Adam Fields (weblog)

Since when does “one tower” evoke “two towers”?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/arts/30appraisal.html?ex=1277784000&en=4099edc8a297a3b6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

“There is no doubt that Mozilla has walked into an agenda capture process. It specifically excluded one CA, CACert.org, for what appears to be competitive reasons. Microsoft enters these things frequently for the purposes of a) knowing what people are up to, and b) controlling them. (Nothing wrong with that, unless you aren’t Microsoft.) At least one of the participants in the process is in the throes of selling a product to others, one that just happens to leave itself in control. The membership itself is secret, as are the minutes, etc etc.”

https://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000514.html

Ironically, the headline of this article is “IRS search for public records access ends with ChoicePoint”. Ha!

“The Internal Revenue Service has awarded ChoicePoint Government Services a contract worth as much as $20 million to serve as the agency’s public records provider for batch processing projects, according to the company.”

http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/36239-1.html

???!

So, being the target of the data breach du jour is now your ticket to FAT FAT GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.

Oh, but wait, that was four or five months ago. Everyone must have forgotten about it by now.

Right?

Via hackaday:

http://www.casualty-maps.com/

[Update: another map (not a Google map), this one with casualties plotted over time by country and location in Iraq: http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html]

I’ve been hearing a lot that the Grokster decision is akin to the court saying that gun manufacturers should be liable for crimes committed with guns.

I think a better analogy is this: if a gun manufacturer sells guns with a sign that says “Bank Robbing Projectile Launchers Here” and then in the middle of a bank robbery they help their customers unjam their guns so they can fire at the cops again, that they might have some liability as an accessory to the bank robbery.

Apparently, it’s just been discovered that buckyballs are water-soluble and antibacterial.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-05zzl.html

I’ve actually had time to read the entire decision, and I find this totally reasonable.

This is the text of the decision, and I’m surprised that this was turned into such a landmark case to begin with. It’s meaninless - all it says is that if you promote a service meant to contribute to copyright infringement, you can’t hide behind the defense that your service also has other uses.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=04-480

Discovery revealed that billions of files are shared across peer-to-peer networks each month. Respondents are aware that users employ their software primarily to download copyrighted files, although the decentralized networks do not reveal which files are copied, and when. Respondents have sometimes learned about the infringement directly when users have e-mailed questions regarding copyrighted works, and respondents have replied with guidance. Respondents are not merely passive recipients of information about infringement. The record is replete with evidence that when they began to distribute their free software, each of them clearly voiced the objective that recipients use the software to download copyrighted works and took active steps to encourage infringement.

This isn’t about freedom of technological expression, unless I’m missing something big here. These guys were running a service encouraging people to trade copyrighted content, giving them tech support on it, and then hiding behind the claim that other people were using the service for legitimate means.

We can argue about whether that should be legal or not, but as far as I can tell, there isn’t a strong case for the argument that it actually is legal. This isn’t about protecting the rights of technologists to develop new ideas - this is about actual copyright infringement. There are two different cases here:

1. You release a tool that enables people to infringe copyright and you have no control over that.
2. You release a tool that enables people to infringe copyright and you advertise it as such, promote it with that goal, and help people out when they can’t download the latest Britney album.

Sounds like #2 to me.

The Supreme Court has unanimously decided that filesharing companies should be held liable for copyright infringement performed on their networks.

“One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright … is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses,” Justice David Souter wrote in the ruling.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050627-5042.html

[Update - I think this is reasonable. Here's why.]

I’ve just started playing Psychonauts, and it’s tremendous fun. I’ve been a fan of Tim Schafer games for a long time - I’ve played all of them except Day of the Tentacle.

It’s rare to find kid friendly games that aren’t boring for adults.

I’ll be posting a review to Buy Adam when I’m done with it, but there’s one piece of dialogue I just have to share (possibly slightly inaccurately quoted from memory):

Raz: They’ll be looking for Raz, the boy, but they’ll find Raz… the Psychonaut!
Dogen: And then you’ll make their heads explode?
Raz: What? No! You do that?
Dogen: No…
Dogen: Except that one time. But now I wear this special hat. Do you want to try on my hat?
Raz: No, no, that’s okay.

What’s that slightly coppery smell? It’s irony mixed with incompetence.

So, let me get this straight. The UK government decides to implement a national ID system amid serious criticism of its effectiveness at all and its cost-effectiveness in particular, and now is considering selling the data to pay for spiraling costs.

