December, 18, 2001 archives

why to boycott disney, and roll back the copyright term to fourteen years, from an article about legislating copy protection: Disney's Padden wasn't buying it. "There is no right to fair use," Padden said at the event. "Fair use is a defense against infringement."

suddenly, all my neighbors are moving. both my upstairs neighbor and the neighbor across the hall have moved in the last week. i wonder what they know that i don't. they both loaded up big ol' trucks of stuff. if i move any significant distance (more than could be driven round-trip in a day), my plan is to give away enough stuff so everything i own fits in a rental van. the bulkiest belonging will be my television, and even keeping that is questionable.

i want a computer that has: two 100base-T ports, a pcmcia slot, room for at least one 3.5" hard drive, stereo sound out, two serial ports, a parallel port, and a processor that can run linux and is at least powerful enough to do mp3 decoding while other stuff is going on. low power consumption and noise are key. it would be so nice to replace the midsize-tower monstrosity that sits under my stereo with something no larger than a family-size kleenex box.

why doesn't yahoo! groups make it possible for someone to pay to not have advertising appear in the messages to the mailing list? it seems like that would be a drop-dead-simple revenue stream for yahoo. they should make it open like blogspot so that the burden doesn't fall on the list owner.

i'd heard good things about steve silberman's piece on autism from wired, but wow. a very well-told story of how autism (and asperger's syndrome) is on the rise in silicon valley.

to replace my cheap duffel bag that disintegrated upon return from my last trip, i went to the army surplus store and got a canvas swiss army rucksack. it's in perfect condition, and it rocks. $20. (checking luggage is for chumps.)