he thinks the game may be over

For once, I think he's right.

wiki

Cory Doctorow is very bright, a well spoken guy with whom I almost always disagree.

http://boingboing.net/

He edits the very good boing boing blog, and is a force to be reckoned with in digital rights and loosening IP copyright protection. He’s a very interesting man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow

The other day he published a tumblr piece that is just spot on.

You don’t have to understand the digital jargon to grasp what we are all poised to lose in 2014.

Many point to spying as the root of web troubles ahead, but I think it is simpler than that. 

Here’s the quote:

Yes, so we can no longer make free copies of the entertainment and software we stream, dismantling the value of digital goods and thus, our global economy.

centives.net

Take a moment, it’s only four paragraphs, and understand better where we are. 

We are losing our open internet--fundamentally--

 through economic piracy.

Finally, and for once, I agree with him.

What a sad, sad thing to agree on.

barking up the right tree

Two out of three SoBro residents are of Hispanic origin. 

White folk here make up just 2.1% of the population.

So naturally at Christmas, we did as the Puerto Rican’s do. 

We made pernil, a roasted pig shoulder. 

The best party meals combine delicious tradition with ease of preparation, and "Pernil al horno" hits both marks.

All the prep is done the night before, so you can party with your guests while your oven does all the work. 

A Puerto Rican colleague put this marinade together for us, so our effort would be authentic.

She said it never comes out the same way twice, but at least the Adobo is in every market here.

Start with a full-skin pork shoulder, about 6 or 7 pounds.

 The skin is essential for this.

Loosen the skin around the ankle and cut deep slits into the raw meat.

Now fill the ankle with the marinade, and work it deeply into all the cuts you’ve made.

Slather the whole thing and put it into a tightly lidded roasting pot. 

This roast was just a bit too large for our roasting pot, so I gave the lid a little help from my toolbox.

Now into the fridge.

And that’s about it. 

From here on figure 325F undisturbed for about

And then another 45 minutes or so uncovered to crisp the skin.

Whoa baby. TV chefs call this “the bark.”

It's rich and insanely tasty.

Do it. You know you want to.

kiddy cat

Sears salesman Griffin, 49, acknowledged he had “accidentally seen child pornography” on his computer, but claimed he had no idea how those images got their in the first place.

Then it dawned on him.

The cat did it.

In a statement to investigators, “Sometimes he would leave the computer on and his cat would jump on the keyboard and he would come back to the computer and find strange things on his computer.”

erinina.com

Griffin was charged with 25 felony counts, convicted and ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison.

No word whether the cat testified against him.

wish I’d thought of it

AT&T dropped an internet bombshell the other day.  

If a search engine charged you a monthly fee but Google was still free, would you use the other engine? 

Probably not. 

cnet.com

Sounds nice doesn’t it? At first glance? 

Egalitarian, right?

Except that it is not even good common sense. 

First, voip voice and video has always been prioritized or it wouldn’t even function at current bandwidth.

And were this net-neutral concept codified into law, a brain surgeon based in Tokyo, operating through internet robotics on a patient in Chicago would---by law---be required to share equal bandwidth and delivery reliability in real time with a random teenager’s tweets about her boyfriend.

Now AT&T has stepped into all this and found a way to circumvent neutrality and earn some money doing it, a program called

It’s so insidious. 

You know that data cap on your phone? 

Would you be more inclined to use a website service if you knew the site was paying AT&T so the data wouldn’t count against your cap? 

OH YES you would.

lifehacker.com

Ingenious, no? Bye bye neutrality. 

Big companies who can afford this will dominate even more. And a little company can’t even get started.

ISP’s will let people craving FREE(!) dismantle a noble concept that was intended to protect them all along.

Government can’t preserve a level playing field if we insist on it for nothing, y’know. 

Not forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

remember this guy?

http://clocktowertenants.com/2013/03/wile-e-chayote.html

It sprouted in our kitchen fruitbowl. Back in Spring 2013.

So I gave him to José to plant in his garden. 

 Here it is planted in early June.

By June 19th José had staked him.

He was 2 feet high on Independence Day.

And by the end of July José had rigged a network of pipes and strings. 

Were we to harvest more chayote fruit?!

But by mid-August height gains had stalled. 

He was putting out tendrils instead.

Rain in late August raised hopes.

Alas. It seemed not to be. 

By October 5 he was fading fast to autumn yellow.

By November 17th, he appeared completely done for the season.

But wait. What’s that? 

I should have looked closer. 

Just three days before Christmas we discovered his gift from Summer 2013.

December 22, 2013