Posted: March 30th, 2010
Sony BMG takes Beyonce’s official YouTube channel down for “copyright infringement”: “Beyonce
In an act of corporate insanity that reminds me of military behavior as described in Catch 22, Sony BMG removed the videos from Beyonce’s official YouTube channel for ‘copyright infringement.’ It is her channel, and she is their artist. This is awesome! I mean, talk about caring for your musicians! Way to go, BMG!
“
Posted: March 21st, 2010
Dear Mozilla, Please Don’t Kill HTML5 Video! | Brian Crescimanno: “I’m a huge supporter of open formats; I always have been. One of the main reasons Microsoft was able to rise to its Monopoly-level dominance was the proliferation of the proprietary MS Office file formats. However, I have reason to believe that Mozilla’s decision not to support H.264 encoded video via the HTML5 video tag due to the ‘patent encumbrance’ of the codec, is a wrong decision and one that, unless they change their mind, will kill any hope of ushering a new era of online video distribution that exists without plugins. Mozilla has always been an organization willing to take a stand for what they believe in; and they believe in the open web.”
An interesting post arguing for the mozilla to support H.264 in the HTML5 video tag in firefox. Rethinking my position on the matter, I guess dual support for both Theora and H264 would be way to go right now. H.264-encoded internet video that is free will continue to be exempt from royalty fees until at least December 31, 2015. It won’t be a problem until 4 years from now. That’s plenty of time for Theora to improve or Google to open source VP8. With storage and processing power becoming cheaper, I can see Google flipping a switch on December 31, 2015 and Youtube becoming VP8-powered overnight. Google has the power to do that if the licensing terms of H.264 become “disagreeable”. Acquiring VP8 was about giving it bargaining power in the future licensing negotiations with MPEG LA or to give them a way out if necessary.
Granted, I’m not entirely sure that Theora isn’t up to the task, but that seems to be the dominant opinion. But 4 years is plenty of time to get it up to the task if it isn’t already. In the meantime, HTML5+H.264 or flash (yuch) seem to be the only options for internet video. Flash is way worse than HTML5+H.264 in every way (it’s proprietary, buggy, a security hazard and a resource hog). I don’t see any more freedom in Flash than in HTML5+H.264, do you?
So, Mozilla, I’m reversing my previous stance, be pragmatic, support both codecs. I hate flash too much (not to mention it won’t work on my iPhone and future iPad).
Oh by the way, you know that flash uses is H.264 right?
Posted: March 21st, 2010
Daring Fireball: Tits and Apps: “So with this whole thing where Apple has removed and banned like 5,000 ‘sexy apps’ from the App Store, I think I’ve figured out the reason why, including why they’re granting exceptions to established names like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Victoria’s Secret. It’s about branding. Let me just state right here up front that I don’t agree with or like how they’re doing this. I’m just trying to make sense of it.”
Posted: March 18th, 2010
Open Letter: “Dear Apple,
Apple App Review team strikes again, with Erotica (now called Exotica) app rejection, showing your senseless and discriminatory ‘reasonable judgement’.
According to Apple, Erotica’s sex positions illustrations are obscene, pornographic or defamatory.
We’ve decided, therefore, to write this open letter exposing what we consider a misjudgment and huge discrimination, specially if you compare it with current Apple iTunes Store contents like L World, Californication, Sex and the City, Bikini Blast, Top 100 Models or Good Luck Chuck.”
(Via Michael Tsai.)
Posted: February 1st, 2010
Fraser Speirs – Blog – Future Shock: “The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.
The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.”
(…)
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.
In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.
(Via Tao of Mac)
Hmmm… while I agree that computers are too complicated and often hinder “real work” I don’t really what loss of background processing or lack of flash support has to do with it. And there is no good reason not to safeguard the ability to tinker.
