Over the weekend, I went to see Harold and Maude at the Red Vic with Biella and some other people. I first saw Harold and Maude at Biella's place last year.
I also watched Shaolin Soccer at home with Zack. This is a comedy about a soccer team which uses super martial arts powers to beat other teams. We saw it in Chinese with no subtitles, but it was still pretty easy to understand. :-)
There's a new release of Knoppix out from Klaus Knopper. If you have a CD burner and a PC which can boot CDs, you should try it out (and let me know what you think, because I don't have those things at home).
Napster sent their VP for policy, Manus Cooney, to a CPTWG meeting once, around six months ago. The really funny thing was that, after he'd introduced himself, all the participants refrained from using the verb "Napsterize", or the noun "Napsterization", ordinarily so common at CPTWG. (The same thing happened, if I remember correctly, when Manus joined a BPDG conference call.)
At subsequent meetings, and on subsequent calls, with Manus absent, people went back to talking about "Napsterization".
Dan Bricklin reiterates the argument that casts copyright infringement as malum prohibitum rather than malum in se. (I've argued that; it still seems to be the biggest issue which divides people with regard to copyright.)
Bricklin is also proliferating examples to show that there's some arbitrariness in the scope of copyright's coverage; it's not a clean and obvious thing dictated by some simple principle. Actually, it turns out that it's the result of political struggle and negotiation, and without much public scrutiny.
On Monday, I took a trip along the full length of the F Market historic streetcar line, to honor Donald Chee, who was responsible for its creation. I was on car 1007. (Take a look at the whole fleet.) I boarded at Embarcadero, rode the car out to Fisherman's Wharf, and then back again all the way down Market into the Castro.
The F Market is a great treasure of San Francisco. It turns out that it only opened a few years ago, shortly before I moved to the Bay Area. It's one of those things I imagined had been here forever.
At the end of the line, the car turned and started to follow the J Church route. I'd heard that the historic streetcars sometimes run along the J route, although I don't understand exactly how or when they decide to do it. This was very nice, too, because I got to see the wonderful view where the J ascends behind Dolores Park on its way into Noe Valley, and it was very convenient because the J route runs by 30th and Mission, pretty easy walking distance from my apartment.
I also drank some lemonade that evening in honor of Mr. Chee.
I got a haircut.
FISA appeals court
Via RRE: the SF Gate covers the existence of the FISA appeals court. This is the court which Bamford pointed out is the only court in the United States which has never heard a case. It will meet for the first time soon in order to hear its first-ever case. If only the session weren't secret and if only people other than the U.S. Justice Department could attend it, it would be very interesting to hear the oral argument.
But oral argument has got to be really different when you don't have to argue against anybody. You would think that the FISA law would at least have appointed some kind of office of advocati diaboli who would be responsible for arguing against the DOJ. (One obvious choice would be to permit the Federal Public Defender, say, for the District of Columbia to come in and argue against the DOJ. Or to allow the Federal Public Defenders of all districts to form a committee. Or just to appoint a special counsel responsible for trying to rebut the DOJ's arguments. But no, it's just the DOJ and the judges. And you'll never get to hear what the DOJ has to say in its defense.)
As I was eating lunch today, I got up and turned around to go purchase another anise cookie. My action was an example of anise-otropy.
Contact: Seth David Schoen
