28. February, 2003 - Ends

• Google News: Mr. Rogers, R.I.P. Time for a new neighborhood.
• Missing U student found in Mississippi River. A body was found in the Mississippi yesterday. There’s a good chance it’s Chris Jenkins, but folks are still waiting on the final word. [strib]

• The Minneapolis Public Library

  I walked near the spot where the body was found yesterday. Not close enough to notice anything, though, and a couple hours before anyone noticed anything. I had gotten frustrated with work and with some prodding from Steph who pointed out that it was a nice day, and the Minneapolis Public Library was in an interesting state of deconstruction, I decided to take a walk. So I walked around and took some pictures of the library, had a nice lunch at Tugg’s River Saloon where it was pretty quiet (but what do you expect around 2pm on a weekday). After that I walked home and napped. It wasn't the most productive day.
• Then in the evening, in a fit of frustration, I wrote about Being on Time and why I think it’s an important thing.
• FT.com columnists talk about patents. Lawrence Lessig says the US system is broken (which I agree with) and Richard Epstein argues that innovation is still happening, so what’s the problem? The problem is that the patent office grants stupid software patents for things like a discussion group for which there’s plenty of prior art, and those patents will keep little guys from working on new discussion board software that might infringe. Also, little software developers (like me) typically don’t get patents because even something genuinely new costs more to patent than it’s probably worth, because once you’ve got a patent, you still need to defend it, and that costs even more money. [scripting]

Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Tue, 04 Mar 2003 05:20:59.