Monthly Archives: February 2003

PHPNuke Copyright Notice Debate

Uncategorized

Today, a story (beware the popups) on PHPNuke.org caught my attention. Basically, it is slamming Yale’s excellent LawMeme site because it doesn’t include a PHPNuke copyright statement at the bottom of each page. The PHPNuke people seemed to be asserting that this was required of them under the GPL.

This concerned me, as PHPNuke is a part of Debian, which has a strict set of guidelines requiring included software to be truly Free. I did some checking, and, in a post to debian-legal, highlighted the problem.

There are several interesting aspects of this saga. One is that some may consider the user to actually be distributing parts of the PHPNuke code to each person that views a webpage. Another is whether PHPNuke qualifies as an “interactive program” under the GPL. So far, these seem to be uncharted waters.

A Lesson on Influencing Adults

Society, TV

When the news broke yesterday that Fred Rogers had died, it was amazing to see how many adults still remembered the Mr. Rogers show and even were personally moved by the show in later life. I think it goes to show that what children watch on TV and at the movies really does matter to their character development.

A number of stories about Mr. Rogers appeared yesterday in addition to those liked above. We saw appreciations, lists of Fred Rogers quotes, links to an old interview with Mr. Speedy Delivery, and even how to talk to children about his death.

NPR has a webpage about Fred Rogers.

A Fresh Look at the ‘Net Tax

Online Life, Uncategorized

Recently, many U.S. states and large bricks-and-mortar retailers are again pushing the “Internet tax” — an effort to add sales tax to online purchases. This gets debated every few years, it seems, and we see similar arguments each time.

What the sates and existing retailers miss is that the sales tax is really a local tax. If I live in Lafayette, Ind. and drive to Chicago, IL for a day of shopping, I’d pay Chicago’s sales tax. And that is only right. After all, I’m contributing to the wear of Chicago’s roads, I’m benefiting from the police officers keeping the area safe, I could benefit from the fire dept. if there was a problem, and their snow crews let me travel around.

But if I sit at home and place the order, I’m doing none of those things. Without stepping foot in Chicago, I don’t benefit from their roadways or safe streets. The people that do — perhaps UPS, which delivers my package — already pay local taxes (fuel, sales, etc.) and that cost is passed along to me as part of the shipping fee.

Lighting the 1901 Way

Outdoors, Uncategorized

After a recent visit to the Coleman factory outlet and museum in Wichita, I was struck by how good the 1901 solution to the lighting problem still works today.

I purchased one of Coleman’s new North Star Dual Fuel lanterns. It costs 5 to 10 cents per hour to operate and can use standard unleaded fuel from any gas station, and puts out the same amount of light as a 75 watt bulb. Battery-powered lights cost roughly 50 cents per hour tooperate and put out far less light.

It was also intriguing for a geek to look at the mechanism, largely unchanged since 1901. The lantern vaporizes the fuel by using heat, then burns that. You pump it up with pressure once an hour, which keeps things moving.