Lowering the flag

As Basil noted, this site has been figuratively flying the black flag since the Eldred v. Ashcroft supreme court ruling. It seems time to get back to normal, or at least as normal as can be expected these days.

I’m still saddened by how much was lost, but the Creative Commons provides hope for the future. The conversation and debate are improving. More people are aware of copyright issues and the public domain. Some are writing fascinating articles that challenge our views and look for the good of the people.

Aaron Swartz’s article “Why ‘Intellectual Property’ is not Property” points out that government should protect our rights against actions that endanger them, but copyright prevents a right that we’d otherwise have. His terminology guide is fun.

Pick a color

Kirk Franklin created the nifty MoreCrayons tool to help web designers more easily visualize the color palette. He recently made fixes so it works with Mozilla as well as other DHTML browsers. I found it a bit surprising that he suggests a 4,096-color Web-Smart palette instead of the traditional 216-color Web-Safe. The color depth available on even 3-year old computer systems is generally better than 256-color, so it probably is past time to be worrying about that limited palette.