Virtual Thought

Just so we’re all clear… Mac OS X has not had its first virus. The Oompa Loompa threat is a trojan. It disguises itself as a legitimate program (or, er, a JPEG in this case) that invites clicking. You then have to authenticate with your password. Only then will it run. I wouldn’t type in my password to look at a picture, would you? ( ;

It does spread via iChat… but only after it has been executed and authenticated by the user. Compare this to ActiveX virii on PCs that spread because the user went to a bad webpage… way different.

And I’m not doing this because I’m some rabid Mac guy… I just hate misinformation.

Okay, Microsoft, please please please fix this before you put Visual Studio 2005 out.

VS keeps changing project files on me and it’s screwing up my source control. We’re using StarTeam at work and, every time I build, VS changes the types of form and control files in, oh, about half the project files in the solution from “UserControl” or “Form” to “Code”... and then, arbitrarily, back again. This happens even though I haven’t done anything of the sort inside the editor itself… it just happens on solution builds. So then, when I go to StarTeam and try to check in only the files I’ve modified I have to wade through the 30 or so project files that say they’ve changed even though I have changed nothing. WTF(What the fuck)?!?!? Don’t keep erroneously changing the types of those files on solution build! Don’t make it harder for me to do my job!

In this article discussing Bush’s comments about the democratically elected Hamas party he says the following:

“On the other hand, I don’t see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as a part of your platform,” Bush added. “And I know you can’t be a partner in peace if you have a, if your party has got an armed wing.”

Excuse me? What did we do in Iraq, exactly, if not destroy their country? Wasn’t that exactly what President Bush was campaigning on?

Found this on CNN this morning:

“Super-secret spy agency”? WTF?! Can we treat this issue with a little more seriousness, CNN?

Microsoft wins FAT patent case.

In an IP law infected world, what does this mean? Potentially, that Linux won’t be able to use FAT as a filesystem and therefore will only be able to interoperate with Windows filesystems through Windows OSes. It means that all the USB drives of the world just got a little bit more complex, a little more expensive. It means that a small host of helpful, free utilities might have to license the filesystem use from Microsoft.

Godammit. Who did this protect exactly? Microsoft. Who was billions of dollars to ensure that IP legislation stays current and aggressive through donations to key legislators? Microsoft. Who gets hurt by the lack of innovation this widespread, general kind of protection this patent provides? Consumers. You might be thinking, “Well, Microsoft did innovate and invent that filesystem. They deserve to be compensated for their hard work commensurate to their effort and dilligence. After all, I would want that kind of protection should I ever invent anything.”

Wrong. Guess what: We don’t live in a free market. Your products don’t get to compete fairly for two reasons:

1. Late-era capitalism combined with post-scarcity commodities. Digital goods are not scarce. Digital means of production are not scarce. In fact, filesystem innovation at the level of FAT is not scarce. What is, exactly? Time. Right, right… the resource in a digital age. But guess what? If you measure the amount of time spent on developing FAT with an adjusted ruler (adjusting for the current speed of technology development) you’ll find that the time spent was probably only a few minutes. How much is that worth now? Are FAT royalties going to be adjusted to that level? Can a free software advocate walk up to Microsoft, give them $100, and declare that the royalties for FAT have been paid?
2. Influence of capital. If I pay you $5 to influece your decision, is that fair? If large, corporate bodies that are content providers lobby Congress incessantly with large amounts of money, is that fair? I’m not one to argue that “fair” necessarily needs to be a part of the marketplace; however, if you think the market is going to reward your commensurately reward your efforts based solely on those efforts you are sadly mistaken.

My scream of frustration goes here.

It seems that all manner of whacked-out conspiracies were on display on digg.com today.

Among them was this article that asked, Were these brutal beatings inspired by video games? The article’s answer can be found in the last sentence:

Man’s inhumanity to man and his compulsion to pick up a blunt weapon have been around since caveman days. Given the recent tragedy, is the presence of baseball bat weapons in games like the Grand Theft Auto series and The Warriors an instance of art imitating life, or life imitating art?

That says, “No,” to me. “No, video games do not make people kill other people.”

However, as you can see in the first comment after the story, some flaming idiots) do not agree. I can’t wait to see what this clueless loser) does next.

Saw a great image of the famous Bigfoot walk movie stabilized which is very cool. Makes me want to take those images, create a stretched version of the landscape that is entirely visible, and have Bigfoot walk across that. Hmm…

And read an interesting post about how the NSA finds us and what software they use. Very, very interesting…

Just read an article at Wired about new technologies that take a stab at piracy in movie houses. Basically, the article explains a bit about digital watermarking and how that can stop piracy.

I have all kinds of problems with the article. Here’s the first:

Hunt said several other techniques exist. “We’re not trying to describe specifically what is being done, because the effectiveness of these technologies is based on a lack of knowledge.”

Yup, because lack of knowledge about a system is such a great technique in defending a system in the digital age.

And if the projector is the thing responsible for watermarking the movie (visually or aurally), how, exactly, does the projector know where it is? If I run the projector at 2 am but tell it that it’s actually 7:30 pm and that I’m not in Austin, I’m in Spokane… how has this technology helped anything?

When content moves to digital the content creator loses control. End of story. So stop figuring out how to eke out control for the next few years and start thinking about what besides the content itself is valuable in the system of content-provider/content-consumer. Sheesh, people.