09.13.08
Posted in Letters to the Editor at 6:20 pm by Clay
Since the presidential election is coming up shortly, I figured I should get back to writing a few things at Moderate Wacko. Oddly enough, it’s harder to write during this time period, as I keep absorbing an absolutely massive quantity of news stories — by the time I get annoyed by a story, there are three more that are just as annoying. So I keep reading and not blogging.
Well, time for me to add to the noise of the internet again.
Here is a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, September 10th. Considering how short it is, I’ll quote the entire thing:
Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s discussion of Gov. Sarah Palin “actually pushing the combination of professional and personal ambitions beyond the sensibilities of this generation of working moms,” raises a question I had wonder about as well (”Let’s Talk About Palin’s Family Challenges,” op-ed, Sept. 6).
Why in the world would she subject herself to such horrible treatment by the press particularly when she had a fantastic life in Alaska?
While recently reading “John Adams,” “founding Brothers,” “1776,” “Team of Rivals,” etc., I asked myself the same question about those people who chose to push themselves beyond comfortable and meaningful lives to endure excruciating discomfort for the purest of political endeavors.
The only conceivable answer is that there are special people who are compelled to make a difference for their country — they cannot refuse.
Jacquie Woodward
Harrodsburg, Ky
Evidently it’s inconceivable that there are some people who are so power hungry that they’ll put their families through anything in the quest for power and a form of immortality.
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01.22.08
Posted in General at 10:36 pm by Clay
On page D3 in the local section of today’s Wisconsin State Journal was an article about a Blackhawk Technical College brochure. Its cover featured a photograph of adults and two children with a caption that originally said, “A Family Affair: BTC is the perfect fit for the White family.”
This, quite reasonably, drew some complaints as being a rather poor choice of phrasing. The State Journal asked an expert:
Bob Baldwin, a diversity specialist for the Janesville School District, who is black, said most black people would have a problem with the wording.
“That’s kind of a natural thing — when you’re white, you don’t think about these things,” Baldwin said. “And people need to start thinking about these things beyond their own comfort level — you know, what about the other folks?”
There’s nothing quite like a generalization about white people to help illustrate his point.
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01.04.08
Posted in General at 4:25 pm by Clay
I’d like to mention that Ron Paul decimated the Republican Iowa caucus vote last night.
By which, of course, I mean that he took ten percent.
…
Hopefully enough people have heard the controversy about the usage of “decimate” to not think I’ve completely lost it.
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10.06.07
Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law at 8:14 am by Clay
Slashdot linked to a news.com article that quoted a Bush administration official as saying:
Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property
And, indeed, this case does lead to a very obvious conclusion: Jammie Thomas should’ve gone to the store and stolen the CDs off the shelf instead, since, if memory serves, she would’ve been on the hook for up to $1,000 per CD, rather than ending up being stuck with over $9,000 per song.
Oh, and my title is a bit over-the-top, but when there’s research claiming that fair use is worth more to the economy than copyright, and the Bush Administration prefers an expansive view of copyright, I have to conclude that Bush is less interested in having a thriving, expanding, vibrant economy than he is in protecting his friends in the content industries, and thus must be an “enemy of freedom”, to borrow a Bush-ism.
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09.04.07
Posted in General at 9:41 pm by Clay
In today’s Marketplace section, Yukari Iwatani Kane wrote from Tokyo about Sony. The article was titled “Sony to Challenge Apple in TV, Movie Downloads”. It mentioned that,
Since the failure of the Walkman to beat the iPod, Sony has been struggling to come up with a new product that defines the industry standard in innovation.
This general idea of Sony failing since losing to the iPod is repeated throughout the article, along with some conjecture about what Sony is likely to do to turn its fortunes around.
However, I find it odd that the article doesn’t mention the reason why most everyone I know(and Slashdot) has developed a distaste for Sony hardware; the fact that Sony releases moderate quality products that are crippled into products that worry most about stopping you from doing stuff.
This hit home recently when I was playing with a PSP, and went to download a trailer for a PSP game, and had to agree to a EULA before I was allowed to watch it.
