God Damn, People Suck -Saturday, October 04, 2003 -8:25 pm-
The unwashed masses of humanity just piss me off. For a species allegedly possessed of intelligence, we really suck.
First of all, there's driving. Jesus christ people, I don't think cars require that you check your brain at the door, but you all act like it. Half of you wallow, the other half attack. Why do people have to accelerate to close the hole I'm about to merge into? For god's sake people, it's not hard to be nice. Lately, I've been practicing a technique that helps to eliminate the mysterious slowdowns for no apparent reason that occur within larger traffic jams. This causes me to, at times, carry a large space in front of me. Now what amazes me is that I daily see people jump out of the faster-moving lane beside me into the hole in front of me. The thing is, the traffic in front of me is stopped. People leave a flowing lane only to stop, just because they say a few yards of open pavement. Fuckers.
Then there's just people. Why do parents have to be so mean to their children? If you just treat them with respect and a little kindness, they won't grow up to be fucked up. I don't think parents know how effective they are at driving their children away, especially in multi-children homes. Praising or being interested in one child while ignoring or condemning another for the exact same this is the pathway to large therapy bills. I'm amazed at the number of people I see that are unfit parents.
My car was in to the exhaust shop today. This was necessitated by it being slightly louder than most geologic events. The problem was, that as wall as having rusted out the muffler, it has rusted out most of the hangers and, most critically, the down pipe that connects the headers to the catalytic converter. That pipe alone cost $160. Total cost: $377.51. Oh, the muffler was free because I had a warranty. Oh goodie.
The Avalanche Has Started, and the Pebbles No Longer Vote -Sunday, October 05, 2003 -4:30 am-
As you all know, I'm pretty pissed off at the American government. One of the most stupid things it has done it to enact a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (full text of law HERE.) The DMCA didn't even have to go through the Constitutionally mandated process to become a law. It was a treaty draft by the WTO and the WIPO that just became law because the US is a part of those bodies. What the DMCA does it prevent anyone from owning, creating, using, discussing, or sharing copyright-circumvention technology. Sounds like a good thing, right? It went horrible wrong. Ever downloaded a mp3? You're a felon. Ever ripped a CD? You're a felon. Ever played a DVD on a non-Windows or non-Apple computer? You're a felon. Ever owned an Apex DVD player? You're a felon. Ever tried to get a new CD that doesn't like your car CD player to play? You're a felon. Ever told someone you've found a flaw in the student ID card you use (BuckID or Blackboard)? You're a felon. We've lived under this draconian law for 5 years now. For the next few days, I'll be posting examples of how this law has violated 1st Amendment rights, punished the innocent, and stifled scientific advancement. Call your Congressmen.
Blackboard is a system of ID cards used on hundreds of campuses nationwide. Recently, as a research project, a student at one of the universities noticed several security vulnerabilities that could result in thousands of dollars being stolen from students. The student tried to give a lecture to security professionals from major universities. The result:
Blackboard Threatens Security Researchers
In April 2003, educational software company Blackboard Inc. used a DMCA threat to stop the presentation of research on security vulnerabilities in its products at the InterzOne II conference in Atlanta. Students Billy Hoffman and Virgil Griffith were scheduled to present their research on security flaws in the Blackboard ID card system used by university campus security systems but were blocked shortly before the talk by a cease-and-desist letter invoking the DMCA. Blackboard obtained a temporary restraining order against the students and the conference organizers at a secret "ex parte" hearing the day before the conference began, giving the students and conference organizer no opportunity to appear in court or challenge the order before the scheduled presentation. Although the lawsuit complaint Blackboard subsequently filed did not mention the DMCA, its invocation in the original cease-and-desist letter preceding the complaint contributed to the chill the students and conference organizers felt in challenging the complaint and proceeding with the scheduled presentation.
John Borland, "Court Blocks Security Conference Talk," CNET News, April 14, 2003.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-996836.html
Or another case:
Professor Felten's Research Team Threatened
In September 2000, a multi-industry group known as the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) issued a public challenge encouraging skilled technologists to try to defeat certain watermarking technologies intended to protect digital music. Princeton Professor Edward Felten and a team of researchers at Princeton, Rice, and Xerox took up the challenge and succeeded in removing the watermarks.
When the team tried to present their results at an academic conference, however, SDMI representatives threatened the researchers with liability under the DMCA. The threat letter was also delivered to the researchers' employers and the conference organizers. After extensive discussions with counsel, the researchers grudgingly withdrew their paper from the conference. The threat was ultimately withdrawn and a portion of the research was published at a subsequent conference, but only after the researchers filed a lawsuit.
After enduring this experience, at least one of the researchers involved has decided to forgo further research efforts in this field.
Pamela Samuelson, "Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to Science," 293 Science 2028, Sept. 14, 2001.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/293/5537/2028
Letter from Matthew Oppenheim, SDMI General Counsel, to Prof. Edward Felten, April 9, 2001.
http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm
Go the the
Anti-DMCA Website to learn more.
