Corporations 1, the Commons 0

The Supreme Court voted 7-2 against Larry Lessig’s challenge to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Justices Breyer and Stevens dissented, saying that the act makes copyright “virtually perpetual” and “inhibit[s] the progress of ‘Science’—by which word the Framers meant learning or knowledge” (Breyer dissent). Justice Stevens dissented more narrowly, arguing that just as states lack the right to extend individual patents, so Congress has no right to extend the term of copyright, and that the majority opinion of the court “rests on the mistaken
premise that this Court has virtually no role in reviewing congressional grants of monopoly privileges to authors,
inventors and their successors.” The Trademark Blog has additional coverage. Doc Searls weighs in to argue that this is the start of a long road, not the end of one. Ernie the Attorney thanks Lessig for his hard efforts. Slashdot has a discussion underway. Meanwhile, the Associated Press calls it “a huge victory for Disney,” laying the blame squarely at the feet of the companies who lobbied so vigorously to protect their monopolies.

RIP, Charles Vandersee

The man who was the dean of the Echols program at Virginia, Charles Vandersee, died of a heart attack on January 2. Vandersee, an English professor, was the dean of the Echols program from 1973 to 1997. Under the program, students had considerable academic freedom to pursue their own courses of study—no major requirement and no required courses.

I wish I had known Dean Vandersee better. I confess that at times I was driven to mild mockery by his donnish demeanor, calling him “DJ Chuckie V (In Full Effect).” I was also less than pleased with the Echols program, primarily because its full social and intellectual benefits seemed reserved for students who lived in the program’s main dorm, Watson (I was a spill-over student and lived the next dorm over). But I always respected him for what he represented: the liberal arts, in the best sense of that phrase. The University is a little poorer for his departure.

Phat Mack

One of the advantages of working at a Large Technology Company is that the people who work there are tech pack rats. And occasionally you score some good stuff. At my old job in 1998, I managed to pick up a Mac IIcx and IIfx for free—both were missing hard drives and memory, of course, but just to hold something that ran a Motorola 68030 chip at 33 MHz and could complete an infinite loop in 30 seconds was cool. (The machines both disappeared when my parents moved from Newport News—my dad probably rightly decided to clear out all non-functioning junk in the process.)

I bring this up because I did it again. I now have a Fat Mac (original Mac with 512K of memory instead of the original 128), a Mac Plus motherboard, an extra 400K disk drive, and something else in an original Apple box (external floppy?) sitting in the trunk of my car. Free. The Fat Mac needs some video work, but otherwise represented to be OK. Of course, the question is what can I possibly do with a Fat Mac? I don’t know, but this is the cue to get that soldering iron for the workshop that I wanted…

Update: Low End Mac has a slew of articles about fixing a Fat Mac. Apparently I’m not alone in keeping a fond place in my heart for these older machines.

Quick tasting notes: Delirium Tremens Noël

It’s a little late to be tasting holiday beers, but I found the Delirium Tremens holiday beer, their Noël, in the wine department of DeLaurenti’s at Pike Place Market on Saturday and had to check it out. This holiday beer, like the Orchard Street Jingle Ale, is spiced; unlike the Jingle Ale, the Delirium Tremens has a depth of flavor and a sweet bready aftertaste from the complex yeast strains used that keeps you guessing about the flavor. Is it cinnamon? ginger? just fantastic after-flavors from the fermentation? God knows but it’s good.

Francisco Toro: ex-NYT Venezualan blogger

Francisco Toro was apparently asked by his editor, Patrick Lyons, at the New York Times to stop blogging, as it apparently raised the specter of conflict of interest. I suspect the real issue, as he suggests in his open letter to Lyons, was his activism. At any rate, he has quit the paper and unshuttered his blog, and I think it will continue to prove to be the best way to understand the chaos that continues in Venezuala.

Blogroll update: great writers new and old

Two additions to the blogroll, both of whom belong in some sort of canon or other: Samuel Pepys and William Gibson. Two blogs, two very different writers. To misquote Dickens, Pepys is dead, to begin with. But Phil Gyford is turning Pepys’s diary into a daily blog. Good reading and the comments (aka “annotations”) are fascinating. The ninth features such discussions as the date of the arrival of coffee in London and a discussion of Parliamentary politics after the age of Cromwell.

William Gibson is, of course, not dead (he’s just resting). So far since his blog started a week ago he’s kept it daily and is writing about topics as diverse as his life, his pets, and his books. Great entry today about Joseph Cornell, whom I discovered through Gibson’s description of his works in Count Zero. Through it all, there’s a refreshing humanity and lack of pretense:

Well, you might try keeping mind that behind whatever mediated projection of “William Gibson” we’re both, in our different ways, complicit in, there’s a guy who once sat on the cold kitchen floor in his bathrobe, trying rather unsuccessfully to squirt disturbingly black fluid down the throat of a small, intensely uncooperative dog.

No 802.11g for you…maybe

When I read that Steve Jobs announced Apple’s support of 802.11g (WiFi on steroids), I was thrilled. Thrill gave way to dismay pretty quickly as I remembered I had already bought a new 802.11b access point. My dismay may be both short-lived and prolonged, however.

