Why I'm beginning to root for the video pirates

Boing Boing: Apple restricting DVD region-changes -- voluntarily! -- UPDATED

I don't have pirated music or video. I'm one of the 4 people in America who pays for their shareware software. Nonetheless, this entertainment industry behavior is causing me to root for the pirates.

[DVD] Discs have region-codes and players have region-codes. If you have a Region 1 disc (US and Canada) and a Region 2 player (Europe), and you put the disc in the player, the player will reject it.

But what happens when you take your laptop from New York to London? You're in Region 2, but you bought your device in Region 1. Can you buy a disc in London and play it on your computer?

Yes and no. When a computer manufacturer gets a DVD-decoding license from Hollywood's licensing cartel (the DVD Copy Control Association or CCA), it is allowed to make players that can change regions up to five times.

What's more, once the region-switches have run out, computer companies can reset your counter at a service depot a further five times. That means that you get 25 region-switches. This sucks pretty bad: I moved from San Francisco to London with hundreds of Region 1 DVDs and now when I buy a movie in the shop, it's Region 2. That means that if I watch a movie from my US collection once a week, and once from my UK connection the next week, I'll run out of region switches in three months. Three months after moving to the UK, I'll have to throw out half my DVDs.

It turns out Apple doesn't do the reset service on their embedded DVDs. So what's the workaround? Pirated video.

This nonsense is self-defeating.

Ghosts of the Golden Age: the computer as an aid to thinking

The New York Times Sunday Book Review - Essay: Tool for Thought

One upon a time geeks dreamed that computers could help us think. They are good at what we are bad at, we are good at what they cannot do at all. Vannevar Bush wrote about that dream in the 1940s, though he described it in terms of microfiche. (He actually knew about computers, but that knowledge was classified. I don't know for sure, but on reading his article I was left with the impression that he used "microfiche" as a code for what he could not say aloud.)

During the minicomputer era of 1970s very innovative software was developed to aid collaboration and education. Most of it is long forgotten -- even I cannot recall the names (Plato?). In the 1980s the dream again arose, I have a classic Whole Earth Catalog book on personal computing full of fascinating green screen DOS applications that tried to help people think. Lotus had Agenda and then Magellan.

Then came the Dark Ages. Microsoft swept all creativity aside in its race to power, and then the wonders of the Internet led creative minds in another directions. There were applications in finance, health care and other domains that solved particular problems -- but many of the ones I know of have more or less vanished (Iliad, QMR). (Ok, so many went underground, into devices like EKG machines.)

Steven Johnson claims the dream has life left in it yet. He describes the experience of using a full text document management tool to manage his large information repository - DEVONThink (an OS/X app). Over time his large knowledge collection is beginning to have "emergent properties", to turn into something that's not quite his biological memory but is far more than a filing cabinet. Something akin to Vannevar Bush's Memex, or Dickson's "Encyclopedia" or Ted Nelson's "Project Xanadu".

I've had a similar experience with using Lookout for Outlook, and, to a lesser extent, using Yahoo Desktop Search (X1). A lifelong knowledge repository seems to compensate, in some ways, for the memory loss of an aging and overflowing brain. Tools like DevonThink, YDS and Lookout are helping make this repository real.

Inline skates for a 2 yo -- not so easy to find!

Google Groups : rec.sport.skating.inline

It took some work to find a place in the US that sold the Roces Orlando skates discussed here. Very nice skates, although my wife was more fond of the $15 toy skates from Walmart (fortunately they were broken out of the box -- leaving an open door for Dad to order the hard-to-find real thing). Our daughter is zooming around the house on these, her primary focus is now on skating backwards.

Points to usenet for solving a problem the search engines didn't help with.

Good news from an unusual source and a soldier's noteworthy comments

Salon.com News | The Shiite earthquake

Juan Cole is a fairly severe critic of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. In Slate he wrote: "The Sunni Arab populace continues largely to support the guerrillas. Over half in a recent poll said that attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq are legitimate."

