talk about the weather

The weather here sucks, but not because it’s particularly brutal. I haven’t encountered a day that was any worse than what Columbus or Carlisle has to offer. The reason it sucks is that it messes with your emotions. A few days ago, I walked out of my flat to go to King’s Buildings for class and was blinded with sunlight. This was pure, unadulterated sunlight without the moody grey clouds that seem omnipresent about these parts. If there were clouds, they were the whispy white variety and nothing more. Well, it was the first sunny day for a while, so I was in a good mood, and the first thing I thought was, of course, skate! So, walking back from lectures, the weather was still good. I dropped by my flat, grabbed my board, and headed for bristo. There were some dark clouds forming, but it was sunny for the most part. I got to Bristo and skated for maybe twenty minutes before it started raining. Mother naturer you whore! From the window of my tutorial I could see that the rain had subsided. But could I skate? No, I could not as it had rained just enough to leave large puddles waiting to rust my bearings and delaminate my 7-ply. It’s just not fair

reason 1,000,001 i’m sxe

Originally written 07.02.2002

Reason 1,000,001 that I’m straight edge would have to be the movie Requiem for a Dream which I watched tonight on my laptop connected to Iain’s monitor. This movie doesn’t have any of the lovable, cudly, heroin addicts that Trainspotting has. It just paints a horribly bleak picture of drug abuse from a couple of different perspectives. It’s one of the few movies that I can remember that has made me cringe and recoil in my seat. I suppose that one could dismiss the film’s graphic nature as being indiewood sensationalism, but Iain, who worked at a chemist’s during high school, recounted an anectdote of a women who literally tripped over her own small child to get to her mescaline tablets, which affirms that addiction is every bit as ugly as movies portray it.

Reason 1,000,002 would be giving myself less opportunities to dick over people I care about.

Reason 1,000,003 is that Marco drank more than enough for the both of us yesterday, though he was more comical than anything. And hey, who doesn’t want to hear a musical version of “The Owl and the Pussycat”?

googlewhack

Ian describes googlewhacking as:

first go to www.google.com
enter a combination of words in the search box
click “search” if your results come back as search result 1 of 1, you’ve got a googlewhack

I wrote a googlewhacking cgi. You can check it out at http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/cgi/s0130561/googlewhack.pl.

creepy

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

This is pretty creepy, though not in the same way as Rob’s dream (see below). I was reading Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier and found this passage towards the end of chapter 4:

Key escrow has considerable disadvantages. The use has to trust the escrow agents’ security procedures, as well as the integrity of the people involved. He has to trust the escrow agents not to change their policies, the government not to change its laws, and those with lawful authority to get his keys to do so lawfully and responsibly. Imagine a major terrorist attack in New Yorkl what sorts of limits on the police would be thrown aside in the aftermath?

I agree with Schneier that escrow is a bad, bad idea. Primarily, it’s very clear that it won’t keep criminals and terrorists from using non-escrowed crypto. Similarly, there are enough empirical examples to be reluctant to entrust one’s keys to the government or to big business. However, I think the idea of mandatory escrow is going to continue to be thrown around, and it is probably only a matter of time before key escrow becomes overwhelmingly frequent, if not mandatory. So why not establish a network of escrow agents who can be trusted to a greater degree than government or business? “Sure I’ll use escrowed keys, but you, Uncle Sam, can only have part of the key, the other parts are escrowed with the ACLU and the EFF.” If the hypothetical ACLU escrow service is implemented and used, say for the keypair that I use to send my grandmother birthday e-mails, then such escrow agents become a legitimate entity in the escrow debate and could offer an additional level of protection against state abuse of escrow systems.

flower of scotland

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

Here is my flatmates, Iain and Marco’s, rendition of the Scotish anthem, Flower of Scotland.

hook (oh my god)

This was originally written on 03.02.2002.

