Boing Boing: Cory responds to Wired Editor on DRM
Cory (boing boing) Doctorow rants against Wired's sell out on DRM.
On the one hand, I think Doctorow is a bit extreme. I like my iPod, but I don't buy DRM protected music. I buy CDs, which I legally "rip" onto my iPod for my use. The AAC file format is MP4, and is not fundamentally DRM protected.
Anyway, Wired can't "sell out"; it never had any non-mercenary principles to begin with.
On the other hand, if there's anything that might get me streaming BitTorrent files, it's the intent of Microsoft and Hollywood to embed DRM deep into the fabric of everything we own -- from music to batteries (yes, hardware too). I'd probably still pay for the DRM version (why steal when you can afford not to?), but I'd use the DRM-free pirate version.
Hollywood/Microsoft/Palladium's version of DRM will build the Pirate Legions like nothing else.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Dyer article on the Cumbre Vieja tsunami-to-come
Unstoppable Gee-Gees
"Gee-Gee" is a cute name for "global geophysical event". If Cumbre Vieja erupted today, the resulting tsunami would wipe out about 100 million people, and destroy many US coastal cities. This is not new. I read about this a couple of years ago, and Dyer wrote this piece last August. It's been resurrected because of the Sumatra tsunami.
Problem is, we don't know when this will happen. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 10,000 years. We don't have the technology to handle this type of disaster; although we do have the technology to perhaps mitigate Sumatra-style disasters.
In medicine we're taught not to seek data that we don't know what to do with -- it usually causes anguish without an upside. This is the same problem on a much larger scale.
It may make sense to sit on this problem for a few decades. We're not going to forget about it. We will face huge challenges in the next 50 years, if we survive those with an intact civilization, then Cumbre Vieja may be a relatively trivial problem.
"Gee-Gee" is a cute name for "global geophysical event". If Cumbre Vieja erupted today, the resulting tsunami would wipe out about 100 million people, and destroy many US coastal cities. This is not new. I read about this a couple of years ago, and Dyer wrote this piece last August. It's been resurrected because of the Sumatra tsunami.
Problem is, we don't know when this will happen. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 10,000 years. We don't have the technology to handle this type of disaster; although we do have the technology to perhaps mitigate Sumatra-style disasters.
In medicine we're taught not to seek data that we don't know what to do with -- it usually causes anguish without an upside. This is the same problem on a much larger scale.
It may make sense to sit on this problem for a few decades. We're not going to forget about it. We will face huge challenges in the next 50 years, if we survive those with an intact civilization, then Cumbre Vieja may be a relatively trivial problem.
Gwynne Dyer Returns
New Page 1
Yes, "New Page 1" is the title of the web page with Dyer's 2004 articles. Dyer may have finally more-or-less decided that the web isn't going to go away, but that doesn't mean he's become a guru. It looks like he's doing his own web pages.
Dyer is a historian and journalist. I read him as a young-un in the Montreal Gazette. Canadian by heritage he's lived in Europe for several years. He's a bit of an egomaniac, and I suspect he's not the most agreeable person to meet (though I've never met him), but he's an interesting, albeit sometimes irritating, writer. For a while you could read his stuff in the International Herald Tribune, but the link I used for that broke some years ago. Now he's on the net, seemingly to stay.
Dyer was a better writer in the 1970s and 80s. In the past 20 years he's seemed more petulant and he sometimes indulging in irrational anti-American sentiment. (Dyer would have preferred the US come to terms with the Taliban and bin Laden -- a strategy as unlikely as GWB becoming a rationalist.) Even so, cranky and irrational Dyer is still better than most commentary.
I'll add this link to my news page. Maybe he'll add a syndication feed!
Yes, "New Page 1" is the title of the web page with Dyer's 2004 articles. Dyer may have finally more-or-less decided that the web isn't going to go away, but that doesn't mean he's become a guru. It looks like he's doing his own web pages.
Dyer is a historian and journalist. I read him as a young-un in the Montreal Gazette. Canadian by heritage he's lived in Europe for several years. He's a bit of an egomaniac, and I suspect he's not the most agreeable person to meet (though I've never met him), but he's an interesting, albeit sometimes irritating, writer. For a while you could read his stuff in the International Herald Tribune, but the link I used for that broke some years ago. Now he's on the net, seemingly to stay.
