Coins
I keep thinking that the Real coins look strikingly similar to the Euro coins. Don't you agree? Is this just coincidental?
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I keep thinking that the Real coins look strikingly similar to the Euro coins. Don't you agree? Is this just coincidental?
Sumana laments the loss of Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.
Apart from my memories of coming back to Berkeley to shop there during the dot-com boom, I remember when Wolfgang saw the façade of the Fred Cody building for the first time and misread it as "Fried Cody Building". She drew a cartoon about her interpretation: THE FRIED CODY BUILDING IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU.
Fred Cody, I understand, started his bookstore instead of pursuing an academic career because of the loyalty oath controversy. That bookstore has been one of the most wonderful things about Berkeley.
Anirvan has his own set of recollections of Cody's. For my part, I remember taking people to Berkeley for bookstore tours -- and Cody's was always the centerpiece.
"Wow!" I gasp; I think Mika+Mako an artful group, for those newlywed Bostonian friends succeeded: bit by bit spelling math, making, in poetic vows, two apt promises.
("prima fugit?")
I had a fantastic day on Saturday. In the morning, I joined the Defective By Design anti-DRM protest at the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco. You can see me in several of Quinn's photographs -- I'm wearing a blue shirt and holding up a somewhat wind-battered sign that quotes Steve Jobs on our right to use music "on all other devices that [we] own". (Thanks for reminding me that Steve Jobs said that, Don.) I am also one of the few people not wearing a hazmat suit.
That protest was attended by Jon Johansen (who has just moved to San Francisco) and his friend Monique, and I ended up having a delicious lunch with them, Praveen, John Gilmore, and someone named Serge over at Tu Lan.
The protest was remarkably mellow; Apple had one security guard who was polite and respectful to us, a fair number of employees reading our signs and gossiping about us, and customers going in and out and frequently taking flyers. Nobody harassed us or called the police. This is a nice contrast with another anti-DRM protest I participated in in the Fourth and Market area a few years ago -- at the Sony Metreon when the first lawsuits were filed over DeCSS. I think the San Francisco Apple protest was mellow on all sides; we neglected to chant anything.
After lunch, I got to see my friend Michelle for a little while; we visited Josh's cat, and then we took BART to the East Bay together.
In Oakland I met my friends from the Cena Latina and went off to the North Bay for an excellent Cena at the home of a Latin teacher friend who is using the modus vivus (immersion teaching) and teaching out of Ørberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Explicata. We met one of his students, a high school sophomore who speaks fantastic Latin and who has the good fortune to be headed to Rome this summer to study Latin there. After dinner, we played a game called Rapio, the Latin version of Grabble. I finally had an opportunity to use my Latin anagramming and word visualization skill -- heretofore always useless in English-language Boggle games -- and I won by a pretty decent margin. But my opponents were extremely worthy and made some brilliant plays.
John Piazza talked about creating a Latin-speaking bicycle club in Oakland called SBQR (Societas Bi Quercopolis Rotarum), a hilarious example of tmesis (from "Societas Quercopolis Birotarum", lit. "Oakland Bicycle Society"). If you don't get the joke, see also SPQR. I would totally join.
On BART on my way to and from Oakland, I read about historical linguistics.
My friend Michelle is planning to compete in the AIDS Marathon in Florence, Italy, in November. I'm proud of her, and I wanted to let my readers know that you can help by donating to her fundraising campaign.
What is the world coming to when even social conservatives (and their editors) don't know how to decline in Latin?
Mr. Bauer, it should be "e pluribus plures".
Cool, I got the Steve Jobs comment into BusinessWeek!
Responses to commenters:
FSF should protest against Microsoft too: They did (as the BusinessWeek article notes), at WinHEC, because of (among other things) Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" program, which is seen as a competitor to the iTunes platform. The Defective By Design campaign sees both Apple's and Microsoft's DRM as wrongful attempts to protect each company's market share at the expense not only of the other company but of end users' rights.
Record labels, not Apple, are to blame: There's a lot of blame to go around, but an Apple lawyer said publicly that Apple would not abandon FairPlay restrictions if the record labels gave it permission to do so. A music industry trade association in the U.K. has stated that Apple's use of FairPlay is a competitive problem (although it does not necessarily agree with Defective By Design that the use of DRM in general is a problem). And Apple is now actively supporting legislation that prevents people from working around these restrictions. Did the record labels require Apple to do that?