Wow. Only "over half"? That suggests it's not even 60% among the most resentful of the Iraqi population. That's much better than I'd have guessed.

Like most of the world, I am very much hoping Sistani was right about this election. I am a strong critic of Bush/Rumsfeld, but I thought they were right to stick with the deal they made with Sistani (not, of course, that they had a choice!). We'll see how it goes.

On more of the good news front, a BBC quote from Lt Bryan Suits:

It was slow to start, but it finished like a carnival everywhere I looked. I was proud to stand between Iraqis and the men who would deny them freedom. It was an exhausting four-day event for me and my men, but they slowly understood how monumental these days would be in the future.

Two brothers, both in their late 70s, drove to the polls to cast the first vote in their lives. Civilian vehicles weren't allowed on the road for 24 hours, but the polls were six kilometres away. If they couldn't drive they couldn't vote. As an American, it was an easy choice for me to make. They voted.

An hour later they stopped us as we patrolled, and they thanked us profusely. Their sons and grandsons also joined in with an impromptu circle dance called a "dabka". One of the men said: "God sent you to give us freedom." My Iraqi translator, who's a practised cynic, became silent and looked away. The man put his hand on my American flag patch and then kissed his hand. I pulled the flag from its Velcro and handed it to him. My translator took a picture as I started to choke up. My translator pulled his hat down to his eyes and turned around. He wanted to appear unmoved, but was failing badly.

The Iraqi police and army seemed to grow more confident as the day went on. This was definitely their show and they received the thanks and congratulations from their people. That was great to see. The collection of the ballot boxes was a celebration and the atmosphere continued on Monday morning. The police and Iraqi Army have won their first battle and they have new credibility.

I'm leaving Iraq in three weeks and I'll start the rest of my life as a newly married man. My wife is a police officer and an unapologetic American idealist as well. Luckily, I never have to worry whether this year was worth it. My men and I are grateful to the Iraqi people for their bravery. It's our ticket home.

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

Phil Agre has an extended discussion which has had further play and commentary on Body and Soul. I agree with quite a bit of it, though I think he mixes conservatism, fascism, and a fundamental opposition to reason and rationalism that is common to many mass movements.

He doesn't seem to get to what I consider one of the core issues: "the problem of the weak". This is the great moral challenge for human societies.

Yeah, it's a politically incorrect term. Someone might be cognitively weak and pull down a $50 million/year sports contract. Another person might be brilliant but almost completely paralyzed (but make bundles from his popular physics books). I use the term to mean those for whom there isn't a path to independent unassisted living in modern society; that includes a lot of people with cognitive and behavioral disabilities, including addiction, dementia (really a complex of behavioral and cognitive impairments), low IQ, memory disorders, schizophrenia, etc. This is not a small number of people. This is perhaps 5-10% of America. Some are young, some are old, some are middle-aged. In the modern world they are disabled.

There's a smaller group of people who are blind, deaf, missing limbs, have debilitating diseases etc. They all have significant challenges -- depending on their personal and family resources they may join the the "world of the weak" -- despite the good work the ADA brought us.

Most of us, at some point in our lives, will join the "world of the weak". If we were deer, the wolves would take us. Too many Republican policies translate to "let the wolves take the weak".

Weakness happens. Have enough children, one of them will be weak -- your genes aren't that good. Live long enough, you will be weak.

The battle my side is losing is the battle for the weak. Make strong those who can be healed, care for those who cannot.

Search: MSN vs. Yahoo vs. Google

MSN Search: faughnan lexia

MSN Search is supposedly out of beta today, but the url is still beta.search ... No matter. I did a quick test.

I searched on my name and word I know is only in a reasonably recent posting to my special needs/special education blog.

This is how MSN, Yahoo and Google did:

1. MSN: Pointers to Bloglines (but only to the view of recent postings) and Meblogs (aggregator). Better than nothing, but transient.
2. Yahoo: Pointer to Medlogs (aggregator) and a generic pointing to main page of my blog.
3. Google: zip, nada, nothing. Note Google owns blogspot/blogger where the blog I'm testing resides.

