I seem to be leaning on Max a bit today. Via his next item, here's what security guards are defending against today.
Do you see why? Took me a minute, which I'll try to excuse on the basis of the misleadingly colorful illustration in Max's post. Answer is given in the comments. Or is it crashingly obvious? If so, why was the newspaper item so coy about it? Inquiring minds want to know.
The Birth Tax
The party that traditionally has defended us from deficit spending and inflation and all that stuff has found a conflict between that mission and its other one, making life easier for the rich. You knew all that. But since there is so much attention being paid to the Death Tax as a way of fulfilling one of these responsibilities, it's only fair to take a glance at the Birth Tax: the debt that every American acquires by the act of being born. MaxSpeak has kindly given us the data. If you wish, you can cut straight to the graph, showing the national debt bestowed on each newborn citizen over time, expressed in 2005 dollars (corrected for inflation, that is).
Technical note: Why call it a tax? Elementary bookkeeping principles: You add a financial liability to the books, it's a credit entry. The balancing debit entry can be the reduction of another financial liability (nope) or acquisition of a financial asset (nope) or an expense (yep, a tax payment).
Technical note: Why call it a tax? Elementary bookkeeping principles: You add a financial liability to the books, it's a credit entry. The balancing debit entry can be the reduction of another financial liability (nope) or acquisition of a financial asset (nope) or an expense (yep, a tax payment).
Homicide suicide
Not having been driven off by the title's implication that this is about something truly horrid, you are a candidate to read this really remarkable sarcasm-fest from alicublog, concerning the new and seemingly unbeatable standard recently set for how repulsive a statement by a government spokescreature must be before you can use the word "incredible". If you fail to read the comments thread, you will miss much important material, including the strategy for countermeasures by Donald Rumsfeld.
A deconstructionist joke
[Note: I may turn this into an actual post later on. After all, Edward Said, the National Spelling Bee, the brain-eating Hitler zombie, and deconstructionist gangsters could be the basis of quite an entertaining posting. This, however, is at present not it.]
It may not be all that funny, but it's late at night, and I have just spent too much time on a Google search, having decided on a whim that I would now try to find out a thing I had wondered for some time: just what Edward Said really said about "Aryan" languages.
I should say at the outset that I still don't have it quite clear. But I can now be quite sure that nearly everyone who addresses any question having to do with Said from either side, is an insufferable fanatic who is plainly incapable of saying anything that one could take at face value, at least on this subject. Alas, I pretty much knew that beforehand.
In the process I finally found a piece of good sober academic prose, which included an instance of a word I'd never heard of before this week (and confirmed my opinion about that word, on which I may manage to write more trivialities later), along with a quite unexpected sighting of a corpse that may turn out to be the brain-eating Hitler zombie. But that's not the paper I'm speaking of.
Then I came to another piece of non-nonsense, which I found worth reading through while skipping dense discussions of the author's specialized work (rather than invest my time in a long course of instruction to be able to assess the details of his argument, it being easier to stipulate that what he says does support his main point). And toward the end I was further rewarded by a joke:
It may not be all that funny, but it's late at night, and I have just spent too much time on a Google search, having decided on a whim that I would now try to find out a thing I had wondered for some time: just what Edward Said really said about "Aryan" languages.
I should say at the outset that I still don't have it quite clear. But I can now be quite sure that nearly everyone who addresses any question having to do with Said from either side, is an insufferable fanatic who is plainly incapable of saying anything that one could take at face value, at least on this subject. Alas, I pretty much knew that beforehand.
In the process I finally found a piece of good sober academic prose, which included an instance of a word I'd never heard of before this week (and confirmed my opinion about that word, on which I may manage to write more trivialities later), along with a quite unexpected sighting of a corpse that may turn out to be the brain-eating Hitler zombie. But that's not the paper I'm speaking of.
Then I came to another piece of non-nonsense, which I found worth reading through while skipping dense discussions of the author's specialized work (rather than invest my time in a long course of instruction to be able to assess the details of his argument, it being easier to stipulate that what he says does support his main point). And toward the end I was further rewarded by a joke:
We now know, thanks to the decontructionists, that not only is objectivity impossible, it seems it is even impossible to convey intended meaning. It seems that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the writer and the reader as well. No matter what the writer intends when he writes, the reader will bring his separate set of experiences and understanding to the writer's text. This is truly pathological. This means that the very enterprise of writing is unlikely to convey the meaning intended by the writer. This is a view that I find truly tiresome (and for those of you who have attempted to read deconstructionist theory you know, at least, what the word tiresome means. The impenetrability of the writing about this theory has given rise to much derision on American campuses--my favorite is the story of the Boss of a Mafia family who decided he would study deconstructionist theory. As a result, he was eventually replaced as the Boss because instead of giving orders that no one could refuse, he found himself giving orders that no one could understand.)Actually, it's not all that hilarious, but anything that disses the desconstructionists is a good start, and as I said, it's late. If you were still reading, you might ask, 'Do you mean that is the best you found in a long search on <"edward said" aryan> ?' Yes.