Apple competitors are hypocritical because they also create (or want to create) proprietary products that prevent interoperability: That's often the case, so we need to get in the habit of criticizing everyone for doing this and try to help the press understand (as BusinessWeek understood) that there are people whose objections run deeper than any one company's business strategy.
Users can choose other products: That's the main thing that the Defective By Design protest was encouraging people to do. The most common position among protestors is not necessarily that there should be an antitrust investigation of Apple, but that users should stop feeling sympathetic to Apple's business strategy and that the law should stop protecting it by threatening technologies that create interoperability.
Apple was legally required to use DRM: The use of DRM is mostly an industry habit and a cultural problem, not a law; DRM-less devices are mostly protected (and we need help to keep them that way). There are on-line music stores that don't use any DRM at all. It will be progress when users value the freedom (and platform competition) that these stores provide.
FairPlay is necessary or useful to stop iTunes content from appearing on file-sharing networks: According to Eric Garland, who monitors file-sharing networks for a living, every song in the iTunes music store -- including iTunes exclusive releases -- is immediately available in file-sharing networks. FairPlay is a complete failure in preventing iTunes Music Store songs from being shared in file-sharing networks -- and the "burn to CD" feature guarantees that it will continue to be. If the music industry wanted Apple to try to prevent people from sharing songs in P2P networks, it would need to start by objecting to "burn to CD". FairPlay has a much greater effect on paying music customers' decisions about what portable music player and operating system to use than it does on the availability of infringing copies of songs in file-sharing networks. And since Apple said it wouldn't drop FairPlay even if the labels agreed, it looks like FairPlay was designed that way; Apple is laughing all the way to the bank when someone repeats the theory that FairPlay is "necessary for content protection". More like platform protection.
The Microsoft alternative is worse: The Free Software Foundation -- which organized the Defective By Design campaign -- is certainly not promoting Microsoft or any of Microsoft's products as an alternative to Apple's. And they're certainly not being paid by Microsoft to criticize DRM! Although this campaign is focused on the problem of DRM in general, anyone who assumes that criticism of Microsoft means "use Apple" or criticism of Apple means "use Microsoft" has gone astray. Indeed, the assumption that Microsoft's DRM is the same kind of problem as Apple's is what led Defective By Design to launch its first protest at Microsoft's WinHEC conference.
In a sense, the fame of the "Mac/PC" platform rivalry -- just like the "Democrat/Republican" rivalry -- is an obstacle to learning about new issues. If anyone criticizes Apple for labor issues (as a recent article did) or Microsoft for using digital rights management, the prominence of "Mac vs. PC" makes the general public assume that the critic wants everyone to switch to "the other platform". This also makes it easier to dismiss a critic of anything as an opportunistic proponent of "the other side" (even in cases where the critic supports a third alternative or no particular alternative at all). Thus any critic of a Democrat can be dismissed by Democrats as a "Republican" and any critic of a Republican can be dismissed by Republicans as a "Democrat". This particular protest campaign was organized by advocates of free software (if you like, of "Linux"), but Robert Green Ingersoll properly said that "[t]he destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not." In my office at EFF we have a lot of Mac users who are quite attached to what Apple has accomplished, but who think that Steve Jobs is doing wrong by users with FairPlay.
Perhaps our culture would do well to give more respect to would-be "destroyer[s] of weeds, thistles, and thorns" without presuming that they are selling something, or even that they have an alternative in mind at all. Certainly all kinds of advocates want to be able to point out problems with existing business practices, even if they don't know an alternative that they would rather you buy.
No, I'm not leaving EFF. But my colleague, Chris Palmer, is -- he's going to work with iSEC. Therefore, EFF is advertising for a new staff technologist job opening.
Take a look at Wendy Seltzer's debate with Fritz Attaway (you have to follow another link from Wendy's blog post to read the text at the Wall Street Journal, and, in my browser, the text is squashed in a column at the very right hand edge of the page).
Both of them are quite eloquent. I think the most remarkable and important thing about the debate is Fritz Attaway's repeated statement to the effect that price discrimination (1) is good for customers, and (2) is the most important reason for DRM. (He observes that, without DRM, every retail media transaction would be a sale, or at least users would have the ability to treat it as a sale. And then he says that users who prefer to pay less for fewer rights would regret being denied the opportunity to disable themselves from making uses that they didn't pay for.)
