Hey, it least he didn’t call proponents of copyright reform radical extremists, then blatantly lie about it, as Canada’s heritage minister did (and oh yes, he did call them radical extremists, as the end of the linked article points out, it’s on tape).

No no, our VP simply chose to blatantly lie about the damage and impact of file sharing, trying to make it sound like something dangerous and violent–evil, really, when in fact it’s something that is mostly harmless (“Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”) and largely blown out of proportion–the actions of both sides, file sharers and the RIAA, are more misguided than anything else.

Perhaps more on this later, I’ve got a rant brewing, but whether it gets posted or not only time will tell.

Till then,

Lark

Part of the reason I’ve been playing Bioshock is so I can be finish it in time to play the sequel, Bioshock 2 when it comes out in February.

Then I saw this.

The tech specs for Bioshock 2 are out…To save the game or play online, you need to be logged into Games for Window Live. This still applies on Steam – so SecuRom and Games For Windows Live are needed in addition to the Steam client. Hmm.

This is ridiculous. Bioshock allows 15 machine activations, reasonable to a point, (though as I keep saying, I’d like some assurance that these games will be playable in 10-20 years when the developers will probably have a completely different activation system) yet not quite as cool as Arkham Asylum’s 4 activations per month.

I’m willing to put up with reasonable activation limits. I don’t have a problem with DRM in and of itself (I really like Steam’s basic DRM that allows you as many installations as you want but your games can only be played on the one computer you’re logged in on at the time). The Windows Live thing just makes me feel like they’re spitting in my face. I have to be connected to the internet to save a game? Seriously? So if my internet’s not working, not only can I not check email, look at my news feeds and surf around, I also can’t play video games even if they’re stored locally?

EDIT: Looks like some new info is showing up on 2K Games’ forum.

Here’s the word on BioShock 2:

On retail (physical disk) versions, SecuRom is used for disk-checking only.
Activation is done through Games For Windows Live (yes, through the company that’s had no problems abandoning old DRM systems in the past, leaving people with useless mp3s).
No confirmation on the Steam version, if it has SecuRom (it shouldn’t, it has no disks, but we’ll see), or it will have the same activation limit.
You do not need to be online to save games, but you do have to have a G4WL account.

EDIT 2 – From “2K Elizabeth” on the forums, head of 2K’s customer support when asked “And what happens if/when Microsoft decide it’s not worthwhile to keep running GFWL?”:

I’ll also ask about that – but as I said with BioShock, I’m confident that we’ll keep the game around. In the past, we have made sure, even if digital distribution partners go away, our customers still have access to their games.

She also said she’d post on the forums when she hears for sure what Steam’s DRM/activation will be, hopefully by the end of the week.

So my thoughts:

SecuRom is not necessary on Steam at all, so if it’s included that’s bad.
Requiring Games For Windows Live to run in the background, or at all, is irritating.
I do appreciate that she said they would keep the game playable even if G4WL’s activation goes under.

Pending word on the DRM they include with Steam, it might not be that big of deal after all.

We’ll see,

Lark

PS – You know what game isn’t going to require online authentication of any kind? Mass Effect 2. Hell yeah.

Is one required to get married in a church? No, you don’t need a church or a religious leader to get married, you just need a license from city hall. Do you have to be a member of a certain religion to get a marriage license? Of course not. Some people are all of the sudden pretending that marriage is a religious term, probably because homosexuality gives them unease and they’re not yet ready to accept it as legitimate. Don’t be fooled though, people know that you get a marriage license at a city building, not a church.

Catholics, Protestants, Scientologists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans, Pagans, Atheists and Agnostics are all allowed to marry whoever they see fit, and call it a ‘marriage,’ so long as the resulting couple consists of 1 man and 1 woman. So which religion owns ‘marriage?’ Seriously, which specific denomination owns the term ‘marriage’–tell me quickly, so that we can deny everyone that isn’t a member of that specific religion the right to call their union a ‘marriage.’

