Stuck in a Vent

When you purchase a CD, do you feel that you are purchasing a license to “use” (listen to the music, play the game, whatever) the content?  Do you think that license is in any way bound to the packaging/media?  For music, do you think the license grants you a right to copy/rip individual songs to your own MP3 player, your own mix CD, or any other media?  (I don’t mean to share, I mean for personal use.)

If you are like me, then you believe that once you have a license for content, you can use that content in any way you see fit.  If the industry abandons the original media, then you might also believe (as I do) that you have an implicit right to trade in the original media for a newer, currently supported media for only slightly more than the cost of the new media.

However, if you are like the movie, recording (or game) industry, you believe instead that you should pay full price to access content you’re already licensed to access for each different storage media you wish to use.  In fact, if the recording and movie industry had their way, the media would be tied to a specific playback device, so you would be required to purchase a completely new copy simply to play it on another device of the same type (for example, they love to force you to buy one DVD for each player in your home).

Do you like DVDs?  When they came out, did you believe, as did I, all of the hype about them being far higher definition than our existing televisions could display?  Especially in regard to DVDs with movies in widescreen formats?

Again, if you’re like me, you are extremely angry that your investment in DVDs is nearly a complete waste, because now we’ve learned that none of the DVDs we’ve been sold are actually higher definition at all.  If we want the DVDs we thought we’d been buying all along, we must choose one of two competing formats (HD-DVD or BluRay) and then repurchase (at not only full, but actually at a premium price) all of the movies we already own that might be available on the format we selected.  For the others, we lose.

Is this anything except the movie industry’s attempt to double-dip in our bank accounts for the movies we love?  Should they not be required to offer a trade-in program for no more than the cost difference for producing the different media?

If you agree, write to congress and anyone else that might be able to get something done to support the poor consumer.  If we don’t fight for our rights, we’ll eventually be little different than third-world citizens, working for sustenance and to support the state (or big business, which is basically the same thing these days).

I’ve always loved Sid Meier’s Civilization series of games.  These days, Civ IV is wonderful, even for a lousy player like me.  However, it has one truly serious problem, and at least one rather bizarre one.  I’ll start with the bizarre because the serious problem will be followed by one of my typical rants.  <smile>

Non-players of Civ IV may not know specifically what I’m talking about, but everyone can understand this problem:  Civ IV is bad at math.  Late in the game, the United Nations appears and starts voting on various proposals.  Many times, I’ve been told that my proposal failed because (for example) it only got 900 votes, but 600 out of 1100 were required for it to pass.  If you read that and thought there was a typo, you understand the bug.  Here’s what it looks like:

Isn’t amazing that in a game as complex as this something so simple can be broken?

OK, now for the serious problem:  copy protection

Copy protection was found to be a special feature of software that was designed to hinder legitimate users when they attempt to use their fully licensed copy of the software.  Copy protection was, I thought, generally abandoned years ago.  Sadly, I was wrong.  Now, I actually don’t have a problem with a program that requires a copy of the original CD (or DVD) in order to run.  However, when the copy protection software scans all of my currently attached hard drives to see if I have any software that it doesn’t like, such as a program that can ‘fake’ or duplicate a CD (or DVD) image, and then simply refuses to run, by telling me that I have the wrong CD in the drive, that is so very wrong.

And yet, this is exactly the type of copy protection that Firaxis has chosen to include with Civ IV.  So, if I happen to install Alcohol 120% (which I use to keep many, unprotected CD images on a large external drive and mount them as needed), I can no longer use Civ IV until I completely uninstall Alcohol.  Of course, none of this is mentioned on the packaging or the company’s web site because it might, obviously, cost them some business.  No, instead one only learns this the hard way, after opening and installing the game, and then searching the internet to see if anyone has the same problem getting it to run.   Of course, by then few, if any, places will allow you to return the software, so you’re stuck with something you cannot use unless you uninstall other software that you have paid for.

