Living in a mediocre world

I think I was damaged by working at a tiny little software company (less than ten people) for the first decade of my career.  It had its good points and bad points, and one of the bad ones was that everyone was competent and meant well.

You would think that would be a good thing, and certainly we made a decent living for a lot of years (and they still do today).  The problem was I got used to that.  I thought that was normal.

Fast forward several years and I quit that job to make my game, and then when I ran out of money I have worked in other jobs, where things do not work like that.  It was a culture shock, to say the least.

So now I'm trying to get used to the idea of working and somehow thriving in an environment where everyone is not competent, and many do not even mean well.

But that's reality.

The Impulse to Control

An Iranian blogger died "of shock" while being held in an infamous torture prison.  Meanwhile, a school in Texas wants to force all students to wear RFID tags while they're on campus.  Both of these have the identical motivation that the record and movie companies have when they sue and sue and sue the bejessus out of all and sundry--the impulse to control.

It's an ancient impulse, and it has good as well as bad uses.  Always, however, we have to be extremely wary of it.

The impulse to "keep students safe" while on campus is a good one.  And if it were to stop there, the RFID tag idea would probably be a good one.  However, you and I know perfectly well it will not stop there, as schools have been reaching more and more into students' personal lives in recent years.  The problem is that it is the same path that leads to bloggers mysteriously dying while being held by police.

Obviously, the recording industry doesn't even have a worthwhile fig leaf to hide behind like student protection--it's just greed, which is the most common and least worthwhile of all the sources of the impulse to control.

I want to strangle Sony Music Entertainment

So here we are again:

You may recall I got my first phoney DMCA request from these same assholes and they backed off of it just a few short weeks ago.  I even published the license I had for the music here.  But apparently they do not have the capacity to white list something for their fucking bot and they've succeeded in getting my video muted again.

Short version of the story--I licensed some music to use in the video game I've been working on for the last several years.  Sony apparently did so as well, and have decided that they own the copyright for it.

You can imagine my agony of rage and hate, considering the real effort I put in to keep all the licensed content in my game legit, and also considering my mild interest in the subject of copyright and fair use, as well.

But how can I even call up and meaningfully harass Sony Music Entertainment (Japan)?  This conflict is slightly assymetric.

It didn't help that the Google form for disputing it is highly legalistic and scary, and even asks with a popup "are you sure you want to dispute this claim?" before you submit it.

Fuck Google. Fuck Sony.

Happy Black Friday

I was driving back from Austin today when I saw an outlet mall on the side of the road.  I thought to myself, "say, I do need some shoes, maybe I'll stop and get some."

And then I saw the parking lot.  Oh yeah.  Black Friday.  And the fields next to the parking lot, also covered with cars.  Yeah, new shoes can wait.

I can't really understand why people go to such lengths on Black Friday.  Do you really think the deals are that much better?   Have you lived in America before?  Half the time, "sale" is equivalent to "we raised the price and then lowered it, check out this deal!".

I suppose it's cultural, and I suppose some people just enjoy the excitement of it.
Bah, humbug.

Cox likes their customers

Just a quick post today.   Apparently Cox actually likes having their customers, and will not be participating in the six strikes program--"for internal reasons".

lol

Watched over by machines of loving grace

A friend asked me to check out this (hour long) video about Ayn Rand, computers, and the financial system:

http://vimeo.com/27393748

(sorry for the lack of embed, but gay ass Blogger only supports Youtube videos that way)

It just so happened that I was in the mood for something to sink my teeth into over dinner, so I checked it out.  It was entertaining and interesting, and definitely not something that could be responded to on a Facebook wall--and indeed the subject matter fits into the recently expanded format of this blog.

It's a little bit unclear, in the end, exactly what they are trying to say.  The video ends with a dark implication that the finance industry, having taken over the government in the nineties (a claim made earlier in the film), is still running the show even after the 2008 financial crisis.  To which my response is:

Oh.  My.  God.  You.  Must.  Be.  Shitting.  Me. :-)

I mean, the finance industry has been running Washington way longer than that!

I went and did a little research on Wikipedia and found several Treasury secretaries who had a background in finance, especially starting in the 20th century.  For example, Andrew Mellon (namesake of Carnegie-Mellon university) back in 1921.  Or this fellow Franklin MacVeagh (1909) whom I had never heard of before today.   Or if not finance directly you have many businessmen like Joseph Barr.

In other words, those of us doing software QA for a living don't normally get picked to be Treasury secretary.  And indeed, shouldn't the Treasury Secretary like, really understand all that stuff?

It's really just a part of the bigger pattern of life in that rich folks can easily accumulate power and have influence over the affairs of a country.  It's perfectly natural.  After all, put yourself in their position.  You have several billion dollars in the bank.  You don't like something that is going on politically in your country.  Or you feel like the government is costing you (or about to cost you) a bunch of money.  What do you do?  Do you sit at home, mourning your powerlessness?  Hell fuckin no, you put your money to work and obtain influence to try and effect change that you want to see.

Hell, in ancient Rome, rich folks actually paid for public works like aqueducts and stadiums themselves--in fact few public works were paid for by the government.  Providing a chunk of the city with clean drinking water is a great way to make yourself popular, for example, and enhance your prestige and power in the halls of power.

Of course, we don't see Bill Gates offering to re-pave highway 59--but then again he is trying to cure Malaria in Africa.

Nothing ever changes.

So, you know.  No news there.  I do think it's obvious that the finance industry has got a little too much clout at the moment, but the forces of light are pushing back with Dodd-Frank, for example, which I can assure you is greatly irritating them.  I personally do feel that those of us without power need to have credible advocates in Congress, which is why I voted both Green and Libertarian in the last election, and frankly I lean Democrat when there is no other choice.  But I don't have a problem with business having a seat at the table either, as they are the engine of our society.  I just don't think they need any help from me!

So, in the video they make a big deal that Joseph Stiglitz didn't have access to President Clinton.  I see a common fallacy here that if the President had only known, he could have waved a magic wand and changed things.  Speaking of Clinton, this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by him, paraphrased, which was that when he came into office the one thing that surprised him most was that no one did what he told them to.  It seems that a President has actually surprisingly little power to change the inertia of government bureaucrats protected by civil service laws, hundreds of thousands of people in large organizations used to doing things a certain way, and of course that pesky Congress.

Moving on.  The video also talks about Ayn Rand, her followers, and their effect on the current situation.  This is obviously important, as many people in power these days do claim Rand as their inspiration.  If you are masochistic enough to read this blog on a regular basis, you know that I have talked about her more than once.  In short, I have read and liked Ayn Rand--I even think she has some extremely worthwhile things to say.

For example, one thing you never hear in the media--because it's way too abstract--is Rand's emphasis on philosophy.  Not her philosophy, but philosophy itself.  She says that if you don't have a philosophy, from what do you derive your value system?  And if you don't have values, how do you make any decision whatsoever?  To my mind, that is the most essential point of her philosophy--have a fucking philosophy.  Think about what you do.  Have reasons for the things you do, and for the things you think.  I think this is an excellent point.

She is also very much anti-Christian, or at least anti-Christian values.  In Atlas Shrugged in particular, she demonstrates how some people use other people to get things from them, using emotion, altruistic philosophy, and even family ties as blackmail.  I agree with her about this, too.

But she's most famous, of course, for exalting people of ability.  And I think this is great, too.  But it is also, in my opinion, where she stumbles.

Look, there's one thing you need to understand about Ayn Rand.  It's very simple.

Bitch was crazy.

Craaaazy.

I mean, you only have to watch an interview of her to feel it coming off the tv screen.  The crazy.  This woman was a miserable person.

In the video they talk about how she "rationally" convinced a married friend of hers, while she was married, that the "rational" thing for them to do was to have an affair.  Her former lover testified that she seriously believed that everything she did was rational.

