Media

Dear Mr. Eisner,

The Internet is a wonderful place. Not only can we read your enlightening commentary on one of the grevious sins of our age, but we can easily find the words of our great President Lincoln.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins) Ref: "The Lincoln Encyclopedia", Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

We can even cite our sources.

Please have someone maintain Splash Mountain at DisneyWorld. It stopped five times for over 30 minutes while we were on the ride, once at the top of the hill. It was not fun.

Yours sincerely,

2:45:14 PM # Google It!
categories: Law, Media

"We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin- a little fellow trying to do the best he could." — Walt Disney

2:19:15 PM #
categories: Law, Media

WARNING: This post makes extensive use of the ACRONYM tag

We bought a new VCR because the tracking on the old one was on the fritz. While connecting it into the chain of devices connected to my TV, I was excited to find that I didn't need the RF converter for the multizone DVD player we received for Christmas; I could connect the DVD player directly to the VCR.

Then we sat down to watch a DVD, a Hitchcock film.

WTF! Every few seconds the MPAA's gremlins in the VCR would flash some blue frames on the screen, and the contrast wouldn't remain stable. This is the great advance in quality of DVDs?

So I spent five minutes restoring the RF converter to the chain.

Yeah, I'm going to copy your precious DVD using a $40 POS VCR that we bought just so our daughter wouldn't be disturbed by the bad tracking on her VHS tapes.

Have a nice day.

12:18:22 PM # Google It!
categories: Language, Law, Media

The more things change

I had a good conversation yesterday with Jenny about the rapidity of technical change. It started from her question: "How long will it be until we start seeing judges who have at least some passing knowledge about technology?" I had a similar discussion the day before with Mulher that turned into a consideration of the requirements for judges who sit on patent issues.

Jenny linked to Jeremy Bowers's consideration of the What-the-hell-is-that-acronym-again Act. I'm not sure he's aware he joined this particular discussion:

Unfortunately, this ability to be rational is critically dependent on domain knowlege. Enter the computer, the modern-day magic, understood by a modern day class of wizards. The people proposing and supporting the bill know little-to-nothing about computers. .... Most people do not have instinct-level knowlege about computers. What's the result?

11:47:30 AM # Google It!
categories: Language, Law, Media

I am, to an extent, a product of St. John's College. Books hold a conversation across time with each other.

We carry on that conversation.

11:11:03 AM #
categories: Language, Law, Media

A Canticle for Leibowitz

"Another question: if they agree that someday a work could fall out of copyright (100+ years), how would your locked-down machines know its rights had changed?" — The Shifted Librarian

That's a good question. Unfortunately, at that point the work will no longer exist. It would not have been copied to other media, and so would perish from the record.

10:11:22 AM # Google It!
categories: Law, Media