Somehow that sounds rather criminal to me.  I wonder how a company would respond if a Microsoft product refuse to run until some other program they didn’t like was uninstalled.  Or if Windows simply refused to install something that Microsoft didn’t like.  The lawsuits would be flying fast and furious.  So how are the game companies getting away with this crap?  Are we that lazy or are we simply sheep, following the judas goat of the copy protectors and the RIAA?

Does anyone else out there think that the way software is licensed and paid for is practically a license to print money for Microsoft and other large/popular companies?

Here’s what I mean: Microsoft stops upgrading and supporting “old” versions of their software after only a few years (say, seven to ten).  If businesses want to maintain their support, they are required to update  when Microsoft dictates.  This is very much like a tax, and as consumers, we not only pay it directly to Microsoft (when we upgrade our own system) but indirectly when we purchase any product that is produced (or shipped, handled, etc) by companies using Microsoft software.

Also, Microsoft doesn’t generally allow the transfer of Windows (and possibly other packages) to new hardware, particularly when the new hardware is substantially better (i.e. faster/more powerful) than the old.  They reserve the right to charge either for an entirely new license, or for an “upgrade” fee.  Their logic is that you are able to get more out of their software, so they should get more out of your wallet.  Following their logic, gasoline prices would be based on the make/model of your car, with cars that offer more features/performance paying the premium prices and a broken down junker that gets 6 MPG would pay the least.  One could apply this logic to all sorts of things, such as larger homes paying more per KWH for electricity, larger families pay more for clothing (they get more use with hand-me-downs) or even faster readers paying more for books!

Imagine if the automotive industry refused to maintain vehicles more than ten years old.  Of course, you immediately picture a new industry starting up to take up the slack, but wait… to match the software industry it would be illegal for anyone except the manufacturer to perform maintenance on those vehicles.  You cannot even look under the hood without violating Federal Law.  You are welcome to keep using your old car without maintenance, right up to the point when it fails and, perhaps, kills you and your family (at worst) or leaves you stranded somewhere (at best).  That is exactly what we are allowing Microsoft and other software companies to do.

Instead, we should make it a condition of their business license that when they wish to stop supporting something, they must make the source code available to any organization/business that is interested in supporting it.  They should also allow people to transfer any valid licensed software from one computer to another and/or to add/replace any hardware within their computer — so-called ‘OEM Editions’ should not impact customers who purchase new components, only to find that they now need a new copy of Windows as well in order to continue using their computer with the new hardware installed.  The OEM Edition concept is a pricing deal between Microsoft and a computer manufacturer only — it should not affect the customer’s license in any way.

I was going to propose that they be required to provide free upgrades for licensed users of abandoned software, but that would still require people to upgrade to crap like Vista, which added little, if anything, that customers wanted, but removed many, many things that they relied upon (just like Office 2007).

I know that no one is reading this, but just in case someone does, please consider writing to your congressfolk about this issue. Software companies should not be allowed these extra dips into our bank accounts any more than the government should be allowed to charge us for a new/separate driver’s license for every car we purchase/drive. If you think your letter expresses the concepts here well enough to make a congressperson understand, please share it with us so others can use it when they write.

(Specifically, American English as it is abused today.  The roman numeral indicates that I think there will be a series of these posts, continuing over time.)

Some years ago, I remember a few web pages at a site called “Serendipity” that were beginning to collect the more common misuses of words being found on the young (at the time) internet.  For example, I’d hazard a guess that the three most common misused word sets in our language might be (its and it’s), (your and you’re), and (there, their, and they’re).  For the three of you who care:

“It’s” is a contraction of “it” and “is” while “its” is the possessive form of “it.”  This is a correct (if pointless) sentence:

It’s taking its things away.

“Your” is the possessive of “you” and “you’re” is a contraction of “you” and “are.”  Interestingly, “yore” never gets included in this group despite sounding exactly like the other two.  Another correct (and similar) sentence:

You’re taking your things home.

“There” is a place, “their” is the possessive of “they” and “they’re” is a contraction of “they” and “are”.  Here’s that silly (but grammatically correct) sentence again:

 They’re taking their things over there.

