Virtual Thought

There’s this interesting article on CNET that discusses how Microsoft is suing the FairUse4WM developer over stolen source code because, in the Microsoft rep’s words:

“Our own intellectual property was stolen from us and used to create this tool,” said Bonnie MacNaughton, a senior attorney in Microsoft’s legal and corporate affairs division. “They obviously had a leg up on any of the other hackers that might be creating circumvention tools from scratch.”

So, is someone from Microsoft saying that, obviously, only someone with access to the source code could crack FairPlay?

Boy, is that wrong.

Here’s the big fallacy with DRM: if you give someone protected content (songs) and the thing that has to un-protect it to play it (Windows Media Player) then you have given that someone the keys to the kingdom and it is impossible to protect that content. This happens over and over and over… CSS encrypted DVDs and DVD players, locked up game content on XBox titles and the XBox itself, iTunes songs and the iTunes player.

I think what’s really going on is MS(Microsoft) trying to get some legal momentum on this fight, maybe get this hacker-type person Viodentia to pay many, many dollars in a drawn-out legal contest when, truly, MS isn’t going after the hacker for stealing source code—they’re going after the hacker because he/she circumvented the copy protection which is a lesser offense than stealing source code.

Sound and fury. I just hope the judge in the case is smarter than that and doesn’t let MS get away with it.

Saw this cool article about digital download royalties versus CD royalties. It caught my eye, of course, because it has to do with Weird Al Yankovic one of the primary geniuses of our time. He answers the question on his Ask Al page of which format to buy, physical CD or ephemeral DRM-ed digital, and he says, “Please buy CD.” I would buy the CD, Al, except sometimes that might allow Sony to root my box and might force me to pay $18 for packaging and, hey, wasn’t that price supposed to go down like ten years ago?

Dammit. According to the aforementioned article this is the record company’s fault. Apple can probably share some of the blame, too. Dammit. Instead of making it easy for what I see as the two parties involved in this transaction (artist and listener), the record companies and Apple have figured out a new way to screw everybody… the artist by not giving them the profits, and the listener by making us jump through these weird hoops of CD vs. iTunes because of

So hurry up and join Defective By Design and let’s end this crap.

It seems that recently I’ve only been putting funny stuff online. This time, I’m talking about something more serious… a little something called network neutrality.

Prior to a few days ago, the physical infrastructure of the internet was just a bunch of wires that transmitted everyone’s data equally. However, the big telecom companies want to skew this level playing field based on which companies pay them the most. This is where Save the Internet comes in.

Do you like visiting my blog? I probably couldn’t afford to compete with Blogger, or Yahoo, or any other blogging service… and what would happen when I don’t pay? Would my voice be marginalized due to some external market force introduced to pay for a resource that has already been developed and is easily maintained with the current schedule of fees that nearly everyone pays?

I don’t want that to happen. If you don’t either, check out Save the Internet and see what you can do, too.

[tags] Save_The_Internet [/tags]

Hey fellas, have you heard the news…

So it seems that Libby says that Cheney told him that Bush told Cheney that it was okay to leak Valerie Plame’s name. Let’s examine the various conclusions this leads us to:

• When Bush had said before that he wanted the investigation to end so we would know the facts what he meant to say was, “I know the facts but I’m not going to reveal them at this time.”
• When Scott McClellan said previously, No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States, what he meant to say was, “The president knows what happened but is being hush-hush for now.”
• When Joseph Wilson insisted that his wife’s exposure was an act of political retaliation that ended her career the decision to endanger her life and end her career came from the President.
• When Bush said, I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business, he, at that point, knew that he was lying.

Of course, maybe Libby was lying. So that’s perjury. But isn’t he already charged with that?

Here’s some speculation:

• Cheney didn’t talk to Bush about declassifying this information… Cheney, by virtue of releasing the info to Libby, went over the President’s head! And then lied about it!
• The President forgot he did it in the first place!
• Libby is, in secret, a Democrat who hates America and doesn’t support our troops and that’s why he is attacking the President!

Of course, the CIA isn’t doing such a good job at protecting the names of employees anyway… and maybe we should take a look at that?

Just read this article discussing companies and their blogs:

“It’s become an expectation that if you have a business, you have a blog,” said John Jantsch, a Kansas City marketing coach and active blogger for several years. “Consumers are looking to find a community around your service. They’re looking to have conversations with companies about the products they’re using.”

Here we go: No. A blog is not just another PR channel such as television, radio, or print… a blog is a form of interactive media to allow conversation and encourage community. For big companies to have company-sanctioned blogs that have posts that are first reviewed by the company’s legal department, then by the public relations department, then by the Don’t Offend Anybody department… wake up! You are not writing a blog! It may have the CEO’s face next to the post, it may be open for comments, but unless the CEO wrote it his- or herself and is responding to those comments, unless the blog represents an open and honest line of communication between the author and the readers, then it is not “real” blogging (yeah, as if I know!).

Designate someone in the company to be the blogger, be the forum moderator, whatever, but then leave them alone. My favorite example of this kind of person is Walter, the mod for the Northwoods GoDiagram forums. This dude answers every technical question well in a friendly manner and has saved the bacon of many, many GoDiagram developers. He is an invaluable resource and, best of all, he’s a person, he’s out there, he takes risks, and, yes, he represents the company in these one-on-one conversations with the company’s customers. That informal support relationship shouldn’t be capitalized by the company in any formal pricing structure (“3 conversations with Walter for $9.95 per month!”) it should be left the hell alone.

I think service-oriented doesn’t just mean having WSDLs and REST architectures… it means creating and sustaining a community where the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

Where would I be without my faithful news outlets dutifully reporting that cats like birds?

Okay, that’s not entirely true… the article is about the recent cat death in Germany. The cat had eaten a bird infected with H5N1 bird flu and consequently sickened and died.

But with photos like these, I just had to poke fun:

Yes. Thank you. I know cats like birds.

In this struggle to have up-to-the-minute news coverage of every little detail because of the transparency afforded by electronic, “new” media I think our more traditional news outlets are flailing and flapping around like flu-addled birds trying to provide us with the detail they think we want. Heck, maybe we think we want it.

I get really nervous when we apply supply-and-demand economics to the news… is it really okay to give us what we want, all the time? Isn’t that how we get Jerry Springer-style sensationalism that focuses entirely too much on couples whose names abbreviate is cute ways (Bennifer, Brangelina, Jessinick… I made that last one up) instead of real issues like the horrible, unjust war in Iraq, the corruption that is increasingly evident in the highest echelons of government, the global warming we brought upon ourselves that we are still denying?

Cats like birds indeed.

Jesus Christ! It seems that the electronic voting machines in Flordia were illegally accessed during the presidential elections. Anyone else find it extremely, incredibly fucking odd that voting discrepancies are happening in a state where one of the candidate’s family members runs things?

We knew this would happen. There were people saying this over and over before the elections. And, look, they’re right. Good job.