by Suw on September 22, 2003
The Online Computer Centre, owners of the Dewey Decimal System, are suing the Library Hotel in New York (about which I’ve blogged before) for trademark infringement, hoping to gain three times the hotel’s profits since opening or three times the organisation’s damages, whichever is greater.
It’s a shame that such lawsuits get filed – the real pull of the hotel, surely, is not that the room numbers use the Dewey Decimal System, but that each one is themed around a certain subject and contains books and works of art about said subject. Using the Dewey Decimal System is a nice touch, but doesn’t seem to me to be central to the concept. They could as easily have made up their own numbering system.
I don’t see why the Online Computer Centre couldn’t have collaborated with the Library Hotel and used the whole thing as a nice bit of PR. Instead, they look like a bunch of over-litigious money-grabbers. I just hope that they don’t win.
(via Scripting News, via The Trademark Blog from TBO.)
by Suw on September 22, 2003
by Suw on September 22, 2003
I’ve just spent the afternoon figuring out which business invoices I can and can’t pay, and how much I can pay off the ones that I can’t pay all of. Although paying some creditors completely has made me feel a little better – particularly when those were freelancers rather than companies – all in all it’s a pretty depressing thing to do because it’s not my money I’m paying them with.
A little financial wangling has resulted in a situation where I can pay just over half what the business still owes, but in the long run this is just adding to my own personal debt mountain as the business is pulling in approximately ?13.50 a month right now.
I don’t like to add up what I owe, but suffice to say that it’s over mid five figures and enough to have bought a small house somewhere like north Wales. I try not to think about it, but days like today I have to sit down and smile with gritted teeth whilst I try to, at the very least, tidy things up a bit.
Using the Ostrich Method of Coping may not be wise, but it’s the only method that works at the moment. Anything to stop the fear setting in, because if that happens again I’ll be huddled in a corner and unable to answer the phone anymore.
Still, I’m going to go away now and think some resolutely positive thoughts.
*nods sagely*
And possibly some reprehensible ones too…
*grins wickedly*
by Suw on September 22, 2003
Took Dad to see Pirates tonight at our local cinema, The Tivoli in Wimborne. This is the third time I've been to see it, which I think is getting on for the most times I've seen any given film actually at the cinema (as opposed to obsessing over a video/dvd, which I may possibly have been known to do once or twice. *coughcough*). I often see films twice, just because that's how it works out, but I would happily go and see Pirates a fourth and fifth time, were the opportune moment to present itself.
I laughed just as much this time round as I did last time, and the first time. Dad loved the film too, which was a bonus. It kinda sucks to go on and on about a film only to have someone just totally not get it, so it was a relief to hear him chortling away next to me.
Of course, I did suffer a little from pre-laughter – you know, the kind of laughter you laugh when you know what's coming, but no one around you does, and you can see it a mile off and you're anticipating the punchline and laughing in preparation for the everyone else getting the joke. I had that with Reloaded because I'd already discussed the Merovingian's curse with my French friends, so when the moment came, just as he starts to say 'Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'encul? de ta m’re!' I collapsed in hysterics.
Strangely, no one else in the cinema seemed to think that joke was quite as funny as I did.
Anyway, yes, Pirates. Who'd've thought it could stand up so well to repeated viewings?