First, short-lived: the new AirPort Extreme card does not fit existing devices’ AirPort slots. In fact, according to some observers, the bus speeds needed for 802.11g are too high to be supported by the existing AirPort slot. Second, prolonged: the WiFi News blog (formerly 802.11b News) points to a slew of PC cards and access points from other makers that support the new standard. So I might still have options for my old Pismo…but I can’t upgrade for a while anyway.

Quick tasting notes: Brouwerij Verhaeghe Echte Kriek

There comes a moment in every young beer drinker’s life when he either discovers the great world of tastes beyond Miller Genuine Draft or forever languishes in longneck hell. For me, there were several such moments in Charlottesville—my first Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout at the late lamented Kafkafé, drinking Hefeweizen in the Court Square Tavern—but my first fruit lambic didn’t make too much of an impression. I don’t remember whether I was in school or already in Northern Virginia, but I remember my friend John Liepold raving about Lindeman’s Framboise and Kriek. I have to say that my first lambic didn’t make that much of an impression. Sweet like soda pop was my first and probably only thought.

I’ve learned a few things since then about beer. For one thing, lambic is a fascinating drink with or without fruit. A true lambic is fermented in open air tuns, and naturally occurring yeast strains in the environment contribute tremendous complexity and depth of taste. Some lambics, such as the wonderful “old red” Rodenbach of Flanders, develop a piquantly sour taste that is simultaneously challenging and refreshing. And adding real fruit to a lambic (instead of the extracts rumored to be used in many of the more outlandish beers from Lindeman, including the Cassis and Banana flavors) contributes natural sweetness and color and deepens the flavor.

Knowing all this, I was thrilled to see that one of my most recent shipments from the RealBeer Club included Brouwerij Verhaeghe’s Echte Kriek. The echte means “real,” and this is indeed the real thing, intense sour lambic flavored with big handfuls of cherries. The color is a reddish brown with no suspicious hints of gold; the mouthfeel is dry, the nose is aromatic without being cloying. The taste… sour cherries but more complex, the classic lambic “sour ale” taste hitting the palate just after the first flavor of cherries. There isn’t a lot of depth of flavor beyond the combination of sweetish cherries and sour-ish beer, but my God, what else could you want? Highly recommended.

Dog show

Lisa and I went to a dog show in Puyallup on Friday night. We thought, What better way to find a breeder who could tell us about how to get a Bichon Frisé puppy? Well, apparently the right answer was, “Lots of better ways.”

But not to get too far ahead of the story. The dog show was being held in the Puyallup fair grounds, about thirty miles south of where we live, to the east of SeaTac. This means that on a Friday afternoon at 4 pm, it was about seventy minutes away. We got there at about 5:45. The papers we had said the show, which included the meeting of the Puget Sound Bichon Frisé club, would go until 10 pm. Plenty of time, we thought.

We walked into the first building, which looked like a preparatory area—dogs in crates, on grooming tables, being watched by twelve-year-old kids—but with no apparent breeders in site and only a small crowd in the far end of the building. We saw another building to the right and walked through. Immediately we were hit with a miasma of dog. More dog crates and pens, stalls selling liver treats and grooming implements—all shuttered. We looked at each other and said, “Uh-oh.” Then we saw chairs at the far end of the next room set up in a ring and heard an announcer’s voice. Finally, I thought, we’ve found it. And a Bichon was on the judging table. We drew closer and realized that this was a general judging of “non-sporting” breeds, not the Bichon Frisé club judging. And there were only about fifty people there. The ones who weren’t handlers in the ring were waiting for their turn to go on. We watched the Bichon take third place and talked to the lady at the AKC desk, only to find out that the Bichon club was meeting in the building we had first been in. We walked back to find most everyone cleared out.

We went away without having talked to a breeder. But we have some addresses and phone numbers, and we’ll press ahead.

Keiretsu check up

Not a lot of time today, but here’s the latest from around the keiretsu:

Update: iPod Remote

A while back I mentioned that I was getting the iPod Remote Control. This little device is essential if you have an iPod and you either (a) work out or (b) listen to it in your car. It is a small module less than an inch square with a clip on the back. The control layout is volume up/down on the top (rocker switch), previous and next track switches in the middle, and play/pause on the bottom. A small slider on the side allows locking out the remote so you don’t press buttons accidentally. The top of the device accepts a standard miniplug for headphones or another device (like a cassette adapter).

In the car, I clip the remote to my shirt (what do you call the strip of fabric into which the buttons go? there must be a word for that [Update: Esta says it’s called a placket. Thanks, Vocabulary Fairy!]). If I need to change a tune it’s a one hand, no eyes required operation, much safer than trying to do it on the iPod. In the gym, as long as there’s a flat surface nearby, I don’t even need a belt clip for the iPod; the remote clips to my t-shirt and away I go.

Some bonuses: if you have the original iPod with the ear-stretching earbuds, the remote comes with the new, less painful earbuds. And pressing play while the iPod is off immediately turns it on and starts it playing. Using the iPod, two button pushes are required, one to wake it up and one to start it playing, and there is a perceptible amount of lag time, which seems absent when using the remote.

