Finally, I can Type again with more than one hand...

Surgery went well, but recovery will take a while, but it is getting better.


















Don’t scroll down if you have a week stomach.

Surgery Tomorrow - For Palmar fibromatosis

I have been suffering with Palmar fibromatosis for some years.

The middle fingers of my right hand have been slowly curling inwards for about 20 years. Finally it has reached a point where I need action. I am at the point where I can barely open my hand to a 90 Degree angle.

I am having surgery tomorrow. The first surgery I have had since having my tonsils out 53 years ago. I am, naturally apprehensive, but it is necessary.

Palmar fibromatosis (Dupuytren’s contracture) is a condition in which tissue in the palm of the hand covering the finger tendons thickens and scars. The affected tissue, called the palmar fascia, becomes tight and shortened, contracting the fingers inwards toward the palm.

I am told it is prevalent among people with Viking ancestry. Take from that what you will.

Copyright, History and Disappearing Books

Copyright is a legal device to protect the creator of a work from having that work copied and devalued without his permission. The definition is: The exclusive legal right to (publish, distribute, sell, perform) a literary, musical or artistic property.

There was no need for copyright before the printing press, because the only way to copy anything was by hand, and the process was slow. If you wanted a copy of the Bible, you hired a scribe, who would then work for three years making an (error prone) copy. The cost was high, and the results were in themselves an original work of art.

Early Copyright

The republic of Venice granted the first privilege for a book in 1486. The first copyright privilege in England bears the date 1518, it was for two years. It was 15 years later than that of the first privileges issued in France.

in April 1710 In Great Britain the Statute of Anne marked the world's first copyright statute. It granted publishers of a book legal protection of 14 years with the commencement of the statute. It also granted 21 years of protection for any book already in print.

American publishers regarded the work of foreign (i. e., non-US) authors as unprotected 'common' property. Thus, numerous unauthorized American re-prints appeared until 1891, when the United States finally stopped sanctioning literary piracy. In 1896 the American Congress joined the international copyright union, despite petitions by such noted British novelists as Charles Dickens, far earlier, in 1837.

It was not until complaints by American authors such as Mark Twain, who was fed up with publishers' ignoring American writers in favour of English writers whose books could be re-printed more cheaply because there were no royalty costs. A further point of aggravation for Twain was the Canadian piracy of his work. This resulted in cheap copies of his books flooding across the border within days of their release in the US.

He was hurt badly in 1876, when a Canadian publisher issued Tom Sawyer before the American edition even appeared.

Concerns about Canadian piracy of works by American authors lead to the U. S. Copyright Act in 1886.

The 20th Century - Things Start Going Bad

In 1998, the Walt Disney Company realized Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse was due to expire in 2003. Rather than allowing Mickey to enter the public domain, Disney campaigned Congress for an extension bill. (I'm sorry but who really cares about mickey any more? I don't see Mickey Mouse comics in the news agent, and I doubt children really have more than a passing interest. It is the 21st century. The Mickey Mouse Revue, an automated musical tribute to Disney songs that opened Walt Disney World in 1971, was sent to Tokyo's Disneyland in 1980 and was warehoused for good in 2009. I think people go to Disneyland/world for more modern attractions, despite THOSE ears)

Disney’s campaign donations - more than $6.3 million in 1997-98, helped Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This extended the term of protection by 20 years for works copyrighted after January 1, 1923. Works copyrighted since 1978 got "life plus 70" rather than the existing "life plus 50". Works made by corporations got 95 years. Works copyrighted before 1978 were protected for 95 years.

The Modern Context

Instead of Copyright protecting an author or publisher long enough for him to ensure an income from his work, Copyright law has become a stranglehold on invention, creativity and thinking.

I live in Australia, so America's recently found righteous indignation over copyright law should have little impact. But that is not the case.

America has used the DMCA to shove its intellectual-property laws down the throat of every country it does business with.

A Cnet article says, in part:
Australia will be required to adopt U.S. intellectual-property rules, including laws covering the "circumvention" of copy protection, and software patents that have alarmed advocates of open-source software, according to a trade agreement that President Bush signed on Tuesday...

A less-noticed section of the free-trade agreement deals with copyright.
"The agreement strengthens protections for intellectual property and promotes electronic commerce," Bush said, before signing a bill committing the United States to the arrangement. "Our two nations are committed to the reduction of trade barriers and other restrictions that are keeping too much of the world from the kind of prosperity and opportunity that the developed world takes for granted."

The agreement requires Australia to recognize software patents, to extend the duration of copyrighted works and to essentially adopt key portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That 1998 law has been attacked by computer scientists and open-source programmers in the United States as stifling innovation and outlawing legitimate activities like making a back-up copy of a legally purchased DVD.

Australia will be required to enact laws punishing anyone who "circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access" to copyrighted work or who distributes hardware or software that is designed for circumvention or is marketed that way. As in the DMCA, some limited exceptions permit such activity by authorized researchers and government employees for "the sole purpose of preventing the access of minors to inappropriate online content."

One section goes further than existing U.S. law and commits both nations to enacting bans on tinkering with "rights management information." A related bill is pending, but has not been approved, in the U.S. Senate.

A more opinionated comment is here:

The Australian Governments version:

The short description is that this law is forcing the rest of the world to enact the seriously broken American copyright laws.

Down to today.

This article by The Atlantic highlights the problems with these modernized copyright laws. They make it almost impossible to print or reprint works from the near past. The fear that someone who holds copyright (for 90 years in some cases) makes it an exercise in terror to print anything.

If an author has died or disappeared (or if a publisher has folded, and not passed copyright back to the author, a common problem) it is difficult if not impossible to track down the copyright owner for the years or decades involved.