I think it's useful to have an MPAA representative say that DRM is about price discrimination rather than "copyright". Almost every DRM proponent's argument about "new business models" seems to be an argument about price discrimination. Price discrimination is, I think, the fire that produces the smoke in the DRM wars.
I decided to run Microsoft's new Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office under Wine to see whether it displayed any kind of EULA. The result:
MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS CREATIVE COMMONS ADD-IN FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE
These license terms are an agreement between Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) and you. Please read them. They apply to the software named above, which includes the media on which you received it, if any. The terms also apply to any Microsoft
for this software, unless other terms accompany those items. If so, those terms apply.
BY USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THEM, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE. IF YOU COMPLY WITH THESE LICENSE TERMS, YOU HAVE THE RIGHTS BELOW.
1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. You may install and use the software on any of your devices.
2. DISTRIBUTION. You may copy and distribute the software; provided, however:
a. You may not:
b. For any software you distribute, you must:
c. Separation of Components. The components of the software are licensed as a single unit. You may not separate the components and install them on different devices.
3. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights.
Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. For more information, see www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. You may not:
4. EXPORT RESTRICTIONS. The software is subject to United States export laws and regulations. You must comply with all domestic and international export laws and regulations that apply to the software. These laws include restrictions on destinations, end users and end use. For additional information, see www.microsoft.com/exporting.
5. LIMITATION ON AND EXCLUSION OF REMEDIES AND DAMAGES. YOU CAN RECOVER FROM MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS ONLY DIRECT DAMAGES UP TO $5.00. YOU CANNOT RECOVER ANY OTHER DAMAGES, INCLUDING CONSEQUENTIAL, LOST PROFITS, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES. This limitation applies to:
It also applies even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the possibility of the damages. The above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you because your country may not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental, consequential or other damages.
6. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. The software is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express warranties, guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under your local laws which this agreement cannot change. To the extent permitted under your local laws, Microsoft excludes the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
7. ENTIRE AGREEMENT. This agreement (including the warranty below), and the terms for supplements, updates, Internet-based services and support services that you use, are the entire agreement for the software and support services.
8. APPLICABLE LAW.
a. United States. If you acquired the software in the United States, Washington state law governs the interpretation of this agreement and applies to claims for breach of it, regardless of conflict of laws principles. The laws of the state where you live govern all other claims, including claims under state consumer protection laws, unfair competition laws, and in tort.
b. Outside the United States. If you acquired the software in any other country, the laws of that country apply.
9. LEGAL EFFECT. This agreement describes certain legal rights. You may have other rights under the laws of your state or country. You may also have rights with respect to the party from whom you acquired the software. This agreement does not change your rights under the laws of your state or country if the laws of your state or country do not permit it to do so.
Me interesse que a palavra "você", que vem da frase "vossa mercê" (claramente feminina), possa ser feminina ou masculina (sempre de acordo com o sujeito). Isso não faz muito sentido. Pode dizer "o sujeito do pronome 'você' pode ser feminino ou masculino, então o pronome também pode ser um ou o outro" -- mas o sujeito do pronome é sempre na pessoa segunda, não na pessoa terceira. Entretanto, o pronome "você" precisa da forma da pessoa terceira por querer dizer não "tu" mas "a vossa (isso é, a tua) mercê". A mercê de um homem, bem como a mercê de uma mulher, é sempre, em qualquer caso, gramaticalmente feminina.
Além disso, na forma "o senhor/a senhora", há duas formas diferentes que abertamente mostram gênero gramatical. Da mesma razão, parece que a forma única "você" sempre seja feminina -- como eu disse, ninguém tem uma mercê masculina...
I went over to the Heptig v. AT&T hearing this morning, but by the time I arrived, there were already 15 people in line outside the courtroom. None of us got seats.
On my way out of the Federal Building, I ran into a Federal Protective Service employee who had been working at the security checkpoint when I came in.
"You didn't get a seat, huh?" he said.
"Nope."
"Sometimes they move these things into the Ceremonial Courtroom when they know it's going to be a big thing. I guess Judge Walker didn't do that this time. This one is very important. Damn important. More people need to know about it than do. My opinion."
Contact: Seth David Schoen