Except for “its” and “it’s” these are very simple things that any elementary school student in the USA should know.  The fact that not only do children find themselves incompetent to use written words correctly, but far, far too many adults have the same problems.  (By the way, (to, too, two) is another set that is often abused.)

I find it strangely humorous that I’ve seen a person use “your” and “you’re” backwards in the same sentence where they use “my” and “I’m” correctly.  “My” and “I’m” have the same semantic relation, but their sounds are inverses of each other.   So, next time a script kiddie says, “I will crash you’re computer.” feel free to respond with something like “I’m computer is well protected, but my going to report you to the police.”  They should understand.

This must say something about our society, but I’m not sure what, exactly.  I can see all of these possibilities and it may be anything from one to all of these (or maybe something else entirely):

• Our education system has been failing students for at least 40-50 years and those students just don’t know any better.  Of course, to remain so amazingly unenlightened for 40-50 years after leaving high school must take a serious effort…
• People have no care at all what others may think about their poor use of written language.  Personally, I believe that many newspaper editors (once the paramount of the grammar establishment) came to their jobs by not being competent enough to make change at a fast food restaurant…
• Some percentage are likely intentionally using the incorrect words because they think they are “anti-establishment” or some other misguided thing.  The band King Missile summed those folks up in one of the most perfect lines ever written into a song lyric:  “I want to be different, just like all the different people.”
• An evil alien super-hacker organization is quietly (itself often replaced by “quitely”, as if there were a word) reversing all of these words on all of the web sites and emails they can access, in order to subvert our language in preparation for a future alien invasion.  Probably in the hope that we’ll be so confused by our own language that we’ll be unable to communicate well enough to coordinate efforts to repel the invasion.
• Too many Americans aspire to the title roles in “Dumb and Dumber” instead of “A Beautiful Mind”

More to come at another time, probably on another day.

It is interesting, how one’s thoughts change.  The day I decided I wanted to give this a try, when I wrote my first post, I was imaging that people all over the world would be reading my words, possibly within seconds of publication.  A few days later, my thoughts have already swung to the opposite end of the pendulum and it feels like I’m writing only for myself.  From things other writers have said, I believe that writing for one’s self is the way to go, with only a small portion of consideration given to the readers.  I doubt I am currently able to provide good reasons either for or against my statement, or if I can it is likely that I’d end up with equal numbers of each side.

That’s something I’ve been rather good at doing for a long time.  It started in high school, when a friend and I would be driving around, trying to find something to do that (a) interested us and (b) was virtually free, because we were nearly penniless.  The drives themselves became something to do because we’d be talking and one of us would make some stupid proposition and then we’d argue about whether or not it was true.  While that was interesting in itself, even more interesting was that after a while, we’d switch sides in the argument and continue farther.  I believe that type of informal debate, especially with the swapping of sides halfway through, taught us to look at things quite differently from most of the people around us.

That might explain why I can strongly support political views from all points along the political spectrum and at the same time argue vehemently against things that are very close on the political spectrum.  More often than not, I’ll want to split a simplistic issue into more than one part, then support some parts and reject the others.  Ever tried explaining something like that to a “true believer”?  They are less likely to understand than George W Bush is to intentionally create a grammatically correct sentence (or to pronounce “nuclear” correctly, but that is another post for another day — no, wait, I think I’ll stop here and start on that post instead…)

If you’ve read anything here, you’ve probably wondered about me. Perhaps you’ve imagined things and quite possibly, you’ve been exactly correct. Or maybe not. Here’s some basic stuff about me:

• Male, brownish hair and eyes, 6′4″, 260lbs
• 45 yrs old
• Caucasian (3/4 grandparents were French, 1/4 Italian)
• Single
• Left-handed

Born in Massachusetts, moved to Connecticut after 4 years, moved to Florida after 5 years, moved back to CT after 2 years, then back to FL after 7, to CT after 1, to FL after 3, to North Carolina after 8, to FL after 1. Spent 4 years in the USAF as a programmer, two years at the local School Board as a programmer, and 17+ years at my current job as a programmer, designed, engineer, network manager, web site creator/maintainer, and misc other things. I’ve had a cat for almost two years. Otherwise, I live alone, so I have far too much time to think.