Nevertheless, Speirs is correct: the iPhone and the iPad are devices that have the potential to allow people to focus on doing the “real work” instead of “managing” their computers. Just think of how many blog posts there are dedicated to making your computer work (e.g. how to defragment your drive, repair filesystem, remove virus, …). There is also a lot of complexity at the application-level: even keynote is not easy to use! Not enough anyway. I’ll have to try the iPad version for myself before I can comment on it.
(PS: I don’t use Pages & Numbers. I usually have no need for spreadsheets and Pages is just really bad)
Posted: February 1st, 2010
Tinkerer’s Sunset [dive into mark]: “When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with ‘unauthorized computer trespassing.’ That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, ‘On whose computer did he trespass?’ The prosecutor’s answer: ‘his own.’
If that doesn’t make your heart skip a beat, you can stop reading now.”
Posted: January 31st, 2010
Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight – Charlie’s Diary: “Final note: to customers, Amazon would like to be a monopoly (i.e. the only store in town). To suppliers, Amazon would like to be a monopsony (i.e. the only customer in town). Their goal is to profit via arbitrage, and if they can achieve those twin goals they will own everyubody’s nuts — the authors, the customers, everyone.”
The post goes into detail on how the current model works how amazon and the publishers are trying to evolve it in different, mutually-exclusive ways.
After years of being screwed by the content industry at large (Music and Movie) I was generally inclined to be against the publishing industry in what I though was mostly their attempt to exact higher prices from consumers. And of course, DRM; it might not be important to the publishers but it is very important to consumers. Eventually, if one side offers DRM-free media and the other DRM-encumbered media, the winner is clear. Consumers are not as stupid as they appear to board level executives who I’m guessing are the type of people who think themselves much more intelligent than the rest.
Overall, the reverse auction model tends to be a very good one for the consumers – at least those of non-technical books whose prices seem to never go down *coff* – though this probably is just the way it has to work with a much more limited but “premium” market.
Most of the books I tend to read have been around for a few years – many of them already in the public domain, so I guess picking up a book at $6 is better than amazon’s fixed $10. But paying $15 is not. I wonder which books will cost more…
I just hope that this battle results in DRM free books like it did for music. DRM is always too expensive.
UPDATE: Amazon has replied via a post on the kindle community forum.
Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.
Seems surprisingly reasonable. It is clearly a victory for Macmillan. The prices are probably, as Amazon says, unreasonably high but you can chose not to buy them until they drop the prices…
I just hope that this is only the first battle in a long line that will result in DRM free e-books down the line.
Posted: January 24th, 2010
I’m going to skip the introduction and go right to the point: support Mozilla!
How? Use firefox and promote it.
Why? Because you want the web to be Free (not free as in “free beer” but Free as in Freedom). Because you value Freedom and knowledge!
Read these two blog posts:
HTML5 video and codecs by Mike Shaver, Mozilla VP of Engineering
Video, Freedom And Mozilla by Robert O’Callahan, Mozilla Developer
(originally via Slashdot)
If you use Firefox you are giving it a bigger market share and thus more power with content providers. After all, youtube would be worthless without viewers.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
What if a video site is online but no one can view the videos in it? Is it still a video site? Would it have any traffic at all?
I was planning on switching to chrome – after all, it is open source and firefox is slower, uses more resources and I prefer chrome’s UI in many aspects (but not all). However none of those things is nearly as important to me as keeping the web an open place and I believe in the importance of sites like youtube (we’ve all heard about videos on youtube documenting things like police abuse for example).
I’m no Richard Stallman and I not trying to turn anyone into Stallman but the choice between Firefox and Chrome is a close one to begin with. It’s not like I’m going to start promoting Linux (gNewSense at that) over OSX.
Posted: January 22nd, 2010
I just had to share this!
“The US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom,” he said in a statement posted on the foreign ministry website.
“This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations.
An article in the Communist Party’s Global Times English language news website called Mrs Clinton’s criticisms “information imperialism“.