Dyer was a better writer in the 1970s and 80s. In the past 20 years he's seemed more petulant and he sometimes indulging in irrational anti-American sentiment. (Dyer would have preferred the US come to terms with the Taliban and bin Laden -- a strategy as unlikely as GWB becoming a rationalist.) Even so, cranky and irrational Dyer is still better than most commentary.
I'll add this link to my news page. Maybe he'll add a syndication feed!
Why have all the top-rated cordless phones been discontinued?
Amazon.com: Electronics / Categories / Telephones / Cordless Telephones / AllOur Panasonic 900 MHz cordless phone is dying. The cheapo buttons don't work any more. Annoying. I don't love the phone, but it has worked well. I would, of course, have paid more for higher quality, but I know I'm the only consumer willing to do that.
So I go to Amazon and review all the top-rated cordless phones. All are 900 MHz range, and none of them are sold any longer.
I don't want a 2.4GHz phone -- that would mess up our 802.11b WLAN.
The 5.8 GHz phones have relatively poor ratings -- looks like the technology isn't quite done yet. High power drain, poor range, susceptible to microwave interference (guess that blasts everything).
So 900 MHz was a well understood technology that interoperated with wirless LANs and worked well. Except it's no longer sold. No phone currently sold by any vendor has comparable ratings to those discontinued phones. Of the currently higher-rated phones, Uniden, Panasonic and Motorola all appear to have equally horrible quality control and customer service.
So maybe I should buy a VOIP phone? Or shop around the dusty back of out-of-favor electronics stores looking for a vintage 900MHz cordless phone?
No Virginia, progress is not guaranteed.
I wish an economist would research this one.
So I go to Amazon and review all the top-rated cordless phones. All are 900 MHz range, and none of them are sold any longer.
I don't want a 2.4GHz phone -- that would mess up our 802.11b WLAN.
The 5.8 GHz phones have relatively poor ratings -- looks like the technology isn't quite done yet. High power drain, poor range, susceptible to microwave interference (guess that blasts everything).
So 900 MHz was a well understood technology that interoperated with wirless LANs and worked well. Except it's no longer sold. No phone currently sold by any vendor has comparable ratings to those discontinued phones. Of the currently higher-rated phones, Uniden, Panasonic and Motorola all appear to have equally horrible quality control and customer service.
So maybe I should buy a VOIP phone? Or shop around the dusty back of out-of-favor electronics stores looking for a vintage 900MHz cordless phone?
No Virginia, progress is not guaranteed.
I wish an economist would research this one.
Sunday, December 26, 2004
A meteor to track - Torino Level 4
Impact Probability
I came across an obscure reference to this asteroid. As of 12/23 it has a 1/45 chance of impact.
The next level on the Torino scale would require governmental contingency planning.
Update 1/05: It's a clear miss!
I came across an obscure reference to this asteroid. As of 12/23 it has a 1/45 chance of impact.
The Orbit of 2004 MN4
Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas
NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office
December 23, 2004
A recently rediscovered 400-meter Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) is predicted to pass near the Earth on 13 April 2029...
December 24 Update: 2004 MN4 is now being tracked very carefully by many astronomers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale...
The next level on the Torino scale would require governmental contingency planning.
Update 1/05: It's a clear miss!
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
IE crashing -- is it the google toolbar? My, how strange would that be ...
Google Toolbar
IE has started crashing on me. It's never done that before. Maybe IE feels bad that I've left it for Firefox?
Or is it the Google toolbar? Last time IE crashed, it kindly told me, as a part of the post-crash report, that I had the Google Toolbar installed. It didn't say I should remove it. Of course IE has never before had a problem with the Google Toolbar. The only way that COULD happen would be if one of those endless IE patches had, as a most unfortunate side-effect, an incompatibility with the Google Toolbar.
Nahhh. Microsoft has never done anything like that before. Have they?
[cue: evil, diabolical, echoing, laughter]
IE has started crashing on me. It's never done that before. Maybe IE feels bad that I've left it for Firefox?
Or is it the Google toolbar? Last time IE crashed, it kindly told me, as a part of the post-crash report, that I had the Google Toolbar installed. It didn't say I should remove it. Of course IE has never before had a problem with the Google Toolbar. The only way that COULD happen would be if one of those endless IE patches had, as a most unfortunate side-effect, an incompatibility with the Google Toolbar.