On Our Country... -Wednesday, October 15, 2003 -12:22 am-
Because of a lot of the things I've been reading and watching lately, I've been thinking quite a bit about our government and our country. I've come to the conclusion that a lot of things must be broken. Some of it has to be down to the fact that the world the Constitution was written in no longer exists. The Framers set into motion a system that divided power among offices, but looked to one man to wield and take responsibility for that power. I think that idea may no longer work. The whims of the man in the Oval Office send the world careening on too tilted a course. And when that course leads to rocky shoals, one man bears the burden of the failure of a nation. If, by chance, the man holding that office is a good man, the strain placed upon him by other people's follies surely must be too much to bear. One person cannot possibly be capable of dealing with the demands of a world gone mad. Another stumbling block, I think, is the misconception that we live in a democracy. At a Federal level, the United States is not a democracy, it is a Republic. The people are under the mistaken impression that we make the decisions for the country by voting. We don't. At best, we get to elect the people who make the decisions. The only time we have direct affect on the governance of our country is when a Constitutional Amendment is ratified by a vote of the people. Anyone remember when that last happened? Now, even that system is broken. We no longer have our voices heard in the process of election. The President of the United States was not elected by the people. Due to our flawed and corruptible system of election, a man whom the majority of America did not vote for controls our country. But even there, I misspeak for someone controls him. We have sold our country to the highest bidder. We are now a nation owned by corporations. When at a time when the economy is faltering, and the dollar is falling faster against every other currency than at any time in history, how are we supposed to make our voices heard against corporations that can afford to lose USD40billion just so one of their products may succeed? Our civil liberties, the very reason this country was founded are being systematically stripped from us, and the American people remain quiet. Those voices that are raised are extinguished by the hands of shadows and those to prominent to disappear are discredited. Once the people begin to awaken to the loss of freedom, will they be allowed to leave?
Science Begins to Confirm Link Between Genius and Madness -Wednesday, October 15, 2003 -4:22 am-
Some scientists recently completed a study in which they found a strong link between something called Latent Inhibitions and genius/creativity. Basically they found that really creative people don't have a built-in filter to stop thinking about things. Most people look at a lamp and see a lamp. Someone with low latent inhibitions would see the lamp and not bother to stop there. They'd think about electricity, and fire, and light switches, and lightning. The fact that the light coming out is yellow would take them down a path along which they'd find Big Bird and bananas, and Sponge Bob, and the sun, and yellow submarines, and the Beatles, and insects. The study indicates that creativity is potentially the brain just not knowing when to stop. The problem with this is that without a high IQ and good memory to filter out the noise, such runaway lines of thinking lead to schizophrenia. So there really is a fine line between genius and madness.
Which side am I on?
The article is in the September 2003 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The title is Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals
It was written by Shelley H. Carson, Jordan B. Peterson, and Daniel M. Higgins
Mixed Nuts... -Tuesday, October 21, 2003 -3:46 pm-
On Sunday, a large group of my friends went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival. I attempted to join them, but was greatly hindered by the Columbus Marathon. Sidebar: Typing that just made me realize that it's been a year since all the drama last year with the blonde cow. Somehow, that's just disturbing. Anyway, the marathon kept Amanda from being able to get to my house so we could leave. Two hours late, we finally set out on the road. Driving down there was a trying experience. I never want to drive like that again. Traffic was flowing between about 83 and 87 MPH the whole way. Taking into account the areas of 55 (construction) and the distance we weren't on the freeway, we still averaged 76MPH. Ordinarily, I won't speed, but since the slow lane was moving that fast, I just went with it. My car does not like to be driven upwards of 70MPH I found. It's a lot of work. Also, in that heavy of traffic at that speed, it's really intense, I had to pay way too much attention not to kill us all. However, we did manage to get there in only 2/3rds of the time it usually takes. Once we got there we eventually found everyone else at the Chess Match. My god, was it bad. I have never seen stage fighting that bad, and I've done high school theatre. Most of the people then went to watch the human equivalent of Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog, but 5 of use went shopping. Mich found a blue silk scarf she liked. I managed to convince her to let me buy it as a present. One of the other girls with us was acting very cute. She normally doesn't like her looks much, but she found some things she thought she looked very cute in and was quite happy. I like it when people are happy. Truth be told, she looked very cute by anyone's standard. Another one of the girls bought a cloak, which is one of the most ridiculously overpriced items at any Faire. However, it is quite pretty, and quite petty. I was teasing her about her needing a minute alone with the cloak, or having a nice candle lit bath and then wrapping up in just the cloak. She laughed the laugh of the guilty. And so the day passed on, and I came home with nothing, which is better than I usually do. However, all of this got me interested in making a cloak for myself again. I think I've figured out how to do it, but I won't know until I get the money to try.
Yesterday was my EET final, my first for this term. Most of it was pretty easy. It was well written. If you paid attention in class it was pretty much just plug and chug. However, if there was a bit you were missing, it was a bitch. Which happened to me on the last question. It was 2 equations in 2 variables with differential calculus. However, the prof had taught us a method for solving the specific case relevant to the design of a 555 Timer that didn't involve anything esoteric. I forgot the method. So I had to do it all long hand. For 2 and a half pages. It was ugly. I was the first person to get to the last problem, and almost the last person to leave the room. Oops.
