There is now a lawsuit over whether time-zone data can be protected by copyright. This follows older litigation on telephone directories. It may affect the lexical data used in the PanLex project.
[Full text]PanLex, Copyright, and Licensing
October 7th, 2011Raceway Recommendation
October 2nd, 2011I found a well-designed raceway for low-voltage wiring.
[Full text]Thanks, Governor Brown
September 18th, 2011Governor Brown, after receiving my supportive letter, signed Senate Bill 563 this month. Some of my neighbors were livid, suggesting they might sue me for the letter.
[Full text]Never Use Email
September 12th, 2011Berkeley Town House’s attorney recommends all directors of housing communities avoid using email. I answer no thanks.
[Full text]Corporate Linguicide
August 12th, 2011See this attack on a company that kills languages.
[Full text]Native Speech Status
August 6th, 2011Native speakers of languages enjoy superior statuses to non-native speakers as providers of grammatical evidence in linguistics. This superiority is accorded to them as well in language documentation and language standardization, where the motivation for such a status distinction isn’t obvious.
[Full text]PayPal Account Closure
July 27th, 2011Thank you, Anonymous, for reminding me to close my PayPal account.
[Full text]My Last Flight
March 5th, 2011Recent documentaries and a recent book remind us that human flight is obsolete.
[Full text]Installing Latest Perl on OS X
March 5th, 2011Solution to errors occurring during the installation of Perl under OS X.
[Full text]RealManage: My Verdict
February 25th, 2011Condominium associations and housing cooperatives often hire managers. One of the larger managers specializing in this market is RealManage. It’s the manager of the cooperative where I live. I review RealManage, detailing some real strengths and some real weaknesses.
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