Sorry to get all Art School Wanna-be, but there's something beautifully stunning about the blue paint on the red brick. Unfortunately, I have no idea what any of the Armenian says (though, the advertisements are for something at the library).
The front page of Hacker News is buzzing about the Pitchfork.Tumblr story (great insights from Shopify & Weebly), which goes something like this:
Tumbledore creates pitchfork.tumblr.com, kinda uses it for a while before Pitchfork asks/tells Tumblr to take it back, which they do.
Yes, it was a classic dick move by Pitchfork & Tumblr's people (and they even wrote that great review of my band back in 08) and they ought to have handled the entire ordeal much better, but aside from failing Wheaton's Law, they behaved reasonably given their Terms of Service (emphasis mine):
Subscriber represents, warrants and agrees that it will not contribute any Subscriber Content that (a) infringes, violates or otherwise interferes with any copyright or trademark of another party […] Tumblr reserves the right to remove any Subscriber Content from the Site, suspend or terminate Subscriber’s right to use the Services at any time, or pursue any other remedy or relief available to Tumblr and/or the Site under equity or law, for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Subscriber Content or if Tumblr is concerned that Subscriber may have breached the immediately preceding sentence), or for no reason at all.
I'm just as guilty of not reading these damned things, but the fact of the matter is, when tumbledore signed up for Tumblr, he agreed to the above and denied himself any ownership of that subdomain. It brings up an interesting debate about what we've come to (and ought to) expect from services that we generate mountains of free content for.
I can empathize with Tumbledore, as I had the same thing happen to me with my Twitter account back in 2008, when they confiscated @digg from me. Yes, I'd registered it along with @reddit back before everyone thought Twitter was the bee's knees -- furthermore, I'd even plugged in the digg RSS feed so it was auto-tweeting digg's top links.More than a few redditors had emailed asking why I wasn't doing something sneakier and while it had crossed my mind, I was content to let to competing products exist and just let users decide. If there can be google and yahoo, why not reddit and digg?
And then I got this email:
Hi There,
We've received a note from Digg regarding your Twitter account. It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
is in violation of our Terms of Service, specifically article 6 of the General Conditions, which mentions trademark infringement:
6. We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.
To settle this issue we've changed the user name to "Digg_News" in the full name and user name fields in order to eliminate confusion. You can change your user name to something else if you'd like, but please honor the Terms of Service accordingly:
1. Visit Twitter.com/settings
2. Edit the Full Name and Username fields
3. Click "Save"We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Thanks!
Was it handled poorly? Sure. But I felt then -- and still feel now -- that it was perfectly within Twitter's rights to gank the name back because that was the agreement I signed up to when I created the account (of course I didn't read the Terms of Service). Admittedly, it seems reasonable to thwart brand squatters from sitting on [brand name X] every time a new startup is launched. But choosing when to pull the trigger on someone who is genuinely using a trademarked username for something benign (or totally unrelated in pitchfork's case) is much less black & white.
It's already passed Valentine's Day, but I spotted this on the walk home yesterday. The English isn't perfect, but neither is love, or anything for that matter -- except for coffee.
Bacon-flavored mini-croutons with a pig made out of bacon on the wrapper. It's almost like some kind of odd breadpig perversion. But to date, our hero hasn't been thwarted -- or turned into a salty snack.
I'm anxious to see the city in full bloom this spring, but the weather now is giving me a great excuse to have seconds of borscht (oh yes, there's borscht to be had here in Armenia).
Cafe Mokka is one swanky cafe. If I kept showing you pictures from here, you'd think I'd never have left San Francisco. I'm quite fond of french press coffee back home, but it doesn't quite have the same 'oomf' I need now that I've been practically bathing in surj.
Who am I to say what one should or shouldn't be wearing into battle? You can find this stout fellow at the foot of the Cascade.
David of Sassoon may be an animated film about a famous Armenian epic hero, but it was still a challenge for this non-Armenian speaker (not yet, at least) to understand everything. I think I'm feeling inspired to read the epic on which it's based - so long as I can procure an English translation. The charming Moscow Cinema was the setting for this great escape from the rain. There's giant iron (?) spider sculpture in front of it, as well as a few inside, you can't miss it.
Strong. Delicious. With notebook nearby. Thank you, Art Bridge Cafe, for your fantastic wi-fi and generously patient staff.
Formerly known as Lenin Square (the severed head of the torn down Lenin statue is purportedly locked in the Natural History Museum -- will explore) Republic Square is the center of Yerevan. The fountains aren't on this time of year, but they're apparently quite the sight. Follow-up pictures to come this spring.