That evening I spent helping friends. Michele is trying to get together a Halloween costume that looks like one of the drawings by Alberto Vargas (scroll down a lot). So we fussed around with the computers for a few hours. While I was looking through the pin-ups, another of my friends IMed me rather upset. So I grabbed her from campus and we went out into the "country". Or to be more precise, different places around Hoover where there weren't lights or many cars. Setting on my ass on cold ground really makes my hips hurt these days. We drove around some too, for a total of about 100 miles, all well after nightfall. I got home very late and very tired.
And now I sit alone, on the Dark Side of the Moon.
Sometimes Seeing the Present Lets You See the Past... -Wednesday, October 22, 2003 -3:32 pm-
I know that in the context of causality that is a self evident statement... deterministic universe and all that, but on a practical level, it's kind of interesting. I was driving around today over near Color Plus, which is near 5th St. and Spring. I saw a gate at the exit to a parking lot that was a little different. The turn-pike was about 10 feet off the ground. There was a semi truck setting behind it, waiting to be let out. After a moments surprise, I could see semis past plowing through the gate because it was too low to see. I was amused.
On a related topic, thanks to the British, I finally know what a semi truck is only part of. It's semi-articulated, meaning that it can bend between the cab and trailer but not at the rear axles of the trailer. So a big-assed Ryder truck is a non-articulated truck and a fire truck with a joint behind the cab and a tiller steering at the rear is fully-articulated. I'd like to know if there are any other fully-articulated trucks.
First Post! -Friday, October 24, 2003 -7:43 pm-
I received my copy of Panther mid-day today, and I've had my install up and running on my laptop since about an hour before the official release for my time zone. As far as I can tell, it's kind of a mixed bag. Some of the stuff is great. Expose, Fast User Switching, and better security all are major pluses. However, there are some major setbacks. It feels slower. I'm not sure why this is. Most of the pre-release reviews remarked on how much of a speed boost there was, so I suspect that something is not optimized in my system. The new Finder flat out sucks. Since OS X Public Beta, Apple has been moving further and further away from the UI model for the pre-OS X Finder. Personally, I find the new Finder much less intuitive and much slower to use. The process of learning OS X has been one of coming to understand how my expectations for using the computer had been broken. The new interface is much more like Windows XP, a format I find frustrating. Hopefully, I'll come to adapt to it. The switch was pretty smooth. So far, I've only noticed three programs that broke. First, and expectedly, ClearDock broke. I don't think there has been an update yet that didn't break the hacks people apply to the dock. Second, and only a small surprise, uControl broke. uControl does key remapping and a few other things. Since it's a non-Apple-sanction kext, it isn't at all surprising that enough changed to break it. Finally, and quite surprisingly, Excalibur broke. Excalibur is a UNIX-compatible spell checker. I have no idea why it broke, but suspect it can be fixed by reinstalling the application. Hmmm, I can't launch X11, so I guess that broke too. I have that on disk with me (I'm currently in BFE and have no Net access), so I'll try reinstalling in the morning. Good news is: no crashes and nothing OS-level is broken.
Panther: 24 Hours Later -Saturday, October 25, 2003 -9:21 pm-
I'm starting to find some of the less flashy features that are still somewhat amazing. The Fast File Search lets you run a search from within a Finder window. It starts the search in real time and refines the search as you add more characters to your query. It's default behavior is to search all local disks, a function for which I think the Find command still takes the cake. More useful is the Selection setting, where it searches amongst the current folder (recursively) or amongst the currently selected items. This makes it easy to open your Documents folder and find all of the .doc files with the word fish in their name. Unfortunately, I think this feature will confuse new users greatly. As soon as you enter a character in the search field, it begins sorting results. If you delete the characters from the search field, it still shows only those files that were a result of the query. You have to click the little X at the end of the search field to exit search mode. I suspect this will lead to a lot of users being confused because they see nothing in the search field, but aren't seeing all of their files.
Second is the Action pop-up menu. It's an icon in the Finder tool bar that duplicates the menu accessed by right-clicking (my method of use) on a file or folder. However, there are two additions. First, labels are back, which, to me, is marginally useful. Second, and most usefully, you can now create zip archives from the pop-up menu. This is really freaking convenient. It would be nice if you could set it to create tar.gz, but I'll go with what I can get.
Well, now that I've got net access again (ughghhehhghghhhhhh... sweet internet), I've been able to fix all of the apps that Panther broke other than uControl. Turns out uControl relied on a bug in the gcc 3.1 compiler. Panther was compiled on the gcc 3.3 compiler, and therefore, uControl can no longer get into the system. It's kinda surprising that uControl doesn't break Panther, poking around in it's innards like that.
I Am A Mix Master -Thursday, October 30, 2003 -12:12 pm-
I just took a quiz at a sound website. It said:
Congratulations! You have received the Mix Master award. Somehow your keen sense of the obvious combined with an in depth awareness of the nuances of the auditory profession has allowed you to navigate your way to being a Mix Master. You are on the right track and somehow figured out that all you hear is not to be believed. Good luck and congratulations!
