Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Tom Tomorrow (real name: Dan Perkins ), is the creator of the comic This Modern World . Read his recent strip, " What could possibly go wrong? " to understand why we now have millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. And bitch-slap some sense into the next person who acts like this is no big deal.

Last Sunday was the LOST-o-thon: 2 hours of recap/interviews with cast and producers, followed by the 2 1/2 hour finale.  And if you wanted to hang around long enough, another hour entirely devoted to LOST on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It was exhausting. Reactions have been mixed. Much of Slashdot-dom hated it . They wanted ANSWERS, god-dammit. And while quite a few long time mysteries were addressed, not all were. So freaking what? A lot of how I processed the finale (as well as the show as whole) is based on things I learned and taught as a once and future painter. I've learned to appreciate and celebrate the power of ambiguity. Works of great art (if television can be art) engage the viewer/audience in the creative process. The viewer essentially finishes the work by layering on their personal interpretation or meaning, based on their life and experiences.  Giving people explicit answers shuts off that dialog. In the days that followed, there has been much discussion about ...

Dear God, Don't let stupid people piss me off. Rinse and repeat.

The whole Apple vs. Adobe soap opera continues. When will somebody cancel this show? The latest installment comes from Adobe, who's now running full pages ads in the Wall Street Journal and posting open letters. The latest is entitled, " Our thoughts on open markets ." As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers. Freedom of choice on the web has unleashed an explosion of content and transformed how we work, learn, communicate, and, ultimately, express ourselves. Yeah right. This is because (sniff) Apple won't support Flash on the iPod/iPad/iPhone. Oh boo hoo. Guess what: when I use the Lynx browser on the console of my Linux box I get no Flash support either. More significantly, the Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. It is a closed, proprietary platform. Closed: not open. As far as open markets, A...

 Ever hear how Amazon managed to patent the idea of " One-Click Shopping? "  That's right -- they were granted a patent for the idea of pre-entering your credit card info so when you clicked on the "Buy Now" button, you didn't have to re-enter all your financial data.  When Barnes and Noble later offered a similar service, Amazon sued for (get this) patent infringement. Years later, large chunks of the original broad patent were thrown out, but not without a lot of money being flushed down the toilet that is occasionally our legal system. The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent. This sort of nonsense abounds. A couple of weeks ago, a new short documentary was released on-line entitled, " Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system. " In it, independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini looks at how our current patent system has managed to screw by issuing patents on the flimsiest of premises and the history of how this sorry st...

Imagine you were a guitar player. You're no Leo Kottke, but you can hold your own on open mike night at the local bar. How would feel if you discovered, buried in the fine print in the owner's manual that came with your Martin D-15, something that said you could only perform with said guitar for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes? Or suppose you were an artist - a painter - and discovered the brushes you used to paint your last masterpiece came with the same restriction: for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only? Or a writer, with the same restrictions on anything that came out of your word-processor? Freaking ridiculous, eh? Guess what, all you photographers shooting digital video, your camera may have the same restriction. It's about the technology used to encode the video (the "codec"). OS News (one of my favorite technology sites) has a long article about the licensing restrictions placed on one of the more commo...