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November 18th, 2009
 | 02:41 pm - Copyright/copywrong
Consumerist has an article today blasting Wal-Mart for not allowing someone to make copies of some old school photos. Now, I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but this isn't Wal-Mart's fault, and it disappoints me that someone working for a prominent blog like Consumerist can't be bothered to do even basic research about copyright law.
In the U.S., the copyright on photos taken by a photographer stays with the photographer, unless there's an explicit agreement signing it over. It doesn't go to someone else just because money changed hands, or because their likeness appears in it. For unpublished works this copyright is good for the life of the author plus 70 years. The fines for violating this are quite steep and in many cases can be directly charged to the wage slave behind the photo desk, who therefore has an obvious motive to err on the side of caution.
There's a lot wrong with U.S. copyright law, but the proper place to complain about that is at your Congressional representative's office. It's not Wal-Mart's fault; they're just following the law.
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November 12th, 2009
 | 10:21 am - Today in "Missing The Point Theater"...
...researchers discover that the Wii Fit versions of sports burn fewer calories than the actual sports they're imitating.
I'd guess that most people who use Wii Fit are not exactly using it as an alternative to real sports. I may be over-generalizing here, but I just don't think they're the type of people who would go to a gym and go boxing. They're probably people who would otherwise be doing something sedentary.
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November 6th, 2009
 | 04:24 pm - Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009
Note to those of you living in Washington state: The Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (S.1584) is currently being considered by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Sen. Patty Murray sits on this committee, so this would be a good time to contact her and express your support for the bill. ENDA would prohibit employers (with a few exceptions) from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill has 42 cosponsors and looks to have a decent chance this time. President Obama has said he'll sign it into law if it passes.
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 | 09:59 am
If you haven't voted in Amazon's Comic Strip Superstar contest, today's your last chance! Naturally I think you ought to vote for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bluerain's submission, Girl, but you can see all the submissions there and make up your own mind. :)
Voting ends at midnight EST.
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November 5th, 2009
 | 03:27 pm
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November 4th, 2009
 | 09:57 am
R-71 is, as was generally anticipated, looking pretty close. It's currently leading, but because this is a vote-by-mail election we won't know the final numbers for another day or two. The margin has shrunk slightly since last night, but King County, which is currently passing it 65%-35%, has a batch of 115,000 ballots to process that won't be incorporated into the statewide results until the next results drop at 4:30 pm. This is likely to widen the current 51.03%-48.97% margin. The biggest county turning it down is Pierce, but the margin there is relatively close so those votes won't affect the statewide totals by much. The election map shows basically the usual west-east, urban-rural split we're used to seeing in Washington.
The Washington Poll is projecting a 51.11%-48.87% win. This is based on two assumptions: That voting patterns will remain the same per county as new votes are tallied (likely, but not a given); and that turnout will be 50% (probably optimistic, although some counties are approaching it as ballots continue to come in.)
I-1033, which is Tim Eyman's take on a TABOR measure, is going down by a fairly wide margin, with even many rural, conservative counties going against it. Eyman sounded cheerful and upbeat on the radio this morning, which makes sense; he's an initiative mercenary who gets his paycheck whether it passes or not. In a way not passing it makes his job easier for him, since he can rejigger the language slightly and try the same thing again next year.
UPDATE: King County's results dump at 4:30 did indeed widen the margin, by nearly 1.5 percentage points. Interestingly enough, they also actually fell behind, with the number of pending ballots rising to 129,000. Probably a lot of people mailed their ballots at the last minute.
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November 3rd, 2009
| 07:03 pm - 2010 Congressional District Survey
Somehow — I can't for the life of me imagine how — I've ended up on the RNC's mailing list. Today they sent me a pretty amusing fund raising form disguised as a poll. Some choice bits below:
INSTRUCTIONS: Please complete your RNC Congressional District Survey in its entirety and then return it to me at Party Headquarters using the enclosed reply envelope within the next 14 days. Your answers will represent ALL Republican constituants living within your Congressional District... If only that were true! Imagine the fun I could have.2. Should Republicans continue fighting congressional Democrats' efforts to grant full unconditional amnesty to illegal immigrants? Yes, and while they're at it, they should continue fighting the Democrats' efforts to drill a hole in the bottom of the ocean and let all the water drain out.7. Do you support the Democrats' efforts to create a massive new federal government bureaucracy that would be run by unionized government employees and would have complete control of your health care costs and choices? Wow, pushing all the hot buttons here. Not just a government bureaucracy, a unionized government bureaucracy. I nearly finished my Republican Buzzword Bingo card on that question.12. Do you believe that American business and industry will be able to compete in the world economy if the Obama Administration bends to pressure from radical environmentalists and implements draconian regulations on emissions, energy consumption and transportation beyond what is required in other industrialized countries? BINGO! ("Radical environmentalists" was the one I needed, up there in the corner.)16. Do you feel that total Democrat[sic] control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency will make our nation more prosperous, safe and free? Well, actually...