Nahhh. Microsoft has never done anything like that before. Have they?
[cue: evil, diabolical, echoing, laughter]
Creating the happy life - in retrospect
Faughnan's Notes: Editing -- the secret to a happy life ...
I'm still thinking about my above post, and the Onion satire that inspired it. We don't do scrapbooks, but we have about 1500 images that cycle through our computer screens. This will probably grow to over 20,000 images over the next decade with new additions and by the incorporation of 40 years of analog images. Current selection algorithms are very crude, but with a bit of metadata one could script quite an interesting perspective on a life. For now images are "randomly" selected.
The pictures are strongly biased towards positive and happy events. Not everyone in the images is still with us or even still alive, but the times that the images were taken they were very much with us and very much alive. Unlike the traditional world of photo albums, we see them all the time. Each viewing triggers (or recreates!) old memories.
We know our memories are constructed from tiny fragments of "true memory", and we know our memories can be manipulated with trivial ease. In particular, we know how easy it is to implant false memories by using false images. In this case the images are not false (or no more false than any image), but they are highly selected. They produce a partially false "impression".
Is the viewing of these images, spanning decades of life and biased towards happy moments, altering memory and perception? Are they retrospectively creating a "happy" life -- irregardless of the true balance of joy and sorrow? Is this good? How does it differ from a constitutional predilection to seeing the "bright side" of life?
Hmm. Lots of interesting questions here.
I'm still thinking about my above post, and the Onion satire that inspired it. We don't do scrapbooks, but we have about 1500 images that cycle through our computer screens. This will probably grow to over 20,000 images over the next decade with new additions and by the incorporation of 40 years of analog images. Current selection algorithms are very crude, but with a bit of metadata one could script quite an interesting perspective on a life. For now images are "randomly" selected.
The pictures are strongly biased towards positive and happy events. Not everyone in the images is still with us or even still alive, but the times that the images were taken they were very much with us and very much alive. Unlike the traditional world of photo albums, we see them all the time. Each viewing triggers (or recreates!) old memories.
We know our memories are constructed from tiny fragments of "true memory", and we know our memories can be manipulated with trivial ease. In particular, we know how easy it is to implant false memories by using false images. In this case the images are not false (or no more false than any image), but they are highly selected. They produce a partially false "impression".
Is the viewing of these images, spanning decades of life and biased towards happy moments, altering memory and perception? Are they retrospectively creating a "happy" life -- irregardless of the true balance of joy and sorrow? Is this good? How does it differ from a constitutional predilection to seeing the "bright side" of life?
Hmm. Lots of interesting questions here.
Driving merrily over the cliff of economics
The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Whoops! It's 1985 All Over Again
A longish NYT article. Nothing new, but a good overview. We've been here before -- with the last president who was a deluded ideologue.
If the trend were to continue, it would require foreigners to lend the US about $1 trillion a year. That's about 75% of the savings of the entire world.
I don't care how good Bush is at defining reality and rejecting rationality. He can't define away mathematics.
I can see why they couldn't find a new treasury secretary. Who could stomach this leadership?
PS. Later in the article, this quote appears explaining how the Reagan administration blinked on the 'no new taxes' promise.
A longish NYT article. Nothing new, but a good overview. We've been here before -- with the last president who was a deluded ideologue.
In broad schematic terms, the United States imports and the rest of the world exports; the United States borrows and the rest of the world lends. Financial flows are so lopsided that last year America soaked up nearly three-fourths of the surplus savings in the entire world.
Not surprisingly, this state of affairs is adding to the country's foreign debt. At the end of last year, the nation's financial deficit - what the United States owes the rest of the world, minus what the rest of the world owes the United States - amounted to more than $3 trillion, about 30 percent of the country's annual economic output. And it is growing. In the 12 months through October, foreigners acquired nearly $885 billion of new United States government and corporate debt.
THAT wouldn't be a problem if the world were comfortable lending ever-larger sums to the United States to pay for American investment and consumption. But this is unlikely.
If the trend were to continue, it would require foreigners to lend the US about $1 trillion a year. That's about 75% of the savings of the entire world.