What you need to understand, in my opinion, is that there is rather a lot of psychological science proving, quite clearly, that humans are not rational most of the time.  I could come up with literally hundreds of psychology experiments that I studied in school if I had time, but Google will not let you down.  Humans are animals, they have animal instincts that work extremely well at keeping us alive in the jungle.  What they don't do so well is guide us through the modern world.  I personally believe this is the root cause of most of the human-caused evil in the world--lack of rationality.  (I believe this can be improved dramatically with good education, but probably not completely).

Look, life is complicated.  There is a lot of shit to know and think about.  Anyone who thinks he is the master of it is self deluded.

At the beginning of the video you are shown a number of silicon valley entrepreneurs announcing that they are Randian heroes.  Listening to them and watching them, don't you kind of feel like they can't be?

As Obama was misquoted during the campaign--you didn't do that.  You did not auto-create yourself, and auto-educate yourself all on your own with no help from anyone.  You needed the society around you to buy your fucking products, after all.  Not to mention the roads, police and court system protection, and other educated people to work for you, since you literally cannot do it all by yourself.

I'm not even saying these guys aren't brilliant entrepreneurs, and possibly even great credits to themselves, their families, and society.  And I even agree with Rand that, generally speaking, we need to stay out of productive people's way and let them do their thing.  I'm just saying that expecting them to produce everything that humans need is madness.  Have you ever met one of these guys?  "Englightened" is not a word I would use to describe them.  "Acquisitive" is.

For example, many "self-made" men also have a way of treating their employees like crap.

In Atlas Shrugged, the hero guys treat certain employees with a lot of respect, because they have that mutual respect thing going on.  But if you look at an example like Papa John's pizza, it is obvious that there any respect has to be a one way upstream sort of deal.

All I'm claiming is that many people who are very very good at making money are not actually good and doing and making stuff.  They are generally just kickass salesmen--see Ellison, Larry.

In short, Rand was an idealist, and like all idealists who have ever tried to perpetrate their ideal onto reality, it backfires in unexpected ways because they don't understand their own idea's limitations and flaws.

So in the real world you have the case of the Randian financiers in Washington using the government to bail out Thailand and Korea, supposedly, just so they could get their own money out of those countries.

Ayn Rand would have those people executed.  You may recall that Dagny Taggart's dad once almost killed a government man who offered him government money.  No.  She wouldn't like that.

Hypocrisy is certainly the name of the game, here.  These guys claim Rand as their inspiration, but they use her to justify their government looting behavior.

Oh my, they've certainly gotten their information about her from YouTube, and not actually read her work.

So yeah, that's bad.   But personally, I don't care what kind of philosophy is spewed by someone who is looting, and whether they are being hypocritical or not--they're just criminals, even if they're likely to get away with it.

But you know, in the end, I think my point is that it is just not worth getting your panties in a wad about stuff like this.

Today I took the day off, and it was a beautiful day outside.  I got up and "worked out" (a two mile walk around my neighborhood), cleaned up and had lunch with a friend.  I came home and walked up to Starbucks and got a coffee and a cookie and enjoyed the nice weather, watching the people going about their business out there in the world.  It was very pleasant.

Ultimately,that is that kind of thing that life is all about.  One person can only do so much.  You can write a blog and try to influence people to support the expansion of fair use in copyright to include all non-commercial use, for example.  I certainly encourage that.  You can sit around with your friends and bitch about politics and stuff, as long as it's fun.  But one person's power is very limited--even if he or she is wealthy.

Look at the last election--billions were spent by billionaires, and half of them still lost.

So you do what you can. But I think it's far easier--and more interesting--to simply accept that there's going to be a certain amount of bullshit in human affairs.  People are going to lie, cheat, and steal, bribe and corrupt.  They are also going to be virtuous, honest, and value integrity.  More often than either they are just confused and kinda stupid. It's this mix of reactions that I think makes society interesting and entertaining.

Sure, it's possible the Earth will be swallowed by a black hole because Obama got re-elected and computers aren't as smart as some think they are and Wall Street is running wild and the Chinese are experimenting with antiprotons.  And if so, well, we'll all go down together.

But I doubt it.  Probably the future will lie somewhere in between "global holocaust" and "nirvana".   I'm just going to do my small part where I see the opportunity, and try to enjoy myself the rest of the time.

Anybody got any weed?

Why electricity deregulation sucks

So maybe you're living somewhere where they are considering deregulating electricity.  If so, STOP THEM.

I live in Texas, where they perpetrated this scam on us over a decade ago.  Every few months--varying based on term--I have to select a new electricity provider if I don't want to get gouged.

Sure, it looks great if you don't think about it at all.  You even have a nice looking website:

http://texaselectricchoice.com

And gee, if you go to "compare offers" (feel free to use my zip code 77057) you will see lots of different options--

and you better read the fine print on every single one of them.

So you know, all the electricity always comes from the same places.  You just pay different people.  And if you follow the links on the offers to any of the companies' websites, you'll see they all have a totally different scheme and way of doing things.

For example, Frontier Energy just tricked me into signing with them, only to get a phone call saying I have to sign up for automatic payments to get the rate they promised.  Again, in the fine print--and there is a lot of fine print.

Fine print is not justice.

Everyone should quit their jobs

One of my main meme's is douchebags.

Douchebags are responsible for all of mankinds man-made problems.  Every war, every financial disaster, every last bit of fine print on every contract, and probably a lot of suicides as well.

The workplace is one such venue for douchebags to show off their douche-cellence.  For example, call centers where people are forbidden to deviate from a script.  Let's run through how that happens.

Customers complain about the automated phone system.  So some douchebag genius decides that what he needs is a call center.  But of course, he wants to spend as little money as humanly possible, so they set the wages for the call center workers so low that he can only find, quite frankly, the dregs of the world to work there.  People who can barely read and write, and have managed not to acquire any important life skills.

So because they don't pay worth a damn, they get these people who can't be trusted for their judgment, so they give them a script and tell them they must not deviate from it.  You know--like an automated phone system, except with real people reading the words.

This does a lot of things.

First, I realize that not all of the people working there are incapable of doing more, so it humiliates the people who, forced by circumstance, find themselves doing a tenure of script reading.

Second, for those who are well suited to this kind of work, it traps them there.  They believe that this is a normal and sane state of affairs, and can't find a reason that it should be changed.  This just ensconces douchebaggery in our society even more.

Not only that, but at minimum wage, it is real hard to pull yourself up out of poverty.  Go and get some training or education.  Hard to do that when you can't even really make ends meet.

Third, it insults any of your customers with half a brain.  It thus alienates the very people you were trying to placate by having real live people answer the phone.

And so the whole world sucks a little more.  But it does create jobs, I suppose!

More than anything, whenever possible, people need to quit working for douchebags.  This really is possible--I've done it before, and I daresay I will need to again.  As long as people agree to go along with douchebaggery, you can be certain it will continue to happen at the alarming rate it is, now.

GO FIND ANOTHER JOB AND TELL THEM WHY YOU LEFT.  It's the only hope.

So I'm voting Republican, now?

I've been wondering for a while how long it might take the Republican party to potentially get on the right side of the copyright debate.  It appears there have been baby steps in that direction.

I say "baby steps" because it did not take long, as the article notes, for the issuer of the report to back down off it.  Strong copyright has strong representation in Washington.

They have great Washington skills.

Drug testing for unemployment and welfare benefits

Drug testing people in order to receive unemployment and welfare benefits is one of those many, many great ideas until you actually think about it for a minute.

Should we really invade the persons of every single person who gets laid off?  Think about that, please.

Also, I find it amusing that this idea comes from the Republican "individual rights" crowd.  Really?  You want the State actually taking piss tests on the citizenry?  This is the direction you want to go?  What's next, piss for a drivers license?

And I definitely agree with the crowd who can tolerate this, as long as all members of the legislature and governor are also subjected to random screenings.

Another expensive, stupid idea in order to solve a problem that has not been shown to exist.

So after a decade of p2p lawsuits...

It seems we learn nothing.  After a decade of massive p2p lawsuits, the answer to the problem seems to be more lawsuits.

