SyncWorld, English Edition

Can't take photos in Starbucks? Afraid not.

From Lessig blog dear Starbucks, say it ain't true?

So I have this from an extremely reliable source, who vouches totally for the facts that follow.

Story one: Last month while visiting Charleston, three women went into a Starbucks. They were spending the weekend together and one of them had a disposable camera with her. To commemorate their time with one and other they decided to take round robin pictures while sitting around communing. The manager evidently careened out of control, screaming at them, “Didn't they know it was illegal to take photographs in a Starbucks. She insisted that she had to have the disposable camera because this was an absolute violation of Starbuck's copyright of their entire ‘environment'--that everything in the place is protected and cannot be used with Starbuck's express permission.

Trusted Trackback (2) : simplest case

I've been thinking of the role of the trackback since I mentioned about the idea of Trusted Trackback.

Let's start with the role of the trackback. Imagine trackbacks between weblogs, not entries. A trackback is like asking an appointment without any reference, or “hi I'm here, please look at me.” If your blog accept trackbacks, you will find something from trackbacks. But the mechanism to select really useful information out of bunch of trackbacks will make things get easier. I want to make the trusted trackback help realize this.

Public Domain

Lawrence Lessig Blog we need your help

About a month ago, I started sounding optimistic about getting a bill introduced into Congress to help right the wrong of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. I was optimistic because we had found a congressperson who was willing to introduce the bill. But after pressure from lobbyists, that is no longer clear. And so we need help to counter that pressure, and to find a sponsor.

The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner must pay a $1 maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee, then the copyright continues. If the owner fails to pay the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on historical precedent, we expect 98% of copyrighted works would pass into the public domain after just 50 years. They could keep Mickey for as long as Congress lets them. But we would get a public domain.

I can't do anything but blogging, since I am not in the US, but hope it helps.

Giant company, life-time employment, and stability

I don't remember what was the source of these survey results, but was surprised at the recent survey showing that the largest number of young Japanese people who just started working for a company showed the preference for the stability of employment: working for large companies under the life-time employment system. Under such economic environments, even big companies don't guarantee the stability of the employment, but for young "salaried people" they believe the bigger the company they work for, the more stable conditions will be.

Presentation on Blogging@Tokyo PC Users Group

Tokyo PC Users Group

Presentation on Blogging
Thursday, June 5

TPC's own Stuart Woodward will discuss web blogs in all its glorious detail. Please join us for the presentation and discussion afterwards.

Venue: Tokyo Union Church in Omotesando. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
meeting starts at 7:00, presentation begins at 7:45. TPC Members are free, guests are 1,000 yen.

Why isn't MovableType "open source"?

I have been wondering why MovableType is not "open source". Six Apart announced TypePad, which is designed to capture more people who don't have their weblogs now, by offering user-friendly tools, according to the press release.

It seems to me that Six Apart expects more revenues from TypePad than MovableType. If so, making MovableType be open source to let others develop MT really makes more sense to me than making efforts on further development under supervision of Six Apart's very limited resources.

"Matrix Reloaded" breaks opening day record

"Matrix Reloaded" just came out yesterday in the United States...

'Matrix Reloaded' Sets Opening Day Record (washingtonpost.com) Reuters Friday, May 16, 2003; 2:38 PM By Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "The Matrix Reloaded," the movie produced by AOL Time Warner's Warner Bros. studio, raked in a record $42.5 million at domestic box offices in its first day, box office watchers said on Friday.

The science fiction thriller surpassed last year's smash hit "Spider-Man."

Technorati API released

Technorati API 0.9 I'm proud to announce the first public release of the Technorati API, the application programming interface to Technorati's weblog index and search engine.

blogging, journalism, links and trackbacks

As I quoted an article about NY Times' plagiarism, I was thinking about the difference in authority of between traditional news sources and the weblog. A couple of days later, I had a chance of having lunch with Joi Ito and Dan Gillmor. Joi was talking about the journalism and blogging and mentioning that traditional newspapers should be separated into two entities: journalism and printing. It led to a discussion how we create a better democratic system.

Style Switcher

Stylesheetを動的に切り替える「Stylesheet Switcher」ですが、一部でうまく動かないこともあるようでした。

Stylesheet SwitcherはCookieを使ってStylesheetを記憶させるのですが、Movable Typeが標準で搭載しているCookie管理用のJavaScriptコードとちょっとバッティングしそうだったので、Stylesheet Switcherのコードをちょっと手直ししてみました。