Updated: 9/6/04; 9:59:24 PM.
ology dot org -- Eric Tilton's weblog and photo journal

Thursday, August 5, 2004


Good: Denver Airport has wireless by AT&T. Since I'm a wireless subscriber, I can just enter my phone # and they bill it to me that way. Since I have the phone connected via bluetooth (via the Address Book), when AT&T sends me an SMS with my "secret PIN," it pops up on my screen, suitable for copy & paste.

Bad: This works flawlessly on Carrie's iBook. My AlBook (which otherwise has comparable reception to the iBook) refuses to connect to the network.

Good: The hotel we're at has WiFi.

Bad: It also (in this room, anyway) has no Ethernet. And I keep varying between 1 and 0 bars.

Good: I'm going to listen to music until my ears bleed for the next four days. And assault you with even more pictures.  3:42:27 PM  (comments []  



Downtown Edmonton Notes

I have seen the light; all future banking to take place here:

The sock bunny relaxes with some Coke Classique, filled with real sugar:

I just liked this fountain a lot:


  2:36:02 PM  (comments []  



Hotel Notes

OK, I caught on to the Celsius part pretty quick, but what the heck are the temperature zone ticks on the dial supposed to represent? I expected the more heavily dotted region to be the "comfort zone," but experimentation reveals it's too frickin' cold.

Also, passive aggressive much?


  2:32:47 PM  (comments []  



The challenge of working on "intellectual property" is that we're basically all working on infectious diseases. And we have to carefully tune those infectious diseases so that they (a) have epidemic-level infiltration enough to get people to buy our widgets, and (b) not actually infectious enough to get other people making viruses (er, memes) sick in just the right way to duplicate. (a) and (b) are clearly impossible to reconcile. So we end up with an elaborate code of ethics and laws that basically says, "if you're a germ-producing machine, you should just pretend not to be sick. And if you pass on something you caught from someone else" (which is everything, let's be honest, all we do is mutate the memes in our hothouse heads) "then by God pretend you caught it somewhere really weird, and it's NOT just the common cold, it's really, uh, Crazed Penguin Disease!"

That, in a nutshell, is why intellectual property law is crazy, and why open source will defeat us all. Except that I get paid to get sick, and I'm part of a team that is really some kind of horrible disease ward, and we all lock ourselves into a little room to mutate those suckers real good before we pass it on. So I guess maybe we've got some punctuated equilibrium going for us. Hmmm. Must cough harder.  2:20:40 PM  (comments []  



In Canada. For the Edmonton Folk Festival. Must sleep. Enjoy pretty pictures.




  1:33:40 AM  (comments []  



My mom is also quite the shutterbug (it was her purchase of the Canon Digital Rebel that eventually tempted me down the same path). She sends along these pictures:


  1:30:49 AM  (comments []  



 
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Last update: 9/6/04; 9:59:24 PM.