It's hard for someone like me to understand.  I tend to see the world in terms of what is real, to the best of my ability.  What people think is less important to me when I'm trying to understand a thing.  But I see every day that cronyism and conformity to the current management fad is a more effective method of self promotion than actually doing good, effective work.

So these people who keep wanting to sue people on the internet for distributing their precious bits confound me.  You had might as well sue the farmer who collects the water that flows downhill to his farm or the baloonist who rides the hot air over a factory higher into the sky.  Surely they don't really think they can stop this thing?  It's just greed, I say.

It doesn't help that the legal profession in America appears completely devoid of any spine, commitment to principles, or vision.  The Federal government has been trampling on civil rights in a serious way for over a decade now with no repercussion--indeed it is lawyers leading the trampling.  Same thing with file sharing lawsuits--despite ample evidence that man of these suits are of dubious quality and intended mostly to intimidate, they do nothing.

What can we do about it?

Some people should secede from the internet

I'm actually seriously annoyed that Fox is making a big deal out of the piddling number of people circulating a petition for their state to secede from the U.S.  Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia, and now he wants to encourage our country to break up?

Don't like it, not one bit.

Americans will abuse a censorship system, too.

Google has released a new transparency report, which is good.  I would rather they put up more of a fight, but there are cases such as court orders which make that problematic.

One interesting part today is the government requests section.  You'll see there that the most common type of government request to remove content, by far, is "defamation", which is what despots always say when they censor stuff.  What is interesting is if you go down to the United States section, down at the bottom, that Google did, indeed, receive several requests from the U.S. to do this for the same reason, and happily they rejected the requests.  But it just goes to show that Americans are not immune to abusing any censorship system that exists.

Marijuana is like piracy

I'm very concerned that the War over Copyright is going to turn into another War on Drugs.  Or rather, that it already has.  Meaning, a decades long struggle to prohibit something that people are definitely going to do, anyway, and infringing on the freedoms of every American in the process.

Maybe we should encourage for-profit piracy?

My whole thesis is that it is legitimate to go after counterfeiters--people who make and sell counterfeit cd's and movies and such for profit--or for that matter, people who sell mp3's for profit or otherwise profit from piracy.  But that may change if 15 year jail terms become the norm.

I'm all for suing those guys for every dime they made, but jail--especially a lengthy term--is stunningly wrong.

How does it feel to be a human resource?

I've talked before about "human resources", and how much I hate the term.

I'm not talking about things like a harassment free workplace, equal opportunity in hiring and promotion, and things like that.  I genuinely approve of those things.  I'm just talking about the entire concept of treating humans as resources.

Look, I'm a programmer--I understand the desire to quantify and systematize all things.  The problem is that we are not yet ready, as a society, to quantify and systematize humans.  That is, they are far, far too complex to do this successfully with, as of yet.  When it does happen, I'm pretty sure it won't look anything like it does now.

I will say that some people seem to do well when treated as a resource.  They seem to be happy working in very large organizations, pigeonholed into a strictly defined role where process is more important than product.  And I can even see how that sort of thing may be necessary, to an extent, in vary large organizations.  Unfortunately, it is this same thing that diffuses responsibility in those large organizations, to the point that the organization can do something terrible, but somehow no individual is responsible.  Which of course is highly immoral.

So I find it jarring to see that kind of thinking in a small organization.  What's more, we seem to be training an entire generation of people to be managers, as opposed to leaders.

This is a subject of great interest to me, that I've been discussing lately with a number of intelligent people.

To my mind, a leader is responsible.  A good leader is the sort of person where really you can sense their competence from a distance.  When they give an order, you want to obey it.  It's not just force of character per se, I think, but a sense also that their mind is clear, they know what they want to do, and they have reasons for engaging in things like discipline beyond the mere assertion of authority.

A manager, on the other hand, manages process.  Every interaction you have with a manager can be seen as an engagement with process, even within their own minds.  You can see it working on their faces.  Hiding with effort their true thoughts and feelings--not out of tact, but terror of making an error.  The last thing they want to do is engage with you as a person, because that breaks the process whereby you are transformed into a resource.

And these same folks wonder why their employees won't lay down their lives for the company.

Paranoid distractions

Everyone seems to have noticed the appalled reactions of Romney supporters on Facebook lately.  They are quite shocked, appalled, and many genuinely fear for the future of the country.

I expect that to be mitigated to some extent by what I expect will be a rapid and complete deal to avoid the Fiscal Cliff before the end of the year.  I wouldn't be surprised if it happened before Thanksgiving--but certainly well before Christmas.

It's certainly quite a remarkable political climate at the moment for anyone who seriously follows such things, as I do.  Note that "seriously following" does not mean getting all (or any frankly) of your information from Fox News or AM talk radio.  I'm talking about the millions of folks like myself who read the newspaper every day, and have done so for many years, and even occasionally watch PBS for serious analyses of things.

But with another four year mandate for the President, Congress understands that the best thing right now is to put on a show of bipartisanship in time for people to feel confident heading into the Christmas shopping season.  Seriously, there are fairly falling all over themselves to do so, with only the de rigeur level of partisan speak.

Why they couldn't do this before was largely, in my opinion, because of Fox News, primarily, stirring up massive discontent among uninformed people who are simply not educated enough to distinguish News from Opinion, or Opinion with Sensible Opinion or even Logical Internally Consistent Opinion.  I'm sorry, but it's true.  The truth has no bias.

I think the logical disconnect between a lot of those poor folks expectations for the election and the actual outcome may have for the first time penetrated that barrier to understanding which is characteristic of believing everything Fox News says.  There is a state of shock, and certainly fatigue.  The country wants very much to move on, and I'm hopeful that a lot of Fox News addicts may wake up and smell the roses.  Folks, it's not as bad as all that.  Or if it is, it's not in the way they're telling you!

You see, I find the whole political circus to be a distraction for the people as well.  This predates Fox News and exists independently of it as well.  For example, I consider global warming to be the single (of many) biggest threats to humanity, but how many times was it mentioned during the campaign?  Because it's not a part of the political parlance of the moment, it was ignored, and thus we continue blithely hurtling along the path to self destruction.

I'm hoping Obama and Congress can do more than avert the Fiscal Cliff of their own devising, and actually start trying to do some good for the people.

Copyright is not a winning political proposition

This article has some interesting polling data about piracy.  Most appalling was the about 25% across the board support for monitoring your internet usage to ensure you aren't pirating movies, tv shows, or video games.

Now, you can get 20% of people to believe just about anything.  But still that's pretty disturbing.

A cheerful thought

Bittorrent traffic increased by 40% last year.

Keep sharing with your friends.

Squaring the circl-y type thing

I had an epiphany last night.  I was not the first to have it.  Basically, we need to end Congressional districts looking like this:

The entire, 100% purpose of districts that look like that is to construct a "safe" seat for a particular political party.  You will find that this is one of the many things the Democrats and Republicans agree upon 100%.  It suits the both of them to secure safe seats for each other, and this perpetuates their duopoly in power.

But this isn't even my main issue.  My issue is that because the districts are homogeneous, the way to win them is to appeal to all of these people who have the same beliefs.  This may sound innocuous, even virtuous, until you think about it for a moment and observe the political reality of the United States today.

You see, I am not one of those people who believes we are really as polarized and divided as all that.  Sure, there are always whackos.  But most people are pretty darn moderate when it comes right down to it.

For example, I may have a fantasy about going into the office tomorrow and telling my boss what an incompetent dickhead he is.  But you know I won't do that.  Burning bridges is retarded, and also it doesn't look nice to other people.  Not to mention that hey, are you ever really 100% sure you are right about something like that?  So instead I'll go in and pretend to go along with the flow until I find a better job.

That's how people really are.

But I believe the core of the problem we have in this country now is that the two "sides" feel compelled to pander to their bases precisely because they have been so cut and dried into nice digestable chunks whenever redistricting takes place.

Imagine if every congressional district was square, or something close to that.  You would have a cross section of ALL people in there.  And what would you then have to do to win?

