I wonder if Schneier also gets these things. Nah, he probably gets Mafiosi who want to break into banks. Perhaps I am blessed to only have to deal with… well, the attached.

People: be sympathetic to me, and to Alejandra. Once you too were that young and tiny nitpicky interpersonal things were your entire universe. In fact, some thirty-something-year-olds I know are still that way inclined, though I am somewhat thankful that that playing MIST – including being repeatedly and multiply killed by Knkknkqqkl, you know who you are matey-boy – beat most of that out of me whilst I was still in my teens.

Alejandra: speaking directly to you, yes you’re pissed-off, so you probably want to wait a day or two before talking to your “friend” about this. If you do choose to talk to your friend about this, pick a time of day when you’ll both be relaxed, maybe in the morning not long after having had breakfast?

It’s not wise to assume that it is your friend who has “stolen” that Geocities account-name just because you can’t register it. It might, but it might not have been your friend. The world is a very big, very old place, and you will find that most of the ideas you will ever have in your life will have been had by someone else beforehand, possibly many years ago. “Google” can provide you with a degree of proof for this. When you can start typing ideas and concepts into Google and nothing comes-up at all, then you will be a very clever person, indeed.

When that day comes, be a little reticent about your success. Don’t blab about it. By then you will also know what to do with the idea.

In the meantime, yes I can sympathise. I like to be original, too. It’s fun and nice to think of an idea, craft a joke, or (for me) to write a computer program, and it’s annoying if your friends recycle your work and present it as their own in order to make themselves more popular, to get boy/girlfriends, or to get a job promotion without citing your help.

It’s not just you, or me to whom that happens; in my life I’ve heard many stories of that sort. I keep hearing them, even today.

People who re-use others work eventually get a reputation for doing so, and eventually their lack of creativity will show them up to be shallow, not actually very clever, and not actually very interesting. If your friend really is copying you, perhaps she doesn’t have many ideas of her own.

Some people would actually consider her to be paying you a compliment through imitation, trying to look like you, trying to act like you. Don’t worry about that. Some years from now you’ll be playing for higher stakes than “who was the first to think of a particular website name”; instead your ability to be original will be your fame, your fortune, and perhaps your career. It will guide your life, and hen there will be money and the welfare of your dependents on the line.

Then, and only then, will you need to take matters more seriously.

However: what I recommend for you right now is to think of a better name, create your website, and actually make it a really good website. Make it useful, interesting, pretty and fun. The content is more important than the name. When you’ve done the first version, tell your friends about it. Make it better than the websites of people who imitate it. Keep changing it, keep updating it, and keep moving.

Enjoy watching the others try to keep up, while you’re at the head of the pack.

– alec

Subject: COPYCAT!
Date: 2 October 2005 01:07:00 BST

Hey. Well the main reason for which I write this e mail is that I want to find out a password of someone’s yahoo account. Before you say “piss off” let me tell you the reason.

I want to do a webpage with a name of a character I invented. The only place I know of which is easy to use is geocities, yea…maybe I’m so ignorant. The point is that I was about to create my account with the name I tell you, and I found out that someone had already taken that name. And it’s not a usual name, for if it was, I wouldn’t have bothered to even write to you and I would have simply gotten another name, but I knew there was only one person who could have taken it. My “friend” who is also copying my and another girl’s stuff. She suddenly likes the bands we like and has all of their cd’s in a day. She sees some nice clothe thing we wear and has one exactly equal to it the next day…we want to go somewhere and she also wants it in a second, we make a team and she auto adds herself to it. And I didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop it and get the hell out of my life…so um recently I got fed up with her attitude and I’m now pissed at her….and more now that I found about the account…she realy doesn’t have a life. So…after all of this maybe corny stuff for you about which you might not give a peanut, I want to ask you if you have a solution to it, either you know how to find out her password to get into her account and delete it, or you know any other solution like where I can find a free host as geocities to use the name I tell you…I dunno…um that’s all I guess, If you ever saw a girl like her, you’d understand.

Thanks a lot…bye

Alejandra