Governor of Disneyland Inflamed by Slashdot Comment

except not really

Little Tinfoil, for funzies

Here is Gartner's graph of Vista's expected uptake:














Certainly looks bad for us free-software folks doesn't it? That's fine, though -- I'm used to things looking "bad" and don't particularly care that much whether free software takes over the world. I just want non-free software to leave me alone and stop making my life difficult.

But... there's something funny about that image and I'll give you a few second to guess it

Give up?

Here it is: there's no such thing as a "pernonaginta". It's called "percent" because it goes to 100. Here's Gartner's graph, side by side with my corrected version:









Now, you'll rightly point out that Microsoft still "dominates". Duh. But that's the thing with "marginalization"; it doesn't work through outright lies but by subtly changing our symbolic life. I'm not going to rant and rave about this, but I suspect this kind of itty-bitty distortion is all over the place.

Found a Senator I Like

There's more complete coverage of the rebirth of SIRA over at a4fs, but I liked an exchange between this guy Rick Boucher and the Copyright registrar: (41:28 in the video. Boucher obv was not speaking in hypertext so I added in links)

Boucher: Well, we don't need an audio flag for HD radio.
Peters: I agree --
Boucher: -- and we don't need to disable the portable devices that XM is putting out to do this [i.e. reform section 115], do we?
Peters: (Pause) ... not through 115, but --
Boucher: Thank you, that ... that --
Peters: The question is --
Boucher: -- pretty well answers --
Peters: No, no, but --
Boucher: That's a great answer...

...Hm. This guy's pretty sharp.

Boucher: Why not just say that these ephemeral copies have no independent value? It's hard for me to imagine that they do, and frankly I'm a little bit surprised this morning to hear you suggest that they do after all and that your footnote was not properly stated. Tell me this: how can they possibly have independent value when all they do is effectuate a transmission that itself is licensed?
Peters: I'm not a guru in the marketplace; I stand by the statement with regard to incidental, temporary copies. The question that has come up, um, and where we actually have seen deals. We've seen contractgs where there is separate money for a server copy. Just raises for me a question of whether or not there is value --
Boucher: Well, Ms. Peters, is it possible those deals were made because of the legal uncertainty, with regard to whether or not this would be termed to be a copy unless we clearly declare that they have no independent value? I think the answer's yes.
Peters: It could be, I --
Boucher: Thank you very much.
Peters: the answer to that --
Boucher: Thank you, Mr. Chairman I yield back.

mmm... more later, I hope