrons were backed up on the sign-up sheet, and a computer came available at 8:28PM. A patron who may have been waiting for an hour or more to check for a critical email sits down and waits through the three-minute reboot, only to discover that he or she is locked out because it is 8:31PM.

Many people only pop online for a few minutes for that sort of access, and there simply is no reason for the policy. However, like so many bureaucratic edicts handing down from on high to the poor insignificant patrons, there is nothing anyone can do, except vote to reduce library funding again, of course.

Another purely arbitrary edict posted on the wall for every patron to read: "Two people sharing a computer cannot have back-to-back log-ins." WHY? How is this wrong? How is two hours shared separately on two different computers different than two hours shared on a single computer? Why is the library punishing couples or partners as such?

I know the answer, of course. It is annoying when one is waiting in queu to discover that a computer that one thinks is going to come available will in fact be tied up for another hour. That doesn't make it wrong or unfair. It just means that the librarians may have to field complaints. Anything that causes them to have to deal with patrons is unwelcome, especially so when they have to act as a judge, which means that someone is likely to be unhappy enough to raise a stink, and then the head librarian may be called in, and NOBODY on the staff wants that..

Every library has their own policy as to how to deal with queus. The Fountain Valley library forces everyone to literally line up - in chairs (if available) and wait for their turn, unable to access any other library resources for the nonce. To their credit, they have attempted some limited remedial diversification of services. One computer is only available for brief on-line sessions. Another is only available via appointment by phone or in person at the information desk.

The Tustin library for several years has used a sign-up sheet. The weakness of this system is that it requires constant vigilence on the part of those who have signed on, especially now, as Tustin, after a decade of fighting the internet, has finally submitted to the truth that there are a lot more patrons interested in getting on the web than in reading the libary catalog. Thus, three of the six machines previously dedicated to the library catalog are now switched to the internet. However they are in a separate location in the library not easilly included in the internet queu. Very often, someone will observe one of these computers coming open and rush to grab it, having not signed in at all, on the assumption that they will probably not be noticed, and what is the library going to do to them anyway?

When disputes do arise, the information desk librarians have to deal with them. However, then the policy becomes a matter of whichever librarian has the ball. At one point a group of rather abusive large Russian men tried to insist that their position in the queu take precedence because other patrons had temporarily left the area to use other library resources. Of course, the point of a sign-up list was precisely that, to allow one to leave the immediate area, along with creating a reference as to who is waiting and what one's queu position is.

The information desk librarian, however, (the same one I discuss below censoring a patron for no reason.) was clearly reluctant to oppose these goons, who looked and sounded like Russian Mafia for real, and seemed ready to simply allow them to have their way. At which point, of course, I stepped in and got even LOUDER than the Russians, making it clear that I was not going to back down, and, sensing the balance of force majure shifting, the librarian finally did the right thing.

Note that this is all happening in the OC, the county that bills itself as the second "Silicon Valley." How embarrassing.

Then there is the issue of censorship. Several libraries have NO censorship whatsoever, and lurid movies of teens engaged in group sex might be running on a machine right next to a mom with a young kid. However, THAT problem could have been easily solved by correctly positioning the computers to begin with.

It is reasonable to assume that many people would not want their web activity to be freely available for public view. Without any presumption that the patron might want to view sexually explicit material, there are a host of perfectly innocent activities that one would want to keep private, especially those involving checking ones bank checking account, using a credit card online, writing a love letter, or writing a political blog taking an unpopular position. Many other examples easily come to mind.

Nonetheless, the libraries seem to have universally positioned their web computers so that anyone can spy upon the patron's activities without the patron realizing it. I.e., virtually every computer leaves the patron facing the wall, with a large open area behind them, where any hacker or identity thief could lurk. How easy it would have been to have corrected this from the get go. But that would not occur to a bureaucrat whose priority is inherently power, not performance. Oddly, the computers restricted to accessing the library catalog and databases ARE installed in little stations with partition for privacy, just not the internet computers where it matters most.

