While reading slashdot, you can’t escape the

rants like this about the evils of the MPAA and RIAA. People respond in great numbers to postings like this, and everytime they do, I am baffled by the lack of clear thinking on the subject. This rant will try to isolate a few of the ways that they are stupid and wrong thinking and I am correct and right thinking.

The first set of wrong thinkers are just thieves. They oppose the RIAA and MPAA by stealing their copyrighted works
from them. They typically say things like “if they made stuff that wasn’t shit, I would pay for it”, as if that actually is an excuse for
larceny. I actually have more respect for those who merely admit that
what they are doing is illegal, they know it, and just don’t care.
At least they avoid the hypocrisy of having collected 57 gigabytes of mp3 files, all of which are crap. I have
better uses for 57gb of disk space.

The second group of wrong thinkers are what I call recyclers. Recyclers refuse to by CDs and the like from
retail outlets, and instead buy them from used stores and friends. They think that because they are buying their CDs from
used dealers, they are hurting the profits of the record companies but still getting the music they want.

This is wrong on two levels. First of all, record companies only promote artists which make them money. It isn’t because they are evil, it is simply that they are in business, and businesses exist to make money. When you choose not to buy a record of an artist you enjoy, you decrease the incentive of that artist to produce new works and the incentive of the record company to promote them. Net result: you don’t hear as much of the music that you enjoy.

The second thing wrong with this idea is that even if you do buy from second hand outlets, you are still creating demand for the record. Some people will buy records and
enjoy them for a time, and then pass them onto the used market and recoup some of their initial investment. If you didn’t
buy these records in the secondary markets, retailers wouldn’t
buy them, and demand for them would fall off in the primary
markets as well.

The third set of people are fatalists. Fatalists believe that people just can’t live without their influx of music and artists, and therefore nothing will ever change. Therefore, they go out and spend their money and then come back to their keyboards and complain about the state of affairs on slashdot.

In the end, the fatalist merely complains, but has no new ideas to offer. His thinking is too limited to actually imagine other solutions, but that doesn’t keep him from complaining about
the problems.

My own views on this matter is one of pragmatism. If I want to go see the new Two Towers movie, I go see it, and I don’t complain about the vast media machine that builds such movies. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how such epic movies are constructed without the backing of immense media empires, so I accept that as the cost of entertainment. Do I think that Tom Clancy or Stephen King deserve the huge amounts of money they earn? Well, I’m willing to buy paperback editions of their books, so I’m willing to trade my six fifty for their book. If a few
million people think the same way, then I guess they really do deserve the millions that they get paid.

Lastly, we should realize that much of the human experience has become watching rather than doing. In older cultures, activities such
as singing, music, cooking, painting, sculpture and the like are
things that are done by people, not watched by
people. I volunteer time to teach telescope making each week
because I want to encourage people to build and use telescopes, and pursue their own understanding of the universe
around us. My friend Tom schedules and performs music concerts for small audiences so that he can participate in music rather than merely consume it.

If you are opposed to the music industry and complain about
the quality of acts that they promote: make some different music and promote and distribute it yourself. The internet makes such
distribution very inexpensive. Yes, you aren’t going to be the next Britney Spears, but we already have one of those. If your
interest is in making music and sharing it with others, then make music and share it with others. Join the producer side of the equation rather than the remaining on the consumer side. The RIAA exists only because they think they can monopolize music production, and for the moment, they seem to be correct. If you
change this supply vs. demand equation, the viable business models that the record companies rely on will change as well.

Well, as I place the sage and thyme stuffed bird into a toasty oven, I am reminded that it is Thanksgiving and that I have much to be thankful for. To all of my friends and the odd individual who happens here by random link, I hope that you can sit back and think of what you should be thankful for, and spend a nice day with your friends and loved ones.

I was reading memepool today, and they had
an article on Dr. Michael Kelly, a guy who sells video tapes purporting to teach martial
arts enthusiasts the dim mak, or Death Touch.
What I want to know is “how do you practice enough to get good at it?”

One of my personal pet peeves is creationism: the bastard child of bad theology and bad science. I’m pretty familiar with most of their silly broken arguments, so it was interesting to see many of the worst ones
drawn up in color to hang on your children’s wall.
It’s hard to actually find anything on this poster which isn’t an absolute and total fraud, barring
perhaps the copyright date. I shudder to think the number of home schooled children who are
"learning" this stuff.

Today BMG announced that they are going to stop producing CDs. Instead, they are
going to produce specially encrypted CDs which have had problems in many
different players.

Want to stop this? It’s simple. Just don’t buy their CDs.

You want to change the industry: change your buying habits. When you buy a CD with
copy protection, you are giving up some of your legal rights: the right to make archival
backups of something you own, and the right to listen to your music on whatever
equipment you have. If you find a CD with copy protection on it, return it. If they won’t
accept it, complain to their manager. Talk to consumer advocates. Raise an unholy stink.
And make sure not to give them your money.

