Odds and ends

I'm busy getting ready to watch The Sopranos' final episode, but wanted to pass along a link to an article about how lightening up roofing and highway materials is a vastly useful environmental technique, since much less heat is absorbed, especially in cities. All it takes is chalk dust. Apparently, the reason we don't do this is because it's too simple to sound impressive. From Mark Kleiman, via Matt Yglesias:

Of course, if we had political reporters who weren't pig-ignorant about science and technology, this wouldn't be as significant a problem as it is. And if politicians weren't in the habit of offering trivial pseudo-solutions to serious problems, journalists would be less cynical about things that seem too easy. But then if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a trolley car.

This is a case where simply repeating the idea until it no longer seems funny could make a difference. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explain the idea to five people until they stop laughing.

Stop laughing!

By the way, lest we ever forget this, people are morons. This is a fundamental truth of human existence. It applies to those in the tech world who would impose arcane limits on us, crazy warmongering politicians like Joe Lieberman, the same crazy guy agreeing with Barack Obama that the internet is dangerous, etc....though I'll note that, closing the circle, Obama does know how to deal with pig-ignorant journalists.

Catching up #3: Technology/Music/Free Concert Clips

As I mentioned back when I was more responsible about daily blogging, I think the whole push by media companies for digital rights management (DRM) software is a load of crap. At best it makes it slightly more inconvenient to copy files illegally, and at worst it means that the CD* copy of Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome album won't play on either my DVD/CD player or my computer, and thus can't be imported onto my iPod (remember, CD* means like a CD, only crappier). In what almost counts as irony, I returned the disc to the store and got it on iTunes instead, and then burned a backup copy to disc, thus freeing it from the DRM software that Apple prefers. For anyone who likes the album, let me recommend that you do this, but rearrange the tracks in alphabetical order. For unknown reasons, this is a vastly better mix than what Springsteen et al. decided to go with. This is true whether you get the additional tracks from iTunes (Bring 'em Home, How Can a Poor Man Stand such times, etc.) or not.

Anyway, Apple recently announced that they are adding non-DRM tracks to their online store, albeit at an additional cost, starting with the non-Fab component of EMI's catalog. More power to them, I say, even if they do charge more for the privilege (which, frankly, is their right). Some people, though, are now up in arms about a hidden bit of the system: apparently, they "watermark" the files by encrypting your account info into the song file. Honestly, I understand that this can be a security threat if your iPod is stolen, but let's not kid ourselves. People are angry because it means that they will have to think carefully about illegally sharing those files. Allow me to play them a dirge on the world's smallest violin....ok, better. Just because DRM is dropped doesn't give people any more right to share the music files than they possessed before, which is absolutely no right whatsoever, unless said album was released under a Creative Commons license, like They're Everywhere, by Jim's Big Ego. For those convinced that they need to share files with their friends, but are afraid of the fuzz, one might suggest the following method is not really so hard.

1. Burn music to CD.
2. Read CD back into computer.

If you aren't willing to put forth that much effort before posting your music to a torrent site, I kinda hope the law does bust you, because you're an idiot.

Speaking of music, I've been listening to a bunch of it, and here are some recommendations:

Via my co-blogger, a Mexican Ska band that just totally will rock your world, Los de Abajo (The Underdogs). Clips from their album LDA vs. the lunatics ca be found here, including the single mix of the title track, which is just awesome. Honestly, given that that link will allow you to play their entire album for free, I don't understand why you are still reading this. You can always come back to my ramblings later, if you think about it.

Speaking of albums being streamed freely over the web, Wilco is doing it again with their latest album, Sky Blue Sky, which just came out recently. Go to this page, and click on "listen" in the lower left. After that, you can buy the album if you'd like, supporting musicians who remember that their fans deserve t be respected, not threatened with lawsuits. As for the album itself, dkon loved it at first listen, but it's taken some time to grow on me, and might need a bit more time still. It's very slow and quiet, much more given to softer pop rock than the atmospherics of their past albums. Jeff Tweedy's voice is in good shape, and the lyrics are a bit more grounded than the past few album's intricate nonsense (that's not an insult, BTW, just the best way I know to describe some of their songs). For what it's worth, I liked the album when I played it outside while chilling on the porch, and it'll do nicely for just about anyone in a "porch music" capacity, to use a term I usually associate with Greg Brown. I can't really rank it above either Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which is just a brilliant, quasi-visionary album, nor Being There, Wilco's second album, a double disc of roots-inflected Rock'n'Roll that just pounds out all that is good about good ol' down home Americana rock. Still, the album is currently playing in the background and my wife has been unable to stop drumming her fingers in time with Sky Blue Sky, so it must be pretty catchy.