Other libraries, such as the Tustin branch, have a zero tolerance attitude, with big signs advising patrons that their sessions may be cancelled by library staff if they dare to display - or print (!) - "objectionable" material.* In one case, a patron was going to great lengths to make sure that no one else could see the sites he was visiting, using tiny browser windows, etc. Upset over witnessing - not the "objectionable" material, but the effects of the censorship, I chose to make a complaint.

*The actual notice reads: "Please be mindful or our patrons when viewing or printing explicit materials. The library reserves the right to end an internet session when such material is displayed." When I went to the librarian at the reference desk and expressed my views on their censorship policy, her response was to go the man and shut down his machine. Note that not a single person had complained about his activity, no children were anywhere near, and only by careful examination of the mostly closed windows he was using could anyone have determined that he might be viewing something "bad." This was not aimed at protecting other patrons, but simply at pure censorship. And here I thought that the library was about making information available.

The City of Orange's library - a separate system from the county libraries - takes this a step further. When I got my card from them and went on-line, I was served with a notice to the effect that the libary keeps a record of all your web activities, and, if you use the libary to access pornography, then you WILL be prosecuted. Under what unconstitutional law I'm not at all sure.

Then there is the choice of hardware and software. With all kinds of cheap, perfectly good clones on the market, the libraries chose to buy name brand equipment. However, that's a minor issue compared to the software. Any computer savvy nerd can be called upon to tell one just how truly awful the MicroSloth Windoze is, compared to any number of other platforms.

Specifically, however, Windoze (spelling intentional) is extremely slow, buggy and limited compared to any of the many versions of LINUX, which is why most internet servers run LINUX. And, LINUX is FREE! And, yes, people are used to Windoze. But LINUX can be easily configured by the Webmaster to look and feel so much like Windoze that very few people would notice any difference.

The advantages would have been much greater speed on the same hardware, vastly fewer bugs, and greater security. These are generally accepted conclusions throughout the professional computing community. The disadvantage would have been that the sysop would have to learn LINUX, and that MicroSloth, which considers LINUX its major competition, might try to exert pressure on the library system.

However, even running Windoze, there could have been fairly trivial efforts that would have yielded relatively vast returns for the patrons. It has only been in the past year or so that most of the library web computers have also offered MicroSloth Word. Even if MicroSloth is donating Word and Windoze to the system, it is not worth it when one considers that Star Office is available for free and is a better product, including a full-featured database, spreadsheet, paint, and even 3D rendering programs, besides the desktop publishing program which again can be configured to look and feel just about exactly like MicroSloth Office or Word.

Word has extremely limited capabilities regarding the use of images, and only the Costa Mesa Technical Branch library even offers the patron access to the antiquated piece of garbage called Windoze Paint. Thus, once again Patrons are restricted from access to the technology that any home user would have readily available, not due to price - the "Open Office Suite" is free for the download, and there are dozens of other free alternative word processors and paint programs - but due to the lack of incentive for a bureaucracy to do anything beyond a bare minimum.

The problem here is not the librarians on site. The librarians at the Costa Mesa Tech Branch have been the model of helpfulness, even when dealing with patrons who are abusive. At most of the other libraries, the librarians are simply ignorant about basic computer processes. I recall one librarian telling me early on that it was "illegal" to download onto a floppy. Another informed me that the library web computers not capable of being used for email.
Yet another told me that the couple dozen 486's the library had for library catalog access were "too slow" for web use. Note that the catalog access was itself on the web. And, running LINUX, a 486 is actually reasonably fast at web access. Anyway, since that day in the late '90's, the library catalog computers have been upgraded to Pentiums. And, as I mentioned, the Tustin library has actually converted three of those machines to be used for web access, only a decade late.

In summary, in virtually every respect, the socialist bureaucracy we call the library system has fallen down on the job regarding the information age. Ironic, considering that information is allegedly what the libraries are all about. Consider the comparison between a typical home library of books versus the public library. There is no comparison. The public library can afford to provide thousands of times the number of books and magazines that a typical individual could.