Finally, we come to the kicker:
17. Are you ready to actively support Republican candidates in your area and across the country who are fighting to stop the liberal Obama agenda and reinstitute conservative Republican policies and principles such as personal responsibility, lower taxes, cutting government waste, and keeping our defense strong?
[ ] Yes! I want to join the RNC's effort to win control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in the fast-approaching 2010 mid-term elections, safeguard our values and principles, and get America moving towards a strong, prosperous, and secure futre. I am enclosing my most generous contribution of $_____.
[ ] I cannot pledge my support for this year, but I would like to include a contribution of $11 to help the RNC fund this survey and its tabulation. I love how the last question in the "survey" is a choice between "yes, I'll give $xxx" and "no, I'll give $11."
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November 2nd, 2009
| 09:41 am - WA residents: Have you voted yet?
If you live in Washington and haven't voted yet, you'd better hurry. Your ballot has to be postmarked by tomorrow for your vote to count. Turnout in King County so far is only 20% so your vote is more important than ever.
Naturally, I also hope you'll support domestic partnership benefits for same-sex and senior couples by voting yes on R-71*.
EDITED to clarify the turnout number, and to remove the note about the R-71 site being down.
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October 28th, 2009
 | 09:23 pm
One of SLOG's contributers thinks he's found the killer application for Google Wave: Role-playing games.
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October 27th, 2009
| 04:36 pm - New Washington Poll today.
New Washington Poll results were released today. This is a vote-by-mail election, so for some races they've broken out figures for how many people have already voted.
King County Executive: 45% Dow Constantine, 32% Suzanne Hutchison, 22% Undecided.
R-71 (Domestic partnership rights referendum): 56% Yes, 39% No, 5% Undecided. Of the people who said they had already voted, 55% Yes, 45% No. There are some interesting crosstabs by region but I won't recount those here; you can check them out in the full results.
I-1033 (Tim Eyman's latest anti-tax initiative): 41% Yes, 46% No, 13% Undecided. Among those who have already voted: 44% Yes, 56% No.
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October 26th, 2009
| 07:07 pm - Further rant ('cause I'm in a ranting mood, for some reason.)
Back when this country actually manufactured stuff, the people on the high end of the income scale had to give some thought toward not letting things get too out of hand. They needed to employ lots of people to make that stuff, people that might get organized and/or rowdy if they didn't think they were getting a fair shake. So income disparities were large, but never reached banana republic levels.
It's different now. The wealthiest people in today's economy make money largely by moving other wealthy people's money around. This does not require a lot of employees. In fact it doesn't require most of the population to do anything in particular, although it's helpful if we occasionally buy into one of their heads-I-win-tails-you-lose schemes*. Ultimately, to the people at the top it no longer matters what happens to the rest of us. Therein lies much of the problem.
Our court system has also largely decided that campaign spending limits are illegal, and if the makeup of the Supreme Court stays more or less the same I expect campaign contribution limits to eventually follow; this makes money essentially equal to speech, and since the wealthiest 5% of the population now control over 50% of the wealth, they can easily drown out the rest of us and get policies that favor them.
* These exist at all levels in finance. On a small scale, there's the stock broker, who makes commissions whether his client makes money or loses money. On a bigger scale, there's the CEOs of large financial institutions, who have contracts that guarantee they'll draw a large pension for life even if they screw up unimaginably badly and get fired. The mortage bubble was this writ large. Mortage brokers and the businesses they worked for got their percentage no matter how the loan performed. When the investments eventually went bad, the banks that had invested in them simply held the economy hostage until the rest of us made good on their losses.
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| 02:21 pm - Double standard
If you're a blue-collar auto worker and your company is in trouble:- Your company is forced into bankruptcy.
- Conservatives will demand that the company break your contract as a condition of getting a bailout.
If you're an investment bank CEO and your bank is in trouble:- Your company gets billions in bailouts with few strings attached.
- Conservatives will argue that you should still get your bonuses, because it would be wrong to break your contract.
Of course, the liberals in Congress went along with what the conservatives wanted, because we've created a culture where only conservative views of economics are accepted.
Is it any wonder that Wall Street is now doing great, while unemployment is still increasing? This is the real "decoupling" — the top 1%, most of them in the financial sector, have decoupled from the rest of us, and our half of the train is rolling backwards down the hill.
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October 23rd, 2009
| 03:07 pm - Jolicloud first impressions
Random thoughts about Jolicloud, which I just installed on my EeePC:- For an alpha-test product this is pretty robust stuff. Nothing has crashed or caught fire yet. I suspect this is because they're mostly amalgamating software that is, itself, already production quality. The only software I had problems with was the USB key creator, and that was easy to work around.
- The experience of using sites like GMail through Prism is excellent. On a desktop I never really understood the point, but on a netbook the lack of browser "screen furniture" makes for a much more efficient use of limited space.
