...or you can search Google...
...the better search site.
Here's the temperature converter from the Weather Channel website, with a spelling correction:
I'm a software engineer currently working for a certain well-known search company in Santa Monica, California. Before that I worked for Sparta Inc. in El Segundo, California, with the former McAfee Labs folks doing DARPA-type stuff messing with the insides of the FreeBSD networking stack among other things. Before that I worked at HRL Laboratories in Malibu. The job itself was fun but my future there with my little Bachelor's degree was, shall we say, limited. As far as I'm concerned, it does not appear that the future of HRL's Information Sciences lab is too bright, at least if they do not quickly correct shortfalls in both management and bureaucracy. Son Dao, I'm talking about you in particular.
I do operating systems-type stuff; I've worked on Compaq's NSC SSI Unix cluster technology, now OpenSSI; I've worked in various parts of BSD/OS, which is now dead thanks to the shortsightedness of Wind River Systems, and I've also worked in AIX, SVR4 and others. Back in the mists of time, I did mainframe operating system development on Honeywell Information Systems' CP-6.
In general I muck about with things like cluster management, SMP, distributed systems, file systems, device drivers, and other aspects of OS development. If you're interested, you can look at my Resume.
I beat on FreeBSD in my scant free time, and have run it beginning with 386BSD 0.1 in 1992 and the patchkit in 1993. The rest of the time I spent with my wonderful Chinese wife and when I'm not doing that I read, mostly science fiction. I also listen to music (Euro-goth, mostly), and sometimes we go to the movies. I've also been known to write a poem or two.
The Los Angeles Times had an interesting article about Lawrence Lessig and the case (Eldredge v. Ashcroft) due before the Supreme Court shortly. They point out that this very fight was fought and won in the 18th century:
[...] Indeed, what's odd about the current copyright fight is how much it's a contemporary remake of an issue that was discussed, litigated and decided during the 18th century.The Stationers' monopoloy was ultimately broken, after they tried for six decades to supress those who were challenging it. (Sound familiar?) The article goes on to say,
Before 1710, the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers, controlled the publication and sale of all works in England, including those of authors who had been dead for thousands of years. The Stationers scoffed at the idea that their monopoly should be in any way limited. For one thing, they warned, if the system were dismantled it would ruin the economy. Equally important, they said, they had a moral right. No other property gets taken away after 10 or 20 years, they wrote in a broadside, so why should books? It's an argument that the music and movie industries are still making today.
When the U.S. Constitution was drawn up several years later, this history was still fresh. Jefferson wanted to put a "restriction against monopolies" in the Bill of Rights, right alongside trial by jury and freedom of the press. He, like the other framers, hated concentrating power in the hands of a few, and didn't like the idea of the past calling the shots on the future either. The earth belongs to the living, Jefferson wrote Madison on Sept. 6, 1789: "The dead have neither powers nor rights over it."I strongly urge any who are interested in this fight to read the article, which you can find here. It certainly appears that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the newer, even more restrictive laws (such as the so-called "Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention Act" that would allow corporate vigilantes to break into your computer just in case you might have illegal copyrighted material there) that the RIAA/MPAA wants Congress to pass are unconstitutional and are certainly not what the framers of that document had in mind.
Who stands to lose in this fight? Well, the big corporations stand to lose a few bucks if they lose, but the rest of us stand to lose the right to build on the past, to create new things from the ones that have gone before, which is the tradition and much of the essence of creativity.
The RIAA and the MPAA want to lock up copyright forever, to keep their revenue stream intact with no need for them to continue to create anything. They fear that the Internet will cause them to lose their sacred profit. Robert Heinlein had something to say about this:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a 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 public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor 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, for their private benefit.
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line"
We have the technology that will allow music-makers, writers, moviemakers to reach their audience directly and immediately, without the intervention of some moronic middleman who is trying to line his pockets by stealing from both the artist and the audience. It is time we as a society used that technology and told the middleman just where to get off.
How Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, feels about someone skipping commercials using a VCR or PVR:
[Ad skips are] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.
How I feel about Jamie Kellner: Mr. Kellner is one of those thieving middlemen. Bastard.
You want to read this article about that moron.
I am solely responsible for the content of these pages; they do not represent the positions or opinions of anyone else, possibly even including me.The text and images on these pages, excluding linked pages outside this site, are variously Copyright © 1993, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Frank Mayhar. All rights reserved. Redistribution or other use is forbidden without my specific written permission.
This page has been seen
times.