And why haven't you ever asked this?
And, obviously, why haven't I?
You might think that pundits would ask why the Democrats have NY and CA in the bag in every presidential election without spending a dime, when they're traditionally Republican states that will still vote for pro-choice Republican governors, but for some reason this topic is off-limits.Thus spake Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Since I remember when California generally voted with the winning side in presidential elections rather than necessarily for the Democrat, I'm interested in his answer.
Ravens Imprisoned in the Tower
The Chronicle (actually the Washington Post) tells us today that Branwen, Hugine, Munin, Gwyllum, Thor, and Baldrick have been put in protective custody in a comfortable cell in the Tower of London. Obviously I am not making up those names; who could?
This is to protect them from the infamous H5N1 flu. Should the ravens at the Tower expire, the Tower will fall, and with it the kingdom. They can't be removed from the Tower, under a decree of Charles II. The master of the ravens, Derrick Coyle, puts on protective clothing, for their protection, not his, when he feeds them.
They seem to be taking well to it.
This is to protect them from the infamous H5N1 flu. Should the ravens at the Tower expire, the Tower will fall, and with it the kingdom. They can't be removed from the Tower, under a decree of Charles II. The master of the ravens, Derrick Coyle, puts on protective clothing, for their protection, not his, when he feeds them.
They seem to be taking well to it.
"The first day they were a little bit stressed," Coyle said. But now, he added, "They're eating very well and Thor, the one who talks, said, 'good morning' straight away" when he visited the birds on Tuesday. He said the birds are eating their normal diet of hard-boiled eggs, apples, biscuits soaked in blood, beef liver, vitamin tablets and chicken.""Good morning", eh?
Q. After a severe storm we found this old male raven in the study of my father, the Hon. George Morton Bodwell, for may years head of the Latin Department at Tufts, sitting on a bust of Livy which was a gift to him from the class of '92. All that the old bird will say is "Grawk." Can ravens be taught to talk or was Poe merely "romancing"?Unnecessary to add: Time for Mr. Coyle to worry, when Thor drops his "Good morning" for "Nevermore."
A. I am handicapped by an uncertainty as to who says "Grawk," the raven or your father. It just happens that "Arrk" is what ravens say. I have never known a raven that said anything but "arrk."
-- James Thurber, pet advice column from The Owl in the Attic
How could they tell?
When Dorothy Parker was told that Calvin Coolidge was dead, her response was, "How could they tell?"
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was running for the honor of being the oldest President in history, and some people raised gentle, polite, even apologetic questions about whether there might be a problem there. His campaing assured us all that he would get annual medical checkups, which would establish whether he was subject to any deterioration of brain function.
Guess what I said about that. To be sure, my response in 1980 became less funny in the 90s, when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which is not fit material for joking, which is why there are so many jokes about it. Well, maybe not less funny, maybe just a bit too offensive.
Now, as you all know, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has a contest going. They will now start publishing contestants for the most offensive cartoons about the Holocaust and Jews in general.
All together, now! "How can we tell?"
If you have any doubts about this radically new editorial policy, ask Deborah Lipstadt, the historian who kicked David "What Holocaust?" Irving's butt in a lawsuit that Irving brought under the extremely plaintiff-friendly English libel law. She has declared that she is entering the contest. A piece of cake, she says. She has cartoons at the ready, really nasty ones, some them already in Farsi, having been taken from Iranian papers.
But this is old news. This morning it gets more interesting. In the Chronicle there is a reference (in the printed edition, but I can't find it in their on-line sotry) to the first entry published. First it quotes the paper as to the meaning of the contest, titled "What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?":
This unpleasant little item is not merely part of daily political discourse in the Great Satan; it's relatively inoffensive. From the description, I can't even see a direct reference to the Holocaust; it's just somebody in jail. Now if the number were tattoed on him, that would be getting offensive. Maybe the blue and white stripes, rather than the traditional black and white prison stripes, refer to Israel? Pretty weak. Where are the interlinked swastikas and stars of David?
Nest to the stuff that you and I have seen paraded throught the streets of San Francisco (or wherever), this is so inoffensive it's pathetic.
