Hi, I'm Thad. I build websites.
This blog's been up in one form or another since 1999. In that time I've written about topics ranging from comic books to video games to copyright law to creators' rights to Frank Zappa.
I also write eBooks and narrate audiobooks. Here's where you can find them:
Yesterday I praised the Republican Study Committee for putting out an excellent paper on what's wrong with copyright and how to reform it.
Today they pussied the hell out and retracted it under pressure from Hollywood lobbyists.
Who the hell do you guys think you are, Democrats?
My continued support and praise to everyone who still supports copyright reform. And a great big raspberry to all the craven little shits who backed down.
This isn't over.
2010. Official upload by Roundhouse London.
So far as I know there's no DVD release. Which is a pity because obviously they've got DVD-quality video here.
I can't say I agree with the Republican Study Committee on many things -- among other things, their leadership is responsible for holding the budget hostage to pursue more tax cuts for the 1%. (At least they're willing to discuss cutting the budget for the military.)
But, per Cory Doctorow and Mike Masnick, they've put out a paper called Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix It, and while so far I've only skimmed it, it looks pretty fantastic.
There is a strong conservative case to be made against modern American copyright law: it's a big-government handout to Hollywood that grants artificial monopolies, interferes with the free market, stifles innovation, and is clearly not what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution.
I'm not optimistic about the Republican leadership, or the Democratic, picking up the baton on this one. But I think it's a pretty big deal that people are actually talking about it -- and that some Republicans still remember that what "conservative" actually means isn't just "tax cuts for the rich".
All the major copyright landgrabs of the past couple of decades, from the DMCA to TPP, have been bipartisan efforts by lobbyist-owned politicians, with as little input from the voters as possible. SOPA/PIPA showed that while their support among politicians may be bipartisan, their opposition from an informed public is nonpartisan.
Even if nothing comes of this right away, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of it. Kudos to any politician willing to speak truth to power on this subject, regardless of party and regardless of disagreements we may have on other issues.
SNL, 1978.
I am very tired, so here's another old Doctor Who review. Originally posted Brontoforumus, 2008-11-18.
The Pirate Planet is not what you expect either from the title or for the writer (Douglas Adams). The pirates are not of the traditional variety (though the leader has robot parts), are never referred to as pirates, and it is unclear until halfway through or more why the serial is called "The Pirate Planet".
But all that's part of a series of mysteries in the serial that are quite cleverly revealed. Some are obvious, others (why do gems fall from the sky right before the stars change?) are not.
Adams crafts a story with far fewer laughs than you would expect, but it's quite clever and plays out at a good pace, and features an interesting cast of characters (particularly the villains). As usual, he wears his environmentalist cred on his sleeve, but uses it in a way that makes the story interesting.
For $11, it's on the "worth owning" list.
That said, I have zero interest in watching the rest of the Key to Time Series. I've already watched 200 minutes of a collection quest; I don't really see following the remaining 450. Frankly, as much as I love Baker I think I'll take a break from him, maybe watch some more Pertwee or Davison.
Interesting to hear him talk about the Libertarian Party -- I've always figured he was ideologically closer to them than either major party, but wouldn't be able to reconcile their total lack of empathy for their fellow man. Guess this confirms it.
New York, '88; another upload by tomtiddler1.
I hadn't set out to do another election video so soon after we got through the damn election, but what the hell, it's a pretty good interview.
Now, the concert video looks like the 1988 equivalent of a cell phone video, but what the hell -- maybe I'll give Chunga's Revenge a do-over at some future date. But it's not a bad rendition, for all that.
So far this week I have closed a house, looked for work, shopped for cars, and picked the spot where I'm getting married.
Now that I am home, about the only damn major decision I intend to make is what beer to get out of the refrigerator.
And some shirts from Threadless I guess, since I need new T-shirts and Groupon's got a deal.
I'm thinking 8-Bit Blues and Halfling and Wizard. (I'm sorely tempted by the Mike Allred Monkey Around shirt -- and it's only $10! -- but it looks like it would be goddamn hot in the summer.)
In the words of uploader and co-director Ed Seeman:
This three minute film was created by Frank Zappa and Me in the late 60's to illustrate the art of UNDERGROUND MERCHANDISING of his album FRAK OUT! [sic] It was the begining of our filming relationship that lasted two years and became the initial shooting for UNCLE MEAT. This opening was shot at the Garrick Theater in Greenwich Village.
I did all the shooting for the next two years with a silent camera so that Frank could score it himself.
To read the whole story check out my Zappa web site at www.edseeman.com/zappa
Welp, broke my computer again, sort of.
See, I've confirmed that the instability I've been experiencing with the ol' OSX boot is definitely due to booting it from GRUB; it works fine from EFI.
So I decided I'd give Chameleon another shot -- maybe another bootloader would be more stable? Worth a try, right?
'Cept I can't get Chameleon to work this time, and it fucked GRUB up so it won't boot anymore either. (Edit to add: Apparently an MBR disk can't have more than one bootable partition? Guess it's been awhile since I took that A+ test. So okay, it's easy enough to get GRUB working again, but it doesn't help me get Chameleon working.)
The good news is that Chameleon boots just fine from CD, so I can still boot OpenSUSE that way.
The bad news is that, for some damn reason, holding down "C" to boot from CD doesn't work anymore on my Mac, so I've had to stick the damn helper card back in to access the boot menu by holding down Option when I power up.
(The other bad news is that AVG Free decided to flag fucking rundll32.exe as a virus and delete it, but Win8 must have restored it automatically because it worked okay on a reboot. But that's all the Win8 I did today.)
Anyway. Hoping I can get this damn mess fixed tomorrow. Because I've got better shit to do than keep fucking around with bootloaders.