Staying on the alt-country vein, I have to also recommend the newest album from Golden Smog, Blood on the Slacks. For those not familiar with them, Golden Smog started off as a side project for Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, a couple members of the Jayhawks, and a bunch of other alt-country artists. Tweedy was apparently too busy with Wilco for this particular release, but the Jayhawks members are more than capable of sustaining the gig. They have a couple of free tracks available on the MySpace page I linked to, but I also have to recommend their rocked out version of David Bowie's Starman.

Delving back slightly further into the history of country rock, I stumbled across a Gram Parsons tribute album while looking for Wilco songs, and it is incredible. Return of the Grievous Angel is a staggeringly good album, and I can't say enough about "$1000 Wedding", covered by Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield, "Sin City", by Beck and Emmylou Harris, or the title track, as covered by Lucinda Williams and fellow former Byrd David Crosby (Wilco's cover of "One Hundred Years From Now" is also very good, of course).

Finally, we've always known that They Might Be Giants were a bit ahead of the curve, but they are currently trying something that I have to say I can't remember being tried much before. Their new album, The Else, is available on iTunes exclusively, at least until July 10 when they finally ship the CDs. Here is a mashup of my favorite song on the album, Climbing the Walls with highlights from the Lost Season 3 finale (go to 0:47 for the music starting; spoiler warning?), and concert recordings of Take Out the Trash and Shadow Government.

And that is how I know...when I try to get through on the telephone to you...There'll be nobody home

There was a brief period when I was first introduced to Slashdot, the web's leading technology news source, when I used to leave comments. I soon realized it was pretty useless, given the general chaos in their comments, which span the full range between insightful points and babbling idiocy, with very few people aware of the difference in spite of their extremely complicated comment moderation system. Still, it should be pointed out that there are precious few stories about anything technical that escape their attention, and three from tonight really made that clear. I'll skip straight to the linked articles, since that is where the real interest lies.

First, a quickie about a mission to go sample the Earth's mantle with a deep sea mission. MSNBC reports that the exposed mantle is located near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where matter is upwelling, slowly pushing America and Europe apart, though nowhere near as fast as our President has been doing so. No one is quite sure exactly why the crust seems to have ripped open in this one spot, according to the article, though they seem to think the crust above fractured and was more tightly bound to itself than to the mantle below, leading to fissures. Given the huge uncertainties we have with respect to the physics of what happens underfoot, especially compared to the ease with which we study the stuff above, I'm sure that anything they find will be more than interesting. Heck, just last week they announced that a big chunk of the mantle beneath China contains as much water as the Arctic Ocean, though no one has much of an idea how to access it anytime soon.

Switching over to matters above, if you will, the NYTimes has an article about our evolutionary conditioning to believe in God. Just to set up the basic parameters:

About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”

The article mentions several interesting psychological studies, demonstrating that as young children we first believe that everyone thinks exactly the same (i.e., exactly like us), and later that we still seem to believe in omniscience, especially with regard to our parents until about age 5 or 6, and essentially suggests that God may be the residual of this belief.

Now, I might be genetically predisposed to be a non-believer, since neither of my parents are believers, but I am wary of the "nature instead of nurture" tone of the article. There is a strong social component to religion, especially given the role played by parents in teaching religion to their children (you have no idea how hard it was not to use the word "brainwash" there). Also, there is a bizarre tendency in humanity to believe completely random crap about just about anything, no matter how contradictory those beliefs may be, rather than admit to not knowing. Ask people if there is gravity on the moon, and more people will tell you "no" than "I don't know" (the answer is yes, of course, since mass is a source of gravitation and the moon has quite a bit of it). For reasons beyond me, people would rather believe their lives have an inherent point, even if we can't really define it, rather than admit we have no idea if we do or not. Most of it comes down to a sense of perspective: people ignore the fact of just how small and insignificant we are on the global scale, much less an astronomical ones. Maybe this is the byproduct of evolution: we specialize in explaining things, with very little regard to whether or not the explanations are correct, and uncertainty just flusters our well-evolved brains. Then again, I really don't know.

Finally, having looked up and down, let's just look all around at the invisible things all around us, in this case Wi-Fi networks. John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, who is a very good writer, suggests that cellphone companies will try to kill off citywide WiFi projects, which would compete with their overpriced, tortoise-paced cell-based internet networks. He's certainly right about the telephone companies, who like just about all media/communication companies are fundamentally shortsighted about literally every technological issue with which they have to deal. I just wonder whether he fully understands kids these days. To anyone used to Hi-speed internet (let's say 10 Mbps or so), dial-up speed is physically painful. So long as there are restaurants and coffeeshops with free Wi-Fi, I'll blissfully ignore the existence of slower connections. If trapped at an airport without Hi-speed, I'll watch a DVD or read a book. I doubt I'm alone in this, it's just that a slow connection seems like a waste of time in the end. Outside of an airport, where exactly can one not find a coffeeshop these days? I would certainly look at paying for city-wide WiFi , but anything else is just a bit too close to the telegraph and the Pony Express. Thankfully, the cellphone companies don't have time on their side: free municipal WiFi may be hard to get implemented, but once in place it's hard to see what could make it go away. Besides, once Apple takes over the market with the iPhone, and then switches over to a WiFi/VoiP basis rather than cell when possible, how much longer will the cell phone industry be around, anyway?