I bet that idea is guaranteed to reduce identity theft and abuse of the system.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=649780

We spent the day at the Mermaid Parade yesterday in Coney Island.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields/sets/504041/

If you don’t have the patience to go through all of them, here are a few of my favorites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields/sets/504109/

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3239024

New London, Connecticut is salary.com’s #1 most affordable city for 2005:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/23/pf/pay_costliving/index.htm

“The living costs measured in the new Salary Value Index include housing, food, transportation, utilities and state taxes. The index also factors in an area’s employment and job-growth rates.

What it does not account for are quality-of-life issues, such as culture, school systems and the weather.”

… or, you know, the fact that the city may seize your house and knock it down.

“File a false unemployment claim and you can receive $400 per week for 26 weeks. Do it for 100 Social Security numbers and you’ve made a quick $1.04 million. It’s tough to make crime pay much better than that.”

http://news.com.com/States+fiddle+while+defrauders+steal/2010-1071_3-5754429.html

Wired picks up on the fact that Google is growing fast, aggregating a LOT of data on its users (some of it incredibly personal) and not telling anyone what they’re doing with it behind the veil of vague privacy policies.

The article is a decent summary, but it also misses the point that a good deal (if not all) of the Google information is subject to revelation simply if “We conclude that we are required by law or have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public.”

That is NOT the same as a subpoena. I talked about this previously in a discussion about why Google’s needs come before your own.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67982-2,00.html

I think this is a terrible precedent. But, you know, you’ve got to build bypasses.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050623/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_seizing_property

I can’t wait for the nanobots to start fighting over molecule level tagging. Presumably, the coding of the DNA strands is protected by all sorts of interesting copyright law, too.

Bruce Schenier points out this new technology:

The system, called Sentry, works by fitting a box containing a powder spray above a doorway which, once primed, goes into alert mode if the door is opened.

It then sprays the powder when there is movement in the doorway again.

The aim is to catch a burglar in the act as stolen items are being removed.

The intruder is covered in the bright red powder, which glows under ultraviolet (UV) light and can only be removed with heavy scrubbing.

However, the harmless synthetic DNA contained in the powder sinks into the skin and takes several days, depending on the person’s metabolism, to work its way out.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/dna_identificat.html

“Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.”

http://www.venganza.org/

Dear Adobe:

Your activation system is a failure.

I have been a loyal customer for more than ten years. I’ve dutifully paid pretty much whatever you’ve asked for upgrades over the years, and I’ve always been happy with your product.

I understand that you don’t want people to steal your software. Never mind that Photoshop is largely the industry leader in image management because it was mercilessly copied by everyone. Your product is good, and I like it.

Let’s be clear about this. I’m not stealing your software.

But you’re treating me like a criminal. Twice in the past few weeks, I’ve had to talk to one of your activation support reps because your online activation system is broken. It has several times just decided that I’d activated enough, and was suspicious. Never mind that I was reinstalling on a brand new replacement computer. Never mind that on the first occasion this happened, there was no grace period, and the software simply would not run until I talked to a representative on the phone, who, by the way, are ONLY AVAILABLE DURING WEST COAST BUSINESS HOURS.

Thanks. You’ve given me reasons to think twice about giving you more money in the future and tarnished your spotless reputation.

Bravo. I hope it was worth it.

[Update: I've spoken to Adobe support after my fourth automated reactivation failure, and apparently, this is an issue with RAID devices, where the activation system sees it as a different computer configuration on subsequent checks. My previous comments stand. This is totally unacceptable. Worse than that. The system is not only broken, it's returning false positives for theft masquerading as valid and accepted disaster prevention techniques. So, my opinion is now this - Adobe has not only foisted misguided copy protection techniques on us, but, to add insult to injury, they're still beta. There is a patch available, so contact Adobe if you have this problem.]

[Update #2: I installed the patch, and activation failed yet again. Holding for support... ]

[Update #3: After activating again via phone, all seems to be working. For now. ]

This PDF entitled “Sony to Include Blu-ray in PS3: HD-DVD Green with Envy” is $1500 on Amazon. It’s one page.

Really!

I’m not sure if the one page is the pictured cover page, or there’s another page after that.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002XWAGW/buyadam-20

http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/nerdwatch/

“MasterCard International reported today that it is notifying its member financial institutions of a breach of payment card data, which potentially exposed more than 40 million cards of all brands to fraud, of which approximately 13.9 million are MasterCard-branded cards.”

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050617/175525.html

“I still buy, but now I also steal. You have forfeited your right to my loyalty. And maybe you’re too lost and beaten to care, and even more likely it’s too late to matter, but for a few minutes I’m going to pretend that neither of those things are so. I’m going to pretend that you’re still capable of awareness and reason, and in a spirit of truth that you long ago stopped deserving, while I’ve still taken little enough to list, I’m going to tell you exactly what I have stolen from you, and why.”