Most people would probably refuse to discriminate in that way, but some still claim that it’s the privilege of the churches to define what is and isn’t marriage. Okay, well they should know that it’s the official stance of some (or all) branches of Judiasm, Unitarianism, Buddhism, Presbyterianism, Methodism and more I’m sure that same sex marriage should be allowed. All of these groups apparently hold rights to the term marriage, so that’s settled, right? Churches have their say, and gays can get married, mission accomplished!

I understand that a lot of people who support civil unions are trying to be fair while also keeping the peace. I understand a lot of other people are trying to push something separate but equal out of their own fear and hatred of that which they do not know, which seems to fuel most segregation and bigotry.

Marriage isn’t solely a religious concept. It was most probably a social concept first. Today, above all it’s a legal construct. From a Libertarian perspective, the government gets it’s rights from the people. Since no person has the right to tell any consenting adults whether or not they can marry, the government doesn’t posses that right either. Churches can still make as many rules for it’s congregation as they want. As with every other religious proclamation, those of us outside a particular church shouldn’t be subject to any of it’s doctrines.

Lark

In addition to maintaining a running list of all the verifiable lies she told (which I can’t fault him for), Sullivan also frequently revisited one suspected lie that couldn’t be verified without Palin’s consent (by releasing her medical records)–Sullivan suspected that Palin’s son Trig was not her child, but in fact he child of her (at the time) 17-year-old daughter Bristol Palin.

Today I saw (via my feed reader) that Reason editor Nick Gillespie reviewed two books about Sarah Palin in the Washington Post. I was reading Reason’s excerpt of the review and was a little surprised to read this:

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, a self-identified conservative who calls his Daily Dish “the most popular one-man political blog site in the world,” persistently claimed that Trig Palin, the governor’s then-4-month-old baby with Down syndrome, was not Sarah’s biological child and requested the full release of her obstetrical records, stopping just short of demanding he be sent the placenta for genetic testing. (If President Obama is hounded by a small group of reality-challenged “birthers,” who doubt he was born in Hawaii, Palin is certainly the only politician to have given rise to what might be called “after-birthers,” who doubt that she delivered her own children.)

Am I reading too much into that, or is he especially harsh toward Andrew Sullivan? As someone who likes Sullivan, and as someone who read his blog regularly as he was making the aforementioned claims, I’m a little disappointed by how that paragraph treated him. I have to wonder if Gillespie even read what Sullivan wrote about the matter, or if he’s just been influenced by the way it was covered by others. First, let’s address the actual argument, which I think Sullivan best laid out here.

To summarize the link, Palin announced her pregnancy at 7 months, when she didn’t seem to be showing (the reporters she announced it to were shocked). A lot of pictures have popped up from around that time where she didn’t seem to be showing, but one has showed up (the one at the top of the link) where she did look pregnant. Her campaign said she was using her wardrobe to cleverly disguise her pregnancy. I don’t think it’s at all hard to believe that she could have been pregnant and hidden it.

However, some other points come up that give way to doubt:

On top of all this, at the end of October 2009, one of Sarah Palin’s spokespersons said Palin’s medical records would be released within the next week. They never were.

Let me be clear: I don’t have an opinion on who the mother of Trig Palin is. I don’t have enough information, and I don’t care. However, I can understand Sullivan’s doubts.

That said, I don’t remember Sullivan ever flat-out stating that that Trig wasn’t carried by Sarah Palin, he’d only expressed doubt. Here is a post by Sullivan at his angriest. McCain chief aide Mark Salter told a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg: “This whole story about how the baby isn’t hers? Jesus Christ. Just crazy shit.” Even in response to that, Sullivan doesn’t make any direct accusations. In his own defense, he says:

I think the bizarre circumstantial evidence easily rises to the level of material that should be addressed – as presumably could be done definitively – by the campaign.

It is not an answer to call bloggers “insane” because they are asking factual questions to which there must be evidentiary answers.

