Category Archives: Rants and Raves

What the heck is an “anti-reaction”?

Microsoft propaganda minster Robert Scoble has remarked that news that Longhorn will prevent playback of DRM’ed video unless it is to a sufficiently “secure” or “digital” device has provoked a strong “anti-reaction”.

Just what the hell is an anti-reaction? It generated a strong reaction: a reaction that should tell Microsoft that anyone intelligent enough to know what it means knows that it is inherently anti-consumer. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there are no consumers who think that DRM is a good thing. There is a reason for that: it only restricts consumers, it doesn’t empower them. It only makes things more difficult for consumers, it doesn’t ease their tasks. And perhaps even more importantly, it restricts the world of media creation to using those devices which are somehow approved of by Microsoft or their taskmasters in the media world.

In the last three or so years, I’ve begun to think of my computers as something fundamentally different than in years past. I’ve thought of them as engines for playing with mathematics and physics, I’ve seen them as game machines, I’ve seen them as storehouses for vast quantities of the written word.

Now, when I look at my computer, I see it as a method for creating media. I use it to process pictures, audio and video. I use it to store them, forward them to others, and subscribe to other people’s media feeds.

And DRM doesn’t help me at all with that because it takes some distribution decision out of my hands and gives it to someone else.

When I snap a picture with my digital camera, carefully nurse it with the Gimp until it is a masterpiece, I want to be able to print it without having to ask permission. I don’t think I should have to beg and plead Walmart and try to convince them that I am truly the owner of my own images, just because they look professional.

I’d like to be able to take my video content directly from my MiniDV camcorder, and load it onto the machine I use all the time (a Linux box). I’d like to be able to transcode them into a format which can be used in popular video players (like DVD players for instance) without worrying whether I have the right patented technology. I just want it to work.

I’d just like things to work, and be easy to distribute. Nothing about any of these DRM features seems to be at all concerned with these topics.

Doesn’t anyone test anything anymore?

I snapped a picture of my Pac Man t-shirt using my Motorola MPx220 cell phone in its “self portrait” mode: where the viewfinder is echoed onto the screen that is on the outside of the flip phone. Thinking about it for a second, I had a moment’s inspiration and took another picture.

Reversed photos

This error apparently only occurs in the mode where you use the phone when closed, but for God’s sake man. Doesn’t anyone test these things at all?

Addendum: Oh, the phone doesn’t seem to have any way to flip the image left and right either.

Home Improvement, Round 2

Not content with merely screwing up one minor job, I had to go back to the well of human despair for a second time today. One of my larger popup sprinkler heads was apparently stuck: spraying water in only a single direction rather than circulating back and forth in the 90 degree arc that it should.

Have you ever tried to figure out how these things work? They are truly diabolical in their construction. First of all, the gizmo is spring loaded so that it only pops up when water pressure is being applied. The manufacturer’s preferred method of examining the interior mechanism is to lever a screw driver under the lid to pull the mechanism up. Of course, it is spring loaded, so you can’t really let go of it, so now you’ve got one of your hands entirely committed for the rest of the operation.

Careful examination of the mechanism revealed that the sprinkler head existed in one of two states, separated from one another by a spring about the same strength as you might find in a ballpoint pen. When the sprinkler head hits its limit of travel, a small lever arm flips the sprinkler head into its opposite state and it reverses direction.

But mine didn’t seem to do that, for reasons which seemed inexplicable. Even though I powered it up, and withstood the watery blast of its malfunction in some vain attempt to figure if something minor had been jammed.

Oh well, think I. I’ll just replace the entire mechanism. Off to Orchard I go. The heads aren’t particularly cheap ($16.99) but what the heck.

Now comes the really fun part. Extracting the old one, and installing the new one. These sprinkler heads are roughly four inches in diameter, and are roughly cylindrical. They screw (without any kind of adhesive) into the underground plastic piping that forms my automatic sprinkler system. In principle, you merely have to dig it out, unscrew it, and rescrew the new one in.