Someone once told me that men have two paths they may follow in life:

1. They can get married
2. They can become philosophers

While I may wish it were otherwise, I don’t see another marriage in my future (and don’t ask about the one I had it wasn’t actually real – it was more just a legality so the USAF would give us a free house to live in (but I still miss her sometimes)).

I’m a good example of the horrible wrongs that feminism can wreak on a male. When I was young I had things so deeply ingrained into my mind that, even though I know they are there, I often only notice that they have ruined something far too late. For example, to me when a woman says, “no” it means “no” at all times — no exceptions. Also, I will never, ever strike a woman — even if she’s gotten naked, draped herself across my lap and is demanding that I smack her ass. There are many, many more. Probably more than I’ve discovered. Thank you society for giving me all of these rules. I just wish that you’d explained to me that society’s rules are more like basketball’s rules than football’s: The rules in basketball seem to exist only to be ignored by the players and refs, except when someone has a grudge, unlike in football where sometimes it seems there is a rulebook lawyer consulting on the call for every play. I follow the social rules I was taught like football, but the only way to have a serious social life is to treat them like basketball.

Have I revealed too much? We’ll see…

I expect that there will be a very large number of posts about drivers.  I live on the East coast of Florida, so I have the privilege of seeing people from all over the country (and sometimes, world) driving around our area.  However, this post will be about things that I’ve seen in all of the areas where I’ve driven during the past several years.  That area would cover a rough trapezoid from Boston, MA to Toledo, OH to the western tip of Kentucky, to Key West, FL.  I’ve observed two traits in particular that combine to create most of the bad drivers out there.

1. People are selfish
2. Disdain for basic traffic laws and rules of the road

Generally, the first point is enough, but I can’t help but believe that there might be some selfish folks out there who actually worry that they might get a ticket for violating traffic laws.  However, especially in my local area, since the police don’t bother with tedious things like actually stopping at stop signs or even at red lights before making a right turn, why should the public?

On the highway (and probably all other roads at some time) selfishness manifests in people driving (or attempting to drive) at both extremes:  too fast and too slow.  Unless one is driving a pregnant woman or someone with a serious injury to the hospital, what valid reason can there be for not just speeding, but doing everything possible to get in front of just one more car.  In a simple sense, why do people who would never, ever cut in line at a movie or amusement park think that it is OK to cut in front of a line of traffic?

Ah, right, sorry.  I used the word “think” and it is rather obvious that actual thinking is beyond many of the drivers out there.  If you don’t believe me, try to think back yourself and see if you have ever seen a car slowly approach a very steep driveway (or other road surface transition, with upward or downward) and then carefully line up to cross the transition line perpendicular.  Clearly the driver recognized the possible problem, but when the driver’s brain was given the problem, it failed miserably and produced the most incorrect solution possible, thereby inflicting the maximum damage to their vehicle or creating the most dangerous situation possible.  It may appear that I’ve drifted off my selfishness theme but…

This very same driver is likely one of the leaders of the, “I go first at a four way stop” group.  You know them, they see that there might be a question of who should go first after stopping, so they accelerate towards a stop sign!  Then, they “think” that they arrived a millisecond or two before the other car(s) and therefore have the right to proceed first.  Coupling a selfish attitude with a malfunctioning brain is a sure way to create a terrible driver.

It is also true that some of the “overly safe” drivers also fall into the selfish category.  What else can you call a person who insists on driving 10-15mph below the speed limit on a single lane road where no passing is allowed (or simply not possible) — even in perfect driving conditions?  The overly slow drivers think they are being safer (if they are thinking at all), but in reality they are just amping up the idiots at the other end of the spectrum.  The speed demons will go even faster then they intended as soon as they have an opportunity and will often cause the slow car to swerve and/or slow down more.  Slow vehicles are one of the most common causes of huge traffic jams on two lane (well, four lane, two in each direction) limited access highways because the speed maniacs are all trying to cut in line ahead of one another to get through the bottleneck first.  Eventually, this leads to people going so fast that when they slam their brakes, they end up at a complete stop and PRESTO!  A traffic jam is born.

