paid cd monkey

May 25, 2004 by Eric Richardson

There are times when I absolutely hate computers.

Today at work I had to upgrade my computer to Fedora Core 2. Simple enough. Then I decided to use the system-config-packages utility to install some GNOME software I hadn't installed with RH9 (and it hadn't given me any opportunity to include in the upgrade process). :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 1 needed to install packages

Fair enough... :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 2 needed to install packages
"Fedora Core 2" disk 3 needed to install packages

Still ok... :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 1 needed to install packages

Wha? :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 2 needed to install packages

Ummm.... :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 1 needed to install packages

Wait just a minute... Let's pay a little more attention here. It installs gphoto2... :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 2 needed to install packages

Installs some more packages :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 3 needed to install packages

Install one or two things... :

"Fedora Core 2" disk 2 needed to install packages

Three more packages. :

And now it says it's done. Whoever designed this app, I strongly dislike you at the moment.

another sequel

May 25, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I could have gone a whole lifetime without knowing that they planned to make a Miss Congeniality 2. Unfortunately, I didn't, and they are. In fact today and tomorrow they're shooting it on my block and have two lanes closed to traffic on Spring. I know downtown filming is a fact of life, but I wish we could agree for the inconvenience to at least be caused by good movies.

a movie and late night gas stations

May 24, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Saturday night Kathy and I went up to Pasadena and saw Strayed (or Les Égarés, if you prefer) at the Laemmle Playhouse. Kathy's taken a lot of French, I haven't; so while she gets to listen to the movie, I read it. It was good.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. On the way back it was a touch after midnight and Kathy wanted somewhere to buy a soda. The gas stations on Arroyo Pwky. in Pasadena were either closed or sketchy, so we made our way down the 110 and ended up exiting on Hill to head into downtown. On Hill, in Chinatown, there's a gas station that just recently reopened as like USA Gas or something like that after the major chain that was their closed up shop a while back. Not only were they open, the front doors were wide open and the only employee present was a friendly lady who was out sweeping by the pumps when we pulled in.

Now, this wouldn't be that surprising in Michigan, or Nebraska, but this is LA. In LA you get used to talking to gas station attendants through glass once the night becomes late enough. But here she was, in the middle of Chinatown, happily tending her wideopen store in the wee hours of the night. I thought that was cool.

the fun of the Court

May 23, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So I started this post Friday and didn't get around to finishing the research I wanted to do on it until now. Oh well.

Browsing the blogs at the bottom of the list at LA Blogs (the ones that don't ping updates to blogrolling) I happened across the Advice Goddess blog, whose latest entry mentions House Bill 4239, the "Parents Empowerment Act". Basically it allows parents to sue if their children come into contact with "obscenity".

You can see the press release on Rep. Hunter's site. The text of HR 4239 is also online. The law itself isn't worded to deal specifically with the Internet, but you can see from the press release that they do indeed have that in mind.

First thoughts: The case you have to compare this to is the CDA, which the Supreme Court shot down in Reno vs ACLU in 1997. The new bill looks to have learned some lessons from the CDA. First, it does include a definition of obscenity instead of relying on just the one prong from Miller.

The battle lines are going to be drawn over what constitutes measures that would prevent "a reasonable person [from expecting] a substantial number of minors to be exposed to the material." The CDA decision dealt with credit card verification systems as a method of keeping minors out. The Court ruled that requiring such a system would be overly burdensome for non-commercial sites. This law only applies itself to

any person who knowingly sells or distributes in interstate or foreign commerce an entertainment product containing material that is harmful to minors

To me that seems to only apply to commercial sites, and the Court's been a lot more favorable to imposing restrictions on commercial speech.

If this passes, I'm sure it will be challenged. If it is, it'll be an interesting opportunity to see how the mind of the Court has evolved in the six years since the CDA decision.

And if I hadn't been browsing the bottom of the blogroll, I would never have known about it.

spring cleaning

May 21, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Doing a bit of spring cleaning and noticed two papers I wrote and neglected to post here. Both were written for my Writing 340 class.

The first I titled Indecency in the 21st Century. It looks at the historic model of broadcast regulation and argues that this model can not and must not be carried forward to cable, satellite, and the Internet.

The second is The Train's Coming, but will USC Students Care?. We had to do a poll and write a paper on the results, so I asked students about their usage of public transportation. The results? They don't use it. You could have guessed that.