Why, you'd need to be an intelligent, sensible, reasonable person.  And can you imagine a Congress filled with those?  Not to mention the opportunities for alternate parties.

There is more than one solution to this problem, and I think they all need to be explored.  Then, we'll just have to convince every member of Congress to jeopardize their positions for the good of the country!

2004 all over again

It's eerie how like 2004 this election is.

You have a President who is profoundly unpopular among a large segment of the population--one for bankrupting the country with his war mongering, one for being black (not that I have an opinion!)

The economic and political climate is absolutely ideal for a change, but the opposition party only manages to nominate the least offensive, most "electable" candidate--John Kerry in 2004, Romney now.  In both cases, they are entirely absent of any appeal of their own, except that they aren't the other guy.

Both of them made the argument essentially that, "hey, I can do it better", without offering any specifics.

And they both will lose because they don't really have anything new or attractive offer.

It's a little inspiring to me that, ultimately, positivity generally prevails over negativity, if only just.

Let me explain Linux to you

Linux is the most widely used open source operating system out there.  I use it every day, on my compters at home and at work.  I like it a lot.

It has come to my attention that many people do not know what the fuck it is.  So let me explain.

A guy named Linus Torvalds was studying computer science in college and decided he wanted to make his own computer operating system.  So he did, and he called it (in modest fashion) "Linux".  It's kindof a play between "Linux" and "unix", which is the kind of operating system he copied as a model.

Unix was made originally by Bell Labs originally made in 19 freaking 69 for mainframe computers.  There were many "clones" made over the years, of which Linux was one.

Fast forward to 2012, and you have a much more mature operating system which includes nice, easy to use desktop tools familiar to anyone--which in fact I am using right now:

The thing about Linux which kindof confuses people is that there is more than one kind.  In the screenshot above I am using Ubuntu Linux, which I do recommend for beginners.  You can install Ubuntu for free on as many computers as you like--which is true for all decent versions of Linux.  There is no "license check" whatsoever.  Doesn't that freedom sound appealing?

It also comes with tons and tons and tons of free software (legally), which you can install with a click of a mouse.  And none of this stuff is going to spy on you or steal information from your machine.

There are many different versions, however, and some of them can look very different.  The guts of the system are all the same, but the interface--the part you look at--can be very different in both good and bad ways.  It just depends on what you like.  Different versions are called "distributions", which just means version.

Android, the mobile phone OS from Google, is a version of Linux for mobile phones.  Android is going to take over the world.

For many years, I've predicted that we would all be using Linux--somehow--by 2020.  I didn't know the form it would take, but it's starting to look like Android.

You will also find Linux in many standalone devices, such as the Boxee box, Roku media player, WDTV, etc.

So you might as well go ahead and try it on your desktop--the sooner the better for the coming Linux revolution.  I could go on for (literally) hours about the many ways it is superior to anything else out there, but it would bore you, and you probably aren't ready for it yet.  :-)

NB: There are versions that are specially made for older computers, such as Xubuntu, so you can extend the life of your crufty old PC.  Sure, you'll wipe out all your data, but that's okay--make backups first.   You'll be amazed at how fast your old machine is once you get that nasty Windows install off it!

Day laborers impress me

So when I was on the way back from the Comcast store the other day, I was stopped at a light at Chimney Rock under the Westpark tollway in Houston.

This is a well known place where day laborers gather to look for work.  Honestly, I hadn't put a whole lot of thought into it before.

But while I was sitting at the light, I was watching these guys just standing around, waiting.  I was thinking about how boring it looked.

And then, a U-Haul truck pulled up.

As soon as it came within sight, all of the Mexicans (and doubtless nationals of other Hispanic countries!) sprinted toward it.  They started pulling on the passenger door before it even came to a stop.

That's what the desire to work looks like.  That's probably also what hunger looks like.

So Comcast sucks.  But I realize this is a first world problem.  Indeed, the entire theme of expanding fair use in copyright to encompass all non-commercial use is very much a first world problem.

I do think it matters, as we will only have more scenes that like that that I witnessed if real freedom on the internet is not preserved.  But I understand it's not exactly salient to every day living to a lot, or rather most, people.

Does Comcast not understand why they suck so hard?

So I went down to the Comcast store today to return an unneeded Cablecard.  It's about the sixth time I've been down there over the past year, and it has never not looked like this:

The few workers there are not exactly hurrying--not exactly Post Office-like, but definitely not feeling too put out by the extremely long line.  Not that I blame them.  It's always like this.  If they tried to hurry it would suck for everyone.  And obviously, it's not in the least important to Comcast to serve their customers well.

Anyway, I did some metrics and calculated that I would be there at least two hours, so I left.  Wasted gas, time, but not my Saturday time.  Not any more.

But what else do you expect from a company that has agreed to rat out it's customers to Hollywood?  Plainly, they don't like us very much, and don't want our money.  Which is why I, and I urge everyone, to give them as little money as possible.

You don't really need that extra level of cable service.  Spend that money on clothes for your kids, or retirement, or something else trivial like that.

One thing is for sure--the moment they rat me out ONE TIME, my internet service is going with someone else.  I call it my "one strike plan", and I'm the customer--I can do that.

Which Presidential candidate is better for copyright?

I'm not going to lie to you.  I lean Democrat.  I don't like all Democrats, and I don't dislike all Republicans--although I do think the latter party is being literally driven insane by Fox News and AM talk radio the last twenty years or so.  It's not very productive.

But one major thing I'm not liking about Democrats these days is how they are completely in the pocket of Hollywood.  They get a lot of money from them.  Obama appointed a "copyright czar" who worked for the MPAA.  Not good for our future.

That being said, the previous regime wasn't much better--the Republican reflex in favor of big business is also in favor of Hollywood, and the subversion of our foreign service by Hollywood started well before Obama came into office.

Support for the horrible Pro-IP act, which for some reason forces the Federal government to sue people for violating copyrights and patents, was nearly unanimous, for crying out loud.

So it looks like we're screwed on that front, at least for now.  I am a little more hopeful that the Obamas (you didn't think the Administration was just one guy, did you?) may be more receptive to the human rights angle of a free internet than the other guys.

I'll tell you this much.  If Romney were to magically announce that he was strongly in favor of a massive reform of our "intellectual property" laws, I'd vote for him despite his Bush-like "twiddle thumbs while Rome burns" plan for America--because it's so much more important that we are able to talk about our problems, than even solving some of them.

Expanding expanding fair use

Okay, I wanted to wait for the one year anniversary of this blog to do this, but I think I need to do it now.

I am expanding the scope of the blog.

There are a lot of reasons for this.  Truly, my recent first personal encounter with the ravages of the DMCA and our current American internet censorship system has brought things home in a non-abstract way.  It is, indeed, personal now.

There is also the fact that, frankly, I've probably made most of the coherent, logical, rational, and even emotional arguments I can for the expansion of fair use in copyright to include all non commercial use.  I intend to continue to make them, as I can't expect anyone to go back and read all my blog entries necessarily, and adding different angles is always useful, too.  But I need to write about other things.

I am only a man.  I am an intensely creative person, but I have limits.  Leaving the subject of the blog tied solely and exclusively to supporting the expansion of fair use as the only decent solution for the future of humanity's internet thing is keeping me in a creative straightjacket.  You may have noticed a lot of short posts lately.  This is because of that.

But the thing is, the expansion of fair use, and the abuse of the copyright system, is part of a much larger set of problems, anyway.  Problems humanity has always had:

Assholes.
Bullies.
Fools in power.
Blind obedience of the masses.
Greed.

That kind of stuff.  These are the direct causes of the mess we are in now with copyright, and everything else that is wrong with the world.

For example, in my opinion, there has never been a war that was not caused by one or all of these things.

So, I hope you don't mind.  I'm going to expand the scope.  I may even, I daresay, occasionally post something trivial.

But I am optimistic it will be more interesting for all involved!