Remember DIVX? Consumers hated it. It went away.

When casinos began to change the rules to blackjack to combat card counters, people stopped
playing. They lost money. Many reinstated better rules.

Vote with your pocketbook, and they’ll do something better.

Well, the World Series is over.

Sigh.

The Giants had their opportunities. Saturday’s game was in the bag. And then it wasn’t. And then they were behind. And then they lost. And then they lost again on Sunday. And just like that,
the Anaheim Angels were champions, and Barry Bonds was scowling.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen Anaheim play against the Athletics several times this year, and I
knew that they were capable. Early on I predicted that whichever team came out of the AL West would be the champions, because I felt that no NL team looked as good. I never envisioned the
Giants would make it out of the first round (as much as I hate Atlanta), sot hey weren’t even on
the radar.

Still, after watching several great games against Atlanta, and attending the terrific game 5 against the Cardinals, I started to believe. And that seemed to make the ultimate fall all the greater.

It is perhaps the flaw of competative sports that for someone to win, somebody else must lose. In
this case the Angels simply outplayed the Giants. The better team (at least on those seven games)
did come out victorious. So after an evening of moping, I hope that I have gained a little perspective.
After all, these guys play a kid’s game for a living. So Barry Bonds doesn’t get a ring. He gets
to play a kid’s game for a living. A very good living. We have no reason to feel sorry for him, or
for anyone lucky enough to entertain us for a living.

Besides, there is always next year.

I was toying around with GNU vcdimager this week, trying to make some nice interactive video CDs. I was looking for some video footage in VCD MPEG-1 format to use as a test, and came up with a couple of options

• The Prelinger Archives offers many films in VCD format, including such classics as A is for Atom and Duck and Cover.

• I could also convert some existing footage from another source, such as DVD.

In my collection, I have a DVD that contains three silent films by Buster Keaton: The General, Paleface and The Blacksmith. A brief websearch reveals
that all of these films are now in the public domain. So, the question to ask is, what am I
allowed to do with my DVD?

Initially of course, we know that circumventing the CSS protection on the DVD is a crime, regardless of whether the underlying material is public domain or not. This point was brought to my attention rather well by Andy Greenburg, and remains the single finest objection that I can see to the DMCA and similar legislation.

Ignoring that (at my own peril), let’s assume that the film itself is in the public domain. Could the company that released the DVD have any copyright claims on the work? Well, it seems hard to tell. They may be able to make some claim that the menus and additional material on the CD are covered
by copyright, and therefore cannot be redistributed. Perhaps the music on the CD is not from an
original recording (how could I possibly tell?) and would therefore be covered by copyright.

What if the film has been colorized? There has been some precedent that claims that colorization creates a signfiicant derivation of the original work that could be copyrighted. What about digital restoration efforts? Do these create a significant derivation of the original work?

The DVD that I have carries a warning that copying of copyrighted materials is a federal offense. No where does it claim that any of the works appearing on the DVD are copyrighted (nor does it have to, given modern copyright law). How can I determine what my fair and/or unregulated uses of this film are?

Slashdot is currently running a thread under the rather sensationalistic title

The End of Minix. It declares that since the XFree86 project has decided to drop support
for the Minix operating system, that it is dead.

Andy Tanenbaum wrote Minix to educate students on the construction of modern operating systems.
It is a microkernel system, where many operating system tasks are performed by user tasks, such as file system access and memory management. It is written in a clear, straightforward style, and is small enough that it can be reasonably understood by sufficiently motivated individuals.

If it has a flaw it is probably that modern PCs have all moved beyond the initial 8088/80286 level that Minix was originally written for. It would be good to have included real memory management and stronger networking support from the very beginning.

Ten years ago, Andy Tanenbaum declared that
Linux is obsolete, because Linux reverted to a monolithic kernel design instead of the microkernel design, and that Linux wasn’t designed with portability in mind. I think that both of these points are correct, and both are wrong. Tanenbaum viewed the debate over monolithic versus microkernels as completely over, but the fact is that microkernel operating systems are still uncommon, nearly a decade after he first made his comments. There must be some reason why monolithic kernels continue to be the norm, beyond simple inertia. In discussions with Tom Duff on the matter, we basically arrived at a similar point: that regardless of where the code for the filesystem is, it needs to be written. It doesn’t matter that much whether that code lives in the kernel or in user space. If it does live in user space, there will by necessity be overhead of calling remote procedures that is absent in the monolithic kernel case. This limits performance, and operating systems to date have been entirely about delivering performance.

