Uncharacteristic naïvete

Neil Gaiman assumes bluestockings care about quality:

surely saying “It won the Newbery Medal. We order the books that do that. It’s been the most respected guide to quality children’s literature since 1922,” would fend off most threats to a school librarian’s job… wouldn’t it?

Some librarians are (over-)reacting to The Higher Power of Lucky with it’s mention of the word ‘scrotum’ on the first — or perhaps any — page. The part in question belongs to a dog, so this is a non-sexual reference, as naughty as being bitten on the ankle, but not as memorable.

Now playing: Lonesome Cowboy Bill by Charlie Pickett and the Eggs from the album “Live at The Button”

dumbest idea I have seen in forever, software division

Mac program can erase your home directory if you use a pirate serial:

Cory Doctorow:

David sez, “a Mac program called Display Eater that has been set up by its developer to respond to the use of pirated CD keys by ‘erasing something’ — apparently this is, in some instances, the home directory of the infringing Mac. Response over on Versiontracker, amongst other places, has been rather irate — the PR disaster has already occurred”

Link

(Thanks, David!)

wow, who would think this is a good idea?

Now playing: Shake Some Action by Charlie Pickett and the Eggs from the album “Live at The Button

I guess Apple should never have tried to pry open the RIAA’s vaults

What Steve Jobs’s DRM announcement means:

Every iTunes song you buy for 99 cents amounts to a 99 cent tax on switching from an iPod to a Zune. That’s because your iTunes songs won’t play on your Zune — or on any other player, save those made or licensed by Apple.

At some point you have to wonder if someone is trying to trick you or really believes what they’re saying. If you burn a DRM-ed track to CD, then re-rip, you’re home free. Everyone knows that. Cumbersome? Yes. Wasteful? Check. Easy? Sure. Legal? Yup.

That [money you spent on DRM-ed tracks] you kiss goodbye if you buy a sexy little Creative Labs Zen or a weird little no-name from the wildly imaginative entrepreneurs of Malaysia. Not only won’t your iTunes Store music play on those devices, it’s illegal to try to get it to play on those devices.

And here I thought Jobs’ message was that DRM was the record labels idea and the right place to start pushing for the end of DRM was with them. But for some reason, Apple is the bad guy in Cory’s world. The best is the enemy of the good, I guess. If we can’t open the digital music completely, we shouldn’t bother.

what is a Perfect Number?

Perfect Number — from Wolfram MathWorld:



Perfect numbers are positive integers n such that

n==s(n),

where s(n) is the restricted divisor function (i.e., the sum of proper divisors of n), or equivalently

σ(n)==2n,

I don’t know any more than when I started. But these examples:

6 = 1+2+3

28 = 1+2+4+7+14

496 = 1+2+4+8+16+31+62+124+248

suggest that

Perfect numbers are positive integers such that the largest factor is the sum of all the other factors.

might also define them. I’m sure that sucks the fun out of it for some people.

More fun numeric facts here.