- All my hardware worked right out of the box -- probably a benefit of targeting a specific subset of machines. Even the volume control keys worked, and I never figured out how to get them to do anything under Debian. They need to add a pop-up reminding you to configure your network when you first boot, though. If I hadn't already been familiar with Ubuntu I would have probably overlooked the little "WiFi" icon in the taskbar.
- The Twitter-like feed showing what your friends have been installing is kind of clever, in a "they liked this, you might too" sort of way.
- There's a disappointing absence of developer information. I really like the concept of Jolicloud and I'd love to take a crack at porting some apps to it, but there's absolutely no information on the website about how to do that. Granted, I could run any Linux app I wanted, but that doesn't get it integrated with the Jolicloud UI. This gives me a slightly uncomfortable suspicion they might be trying for an iPhone-like closed platform.
- There's a dearth of options in general for communicating with the developers or other users -- very odd for an OS that's supposed to be somehow crowd-sourced. What's the point of alpha-testing an open-source product if you don't give people a way to hack on it or even file bug reports?
Overall, I think this is a good idea and will probably keep it on my netbook, but I feel like there's more potential than actual innovation here. The only really revolutionary thing (compared to other netbook remixes of Linux) is the app installer, and that's somewhat hamstrung by a lack of integration (you have to go back to the home screen to actually run what you've just installed) and the perplexing absence of any way to contribute new apps.
Of course, this is all alpha-test, so it's possible the potential will be rolled over into actual at some point. ;)
P.S. - If anyone else wants to give it a try, I have some invites I can pass out.
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October 22nd, 2009
 | 10:05 am
It took me a while to figure out that my rice cooker is good for more than just cooking rice. It works for pretty much anything where the instructions contain the phrase "simmer until all water is absorbed." The amount of water you dump in basically sets the cooking time. What I've tried so far:
- Rice - of course.
- Couscous - works well, sometimes burns a little on the very bottom.
- Oat groats - 3 cups water to 1 cup groats; they take about an hour to fully cook. This is a lot of water, so the trick is to keep it from boiling over onto the counter. I put an upside-down saucer over the vent to catch anything that sputters out, and put the lid on the cooker slightly cockeyed so the excess liquid will drain back into the machine.
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October 17th, 2009
 | 02:36 pm
I wonder how much money the Rube Goldberg Corporation made in the 80s, what with VW contracting with them to design shift linkages and accessory V-belt drive systems?
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October 15th, 2009
| 11:38 am - Someone finally asked.
Opponents of gay marriage always assert that it would damage society by undermining the institution of marriage. They state this as if it's obvious and requires no proof or explanation. Finally, someone is challenging them on it:The question is relevant to the assertion by gay marriage opponents that Proposition 8 is constitutionally valid because it furthers the state's goal of fostering "naturally procreative relationships," [U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker] explained.
"What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?" Walker asked.
"My answer is, I don't know. I don't know," Cooper answered. Here's the best he could do:Walker pressed on, asking again for specific "adverse consequences" that could follow expanding marriage to include same-sex couples. Cooper cited a study from the Netherlands, where gay marriage is legal, showing that straight couples were increasingly opting to become domestic partners instead of getting married.
"Has that been harmful to children in the Netherlands? What is the adverse effect?" Walker asked.
Cooper said he did not have the facts at hand. It seems to me that his statistics show the unintended consequences of creating a two-tiered system. I've seen it suggested before that if the government creates a purely secular institution similar to marriage, heterosexuals might eventually demand access to it and opt for it. By creating a potential alternative to marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships might ironically do far more damage to the institution than simply allowing gay marriage would have.
(AP via USA Today via Slog)
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October 13th, 2009
| 07:33 pm - Everything old is new again...
OK, old Unixheads...remember "talk", or maybe its slightly improved clone "ytalk"? I think Google just reinvented it:On a conventional IM, you only see what other people say once they hit Enter. (True, the IM program will tell your partner whether or not you're typing, but this is too little information to get embarrassed about.) On Wave, every misspelling, half-formed sentence, and ill-advised stab at sarcasm is transmitted instantly to the other person. This behavior is so corrosive to normal conversation that you'd think it was some kind of bug. In fact, it's a feature—indeed, it's one of the Wave team's proudest accomplishments. When Google first unveiled Wave this spring, the program's inventors hailed real-time typing as a way to mimic real-life conversations online. I'd argue the mental distress the article's author is experiencing is not actually an inherent feature of real-time typing; I think it's there because for about a decade all the major ways of chatting live with other people online have been line-oriented. IRC, MUDs, and IM clients all used this model because it scaled well, obscured the lag of slow connections, and didn't ask much of the equipment at each end. (In the early days of IRC you couldn't even assume that everyone had a terminal with cursor control commands.) Now people have gotten habituated to the extra thinking time that a line-oriented conversation model creates. It'll be interesting to see whether Google Wave can overcome this hurdle.
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