Anyway, is Minix dead? Of course not. If you want to learn about how to construct a nearly practical example of a microkernel operating system, Minix is without a doubt a good place to begin. it doesn’t need to support Xfree, or even be popular to achieve that goal. I keep a copy of the Minix 2.0 source code checked into a CVS repository just for same keeping, and have pondered the idea of constructing an operating system around similar ideas. Every software project doesn’t need
to achive dominance or even acceptance to be worthy of preserving. Tanenbaum puts it this way:

As most of you know, for me MINIX is a hobby, something I do in the evening when I get bored writing books and there are no major wars, revolutions, or senate hearings being televised live on CNN.

It’s a creative way to murder time. And nothing has changed about that.

ZDNet UK is currently running a
story about the comments
made by Microsoft VP Steve Ballmer about Microsoft. This provoked the usual backlash of
anti-Microsoft sentiment on weblogs like
Slashdot, but one interesting point was raised.

The ZDNet article says:

Asked by one lateral-thinking MVP whether Microsoft planned to offer applications software on Linux, Ballmer said no. “We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays for software on Linux.” Even StarOffice, sold by Sun, was originally a free product, he said. And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: “It’s weird! IBM says ‘Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux…. From SuSE.”

The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.

The reason that I find this interesting is of course that Microsoft doesn’t assume any legal liability for damages caused by the use of their software either. From the WinXP EULA:

13. EXCLUSION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL
AND CERTAIN OTHER DAMAGES. TO THE
MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE
LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS
SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES
FOR LOSS OF PROFITS OR CONFIDENTIAL OR
OTHER INFORMATION, FOR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION, FOR PERSONAL INJURY, FOR
LOSS OF PRIVACY, FOR FAILURE TO MEET
ANY DUTY INCLUDING OF GOOD FAITH OR OF
REASONABLE CARE, FOR NEGLIGENCE, AND
FOR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY OR OTHER LOSS
WHATSOEVER) ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY
WAY RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY
TO USE THE PRODUCT, THE PROVISION OF
OR FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT OR OTHER
SERVICES, INFORMATON, SOFTWARE, AND
RELATED CONTENT THROUGH THE PRODUCT OR
OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THE
PRODUCT, OR OTHERWISE UNDER OR IN
CONNECTION WITH ANY PROVISION OF THIS
EULA, EVEN IN THE EVENT OF THE FAULT,
TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF CONTRACT OR BREACH
OF WARRANTY OF MICROSOFT OR ANY
SUPPLIER, AND EVEN IF MICROSOFT OR ANY
SUPPLIER HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

I wonder what legal liability Ballmer is actually talking about, since this basically says that if WinXP blows up and destroys your house, even if their programmers put code that they knew could result
in the loss of your house, that they are not liable for damages. It is true that Microsoft is at least
a sue-able entity, but good luck in actually succeeding.

Microsoft offers precisely the same legal liability as any Linux distribution: none.

I was reading an article on slashdot that announced that OSI (presumably the company that administers Ultima Online) would begin to offer advanced characters for sale, and the resulting outcry from gamers who did things "the hard way" who feel cheated. This made me think.
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I’ve been working a bit more on my weblog over the past few days, trying to clean up and remodularize the templates that I’ve been working on. As a result, I’ve got a stack of books on my desk regarding the various bits of web technology that I use. And it started me thinking. And as so often happens when I think, I feel the need to rant.

Why in the world do we have to know so much to make an attractive, interesting web page?

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Damn. I love baseball. It didn’t use to be that way. I found baseball to be rather dry and slow paced and not very interesting. But about five years ago I started to go to games. And now I am hooked.

And the Oakland Athletics have alot to do with it. Athletic tickets are fairly cheap, the ballpark is pretty easy to get to and the Athletics kick major ass.
You’d think that after losing a former league MVP that their team would be on the way down. Yet tonight they set an alltime AL record by winning their 20th straight game. Sure, they blew an 11-0 lead by allowing the Royals to come all the way back to tie in the top of the 9th, but Scott Hatteburg came up big with the game winning walk off homerun. This caps off two dramatic 9th inning victories in the last two games, both won by hits from Miguel Tejada, the obvious candidate for league MVP (despite some shakey defensive play tonight).

Damn, I love baseball.

Just like the talking Barbie who drew the ire of feminists everywhere by claiming that "Math is hard", I find myself asking more and more often "Why is programming so hard?"
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Open source software owes its existence to the convergence of three technologies:

• Fast, cheap computer hardware
• Fast, cheap networking
• Cheap compilers

Inexpensive PC hardware provides the raw grist for programmers. GCC provided a reasonable way to program this hardware. Cheap networking allowed the fruits of their labors to be propagated to people all over the world.

We’d like to think that free software will prove to be a never ending resource, but I believe that open source software is in
serious danger of becoming extinct.

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I love twiddling around with fonts, but let’s face it: most of them completely suck, especially for display on screens and in web browser. Without any doubt, the best widely available fonts were Microsoft’s core webfonts, which used to be freely downloadable from their website. Unfortunately, they recently
announced that they were withdrawing free downloads of these fonts.
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