BunkBlog

Just to prove my geekiness, I now have Acrobat Reader on my Clie, and I’ve put the PDF version of Atlas Shrugged on it. It makes that book much more portable. Too bad I can’t take my Clie to work any more – I need something to keep me awake there.

Anyone out there with enough CSS savvy to explain why my main page looks like crap if I don’t have a lot of entries in my weblog? If the links column is longer than the content column, the links ease into the left side. I’ve tried playing with the “height:100%” style, but that only seems to work in IE6. In Netscape/Mozilla and Opera it’s broken. I’m sure the browsers aren’t broken, but why does the code not work quite right? I’m not going to use tables like 1996 to align my page content…

Help? Anyone?

Iran arrests Al Qaeda terrorists and President Bush says he’s not impressed.

Anyone surprised?

SCO says, We own Unix!
Do Not!
Do Too!

And so it goes…

In response to my musing about what Raymond and Stallman think, Eric Raymond has posted some interesting reading.

Whoever ordered from the Spoiled Brat store, thanks. I was beginning to think nobody remembered that it was there. Of course, the Che Guevara store is gone now, but I have others. Just go to my store to see the options.

I was going to post the Friday Five, but it was just too lame for words this week. Off to San Antonio this weekend.

Both Arianna Huffington and Tom Tomorrow make the correlation between the Spin Doctors of 1600 Pennsylvania and the Matrix Reloaded. Guess it’s not too much of a stretch, considering how the administration’s views on most international events seem at least slightly off from the objective reality.

Cafepress has been told I’m violating the copyrights of Albert Korda with an image of Che Guevara I was using on some products that nobody ever bought. Apparently Señor Korda’s estate is more interested in his intellectual property than he ever was. There are many concepts involved in this case, and I’ll lay them out for you.

• Korda said specifically that he wanted people to copy and spread the image of Che Guevara, as seen in this quote:
  

  I am not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his [Guevara’s] memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world,” Korda said in the autumn of 2000.

• The concept of benign neglect reigns. If someone does not attempt to defend their copyright, even in the face of many highly public uses of it, the right to defend it is hard to manage. Consider how many times you’ve seen the Che Guevara image on posters, t-shirts, etc.
• The Berne copyright convention is the means for reciprocity between countries and their varying internal copyright laws. Cuba has never signed the Berne convention, because Castro said it was a tool of the capitalists. Korda lived until his death in 2001 in Cuba, and was a proud Cuban citizen.
• The image I used was not the photograph of Che that Korda took, but a stylized rendering of that image. It is a unique work. To claim that any image of Guevara infringes on Korda’s copyright implies that Guevara’s likeness is ownable and, further, that it is owned by the estate of Señor Korda.

Of course, none of this matters, because the store has been removed and it never made money anyway. Just another example of lawyers bullying people into doing things that aren’t right, merely expedient.

You belong in Time Enough For Love. You are older than you look. Your wit and wisdom are prized by others. People throw themselves on you, begging to be with you.

Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yet again, some company (Disney) is trying to replicate the “success” of the ill-fated Divx DVD self-destruct format that Circuit City tried years ago. They never learn.

The WSJ has an article about a US Army Major who has been relieved of duty for not following orders. This is a toughy…
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“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell

According to Wired, SCO is suing everyone. For those not keeping score, here is a short timeline of things in SCO-land…
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If your name is David Nelson, Don’t fly anywhere. The TSA is compiling watchlists of suspicious people, but they don’t bother to include photos or identifying characteristics. Wonder how many David Nelsons there are in the US…
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To counterbalance the various Conservative parodies of the Iraqi Leadership playing cards, here are the Republican Chickenhawk Cards. These are the men and women who are so hot to put our servicemembers in harm’s way, yet were never so inclined to join up themselves.

Gringo in TJ has moved to Movable Type for his weblogging needs.

AOL adds fees to IM feature, users jump ship. Betcha. Nobody is willing to pay for IM, no way. And why should we, when there are a half-dozen perfectly good options for free?

Admittedly, AOL is only planning to charge for such things as Yahoo’s IMVironments, but still. Yes, I know Yahoo charges extra for high-speed webcam use. I know MSN is evil. I know ICQ is virtually dead (thanks for that one, AOL – ICQ used to rock). But, AIM is number one by far, and they think that people will pay for extras. Not likely, in my opinion.

Apparently this week, in West Texas, is Skunk Suicide Season. I’ve never seen so many dead stinky animals on the road in any two-day period before! Geez.

Via an older Reverend Jim post, I came upon this disturbing food product. Star Spangled Ice Cream – Mail Order Ice Cream with a Conservative Flavor $76 for a gallon of ice cream delivered to your door. And you can get Iraqi Road too!

Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974
Be afraid, be very afraid.