Posted on by lhl

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

—RAH

Speaking of CSS

Posted on by lhl

I’ve been adding some widgetry. A little show-source JS widget in the left, and also, since I noticed that Paul‘s been using the abbr tag for the nifty dotted underline and help pointer, I decided to adopt that visual convention and automagically style all my titled elements so people can easily spot my snarky comments.

I don’t think I’ve seen it around much yet, but it makes a lot of sense. Of course, browsers that don’t support CSS2 selectors won’t see anything at all:



*[title] {

  border-bottom:1px dotted silver;

  cursor:help;

}

If you add this to your user style sheet, you can see on all the secret stuff on all those sites that you’ve been missing out on ;).

Posted on by lhl

Steven Garrity asks Why should I redesign my site with Cascading Style Sheets? There are a number of replies here.

The curmudgeonly part of me want to say “You shouldn’t, don’t bother.” Actually, to be non-flippant, as a fellow in-the-trencher, Steve has a firm grasp of the issues surrounding the decision to goCSS. Obviously CSS isn’t ready for production work, and at the current rated of browser adoption, it may never be. Also, CSS2 is just has so many weakpoints it really is agonizing. Actually, I’d be more than happy to play within the spec if all my time wasn’t being spent working around implementation bugs anyway.

Hmm: KM entry should have scoped run-time and pre-definable/loadable transclusions…

Time Flies…

Posted on by lhl

…even when you’re not having fun. Hmm, well, not exactly not having fun, just super busy (which isn’t the unfun part). The unfun part is all the rest of the crap that’s still waiting to be done.

I’ve been so busy in fact that things have started slipping my mind rather regularly. For example, I totally forgot about the Phantom Planet concert in the middle of the campus despite telling people to marking my calendar. Oops. I decided to catch them at Aron’s Records. They played a good set, and despite having no doubt signed their souls away I was going to pick up their album (having already invested over an hour in travel and wait time anyway) and be a good sport about it, but the crowds and the lines and the handstamping and the yayas was just too much.

Also, the crowd was mucho trendy, reminding me about Hollywood and LA in general, in how the music industry promotes and popularizes in general, and also in why I don’t go out more (besides being lazy, that is). In any case, and this has nothing to do with being anti-success, but IP issues have been at the top of my mind recently, and that whole thing has left an intellectual aftertaste.

Speaking of which, /. provides the daily IP ulcer: MPAA Wants Copy-Controlled PCs. This has long since crossed over the realm of ridiculousness, with distribution-based media companies once again trying to undo disruptive technology with laws so that they won’t have to shift their economic model because of short term turmoil despite that everyone will benefit in the long run. Fundamental problem? Self-interest is too short-sighted. It will always prefer the safe, local maxima. Never the forest, only the trees.

Posted on by lhl

Hmm…

The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel said AM and FM radio stations should pay 0.07 cent per song, with Internet-only Webcasters paying 0.14 cent per song. The rates, retroactive to 1998, also charge a 9 percent “ephemeral license fee.”

Ephemeral license fee. WTF is that?!? Of course, one might dream that perhaps someone might actually be successful in overturning the tide and one day we’ll laugh about all of this, but… I doubt it.

Interesting posts on mefi, including some from IPLawyer, someone involved with the litigation.

Here’s a timeline of a bizarro alternate-earth: artists start banding together after realizing how they’re constantly getting screwed, music monopolies get slapped around for being complete morons,

people realize what a sham current ip laws are, and laws actually change, hell freezes over.