Why Imaginary Property is going to destroy our country

By "our country" I mean the U.S.A...I do actually realize the internet crosses national boundries.  But it just sounds better to say "our country" :-)

I was having lunch with a friend today and we were talking about brain drain.  Already, if you want the really cool electronics, you have to buy them direct from Taiwan or Hong Kong, because patents are keeping so many basic technologies locked up.

It's sad that this is the case.  Copyright has the same issue--both are artificially keeping entrenched interests in power, and denying entry to new players--which is the exact opposite of the purpose of "intellectual property".

If we don't fix this very soon, the U.S. is going to start a serious decline in arts and technology on the world stage.

Jesus, what a travesty.

Here's the latest outrage:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57542863-75/microsoft-sued-over-windows-live-tiles/

Just check out that amazing technology that Microsoft supposedly infringed!

Mind you, if there's anyone who deserves such a lawsuit, it's definitely Microsoft, who's been extorting money from Android phone makers for years now.

Fuck them all.

Sony is copying my copyright!

So I took at look at sony.com and they appear to be violating my copyright from this post, where you can clearly see I use the word "limited", which they copied.

Am I feeling a little butthurt about their getting the sound muted, without good reason, on my Youtube demo video?

AM I?

DRM in games, closed source software

Digital Rights Management, almost by definition, is always closed source software--meaning you cannot inspect the code that is running on your computer.  Never forget that the "rights" being enforced are the "rights" perceived as belonging to the distributor of the content--not your rights.  In fact, they are actively hostile even to your existing fair use rights.

I'm thinking about that again because this weekend I bought a copy of Battlefield 3.  It's the first game I've bought in several years, since I started working on my own big game.  One of the reasons I started making my own game was because I was profoundly bored with all the new big games coming out, and so I wanted to make the game I wanted to play.  So my lack of motivation to buy games had a deep base.

But in any case, they've been coming a long way in areas like graphics and character modeling, etc. and I decided it was time to check out one of the recent big hits, and I've always been a fan of the Battlefield series.  In fact, my own game is, what I like to think of, as Battlefield on acid. :-)

So I went and bought a copy and as I was opening it up it hit me like a thunderclap--"why the fuck did I buy this?".  I hate Electronic Arts--they are a famously nasty company, and these days I vote with my pocketbook.  They do a lot of douchey things like let you purchase game upgrades that give you an advantage in the game (after you've already dropped $50 on the game), and they treat their employees like shit.  In our so called pure capitalistic society where the people are "consumers" instead of "customers", EA getting away with this sort of behavior only encourages it.  So I don't want to give them any money.

It's not like I don't know how to pirate shit.

And in any case, I seriously doubt I'll play it much, and even more, I do NOT trust the big game companies these days with Administrator access to my computer, especially on Windows.  It is extremely difficult/impossible to monitor what an application is doing on Windows (while many tools are built into Linux for this), and so I simply don't trust them (and there are numerous historical reasons to not trust DRM schemes).

So I started wondering how piracy was working these days with the much more aggressive DRM schemes (which "phone home", making piracy more challenging).  So I toodled over to the Pirate Bay and found this:

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6768548/Battlefield_3-RELOADED

And I started reading the description--generally pirates will have a short description--which you must follow to the letter--to implement their crack.  And I saw this curious comment:

"As usual we recommend firewalling the main executable, not using Origin, and
avoiding EA.

I'm still not sure what they mean by "firewalling" here, but what caught my attention was "Origin".  I did a little googling and discovered it's basically EA's Steam-like service for buying games.

So basically what they are saying here is that, since you don't know what Origin will do on your computer, it might find the pirated version of the game.

Because, of course, Origin might just be scanning your entire computer.

And this is what I mean when I say that Digital Rights Management protects the perceived "rights" of the distributor--including the right to poke into every nook and cranny of your computer, combing through your personal data, personal pictures, finances, etc. in pursuit of their rights.  And it pisses all over your rights.

Run Linux.  Don't buy stuff with invasive DRM in it.

More evidence of RIAA double dealing

I am shocked, shocked I say to find out that the "independent expert" hired by the so called "Copyright Information Center" was actually an entertainment industry shill.

I sure hope no one is fooled by this shit.

The Copyright Information Center, in case you don't recall, is the group that has somehow convinced your Internet Service Provider (Comcast, Time Warner, etc.) to spy on your internet usage for them.

You know, I almost can't wait for this to go into effect.   I, for one, will be raising hell every minute of every day about it, to the best of my ability.  Everyone I talk to will hear it.  I will explain it clearly so that anyone can easily understand.

Someone has to call out this scum.

So Vuze is worth a damn after all?

If you've used the Vuze bittorrent client, you know that it has a lot of nice features at the expense of all your computer's resources.  But this article has some interesting information that I don't yet fully understand that seems to indicate that it might be worth the hassle.

There must be room for failure

(I'm calling this one a late one for the 26th!)

Experiments like mine must be encouraged, not discouraged.  Unless we have a very unrestrictive copyright regime, we will destroy the power of the internet to create.  Yes, it is often based on what has come before--just like everything else in the world.

Copyright in the Presidential debates

I played a drinking game during the Presidential debates.  I took a drink every time a candidate mentioned the word "copyright" or "patents".

Suffice to say...it was the shittiest goddamn drinking game I've ever played.

I realize that the Imaginary Property mess is very much a First World Problem.  In fact, that is very much the reason I started this blog--to increase awareness among "regular folks", because that is the only hope for the future.

Believe me--a first world problem today can become a problem for the whole damn world, tomorrow.  Tell your friends.

Stealing from the public domain

One of the most important provisions of copyright is expiration.  When copyright expires (even if it's in 250 years), works are supposed to go into the public domain, so that anyone can use them.

Too often this does not happen.  There are many, many works that legitimately are in the public domain that cannot be used properly because they are claimed as still copyrighted.

One of the biggest problems with the current copyright regime is that there are no penalties for lying, or even being careless, about what you own copyright to.

Hmmm.  I wonder what I can do with that.

Victory is mine?

So I got this email from Google today:

Dear rastoboy,

Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, "Singularity FPS Capture the Flag". For more information, please visit your Copyright Notice page

Sincerely,

- The YouTube Team

So...I win?  Mind you, the audio on my video was muted for several days after a spurious complaint, and there will be zero consequences, to my knowledge, for the erroneous takedown notice.

I don't think I win, or anybody wins.  This only reinforces my already certain belief that all this taking down of websites and links that someone believes violates their commercial interests has GOT to go.

Murdoch backs down from Google and begs forgivemess

I am always amused at newspaper publishers who get bent out of shape about Google.  Rupert Murdoch famously called them "thieves" and made them stop linking to his papers.  Only a few months later, he has changed his mind.

Turns out he loves all those lovely clicks his papers get from Google.

How can anyone be so shit-headed as to not realize that they get a lot of hits from Google?  This is something that is clearly represented in web server logs.

And now for more amusement: a consortium of French newspapers is basically trying to make Google linking to them illegal.  Google is trying to make them see reason, but frankly I think they should just go ahead and remove them from their search results.

I mean, Google is evil, but people, at least try to understand which side your bread is buttered on.

License to music

I don't really like seeing the words "license" and "music" close together, but as per my own philosophy (and self preservation) I was careful to license the music that I used in my game.  Here's my receipt and the beginning of the license:

I've saved the text of the license here in case you're interested.

So you can see that I made a good faith effort to correctly obtain permission for the music I used in my game, and hence in the video made from the game. (Don't even try to argue sematics with me about using it in the game and in a video made from the game--just go fuck yourself and die, if you read this blog you know how I would feel about such an asinine argument).

The question that arises now, of course, is did the person that sold me the rights have the right to do so?  This will be pivotal in case Sony decides they really do own the copyright to the music used in their video and my game.

My first phoney DMCA takedown request

So I'm so happy today.  I got my first phony DMCA takedown request.

You may or may not be aware that I have been working several years on a video game.  You may or may not be surprised to learn that when I used other people's work in it, I went out of my way to get permission or license the work.  After all, this is a money making (in theory!) proposition!