If I want a copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau (I have an electronic copy on my Kindle, and a paper version here beside me) published in 1854 it is not a problem. If I want something from the 1950's I can always find Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye or Fahrenheit 451. But most books from that period are gone.

The Missing 20th Century

The Article published by The Atlantic suggests that the books written from the 1920s to the 1990s are now a disappearing breed. Why? Because the copyright laws described above are making it almost impossible to print or distribute these books.

This article looks at 2500 newly printed (paper) books selected at random. These are new books. They are not eBooks, or used. They are in the Amazon warehouse (or close by).

Books published before 1923 are free of copyright, hence they fall in the public domain and can be re-printed. The graph comes from University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald.

The Conclusion

This is not a suggestion that copyright is wrong. The Idea of allowing an author to profit from his work is, in my opinion right and necessary. Not may people will continue to write or create with no chance of profit from their labours. Everyone is in the habit of eating. But the thought that a literary work, or anything else must continue to be subject to copyright long after that authors death, and out to 90 years borders on the insane.

images from Flickr by addulla-al-muhairi, joe-shalabotnik, moonlightbulb

Life after Lipitor

In my last post I described the effects of three years of Lipitor on my memory. This event has changed how I think, what I do, how I work. Unfortunately it has caused me to find barriers that are self-created.

My mother was poorly educated but very intelligent. She taught me to accept my limitations, but not to invent them.

The limitations imposed by struggling to retain vital information for longer than minutes has made me completely re-define my life. Now I discover the limitation was imposed by a drug. The manufacturers of that drug were aware of the problem. They state that they have 145,000,000 YEARS of patient usage from which they gather data. That means that Cholesterol patients have been taking Lipitor for a combined total of 145 Million patient-years.

If two percent of patients are suffering memory loss that is a total of 2,900,000 years of misery and suffering spread across patients taking Lipitor.

• That is 38,666 lifetimes.
• That is 116,000 people taking Lipitor from age 50 to age 75.
• That is 290,000 people taking it for 10 years.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of people who are victims of a simple statistic - only two percent have memory problems. A percentage too small to worry about.

• I am one of the two percent and I resent the three years that have been taken from me.
• I resent a growing business that has been reduced to a shadow of its former self by my inability to move it forward.
• I resent the personal trauma I have suffered believing I was incapable of performing any longer at a sustained level that I have maintained for decades.
• I resent the loss of confidence in my abilities that I now have to re-establish.
• I resent the sleepless hours at night worrying about the result of my descent into Dementia or Alzheimer's on my family.

I am ANGRY.

Fortunately I know I will rise above this and move on, but the damage will take some time to repair.





Images from Flickr by D Sharon Pruitt, pink sherbet photography and Caseywest. 

How Lipitor Stole Three Years Of My Life

Over the last two to three years I have begun to have memory problems. I can't remember when they started, but that is hardly surprising. My son said it started as if someone had flipped a switch, perhaps he is right.


I had a computer business. I was writing software for a number of businesses. I also did computer repairs. Many of those involved virus removal and cleaning up Windows to improve performance. My memory became so bad that I would tell someone I would call that afternoon and then forget to go. I would bring a computer back to the office for repair and forget where it came from. This is not the way to run a business. The business languished.


I began to wonder if I was developing Dementia or Alzheimer's. I allowed the business to run down to nothing, and began working as a casual bus driver. I could not remember the number of the bus I was driving, but that was OK, it was printed on the bulkhead above my head. The route was on file cards, and the ticketing computer told me where each stop was.

If Its Tuesday, This Must be Launceston

I was living in a fog where doing each task required intense concentration. Old information was at my fingertips. I could remember the IP addresses of servers I installed 10 years ago, but not today's date. The current time became a puzzle. I would drive past a café and wonder if my friends where there having lunch and then realize it was 7:30AM. My years of experience developing software, designing and managing security installations and flying all over Australia installing high priced electronic and mechanical systems was  far in the past.


Shadows lengthened across my mind. I own 5 computers. I would estimate I have re-installed operating systems and software on them about 100 times in 3 years. Sometimes I would install, remove and re-install 3 times in one day, trying to get it right. Then I would re-install a few weeks later just to find I had settled on the current setup for a good, but forgotten reason.


I began taking copious notes about everything, writing numbers on my hand, Post-it-Notes, in Tomboy Notes or pocket notebooks. I often could not find the notes.

The Lipitor Effect

Then a friend told me he had been having memory problems until he stopped using Lipitor (Atorvastatin), a common Cholesterol medication. I had been Diagnosed with high Cholesterol several years ago. I was on a fairly high dosage. I had begun taking it at about the same time as my memory began to go.


After a couple of months I decided to try a change. My doctor was quite offended. He assured me that if there was a problem with Lipitor, it would be in the medical literature and he would know. He humoured me, and suggested I stop taking Lipitor for 3 months

The New Me

A month after stopping the drug, I feel as if I am waking up from a long dream. I can remember the date without looking a my watch. I can remember not only what bus I am driving, but which one I drove yesterday. I can feel the ability to multi-task coming back. I feel like the shadows are shortening and the sun is rising after three years of darkness.

• I want to write software.
• I want to ring old friends and tell them I am back.
• I want to get that business working as I intended when I started it.
• I want back into life.

Look out, Phil Stephens is coming BACK! And this is after less than a month without Lipitor - the next months should be interesting...


Lipitor-Side Effects are discussed here, and a video about memory loss cased by Lipitor is here by ABC news

Images from Flickr by Peter Heilberg, Quinn.Anaya and Xornalcerto,