And the Iranians think they're challenging the bounds of discourse in thecivilizedWestern world.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was running for the honor of being the oldest President in history, and some people raised gentle, polite, even apologetic questions about whether there might be a problem there. His campaing assured us all that he would get annual medical checkups, which would establish whether he was subject to any deterioration of brain function.
Guess what I said about that. To be sure, my response in 1980 became less funny in the 90s, when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which is not fit material for joking, which is why there are so many jokes about it. Well, maybe not less funny, maybe just a bit too offensive.
Now, as you all know, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has a contest going. They will now start publishing contestants for the most offensive cartoons about the Holocaust and Jews in general.
All together, now! "How can we tell?"
If you have any doubts about this radically new editorial policy, ask Deborah Lipstadt, the historian who kicked David "What Holocaust?" Irving's butt in a lawsuit that Irving brought under the extremely plaintiff-friendly English libel law. She has declared that she is entering the contest. A piece of cake, she says. She has cartoons at the ready, really nasty ones, some them already in Farsi, having been taken from Iranian papers.
But this is old news. This morning it gets more interesting. In the Chronicle there is a reference (in the printed edition, but I can't find it in their on-line sotry) to the first entry published. First it quotes the paper as to the meaning of the contest, titled "What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?":
The newspaper said its contest was a test of the Western world's readiness to print cartoons about the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews in World War II.Right, so here's the entry:
The first entry depicts a man, smoking a cigarette and wearing a blue and white striped prison uniform, with a tall wall and guard tower in the background.
The man, with a moustache, is wearing a white keffiyeh (fez) and has his right hand over his forehead and eyes.
On his chest is a red Muslim crescent with a letter "P". Below that is the number 7 256, the significance of which was not immediately clear, although Israel is said to be holding about 8 000 Palestinian prisoners.
Now we see the cluelessness to which that once-great civilization has sunk. (And not as a product of Islam; of the thousands of years of high civilization in Iran, the most recent centuries were, of course, Islamic.) I mean: Duh, the guy is comparing Isael's treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. Not, obviously, "Duh, it's true", but "Duh, they've been saying this for years, what's the news here?"
This unpleasant little item is not merely part of daily political discourse in the Great Satan; it's relatively inoffensive. From the description, I can't even see a direct reference to the Holocaust; it's just somebody in jail. Now if the number were tattoed on him, that would be getting offensive. Maybe the blue and white stripes, rather than the traditional black and white prison stripes, refer to Israel? Pretty weak. Where are the interlinked swastikas and stars of David?
Nest to the stuff that you and I have seen paraded throught the streets of San Francisco (or wherever), this is so inoffensive it's pathetic.
And the Iranians think they're challenging the bounds of discourse in the
Here's glory for you
Mark Ungar of San Francisco provides a nice knock-down argument in today's Chronicle for the real meaning of Merry Christmas:
I assume, when I say "Merry Christmas," that whomever I direct the greeting to will understand that what I actually mean is: "Have a happy year-end period, regardless of which ancient tradition of marking the winter solstice you have inherited from your ancestral culture, and enjoy your chosen rituals of togetherness and renewal in which our similarities -- not our differences -- are celebrated. I am not a Christian, nor do I assume you are one, nor do I hope to convert you to Christianity -- but I still wish you a happy year-end period and confer such blessings upon you as a compassionate heart can offer."But what do you expect of someone who boldly uses whomever correctly?
Listen carefully
Zac passes on a Yahoo story that looks as if it would be awfully embarrassing to Bush. To be sure, Bush is not embarrassed by flagrant lies; but remember, he's wounded, and the rats are edging in, looking for a good meal and a bit of payback to the predator that they didn't dare challenge for a few years; so the rules may be changing.
(I am here shamelessly stealing from what I put in a comment to Zac's posting. Hope this doesn't violate any traditional blogiquette.)
Read the story, and see the series of flagrant lies. Then read those damning quotes again with an analytical eye.
"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order,"
"When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so,..."
"...by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example,"
"any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order,..."
"Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone,..."
Y'know, when I started copying out these quotes, I thought I was going to make a real cute and satirical point, and by the time I finished, I had convinced myself (almost, anyway) that it's no goddam accident of rhetoric, but quite deliberate. Turn up the volume and listen again:
talking about wiretap
talking about chasing down
that you hear about
action ... by law enforcement
Law enforcement officers need
And you will hear the subtext:
However, the ones we are not talking about, because they are not done by law enforcement officers but by the Omnipotence, who does not answer to law or the Constitution--well, you don't hear us talking about them, do you?
Nattering nabobs will claim that Dubya doesn't have the brains to plan all this careful wording (agreed) or to stay on script like this -- here, I'm not so sure. The weasel wording is just too perfect.