(my emphasis)
Via BBC News
Posted: April 10th, 2007
The Internet is a funny place indeed. It’s filled with trolls and self righteous idiots who like to argue with each other pointlessly. Both of each often delusional to the point of thinking themselves important people…
Today on slashdot: Bloggers Propose Code of Conduct. Did I mention these people have a lot of free time on their hands? This has to be among the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. In Internet speak: WTFLOLBBQ?!? Yeah I know it makes no sense but it is clearly called for.
David Maynor wrote about this and I agree with what he said.
Some people (or just one person, who knows) made a anonymous comments insulting and threatening some random blogger I never heard off. If you’ve been around The Internets for more than a couple of weeks you probably know that stuff like that happens very very often. In fact there are people who do this for fun on a daily basis, one could call them professional trolls if they were being paid. The blogger in question instead of doing what normal people do and ignore the nasty anonymous comments instead reasoned that if the Secret Service takes all threats against The President Of The United States Of America seriously, she should do likewise. Ahhh! Delusional paranoia – it feels good to know I’m important!
Enter the other half of the pointless Internet discussions: the self righteous idiots who think they can argue with trolls and defeat them thanks to their principles and moral superiority. These people decided to jump to the defense of the delusional blogger and a lot of pointless, boring blog posts ensued taking the signal-to-noise ratio of the Internet down another notch.
This would’ve been lame enough by itself but why stop the stupidity here? Know that the issue was hot, Tim O’Reilly had to jump in! I doubt Tim O’Reilly is dumb enough to think this lame Code of Conduct for bloggers would ever change anything so my own personal opinion is that he just wanted attention (or publicity, whatever you want to call it).
Jeff Jarvis already made a good post (though a bit too long for me to bother reading it in full) about this blogger code of conduct.
I have this to say: this is MY blog. You don’t like it? Don’t read it. I really don’t care. I’ll say what I want to say. You have a problem with it? Hint: comments are disabled.
That said, I always appreciate corrections (yeah, sometimes I’m wrong – hard to believe right?) and I’m usually willing to clarify any issue. For example, I often make comments about software I use(d). And sometimes the people who write it happen to be monitoring technorati or whatever. They are always welcome to email me asking me to elaborate on any comment I made or whatever.
Blogs are meant to express their writers opinions (etc). If blogger A wants to insult person B in his blog, that’s his prerogative. The rest of us can chose to read it or not. And after reading it, we can chose to ignore it if we want. Or take sides. Freedom is a wonderful thing and we should be very careful when we consider limiting it in any way – voluntarily or otherwise.
It will undoubtedly be fun to watch the “me too” blogs jump on the code of conduct bandwagon and display their stupidity with pride. It will become a sort of “lack of quality/personality/etc” banner to unite them.
Posted: January 29th, 2007
While we’re more or less on the subject of history, I’ll leave here one of my favorite parts of The Histories of Herodotus (excerpt taken from Ancient History Sourcebook):
III.80: And now when five days were gone, and the hubbub had settled down, the conspirators met together to consult about the situation of affairs. At this meeting speeches were made, to which many of the Hellenes give no credence, but they were made nevertheless. Otanes recommended that the management of public affairs should be entrusted to the whole nation. “To me,” he said, “it seems advisable, that we should no longer have a single man to rule over us—the rule of one is neither good nor pleasant. You cannot have forgotten to what lengths Cambyses went in his haughty tyranny, and the haughtiness of the Magi you have yourselves experienced. How indeed is it possible that monarchy should be a well-adjusted thing, when it allows a man to do as he likes without being answerable? Such licence is enough to stir strange and unwonted thoughts in the heart of the worthiest of men. Give a person this power, and straightway his manifold good things puff him up with pride, while envy is so natural to human kind that it cannot but arise in him. But pride and envy together include all wickedness—both of them leading on to deeds of savage violence.