Again, I had to agree to abide by certain rules so that I could watch an ad.
Sony has a history of having propietary devices that lock you out about as much as American cell phones do. When you can choose an iPod, which plays MP3s and Apple’s format, or the first few generations of Sony MP3 players, which played only Sony’s format, the choice is obvious. Why would you want to force yourself to convert all of your files in order to play them? It takes a lot longer, the files are lower quality, and you can’t just copy them to another player or computer.
Sony’s methods can work, as long as all the other hardware providers provide equally restrictive hardware, but as long as Sony is competiting against hardware makers who worry more about marketability than pleasing content companies, I fail to see why anyone would want to buy Sony products.
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08.18.07
Posted in General at 2:46 pm by Clay
C-Span rebroadcast a recent Republican presidential debate that appeared on ABC, and I was struck by the fact that the moderator started off with the current Iowa polling numbers of the candidates on the stage, as well as Fred Thompson.
This bugs me. I’m not sure how reasonable it is for me to be bugged by it, but I just have this image of a debate being something where one candidate does better than another based on his performance on the stage, or because of how people view the issues, rather than forming an opinion on the candidates because of the current polling data.
On the other hand, it’s a bit pie in the sky of me to even bother pretending that most of these candidates have even a tiny shot at the nomination.
Still, aren’t the producers of this dog and pony show pretending in exactly the same way when they have all the minor candidates on the stage? And if they’re going to pretend that the “non-serious” candidates are serious, why doesn’t that extend to ignoring things like polling?
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Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law at 8:52 am by Clay
In an SFGate article, linked to from Darknet:
Fox News has no plans to offer unlimited use of its debate content.
“That, to me, is giving up too much control to somebody who didn’t create the content and who can then turn around and monetize it,” said Chris Silvestri, vice president of legal and business affairs at Fox News.
Because, of course, it’s rather difficult to assemble ten politicians who already intend to pay large sums of money for media exposure.
Way to go, Fox; way to push the envelope on creativity, going where no one without a network and video equipment can go, but everyone with a network has gone.
I hope(unrealistically) that some politician will boycott the Fox News debate because of Fox’s morally repugnant stance on copyright of debates, so that I could have a clear candidate to whom I would gladly give my vote and money to.
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07.14.07
Posted in General at 10:31 am by Clay
…statistics.
An AP article that appeared on the front page of today’s Wisconsin State Journal stated,
In the eyes of the public, Congress is doing even worse than the president. Public satisfaction with the job lawmakers are doing has fallen 11 points since May, to 24 percent, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Poll respondents from both parties say they’re tired of fighting between Congress and the White House and want the two branches of government to work together on such issues as education, health care and the Iraq War.
So congress has an approval rating of 24 percent versus Bush’s 33 percent; therefore, congress must be less popular than the president, right?
Of course, if you were to ask people how they felt about their representative, they would almost certainly give a much higher approval rating.
As a personal aside, I’d rather like to see the two branches of government work against one another. I can only hope that congress can obstruct the president and force him to be more open than he has, and I can only hope the president can obstruct congress enough to slow down the pork fest.
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06.23.07
Posted in General at 11:25 pm by Clay
I think it’d be entertaining to begin referring to children as “post-born fetuses”.
This idea came from hearing “pre-born child” used in a news report, and the term grated on me — there’s this perfectly accurate term that’s viewpoint neutral. I find “fetus” a much better term as it’s a description of what’s growing inside of a pregnant woman; it doesn’t say whether the woman wants it or intends to kill it.
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05.30.07
Posted in General, Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law, Freedom of Speech at 7:52 pm by Clay
There’s an article on Slashdot today about McCain’s appearance at D5: All Things Digital conference. Despite the fact that it’s supposedly about “all things digital”, about half the questions are about the Iraq war. Being annoyed about the fact that an “all things digital” conference spent lots of time talking about Iraq, rather than, oh, digital things, I wrote a comment on Slashdot that sparked a nice conversation of mostly me ranting.
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