(I am here shamelessly stealing from what I put in a comment to Zac's posting. Hope this doesn't violate any traditional blogiquette.)
Read the story, and see the series of flagrant lies. Then read those damning quotes again with an analytical eye.
"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order,"
"When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so,..."
"...by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example,"
"any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order,..."
"Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone,..."
Y'know, when I started copying out these quotes, I thought I was going to make a real cute and satirical point, and by the time I finished, I had convinced myself (almost, anyway) that it's no goddam accident of rhetoric, but quite deliberate. Turn up the volume and listen again:
talking about wiretap
talking about chasing down
that you hear about
action ... by law enforcement
Law enforcement officers need
And you will hear the subtext:
However, the ones we are not talking about, because they are not done by law enforcement officers but by the Omnipotence, who does not answer to law or the Constitution--well, you don't hear us talking about them, do you?
Nattering nabobs will claim that Dubya doesn't have the brains to plan all this careful wording (agreed) or to stay on script like this -- here, I'm not so sure. The weasel wording is just too perfect.
So you think you're a wingnut
or that you've seen wingnuts in blogs. Well, let me tell you something. You don't even know what a nutcase is. But if you want to, I suggest you visit Wikipedia to find the real thing.
You will come away humbled. If you want to know the unifying theme and the identity of that other person in the picture at the top, look at the last item in the list -- quite a reasonable one, in many ways -- of good guys. Then you will understand that list of beast-men, cultists, fascists, and colonialists.
You will come away humbled. If you want to know the unifying theme and the identity of that other person in the picture at the top, look at the last item in the list -- quite a reasonable one, in many ways -- of good guys. Then you will understand that list of beast-men, cultists, fascists, and colonialists.
One for your iPod(tm)
Isn't wonderful how much free information you can get on the Internets(tm)? Here, for instance, is the obscure page that answers two questions that millions of readers have asked:
The question is, I think, easier to figure out than that for 42. Here, anyway, is proper credit.
PS:
In fact, three questions are answered:
. Yes, you will be able to speak of van Leeuwenhoek without sounding like an idiot.
. No, there is no uniform pronunciation from one end of the kingdom to the other; pronunciations vary no less than that of, say, Shakespeare does when you cross the Pond.
. No, you will never never be able to speak of Huygens recognizably no matter how many times you listen to the file.
The question is, I think, easier to figure out than that for 42. Here, anyway, is proper credit.
PS:
In fact, three questions are answered:
. Yes, you will be able to speak of van Leeuwenhoek without sounding like an idiot.
. No, there is no uniform pronunciation from one end of the kingdom to the other; pronunciations vary no less than that of, say, Shakespeare does when you cross the Pond.
. No, you will never never be able to speak of Huygens recognizably no matter how many times you listen to the file.
Welcome to the Islamic Virtue Party
So, Bradford Plumer took the test to see which party he agrees with in the upcoming Iraq election. Turned out to be the Iraqi Communist Party, but we knew that all along about these lefty bloggers, right? My turn.
Hmm, it really is hard to answer some of the questions, as one doesn't know what they really imply. As a commenter asked, what are the competencies of the Prime Minister under the constitution? So one hits the "neutral" button many times when one probably has in reality a strong position.
Still, I am a bit surprised to find myself in the Islamic Virtue Party (I wasn't kidding) if only 52% worth. Actually I disagree with them a lot (well, 48% worth), but they are the best fit for me relative to all the others. Sort of like Democrats, I guess. Also, there may be nuances. When we both disagree with "Muslim clerics should not have the right to be members of the Constitutional Court", I have the unpleasant feeling that they would still disagree if the words ex officio were inserted; slightly different notions of liberty, that is.
Looking again, I see could also join the Iraqi National Accord. Probably wouldn't like it any better.
Hmm, it really is hard to answer some of the questions, as one doesn't know what they really imply. As a commenter asked, what are the competencies of the Prime Minister under the constitution? So one hits the "neutral" button many times when one probably has in reality a strong position.
Still, I am a bit surprised to find myself in the Islamic Virtue Party (I wasn't kidding) if only 52% worth. Actually I disagree with them a lot (well, 48% worth), but they are the best fit for me relative to all the others. Sort of like Democrats, I guess. Also, there may be nuances. When we both disagree with "Muslim clerics should not have the right to be members of the Constitutional Court", I have the unpleasant feeling that they would still disagree if the words ex officio were inserted; slightly different notions of liberty, that is.
Looking again, I see could also join the Iraqi National Accord. Probably wouldn't like it any better.
Do symbols matter?
