Can you hear me now?

It appears that Colorado Represenative Diana DeGette is proposing a bill that will require all ISP's to keep a log of customer data permanently, until at least one year after they have cancelled their account. In the proposal (pdf) it states that this will apply to any ISP which "enables users to access content", which I cannot think of any ISP which does not do this. It will require them to "...retain records to permit the identification of subscribers to such services for appropriate law enforcement purposes." Now this is a very vague definition. Will it require them just to keep subscription information such as name and address, or much more detailed information such as a record of what their IP address was and at which time, or even more detailed connection information? A spokesperson for DeGette said "We're still addressing some of the issues, and we will have those issues or answers before we introduce this as either an amendment or a bill. " I would suspect that when you propose a bill or an amendment you might have a good idea of what technical limitation you are up against, but it seems that DeGette doesn't. If an expansive reading of her proposal were taken, then a whole lot of data is going to be generated. Many people and especially businesses will stay with the same ISP for many years. With all this this data being generated, that is going to cost a lot for the ISP to store permanently, and the cost will be pushed onto the consumer.

Now of course this bill isn't being introduced standing alone. It is being toted as a means to curb child pornography in the U.S. (another post in which I discuss privacy issues relating to child pornography laws is located here). This in addition to the recent announcement that the lawsuit against the NSA regarding illegal wiretapping was going to be dropped due to the States Secret Privilege.

In other, non-political news I have finally managed to hurt myself on my bicycle. It's a bit funny because I also happen to have a video of it. In retrospect, any jump big enough that it justifies taking a video recording of, is probably not a good idea. I have also embedded the video into this webpage below.

7 Wiki's Feast

While browsing through various articles on Wikipedia (which I believe is one of the greatest achievements on the web in a while). I ran upon some terms of which I've recently heard people throwing around with little regard to what they may actually mean. Another problem I see is that way that they were presented in the public school system (At least in my experience most things were presented in a very Black and White, good or bad manner.)

Fascism
Authoritarianism
Nazism (Most people are not so much wrong about this, but grossly ignorant of the origin/ideas. There are also some interesting similarities in current policies and political views in the U.S.)
Marxism
Totalitarianism
Police state
Socialism


I have been sick for about a week straight, and this is the worst I've felt in many years. I don't think I've felt this bad since I was sick as a kid. I've seemed to of made it through the worst of it without any life altering problems, so I guess it's not too bad.

On a somewhat lighter and semi-comical note(in retrospect), I did manage to finally get my motorcycle down here again. It was, what's the word I'm looking for...hmmm... Wet, and I did not have on proper raingear.




I will be repairing some minor damage (due to age and dryrot from the sun) and just do some general tune-up and work before I sell it and purchase a newer bike. I would like to keep this bike since it used to be my dad's, but it will be a big burden to keep both and a car, both financially and practically. I'll throw in some pics of me riding my other bike...




until next post...

Livin' the G-life

In addition to the plethora of other web-based apps that Google is producing, I recently discovered Google Calendar. Upon first use the interface seems to be very intuitive and snappy. Currently it has not been integrated into my Gmail interface, and actually took a while for me to figure out why it was not displaying. Nonetheless, I will give it a more thorough test when it's integrated into my Gmail interface.

While I love the simplicity and cost (Free is good, right?) of Google's products, it now seems to be getting a little scary. Many people forecasted that the path Google was choosing will be a privacy advocates bad dream. Not only does Google have info about what I talk to my friends about through Gmail and Gchat, as well as what I search for through my Google personalized Page, but now they know what I'm doing and when and where I'm doing it with Gcalendar. While Google has had the "Do no Evil" Motto for some time and seem to be sticking to it pretty well, the fact that they collect this data and have it stored somewhere is the scary part. Now, even if the current people at Google have no intention of using this personal data without our permission, it still has the chance of falling into others hands. It just seems like a bit too much information collected on me to be sitting on a HDD somewhere. Where will this data be in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? What if a future oppressive government were to seize the data? They could use this data to spy/imprison/eliminate possible troublemakers based on emails sent years ago that do not agree with their political views. Of course this is a worse case scenario, but the fact that it's possible is what scares me. In spite of all this concern, I will continue to use Google's services for now. They are just to useful and easy that it's hard to turn down.

On another somewhat frightening note, it seems that the President of China's first visit to the states will be for a dinner with Bill Gates.

In personal news, not much has been going on. I've been searching for a house to rent for several weeks, but haven't found anything that stands out yet. I will be buying a new(used) motorcycle soon, after I sell my current one. Oh, and one last thing. If you are using Myspace and reading this, please learn how to design a webpage that is somewhat readable and functional. Also, stop using static background images that contain colors that are the same as your text and make posts that are somewhat coherent. Another thing, stop playing damn music on your website, it's annoying and your taste is music is really bad. If I want to listen to music, I'll fire up my media player and listen to my music. It seems that Myspace is the new AOL.

