You’ve Got Mail

Have you heard about Tom Hanks’ and Meg Ryan’s new movie, “You’ve Got Mail”? It’s just like Tom Hanks’ and Meg Ryan’s old movie, “Sleepless in Seattle”. Except with computers. They should have just called it “Sleepless in Cyberspace”.

• charlie kaufman
• movies

Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne

No wonder people think physics and math are so hard. Consider the following from Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne, a book I’m currently reading:

(pg. 463) Topology is a branch of mathematics that deals with the qualitative ways in which things are connected to each other or to themselves. For example, a coffee cup and a doughnut “have the same topology” because (if they are both made from putty) we can smoothly and continuously deform one into the other without tearing it, that is, without changing any connections.

Thus, we are forced to conclude that doughnuts and coffee cups are made out of putty. Aren’t we?

• movies
• muppets

Cease and desist

I got my first cease and desist letter today. Sort of. Here’s the letter:

Jason,

This letter is really strange for two reasons:

a) It’s not from a lawyer. It’s from the “Senior Multimedia Designer” from a company called Rossroy Interactive. I guess this guy is cheaper than a lawyer. Of course, the lawyer might have realized that the Apple Dodge Neon page is a parody of both the Dodge Neon and the Apple iMac and is therefore probably protected under copyright laws.

b) It’s unclear what is wrong with the page. Is it the Dodge logo or the Apple one? I did some checking and Rossroy Interactive is in Michigan…making it a good bet that the Dodge logo is the one in question. It might have been nice of them to mention that.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be taking the page down right now. I’ve got a couple letters to write and some legal codes to pore over.

• movies
• robots