Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 30 January 2003

# 8:25 AM

more metadata

This weblog now has an official copyright license: see the bottom of the yellow sidebar. The legal text is provided by the Creative Commons project. They're a good thing, check them out.

Creative Commons licenses come with Semantic Web tagging for the licensing terms, which is a particularly clever idea, but leaves me wondering what to do with the existing RDF tags put there for GeoURL's sake. It would make sense to have everything in the separate RDF file suggested by the Creative Commons folks, but will that work properly? It's too late at night for me to feel like experimenting. Bleah. I wanted to be in bed at eleven PM tonight.

# 7:30 AM

Tell it, preacher.

Wednesday, 22 January 2003

# 6:50 AM

punchy

Chop chop chop! One incomprehensible file becomes ... eight comprehensible files! Behold! 

        * pexecute.c: Split up; meat moved to...
        * pexecute-cygwin.c, pexecute-djgpp.c, pexecute-mpw.c,
        pexecute-msdos.c, pexecute-os2.c, pexecute-unix.c,
        pexecute-win32.c: ... these new files.

(now let's see if it gets approved.)

Tuesday, 21 January 2003

# 8:20 AM

And, worth calling out in its own right: Lessig's proposal of a renewal fee for old copyrights, as a way to break the deadlock produced by the Eldred decision. Lessig has a FAQ on his proposal here.

This is an interesting idea and it will be interesting to see what sorts of arguments come forth for and against it. I've already seen people ranting about its being a horrid idea in terms that strike me as equivalent to "but that's not the way it's always been done and therefore it is evil and wrong". This in rec.arts.sf.composition, where you would expect people to have a smidge more noophilia than that. Furrfu. For myself, I don't know if it is the optimal solution, but I approve of changing the terms of the debate, since the previous angle was clearly not working.

# 8 AM

Just a handful of links:

  • Washington Post article about XM Radio which is attempting to bring the cable television model to radio, in hopes of getting the diversity of programming back up. The twist: it's spearheaded by the guy who killed the diversity of FM radio, and now regrets it.
  • Samuel Pepys' diary, a major primary source for historical events in 1660s England, being serialized in weblog format. Shout-out to my parents for pointing this out to me.
  • It's almost a wek old at this point, but Seth's commentary on the Eldred decision is beautiful and well worth reading. (See also Lawrence Lessig's weblog.)

Saturday, 18 January 2003

# 8:45 AM

Dara got free tickets to see Madama Butterfly at the San Francisco Opera, so I and Robynne and Nathaniel and Dara all went.

I'd never been to a live opera performance before. I think this particular opera is atypical in some ways: the music didn't seem to fit the emotional tone of the action in several places, for instance. The story is tragic, which is common enough in opera, but interestingly it doesn't fit the Classical tragedy model. There is no tragic hero and not much in the way of catharsis. The ending is inevitable but does not feel appropriate; I was hoping the male lead would develop a sense of moral obligation at the last moment. Of course, he doesn't.

Having said that, it was a lot of fun, and I might consider going to more operas, especially if free tickets come my way.

Wednesday, 8 January 2003

# 9:10 PM

I have added GeoURL and Geotags metadata information to this web page. This means, for instance, that you can now poke "neighbors" over on the right side and get a list of weblogs by people who live near me.

Or, if you like, you can visit the Acme Mapper and see a satellite photo of exactly where I live, which is not terribly useful but cute.

Monday, 6 January 2003

# 6:15 PM

Regarding this post by Sumana:

I've got one back-burner queue that's over a year long and it's just things I want to do to GCC. Count all the other software projects, the travel plans, the hobbies I'd like to learn, etc. etc. and there's stuff to keep me occupied for at least a decade.

I envision a giant stove with back burners stretching off into infinity, each with a tottering stack of pots piled atop it. Drawn in Dr. Seuss's art style.

# 2 AM

new year's resolution

I have four linear feet of books in my apartment which I have not read.

I shall read at least two of them a week, and I shall tell you about them, and I shall not buy any more books until they are all gone.