Window Vapor!

With news that Vista will not be out this year, and the new Office Suite will be pushed to next year, things are not looking so bright for Microsoft. Here is a blog of a Microsoft insider about the recent concerns which contains many comments from others inside the company. This video of an interview with Ballmer (sorry will only work in IE) is quite interesting. Funny how he cannot admit that things are not going like they promised us not too long ago, even after all the innovative and useful features were stripped from the product. I got a projoect for ya Microsoft, how about making roaming profiles THAT ACTUALLY WORK! We have all this advanced replication between domain controllers, but a simple folder with profile settings and misc files is way to complex to sync with the server. In any case, I'm sure it will not effect them too greatly because we all know that consumers will eat Vista up as soon as it is released, whenever that may be. Well, maybe force-fed is a better term, at least for home users who get their OS pre-installed with their PC's.

In other breaking news, researchers have found that you should close any panels made of glass, especially when it is dark. I have confirmed this firsthand.

Yeah, glass is not fun to cleanup from carpet. I didn't even see it at all and ran right through it.

One Slick PC

Tom's Hardware Guide has an interesting article that I stumbled across showing an entire top of the line PC that is cooled passively by cooking oil (Submerged completely within it). They also did some trials with De-ionized water, but the PC crashed within 5 minutes. They had no problems with the oil once they got everything sealed up. A followup to the article can be found here, and contains several responses from PC enthusiasts who offer several suggestions that would improve the design.

BBspot post

Looks like one of the bloopers on my personalized google page that I sent in made it to BBspot's blooper page. Linkage.

DRM Insanity

Cory Doctorow, an employee of the EFF as well as a Sci-Fi writer, recently gave a speech to Microsoft employees about DRM. The full speech can be found here. This is one of the best writings about the absurdity that DRM has become that I've read. It also explains how it works and why there are major difficulties getting it to work as they (the media companies) envision it will. Cory's blog can be found at craphound.com (very strange name btw...).

Go ahead... give it a read, it quite interesting. I even hear he is giving similar speeches around the country at different college campuses and such. I hope he comes around this part of the country, but seems unlikely.

Florida - Spring 2006

Well, Finally got some pictures from florida uploaded. Had a great time, but my alternator went out about 30 miles away from home. After being awake for over 24 hours and paddling 7 miles this made it a very, very long day. Finally ended up having it towed back to town after having my brother come down and try to help me get it back to town. One word to the wise... Never take Highway 41 through Kentucky. It is horribly marked and is one of the worst roads I've ever tried to follow. Anyways... on with the pics!









More can be seen by Clicking on one of the photos and following the links.

On another note, a cool little link I found was Retrievr, which allows you to draw something and it will try to find photos from Flickr which kinda match your drawing. Give it a shot!

Black Magic Voting

Black Box Voting is reporting that the internal logs of 40 or more electronic voting machines reveal several anomalies in the 2004 presedential election. Black Box sucessfully sued former Palm Beach County, FL supervisor of elections Theresa LePore to obtain these logs. One thing to note is that these were not the Diebold machines we have all heard of, but were produced by Sequoia Voting Systems. Some of the anomalies include votes being cast before and after polls were closed and one machine being powered off and on 128 times during the election.

Now, I won't jump to the conclusion that these log anomalies were done with malicious intent, but it is something that needs to be investigated. Blackbox.org has invested over $7,000 just to obtain these logs, which took 9 months to obtain. I encourage you to explore more of Blackboxvoting.org (not blackboxvoting.com) as they have several other interesting stories and appear to be very non-partisian.

ATI's Debacle

As an update to the previous article about HDCP, it looks like ATI themselves have taken notice that their graphics cards that they have been selling that claim to have HDCP support, while they don't. They are now removing the claims from their website. Hopefully this is just the first step they are taking and will issue a press release soon. A coverup with something like this would be foolish and almost impossible. There are several sites which archive other sites and a simple look at these archived sites would show what they had earlier.

Infact, if you would like to inform your represenative that you oppose these type of measures, it can be easily done right on the EFF's website. A written letter would also be great as opposed to a digital version.

Unsocial Networking

Here is a hilarious video clip from the daily show about social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace.

In other not so funny news it looks like Myspace is going to attempt to make it's site safer to users. Who knew that putting your personal information on a public website would allow for unwanted people to contact you?

And well, I leave for Florida in the morning, so wish me luck! I just bought a 512 MB SD card for my roomates camera, so hopefully I'll be able to get some good pics and post a few.

Digital Rights Nightmare (DRN???)