And could their context and history make a difference? I'm led to such profound questions by an observation that NTodd made about what to light up as a Christmas decoration. But mainly by the fourth comment on that posting, signed by Ereshkigal, which makes a remarkable, if implicit, nomination for a Lifetime Acheivement Award in Insensitivity:
I live in a predominately African-American section of an (almost) Southern city.
A white family of Clueless Christians who live a couple of blocks from me light up a huge wooden cross on their lawn each year right after Thanksgiving.
Originally, they lighted it with hundreds of flickering votive candles, but now they use little flickering Christmas lights.
It's been a continuing source of discussion among the rest of the neighbors.
Fawlty Towers interval
It's great how us young folks can just pop open the laptop and go blogging when John Cleese starts the segue into the fundraising pitch and we're in for 10 or 15 minutes of the excruciating price we pay for public TV, and I'm certainly not referring to the money.
F. T. is a subject of polite disagreement around here, though. Not that anyone fails to find it impossibly funny, of course; but some of us can watch it and some cannot. If the interactions of Mr and Mrs Fawlty are just too painful, that's pretty much it for watching the show. As it happens, I can put up with that. But the sequences they just showed before the break reminded me that I have my limits. The Nazi episode is fine with me, and the Corpse; but the Gourmet Night episode begins to strike too close to home. The Beating of the Car, in particular. Which raises an interesting question, which someone like Shakespear's sister with millions of commenters should pose: which bit of Fawlty Towers is just too much for you?
Flay Otters. time to get back to the show.
... back again.
The Sensible One Around Here suggests that we can just buy the freakin tape of this Fawlty Towers Retrospective and see it sometime without the dumb breaks. But I persist in watching it.
One wishes they would not feel the need to put in the little patronising (you can tell from the s that the a is short there) bits explaining what and where Devon is, and like that. But I suppose Americans need these things, and I'm just being unrealistic. I mean, is it necessary to explain that Mr Johnson (I think I have the name right) is obviously Fawlty's social inferior as shown by his dress and accent? Yes, I suppose it is.
Speaking of which, how bout dem accents? John Cleese is John Cleese, and that's enough. But Prunella Scales has that marvelous lower middle class affected accent (as I'm told it is). The aforementioned Mr Johnson has his unaffected lower accent. And of course, Manuel!
You know, it was rather a long time before I found out that Connie Booth did her extremely good American accent (not in F. T., of course) by nature and not by hard study; I suppose the English perceived that instantly; but even they, I think, must respect her accent when she was doing Polly.
Teribly funny show. Doesn't look as if they'll have much of a closer after the final membership break, but one must hang around to see. Meanwhile, off to read more blogs while they talk on and on.
F. T. is a subject of polite disagreement around here, though. Not that anyone fails to find it impossibly funny, of course; but some of us can watch it and some cannot. If the interactions of Mr and Mrs Fawlty are just too painful, that's pretty much it for watching the show. As it happens, I can put up with that. But the sequences they just showed before the break reminded me that I have my limits. The Nazi episode is fine with me, and the Corpse; but the Gourmet Night episode begins to strike too close to home. The Beating of the Car, in particular. Which raises an interesting question, which someone like Shakespear's sister with millions of commenters should pose: which bit of Fawlty Towers is just too much for you?
Flay Otters. time to get back to the show.
... back again.
The Sensible One Around Here suggests that we can just buy the freakin tape of this Fawlty Towers Retrospective and see it sometime without the dumb breaks. But I persist in watching it.
One wishes they would not feel the need to put in the little patronising (you can tell from the s that the a is short there) bits explaining what and where Devon is, and like that. But I suppose Americans need these things, and I'm just being unrealistic. I mean, is it necessary to explain that Mr Johnson (I think I have the name right) is obviously Fawlty's social inferior as shown by his dress and accent? Yes, I suppose it is.
Speaking of which, how bout dem accents? John Cleese is John Cleese, and that's enough. But Prunella Scales has that marvelous lower middle class affected accent (as I'm told it is). The aforementioned Mr Johnson has his unaffected lower accent. And of course, Manuel!
You know, it was rather a long time before I found out that Connie Booth did her extremely good American accent (not in F. T., of course) by nature and not by hard study; I suppose the English perceived that instantly; but even they, I think, must respect her accent when she was doing Polly.
Teribly funny show. Doesn't look as if they'll have much of a closer after the final membership break, but one must hang around to see. Meanwhile, off to read more blogs while they talk on and on.
A serious evil
Tom Harper, speaking of the Cheney administration being put on the defensive, notes that Murtha is going to be swiftboated, and "...millions of gullible Americans will probably think he burned his draft card during the Vietnam war and his hobbies include torturing fetuses..."
