Blue Sky On Mars

OK, I’ll admit it. I had an idea of what Disney’s Michael Eisner would say in the Financial Times even before reading the article, and I figured I wouldn’t agree. It turns out that I only mostly don’t agree.
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I would be remiss if I didn’t point to this excellent essay by Michael Fraase. He does one of the best jobs I’ve seen of providing an up-to-the-minute recount of where digital rights currently stands. He also mentions the new DigitalConsumer.org which has a very similar set of rules to something I’m involved in.

Just like design patterns in software, Stephen’s Guide To Fallacies is a set of design patterns for poor arguments. These are things you see all the time.

I’m sure that thousands of bloggers will be chiming in on the Oscars. 2001 was an interesting year in movies, and you could tell because so many Oscar categories had several viable candidates. I had been predicting a Best Picture win for Fellowship of the Ring (currently #3 on the IMDB 250), with a Best DIrector win for Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind).
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Design patterns have become pretty commonplace in software development, and now someone has itemized a set of interaction patterns. These are all things we’ve seen around the net, of course, which is why they’re patterns. It’s nice to see them enumerated with examples, though.

NYTimes Magazine features an article describing the future of music. This author envisions a world in which you don’t pay for copies of music. We’ve got a long way to go before we get to the point where that idea is readily accepted.
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We just got back from a 7-day Western Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line. NCL is great, the cruise was wonderful and we had a great time on the ship and during our shore excursions. Highly recommended, if you’re looking to see a bunch of islands.

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this article before. Michele Boldrin and UCLA Economics Professor David Levine wrote Why Napster Is Right which goes in to the economics of why intellectual property laws should go away in this age of dirt cheap distribution. I’ve generally been of the opinion that copyright laws are a good thing, but should have a much shorter lifespan than they currently do. This article is making me rethink whether copyright really is a good idea in the current age… Everything I’m interested in professionally (software, music, writing) is all based around intellectual property. So, it’s a big step to think that there may be another way.

Let’s hope some version of this Fox News story makes it on TV. The article blasts Senator Hollings for his blatant siding with the entertainment industries and against consumers. The SSSCA as a bill does not make any sense for anyone other than content holders. (And don’t forget that, according to the Constitution, copyright is there for the public good!)

As I expected, this review of PressPlay over at O’Reilly was not positive. The lack of “ownership” of the music was one of the big criticisms. People are willing to rent some things, but for most things people want to buy it and use it as they like for as long as they want.