With DVD's supposedly going the way of the VHS, the push for higher definition video is on. With the new and improved resolution, comes "new and improved" copy protection schemes. It seems that the new scheme for the next generation of media will be HDCP, or Hi-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. This system will be necessary for hi-def playback of the new HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs. Basically this system allows for every piece of the system to protect the videostream, from the source, to the display itself. What this means is that without "DHCP Compliant" TV's/graphic cards/monitors and everything inbetween, nobody will be able to get the full benefit of this new media. Now, while this sounds like a technical limitation, it is not. There are many HDTV's and other hardware devices (such as computers) out there that can display the full resolution of the media but will not, because the video will be downscaled to 540p. 540p will be only 25% of the full resolution that these discs support. That's a pretty noticeable difference. It also means that all analog outputs will also be downscaled to the smaller resolution. But it is not guaranteed that you will even be able to output an analog signal at all in the future. You will need to use a digital output such as DVI or HDMI. Another article that describes a few of the personal computer problems in greater detail can be found here, and shows just how complicated it's going to get. The average consumer is not going to care about all of this stuff. They are just going to get angry because they are seeing no benefit with this "New Fangled DVD". How about the fact that just because your graphics chipset says that it is compliant, doesn't mean that your graphics card will be compliant. According to this article most(if not all) of the graphics cards produced in the last few years that have advertised themselves as HDCP compliant will not be.

Well, why don't companies just make their hardware/software HDCP compliant you ask? As with most of the major DRM attempts, this technology will need to be licensed. The controlling corporation for this particular technology will be Digital Content Protection, LLC. The current HDCP specifications can be found in this PDF. What will this mean for open source software? I doubt they will be able to include this software and still be open source. I fail to see how this system is making things better for the consumer at all.

Another great concern is with the DMCA, which currently trumps all fair use rights and copyright terms. Even if the copyright expires on an item of Intellectual Property, then it will eternally be legally protected by the copy protection mechanisms.

Another big problem for HDCP is that there a several known problems with the system. A paper was published in 2001 detailing the flaw, which as far as I can tell still exist. How long will it be before some hacker (yes, hacker... NOT cracker) bypasses this system just like CSS for DVD's?

I for one hope that the inherent problems and complexity of this system will show itself early in the game. This will hopefully cause a consumer backlash that will stop this system in it's tracks. I'm sure that when John Smith finds out that the HDTV he bought 6 months ago cannot play the new HD-DVD resolution, and that he will have to buy an entire new TV to see the benefits of the new HD-DVD player he just bought, he's going to be pretty angry. How long is it until we see a future so encumbered with digital rights management that it will resemble something like this? It seems that so much progress is being hindered by DRM and IP (intellectual property) legislation. Why would any consumer want a system so complex and resource intensive when we just want a better looking movie? If it were not for these roadblocks I think we would be watching HD-DVD's right now. Making more complex and expensive players is not good for the consumer in any way.

P.S.
I'm sorry for all the links in the article, as there is a plethora of reading there, but this is a complex issue. Anyway, I've already spent too much time on this issue. I am waiting to see how this one plays out.

The Broken Patent System.

Phillip Hallam-Baker has a very series of articles on his blog that detail several of the problems with the current patent system. As of today he has completed parts 1 through 3 of 4. A very interesting read indeed.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Link to his main site, dotfuturemanifesto which has many more interesting posts.

Word of the day!

Technorealism. I found this today while stumbling upon descriptions of other philosophical ideas.

Some others you might want to check out if you are unaware of the basics behind the names:
Pragmatism
Idealism
Materialism
Realism

Many others are linked to within the text, so I'll let you explore those on your own.

Sand

A very cool Java game that has had me entranced for quite a while recently is this sand game. I've seriously spent hours playing with different ideas in this. It's been linked by many, many other sites, but I figured I would put it here as well.

I will be leaving for Florida on the 18th and still don't have my camera back from the repair shop. I'll see if I will be able to borrow someone's for a week or so. I will be visiting Tampa again as well as many of the sites I visited before in the northern part of the state last year. Some warm weather will be welcome, and hopefully it will be much warmer than it was when I went last spring. If I ever obtain a camera I will be sure to post some of the highlights of the trip. My next big trip after this will hopefully be out west to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. I've been there once and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I would like to be able to go with a few friends and take dualsport motorcycles on some of the mountain passes. Anyway, enough with the daydreaming, play with some sand!

Flickr, Florida

Well, after a long period of procrastination, I have finally managed to find somewhere to host my Pictures. I've heard a lot of hype regarding Flickr and decided I would see what all the Hoop-la is about. I'll post some of the pictures from Florida that I have had in my vault for some time.