My overall estimation:

1. Google: complete failure
2. Yahoo and MSN: roughly comparable but different

So for this particular use case, Google isn't even in the running.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are different enough in an interesting way that I'm going to be looking for aggregators that combine and integrate the results. Google has been very disappointing over the last 6 months for many of my searches. I can only hope they have a major upgrade in the works. Of course there's another explanation as to why Google searches of Blogger may be less complete than the competition's (beyond a feature/bug of their algorithms).

America - Darwin's nemesis

The New York Times > Science > Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes

... in a 2001 survey, the National Science Foundation found that only 53 percent of Americans agreed with the statement "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."

And this was good news to the foundation. It was the first time one of its regular surveys showed a majority of Americans had accepted the idea. According to the foundation report, polls consistently show that a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds believe that this belief should be taught along with evolution in public schools.

These findings set the United States apart from all other industrialized nations, said Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University, who has studied public attitudes toward science. Americans, he said, have been evenly divided for years on the question of evolution, with about 45 percent accepting it, 45 percent rejecting it and the rest undecided.

In other industrialized countries, Dr. Miller said, 80 percent or more typically accept evolution, most of the others say they are not sure and very few people reject the idea outright.

"In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolution," he said. Even in socially conservative, predominantly Catholic countries like Poland, perhaps 75 percent of people surveyed accept evolution, he said. "It has not been a Catholic issue or an Asian issue," he said.

I wonder what the numbers are like in Iran? America must be the most anti-intellectual, and anti-science, of the wealthy nations. The Dark Ages are closer than you might think ...

Boycott CRC Information Holdings

Eric's Commentary on the Shutdown of MathWorld

Once upon a time CRC, the Chemical Rubber Company, published books of tables and reference material for chemists and scientists. Alas, that company is gone. It's name has been taken by a foul and parasitic entity; a form of demonic possession that attacks publicly traded companies. This web page explains why we need to stop buying anything from CRC's ownership:

I have had to conclude, to my sorrow, that CRC--perhaps like many other publishers in our era of wild corporate acquisitions and conglomerations--is no longer managed by people who understand and love books, authors, and readers.

The parent company of CRC, Information Holdings Inc., appears unashamed to treat information as a commodity to be exploited for short-term, bottom-line cash with no concern for long-term, strategic planning. The goal of the CRC representatives seemed to be monomaniacal: to squeeze from Wolfram Research and from me as much instant and short-term cash as possible, using the lawsuit as a lever.

How self-defeating in an era of rapid technological change! Apparently uninterested in looking forward and building good future business strategies, here are publishers focusing instead on how to squeeze greater quantities of immediate cash from old 'properties.'

I have come to realize how unusual it is to be working for a company that is run by people who still enjoy the core activities for which the company was founded. Very early in the lawsuit, a Wolfram Research response to the lawsuit mentioned that Wolfram Research has chosen to remain privately held in order to be free from the obligation to outside stockholders, who appear so often to focus corporations inordinately on short-term financial results. Wolfram Research's principals believe that they can take the long and broad view of the corporation's mission, as they could not if they had to satisfy stock analysts and uninvolved stockholders.

The behavior of CRC's representatives this last year has been, for me, convincing evidence of the wisdom of Wolfram Research's strategy. The people at my company believe in what they do, make money doing it, and have fun along the way. I didn't see much fun among the CRC people we dealt with.

Update: This affair first gained attention five years ago. But that was before blogs became popular ...

Adopted doesn't count?

Passports, but no pass

A couple traveling with their daughter is denied admission to their airplane by an agent working for a Northwest Airlines affiliate. The agent's manager also denies admission

Their crime? Their adopted daughter does not resemble them. Her passport, which proves both identity and nationality, is not considered sufficient proof of family affiliation.

