Jamcleat

I read with interest this blog post. I got there from a link on Groklaw, one of my addictions. My thought on reading the excerpt quoted at Groklaw and again on reading the full text of the lecture at Columbia was that things have changed for better and for worse.
For years, I was bombarded with folks trying to get me to subscribe to magazines. I loved and still love paper magazines. But they take up space or you must discard them. Both of these activities give me discomfort. So my request to the solicitor was “Can you send that to me on color microfiche?” The response was invariably “What did you say?” What I wanted was the ability to (re-)locate an article I had read or that was referenced in a current article and (re-)read it for background or recollection.
Today, many magazines offer the entire collection of back issues on CD-ROM for what is more money than I have to devote to back issues, but on the other hand, not an unaffordable fortune. Wooden Boat is one magazine I would consider getting the CD, (now a memory stick) for.
But the pages are pictures of pages and who knows weather you can cut an paste the text or the illustrations.
With the paper version, I can put it on the scanner and get either without a problem, at least for issues I have not yet lost or discarded.
Getting back to the quoted article by Steven Berlin Johnson, the Wall Street Journal has had a corner of the op-ed page labeled “Notable and Quotable” for as long as I have been reading it (I still miss Vermont Royster). With the un-selectable glass box version, does this mean that the Noted but Unquotable version gets forgotten because it cannot be passed on, tweeted, facebooked, e-mailed.
Authors, retain the right to distribute your version and indicate that it is the basis of the published article. Then when someone searches for the quote, they find your version, if you have made it available.

Patents give an inventor the Constitutionally protected exclusive right to a particular process for altering material or to a device for a specific purpose. The US Patent office has managed to extended this to software. Most of the software patents I have read fail to alter material or fail to be a device.
If I ran the zoo, I would permit any software patent given two conditions: 1) It alters something tangible. A general purpose computer does not count. The software needs to turn on a light, roll a bar of steel, catch a mouse. Not tell a broker when to buy. Not bounce a virtual ball screen. Not make a 2-D movie appear 3-D. 2) All of the source code related to the patent must be published as part of the patent grant. It can be secret up to the moment of grant but after that it is public information just as the patent law specifies that the patent enable the reproduction of the process or art at the expiration of the patent. Only the processes included in the published source code are protected. Different code that accomplishes the same end is not infringing.
We will have to wait a little bit to find out what the Supremes have to say about Bilski.

The other night, my wife went to shut the Player off. And it would not go off. The push-on-push-off switch that has served faithfully for 25 years was stuck. She got it off by unplugging it. When I plugged it back in the next day, it did not seem to come on.
The Player is Radio Shack ™ Realistic ™ STA-2500 Digital Synthesized AM/FM Stereo Receiver. The advantage of this particular device is the variety of stuff and internal switching that it has. Enough connections for dual cassette tape, 6-channel mixer, Karoke center-channel suppression, phono turntable, CD player, computer audio feed, upstairs and downstairs speakers. It’s in there. All media, all the time. When the Player is down, it is…well, quiet.
I recorded a diagram of the colors and connections of the cables to all of the above then pulled the plugs.
I found the circuit diagram with the other documents. They were too small to read. I scanned them and blew them up to 4 times the size.
I then took off he covers. This thing is like an onion. 4 screws for the particle-board walnut-look end panels. 3 screws for the back edge of the top cover. 6 more screws for the aluminum front panel. 6 snap clips release the front panel lable layer. Then I can get to the 2 screws for the power switch. I get the switch assembly out. I cycle it a couple of times. I plug in the power cord being careful not to touch anything electric. Get radio over the headphones. Switch on. Switch off. Put it all back together. Don’t you just hate when you didn’t do anything but now it works.

A tweet about a WSJ article authored by Penn Jillette that I read Saturday. The article led to an out-loud laugh when I read what it would take for Hummer to meet the fuel economy standard President Obama proposes. Mr. Jillette – this one’s for you.

While there were no U.S. mine fatalities in 2009, this year’s toll is already too large. The various states agencies and the federal government provide inspections and enforcement of regulations. But death and injury still continue to occur in mines. May I suggest a regulation that requires the CEO of the mining company to personally inspect each mine at least once per quarter and the next tier of management at least once per month. By inspection, I am not talking about a photo-op, above-ground visit. What I had in mind was a trip to the mine face, up-close and personal. It is possible that this would bring additional focus on the safety and conditions in the mine.