The list is interesting, and includes things that are out of print, artificially available in only one country, or just old, crappy, and overpriced.

http://www.furia.com/twas/twas0503.html

Wake up guys - this is what your best customers think of you.

New Terry Gilliam movie. I was getting disappointed about the summer movie slate, but here we go!

http://movies.channel.aol.com/franchise/exclusives/the_brothers_grimm_movie

I got my copy of Adobe CS2 today, and quite frankly, I’m floored.

I tend to focus on Photoshop first, with InDesign a close second.

First impressions of new Photoshop:

The UI is noticeably slower than CS in some minor ways, but I’m not sure if that’s because it’s doing more, or this is just the first time through (some things have gotten faster as I’ve used them). That’s my only criticism so far.

Some things, like raw processing and image browsing, are just a lot faster. Many of the image processing functions are impressively faster.

While the increased feature set on the website sounds minimal, they have really tweaked out everything. I’ve only just begun to explore.

Adobe Camera Raw 3.0 is fantastic and far more flexible than the previous version. You can now do cropping and straightening (with a very intuitive tool) in the raw filter, and can set droppers, adjust constrast curves, do camera color correction with saved profiles (I think this was in 2.5, but not the default one shipped with CS), and apply raw conversion changes without fully opening the image. This last is very useful for doing fast batch raw processing, which Adobe Bridge (the replacement for the crappy browser in the last version) now also supports. They were thinking.

The new Smart Sharpen filter is mind blowing. It is MILES ahead of unsharp mask.

They apparently look at how far in the future your domain expiration is, how your links manifest over time, and how the focus of your site is directed over time, among other things.

It does look to me like, using their definitions, “blog” is largely indistinguishable from “spam”.

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-10-2005-71368.asp

Here’s the actual patent application:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741

(Note: Google’s name doesn’t appear to be on this patent.)

I love Tom Lehrer!

http://www.archive.org/details/lehrer

Plenty of money to go bomb other countries, but let’s not spend any money on making sure our kids can read (yes, I personally learned to read largely from watching Sesame Street). Thanks.

A House panel has voted to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” and other commercial-free children’s shows. If approved, this would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting, threatening to pull the plug on Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch.

The cuts would slash 25% of the federal funding this year–$100 million–and end funding altogether within two years. The loss could kill beloved children’s shows like “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” “Arthur,” and “Postcards from Buster.” Rural stations and those serving low-income communities might not survive. Other stations would have to increase corporate sponsorships.

Sign the petition against this cut:

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/

Um.

No, this doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.

http://www.spermcube.org/

The open source Star Control 2 project released a new version recently.

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Funny little livejournal blog with cartoons mocking the Prequels. How can you go wrong?

This one’s my favorite so far:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/iharthdarth/2867.html#cutid1

http://www.livejournal.com/users/iharthdarth/

The EFF has collected a number of FAQs about legal issues that various kinds of bloggers may face.

http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

The EFF is doing good work that needs doing. I urge you to support them.

Uhhhh…

“We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on our website GWEI.org. With this money we automatically buy Google shares via our Swiss e-banking account. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end we will own it!”

http://www.gwei.org/gwei/

From what very little I know about the architectures, it seems to me that dual-core CPUs will be VERY VERY optimized for emulation - use one core to do the translation that’s then passed to the other across the common cache for actual execution.

Thoughts on this?

Having thought about this for a while, and heard all of the conspiracy theories about how this is Apple’s latest move to dominate the world, here’s what I think.

There is no master plan.

Steve Jobs got backed into a corner by IBM, because IBM wanted Apple to put more money into the PowerPC chip line, which IBM is not terribly interested in keeping alive because, frankly, Apple doesn’t sell that many computers and the technology’s a dead end. So Apple didn’t pay up, and IBM didn’t produce faster, cooler chips for the laptops that Apple wanted, and Apple was left with two choices: produce no more faster laptops, or move to another chip vendor. Intel is the obvious choice, as the largest-and-not-cheapest vendor. Intel’s a little pissed off at Microsoft, and they’ve been getting some heat from AMD (despite continually producing better but not cheaper technology, IMHO). Porting OSX to Intel or anything else is actually laughably easy, because all along, it’s been built on top of a Mach microkernel architecture which is designed specifically for this.

So Apple dumps IBM, who doesn’t really care because they’ve got Sony’s business for the new Cell processors and the PS3 is going to way outsell the Mac any day of the week. Apple will sell, what, 5 million Macs this year? Sony sells that many PS2s in two months. Intel gets a little coolness factor for selling even more of their incredibly popular chip line, and Apple gets their dual-core Pentium M laptops.

Microsoft continues to dominate whole industries through sheer obstinacy.