Probably the second leading cause of traffic jams is essentially the same thing:  a posted merge from two lanes into one.  Amazingly, if all of the cars in the lane that will be eliminated stopped passing cars in the other lanes and just started merging when they could, those traffic jams would almost NEVER occur.  Sure, sometimes there are just too many cars for one lane, but that is very rare on a limited access highway.  Unfortunately, when too many people feel that this is their chance to cut in line ahead of all the people responsible enough to have gotten out of the vanishing lane, they cause an instant traffic jam.

How can we fix this?  I doubt we can.  There’s no way to get it through people’s heads that they are selfish rectal sphincters, especially when that is true.  Given that, people will never see the need to change their driving style, they’re too lazy, stupid, sheep-like, and way too damn selfish to ever bother trying to make the world a nicer place to live.  Heck, this is Amurca (say it out loud, in your best moron redneck voice) and it is everyone else’s responsibility to make MY world a better place for ME.  Why should *I* need to do anything?  Aren’t I free to be a rectal sphincter all I want?

I just wish everyone ELSE would try not to be such jerks.

After three weeks of not quite being able to explain a bug to a vendor, they finally ran our test software on the exact same hardware and operating system platform that they sold us.  Guess what?  NOW they can see the bug, and it only took an hour or two to fix.

If only they hadn’t started their support (three weeks ago) with the assumption that we were a lazy customer who didn’t understand the software they chose to use and that we were too stupid to make it work correctly.  Later, over a week into the support sequence, they finally ran some tests (or told us they did, at least) but were never able to duplicate our problem.  Of course, they didn’t tell us — until today! — that they ran all of the tests using a different hardware platform, with a different build of their linux and video modules than we had.  No wonder they couldn’t see the bugs on our system, since they never bothered to test it until we sent them PHOTOS of the display looking differently than they told us it should.

Due to a short deadline on the project this hardware is for, I was scrambling to find any working display interface and asking for help setting up the build environment because it was unfamiliar to me.  Rather than tell me where they obtained the tools (everything is open source) they just complained that I wanted something for nothing and told me that they’d do what I wanted for $600-900 or so.  The most they’d say was “read the source.”  Like any one wants to read the crap passed of as source in the linux world!  Most of those authors seem to believe that C should be a write only language as it was once called.  Some of them obviously rely heavily on Roedy Green’s classic paper “How to Write Unmaintainable Code” (now an entire web site).

Then yesterday, when I finally learned what tools were used, I was able to locate the necessary documentation and the extra information I needed to obtain and build the tools and the display package they recommended.   But it took three weeks, slowly going from politely asking all the way to insulting before someone else (another customer of theirs) finally leaked the info I needed in order to perform one day’s work.  In a sense, the company got far more than $600-900 out of my company because they cost me three wasted weeks of work!

Well, at least there’s a light on the horizon now, and I can return to using the display package I’d originally chosen without needed to learn any more about all the complicated stuff they refused to tell me anything about.   Of course, I may still be forced to modify (i.e. fix) their video driver module…  They provide the source, but will I have the necessary environment (i.e. all of the correct linux headers and libraries, etc) to actually build it?

I’m a Verizon customer. Whether that is good or bad is moot, since everyone else in my family uses Verizon, I can use the cheapest possible plan to talk with them as much as I want, so I’ll stay while they stay. But that’s not why I’m typing tonight…

Recently, I was having a very, VERY bad day at the office, after several consecutive similarly bad days. To cap it, the phone calls would not stop coming in, each from someone expecting instant support on a totally different project, some that I hadn’t even heard mentioned in nearly a decade! I managed to totally ruin the day when I noticed that I would soon miss the day’s UPS pickup, and if I did, my nephew’s birthday gift would be late. In my rush to get the package completed (filled with bags of air and packing peanuts, taped shut, etc.) I managed to drop my new cell phone into the box without noticing. Later, when the package was safely on its way to another state, I realized my mistake.