I link without additional comment.

While shelling a peanut, I had a flashback to a previous time in my grandparent’s yard. Grandma lived to be 102. Grandpa did not live as long. But my memory is of an earlier time in the yard in Clearwater, Florida. There was a chest-high chain link fence around the entire yard. But you could not see the fence except at the gates for the ivy that covered the fence. The fence was there for Granddaddy’s chickens. He had Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, and Banties that I remember, and from what my mother said, the Banties, bantam hens and a fancy bantam rooster, were his favorites.

Granddaddy had peanuts in a brown paper sack. A rotating sprinkler watered the lawn, spinning in the morning, Florida sun, making the coarse, Florida grass sparkle. A crate that had once been used to ship an upright piano had been made into a playhouse by cutting a kid-size door in one end and a North-facing window in one wall. The crate had been there for long before I got there. The wood was the color of driftwood from weather. Setting it on cement blocks had protected it from termites and and tar-paper roofing and siding kept it from wet.

Perhaps if the packers of today’s wide-screen T.V.’s and such would print play suggestions on the sides of the boxes then kids could take advantage of the play value of the packing material before it went to recycling or landfill…

Objection! Liability. Granted. Strike that testimony.

I have just returned from Asheville, NC where I saw a most amazing play. PLUTO V. ERIS. A play to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the publication of Galileo’s The Starry Messenger.

Full disclosure, I probably would not have heard about this play if my daughter did not play a part.

A classic play in the sense that it’s form and presentation model a Greek classic play. Or perhaps a modern civil trial.

A number of gods and goddesses from myth and legend are gathered for a Council of Celestial Beings. Eris, goddess of Discord, is accused by Pluto, god of the Underworld, of treason and general mayhem. Testimony proceeds through dialog and deposition. The costumes of the gods and goddess are outstanding from the Polynesian and Hawaiian god and goddess that open the show to the giant planet giants that join in the testimony. The cut paper figures in the shadow puppet deposition video are worth the visit in themselves. Classic shapes. Classic themes. Great action.

As the play unfolds, the interaction of myth and earth reality are explored. In the end, there are choices to be made.

The Vance Elementary School in Asheville Planetorium is the near-perfect performance space for this play. The semi-circular stadium is reminiscent of the Greek and Roman theaters of ancient times. More so because the ceiling of the Planetorium is hung with models of the planets with Earth the size of a basketball and the others to match.

Just one more performance in this round on the March 27, 2010 at 8:00 PM. A great show and worth the trip. A website for more info. Contributions benefit the Vance Elementary NASA program.

It is the floody time of year. A headline in my wife’s hometown newspaper reads “County Ditch 56 Now In Flood Zone”. The Weather Underground site where I post weather pictures has flooded roads, streets, and parks. Usually these are posted in a section called VIP for Very Important Picture, indicating that they are weather related pictures happening now. Today when I went to look for one, the section was empty. I suppose that this means that the snow is melting slowly, the Spring rain has slacked off, the rivers are moving, the sandbags are holding. The rivers are subsiding.
And so it is too with things like ObamaCare. From mid-November to today, everyday was some crisis for those who were for and for those who were against. They are still flapping but it will subside.

With rivers, there are many ways to look at them. The towboat captain looks at them as a highway with traffic, dangerous curves, rough spots, narrow lanes. The fisherman looks at them as a place to find a quiet out of the way spot to anchor, sit or stand and try to fool the fish. The Corp of Engineers looks at a river as something to be controlled. And the river looks back and thinks to itself “What a foolish idea”.

The farmer looks at the river and hopes that it comes up and refreshes that bottom land and then goes back in the banks and quietly flows away soon enough that he has time to plant, wait, and harvest before frost comes again. The River Street resident hopes that it does not come up at all.

Heraclitus said “You can never step in the same river twice”. So it is with the passage of the Health Care Bill the country is immutably changed.

Change for the better and change for the worse. The net result remains to be seen. For some it will be a blessing. For some it causes difficulty. For others just the change will be painful as the comfort of the old-same-thing is replaced by the new-same-thing.

Changed it is. Get used to it.

I am blessed that last month my son son became a member Upsilon Pi Epsilon (ΥΠΕ), the International honor society for people with interest and ability in Computer Science (CS).
I am impressed that in a small school, the UPE inductees include a young woman and young man with a visual handicap.