Adam Fields (weblog)

Via Calista:

http://oldeenglish.org/puppy.html

DRM doesn’t work to prevent copying. It cannot work to prevent copying (it can only work to prevent legitimate users from using content in the ways they’d like to, and to turn them into criminals when they do it anyway). Therefore, file trading will continue. It can be made illegal, but then, you have to define the illegal behavior. In the case of a store, that’s easy. There’s a physical item you’re not allowed to walk away with. In the case of a piece of content, it’s not so easy.

(more…)

Mayur has written an extended piece against Social Security privitization. With permission, I include it here in its entirety:

(more…)

Er, yes.

As Warren Ellis says, “WIRED’s interview with Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi is one of the greatest interviews in the history of interviews ever”:

http://www.gamerah.com/noticias.php?bias=180#180

An interview with Jeanne L. Phillips, who seems to be “chairwoman of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee”. Get it now, because the Times Archive Pay Hole Countdown is ticking.

As an alternative way of honoring them, did you or the president ever discuss canceling the nine balls and using the $40 million inaugural budget to purchase better equipment for the troops?

I think we felt like we would have a traditional set of events and we would focus on honoring the people who are serving our country right now — not just the people in the armed forces, but also the community volunteers, the firemen, the policemen, the teachers, the people who serve at, you know, the — well, it’s called the StewPot in Dallas, people who work with the homeless.

How do any of them benefit from the inaugural balls?

I’m not sure that they do benefit from them.

Then how, exactly, are you honoring them?

Honoring service is what our theme is about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/magazine/02QUESTIONS.html

cdh points me to this article by Federal Judge (and blogger!) Michael Posner on the economics of copyright, and why copying should always qualify as fair use if the copyright holder has not expressed “enough interest” in retaining copyright.

http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol1/iss1/art3/

Or jump straight to the PDF:
http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=ev

Also, there’s Judge Posner’s blog, which he shares with Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker:

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Very useful page of corporate contact numbers, courtesty of the GSA.

http://pueblo.gsa.gov/crh/corpormain.shtml

http://www.fakes.net/top10_2004.htm

“Five years after the hoopla and warnings about Y2K, many dismiss it as a hoax, scam, or non-event. Not only was Y2K a real threat narrowly averted, but it is still having major effects on the economy. It also continues to change how we look at technology. For the fifth anniversary of Y2K, we look at the history and the legacy of the millennium bug.”

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/y2k/index.html

We were having a conversation about “what’s wrong with our food production system”, relating to obesity, the availability of cheap, unhealthy food, the abundance of corn, and eventually corn fed vs. grass fed beef. The question came up about why cows need massive antibiotics doses, and I had remembered reading an article by Michael Pollan describing that it was directly related to the change in diet from grass to grains/corn. I couldn’t find the original (actually, I think it’s buried in the NY Times Magazine archive), but here’s an interview with him that has substantially the same content:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html