My thanks for the reminder of something we too easily forget: the Republicans recognize that there are some groups whom it is just plain wrong to torture.
My thanks for the reminder of something we too easily forget: the Republicans recognize that there are some groups whom it is just plain wrong to torture.
Something humorous, but lingering
with either boiling oil or melted lead.
But since I can't administer the proper retribution to spambots, I'm reduced to installing the clever Turing keyword test on comments.
But since I can't administer the proper retribution to spambots, I'm reduced to installing the clever Turing keyword test on comments.
Set the goddam increment bit!
Despite the title, no deep technoid stuff here. If you've read this far, read on. This is too good to be true, almost:
By now everyone has heard about the worm that Sony put on a bunch of its plain audio CDs, which installs itself invisibly in the Windows kernel via some nice security hole that Microsoft left for such purposes. And everyone has heard how within a couple of days of the announcement some malware writers had started circulating stuff that exploited the Sony exploit to get their own evil stuff into Windows in a way that's next to impossible to delete.
Hmm, I said no technoid stuff, didn't I? Gimme a break; the press handles stories like this every day.
All right, the code that Sony installs on your XP system, designed toprotect their copyright prevent you from exercising legitimate rights under copyright law is a copyright violation! Thanks to Rachel for this one. There is code in Sony's little production that's identical to code in LAME, an open-source mp3 encoder.
Open source? Doesn't that mean it's OK to use the code? Yes; everyone is free to use it in accord with the terms of the license under which it's distributed. That's the Gnu Lesser General Public License, and it requires, as they clearly explain in their documentation, that you must give them due credit, provide a link back to their website, and make your modifications to their code available under the GNU license. Want to guess how much of this Sony has done?
It appears that if copyright law is worth anything, Sony, having simply lifted the code without any compliance with license terms, is subject to a nasty lawsuit. To be sure, Gnu's GPL has not yet been tested in court. When do we start? Where's the signup sheet for backers for legal expenses?
Speaking of GPL: Thirty-some years ago, I worked for a company called Information Systems Design, which at one point was involved in one of the first publicized cases of theft of software, and the first application of a new California law on theft of trade secrets. We were the good guys, of course. A competitor who couldn't solve a problem that one of our guys had figured out took a simpler approach: steal our code. We found out; the cops and the Santa Clara County D.A. were quite happy to take on the first test case for the new criminal law; they got a warrant and staged a raid, with technical ssistance from us.
I'd love to tell the full tale, including the first broad search warrant to search all of a computer installation's magnetic storage, and how the story suddenly broke into international fame through a headline in the Chronicle; but I'm too lazy right now. And this isn't supposed to get tech-heavy.
But one thing we had to prove in court, naturally, was that the code they had was actually stolen from us and wasn't an independent solution to the same problem. (The LAME people will have the same problem, which they can easily solve because there is plenty of stuff visible on Sony's CDs which resembles their code in ways that can't possibly be coincidental.) So the competitor's code was examined by the author of our code, to look for excessive resemblances, of which he found plenty. One example that got into the court records concerned a line from which he had at an early stage omitted an essential asterisk, causing the code not to work properly. Finding the error, he had gone back and fixed it. And as he did so, Greg Lutz (who used his initials GPL on his code submissions -- how's that for uncanny?) added this comment.
SET THE GODDAM INCREMENT BIT
Oddly enough, the same comment appeared verbatim in the other guys' code. The perp copped a plea, and we won our lawsuit.
By now everyone has heard about the worm that Sony put on a bunch of its plain audio CDs, which installs itself invisibly in the Windows kernel via some nice security hole that Microsoft left for such purposes. And everyone has heard how within a couple of days of the announcement some malware writers had started circulating stuff that exploited the Sony exploit to get their own evil stuff into Windows in a way that's next to impossible to delete.
Hmm, I said no technoid stuff, didn't I? Gimme a break; the press handles stories like this every day.
All right, the code that Sony installs on your XP system, designed to
Open source? Doesn't that mean it's OK to use the code? Yes; everyone is free to use it in accord with the terms of the license under which it's distributed. That's the Gnu Lesser General Public License, and it requires, as they clearly explain in their documentation, that you must give them due credit, provide a link back to their website, and make your modifications to their code available under the GNU license. Want to guess how much of this Sony has done?
It appears that if copyright law is worth anything, Sony, having simply lifted the code without any compliance with license terms, is subject to a nasty lawsuit. To be sure, Gnu's GPL has not yet been tested in court. When do we start? Where's the signup sheet for backers for legal expenses?
