Publisher.promo.own

After trials, tribulations, false starts, wearing of sack cloth and much gnashing of teeth (and the blood of one dead chicken) I have successfully moved my weblog. For the past week I have been posting only at the new location. It works as expected. All is well.

New Home page.
New primary RSS.

Most of the archives will remain here in order to preserve as many links as possible, but I ran out of disk space and had to delete some of the early ones to keep the site under 40MB. All the archives are at the new site. Eventually I will come back here and put in re-direct meta-tags for both web browsers and RSS aggregators to automagically load the new location. In the meantime, if you have subscribed to a particular Category -- i.e. Patento.absurdium -- you can re-link to it via the Category links on the left.

Many thanks to:

Mark Pilgrim for design guidance and CSS creation
Erin Clerico at Weblogger.com for site hosting and comments configuration
Brent Ashley and Matt Mower for technical assistance
the entire Userland discussion group for moral support.

(drum roll please)

Now, on with the show.......................

Monday, November 11, 2002

One moment please while we check your settings...

11:54:44 AM

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Actually, all I get from MovieLink is that simple, insulting message. I guess they don't like my proxy filter. As for Windoze support, could this be because MS is the only OS vendor openly supporting the Hollywood cartel?

Earth to Hollywood: go adjust yourselves.
Movielink is here. Eric Norlin: the arrogance of this site is palpable.
And he's using Windows (I assume). Here's whatcha get if you don't:
Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers; however, you currently do not meet our minimum system requirements. You will need to adjust the following:
You Need Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Sunday, November 10, 2002

Hollywood Plays by Different Rules

12:55:04 PM

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Seems Hollywood doesn't mind taking ideas from others, it's only when others use the same ideas and make money that feathers get ruffled.

Copyright: Bollywood takes on Hollywood. Economictimes Nov 10 2002 2:00AM ET
[...] The West though, has been taking serious note of Bollywood’s aping. The Sunday Times, London, quotes a Hollywood studio lawyer as saying, "Until now it has not been worth our time tangling with the filmmakers in a Bombay court. But if this Reservoir Dogs rehash (Kaante) starts making serious money in the East, we shall have to start investigating how closely such movies are copying the originals." [...]
[...] And recently, a case of copyright infringement was filed against Dr Dre, Universal, Aftermath and Interscope of Houston. Addictive has huge tracks of Resham lagta hai, from the '70s film Jyoti.
"We approached Universal in June and told them to withdraw the music. Instead of taking any action, they went ahead and entered new markets giving a message that ours was a small Indian music company. And so we have decided to take this case to its logical end," says Abheek Mitra, managing director, HMV.
[Moreover - IP and patents news]

Friday, October 25, 2002

Why PDF Sucks

12:43:51 AM

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Dorothea has got her britches frosted over some PDF stuff. She don't like it. Nosiree.

I say PDF isn't really all that good (not much at all, really) for paper/print production, but it's becoming the defacto standard for a number of bad reasons. She says it's no good for eBooks.

Who's right? If we're both right just where does PDF fit? Mostly in places where highly designed items -- or strictly formatted ones like forms -- need to be presented online. It has lots of nifty features for things like that. But it has little to recommend it over other formats in other areas.

Dorothea makes some good points. Go read for yourself.

Why PDF sucks. Kevin pointed me at a recent ebook apologia and asked my opinion. I’ll give it, naturally, but before I do I want to address the apologia’s author’s words on PDF. I wish PDF-for-ebooks would fold up and die, but it won’t. Therefore I need to explain why, except in certain... [ Source: Caveat Lector]

Thursday, October 24, 2002

The Internet Is Not A Television

6:58:30 PM

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Copyright fights are not nearly so culpable in the dearth of broadband sales as the facts that it costs too much, takes too long, and God help you if you ever need support from the phone company.

I don't want to hear one more mis-informed, self-serving, obsequious politico stand up and claim that all we need is movies over the Internet to spur broadband. They should all go focus on writing laws to stop the creation of fake child pornography pictures or something. Assistant Commerce Sec'y Mehlman should go to work for the MPAA and lose the cover.

Copyright Fights Slowing Broadband Growth. Internet News Oct 24 2002 10:39AM ET
[...] Speaking on a panel discussion entitled "Pirates and Posses: The Battle Over Digital Copyright," Mehlman said, "While users are adapting broadband very rapidly and in line with reasonable expectations for a new technology, the greater availability of movies, music and games from legitimate sources will be critical to more rapid and sustained consumer adoption." [...]
"Companies clamoring every day for government help to accelerate broadband adoption can make significant strides on their own and without government mandates by working with the content community to satisfy their concerns," he said. [...] [ Source: Moreover - IP and patents news]