Missing the Point

In arguing against making it illegal for consumers to strip DRM from legally purchased works if those works stop being playable the lawyers for the content companies said this:
"We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so." (source: arstechnica).

The content companies are missing the point. It's one thing to offer a flawed product for sale and then shut down the licensing servers that make that product work, it's quite another to not allow someone else to fix it. Let me be clear here - content companies have the right to provide a product that ranks anywhere from mediocre to excellent. They have the right to shut down the servers that make that product work unless they contracted to do otherwise. They should not have the right to make it illegal for a consumer to fix content they've legally purchased to make it playable.

To use a better example, let's consider the case of a broken eight track player. No one expects the company that made the eight track player to stay in business in perpetuity to fix them. But it would be ludicrous to argue that a consumer shouldn't be able to attempt to fix their own eight track player if the service is no longer offered by someone else.

No one's asking the content companies to make a product that works for eternity. They're just asking that the content companies allow someone else to fix the product if it's broken.

Nutriwhat?

Billboards have appeared all over the Twin Cities area advertising Nutrisoda, a pop that's supposedly nutritious because it's fortified with nutrients. Only marketers could have come up with this pitch. By that logic you could call carrot cake healthy just because it contains grated carrots. Or we could fortify frosting with vitamins and call it healthy too.

Ugh. Just call it dessert.

Frosty and Fresh

What do you have for lunch after canning 15 pints of strawberry jam? Fresh, frosty lemonade (made with the juice of the lemons used for zesting) with peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches, of course. I won't be able to look at another strawberry until tomorrow and I need to clear some room in the cupboard.

Three Sisters

This year one of my experiments in the garden is 'The Three Sisters'.

I'm happy to report that things look promising so far. You can see in the picture below, the corn growing tallest, with the purple stalk of the bean plant, and just below that the squash plant.