He closes the post with:

I’m begging the McCain campaign to make me look like a total fool for even wondering. Please, blow my skepticism out of the water. Prove I’m full of “crazy shit.”

Now let’s go back to what Gillespie said (with snarky notes from me in [bracketed bold text]):

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, a self-identified conservative ['self-identified' is code for, 'He thinks he's a conservative. He isn't'] who calls his Daily Dish “the most popular one-man political blog site in the world,” [um, he calls it that because it is] persistently claimed [never 'claimed' that I saw, just voiced suspicions] that Trig Palin, the governor’s then-4-month-old baby with Down syndrome [As opposed to Trig Palin, the governor's then-4-month-old baby that didn't have Down syndrome? I don't know how Down syndrome is relevant, unless you're trying to gather sympathy against Sullivan], was not Sarah’s biological child and requested the full release of her obstetrical records, stopping just short of demanding he be sent the placenta for genetic testing [cue rimshot]. (If President Obama is hounded by a small group of reality-challenged “birthers,” who doubt he was born in Hawaii, Palin is certainly the only politician to have given rise to what might be called “after-birthers,” who doubt that she delivered her own children. [I've never heard anyone doubt that she delivered her own 'children' (plural), just Trig specifically])

Keep in mind that this is just me reading deeply into two sentences. I’m not trying to come off as angry or hateful towards Nick Gillespie, nor am I trying to make a case saying Sarah Palin wasn’t pregnant with Trig. I don’t have a dog in that fight. I just read something that seemed a little harsh towards a reasonable if misguided argument, and felt like offering my own take.

Take from it what you will,

Lark

Oh, and the link I pointed to while saying The Daily Dish is “the most popular one-man political blog site in the world,” is a link to Technorati’s Top 100, which ranks blogs, I think by popularity and influence. I don’t know of any better ranking sites, or ones that judge popularity alone. The Technorati Top 100 is updated daily. The Daily Dish was listed #14 on November, 3, 2009 (the day of posting), and I didn’t see any other political blog consisting solely of posts from one person ranked any higher.

A bank mis-typed an email address, sending a complete stranger a file with tons of personal information:

The attachment contained confidential information on 1,325 individual and business customers that included their names, addresses, tax identification or Social Security numbers and loan information.

They then sent a second email to this stranger telling him or her to delete the previous email and contact them immediately. They heard no response, went to court, and the court ordered Gmail to close the account. I have to completely agree with this statement, from the second of the above links: (emphasis mine)

“It’s outrageous that the bank asked for this, and it’s outrageous that the court granted it,” says John Morris, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “What right does the bank have and go suspend the email account of a completely innocent person?”

I get emails sent to my phone, so I tend to see every email within hours of it being sent. My dad uses email for work, so he checks his regularly. My sister, however, can go weeks without checking her email. It’s very possible that the person who was sent this email hasn’t even checked his or her account yet, and now it’s shut down. I have Google Voice, Reader, and Calendar tied to one Gmail address. How would this court order affect all of those services?

I have to say that it’s very possible both emails were read, but the attachment wasn’t opened. If you got those two emails isn’t there a huge chance you’d just assume they were a phishing scheme and ignore them? That makes me wonder why the court chose to start with the undiplomatic brute force method. Why not order Google to first see if the data has even been viewed yet? Why not have Google attempt to contact the person–then it might become apparent that these emails aren’t in fact a scam.

And finally, the question of the day, why the hell wasn’t that personal information encrypted? What kind of bank sends an attachment with the private information of 1,325 customers and doesn’t encrypt it? Truecrypt is free, banks. This bank should be buried in fines, branded as a high security risk and left as an example to others.

Lark

I’m a big fan of Steam, to the point where, if a game isn’t available on it, I may not buy it. In fact, I’m shying away from consoles for the most part. I’d rather spend money on games I can take with me and play on my laptop. Not like I’m playing games in restaurants or anything, but it’s nice for long trips and vacations.