True it is that kings, possessing as they do all that heart can desire, ought to be void of envy; but the contrary is seen in their conduct towards the citizens. They are jealous of the most virtuous among their subjects, and wish their death; while they take delight in the meanest and basest, being ever ready to listen to the tales of slanderers. A king, besides, is beyond all other men inconsistent with himself. Pay him court in moderation, and he is angry because you do not show him more profound respect— show him profound respect, and he is offended again, because (as he says) you fawn on him. But the worst of all is, that he sets aside the laws of the land, puts men to death without trial, and subjects women to violence. The rule of the many, on the other hand, has, in the first place, the fairest of names, to wit, isonomy; and further it is free from all those outrages which a king is wont to commit. There, places are given by lot, the magistrate is answerable for what he does, and measures rest with the commonalty. I vote, therefore, that we do away with monarchy, and raise the people to power. For the people are all in all.”
III.81: Such were the sentiments of Otanes. Megabyzus spoke next, and advised the setting up of an oligarchy: “In all that Otanes has said to persuade you to put down monarchy,” he observed, “I fully concur; but his recommendation that we should call the people to power seems to me not the best advice. For there is nothing so void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what is he about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; but let us choose out from the citizens a certain number of the worthiest, and put the government into their hands. For thus both we ourselves shall be among the governors, and power being entrusted to the best men, it is likely that the best counsels will prevail in the state.”
III.82: This was the advice which Megabyzus gave, and after him Darius came forward, and spoke as follows: “All that Megabyzus said against democracy was well said, I think; but about oligarchy he did not speak advisedly; for take these three forms of government—democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy—and let them each be at their best, I maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two. What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state? The counsels of such a man are like himself, and so he governs the mass of the people to their heart’s content; while at the same time his measures against evil-doers are kept more secret than in other states. Contrariwise, in oligarchies, where men vie with each other in the service of the commonwealth, fierce enmities are apt to arise between man and man, each wishing to be leader, and to carry his own measures; whence violent quarrels come, which lead to open strife, often ending in bloodshed. Then monarchy is sure to follow; and this too shows how far that rule surpasses all others.
Again, in a democracy, it is impossible but that there will be malpractices: these malpractices, however, do not lead to enmities, but to close friendships, which are formed among those engaged in them, who must hold well together to carry on their villainies. And so things go on until a man stands forth as champion of the commonalty, and puts down the evil-doers. Straightway the author of so great a service is admired by all, and from being admired soon comes to be appointed king; so that here too it is plain that monarchy is the best government. Lastly, to sum up all in a word, whence, I ask, was it that we got the freedom which we enjoy? Did democracy give it us, or oligarchy, or a monarch? As a single man recovered our freedom for us, my sentence is that we keep to the rule of one. Even apart from this, we ought not to change the laws of our forefathers when they work fairly; for to do so is not well.”
III.83: Such were the three opinions brought forward at this meeting; the four other Persians voted in favor of the last. Otanes, who wished to give his countrymen a democracy, when he found the decision against him, arose a second time, and spoke thus before the assembly: “Brother conspirators, it is plain that the king who is to be chosen will be one of ourselves, whether we make the choice by casting lots for the prize, or by letting the people decide which of us they will have to rule over them, in or any other way. Now, as I have neither a mind to rule nor to be ruled, I shall not enter the lists with you in this matter. I withdraw, however, on one condition—none of you shall claim to exercise rule over me or my seed for ever.” The six agreed to these terms, and Otanes withdraw and stood aloof from the contest. And still to this day the family of Otanes continues to be the only free family in Persia; those who belong to it submit to the rule of the king only so far as they themselves choose; they are bound, however, to observe the laws of the land like the other Persians.