The family misses their flight. Later the airline is apparently rather contrite. My suspicion is that the agent didn't much like the idea of adoption, much less inter-ethnic adoption. The rules are sufficiently ambiguous that the agent was able to exercise his/her prejudices. Astoundingly, however, the manager didn't catch the problem.

Northwest needs an aggressive re-education program, preferably administered by a senior executive and his adopted children.

If this were to happen to my family, they'd need a heck of a lot more than an apology to avoid litigation.

Glacier Good-bye

SF Gate: Multimedia (image)

When I was young, foolish and fortunate, in 1977, I hitchiked to Banff. I visited again in 1994. Even over those 17 years the picturesque glaciers had receded from the tourist spots built nearby them. Soon they will be gone.

Update: The original title for this post had "Glacier" spelled "Galcier". I fixed the typo, but since Blogger chose to implement persistent URLs based on the article title, this will break any links from RSS feeds to the article. Sigh. Semantic identifiers are rarely a good idea.

Problem of the weak: faces of meth

OregonLive.com: Photo Galleries

When I see these images I imagine what my children will face between 2011 and 2023. What hellish product of evil minds will make methamphetamine seem one day as "benign" as mere Heroin?

To save them from that future I would of course give my life, but I'd also give up some of my and your freedom. That is why I am a liberal, but not a libertarian.

The problem of the weak. Again.

Markets as moral entitites?

Crooked Timber: Just deserts and the market

Crooked Timber notes a persistent theme among their commentators: "...if markets are working correctly, people end up more or less where they deserve to be...". The author digresses into an academic refutation that apparently involves Hayek (generally a sign that it is to heavy a discussion for my aged brain).

Analysis aside, this is a persistent theme in right wing discourse. It seems to have two separate roots that converge on a single conclusion.

Root One: The Deists

• God rewards the good and punishes the bad.
• Poverty is a sign of God's punishment, hence of badness.
• Wealth is a sign of God's reward, hence goodness.

As Mike P. reminded me, this is the thesis of the pre-Job Bible. It's characteristic of many religions and it's the natural regression point for many fundamentalists.

Root Two: The Libertarians

• Markets are God-like.
• Markets are Good.
• Poverty is a sign of Market punishment, hence of badness.
• Wealth is a sign of Market reward, hence goodness.
  

We need to expose the roots of this reasoning wherever it manifests itself.

Dying, not defeated

BBC NEWS | Health | Tumour diary: The time has come

I've read occasional instances of Ivan Noble's diaries over the years. I think the last time I caught site of one he was doing well in remission. This is his last diary. He wrote when he was diagnosed in September of 2002 at age 35:

I am determined to beat the tumour and to see my little girl grow up.

In this, his last column, he writes

What I wanted to do with this column was try to prove that it was possible to survive and beat cancer and not to be crushed by it.

Even though I have to take my leave now, I feel like I managed it.

I have not been defeated.

Ivan lived with his cancer for almost 3 and a half years -- a long time for a high grade glioma. During that time he married his girlfriend and they had a son.

Our friend Tom Antonetti died years ago of the same cancer. I had the fortune to see Tom when he was in remission, he died less than a year later. He was about 40 then.

Time for the US to pass the baton ...

2020 Vision - A CIA report predicts that American global dominance could end in 15 years. By Fred Kaplan

Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it?

This isn't really news. There's nothing except supernatural intervention that would make the US the dominant world power forever. Bush hasn't caused the relative decline of the US, he's only accelerated it by 20 or 40 years or so (twice the rate of decline). Since Bush was elected by a majority of US voters with a well established track record, it's really the Bush voter that should take historical responsibility.

Stories of my father: umbrella combat

Boing Boing: HOWTO kick someone's ass with an umbrella

As a child in the 1930s my father was a fan of "howto" pamphlets on the use of a concealed walking stick dagger in combat. He probably came across some version of this 1901 article. I'll have to ask him if it looks familiar.