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Are you a witch?
(15 May 2003 at 10:15) |
I was looking for info on a band called "Curses and Kisses" playing with the decemberists tonight, and if you search for anything with "curses" in it on Google you'll discover that there is a thriving community of on-line curse (and other spellcraft) services. The promises they make are hilarious and sad at the same time. What really struck me is that apparently my fonts are a key ingredient of spell casting since they are all over the page. So remember, when you use Tom's fonts, you might be a witch.
(You wonder, if their money spells really work, why do they need to charge you?) |
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Tombats tattoo
(28 Apr 2003 at 19:18) |
| Would you get a Tombats tattoo? This guy did. |
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Unintended Consequences
(11 Jun 2002 at 22:48) |
| I'm a star! The lovely folks at EFF have a report out called Three Years with the DMCA: Unintended Consequences that's a good summary of the high-profile bogus cases the USA has suffered under the DMCA. And I'm in it! It's a good read if you want to know just what kinds of silly things are done with this law... |
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AGFA responds to Politech about embed
(08 May 2002 at 15:25) |
Wow, they really are serious... AGFA responds to the Politics & Technology list about my embed controversy. (Their spin machine is pretty amusing, check it out.) This reply is well done. Maybe I need a new weblog just for embed...
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UPD: embed saga
(07 May 2002 at 18:41) |
| I got a long new letter from lawyers about embed. I thought they had given up; I guess legal issues just move on the geologic time-scale. This one is pretty boring and irrelevant, though. I don't recommend reading it. |
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CNET Article
(03 May 2002 at 19:11) |
Looks like the controversy over embed has made it onto CNET News. It's a good article, and I am happy to see that the news media (techy news or not) is interested in publicizing this kind of thing.
I also got an email from a reporter from the New York Times today ... I'm sure Agfa Monotype and ITC are loving the "free publicity" from this one.
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Slashdotted...
(01 May 2002 at 17:51) |
I'm on slashdot (my sixth time) over this embed cease-and-desist business. Not really the best timing, but amusing nonetheless!
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UPD: Embed / DMCA threats
(23 Apr 2002 at 00:57) |
My new foes Agfa Monotype and International Typeface Corporation are at it again. They've sent me several letters of varying vagueness and causticity about my program called embed, which lets font developers change fonts to make them embeddable in (for example) MS Word documents. Their argument, which they finally have spelled out in today's letter, is that my program is a circumvention device under that sleazy law we've all grown to hate, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
You can read our discourse at the new page I set up. The best quote (gotta love those scare quotes) is:
An embedding bit is a "technological measure" that "effectively controls access" to their copyrighted works under the DMCA.
Uber-Troublemaker Dave Touretzky has been a great help so far. Thanks Dave! |
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Public Service Announcement
(11 Feb 2002 at 22:07) |
A few weeks ago some dude named Paul F Stack representing Agfa Monotype and the International Typeface Corporation threatened to sue me over a program I made five years ago called embed. This program lets you change a flag in TTF files that says whether you can embed the fonts in your word processing documents. (If the flag is set, then you need to copy the font along with the document.)
He claimed something vague about Copyright infringement. Of course, this is totally retarded since I made the program for use with my own fonts and I have nothing to do with Monotype or ITC (except perhaps for competing with them). I wanted to give other freeware font developers access to the tool as well...
Anyway, I am not particularly worried since he hasn't explained himself any further after my reply (apparently Stack is somewhat notorious as a windy font cop). If necessary, I suppose I can get my university to help me out. I just wanted to let everyone know about the program and the threats since I really despise legal bullying, especially with regard to intellectual property. If you do too, why not grab a copy of the program and source, and share it with a friend? (But don't use it to violate your font licenses. Just download free fonts instead...!)
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UPD: lots
(17 Sep 2001 at 00:54) |
Today was the second half of my clearing-my-todo-list weekend. I managed to clear it pretty well, but there are some deceptively small items on there. I concentrated on the things with big writing but a relatively small amount of work. Here's what I did:
- Tombats 7 (a new font, finally)
- Ordered CDRs and Chu Chu Rocket for Dreamcast
- Paid some bills, fixed banking stuff
- Did some work on the software to run the snoot factory and other stuff, though I didn't finish it.
- Modified aphasia to support a new style of links and changed over much of snoot.org to the new format.
- Enhanced the game list for scribble
- Answered some questions at Dr. Snoot (Keith is gonna help with this now)
- I guess that's it.
This week I'm going to take care of lingering work work I'm supposed to do (but which is fun!), which should leave me with a possibly half-empty todo list! |
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