So I was surprised to get an email from ebay about one of the trailers I posted there.  This one, to be exact:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YsN-RheueI

This is what the notice currently looks like:

I followed there instructions and disputed it, naturally.  But in the meantime, they've muted the sound because they assume I'm "guilty" even though their notice says my video "may include the following copyrighted content".

So the DMCA filer doesn't even have to be sure.

Now, in this case I did search for "乃木坂46-松村沙友理×多田卓也" and ran across this video:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDM0Nzg4Mjk2.html

And indeed, the song that starts about  half way through is the same song.

So...we licensed the same song from the same person.  And yet these assholes feel like they own it exclusively and are running around trying to censor other people who are using it.

Also...do we enforce foreign copyrights under the DMCA?  I would have thought we only protect our own copyrights with bullshit like this.

Anyway, you see I will get a response by 11/17/2012--so for most of a month, at minimum, I am SOL.

Not happy.  Not happy at all.

I'll be reporting more as information comes in.  First thing I'm going to do is locate the person I licensed the music from and have a chat.

Oh by the way, Google sucks.

One way street--Verizon brags about spying on your internet usage

At a recent conference apparently Verizon bragged about how they are spying on your smartphone internet usage.

I mention this on this page because it is another example of how digital rights are a one way street, these days.  You can't use copyrighted material for the slightest thing, and you can't have any privacy in your internet usage--not to mention the government is probably spying on you as well.

As always, this is a good time to mention the Tor software for anonymizing your internet use.  In particular, I'd like to draw your attention to a version of Tor especially for mobile phones called Orbot.  I tried it out yesterday and it's very good--I wish they would get the desktop versions this easy to use.  The performance lag wasn't even too bad (although you should expect some performance lag until Tor becomes much more popular--it shares some characteristics with Bittorrent, in that the more people that use it the better it works).

Needless to say, you'll need to "root" your phone to use it.  Either you control your phone/computer, or it controls you!

Stay tuned tommorrow for an extra special post about my first DMCA request.

I'm so happy!

If you're interested in facts...and I know you're not...

A recent study indicates music file sharers actually purchase significantly more music than those who don't.

Now, if you've been reading this blog, you know that I don't feel that justification for downloading media is necessary.  So I don't say that this is a justification for downloading music, obviously.  But if downloading music was wrong, this would also not be a justification.

What it is a justification for is for media companies to embrace it, because it is in their self interest to do so.

It will happen eventually.  But first the damn fools want to try brutalizing all their potential customers.

Even ones like me, who at this point go out of their way not to give them money, because I don't want to enable their vile tactics of suing people and somehow convincing Internet Service Providers to censor the internet.

How the hell did they do that, anyway?

A worthwhile DMCA request

Torrentreak has an interesting piece on an artist who is trying to get unauthorized copies of his music out of the major music stores, including iTunes.

If you've been reading this blog, it should be obvious that this is actually something I can get behind.  Sharing music is okay, making money off someone else's music without authorization is rather obviously wrong to most people.  This is one of those cases that I feel that "it's just wrong" is a legitimate argument.

It also goes to show that the big companies really do not care at all about anyone's rights.

The article is a good read, recommended.

Girltalk justifies me

If you've never heard a brilliant mashup by Girltalk, do yourself a favor and go check one out.

They are a perfect justification of the expansion of fair use.  Culture is always reused, just with differing levels of literalness and honesty.

Unless you only speak your own personal language?

Cable set to get less convenient

I'm not too enraged by the news that the  FCC is going to allow cable companies to encrypt basic cable.  At least I think that's what this article says.  It's a bit incoherent.

I mean, cable is a paid service after all, and I don't have a major issue with how they go about doing it.  It is, of course, a step in the wrong direction generally, but this isn't the internet we're talking about but a one-way TV system.  Trying to limit the usage to paid subscribers makes more sense to be when we're talking about a service, as opposed to data itself.

(I find I'm examining the above statement with a jaundiced eye...I'm kinda under the weather today so I might just be babbling incoherently.)

I don't think it's particularly necessary--cable companies have other tools, like a physical freaking cable which they can follow and disconnect or remove--if somebody is stealing cable.  But of course the main reason they want to do this is because they really hate the notion of people not having one of their boxes in their living rooms.

Recently I built a Windows Media Center PC using a Ceton cablecard tuner.  Yes, Windows.  I do loathe Windows, but if you want to use a Centon cablecard tuner, drivers are only available for Windows.  This is basically because the Cablecard cartel (made up of the cable companies) absolutely do not want any sort of open sourcing of their programming.

Cuz, you know, someone might pirate it.  And so because of this, that never happens.

Right?

Sigh.

Anyway.  I've been jacking with MythTV, XBMC, Boxee and their ilk for several years now, and I have to say that Windows Media Center is the bomb-diggety.  It is dramatically superior in every way.

Now excuse me while I go drive some nails into my hand or something.

The entertainment industry is thriving

At least according to this random blog, the entertainment industry has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last decade.  Thus, their efforts to bribe Congress to pass corporate sponsored censorship laws is not only immoral because it infringes on the human rights of every American, but is also immoral because it is completely unnecessary--it's just greed.

You know, I understand how people feel when they own things.  You have a proprietary feeling about it.  But...

I was in the grocery store the other day, and I was watching this young woman walking toward me, staring at her phone as she walked.  She was also wearing these like paper shoes or something--no traction whatsoever.  There was a spill of some liquid in the aisle between us.  Before I could figure out how to warn her in some socially acceptable fashion in the crowded supermarket, she slipped and fell into the spill--soaking much of her clothes.

I offered to help her up, but I'll never forget the look of offense on her face.  She didn't even move to get up on her own--she was frozen in shock and anger.  How could this happen to her?  Someone must pay!  She clearly intended to hold the store responsible.

But you know, maybe she should have considered watching where she was going instead of staring at her phone like a damn fool.  It's a simple rule--if you are locomoting, you need to watch where you are going and pay attention to what is going on around you.

Point being, the world doesn't owe you shit.  It is up to you to equip yourself to survive and thrive in the world that you find yourself in.  Trying to change the human rules so that the world serves you may make you feel good, but it doesn't change the laws of physics.  If you expect the grocery store to be responsible for remaining upright, or if you expect Congress to protect your business model, you are only setting yourself up for wet slips.

Bittorrent is mob behavior

When we use bittorent to keep a file you don't want made public, public, we are ganging up on you, like a pack mentality.  It is exactly like playing "keep away" with a football.  "Give me my ball!" the nerd pointlessly shouts, and we just keep tossing it each other.

If you've ever been a kid, then you know that the only way to stop it is to cooperate with the bullies.

I like being a bully of Hollywood.

Your email is fair game

A slight detour today as I recharge my creative batteries a bit.  It's relevant in the general "our internets are broken" kind of way.

Long story short, your email is fair game to the government.  Basically, if you leave your email on the server (and most people do, via web mail or IMAP servers), after a set period of time it is no longer considered private, and everybody and their mother can read it all.

Even failing that, most folks don't realize that emails are sent "in the clear"--unencrypted--from server to server on the internet until it reaches its destination.

Good to know, eh?

You may have thought it was a sealed envelope, but it's more like a postcard.

phoney DMCA takedowns

Nobody should really have an argument that phoney DMCA takedowns are literally censorship.  This story underlines that fact.

Does anyone know of anyone who has ever been prosecuted for it?

Maybe I should try it in an amusing way.

Bittorrent is useful to content cartles, too.

Just a quick shot today about how useful bittorrent can be if you're trying to, you know, find out what is popular.

Mind you, that can be a bit depressing, as well.

Why robots matter

Marshall Brain has an excellent series of essays on the future of robots in our society.  Well worth a read.

I'm thinking that here in 2012, the idea of robots becoming ubiquitous should start to seem like a realistic possibility even to normal people.

Brain dwells on the effects of robots on employment rates.  I think he makes some valid points.

I tend to dwell on the possibilities for repression.  How would you like a robot following you around and preventing you from doing wrong things?

I trust many of you reading that last statement may scoff, but I also daresay you then thought about it for a minute.  If you don't think it's possible, you're just wrong.