Since I’d only had the phone for a month or so, and it was powered off (I generally leave it off during the work day), I thought that I’d just use my previous phone, since I still had it and all of its accessories at home. After charging (I replaced it because it only held a charge for a few hours) I turned it on and everything looked just fine. I was even able to use Verizon’s “Get It Now” function to synch the phone’s address book with my online backup.

However, when I tried to use it to make a call, I was informed (by a mechanical voice) that the phone was unable to connect to the network. I bit of research showed that Verizon disables your old phone when you activate a new one, because with a plan like mine there is only one number and therefore only one phone.

That’s sad because it should be very little burden for their computers to track the extra phone and, should I turn them BOTH on at the same time, I’d be fine with BOTH phones being disabled until one was turned off again. There are perfectly valid emergency situations (but not necessarily 9-1-1 worthy, which will likely still work) when the ability to use a saved backup phone would be extremely helpful. But it is not allowed.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to bring your old (i.e. “disposable”) phone to the beach (where it might get stolen) or when you go kayaking (where it may get a bit too damp) or maybe after a hurricane or other natural force destroyed the part of your house or car where your new phone happened to be? But it is not allowed.

Why do we allow companies to charge us large amounts of money for devices and then allow those same companies (or sometimes others — think iPod or Tivo) to decide how and when we are allowed to use them? Shouldn’t the devices be completely free (well, actually, more like “issued” by the company, like a cable box) if the companies want to control our use of them? I cannot even begin to understand the lunatics that bought iPhones and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Apple had some super-powered image analyzer that automatically filter out images that Apple considers offensive from your phone. They cannot let the customer see them to decide, because the customer may be offended, right?

Don’t laugh. It will happen. Probably in my lifetime (of which there may not be much remaining).

So, you’re a consumer (but not someone in the computer business) and you have just purchased a shiny new computer that came with Windows XP (or [shudder] Vista) pre-installed for you. When you were buying the computer, did it occur to you to ask if your package would include a “real” Microsoft Windows XP (or Vista) CD or DVD? If you didn’t ask, was that because the store, salesperson, or labeling on the package or sales floor had already answered that question or did you not ask because it did not seem important. After all, your computer came with XP (or Vista) pre-installed, so you obviously were “buying” it, too, right?

I recently discovered just how important this question can be when my mother’s computer was fried in a thunderstorm (the power supply and motherboard were both toast).

Mom had an eMachine that was purchased a few years ago, and when we contacted eMachines, we were told that they no longer sell replacement motherboards for her unit. So we shopped around and found the nearest equivalent we could and bought that as a replacement. After installing the new hardware, we tried to boot, but XP failed to boot more than the screen where one may shoose which type of “safe mode” should crash, um, I mean boot next. Just to ensure the hardware was OK, we tried booting a Ubuntu Live CD and everything was perfect, including the hard drive, but XP still refused to run. We tried to repair XP from the CDs that eMachines provided with the computer, but they refused to run (luckily, it turned out: they would have ERASED ALL of her existing data, applications, etc!). We borrowed a “real” Windows XP CD from a friend and used the built-in “repair” facility, which brought the machine back to life — but with a twist: the existing product activation key was no longer considered valid after XP had been repaired! We contacted Microsoft and after explaining everything above, their response was that we should try to get a new key from eMachines and that Microsoft could/would not help us — unless we were interested in purchasing a new license for XP, that Microsoft would gladly help us with. Of course eMachines also told us to go away because we were no longer running on their hardware.

So, the bottom line was that, in order to be “legal” after her old hardware failed totally and was replaced, to continue using the operating system that she paid for once already, my Mother was forced to purchase a new XP license — NOT an upgrade, since the “new” motherboard didn’t come with an upgradeable OS.

Does this sound in any way fair? I don’t think so. Does it even sound legal? I’d hate to live anywhere near a judge that thought it was, but given that many judges are well paid, and may have investment portfolios that include Microsoft stock, whose value is based on this kind of crap, who knows.