Help save innovation

In light of today’s Supreme Court ruling on the liability of p2p companies, take a moment consider giving to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help save innovation. Surely, there will a flurry of lawsuits coming down and a defense effort to fund. The decision could have been worse (since they send back the ruling on Grokster’s specific liability to the lower courts), but it’s still pretty bad and another step down a slippery slope.

For an audio version of the decision, click here (and use BitTorrent while you still can). For the full text of the decision, click here.

Race Relations

Living in California, especially the Bay Area, can really screw up your perspective on the world. I know I’ve talked about this before, but this time I’m talking about race relations. Living in California can really give you a warped perception of race relations in this country and quite frankly, just make you a bit soft. For example: not all Hispanic people are Mexican, bilingual education is not a universally accepted concept, interracial couples are not as common as you might think nor are they always considered “cool,” “hip,” or “beautiful,” and often times, people of color, no matter how much money, education, or fame they have, face prejudice everday. Period.

I am often reminded of this, but it’s particularly driven home when I talk to people who grew up in California or who have lived in California for much longer time than I have (it’s been about eight years now). Nobody’s burning a cross on my lawn, but the little barbs, the comments, the questions– they happen more often than you might think. For example: yeah, you know, being part of interracial couple is not as easy as you might think, even in California. Oh, and don’t even get me started on assumptions about Asian fetishes. Is it possible that someone might be interested in someone for who they are, not what they are? Yes, thank you, our children would be beautiful, but some bizarre breeding goal is not the reason we’re together. Oh, and where am I from? Uh, New York. No, you mean “originally?” Uh, the Bronx? Oh, I see, you weren’t looking for “New York” or anything else within the US or the Western Hemisphere for that matter as an answer. And no, I’m not Chinese or Japanese. You realize that there are other Asian countries out there, right? And no, I’m not the same person as my Asian female coworker. If you’re so politically correct and culturally sensitive, why can’t you tell us apart? And yes, I keep up with the news on North Korea, but no, I don’t have some special “inside information” nor am I responsible for what that crazy fuck is doing there. Or how about this one: “oh, well, you had help getting into Stanford because you’re Asian.” Yeah, because at nearly at 25% Asian American undergraduate enrollment, they’re really looking to accept more of us even if we’re unqualified. You know, because that’s how affirmative action works.

For many people, these anecdotes may not be very surprising and you’ll write them off as the everyday experiences of being a person of color in this country. But often, when I discuss it with people who have grown up or lived in California for a significant period of time, they are surprised and to some extent, don’t actually believe me. The even weirder part of this is that it’s not just white males that have this response– I often meet people of color here who have these reactions. Everyone seems so surprised that there is still intolerance in this world, or at least that there is still intolerance in California, this “great melting pot” of a state.

Then why is it that materials like these could be produced so high up in the 49ers organization– you’ll take six million dollars from a Chinese-American for your stadium, but you’ll turn around and portray an Asian man as buck-toothed and speaking in broken English (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, anyone?) in your media training tapes? Or two Asian police officers only have to pay a $250 fine after clubbing and pepper spraying a 59-year-old black man?

I don’t know if it’s just an overgrown sense of political correctness, but when faced with a racially-charged situation, I find people desperately trying to find some other explanation. Now, I hate it when people play the “race card” unnecessarily, diminishing the credibility of true accounts of racism and prejudice, but sometimes, when it’s staring at you in the face, you should call a spade a spade (no pun intended). To not do this, to not confront it is to say that these episodes aren’t important, to say that people’s feelings about these issues aren’t important. As human beings, we’re the same, but we’re also different: history has shown us that the fact that you’re white, he’s black, she’s brown, and I’m yellow surely affects the way we interact with each other, for better or worse. Saying that race or ethnicity doesn’t play a factor in certain situations when they clearly do or even saying that it is an issue, but that we should “rise above it” or “ignore it” or “not focus on that” only perpetuates the cycle of intolerance and feeds our complacency.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

I cleary remember writing this page:

Stanford Residential Computing: Wireless in the Residences: What to buy and how to configure it

And we got an email from somebody pointing out the amazing similarities to:

University of Arizona Residential Computing: Wireless Networking FAQ

If I cared, I could have a copyright dispute on my hands.

Trust

I’m pretty sure some of my friends who work in or have worked in marketing have handed one or more of my email addresses over to their employers. As if viruses and bots that harvest email addresses or companies that sell your contact information aren’t bad enough, I’m pretty sure there are people willing to turn over their personal address books. Sure, they don’t want their information shared to the world, but they’ll turn yours over as soon as they get the chance. What hope then do we have for personal privacy if our friends will not protect us and our information?

The switch

How many articles can you possibly have about the Apple IBM-to-Intel switch? For chrissake, something like 50% of my Bloglines headlines have been on this topic starting last Friday since CNET broke the story.

Nevetheless, a brief comment on the topic: I predicted this switch over two years ago– with Apple’s recent success and ever expanding product line, at some point they were going to have to do something about the very expensive business of producing hardware using the minority chip. IBM’s recent moves to get out of the hardware business (and into the “business solutions” business) pushes Apple along the way too. Besides, I mean, even Solaris runs on x86 now. Maybe if they had switched to AMD (it was rumored that they originally looked at this chip, especially since most hardware people agree its a better chip), there wouldn’t have been such a circus. The most amusing part of this whole thing is that it seems like Apple fans are suddenly caught in this philosophical, ethical, personal dilemma– everybody wanted to deny it was happening (including Apple) and then when Jobs made the official announcement at WWDC, it was like Apple die-hards all got sucker punched. It’s like they’ve been betrayed in some deeply personal way. It’s just a piece of hardware, people. With computing hardware where it is today, the switch will make little difference to most people. At least Apple is providing a transition path for developers (Rosetta– if it’s one thing they’re good at, it’s naming things). Besides, what are you going to do about it– switch to Windows? To Solaris? To Linux? Use your IBM-chip Mac for the rest of time?

In any case, some more interesting points about the switch include Techdirt’s question: will Apple sue CNet over leaking the story? Probably not, which reinforces the realization that they’re not as noble as you might think.

New site design

Yee haw. It’s yet another site redesign. Check out the front page.