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This one was a lot easier than getting a California driver's license, because I didn't have to take a test. All I had to do was get my car "tested for smog" and then fill out some paperwork at the DMV. My impression of getting "tested for smog" is that it's mostly a scam. You go to a place that will do a smog check (most car fix-it places will do it) and pay them about $30 to sign a certificate that says your car doesn't produce an outrageous amount of smog. I'm not sure if any testing actually goes on (I wandered off for lunch while my car was being "tested", just so I could honestly say I didn't know whether any actual "testing" had happened or not). Once you have this certificate, you stuff it in your glovebox where nobody will ever ask for it again. The DMV didn't even ask to see it (not even once) when I was registering the car. I'm not sure why I did it at all...
The day I registered the car, I just brought the car title (recently signed over by my parents), the smog check certificate, my checkbook, and a magazine to read while I stood in line. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had thought to bring a magazine. Everyone else just stood around looking like they were only a few hours from suicide. Theoretically, there are two lines at the California DMV: one for those who thought ahead and made an "appointment", and one for those who didn't. On the day I went, everyone was standing in the same line, negating the entire purpose of having appointments (so I didn't feel so bad about forgetting to make one). After an hour in line, during which I was once again reminded of Tanya's evil ways, I went through a very painless 5-minute process, paid a lot less than I was fearing, and got my license plates. Yay!
This is just the latest in a series of patents that the US Patent Office has given out over the past decade (or two) that don't just border on being absurd -- they are absurd. It's hard to understand what the motivation is at the Patent Office, or if this is just representative of some fundamental breakdown of power there.
I personally think patents are a good thing. I agree with the concept that if you invent something truly unique, you should get exclusive licensing rights on that invention for X years. And that after those X years, the invention enters the public domain so that in the long run, everyone wins. There's a lot of incentive to discover something new, and the invention eventually becomes the property of humanity as a whole.
But by allowing patents on any invention or algorithm, lowering the bar from "new and original" to "nobody else tried to patent it yet", it all breaks down. Instead of being a system used for incentive, it becomes a weapon. Corporations patent things that aren't just obvious, but are in common use -- and they intend to use these patents only as bargaining leverage against other companies.
And now, when a patent lasts 20 years, the dissemenation of new inventions to society at large takes an entire generation. I think it's valid to ask if any invention in the Information Age has any value at all 20 years after its conception. If the Apple II has been patented, it would still be covered today.
I think by serving business more than the public, the patent office is dooming itself. The stack of clearly inappropriate patents continues to grow, the number of lawsuits is building, and it's only a matter of time before the general public decides that the current patent system doesn't serve them, and they decide to dismantle it. And when we lose the patent system, we'll lose something that could've been valuable, and I think that sucks.
We went to the nearby Safeway on the 30th to stock up on booze, because we figured if things got bad, we'd rather be drunk for a week. Safeway had pretty much everything -- nothing was in short supply. At the entrance they had a big pallot of bottled water (mostly gone) and a huge display of toilet paper (which had pretty much been decimated). A few stragglers were wandering up and down the aisles, on edge, with grocery carts full of ramen and canned beans (really).
On the 31st, we woke up, and treated the day like a normal weekend, which only made it seem weirder to me. Nobody seemed to know what to do with themselves. Several of us slipped into Pokemon comas for short periods of time. Eventually dinnertime approached and we had to decide what to do. I kinda wanted to go downtown and see the fireworks in a big crowd, which eventually won out, so we had Thai at a place called something like "Thai Time" with a little clock in the window, then we jumped on one of the free buses on Geary and headed downtown.
The busses being free is the only thing I can say to recommend them. They were extremely crowded, and more people got on at every stop. And it seemed like at least half of the people on the bus were annoying fratboys, but it may just be that they were as loud as half a busload of people. They were actually doing things like spitting at cars out the bus windows, and talking about getting laid. In retrospect I wonder if it was just someone's idea of a really funny joke. They were too stereotypical to be real!
When we got downtown and got off the bus, we were several (maybe 10-ish) blocks from the Old Ferry House where the fireworks would be centered. A lot of businesses were boarded up, anticipating some sort of rioting, although a few, conspiciously, weren't. One store was still boarding up its windows as we walked by it, around 11:30pm, begging for an "eleventh hour" joke. I hope those workers got good overtime. Once we got to Market, the crowds were pretty big and you had to just sort of flow with them, which we did until we got to a corner where all movement stopped. The police had blocked off all the streets downtown for their own nefarious purposes, and the sidewalks ahead were too crowded, so we settled there, a few blocks down Market from the Ferry House.
As it got closer to midnight, the crowd was all psyched up, and the police were wearing riot gear and driving up and down Market in weird army formations. At one point after they did some formation that looked particularly stupid, I let out a big energetic "whoop!" that was picked up and carried by a huge section of the crowd nearby. Further up the street, we saw a smoke bomb go off behind one of the barricades, where it looked like some of the partiers had been trying to sneak out into the completely deserted street. Helicopters periodically flew overhead. Arlo finally despaired of finding a porta-potty that didn't have an infinite line outside it, so we gathered around him in protection while he pissed in a plastic jug (which we carefully left behind).
Finally the lasers and fireworks went off and everyone was cheering and screaming -- fun in its own way. You couldn't really hear any of the music blaring from the Ferry House, way back where we were, but when I read a list of the songs the next morning, I was pretty glad we couldn't hear them (think cheese). When it was all over, everyone just sorta drifted back down Market, and the police, looking relieved, took down the barricades and chatted up people. We caught a series of busses out to a party Erin's friends were having in a warehouse, where I just soaked up the scenery and some booze until we left. In the taxi on the way back, we saw a donut shop with about 500 cops milling around outside.
We went back to the Safeway on the morning of the 1st (they were open
for some reason) and the beer section was stocked full. They'd
hoarded a bunch or something. It was practically spilling out into
the aisle. We got a bunch of breakfast stuff (you can tell how prepared
for the apocalypse we were!) and went back home and cooked a nice
breakfast before continuing our normal lives.
Tell me your thoughts on the patent law.
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