Yearly Archives: 2005

Blister packs must be BANNED!!

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I would like to find the people who concieved the blister pack package and for them to spend the rest of their lives just trying to open these packages and extract the contents for people who buy stuff in these packages. You know what blister packs are. Those clear plastic packages that are sealed all the way around. And of course the only way to get these things open is with a knife or a large pair of scissors. And even if can cut the package you end up with sharp edges that cut your hands as you try to get it open. And if you get the item out and it turns out to be defective and you have to return it, you have now destroyed the package. Blister packs are just evil.

Is Condi a hypocrite or just stupid? 2

This entry was posted in politics religion on by (updated 6957 days ago)

In the Washington Post yesterday they had an article about the State Dept’s annual report on religious liberty. In the piece secretary of state Condi Rice is quoted as saying:

“The United States has stood for the values of human decency, of a government that respects the religious freedoms of its people, that respects the individual rights of its people, for its entire history,” she said. “And let me just be very clear. We hold . . . those values today as strongly as we ever have.”

That’s fine as long as we don’t apply those rules to our own government. The shrub administration seems to have no qualms about enforcing religious freedom as long as you choose to believe in a monothiestic religion. If however, you prefer to eschew religion altogether, you are an outcast. When is the last time, you saw an athiest elected to a high political office in the United States? When is the last time you saw an openly athiest judge or cabinet member appointed? There are plenty of people who are athiest or agnostic in this country who are emminently qualified and vastly more moral than most of the people in the executive or legislative branches of our government. Why are they always ignored? Why does someone have to be “god-fearing” to participate in our government? We may not have an officially established religion, (yet!) but we do seem to have an unofficial ban on the non-religious in government. And this “In God We Trust” thing, who is this “WE”?

Morning Light

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I so wish I had my camera with me this morning on the drive to work. As I was heading east on Huron River Dr, I looked toward the horizon. The sky was overcast above me, but there was a gap between the eastern horizon and the clouds. As the sun rose above the horizon it was a golden disc that spanned that gap. I turned north on Superior Rd and after crossing the river the road is lined on both sides with trees. Because of the way the sunlight was reflecting off the cloud cover from the east, the trees were bathed on their eastern side in a golden light. It looked just amazing. It was one of those magical moments that only lasts a couple of minutes before the sun rises a little higher and then it’s over. Fortunately I got to see it even if I didn’t to capture it to share.

Working with digital images 14

This entry was posted in this and that on by (updated 6988 days ago)

Yesterday when I came home the sun was shining and it was beautiful out. I grabbed the camera and started taking some pictures. I decided to do some experimentation with working in raw mode. Higher end digital cameras can save images in what is called a raw mode. In raw mode the image is saved exactly as it comes off the sensor with no adjustments for white balance, sharpening or anything else. There is also no lossy compression that you get when you save to jpeg. Here is one image of a tree in my front yard exactly as it came out of the camera.


Unretouched tree

Then I played around with the Image in Gimpshop, an open-source free clone of photoshop. This is what I eventually got.

Modified tree

I took some photography classes when I was in high school, and did a lot of darkroom work. But I can do so much more now with images than I ever could them. And all without the smelly chemicals.

George Carlin

This entry was posted in this and that on by (updated 6988 days ago)

George CarlinRight now I am watching a George Carlin performance from 1979 on HBO. George Carlin after nearly 50 years on stage, remains one of the all-time great observers and commentators of the human species. He has a remarkable knack for pointing out the absurdity of human behavior. Even now he is one of the funniest comedians of all time. His use of the english language is unparalleled. He has the most amazing sense of rhythm and timing. Tomorrow night he will be doing his 13th HBO Special, Life is Worth Losing. If you don’t have HBO then check the bittorrent search engines for the show on Sunday. I am sure it will be there and worth downloading.

Sony Music is Evil!! 1

This entry was posted in drm technology on by (updated 6990 days ago)

Earlier this week it was revealed that Sony music has been installing a particularly nasty type of DRM on some of their audio cds. There is a technology called rootkits which gets into the lowest level of your computer operating system. At that level programs actually modified operating system instructions and redirect them. In this way for example if you list the files in a folder a rootkit can intercept the call and return a falsified result. By doing this files can be cloaked from view. This stuff was originally developed by hackers as a way of invading computer systems without being detected. Rootkits can be discovered with some specialized software like RootkitRevealer. A lot spyware and viruses use rootkit technology to prevent being detected and removed. A really good explanation of rootkits can be found by listening to to Episode 9 of the Security Now podcast. Security expert Steve Gibson explains rootkits in a very clear concise way. This is definitely worth a listen, as is the whole series if you use a computer with an internet connection.