This is currently my background at work. I like this picture, and it turned out quite well. It also took a very long time to get this close to the bird. I kept "chasing" it down the river for a good half mile. Full size can be found here.



The Rest I will not comment on, but will show some of my work. Hopefully I will receive my camera back soon and can take some more.

Google Still "Doing No Evil"?

I appears that the Bush administration now wants access to Google's massive database of search entries and have subpoenaed them to get it, all in the name of keeping pornography away from children. Google has claimed that it will fight against this request,that they play no major part in this lawsuit and this subpoena reaches too far out of bounds. The government claims that the information within these databases is needed to defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, passed in 1998, and which never went into effect as it prevented adults from accessing completely legal sites. The website for the COPA commission can be found here.

This could be an important case not only because of it's immediate effects of google, but on further rulings in similar cases. This could be a big deal for all of the major search engines and an other website for that matter. Some sources are reporting that other search engines have already agreed to comply, but still remained anonymous. It also effected google shortly after the announcement as their market share prices fell 8% (a record for the stock).

Funny thing about this one is that I heard about it from the local broadcast news (Fox news out of Louisville, KY for anyone inquiring) before any other source(which is normally Slashdot). More impressive is that this sort of news is making it onto the less tech savvy media channels, and that my mother knew about this before I did. Does this mean that the general public is becoming more interested in privacy legislation? More aware of the reduction of rights in the name of protection? Are they starting to realize that the internet is a global network of resources and that the United States, although they did found the basics of it, does not own it. Do they realize that a law passed in America, plays little part on a server in Norway or Finnland? In any case, I hope to hear more about these issues on more media channels in the future. Another interesting fact that I had not yet realized is that according to Nielsen/Netratings, Google now handles 46% of all web searches. Yahoo was in second with 32% and MSN in third with 11%. I did not realize Google had taken hold of the market that much. Any comments/rantings about the topic at hand would be nice, or pretty much any activity other than bots posting about their surf videos would be nice.

In personal occurances, not much has been changed really. I will be working nights again for a while, and am currently adjusting my body to the new sleep schedule. I am watching a new anime series called Samurai Champloo, which although it sounded bad from the recommendation of a friend, is actually quite entertaining. I am almost done reading 1984 by George Orwell for the 3rd or 4th time, which ties in closely with government restriction of literature/materials/pictures. If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend that you do(I would even have to say the best book I have read).

Flippin the Bits

While we all wait on hard drives with Perpendicular Recording that could increase data storage by up to 10 times, Seagate has some good news. They just announced that they have produced a desktop HDD with the traditional longitudinal recording method that stores up to 160GB on a single 3.5" platter. The drive sells for about $90 right now. Due to it's single platter, it will have lower noise levels and power consumption. This is good, I for one am sick of noisy hard drives. My most recent Maxtor SATA drive is noisy as hell. I can here it grinding whenever my gaming PC loads anything. In my experience Seagate and Western Digital drives have been much quieter. Anyway, on the subject of Perpendicular recording Hitachi has this hilarious Flash video about it. I must say, this is the first time that I have seen a HDD manufacturer have any bit (no pun intended) of humor.

In other news, I recently upgraded to Firefox1.5 and I'm quite happy with it. I hear 2.0 is not far away, and implements some cool new features. My only complaint about 1.5 is that my favorite theme, Lila, has not been updated for 1.5, and I've been using Lila since way before the 1.0 release. I hope it is updated soon. Another theme I wandered across while composing this is BlackJapan, which is quite nice if you like darker themes. And for all you slackers out there.... UPGRADE NOW!!!!

As for daily life, school is over for the semester, and it looks like it will be back to Ivy Tech for another semester due to a problem with which classes I need. Before this semester I sat down with my counselor to make sure I was going to be finished with my associates after this semester, and we thought we had everything taken care of. Last week he called me up asking when I was going to sign up for classes, to which I told him I was not. He informed me of the bad news, and now I must take one physical science to graduate. Since I will be there for one class I figured I might as well go ahead and take another. I choose the advanced OS Linux course over a digital photography class because my favorite instructor will be teaching it, Plus I need to beef up on my Linux knowledge.

I guess I'll end today with a quote...

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
- Alice Kahn

My New Bicycle

Well, I had to break down and finally purchase a decent bicycle. Before I rode this one I thought all bikes were pretty much the same, not the case... I wasn't planning on spending as much as I did on it, but it just hit the spot. Kinda sucks now that it is finally getting cold, but I still find ways to ride. Many people around the apartment complex give me wierd looks cause I'm out in the dark riding it, mostly because it gets dark now at 5:00 PM, which is rediculous.

Anyway... I'm working on another article, and will have it up tomorrow, if possible. Today, I'll be riding some trails.

Quotes Ahoy!

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
- Robert R. Coveyou