February, 22, 2002 archives

mark pilgrim has published a bunch of useful web accessibility and css (more) links recently. kudos to him.

zimran ahmed wrote a very compelling analysis of the true costs of copyright extension (with some related thoughts on limited vs. unlimited). hopefully the supreme court will do the right thing in eldred v. ashcroft.

judge patel is making the record labels prove they own the copyrights they claim to and is questioning whether they've used those copyrights to monopolize the online distribution of music. right on.

spinsanity is a great weblog that takes on the massive amounts of spin in american political discourse, such as fritz hollings incorrectly asserting enron connections to various bush administration members (not that there isn't a huge number of connections to be made) and rush and ollie north claiming daschle has allied himself with the “axis of evil” because he doesn't like the simple-minded phrase.

the (currently fairly dim) prospect of moving has me thinking about what sort of apartment i would want to move into, and what sort of “possessions churn” i would undergo. i'm pretty solidly set, electronics-wise (although a full set of speakers for surround sound would be nice). a new couch and recliner would be awesome. there's no end of kitchen-related things i'd love to buy. and i find the notion of locating a job and living situation that lets me ditch my car positively yummy.

now i just need to find the dimmer on those prospect controls to make them a little brighter.

i do know that selling off books at half.com has been a great experience, and a good excuse to walk to the post office (and office depot, for envelopes) regularly.

o'reilly is going to publish the open-source manuals for some projects, starting with the mysql reference manual. i'm a little surprised the php manual isn't on their radar. they still haven't come out with a real php book (besides the mostly script-authored pocket reference), although programming php will apparently finally come out next month.

this review of the book republic.com is great, and includes an email from bill gates about how he never claimed 640K was enough. it sounds like an interesting book, at least as far as its hypotheses about the requirements for both unexpected and shared experiences in a “well-functioning system of free expression.” obviously i don't think much of the notion that the internet generally acts against these requirements, although you can easily see little eddies where it does.

paul prescod has written a fantastic article about rest as an architectural style for web services.