It seems I have a new nickname, and that nickname is “Hook”. How did I aquire this nickname, one might ask? A horrible childhood accident with a lawn mower. No such luck. While I was out today, my flatmate Rob annonced the content of one of his dreams. It involved an attractive girl who proceeded to take off her clothes in the middle of the flat. This figment of Rob’s (obviously warped) subconcious, apparemtly, only had eyes for me and I, again, apparently, in a fit of dreamland infidelity, had my way with her on the top of the kitchen table, with, get this, my hook shaped phallus. It was described by Rob as like “that muppet’s nose”, “gonzo”. If you don’t hear from me in a few days call scotland yard.

the sound of music

This was originally written on 02.02.2002.

A typical Friday night. The flatmates were debating whether to go out or not. Iain was downing the cider, and Rob the cider. Marco was sober on account of having consumed a ton of headache medicine. We were just chilling out, making diner, talking shit (of course), and watching TV. Top of the Pops, a show that plays taped live performances by chart leading artists was one, and some of the acts were utter shwill. So, I made the comment that I could write a song every bit as good as the one being played on the television. Marco asked if I wanted to try, and we retreated to my room with Iain’s guitar. Twenty minutes later we had produced a short ditty, an ode to Iain. It was awesome. Marco has this great, resonant, voice, and when we performened the song for Iain, it was filled with all the bloated cliches of pop and alternative music. “Don’t you knowowow … He looks good in a kilt. Don’t you knowowow … That he’s sturdily built.” Hilarious.

After we were done dorking around with the car, Pete announced that he was going to an electroacoustic concert and asked if I wanted to go. Sure, I said, and we ran off to the concert hall. The show wasn’t free as I had suspected, but it was well worth my three quid. The concert was part of a weekend production titled “Sounds Found and Fixed: Weekend of Sonic Art”. Electroacoustic music seems to be a collection of found sound and electronically produced sounds, or sounds that are tweaked out of an instrument in a way that it was never meant to be played. You’ve probably heard this music before. Think the dark soundscapes that come with the opening credits of movies like Seven. So, I had heard music like this before, but never in a setting like this. The room was wired with over twenty speakers of different sizes and power. The performers played compositions off of CD or computer and worked the mixing board to fill the room with these strange sounds. Pete studies music technology at the university and he was telling me about how one could hear different songs and reverberations depending on where one sits in the room. Sitting in the theatre, I thought, this is why I came to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is really a cultural mecca of sorts for fringe art and it’s so, so good to discover new things for the first time.

well, maybe i do

Last week I finally got access to the laptop ports in the University computer labs. Sure this means great things like being bombarded with e-mail or IMs, but it also means that I can finally download music. So, the first thing I did was go out and download the new Alkaline Trio and Hot Water Music split. It’s really good. The new songs are of similar quality to the overall body of work of both bands, but it’s the covers of each other’s songs that really did it for me. Then, I spoke briefly with Peter about music over IM and he told me about Billy Corgan’s new band as well as remind me of the latest Dashboard Confessional EP. How could I be so forgetful? Despite a departure from Dashboard-esque emotional music, I have awaited this release for a long time. So, I pulled it down from audiogalaxy and loaded the files into my media player. It was so good. The EP has four songs and each song is a vignette in a larger story of boy gets girl. Sure it’s acoustic and melodic, but Chris Carraba has actually managed to write a love song (actually four of them) without a lost or unrequited prefix. Some people might miss his older, angstier stuff, and I probably would have as well, a few short months ago. But it was also a few months ago that I heard some of these songs for the first time at a small show in a little fire hall in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. It was when Erin drove me four hours across state lines and, in the middle of the Dashboard set, put her head on my shoulder. So, listening to these songs is really hard because they remind me of that night, and lyrically, they remind me that beyond all the angst and the disillusionment, past all the jaded nights alone and the disappointment, things just work out. They work out in a way that can’t really be expressed with the flowery language of reckless, spiteful anger. Things work out in a way that, despite the complications of the surrounding world, is just simple and nice. So I’m listening to this nice, simple music and feeling all weepy in the middle of the computer lab. I’m walking home and the songs are still in my head and I’m hoping that someone’s back at the flat when I get home and that the hours between now and Erin’s phone call go by as quickly as the four songs on the EP.

do i look like a bitch, mr. bush?

