Ravelry

 Crafts  No Responses »
Oct 252007
 

I finally got my Ravelry invite today. I got on the wait­ing list about a month ago, so it did­n’t take long. I spent a few minutes pok­ing around, though I will have to be care­ful as it could prove to be an immense time-sink for me, with all the dis­cus­sion about knit­ting and crochet. There’s even a group for KnitML there, which I had­n’t heard of before.

It’s inter­est­ing com­par­ing Ravelry to Face­book, as well. Sur­face impres­sions: com­pletely dif­fer­ent crowd, they don’t ask for any inform­a­tion when you sign up except for an email address, user­name, and pass­word. Of course, you can add info such as birth­day or where you live to your pro­file, but it’s not needed. Lots of links to sites out­side of Ravelry, thus the site feels much more open to the rest of the world than Face­book. And maybe because it’s more focussed, it will be more appeal­ing long-term (there already seems to be quite a lot of Face­book ennui out there in the blogosphere). 

If you’re a keen knit­ter or cro­chet­er, don’t be put off by the fact you have to join a wait­ing list; it does­n’t take long to get the invite and it looks like a worth­while resource. One neat item: the yarn list­ing includes people’s destash info.

Market Choice

 Books, Rants  No Responses »
Oct 252007
 

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing piece dis­cuss­ing how fixed prices on books in Ger­many was actu­ally push­ing prices down (con­trary to eco­nom­ic the­ory), while sup­port­ing a wide range of booksellers.

When I was last in Ger­many, apart from my usu­al beef about Ger­man book­sellers not tak­ing cred­it cards, I found no reas­on to com­plain about the range of books that was avail­able. Chil­dren’s books are more expens­ive than I’m used to here, but a lot of that is also because most chil­dren’s books are only avail­able in hard­back and thus inher­ently more expens­ive. Paper­backs seemed reas­on­ably priced in gen­er­al, and of good typo­graph­ic­al quality. 

Peter Brant­ley has some ques­tions at the end of his piece, which I think can be applied not only to books, but also tele­vi­sion, news, indeed many aspects of what is com­monly called “cul­ture”. When the mass media and mass enter­tain­ment industry are des­per­ately try­ing to increase rat­ings by cater­ing to the fads and whims of the mass mar­ket, is this a “race to the bot­tom” as has been pos­tu­lated? Is the long tail suf­fi­cient to enable people with diverse interests (and that’s all of us at some stage or anoth­er) to have those needs met, those itches scratched? How do people find those groups, if they don’t know what to look for? 

Choice is import­ant, know­ing that you have choices is even more import­ant. It’s a bit like free speech.

Children’s Privacy

 Identity and Privacy  1 Response »
Oct 232007
 

If you have chil­dren, or an interest in pri­vacy, spend the time and watch the video of Pro­fess­or Valer­ie Steeves dis­cuss­ing how chil­dren’s web sites mon­it­or their vis­its. It’s scary. [Link from Michael’s Geist’s blog.]

After see­ing this, I won­der why the schools here don’t teach more about pri­vacy. When we were last in Aus­tralia, vis­it­ing friends, I noticed that one friend, whose chil­dren are roughly the same age as mine, had two pieces of paper with hand­prints on the fridge. It turns out they are told about pri­vacy in school, start­ing at age 5, and these hand­prints are remind­ers of that injunc­tion about pri­vacy. The word­ing on the paper was instructive. 

Respect Pri­vacy

Name ___ is special

Every hand­print is unique. Per­son­al inform­a­tion is worth tak­ing care of. Keep this hand­print in a safe place.

Find out more at www.privacy.vic.gov.au.

Simple, as befits young chil­dren, and the hand­print with its tact­ile mes­sage and remind­er of a child’s unique­ness struck me as a good idea. We need to be more aware of pri­vacy and its import­ance in gen­er­al, and espe­cially for those not yet old enough to make their own informed decisions.

Owning Homes

 General, Vancouver  6 Responses »
Oct 112007
 

In the midst of the U.S. hous­ing crisis, Paul Ked­rosky asks, quite reas­on­ably, Why Do We Want People to Own Homes? I’ve been won­der­ing that myself. Is it because people think houses are a good invest­ment? Because they have sen­ti­ment­al attach­ments to the idea of own­ing the roof over their head? Because they want to be sure no-one can toss them out of their home? Because every­one else does?

I remem­ber years ago in Aus­tralia (where almost every­one also wants to own their own home) talk­ing to a Ger­man immig­rant who com­plained bit­terly that he could­n’t rent any­where nice to live and so he had to buy a house. He would have been much hap­pi­er rent­ing, as people com­monly do in Ger­many. Maybe the rent­al prop­er­ties are bet­ter in Ger­many because so many people rent, or maybe part of it is because in Ger­many it’s com­mon to make modi­fic­a­tions to an apart­ment you rent, for example by renov­at­ing the kit­chen (you own the appli­ances, the cab­in­ets, etc, and take them with you if you move). People often rent the same apart­ment for 20 years or more, which is longer than many people in North Amer­ica stay in houses they buy, so it’s worth their time and effort to make it a nice place to live.

Dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent ideas. For us ten years ago, there were a couple of reas­ons to buy rather than rent. We saw it as a reas­on­able invest­ment, we wanted to live in a house with a garden, and I wanted a couple of cats. So buy­ing made sense (many land­lords don’t like pets).

As house prices climb to the extent that it’s ques­tion­able how good an invest­ment they are (how high can they keep going?), it’ll be inter­est­ing to see what hap­pens. Here in Van­couver house prices have been rising to the extent that many land­lords are selling the rent­al houses to people who ren­ov­ate and move in them­selves, rather than rent­ing them out. For fam­il­ies with chil­dren in loc­al schools, hav­ing the land­lord sell the house out from under them is extremely dis­rupt­ive, espe­cially when they can afford to rent, but can­’t afford to buy, in the area they’re liv­ing in. From the land­lord’s per­spect­ive, they’re cash­ing in on the cap­it­al gains rather than tak­ing a rent that just can­’t com­pare as a return on their invest­ment. Either the house prices will have to come down, or the rents will have to go up, unless people are will­ing to con­tin­ue to gamble on mak­ing their money from cap­it­al gains.

And in the U.S., own­ing the house does­n’t mean someone can­’t turf you out if you default on a pay­ment or two. The Eco­nom­ist has an art­icle in this week’s magazine about the U.S. hous­ing crisis, point­ing out that fore­clos­ure pro­ceed­ings can take months in some states, but less than a month in Texas. Which makes me won­der even more why people buy­ing houses they could­n’t afford did­n’t rent instead.

Small Gods

 Books  2 Responses »
Oct 102007
 

Terry Pratch­ett’s Small Gods is a good place to start in the pan­theon of the Dis­cworld books. That’s the reas­on we chose it, rather than one of the many oth­ers, to read in book club. There are a couple of places where hav­ing read some of the oth­er books would give some addi­tion­al depth (the lib­rar­i­an, or Death), but it’s not neces­sary for the enjoy­ment of the story. There are a lot of Dis­cworld books. To get some­thing of a pic­ture of how they’re all related, try the Read­ing Order Guide (link from Boing­Bo­ing).

I remem­ber read­ing Dis­cworld books when I was study­ing phys­ics, but then some­how got out of the habit (prob­ably because they wer­en’t read­ily avail­able in Ger­many where I was liv­ing at the time). So I was glad to be reminded of just how good a read they can be. Small Gods is a par­ody of reli­gions, gods, and inquis­i­tions. It tells the story of a small god (the defin­i­tion being one that does­n’t have many fol­low­ers and there­fore does­n’t have much power) and his sym­bi­os­is with the one true believ­er. Along the way, Pratch­ett neatly pokes fun at organ­ized reli­gion, the Inquis­i­tion, philo­soph­ers, and lots of oth­er things. It’s the sort of book you read for the snide asides as much as the storyline. It can be read at lots of levels; you can just read and enjoy the story or think about the deep­er implic­a­tions for com­par­at­ive reli­gions. We had fun dis­cuss­ing the rela­tion­ship between Om and Brutha in terms of who needed whom the most. Both Om and Brutha change and learn dur­ing the book’s events; Om becom­ing less venge­ful (although while he’s in tor­toise form there’s not much he can do to carry out any venge­ful actions) and more thought­ful through being mal­treated (run­ning gag: “there’s good eat­ing on a tor­toise” with­in earshot of him) and through Brutha’s bar­gain­ing power (he is, after all, the reas­on that Om is sen­tient although it takes him a while to fig­ure that out).

All in all, worth try­ing if you haven’t already, even if you don’t usu­ally read fantasy or sci­ence fic­tion. Just don’t blame me if you get hooked on the series.

Musings on Copyright

 General, Rants  5 Responses »
Oct 072007
 

I know why it happened, but it still strikes me as odd, the fact that the goal­posts kept mov­ing, as it were, with copy­right. And it’s weird no mat­ter wheth­er the copy­right is there to give oth­er people rights to use, copy and modi­fy the work, or rights to the author to pro­tect and profit from their work. In oth­er areas of the law, the gen­er­al rule is that what counts is the law at the time. It’s only illeg­al if it was illeg­al at the time the offence was com­mit­ted, for example (the major excep­tion being crimes against human­ity). Even pat­ents are val­id for a set peri­od of time, and com­pan­ies know how long that will be when they apply for the pat­ent (hence all the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al tricks with minor modi­fic­a­tions that they hope will be just enough to get a new pat­ent on). Only in copy­right, that I’m aware of, has it been the case that the peri­od of valid­ity has been so massively changed and applied ret­ro­act­ively. From 21 years (see His­tory of Copy­right to the death of the author plus 50–75 years, depend­ing on the coun­try you live in and some con­vo­luted depend­en­cies. And then there’s the fam­ous exten­sion by which Mickey Mouse would have been in the pub­lic domain by now, but won’t be for a while yet. 

It just seems odd to me, the fact that copy­right is the excep­tion to the gen­er­al rule. But maybe it just seems odd to me.

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