Oppose the Orphaned Works Act of 2008!

I won’t go into full detail of its evil here, as you can read and get the gist of it here: http://blamcast.net/articles/orphaned-works-open-source-copyright.

Essentially, it means any company can take a piece of software (among other things) and “claim” they looked for the author and then use it without obeying the GPL license on it. When the copyright holder sues on grounds of infringement, the people that violated the copyright merely have to provide “proof” that they looked for an author and could not locate one.

The only way to really prevent the infringement if the bill passes, is to register with some sort of copyright registry, which costs money no doubt.

Oppose it! You can go here: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/ to find out how to easily write your congressman/woman.

Syndicated 2008-07-05 17:05:05 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

Do something nice today.

To be honest, I’m long overdue on saying something. I am alive, just barely, but I am.

I came across this article today. It made me realize that society has become disenchanted with… well society itself. Do something nice today for someone you don’t even know. Seriously.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89164759

Syndicated 2008-03-28 22:14:09 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

busy

Long two week, many tests, projects and homework to be done. 

With that, I leave you with some food for thought: “When the rich wage war its the poor who die.” - Mike Shinoda 

Syndicated 2008-02-27 17:15:27 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

the dark arts

I am now as we speak ever approaching the dark arts. Actually I’m just going to be working on compilers and filesystems for the next two years in a directed study with a professor in the Computer Engineering department. A friend in IEEE needs help with his senior project so that’ll be the beginning of my learning about compilers. Filesystems shall follow shortly thereafter.

Should be fun and challenging, seeing as I get frustrated to no end with the obsession of online frameworks and building social networking sites. Not that I think those are bad or trivial things, I just don’t find them to be particularly interesting problems. Even if compilers and filesystems are no longer “cool” to the academic types, I still think they are.

And now I’m off to read more of “Functional Programming: Application & Implementation” by Henderson. If anyone actually reads this, stay tuned. A little while from now I may be posting a Lispkit implementation with a compiler that builds native code which I know is a dirty dirty thing and I should have my mouth washed out with soap for it but I don’t care :).

PS: More wine fun is coming as well Hooray for shell32!

Syndicated 2008-02-01 17:26:47 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

cheers & jeers

cheers

So I found out a couple evenings ago that I got the internship with Google. I would start sometime in mid-May and finish up sometime in mid-August. It would be good fun though it is mildly disappointing that my friend (Danny) that works for Google wouldn't be there during the time I'd be there. He’s finishing up his last semester of college and wwill be arriving there about the time I would be leave.

I’m excited and anxious all at the same time, dealing with getting myself a place to sleep will be interesting. Maybe I can just sleep under my desk and shower at the office?

jeers

I was less than pleased with my grades this semester. I ended up with a B+ in both Algorithms & Software Eng. This could change though for Algorithms as I emailed the professor and he said we could speak about possibly getting me an A- which would be great.

Software Engineering on the other hand, I apparently bombed the final. That puzzles me but I’m going to meet with the professor. Surely I didn’t do that poorly? I’m not a bad student…

notes

Anyway, back to programming on wine

Syndicated 2007-12-21 02:03:20 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.