I don't care how good Bush is at defining reality and rejecting rationality. He can't define away mathematics.
I can see why they couldn't find a new treasury secretary. Who could stomach this leadership?
PS. Later in the article, this quote appears explaining how the Reagan administration blinked on the 'no new taxes' promise.
...So as he started his second term, Mr. Reagan changed course. Mr. Regan left the Treasury to become the president's chief of staff, while James A. Baker III, the chief of staff, moved to the Treasury.I think James A. Baker III, in several different ways, rescued America and the world from the disaster that was Ronald Reagan. I don't see a James Baker in this administration.
One of Mr. Baker's first statements was that the Treasury's policy of nonintervention was "obviously something to be looked at." By February 1985, the United States had started intervening in the currency markets to weaken the dollar.
Torture is us. Not that anyone cares ...
New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse Was Widespread (washingtonpost.com)
Sure didn't take us long to sink into the gutter. I wonder if we were faster than average, or merely average. I'd bet on faster than average -- having Rumsfeld at the top of the military has cast a long and very dark shadow.
The Bush administration is facing a wave of new allegations that the abuse of foreign detainees in U.S. military custody was more widespread, varied and grave in the past three years than the Defense Department has long maintained.
Sure didn't take us long to sink into the gutter. I wonder if we were faster than average, or merely average. I'd bet on faster than average -- having Rumsfeld at the top of the military has cast a long and very dark shadow.
Why should stress accelerate aging?
BBC NEWS | Health | Stress 'may speed up cell ageing'
I've been puzzling about this for a while. What adaptive advantage is there for stress to accelerate aging? It seems like evolution went to some trouble to make this happen (note to creationists -- I'm speaking metaphorically).
I can't come up with value for a human adult, but unfortunately for attempts to prevent this, I can think of an explanation for children. Under stressful conditions, such as war, famine, and plague, it makes sense for a child to age faster -- to race to maturity and get out of harm's way. The adaptation may have developed very early in animal (or pre-animal?) evolution, so it may be deeply embedded in our genes.
BTW, about ten years ago I was quite interested in punctuated aging -- the idea that we age in "bursts". I based this on the note that few biological processes in the developing organism are continuous; we develop and adapt in episodic bursts. It helped that there's been a longstanding cultural belief that stress and disease aged us, and it helped that I noted my dog (Molly) seemed to age in bursts.
I wonder if stress-induced accelerated childhood aging would explain why children of the 19th century seemed to have the behavior and capability of adults today. Or why today's 25 yo male seems the biological age of yesterday's 21 yo.
The stress of caring for a sick child can add 10 or more years to the biological age of a woman's cells, researchers have found.
I've been puzzling about this for a while. What adaptive advantage is there for stress to accelerate aging? It seems like evolution went to some trouble to make this happen (note to creationists -- I'm speaking metaphorically).
I can't come up with value for a human adult, but unfortunately for attempts to prevent this, I can think of an explanation for children. Under stressful conditions, such as war, famine, and plague, it makes sense for a child to age faster -- to race to maturity and get out of harm's way. The adaptation may have developed very early in animal (or pre-animal?) evolution, so it may be deeply embedded in our genes.
BTW, about ten years ago I was quite interested in punctuated aging -- the idea that we age in "bursts". I based this on the note that few biological processes in the developing organism are continuous; we develop and adapt in episodic bursts. It helped that there's been a longstanding cultural belief that stress and disease aged us, and it helped that I noted my dog (Molly) seemed to age in bursts.
I wonder if stress-induced accelerated childhood aging would explain why children of the 19th century seemed to have the behavior and capability of adults today. Or why today's 25 yo male seems the biological age of yesterday's 21 yo.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
GWB's kinda guy
Economist.com | Official vetting
Yeah, a nanny. Suure. Enough evidence leaked out, from the press or FBI, that Kerik was probably told to shop for an illegal nanny -- or take a swim with cement fins. Bush has just the best judgment.
EVEN loyal members of the Bush administration might concede that, in retrospect, Bernard Kerik didn't have the best résumé to become secretary for homeland security. New York's former police commissioner, it turns out, abandoned a Korean daughter for most of her life, accepted unreported gifts from firms doing business with New York City, was expelled from Saudi Arabia after a physical confrontation with a local police official, was fined $2,500 for assigning detectives to help research his book and, inevitably, employed a possibly illegal nanny...