Speaking of GPL: Thirty-some years ago, I worked for a company called Information Systems Design, which at one point was involved in one of the first publicized cases of theft of software, and the first application of a new California law on theft of trade secrets. We were the good guys, of course. A competitor who couldn't solve a problem that one of our guys had figured out took a simpler approach: steal our code. We found out; the cops and the Santa Clara County D.A. were quite happy to take on the first test case for the new criminal law; they got a warrant and staged a raid, with technical ssistance from us.
I'd love to tell the full tale, including the first broad search warrant to search all of a computer installation's magnetic storage, and how the story suddenly broke into international fame through a headline in the Chronicle; but I'm too lazy right now. And this isn't supposed to get tech-heavy.
But one thing we had to prove in court, naturally, was that the code they had was actually stolen from us and wasn't an independent solution to the same problem. (The LAME people will have the same problem, which they can easily solve because there is plenty of stuff visible on Sony's CDs which resembles their code in ways that can't possibly be coincidental.) So the competitor's code was examined by the author of our code, to look for excessive resemblances, of which he found plenty. One example that got into the court records concerned a line from which he had at an early stage omitted an essential asterisk, causing the code not to work properly. Finding the error, he had gone back and fixed it. And as he did so, Greg Lutz (who used his initials GPL on his code submissions -- how's that for uncanny?) added this comment.
SET THE GODDAM INCREMENT BIT
Oddly enough, the same comment appeared verbatim in the other guys' code. The perp copped a plea, and we won our lawsuit.
Kansas? Again?
Kansas puts us in touch with the eternal verities. Like, what goes around comes around.. Like, if you put a stupid topical joke on your website and never update anything, after a while it's topical again.
Are seven syllables really enough?
Dadahead has a post on Andy Rooney and Don Imus talking about "black" and "African American". I have no real problem with his conclusions, and no idea of defending R & I; but there's more to be said.
First off, people are in fact trying to tell me (along with Rooney and Imus) how I ought to use my native language. Many people object to being told that kind of thing. They are wrong; but not quite completely wrong.
People have a right, within some limits, to decide what they are to be called. When Clive Staples Lewis, aged 7 or so, declares that from now on he is Jack, the members of his family go along with it; and for the rest of his life he is Jack to all his friends. (Sure beats Clive, even though he was not named after the imperialist.)
And if an identifiable group makes a collective decision on what it's to be called -- you know it's identifiable because it is identified by some name or other -- that decision is to be heeded, other things being equal or nearly so. There will be objections at this point that "collective decision" is impossible and oxymoronic. Strictly speaking, yes, it's impossible, but I know one when I see one.
I saw one in the 1960s. When I learned the English language, the word Negro was used in my part of the world by decent people , by which I mean people who were not overtly racist, did not want to be racist, and did not like racism, however far they may have been from the impossible dream of really being free from racism. There were other words, to be sure.
One word was not used, and that's that. (It's rather an open secret that the word is used in ceratin contexts by members of the group. That's their privilege. This annoys a lot of stupid whiny honkies -- I claim the privilege of using that term -- but to hell with them.)
There was "colored". I'm not quite sure what was wrong with it, but it was not what one used. I think it seemed rather patronizing and euphemistic. Euphemistic? You mean there's something wrong with being [black/Negro/colored]? Of course not; it sounds as if the speaker thinks there's something wrong with it: that's the patronizing part. But I don't insist on the point.
There was also "black". Sounded a bit dubious. Makes one think of Little Black Sambo. And let's please not get into whether Sambo must have been Indian if he dealt with tigers, if only because that will remind us to start fighting about the terminology for the descendants of the the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, exluding Eskimos, oooooops, Inuit. Anyway, it didn't sound right to me.
And then in the '60s there was a rather sudden collective decision, I know one when I see one, to make a change. From then on, the word was to be "Black". Jules Feiffer did a typically funny sarcastic treatment of Black, and it was right, but in the long run irrelevant. And it seemed to me that rather a lot of the older generation of Negroes did not like the new name much more than I did, but they saw which way things were going, and fighting about it was not what they needed, and they swallowed their discomfort. (I could be all wrong about that, and I certainly have no authority here, but so it seemed to me at the time.)
And I went along, of course, because people have a right to choose what they are called, within some limits of reason, and all the more so when they've been taking inconceivable amounts of shit for hundreds of years. And by golly, pretty soon Black sounded right. And in not too many years, Negro actually sounded a bit embarrassing.
And now we come to "African American", with or without a hyphen. Someone is telling me that I ought to change my vocabulary again, and I am to decide whether to do it this time.