And this is exactly one reason why liberty and freedom are so incredibly important to maintain.  There is never an "end state" where "yay we have achieved freedom!"  This is similar to all other strivings for human improvement.  Nothing is ever complete, nothing is static--everything worthwhile is a constant struggle to achieve and maintain.

The free internet will not guarantee that bad things will not happen in the future.  However, without a free internet they will be impossible to stop.

When are we going to apply the DMCA properly?

One of the biggest problems with the expansion of fair use--or even using the fair use rights we have now--is companies with automated censorship regimes submitting hundreds of thousands of takedown requests without human verification.  Microsoft is only one such company doing this.

In theory, a company or person can be penalized for sending out spurious takedowns.  But to my knowledge, this has never happened even one time.

Voting is important

Admittedly, our crusty two party political system tends to be pretty stagnant--as the founding fathers intended, but it's still important to vote, and to be politically active.

Today when I was out for my morning constitutional, I kept noticing other pedestrians who looked like me but speaking Spanish to each other.  Eventually as I got near an office building near my house I saw that it was a Venezuelan polling station.

This really isn't the best picture, but you can kinda see a tent set up on the left and there was a news van there.  But more important is what you don't see, which is the people lined up on the other side of the building, too.  I suspect every Venezuelan in Houston was making a real point of voting today in their momentous election.

I bring this up at all because, after all, the purpose of this blog is to promote a change in the law.  This requires political action, and even before that it requires convincing people.

It's a little bit hard to get people excited about copyright, still.  I predict that is going to change in a hurry once all the major Internet Service Providers start spying on their users so that Hollywood can sue them.  But we haven't gotten there, yet.

Larry Lessig was a copyright crusader but quit to become a clean government crusader.  His feeling--and I agree with him--is that without taking care of our American problem with legalized bribery, effecting real change of any sort is impossible.  I agree, but I also feel that there is lots of convincing to be done, still.

It would be easier if Americans took their governance as seriously as the Venezuelans.

Reselling mp3's

If the title of this post seems totally insane to you, then congratulations, you understand digital media better than the people who make it.

ReDigi is a web site that allows people to resell their mp3's.  They are being sued by the content industry for having the temerity to enable people to resell what they have purchased, legally.

Layers upon layers of stupidity and insanity to wade through here, so I'll just have to do my best.

The whole notion of loaning or selling digital media is preposterous.  I have talked about this before.  (Note that a service selling convenient access to it is not, but not one is really serious about that, yet.  The thing itself is without value, however, sorry.)

But let's assume for a moment that it is not.  Would it not be reasonable to then re-sell what you have purchased, as you can do with movie and music discs, books, etc.?  I mean, if we are pretending that digital media is just like regular stuff, this makes sense, right?

But the content industry wants it both ways.  They want to say that you only license the music when you purchase an mp3.  Or something.  It's not very coherent.

If you are one of the millions of people stupid enough (sorry, the truth hurts) to have bought much in the way of digital media, this law suit should be proof enough that you have been screwed.

It should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention the past few years that the entertainment industry simply wants to have it's cake and eat it, too.  Digital media is just exactly like physical objects one minute, and only an ephemerally licensed fantasy when it does not please them for it to be so.  They are stupid greedy liars, and their stupidity is already destroying the American internet.

Internet Service Providers are initiating bandwidth caps nationwide to stop file sharing and competing online services.  There is no real competition for home ISP's, resulting in ever increasing prices (which should be falling over time in a proper competitive environment).  And of course they are in cahoots with the entertainment industry to actually listen in on your phone calls internet use to make sure you're not doing anything wrong.

In the final analysis, they need to be stopped by any means necessary.  Without a free internet, the future is going to be bleak indeed.

Did you know that South Korea has optic fiber internet laid to almost every home?  But here in the country that invented the internet, we are stuck in the 1990's.

The military invented it, geeks brought it to the masses, and we're going to let a piddling industry (which is doing better and better by the way, despite "piracy")  bring it to its knees in this country, destroying our future with it.

An age of madness

We live in an age of madness.  We have always lived in this age--I'm pretty sure one day we're going to look back at this period as one of extreme insanity and danger.  Like monkeys with machine guns, or nuclear weapons.  It's only a matter of time.

I think it's inevitable that we will improve our brains.  Not just through genetic engineering, but through a proper application of what we know about psychology and learning we'll be able to actually educate most children.  And by "educate" I don't mean just basic reading and writing, but actually learning how to think.  Can you imagine a world where most people have adequate critical reasoning skills?  It simply doesn't exist, now.

And yet we have so much power.  If we survive this period intact, it will be a miracle.
For example, this guy has encoded his book in DNA, and has trivially created 70 billion copies of his book in DNA form.

Seventy billion.  That's 70,000,000,000 copies.  And yet, we have people in power who are tempted to strictly enforce the idea that you cannot make even one fucking copy of a movie, song, or book, without being a criminal.

People are not remotely smart enough.  And I don't believe it needs to be that way.

Republicans advertise on the Pirate Bay

Just a link today about another mildly amusing entity advertising on the Pirate Bay.  I like.

A little lesson on DNS

The Domain Name System is a useful tool.

For decades, humans had to live with the inconvenience of remembering phone numbers in order to use telecommunications products.  With the advent of the internet, we thought it would be nice to automate this a bit, so you could just remember a word, like "huge fucking douchebags" in order to visit the site:

http://hugefuckingdouchebags.com

And indeed, this is much easier to remember than "76.74.24.200".  It also allowed web site administrators host more than one site on a single IP address, by looking at the requested URL and the domain name within it.  Blah blah blah boring technical details.

Ultimately, all it is is a convenient phone book.  Like the contacts list on your smartphone, the names are only bookmarks.

This is why I find it so amusing that the anti-piracy kops are so focused on getting at domain names and their owners.  In the linked article, the RIAA is trying to get a court order to find out who the registered owners of some piracy associated domain names are, with the unstated assumption that they are the "guilty" parties.

As you can see, by this logic, it is the RIAA who own the domain name "hugefuckingdouchebags.com", when in fact, it's me.

Bad copyright infringement

I think it's important sometimes to reiterate that my own position is not that of total freedom of copying.  Many do support that position--and if it's a choice of maximums, I will take total freedom every single time.

But copyright has it's good points--the protection (in theory) afforded to open-source software, for example.  The commercial use of copyrighted material without authorization is another thing that rankles.  And today we hear of a case of, perhaps, abuse of trust in the early release of a Beyonce album.

The Torrentfreak article is not 100% clear if the guy being charged was actually in a position of trust for Beyonce's producers.  For the sake of argument, let's say he was.

Many pro-pirate people like to point out that if you want to keep 100% control of your music, book, or movie, then you have one very simple expedient for doing so--don't release it.

Reaching in and grabbing something that someone does not want released is not okay--that's the bad sort of hacking.  Worse still is being entrusted with something, and violating that trust.  It doesn't matter what that trust is--breaking trust is not a good thing to do.

I think artists and labels have a perfect right to control the initial release of something.  I don't see any reason why that shouldn't be the case.  I don't think they have the right to control the entire internet to have that control.  But they should be able to control their own computers, and the actions of those whom they have trusted with early copies of the information.

If you say you're not going to put it on the internet, and so they give you a copy, and you do it anyway, you are a bit of an ass.

Not a ten-years-in-prison ass.  But certainly a civil lawsuit ass.

The stuff is going to get out there and get pirated rapidly after initial release, anyway.  So I don't think major penalties are in order.  But breach of trust is a serious matter, and some civil penalty should apply.  Prison would be insane.

Japan goes crazy for copyright

Japan has instituted the most draconian copyright law thus far, with penalties including up to two years in prison.

I suppose I should be grateful that the more abusive laws are actually being put into place in far away, benighted places like Japan and France.  This way the world can see how it works in practice without affecting anyone of consequence.

It's particularly interesting to me to see what happens in such a formal, conformist place like Japan.  I wonder if the kids will rebel?  That would be interesting.  But rocking the boat is not exactly a keystone of Japanese culture.

