Si found another public access point, this one for $4 for fifteen minutes. Gotta get some chalk.
My mail to Shelley keeps bouncing. What am I doing wrong, Bb?
Nantucket has changed a lot since my most vivid memoris of it (thirty years ago). There have long been too many cars on the island, but now the cars are SUVs, clogging 18th-century roads with 21st-century urban assault vehicles. I tried to figure out how many landmark businesses were still in the same place: the Dreamland Theater, the banks, Murray's Liquor Store, the Nobby Shop. Nantucket always ran a little to the preppy, but way back when it was casual preppies; this summer, half the people I see look as though they dressed up to wander around.
But it feels good and familiar anyway, a home away from home, and Margaret so loves the salt air and the seaside way of life that we'll always come back (as long as there are relatives to shelter us). But now my time is up and I have to take Mom back to our place for dinner.
Actually, I’m staying with relatives—Aunt Grace is putting us up—not at a luxury hotel, addressing a fancy conference. On the other hand, I have absolutely no schedule for the time being. Margaret and I are just taking life easy, re-acquainting ourselves to this neighborhood (especially re-acquainting me, since she’s been here more often, more recently). I feel like a cranky old codger, saying “Where’s the bookstore? There used to be a bookstore there!” while Margaret rolls her eyes and tells me the bookstore closed five years ago.
Tell you what, though, this island is seriously under-wired—or, more to the point, under-wirelessed. There’s an upstairs room where you can get online for $10 and hour, but I’m looking for a cafe with an open wireless access point. I can identify a number of locations where the surrounding businesses would benefit immensely from installing an open access point where vacationing techies can hop back online. Me? I’m blogging from my mother’s apartment, so I can’t conveniently post the picture of Nate awalking away from us toward his dorm that I meant to put here. And Jonathon, my Aunt has a dishwashing device, evidently designed specifically for bottles, that might make a helpful adjunct to the Dishmatique.
More later. I may wardrive the island tomorrow—goodness knows, there’s not much to drive—just to make sure I’m not missing an opportunity.
We set Nate up with a checking account, a keychainn (for the one key in his life), and since it was looking as though we were only prolonging the transition by staying for the “Information Fair” and “Parents Q & A With the Deans,” we hopped in the much-more-nearly empty van and rolled down to Utica, where we couldn’t resist the opportunity to spend the night in the home of. . . the motel we’re staying at.
I feel very odd, looking in the motel-sized mirror and realizing that I have a son in college. I only just got used to seeing gray hair and notincg that my hands look like old guys’ hands. Not that there’s anything wrong with having college-age children—I was just surprised to find out who I am. Margaret’s a little stressed out, Si’s relieved to be the oldest kid in the household. And we’re looking forward to hearing from Nate about how he’s doing.
So today we spent running around, doing errands, packing, straightening up (marginally) the mess of our house, fretting, fulfilling last-minute must-do obligations, and worrying about whether Margaret would ever get home.
Margaret went to New York on the train this weekend to drop Pippa off with a friend; there isn’t room in the car for Nate’s stuff and a daughter and her stuff, so her friend Jenny will take her to meet us. Then, after spending Saturday evening with Jennifer (our foster-daughter who studies at Union Seminary in NYC, not the same person as Pippa’s friend Jenny), she set off back to Chicago yesterday and arrived home this afternoon. She had to explain to the pharmacist that she’not abusing her thyroid prescription—her doctor actually increased her dosage, which is why she’s running out, and needs a refill earlier than the prescription says, and tehn the pharmacist has to check it out with a dubious insurance company, and everything sits still for forty minutes or so of waiting and buck-passing. Now, after a twenty-four hour train ride and some frenzied packing, Margaret will wake up tomorrow morning, turn around and drive with us back to Rochester.
And Si encountered a bat in the basement. In the basement. I thought they belonged up in attics and eaves, not basements (is this a Buffy thing, by any chance?). And I remembered two business letters I absolutely had to write tonight, and I put off another academic obligation for another few days, and I finished up my part of the draft of the Bechtel/Adam grant proposal. Now I have to pay bills, shut down the computer, and go to bed my own self (Margaret crashed two hours ago; spending forty-eight out of eighty hours on trains will do that to you).
I’ve had some generous emails over the past few months, messages that I haven’t gotten around to answering. I hate that, but this summer I’ve been just furiously busy, and all my etiquette has fallen to bits.
Now, a business email and back to the bills. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll see about pictures of the matriculant and moving-in tomorrow and Wednesday.
DRMA: “Red Army Blues/Song of the Steppe,” the Waterboys; “Please,” U2; “Boogie Albert,” John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers; “Wheels On Fire,” Siouxsie and the Banshees; “Any Old Time,” Maria Muldaur;
I’m counting on support from people like Jordon if Trevor Bechtel and I pull off our grant proposal and build our online, non-institutional, not-for-credit site for theological and religious studies.
Software is covered by copyright law, at least to some degree. The courts have been clear about that. However, noone can agree how far copyright goes in protecting software. Courts struggle with the conceptual problems involved in connecting the abstract formal rules of copyright to the real-life “thing” that is software. A major problem is that software is not only something that is written, but it also does things. Writings are protected by copyright, while “utilitarian items” generally are not. Software is both a writing and a tool. What is more, software takes multiple forms: there is the source code written by a programmer, which seems like a writing, and the object code interpreted by the computer, which seems like a tool or a machine.Very messy, indeed. Dave Winer addressed some of these peculiarities a few days ago. One of the points that Lawrence Lessig has made on numerous occasions concerns the extent to which copyright makes a poor match for software. He has no interest in stripping software developers of the prerogative to make money—he simply wants to find the soundest way of connecting the dots, of balancing private and public interest, of respecting the ways that laws and code and social behavior and system architecture all impinge on one another and shape the possible uses of digital technology.Portions of the program’s user interface may also be copyrightable; is the design of the frame of the windows on your computer’s screen protected by copyright? Does it depend on how much of the design is the result of the programmer’s artistic originality and how much is the result of utilitarian necessity? These sorts of questions have come up in appellate cases about user interfaces. Courts now find themselves trying to dissect user interfaces into functional and non-functional components or aspects in order to figure out how much of the interface is protected. They engage in the same sort of dissection in figuring out what aspects of program code are utilitarian and what aspects are protectible original writings of the author. This gets very messy.
If we apply copyright to digital technology, we fetter the tools and platforms for the future to a ball and chain from the past. To fix on one obvious, oft-repeated example: copyright depends for its cogency on limited means of reproduction, so that the behavior that the law regulates applies to an identifiable few, whereas personal computers (especially computers used for communication on the internet) depend for their usefulness on their capacity to reproduce information. If we don’t devise laws and code and social practices and architecture that respect the digital difference, we’re shackling all our capacities in order to line the pockets of a very few.
Thanks, Tim, and thanks for permission to quote you.
He seems like a nice guy.
Has he written any books?
Would he come speak to us?
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