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.

well, if i had actually purchased shares in apple a year ago, when i said it sound like a good idea, i would have seen a healthy 20% return on my investment. my hypothetical investment in yahoo would have more than wiped out those returns, though.

one of the wacky ideas that is part of extreme programming is continuous integration. i think it's a great idea. tools like tinderbox take this even further. one of the things i've regretted never doing in my previous projects is really good automated testing.

one sort-of-related thing i can't live without is continuous peer review, by way of automated emails from cvs. i have a finely-honed unified diff reading muscle.

first off, the people behind the california official voter information site and the mailed booklet deserve a huge pat on the back for some really strong design. los angeles county could learn a lot from these folks.

anyway, because i can, i'm going to start writing about how i plan to vote on the various ballot measures, and perhaps the primary races (although i haven't decided what party's primary to vote in—i'm registered as a non-partisan).

prop. 40 would authorize $2.6 billion in bonds for natural resources conservation, state and local park acquisition and improvement, and historical and cultural resources preservation purposes. these are all extremely worthy causes, but on general principles, i'm opposed to spending money that isn't in hand. so this will get a no vote from me. (the actual cost to repay the $2.6 billion in bonds would be about $4.3 billion, or $3.2 billion in today's dollars.)

there's a vote yes on 40 site (pretty weak design). there's no specific 'vote no on 40' site, as far as i can tell. the la times says to vote yes.

crazy eggheads have figured out how much static electricity insects generate when they walk around, and are looking at ways to use this static electricity, which helps makes pollen stick to the insects, in traps that use insect-killing spores.