There are lots of very nice “old pictures at Old-Picture.com”:http://www.old-picture.com/, but strangely they claim copyright on the images — many of which are digital reproductions of works available in the public domain. I don’t think they can do that.
I suppose an argument might be made that the scanning of these documents represents “original work,” but [...] Read more »

Posted in Art and Writing, Commerce 2 Comments »

I had a lot of caffeine today before lunch, so when it came time to choose a drink I decided to go for something less likely to cause heart palpitations — a bottle of water. More specifically, a bottle of fruit-flavored water. Most specifically, the a selection from the “infused” line of “O Beverages”:http://www.obeverages.com/products_infused.asp O [...] Read more »

Posted in Commerce 2 Comments »

Boing-Boing has been doing a bangup job on the problems with copyright and licensing agreements. They cover this often, but this week it’s been particularly bad.
* A photographer bans other cameras in his space because he “claims copyright”:http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/16/copyright_protected_.html:
bq. So what is the copyright claim? That the living birds themselves are copyrighted? If so, God created [...] Read more »

Posted in Commerce, Technology 1 Comment »

There’s transportation problems all over the District today because of the sudden terrorist threat thingy. Right now there are few people I trust _least_ than the jokers in charge of our anti-terrorism policies, so let’s think about something terribly materialistic.
I cancelled cable and funneled that money into buying DVDs. I now have hours upon hours [...] Read more »

Posted in Commerce 3 Comments »

!(headimg)http://www.thudfactor.com/pimages/pulsar.jpg (Close-up of the Oral-B Pulsar toothbrush)!
Above is the new Oral-B _Pulsar_ toothbrush, which I think represents a new marketing strategy for toothbrushes. It is called the “what the hell is that?” strategy. It works like this: you come up with an overpowered environment-destroying version of a perfectly simple implement and someday, somewhere, I will [...] Read more »

Posted in Commerce, Diary 1 Comment »