But here’s where more diabolical design features conspire to promote profanity. First of all, the surface of the sprinkler isn’t smooth: they have a fair number of vertical notches along the outside. These, of course, conspire to actually increase friction, and make it very difficult to twist one of these things out. Add to that another clever design feature: a plug which comes out the side. This is for some poor saps who desided to feed their sprinkler heads from the side rather than from below. Who these people are, I don’t know, but I’d like to smack them for ruining it for the rest of them. My old sprinkler head (probably dating to the construction of the house fifteen years ago) is of course now surrounded by a network of inch thick roots coming from the nearby tree. Can’t really blame the tree: that’s where the water is. The side plug of course catches on every single one of them, which I proceed to cut, tug and swear at. I stripped out probably six individual pieces of root, varying in length from six inches to three feet. I also tore a good chunk of skin off my palm, and hurt the tips of three fingers. Each chunk of root removed allowed the old sprinkler to twist a little more, and after a half hour of excercise resembling opening an infinite row of mayonnaise jars, I managed to get the old one out.

Of course, now the fun really begins, because getting the new one backin is even more difficult. Dirt from the extraction of the previous one falls into the sprinkler mechanism and gums the threads, and of course, the same annoying side plug catches on everything. I haven’t yet completed this phase of the operation: I’m stopping for a diet coke and to think.

It’s just one of those days.

Sh*t metal screws…

Mangled Screw

I, of course, meant “sheet metal” screws.

Ever notice how the simplest tasks can become annoying because of abject stupidity? Consider this mornings tiny project: one of the fans in my server box has become noisy, so I decided to go out and replace it with a new one. I bought a spiffy Antec fan (lit with three different color LEDs no less, cool!) and decided to power down the server and give it a try.

The fan comes of course with four Phillips head, self tapping sheet metal screws, made of some really shiny looking metal.

Metal that is of course considerably softer than the metal in the case that it supposed to tap into.

Net result: I’ve managed to tap the four holes, but mangled two of the four screws irrevocably in the process. The picture to the right? That screw is supposed to be round. After stripping it badly, I had to grab it with vice grips and twist it back out. Sigh.

Why can’t these things just be made out of stainless for god’s sake? I’d spend $0.50 for that. Really, I would.

Why can’t camera phones become better cameras?

I really like the convenience of having a camera phone for taking snapshots, but unfortunately, there is a vast gulf in capability between what a modest digital camera can do and what is standard on camera phones. My Motorola MPx220 (despite it’s quoted 1.3megapixel capability) is just pathetic. Witness the following two pictures, the first taken with my MPx220:

Photo from my MPx220

The second with my Nikon 4500, a 3.2 megapixel digital camera:

Photo From My Nikon 4500

Click through to look at the originals. There is no comparison. Yes, the Nikon has a good quality, high resolution sensor and a reasonable lens, but can’t anyone make a decent camera phone that takes decent, honest 640×480 images. I’m not asking for megapixels here…

Brainwagon Radio: Happy Birthday, Grokster and Gnomedex

Carmen's Cube

Where your host sings Happy Birthday to his wife and then goes on to discuss the recent Supreme Court decision regarding Grokster, and his feelings on the cult of personality that seems to be forming around blogging, as is exemplified by Gnomedex.

Links from the show:

  • The best blog on the doings of the Supreme Court would seem to be the SCOTUSblog.

Personal Expression is Just a Fad…

Every once in a while, you read something that makes you just shake your head. Dave Slusher mentioned David Coursey’s anti-podcasting article. I’m not so opposed to his opinions on the grounds that he’s a knee-jerk-off (although he does seem to fit the description) but rather from the simple fact he’s hopelessly off target in his criticism.

If you go and spend a few minutes reading his article, you’ll find that he’s really all over the map. First off, he begins with a rant about iTunes and iTunes Radio Stations. What this has to do with podcasting is anyone’s guess, but he goes off four the first four paragraphs about it, so he must really have felt it was worth saying, given that he introduces his article with it.

And then drops the topic entirely.

He then accidently strays into something which I actually think is likely to be the truth:

Over time, I expect the “most listened to” Podcasts will be products of existing media companies that use Podcasts as a means of repurposing content.

While I don’t think this is entirely correct, it doesn’t immediatey fail the sniff test. After all, existing media companies do possess large libraries of licensed and copyrighted content that they can draw on which are unavailable or expensive for others to acquire. Even independents will be tempted to adopt the trappings of traditional media companies as they grow in popularity, so the “successes” in podcasting will likely be less different from big media than you otherwise might imagine.

