December 2006 archive

Slashdot Copyright Discussion (re: Gowers Report and Dead Artist Petition)

Slashdot has a story picked up from Lawrence Lessig about the Gowers report and resulting petition signed in part by dead artists. There is this comment by “Toby the Economist”:

If I’m a painter, and I create a great work of art, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

If I’m a programmer, and I create a wonderful piece of software, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

If I’m a singer, and I create a great song, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

Oh. It does. Erm, why?

It’s basically judicial theft.

The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it

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You’re a Mean One, Mr. GIMP

In one of my “moving to freedom in stages” projects, I’ve started to use the GIMP on Windows XP. GIMP is the free software counterpart of Adobe Photoshop.

I’ve mentioned previously my bewilderment when faced with its amazing power and feature list. I have to confess that I often just fire up MS Paint or IrfanView for quick image manipulation jobs. That previous post mentions how I found tutorials to do more sophisticated things like changing transparency in .png files and removing red eye, but there are a lot of simple jobs I can do in Paint and IrfanView that would take me a good chunk of time to learn …

Late Friday Photopost: Sedona, Arizona

I wasn’t going to do a photopost this week because I haven’t written much and I don’t want photoposts to outweigh wordier entries. (Although it is a lot of fun to share pictures!)

I have things I want to write about, but one of the reasons I’m not getting to them is I’m doing this new thing where I try to get more sleep. I like sleep. And I have this 10-month-old daughter that selfishly interferes with both my writing and my sleep ambitions.

Since I still don’t have something new ready and these things are fairly quick to put together…

Here are a couple of pictures of gorgeous red rock country: Sedona, Arizona. Doe Mountain is a great hike not far outside of town. A nice switchback trail to the top and then …

SEO Song: ‘Google Loves Me’

Google loves me, yes I know,
for the search results tell me so.
Little sites to them belong,
we are weak and they are strong.

Yes, Google loves me,
yes, Google loves me,
yes, Google loves me,
the search results tell me so.

There is nothing new under the sun. I thought of that little ditty and was pleased with my cleverness, but Google hates me and shows me that others have riffed on it before.

This is a small and insignificant site, amongst billions and billions of other pages, but Google is sending some love my way. I’m amazed at how much of my traffic comes from them: about 50%.

I wonder how often searchers arrive here and find their hopes and deepest longings fulfilled? I can tell that disappointment often awaits …

GNU/Solaris and GPLv3

I found an interesting article at The Register yesterday, “Is ‘GNU/Solaris’ emerging from the Microsoft-Novell deal?” It would be awesome if Sun released the Solaris kernel under the GPLv3, because I think that would be a chance to observe differences between idealistic and pragmatic approaches to free software.

Looking around, I see Linux Today picked up the story, and in comments there I found out there are already projects in progress around an existing free/open Solaris, including OpenSolaris.org and the Nexenta Operating System, which combines GNU with OpenSolaris. But OpenSolaris is based on Sun’s CDDL, and not the GPL, which I strongly prefer.

Why am I writing on these matters of which I know very little? Because …

Friday Photopost: Santorini, Greece

Stacy Cashman took these great pictures of cliff dwellings on the island of Santorini, Greece.

These were taken with a 3.2 megapixel Olympus camera, and they link to 2048×1536 wallpaper versions. Please feel free to make use of the pictures under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. Thanks, Stacy! (And be sure to visit Stacy’s “Rambling Traveler” web site for more free pictures and travel-related articles.)…