In a related note, I missed the announcement of the Burton Amp, which holds an iPod and integrates a remote control into the sleeve. Good for snowboarding, I suppose…

Update: Sony RM-AV3000 Universal Remote

As Anita requested, here’s a quick update on my Christmas toy, the Sony RM-AV3000 universal remote.

First, the good: programming it is pretty straightforward. There are two kinds of programming you can do with a remote like this, learning and macros. Learning involves teaching the remote to duplicate a signal produced by another remote. You put the universal remote in learning mode, tell it which button you want to take the new function, and then hold down the button on the other remote until the universal beeps. Simple. Macros are sequences of commands that the remote has already learned (or that it had assigned at the factory). They’re also pretty simple: tell the universal which button you want to assign the macro to, then go through and press all the buttons on the universal in the sequence you want them to happen.

I’ve programmed a few macros so far. I have two macros for power on (turns on all the devices in the system) and power off. That way, I don’t have to worry in other macros about whether devices are on or off. Other macros generally involve automating the sequence of switching the amplifier to the correct source channel and hitting “Play” on the target device (e.g. the CD player). The most complicated adjustment is the DVD player, because it uses a different input on the TV than everything else.

The bad: My wife still won’t give up the other remotes. In spite of the fact that it takes her two remotes (cable and amplifier) to watch TV, she prefers this to the new remote. This is primarily because she doesn’t “want to take the time to learn the new remote.” It’s also because of …

The ugly: Your final command setup is only as clean as your existing remotes will allow. There are generally two types of buttons on remotes: stateless, which always tell the device to do the same thing (or keep doing what it was doing before—think pressing a Play button twice), and stateful, which tell the device to do different things depending on the result of the last time the button was pressed (think about the Power button: one push turns it on, another turns it off). Stateful buttons are useful for maximizing real estate on a remote control, but they’re hell for programming. Without a discrete “power on” command, workarounds like my “power on/power off” macros are needed. Worse, without a discrete set of commands to select between the S-Video, component, and composite inputs on my TV, there’s really no way to fully automate switching from TV to DVD and back again. I have no way of knowing beforehand what input state the TV was in, and hence don’t know how many times I need to send the “Switch Input” signal.

As Anita said in her inital comment, “no wonder that only a small percentage of people do a lot of home theater and audio stuff. It’s just complicated!” I now understand why people pay a lot of money for systems with insanely complicated remotes. They’ll never use the original remote, but they need it to program the universal remote…

Weblogs.com watch – high water rising

Continuing the Weblogs.com watch, it looks like everyone’s favorite list of updated weblogs survived the blogstorm following the MacWorld keynote pretty well. In fact, it’s hit three or four consecutive high water marks in the last three days.

This seems like a good time to update the graph I did in October showing the high water marks over time. For a while in November and December it looked like the rate of growth was slowing down, and the slope is slightly less than it looked then. But if the activity over the last couple of days is anything to go by, it looks like we might expect a slope increase in the next few months.

Here is the updated graph:

weblogs.com high water growth is approximately linear at 2.74 weblogs a day

I still can’t separate how much of this is due to new weblogs coming on line vs. old ones blogging more frequently. I suspect that this would require more data than Weblogs.com currently collects.

Welcome Macintouch readers

Looks like Macintouch printed my letter about my size comparison between the different PowerBook models in their reader report on the new models. Other reports on the page include the experience of someone who had a 15.2″ TiBook in the pipe from the Apple Store (they’re offering him the new lower price point and honoring the “double RAM” deal since he placed his order before 12/31) and some details about FireWire 800, the new double-speed implementation of FireWire.

On a more personal note, thank God for the fine hosting services of Weblogger.com. If I had gotten as many hits while my site was on editthispage.com, the site would have fallen over (and did, quite a few times). Right now I’m up to somewhere north of 650 hits and climbing…

Safari: my $0.02

Apple made a new browser available in public beta yesterday. This doesn’t happen every day. There was, naturally, a rush to get it, and then a rush to test it. I think every web designer and blogger in the world was thinking what I was: “Great, another browser that I have to worry about. How many things on my pages will break with this one?”

In this case, for me, not much breaks. If you’re reading my page using Safari, the title of each post will appear in the same font and size as the paragraph text below it. It should instead appear in Verdana, Helvetica, or your favorite sans serif, at 14px (slightly larger), as specified by my CSS rule for the H3 tag. Also, periodically a page will load but not show any content or only show a few images on a page; reloading generally fixes the problem. So far I haven’t found anything else broken yet. It does seem a little faster than Chimera, though I haven’t done any stopwatch exercises.

There are a bunch of other folks looking at the browser, though, chief among them Mark Pilgrim (who has both an initial review, in which he strongly states that the lack of tabbed browsing is a showstopper, and Safari Information For Web Designers, in which he summarizes rendering successes and failures of the browser). and Mena Trott (whose article contains links to most of the other big articles on the subject, including the changelog from KHTML to Safari). Finally, here is the blog of Dave Hyatt, one of the team members, in which he addresses some of the initial review comments.