Month: December 2002

Remove unsightly damaged blog posts

You, dear reader, have pristine attention to detail, and never fail to close quotes in a blog post hyperlink.
I unfortunately slip every once in a while and leave off the close-quote, creating an unreadable post that can’t be removed from within the weblog editing interface. Fortunately, it’s possible to remove an offending post using the XML-RPC interface to the major blog tools.
Since I’m enough of a klutz to make this mistake on more than one weblog, I wrote a small python utility that can remove dead posts for an arbitrary weblog, using the form: kill(“blogconfig_filename”,badpostnumber). It builds on Mark Pilgrim’s python wrapper to the blogger API.
Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll post it for download. I will also be reassured to know of the existence of fellow keyboard klutzes.

Shul

Woke up in time to go to synagogue on Saturday morning, though I didn’t get there quite on time. Today was one of those Saturdays when I really only feel awake after an afternoon nap.
The minyan was held at the building of the non-denominational synagogue, with some members of that congregation. The rabbi, who was trained reform, is reaching out to the traditional-egalitarian minyanim, and they are holding joint services with us once a month.
The highlight of the service happened during Torah-reading, when the 2.5 year old daughter of some friends started to lug a chair toward the center of the room (people watched, and didn’t stop her yet). She moved the chair over to the bima, where her father had received an aliya. Then she climbed up on the chair, and watched curiously as the adults gathered around the scroll and the reader read.
Her father was anxious and moved to take her down, but the minyan organizer and the rabbi, who were reading and gabbai-ing, respectively, motioned to let her stay.
Hanna is very clever and energetic and mischievous. She drives her parents bananas.
Glossary:
aliya — being called to recite blessings for the Torah reading
bima — altar. A table in the center of the room, where the torah scroll is placed when it is being read. Taller than the line of sight of a 2.5 year old.
gabbai — the person who calls the stage-directions for the Torah-reading.
minyan — prayer-community, with a quorum of at least 10 adult Jews
shul — synagogue

Piracy is in the eye of the beholder

From a discussion on the O’Reilly article, copyright and policy, on the EFF-Austin mailing list, Doug Barnes wrote:

Although the O’Reilly article is certainly thought-provoking and raised a number of good points, I think it’s a mistake to try to reclaim the term “piracy” from its conventional meaning of “bad, illegal copying” to include “justified, but nonetheless illegal copying.”
Except for those holding to the farthest extremes of “information wants to be free”, we still need a word that means “bad, illegal copying.”
The catch is that the relevant industries are in the process of creating new forms of “illegal copying” that are seriously at odds with both
traditional and intuitive notions of “bad copying.” I seriously doubt that Steve thinks he’s committing theft when he sells a used book, gets up from in front of the TV during the commercial, or installs pop-up blocking software on his computer.
If we allow copyright holders to continue to vitiate fair use and the first sale doctrine through legislation like the DMCA, this is where we’re headed. Intuitively, we don’t feel like we’re “stealing” when we sell a used book, loan a book to a friend, and so on. We cheerfully get up from the TV during commercials. And — for now — we can still do these things.
That’s hardly a given for the future, however, as both the technology and the willingness of our government to impose draconian solutions are expanding the ability of copyright holders to micro-police what would previously have been allowed under traditional legal approaches.
To my mind, the proper role of copyright enforcement is to add enough friction to the process of obtaining content for free so that content creators can be rewarded. Where that’s not possible, mandatory licensing schemes are vastly preferable to having little policemen in every electronic device you purchase. See [this proposal from UT Law School] (and various other proposals out there.) I don’t think that content creators should be able to micro-manage their content to a level of control such as “may not be read aloud.”
I agree with Adina and O’Reilly that what this is ultimately about is control by publishing conglomerates, not about providing proper
incentives to content creators.

Reprinted with permission.

Jogging

About 9:30 pm. It was damp, about 50. I love running in cool weather. I’ve been doing the Rodney Yee yoga tape several times a week and then running/swimming occasionally. Happy that I can still do the Stacy Park run (1.5-2 mi) without stopping. Basic fitness is good.
I ran the way back on the street. There are trees every 20 feet or so. When you’re getting tired, you just run to each next tree. Should avoid the Stacy Pool parking lot after dark; can’t imagine any good reason why folks would park there at 9:30 pm.
Christmas lights: between Little Stacy Park and Riverside, the houses are up on a hill looking down on the creek. One house has a small pine tree all lit up, about storey high overlooking the street. Further up the street, some folks just wrapped a couple of live oak branches in lights. Either lazy or abstract. At the corner of East Monroe and Live Oak, there are foot high letters made of mini-lights, spelling out “peace on earth”. Which is meaningful every year but especially this year when folks are preparing war in our name.
I used to feel crowded by Christmas lights. This is pretty common for Jews; in a country that’s majority culturally Christian, the assumption is that everyone celebrates Christmas; the ubiquitous decorations, music, and holiday wishes feel intrusive. After having dated a Catholic guy for years, I appreciate them. I can translate them now.
Christmas music in retail stores still makes me want to shoot out the speakers.

Brilliant Tim O’Reilly essay

Piracy is progressive taxation.

  • For most authors, their enemy is obscurity, not piracy. Piracy benefits the little guy and is an irritant to the big guys
  • For publishers, piracy is a manageable cost of doing business, like shoplifting. It doesn’t kill the business — Microsoft is profitable despite warez newsgroups
  • Customers will pay for good digital distribution; O’Reilly’s Safari is an example
  • In the world of digital distribution there will still be a role for publishers and distributors. For reasons of math and marketing, intermediaries will emerge to bridge the gap between millions of buyers and millions of sellers

And more great stuff.

18th century letters

Mitch Ratcliffe writes that weblogs are like 18th century letters, a social form in which the literate class wrote to each other expecting to be circulated and published.
Mitch’s perspective on this feels right to me. Some people use weblogs as diaries. I use the weblog to publish letters. Most blog entries here, including the book reviews and news commentary, were things that I was already writing and sending to one or two friends by email. The blog lets me share those thoughts with more people without committing spam.

Public domain considered creative junkyard

Writing about the copyright dinner, Chip Rosenthal says:
During the discussion of public domain, a metaphor occurred to me that I kind of like. I suggested that the public domain is becoming considered a creative junkyard, where we cast off stuff when it is no longer of value. That, of course, is not the purpose of the public domain. It would be good if we can turn this perception around, so that people can understand the value of having material in the public domain. Otherwise, where will Disney get the ideas to steal for their great movies?

EFF-Austin copyright dinner last night.

The copyright dinner last night went well. We had a good turnout – 10 people to talk about copyright issues.
It was a smart, knowledgable crowd with diverse interests — code, art, law. We had an interesting conversation about problems with current copyright policy, and ways that we can fight bad laws and change people’s understandings about culture as property. The discussion was more collaborative and less debate-ful than previous, more free-form EFF- meetings, for better and worse…
At the end of the meeting we brainstormed about ways to get the word out to legislators, press, and the community, and have folks on point on point to do homework and co-ordinate action.
The next session will have Beth Macknik leading a discussion on on databases, privacy/surveillance. I’m really looking forward to the next session. The Total Information Act has me really worried. Beth has a lot of great background knowledge on the issues, and excellent ideas about approaches.