There are some problems with Steam. I’ve written previously that my internet is slow, so downloading 8GB per game takes time. That’s a problem for downloading to install in the first place, and also a problem for when I want to play the game, and it automatically checks to see if the game needs to be updated, then starts updating. No, stupid! I want to play the game, not install updates! Why not download updates and install them once I’m done? Why not constantly check for updates, or set up a schedule, check for and install updates between 2am-8am? There are also issues with automatic updating in general. What if an update breaks something? Can I undo it? Probably not. Although I haven’t had that problem yet, it’s possible.

Once I switch to a much faster broadband carrier, it’ll be better, but even if it downloads lightening fast, I still have to wait for the updates to install. It is a good service, but I’m curious to see how it’ll improve or depreciate over time. And I’m also curious to see if the whole Kindle 1984 scandal will cause people to start looking at services like Steam and Zune Pass with a lot more skepticism.

Lark

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has an interesting article about this, with a form you should fill out to let Google know how they need to handle your private information. The EFF writes:

You shouldn’t be forced to pay for digital books with your privacy. Tell Google it needs to develop a robust privacy policy that gives you at least as much privacy in books online as you have in your neighborhood library or bookstore.

Security used to mean keeping your important personal documents in a safe. Now all our personal information is sent through emails, internet voice services, or to online backup utilities. All this redundancy is great–if you’re careful, a fire doesn’t mean you lose copies of documents, or photos, or music. And it’s a lot easier to search files on a computer than files in a cabinet. However, digital information is exponentially harder to keep track of. As more of our information becomes digital, it becomes increasingly important that we have more effective privacy policies.

Google is collecting such information. We need to make sure this information is safe. Go to the website. Fill out the form.

Lark

We’re almost past needing area codes, aren’t we? I know a lot of people that keep their old cell numbers even after moving to a new state (as I’m sure I will) because it’s easier that way. Maybe everybody should be assigned one permanent number, and we get to choose how and where it’s used. I can see problems with that, privacy and all, people you want to get away from always knowing your number. Then again, Google Voice will probably eventually have blockers for telemarketing and other undesired calls, if it doesn’t already. You could still have alternate numbers, you could still keep your number private, and you could always use a incoming whitelist or blacklist, whatever you prefer. No, wait, the idea of one permanent number is stupid.

Here’s a real bright idea: phone numbers should be more like web domains. I own a domain now, thriceberg.com (duh), which I registered. I ‘own’ it until I let it lapse, at which point it’s available for anyone else to register. I can set up any email accounts I want through this domain, provided my host allows it. I can change hosts a hundred times, but I’ll still own this domain. That URL is perpetually how you’d locate this information, and that email address should always go straight to me.

The identifier (URL) is separate from the service provider (web host). That is how phone numbers should be. I realize that by law you are now given the option to keep the same phone number if you change cell phone companies, but that’s not quite the same thing. There should be a registry that we go to in order to apply for phone numbers. Once approved, we then ‘own’ the applied for numbers until we let them lapse. When we sign up for phone service, they would use the number (or one of the numbers) we have already registered. Or they could register a number for us, as some hosts do with domains.

It’s simple, and it’s flexible. The only problem I see is that it would probably cost money, as registering domains does. It probably already does cost, but the phone companies handle it. People would start being directly confronted with these costs, so they’d think it’s a step back. They’d complain, regardless of how much easier it makes their lives. Or my life, at least.

Oh well, people always need new things to complain about.

Lark

Decimal time was used in conjunction with the French Republic Calendar. It had 10 hours with 100 minutes, each minute being 100 seconds. By this system, midnight is 10, noon is 5. Weird, huh? A second in decimal time is still called a second (by Wikipedia, anyways), but it is completely different. Standard time has 86,400 seconds in one day, decimal time has 100,000, so their seconds must be a bit shorter.