Mark Russinovich is the guy who wrote RootKitRevealer and he was recently testing the latest revision on his own computer. In the process of testing, he discovered a rootkit on his computer. Of course as a security expert who knows how to protect himself, he was quite surprised at this. He wrote a very detailed description here. What he found is that a music cd he recently purchased had installed this rootkit as part of its digital restrictions management (copy protection) scheme. It now turns out that the software that Sony sureptitiously installed on his and countless other computers around the world was actually very dangerous and put a lot of people’s computers at risk. The sony drm was so poorly written that it cannot be removed without damaging the operating system. Virus and spyware writers can take advantage of this spyware to cloak their own malware now. Sony and other music companies use this drm technology allegedly to protect there music holdings from being shared on p2p networks and sold by pirates on street corners. The problem is anyone with any technical savy can get around this protection by simply disabling autorun on a windows computer to keep it from installing anything. Also copying the cd on a linux or mac computer will also bypass the drm. All the cds that have ever been issued with drm are readily available on file sharing networks.

The disgraceful part of this is that the only people who will be hurt by DRM are people who actually go out and pay money to the record companies to buy their music. So if you are foolish enough to be “honest” you will put your computer at risk of being hacked or damaged so that you have to reinstall your os and software. If you are sharing music you will be fine. Is this a good or ethical practise? Is it good to punish your honest customers while being totally ineffective at trying to protect your revenue stream? If you are going to buy a cd check the package for indications of copy protection or enhanced features. If there are any such markings put the cd down and walk away.

I don’t buy any music from labels that members of the RIAA anymore. This both because of the drm they use and the lawsuits that they have filed against, their customers. Boycott Sony Music and all members of the RIAA. Buy music from independant musicians through their websites or companies like EMusic, MagnaTune, Mp3Tunes and other music sellers that actually give a substantial amount of the money back to the musicians rather than overfed record executives like Edgar Bronfman and Howard Stringer. There are a bunch of links over on the sidebar, to new musicians I have found recently. There are also links to sites like the Association of Music Podcasters and the Podsafe Music Network. From there you can find links to lots of music podcasts where you can discover new music that is worth listening to and supporting.

BOYCOTT SONY!!!

Production Quality or Content? 2

This entry was posted in podcasting technology on by

The other day. the NY Times had good piece on podcasting. There was a great quote from Dave Winer (one of the creators of podcasting), “I love podcasting because it turns us all into investigative journalists of our own lives.”. Here is Dave’s elaboration on the statement. One of the main things in the piece is the spectrum of investment people make into equipment for podcasting. There has been a bit of discussion going on online about production quality in podcasts. Dave Slusher has also written about it in response to to this piece posted by Steven Hill on Steve Gillmor’s blog.

Essentially a lot of traditional radio types are saying podcasting sucks because of bad production quality. This is bullshit. Production quality is not irrelevant, after all if you can’t understand what is being said, the content doesn’t mean much. But regular radio generally has what most would consider great production quality. But 90% of what you here on radio is shit content. I believe that the quality of the content is vastly more important than the production quality. I don’t care how good something sounds if there is nothing worthwhile to hear. As long as I can hear what is being said, I am fine with some background or ambient noise or the occasional umh, ahh or cough as long as the podcaster has something interesting/funny or relevant to say. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of podcasts out their with awesome production quality, check out Digital Flotsam, Bob and AJ, the Zedcast and Accident Hash for just a few examples. But there are plenty of podcasts with what many pro’s would consider poor production quality that are vastly more listenable than almost anything on the radio. Morning Coffee Notes, Evil Genius Chronicles and Dawn and Drew all qualify here. None of these are edited, all contain what would be considered flaws and I listen to all of them because they are real and have something to say to me. I have heard quite a few podcasters over the past year buy more elaborate gear to try get better sound quality. Frankly once they reach a certain point, the extra tweaks are only marginal improvements at best if they are even noticable. In many cases I have heard people talk about new mikes or mixers and frankly can’t tell any difference from the previous shows.

You don’t need a lot of expensive studio gear to make a great podcast. But you do need good content. If I can hear the content, that is what counts. Entertain me, inform me, make me think, make me laugh, introduce me to new music. This is what counts. the rest is just icing on the cake.

Which fork is the dead end! 2

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This morning Mark Maynard has a good post over here about selling evolution. The question that scares me is which human development fork is the evoulationary dead end? Is it the faith-based unintelligent designers or the reality based community? A recent poll by CBS news shows the majority of Americans reject evolution:

cbs news evolution poll

It appears that the rational person is headed for extinction at least in the United States. On the other hand, looking at the bigger picture of what is happening in the US economy and the US place in the world, maybe a more accurate assessment would be that the US as a whole or at least as a powerful country is the evolutionary dead end. Clearly with the religous right and corporate America continually pushing for the dumbing down of Americans at every turn, America will quickly turn into a third world country with a third world standard of living. Unless we make some radical changes in the direction that this country is going and quickly, America’s best days are behind it!