I was watching the UK news a few minutes ago, and they seem to have coverage of US politics that is slightly less soft than that of US broadcasters. They were doing a piece on some English official’s involvement in the Enron fiasco, but they also mentioned VP Cheney’s struggle to keep details of meetings with Enron executives confidential. They showed a clip of Bush, and I don’t remember the exact quote, I wish I did, but to paraphrase, he basically said that in order to be able to solicit “sound advice” from people, he, and the vice president, had to be able to ensure these phantom advisors that their advice would remain private. This seems like one of the most counter-intuitive arguments that I have ever heard. To me, the whole definition of “sound advice” is that it is meritorious enough to withstand public scrutiny. Sure, advice can be good, and still be unpopular, but it is the hallmark of a good leader to be able to make tough decisions and defend them OPENLY rather than weasel around and make cryptic meetings like some power hungry high school student council member. So, Mr. Bush, do I, and the rest of the American people look like a bitch? No? Then why do I get the feeling that I’m being played like one.

my response to the Microsoft vs. DOJ RFC

Below is the comment that I submitted in response to the call for comments by Consumers for Computing Choice.

Most Internet historians would agree that the reason for the proliferation of the Personal Computer, the Internet, and indeed, Microsoft’s ability to be hugely successful and experience enormous growth was the adoption of open, public, standards which could be adopted, implemented, and used as a base for development by computer venders and users alike. 

If Microsoft is able to maintain it’s monopoly power, such open infrastructure will be seriously threatened and the ability for computer technology to continue it’s trend of rapid growth in terms of useability offered to the general public as well as monetary contributions to the economy could easily be squashed. 

Because of Microsoft’s size, and the fact that they dominate the desktop software, operating system, server and enterprise software, and Internet services markets, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to establish ad-hoc standards for Internet and computing technology.  This is already visable in Microsoft’s “.NET” and “Passport” initiatives.  Though Microsoft argues that such initiatives are open and designed to foster contributions by third-party vendors, there is no reason to suspect that this will remain the case.  Since Microsoft essentially controls the technology and the standards, they are in a position to block other vendors who may produce better performing or cheaper products designed for use on Microsoft platforms. 

Therefore, Microsoft, rather than the market or consumer, is positioned to shape the future technological landscape.  The company could, potentially, control both which technolgies are available to consumers, and how much consumers must pay for the technology.  There are multiple implications for this scenario.  Microsoft could control available technology, because, as stated earlier, Microsoft essentially controls a number of de-facto standards regarding computer technology.  Therefore, if a computer hardware or software vendor creates some new piece of computer technology, it is essentially neccessary for this technology to be supported by Microsoft in order for the technolgy to reach the market.  Therefore, this bottleneck not only means that consumers have less choice in the computer technology marketplace, but also that it is unprofitable to develop new computing technologies.  Furthermore, since Microsoft software is so purvasive, Microsoft can set the prices for computer technology.  Since Microsoft has already diminished competition through it’s monopolistic practices, many consumers are left with only two alternatives.  Purchase Microsoft software or do without.  The perfect example of the perils of this situation are in public schools.  Since Microsoft has established itself as the industry leader in personal computer technology, it makes sense that students learn computer skills on the Microsoft platform.  However, many schools find it difficult to afford the licensing costs of Microsoft software and are forced to either illegally pirate software or deprive students of quality technology education.  Similarly, as bridging the digital divide has been stated as a national priority in many forums, a world where a single entity controls the price of computer software, and thus the key to computer ownership is clearly frightening. 

In conclusion, the proposed DOJ settlement does nothing to alleviate  the anti-competitive monopoly power of the Microsoft corporation.  Because the company still maintains such a large share of numerous aspects of the computer technology market, entry into said market, and the ability for consumers to drive that market remain difficult.  In the interest of protecting the rights of American consumers, and preserving the long tradition of entrepreneurship and technological advancement in the computer industry, I strongly urge the courts to reject the proposed settlement and instead take stronger action, such as the initially proposed break-up order, to protect free markets and the American consumer.