Thus far in France, it appears that most folks are simply using VPN's.

There is no question that the only way to really enforce copyright is for Internet Service Providers to actively (and expensively) monitor all internet connections.

Or, we could allow art to flourish.

But what if torrenting really is bad?

I've always been a casual student of geography.  Geography, of course, is as much about people as places.  So I'm very interested in different cultures.

One thing I've come to accept over the years is that no culture is perfect.  You may learn a lot of good things about a culture, but sooner or later your bubble will be burst when you learn of a regular, normal, loathsome practice that that culture accepts and you or your culture cannot.  It is the way of men.

Humans are always at least a little bit bad.  So try not to be such a sanctimonious bitch when you're busy judging someone or some group of people, because they probably have similar feelings about you.  If you really want to be wise, I think you must accept a certain level of badness in people.

So if you think pirating movies, books, and music on the internet is bad, go fuck yourself.

Your ISP is not quite ready to help spy on you, but real soon now.

I like to think that the reason the six strikes scheme hasn't actually been implemented yet is due to public pressure.  They say it's going to happen real soon now.  Torrentfreak speculates in that article that none of the major ISP's who have somehow been duped into participating--Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, Verizon, and AT&T, want to be the first to take the plunge.  And who can blame them?  Surely they're own boards are wondering why they are going along with harassing their customers.

After all, to a man, all of their advertisements for internet service emphasis downloading tons and tons of free media.  It is strongly implied.

I mean, I know it's not massive public outrage, but for the leading edge--geeks--it is already pretty sharp.  As reader MJM observes in a comment here:

I don't see why anyone would have a problem with this.

It's just like the phone company listening to your conversations and then letting you know that it sounds like you're running a phone scam and if you don't knock it off, they're going to disconnect your line.

So there you go.  What smoke and mirrors did the MPAA and RIAA use to convince these guys to go along?

Torrenting tips

OMG I FORGOT TO POST YESTERDAY.

And I'd been doing so well.  It seems like I go through these creative peaks and troughs.  Still, I've let myself and my legions of loyal readers down, so I'll post twice today, even if they're kinda trivial.

So first I'll merely turn your attention to this terrible article on bittorrenting tips.  These are not bittorrenting tips, they are a recipe for death.

Well, that's a bit strong.  They won't get you killed, but if you think a "boss mode" will keep you from getting caught torrenting at work, think again.  Your network admins will not be fooled for an instant.  Bittorrent traffic is very easily discernable by a competent network administrator.

Happily, it has been my experience that competent network administrators are pretty rare.  Still, spying on your traffic is much easier that doing the real work of a network admin.

Torrenting at work is an incredibly stupid thing to do.  But if you must, use the tips and knowledge I imparted here.

I'm a little dissappointed in Torrentfreak for passing on such bad information.  The other info in the article is fine, if pointless.

Let's move to Portugal!

File sharing for non-commercial use has been declared by a court to be legal in Portugal.

Obviously, the thing to watch out for now is the forces of darkness to influence the Portuguese lawmakers to make it illegal.

The only good news is that Portugal has bigger problems right now and I would think they would be unlikely to do something so unpopular, when they are doing so many other unpopular but necessary things.

Kinky public sex

Our favorite crazed douchebag Kim Dotcom is at it again, apparently now with exclusive contracts with some popular acts.  It would be great if he would destroy the current music industry.

All I'm saying is that music plus assault weapons is a match made in heaven, and hell this is rap music we are talking about here.  The guy has a terrible reputation and a history of financial fraud, which means he's the perfect person to start a new, parallel music industry.  Of course, his sites will have lots of free music for download, just like the internet, but only this time--on the internet.

You should know that Will.I.am actually contributed to his old site's theme song.  He knew what kind of site it was then.  It was that kind of site.  Only instead of kinky public sex it was music downloads.  And sexy videos.  But I'm splitting hairs.

Say what you will about Mr. Dotcom, his industry won't be pursing people executing their natural right to download whatever the fuck they want off the internet.  There is no doubt he will do other, douchy, things, as he appears to be a wild sociopath.  But if I'm picking my poison, better the devil I don't know.

It is also heartening to know that artists like Will.I.am are actually interested in giving their customers what they want.  It's a privilege to have the masses vying to download your latest song.  Only a dolt couldn't find a way to make money off of that.

Alternative histories

MJM has a fun alternative history of digital content and the internet that inspires me to think of what could have been, and what will be.

Although I think it's much too much to expect Americans to embrace Change so freely, it didn't have to be this way.  Once upon a time this was a country that valued freedom enough to fight for it.  But with the internet, it's as if we had cars that could move at the speed of light, but set up speed limit signs everywhere that limited them to 20 MPH.  We fear change.

By "we" of course I mean "they" who run the entertainment industry in this country--a very politically powerful industry because of course they control our minds.  We are very easily influenced, but once influenced, very hard to change (PDF).  This is not solely an American trait.  We just have more power than we can really handle, so it matters more.

I kinda wish we could all be like Hunter S. Thompson and see the solution to all our problems lies with going faster.  But then again I suppose that would be ridiculously dangerous, reckless, and probably even immoral.   We can't all be freaks.  I guess.

Unfortunately "they" easily influence most of "us" because we are not prepared to really think for ourselves.  We even call ourselves "pirates" when we download stuff from the internet.  How did they do that?

Easy--repetition.  And so it goes.  Repeat after me: piracy is good for all people, especially those who create.

Let's move to Eichberg!

The Pirate Party has scored its first executive election in the person of the mayor of Eichberg, Alex Arnold!

Greed.

I'm going to steal MJM's comment on this post and simply observe that there exists a simple, foolproof solution to stopping piracy--and eliminating the possibility of any fair use by anyone--which is to simply not distribute your content digitally.  Problem solved.

Obviously, this is not going to happen.  Obviously, they still find it profitable, or they wouldn't keep doing it.  Therefore, the problem isn't that they aren't getting paid, but that they aren't getting paid enough.  You know--greed.

I know that "greed" is a loaded word.  I think the problem is that a lot of people don't have a proper  understanding of what it means.  Let's try a dictionary:

1. excessive consumption of or desire for food; gluttony
2. excessive desire, as for wealth or power

The key word is excessive.  The left loves to use greed to refer to selfishness, as in, "The Wall Street traders destroyed our economy.  They are so greedy."  Whereas the right tends to characterize the left's use of greed as indicating a desire to take what does not belong to them, as in "I've worked hard all my life to earn what I've got, but the liberals call me greedy for wanting to keep it".  In my opinion these are both misuses of the word.

Wall Street traders, for example, were more selfish than greedy when they destroyed the economy a few years ago.  They didn't think about the consequences of their actions, which is selfish and stupid.  If you are thinking about the consequences of your actions, then by definition, you are not being selfish.  Greed was a CEO taking a massive bonus after getting bailed out by Washington.  Or taking a bonus after laying off thousands of workers.  Obviously that money could be deployed more usefully to the company than just giving it to someone--but a bunch of people had to suffer to make it happen.

That being said, the inherent act of a CEO laying of a thousand people is not greedy.  It's taking a massive bonus while doing so that is.  Sometimes layoffs are necessary when a CEO is incompetent.  But he doesn't have to enjoy it.

But the right is equally confused.  Taxes are not a greedy grab by the populace for your money--they are what you owe to your country for providing this nice law and order and infrastructure and security that enables you to even have a chance of accumulating your wealth.

Greedy is hurting a lot of people so that you can have two billion dollars instead of one.  A billion dollars is already more money than you can possibly spend in a lifetime.  No one is begruding you the right to try and double it.  But if you do it at the expense of others, then that is greed.  Greed is pointless.

So to sum up: driving down the highway to your illegal Russian orgy and cocaine fest is not so greedy.  Financing the activity by ripping people off, is.

Making money on the internet with digital content is not greedy.  Trying to control what everyone does on the internet so that you can make more money at it, is truly, profoundly, greedy.