That is, of course, if you are looking at the most popular end of the curve. The question is really what happens in the Long Tail.

The existing media industry works really well at the big end: selling hundreds of thousands to millions of units of works. It basically has no real coherent strategy for creating and distributing content to a few hundred to a few thousand individuals. It is in this end that I think that unconventional business plans and to a certain extent, just creating media for its own sake will rule the day. Ordinary media outlets will find it difficult to adapt their business to operate in this more rarified environment, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t find players in this arena. After all, the barriers to entry and the risks are signficantly lower than trying to follow the traditional path to wide media distribution, even if the payoff is somewhat more limited.

Coursey then strays off into what I think is really a short sighted argument:

Personal Podcasting, like personal blogs, is a fad and will fade. Just like personal sites were a fad in the early days of the Web. People experiment because content creation can be fun, sort of like finger-painting was back in preschool, but people also run out of creative energy, and the maintenance of a site, blog or Podcast becomes a chore. And the content gets boring, and the audience goes away.

First, I don’t know what Internet Coursey is using, but I’m baffled why he thinks that personal websites have gone away. The Internet is chock-a-block full of them: we call them “blogs” and everyone seems to have one these days. Yes, many of them peter out because they do become chores for people, but for many, they are not chores: they are significant outlets for personal creation and expression. I suspect the same will be true of podcasting.

He goes on:

Pioneer Webmasters quickly found that creating an interesting Web site required more art and photography skills than most of them possessed. They also learned that creating and maintaining an interesting site was a lot of work, with little reward.

I must admit, I do spend a fair amount of time each day working on my website: gathering content, tweaking software, uploading digital photographs and the like. But to me it’s fun. Interesting. Even exciting at times. Would it be cool if I got hundreds of emails or comments each day? Maybe. But even with my modest level of success, I consider it fun, not a chore. It’s just part of what I do.

Coursey closes with this gem:

I’ve been in the media all my professional life and have spent years trying to understand audience behavior. I can’t always tell what the masses will like, but I am pretty good at calling losers. And as a mass medium, Podcasting will be one of them.

Allow me to use the Brainwagon Universal Translator:
UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR ENGAGED
TRUST ME, I AM GETTING PAID TO WRITE, SO I MUST KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. THE EXISTENCE OF A MEDIA WHERE INDIVIDUALS ARE GRANTED THE SAME PRESTIGE THAT I ENJOY SIMPLY CANNOT BE TOLERATED.
THESE ARE NOT THE DROIDS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.
DISENGAGE UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR

Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me, old man.

Young Trekkie Persecuted

For those of you with a sense of humor, try reading this account of a young man who was suspended for reciting his own pledge of allegiance to the Federation of Planets.

On a more serious note, I wonder why exactly schools choose to force participation in these silly patriotic enterprises. It’s like when you toss Christmas parties at work: it doesn’t really inspire any new fondness for your coworkers. If you had any fondness for them, you probably welcome the chance to hang out with them. If you didn’t, the promise of a free dinner and booze is hardly likely to make any lasting change in your opinions.

If you’d like your children to have feelings of genuine patriotism for your country, here’s an idea: work to make sure your country is actually deserving of your respect. No country which promises freedom should require loyalty pledges.

From Thoreau’s CIvil Disobedience:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(5) etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Wikipedia

I like Wikipedia. I think it is a great resource, maintained by the efforts of many talented and knowledgeable individuals, even in the face of what amounts to continuous attempts at vandalism.

Wikipedia has been subject to some criticism. John C. Dvorak thought that Google’s involvement in the project spelled its demise. Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger noted some procedural problems in an article for kuro5hin. But few have been utterly as self-serving as, you guessed it, the king of self promotion, Dave Winer:
Scripting News: 6/11/2005

The Wikipedia history of podcasting has been carefully rewritten to eliminate any mention of my work. The open approach has the same problem that the proprietary one has, it can easily be manipulated by people with an axe to grind. It’s nice that they give such prominent credit to Chris Lydon and Adam Curry, but the technical innovation in both cases was my work. And my podcasts were the inspiration for Curry’s. How is WIkipedia going to prevent from this from happening again? That’s a serious issue. It’s not the first time it’s happened. This is why I’ve never been a strong advocate of Wikipedia.