Here are some conversions via Wikipediaa to put it in perspective:

Decimal to Standard

* One decimal second is 86,400/100,000 = 0.864 standard seconds.
* One decimal minute is 1,440/1,000 = 1.44 standard minutes, or 1 standard minute and 26.4 standard seconds.
* One decimal hour is 24/10 = 2.4 standard hours, or 2 standard hours and 24 standard minutes.

Standard to Decimal

* One standard second = 1.15740 decimal seconds
* One standard minute = 69.44 decimal seconds (or .69 decimal minutes)
* One standard hour = 4,166.67 decimal seconds (or 41 decimal minutes and 67 decimal seconds)

I find this fascinating, and I have to wonder how big a change this must have been (it was 1795 when this was made mandatory), and then of course they had to change back 10 years later in 1805. Nowadays with cell phones and internet conversions it would be much easier to keep track of what time I know it as and what time it is officially. Back then…wow. What a change it must have been.

Just wanted to throw that in with the calendar talk. More food for thought.

Lark

Take revolutionary France. Once the revolutionaries took control of the country, they started what’s now called the “Dechristianisation of France,” one aspect of which was the proposal of an entirely new calendar to replace the current Pope-ordianed Gregorian calendar (which we use in the US). Reading about it, a new system would make sense.

Why do we have such a messed up calendar system now? Here are some of the Gregorian calendar’s problems, taken from Wikipedia’s article on calendar reform:

* It is not perpetual. Each year starts on a different day of the week and calendars expire every year.
* It is difficult to determine the weekday of any given day of the year or month.
* Months are not equal in length nor regularly distributed across the year, requiring mnemonics (e.g. “Thirty days hath September…”) to remember which month is 28, 29, 30 or 31 days long.
* The year’s four quarters (of three full months each) are not equal (being of 90/91, 91, 92 and 92 days respectively). Business quarters that are equal would make accounting easier.
* Its epoch (origin) is not religiously neutral. The same applies to month and weekday names in many languages.
* Each month has no connection with the lunar phases.

I don’t care about religious neutrality, even though I’m not religious myself. Christmas isn’t rooted in Christianity and most Christians don’t seem to mind, why should I mind that my calendar is?

There are a lot of proposed alternate calendars, but only two are seriously considered. The World Calendar, which has 12 months, and two days: Leapyear Day and Worldsday. Those days aren’t part of any month, they stand alone as “intercalary days”. Each quarter has the same number of days (91), weeks (13) and months (3). 8 months have 30 days, 4 have 31.

Then there’s the International Fixed Calendar, which has 13 months that are 28 days each, with one standard intercalary day, placed at the end of the year. Leap day is intercalary as well, and falls after June. The extra month, by the way, is called “Sol,” and falls between June and July. This was the official calendar of the Eastman Kodak Company from 1928 to 1989, and it’s referred to by some as the Eastman plan.

The main arguments against any calendar change are, firstly, about the general disruption it would cause. There would be a lot of confusion. Of course, many religious groups are against any sort of calendar change, as it would disrupt the dates of their holidays and holy times. The World Calendar and the International Fixed Calendar both have days outside of calendar weeks, yet religions would still have to worship every seven days, throwing them off the days of the week. Also, the International Fixed Calendar has 13 months–13 is a prime number and therefore wouldn’t break into quarters, so not good for bookkeeping. Oh, and every month has a Friday the 13th (OH NO!!!!). The good thing is, with technology, converting calendar dates wouldn’t be any harder than changing currency is today. A few keystrokes into most spreadsheet apps, or even into Google, and you’re good to go.

Really, I’d be down for a completely numeral system. Instead of July 30th, we would have 211 (the 211th day of the year). You can divide that by whatever base you want to assign weekdays, months or whatever. Okay, so that’s kind of stupid, but it’s so simple, and if we kept that number handy, it’d be that much easier to convert to it other calendars. Leap day would be put to the end of the year, of course. Then again, why not a four-year, 1,461-day cycle? Hmm, I think I’m on to something, I’d better call the President.

Till then,

Lark

PS-I’m such a dork, I really love digging through this stuff.