Yeah, a nanny. Suure. Enough evidence leaked out, from the press or FBI, that Kerik was probably told to shop for an illegal nanny -- or take a swim with cement fins. Bush has just the best judgment.
Laptops become a commodity
InfoWorld: Wal-Mart breaks price barrier with Linspire Linux laptop
No-one makes money on desktop machines. I recall reading that if one excluded the kickbacks Microsoft provided Dell, that they lost money on their best selling desktop machines. Laptops were different -- they still had a solid margin.
Not any more. Only Apple will be able to demand a premium for their top selling entry-level laptops, and the iBook may drop to $900 or so. Updrade this thing to 512MB and hook it up to a monitor/mouse/kb and there's a very compact and virus-free machine for my mother to use -- with gmail for her email.
Wal-Mart is offering a laptop that dives below the $500 pricepoint, and it's no accident the machine, from Linspire, runs a Linux-based operating system.
The Balance laptop, at $498, enters a mass market at a price that will undoubtedly accelerate Linux adoption.
The laptop comes with the OS, Internet suite, and Microsoft-file compatible office suite and can be used with both dial-up modems and broadband connections. The machine comes with a VIA C3, 1.0 GHz processor, 128 MB of RAM, which is expandable up to 512 MB with SODIMM (Small Outline Dual In-line Memory Modules). It includes a CD-ROM drive and a 14.1-inch LCD screen...
... The laptop's included Mozilla Internet suite comes with a fast-functioning browser and email program that can display Web-based forms, PDF documents, images, and multimedia files. The suite's included instant messenger program works with AOL, MSN and Yahoo logins.
No-one makes money on desktop machines. I recall reading that if one excluded the kickbacks Microsoft provided Dell, that they lost money on their best selling desktop machines. Laptops were different -- they still had a solid margin.
Not any more. Only Apple will be able to demand a premium for their top selling entry-level laptops, and the iBook may drop to $900 or so. Updrade this thing to 512MB and hook it up to a monitor/mouse/kb and there's a very compact and virus-free machine for my mother to use -- with gmail for her email.
Boing Boing: Engineered spider web
Creepiest science news of the day. I think they mean Hadassah University:
Boing Boing: Engineered spider web: "Scientists at Jerusalem's Hebrew University used synthetic biology to crank out spider web fibers in the lab. They introduced certain genes from garden spiders into a virus that was used to infect caterpillar cells. Spider fibers then formed in the cultured cells."
Note: Spider fibers formed in the cultured cells.
Boing Boing: Engineered spider web: "Scientists at Jerusalem's Hebrew University used synthetic biology to crank out spider web fibers in the lab. They introduced certain genes from garden spiders into a virus that was used to infect caterpillar cells. Spider fibers then formed in the cultured cells."
Note: Spider fibers formed in the cultured cells.
Coin toss bias
Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails: Science News Online, Feb. 28, 2004
This was the most viewed article in Science News in 2004. I can see why. One of the best examples of why one should never have complete confidence in conventional wisdom.
Bias arises because of the mechanics of how people (can) toss coins.
Their preliminary data suggest that a coin will land the same way it started about 51 percent of the time.
This was the most viewed article in Science News in 2004. I can see why. One of the best examples of why one should never have complete confidence in conventional wisdom.
Bias arises because of the mechanics of how people (can) toss coins.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Brave new minds
Sharper minds
The LA Times has a review of the wetware enhancers -- cog drugs for the able minded. I didn't realize Provigil had gained a reputation for enhancing cognition; caffeine, of course, has been known to do that for some time.
The review omits nicotine, a curious drug which is both calming and alerting (and hence beloved in wartime).
I suspect some of these will have quite hideous side-effects. I'm sure I'll end up on one or more though -- especially if the alternative is bagging groceries.
The LA Times has a review of the wetware enhancers -- cog drugs for the able minded. I didn't realize Provigil had gained a reputation for enhancing cognition; caffeine, of course, has been known to do that for some time.
The review omits nicotine, a curious drug which is both calming and alerting (and hence beloved in wartime).
I suspect some of these will have quite hideous side-effects. I'm sure I'll end up on one or more though -- especially if the alternative is bagging groceries.
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