Winer’s problem seems to not be with the project itself, but just that perhaps for a short interval, it doesn’t serve to kiss his ass in the way that he feels he’s due.

Addendum: I’ve removed the Scripting News from my bloglines list, but Winer bleats keep showing up in other locations, like Jon Udell’s blog. Is there no way to escape the Winer whine?

Scoble on Human Rights…

In one of his recent posts, Robert Scoble reveals a certain pragmatism when it comes to human rights.

When doing business in various countries and, even, various states here in the US, we must comply with the local laws if we want to do business there.

And, as a shareholder in Microsoft, I think it would be a bad decision to decide not to do business in China.

Tell me Robert, when you are willing to curb your sense of moral outrage simply to appease your shareholders, why should we bother to listen to you on any subject?

Doesn’t your eagerness to overlook basic human rights abuses in pursuit of bucks for your corporate masters give you any cause for introspection?

Today’s Installment of What Sucks Today…

I worked most of the day getting my garage door primed, and decided to accelerate the process of finishing the job tomorrow by spending more money. So, I trundled my body, covered with white flecks of paints to the Home Depot, and picked up a new Wagner Pro Power Paint Sprayer. I figure that it will help speed the process of getting a nice even coat over the lattice of slats that cover my garage door.

When I got it home, I decided to read the instructions, and make sure I understood what all the parts were.

That’s when it became obvious that the sprayer had been used before. The piston inside it had a residue of white paint sticking to it, and the spin valve was frozen in place, unable to move.

Sigh.

Back to the Home Depot tomorrow. Who do they think they are, Fry’s?

Stopped Clock Right Once in a Day…

But sadly isn’t right for the second time.

Pundit Dvorak (just how does one get to be a pundit anyway) muses that the announcement that Apple will shift to Intel chips is somehow more harmful for Linux than for Microsoft. His reasoning?

Let’s face it, Linux is free, useful and powerful. That alone says that it should have made a bigger impact on the desktop market than it has. There are obviously some problems. You find this same lack of acceptance with Solaris and other pure Unix operating systems too. This includes the BSD-Unix used in the core of the Mac OS. That is until it was turned into OS-X by Apple. Apple simply added modern user interface concepts.

Sigh.

First of all, let’s remember that Apple owes a great deal to the existance of open source software. It is clear that Apple could have hired a development team and came up with their own modern operating system to compete with Microsoft, but they didn’t have to. Apple instead chose a robust, mature product to serve as the basis for their OS X platform, which allowed them to concentrate on what they do best: design and user interface. What we see here is a nice symbiosis between open source and the commercial world.

Secondly, Linux has made an impact on the server market, on the embedded market and even the desktop market. To argue otherwise is just silly. Could the Linux desktop be better? Of course. But has he tried out Slax or Ubuntu. Progress is being made, and for many users Linux provides an excellent inexpensive option to paying $180 for Windows XP.

Dvorak continues to muse:

Linux has other problems too. It’s likely that developer interest will wane when Apple is fully engaged on the X86 platform.

It is clear from this statement that John C. just doesn’t understand in the least why people choose to support Linux with their time and effort.

His rationale?

While Apple ran on the PowerPC chip the amount of developer effort in the Open Source camps was nil. But now that Apple is using the same processor as everyone else, targeting the Macs will now be an easy decision to make. This will be at the expense of Linux.

Perhaps John C. should learn about Fink for Mac OSX. It lists 5247 packages which are available for Mac OS X. Where did they come from? Why, mostly from authors of free software. It is entirely likely that this trend will continue, since it is usually reasonably simple to write applications which are portable to both environments.

If I were a betting man, I’d say this move is very good for Apple, and it will come at the expense of Microsoft. With Longhorn still over a year away (if current schedules hold) and delivering much more modestly than initially proclaimed, Microsoft has left itself open for competition in the world of consumer computing. With the ability to run on hardware of equal capabilities, people will be able to make nearly direct comparisons between machines which run Microsoft operating systems and those that run Apple, and I suspect they are going to find very marginal performance from the engineers at Redmond. Apple is now completely dominating the MP3 market, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them make great strides in the quest for the consumer desktop/laptop.

Time will tell.

But I bet in 10 years, I’ll still have a Linux box.