"Reclaim the Public Domain" petition

Read the petition here

The idea is to require a minimal payment (e.g., $1) to renew a copyright 50 years after a work is created. If the work isn't worth even that much to its owner, it should enter the public domain. This will rescue the vast majority of out-of-print works that are unavailable but still under copyright.

My signature is #6406

Personally, I think even 50 years is too long these days, but it's a start.

Infuriating store policies -- what in Hell were they thinking?

Went to Safeway earlier this evening to get some tomato paste. At checkout, the clerk asked me for my last name! After a bit of appalled confusion I refused, picked up my bag, and walked out.

Just outside the door I realized that, no, this really needed to be confronted and went back in. After a brief exchange with the clerk, in which he basically said that it was company policy to thank people by their last name, I got a manager.

Yes, it really is company policy for the checkers to thank customers by their last name (apparently when they were using first names, the female customers thought they were being hit on -- no surprise). I knew that they did that when you used your Safeway card, which is why I had my name taken off the damned thing: I don't like hearing people I've never met mangle my last name.

What I hadn't realized was that if I didn't use my card (I didn't expect a huge discount on two cans of tomato paste), the clerk would ask me for my last name so they could mangle it back at me to 'thank' me. Right -- like this is going to make me want to come back.
<rant>
The whole incident got me surprisingly angry. Tomorrow morning I'll be calling the customer service number the manager gave me, though I don't expect much to come of it.

Am I the only one who doesn't like hearing their name mispronounced by strangers? Who finds it somehow infuriating when sales droids try to be 'friendly'? Who finds a complete stranger demanding my name after making a $2 purchase to be unbelievably intrusive?
</rant>