Yet virtually anyone on the web at home has vastly MORE access to information resources than at the very library. The only advantage that the library provides is access speed, due to having invested in high-speed servers. But speed alone is not the issue. One can only read so much. More important are the ability to collate, connect, link and record information, which is where the library system has made virtually no intelligent, informed effort.

And what about the ability to connect PEOPLE? Why hasn't the library system forged ahead in inviting people with like interests to use a library sponsored "meet-up," with facilities for on-line discussions of local issues and face-to-face meeting scheduling? Or patron generated reviews of literature? So far, the library has pretended that the information age

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stopped in the 19th Century.

As I discuss in some of my reponses to comments below, the libraries should and could be synergizing with the patrons. The top-down model of knowledge is over, so forget it, ok? It's over for academia, for business, for politics, for medicine, and for the library. People are becoming experts in their free time. We're becoming a nation and a culture of information junkies. Need to reduce gangs? Steer the kids to the library.

But if you plan on keeping them there, then you've got to provide them places to meet and talk and schmooze and organize peacefully and safely. So, what's wrong with a library combined with a coffee shop, a gym, a deli, a Mall? Who has not visited a Barnes and Noble and observed the dozens of teens sprawled accross every chair or bench, avidly poring through some book or magazine? Is Barnes and Noble the new library? Is the old library model simply obsolete?

The Tustin library has done some minor good work in this direction, in terms of bean bags in a special teen-oriented area. However, when I asked them about the possibility of using their meeting room (I had the idea of starting a second OC science fiction club), I was told that it was only open to "authorized groups" with non-profit status. OK. How many teenagers are likely to have jumped through the hoops to get non-profit status for their desired group?

This is by far not the first instance I have slammed into of obdurant socialist bureaucrats stimying access to information. When I lived in Columbia, S. Carolina in the mid '70's, I called the libary to ask how I could get them to carry particular books. I had in mind various books having to do with free-market economics and the libertarian philosophy. The librarian informed me that typically if a number of patrons requested a title, then they would look into it.

However, she was quite amused at the titles I mentioned and added that in the case of those books, I could forget it, because she and her Marxist friends had gotten jobs at the libary for the express purpose of keeping such reactionary trash out of the library and making sure that books more conducive to Marxism/Leninism made it to the shelves. When I asked for her name, she hung up on me.

(I note in that connection that certain books that one might expect to be on the shelves somewhere in any library system - especially the conservative OC system - are missing, such as the 1941 best-selling "Out of the Night," by Jan Valtin, which documented the evolution of the Comintern into the Checka, discussed how the Checka perverted Unions and political parties throughout Europe and SE Asia to support the Moscow line, and gave names, dates and places for dozens of Checka agents.)

In the early '80's, for several years I was using the xlnt Cal State Long Beach library quite a lot, and had paid the substantial fee for a card. I typically kept a dozen or more books out at any given time, and depended upon their notification cards to remind me to nenew them, as my schedule involved swing shifts that kept me disoriented as to dates and times.

Then I got a bill for about $170 in late fees, with no warning. It turned out that they had switched to a new computer-based system, and someone had only allowed for "x" number of characters in the address line for the cards. My address was a few characters longer, and so the cards had been going to someone else, a jerk who simply trashed them instead of notifying the Postal worker. When I protested the bill to the librarian in charge, she took obvious pleasure in refusing to forgive or reduce the bill, which of course I never paid.

The CSULB library during that period was open almost 24/7, and patrons could check out a room - for studying or meeting or whatever - not just books. As an example of what a real library could and can offer, I had missed the entire "Roots" TV series and discovered that CSULB had it on 16mm film. So, I checked out a room, a 16mm projector and screen and the series, spending most of a weekend watching episodes back to back.

I don't expect that sort of capability from the cash-strapped OC libraries. However, if they have a meeting room sitting empty, then WHY NOT make it available for a nominal fee to cover wear and tear, etc.?

What else? I've got 15K+ hits on this blog and only six responders. Let's hear some really radical ideas on how to fix the libraries. Go for it!