Posted: September 5th, 2004
I’ve been wanting to post about a lot of stuff, so why haven’t I? There are three reasons: Far Cry, Metal Gear Solid and Doom 3. A week and a half ago I finished Far Cry. The gaming experience was good (if not excellent), the graphics were phenomenal. Like Filipe pointed out, the view is often breathtaking. I even got to hunt (translation: pick off helpless animals with a powerful rifle – and I don’t mean the mercenaries or trigems). The sound (both sound effects and music) contributed to the almost perfect atmosphere the game created. And tough the game was long, (Filipe disagrees) it never seemed repetitive in spite of the fact that it boils down to ‘clearing’ a small area with enemies and moving to the next area – possibly thinning their numbers on the way with the help of a scope-equipped rifle. I begin wondering if a well written elaborate storyline instead of the simple one would’ve made the game better (more enjoyable) or worse by complicating something simple. Since the best example of a good elaborate story I’ve ever seen in a video game is that of Metal Gear Solid (which I consider the number one game of all time) and MGS 3: Snake Eater is nearing its release date, I decided to play the original MGS again (for the… herm… 8th? 9th time? probably more – I lost count). It is amazing to see how much progress games made in the last 5 years or so. I remember considering the AI in MGS impressive (like everyone else) and know I find it lacking and the genetically enhanced soldiers are incredibly short-sighted. Sure the mercenaries duck and call for help (it would’ve been nice seeing mortally wounded enemies beg for their lives but I guess not everyone is a sadistic bastard) but as you can see here, game AI has a long way to go. Here’s two examples of what I would like to see:
- While shooting at mercenaries, I was usually ducked behind a rock or shooting from a corner, to that i could take cover while reloading or when they fired back. Since I was usually outnumbered, a simple tactic would’ve been for them to keep my position under constant fire by alternating fire (while one fired, the others reloaded) while one (or more) of them approached my position unseen, unhurt.
- The image I posted also shows a typical case of the lack of intelligence in games. I had already killed three or four enemies in that placed when they started coming in carefully (showing that they were no longer sure I was there). I still managed to kill a few (four perhaps) more in precisely the same way. What they should’ve done (and I’m no military or swat expert) since they saw me entering the building and saw their fellow mercenaries die would’ve been to throw a flash bang (smoke grenade or any other type of grenade) and then enter and to enter the building from both doors simultaneously. Alternatively, since the building was made of material that was easily permeable to the bullets, fire a few rounds at the places in which I could be hidden before entering – again from the various entry points available instead of just the front door.
- Use Team Tactics – it feels better killing something that is acting intelligent.
The first is relatively easy to implement compared to the second example which would be somewhat more complex – for a good implementation in a game such as far cry that is.
Moving on to a different subject, I’ve also began playing Doom 3. So far the game is much less hardware-intensive than far cry even tough the graphics are more detailed. This is due to two reasons: far cry plays out in extremely large shinny open spaces with a lot of freedom and those spaces are often filled with dozens of enemies – with a few rather large battles occurring occasionally between mercenaries and trigems. On one of such battles (near the entrance of the volcano) I noticed the game slowing down significantly after using the binoculars to mark the position of the bad guys. Doom 3 on the other hand is claustrophobic, dark and your rarely face more than three or four (big) enemies at the same time (or so I’ve been told and so far I can confirm this). I’m still at the beginning of the game (comms tower or something like that) but it seems to be building up a nice plot and I like reading other people’s email (I’m gonna buy one of those “I read your e-mail” T-shirts). This might also explain why I’ve never been allowed to perform a software installation (as root) in a chefax server unsupervised. That and a few ‘incidents’ with root alias, backdoors & stuff…
Posted: August 21st, 2004
Probability theory put to good use:
Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System
“To improve the efficiency of airport security screening, the FAA deployed the Computer Assisted Passenger Screening system (CAPS) in 1999. CAPS attempts to identify potential terrorists through the use of profiles so that security personnel can focus the bulk of their attention on high-risk individuals. In this paper, we show that since CAPS uses profiles to select passengers for increased scrutiny, it is actually less secure than systems that employ random searches.”
It is an interesting read for people who like to see good old mathematics crush political arguments or for those that never thought about it.
For those who think these and other (in)security measures (such as secret laws) would never be misused, think again – US senator Edward Kennedy’s (Democrat) adventure.
Implications? Civil Liberties? Freedom of Movement? Freedom of Speech? I won’t even mention privacy – no one seems to care about it anymore.