To begin with, I've already changed once, by request. Are names to be changed every so often, with the season's fashions? Right, that's an old guy's sort of argument, and the young and flexible people may well want to make the change immediately. (They, of course, would be making it for the first time.) And it's a small sort of request to make of one's friends and family; if my cousin, whose legal birth-certificate name I had almost forgotten at one time, told me that her first name was changing again from the one that I've used almost all our lives, it would change, blood being thicker than water. But it takes a bit more presumption to keep shaping the vocabulary of millions of strangers.
And just who is telling me? I do not sense the consensus that I did 40 years go, or anything like it. I could be wrong, but I don't see it.
And I am expected to change a good solid forceful one-syllable English word to a nasty heptasyllabic compound, no more sensible or meaningful than the thoroughly inaccurate "black". I don't see the purpose. Or rather, I do see the political purpose, and I disagree with it.
Dadahead says that "African American" signals that you are trying to be sensitive about these things, and that's true and good. He says that it offends no one; in effect, that it's neutral. I disagree on that. Aha! I found something to disagree with, justifying the existence of this posting.
First off, people are in fact trying to tell me (along with Rooney and Imus) how I ought to use my native language. Many people object to being told that kind of thing. They are wrong; but not quite completely wrong.
People have a right, within some limits, to decide what they are to be called. When Clive Staples Lewis, aged 7 or so, declares that from now on he is Jack, the members of his family go along with it; and for the rest of his life he is Jack to all his friends. (Sure beats Clive, even though he was not named after the imperialist.)
And if an identifiable group makes a collective decision on what it's to be called -- you know it's identifiable because it is identified by some name or other -- that decision is to be heeded, other things being equal or nearly so. There will be objections at this point that "collective decision" is impossible and oxymoronic. Strictly speaking, yes, it's impossible, but I know one when I see one.
I saw one in the 1960s. When I learned the English language, the word Negro was used in my part of the world by decent people , by which I mean people who were not overtly racist, did not want to be racist, and did not like racism, however far they may have been from the impossible dream of really being free from racism. There were other words, to be sure.
One word was not used, and that's that. (It's rather an open secret that the word is used in ceratin contexts by members of the group. That's their privilege. This annoys a lot of stupid whiny honkies -- I claim the privilege of using that term -- but to hell with them.)
There was "colored". I'm not quite sure what was wrong with it, but it was not what one used. I think it seemed rather patronizing and euphemistic. Euphemistic? You mean there's something wrong with being [black/Negro/colored]? Of course not; it sounds as if the speaker thinks there's something wrong with it: that's the patronizing part. But I don't insist on the point.
There was also "black". Sounded a bit dubious. Makes one think of Little Black Sambo. And let's please not get into whether Sambo must have been Indian if he dealt with tigers, if only because that will remind us to start fighting about the terminology for the descendants of the the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, exluding Eskimos, oooooops, Inuit. Anyway, it didn't sound right to me.
And then in the '60s there was a rather sudden collective decision, I know one when I see one, to make a change. From then on, the word was to be "Black". Jules Feiffer did a typically funny sarcastic treatment of Black, and it was right, but in the long run irrelevant. And it seemed to me that rather a lot of the older generation of Negroes did not like the new name much more than I did, but they saw which way things were going, and fighting about it was not what they needed, and they swallowed their discomfort. (I could be all wrong about that, and I certainly have no authority here, but so it seemed to me at the time.)
And I went along, of course, because people have a right to choose what they are called, within some limits of reason, and all the more so when they've been taking inconceivable amounts of shit for hundreds of years. And by golly, pretty soon Black sounded right. And in not too many years, Negro actually sounded a bit embarrassing.
And now we come to "African American", with or without a hyphen. Someone is telling me that I ought to change my vocabulary again, and I am to decide whether to do it this time.
To begin with, I've already changed once, by request. Are names to be changed every so often, with the season's fashions? Right, that's an old guy's sort of argument, and the young and flexible people may well want to make the change immediately. (They, of course, would be making it for the first time.) And it's a small sort of request to make of one's friends and family; if my cousin, whose legal birth-certificate name I had almost forgotten at one time, told me that her first name was changing again from the one that I've used almost all our lives, it would change, blood being thicker than water. But it takes a bit more presumption to keep shaping the vocabulary of millions of strangers.
And just who is telling me? I do not sense the consensus that I did 40 years go, or anything like it. I could be wrong, but I don't see it.
And I am expected to change a good solid forceful one-syllable English word to a nasty heptasyllabic compound, no more sensible or meaningful than the thoroughly inaccurate "black". I don't see the purpose. Or rather, I do see the political purpose, and I disagree with it.
Dadahead says that "African American" signals that you are trying to be sensitive about these things, and that's true and good. He says that it offends no one; in effect, that it's neutral. I disagree on that. Aha! I found something to disagree with, justifying the existence of this posting.
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