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, then you might find, you get what you need

Sorry, just a quick post tonight. For anyone who has ever used iTunes, there is an interesting article that was linked to on Slashdot that explains how Apple's Fairplay digital rights management (DRM) software works. Suffice it to say, it is extremely complicated:

During authorization, iTunes creates a globally unique ID number for the computer it is running on, then sends it to Apple's servers, where it is assigned to the user's iTunes account. Five different machines can be authorized.

When a user buys a song from the iTunes Store, a user key is created for the purchased file. The AAC song itself is scrambled using a separate master key, which is then included into the protected AAC song file. The master key is locked using the user key, which is both held by iTunes and also sent to Apple’s servers.

Protected, purchased content is locked within iTunes; songs are not scrambled on Apple's server. This speeds and simplifies the transaction by delegating that work to iTunes on the local computer.

The result is an authorization system that does not require iTunes to verify each song with Apple as it plays. Instead, iTunes maintains a collection of user keys for all the purchased tracks in its library.

To play a protected AAC song, iTunes uses the matching user key to unlock the master key stored within the song file, when is then used to unscramble the song data.

Every time a new track is purchased, a new user key may be created; those keys are all encrypted and stored on the authorized iTunes computer, as well as being copied to Apple's servers.

etc. etc. etc. Some people think it is awful to encumber music with this crap, since it greatly restricts what you can do with it. Thankfully, Apple doesn't really want to protect music so much as make it inconvenient to copy. To get full rights to your music you have to burn it to a CD and then read it back into your computer, and presto, no DRM crap!

Right now, even Steve Jobs is saying that Apple doesn't really like DRM, and the music industry makes them do it. As I've suggested here before, the music labels are certainly idiotic enough to make this statement true, but that doesn't make it so. Either way, the simple fact of the matter is that media companies can try to protect things all they want, but they are no smarter than the hackers out there trying to defeat them, and the hackers have them outnumbered thousands to one, even in the case of Microsoft and the biggies. Actually, I should say especially in the case of Microsoft, since the bigger the target, the more attention it gets.

The real proof of this principle can be found in the multiple layers of encryption used for the high-def DVD formats just coming on the market: Blu-ray and HD-DVD. They use similar content protection systems, known as AACS. Since their release in June of last year, hackers have managed to undo three independent layers of encryption, noting that the means used in each case were similar, to the point that they will likely soon crack the entire system, which is already sufficiently compromised to allow an enterprising user to get around any limits that Media companies tried to place on him or her. Thanks to Wikipedia, knowledge of the cracks is publicly available, and already a source of embarrassment for the media giants, who decided to use the time and date of a disc's creation as the "secret key" that unlocks a disc. Great thinking, guys. All this for a system that some predicted would be unbreakable. in the end, the media companies really just hope that you'll be lazy, and not take the time to learn how to get around their protection. We've obviously passed that point for the majority of computer user's with CDs, and DVDs will follow in the not too distant future. In the end, they'd be wise to find some sort of workable subscription model, basically cutting middlemen like Netflix or CD stores out of the process, and just charging a monthly fee for convenient service. We'll see who is smart enough to do so over the coming years.

Yes, I love technology but not as much as you, you see.

It can amaze even me, something of a professional techie in the grand scheme of things and a daily Slashdot reader, just how philosophically committed people can get to their computers and the software they run. Most of the world mistakenly thinks Microsoft software is required to run a computer, or at least to do business on one. This is dead wrong, of course; I still try to argue occasionally that Microsoft anti-virus software would remove the entire operating system if it functioned properly. Anyway, no one can match the passion of the Free Software Foundation and their followers, and that is in many ways a good thing. Their mission:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), established in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant.

Basically, their goal is to allow people to control their own software, able to modify it and learn from it, rather than treat it like a black box of mystery. Their weapon of choice is known as the Gnu Public License, or GPL, which basically says you can modify a program, copy it, and even redistribute it to others, but that you have to pass on to them the same rights in turn. If you're familiar with the Linux operating system, this is the license that it is distributed under. I can give you a copy of the version we use at work, and it would be perfectly legal. Needless to say, neither Macintosh (the maker of the computer at which I type this) nor Microsoft buy into this model, though it should be noted that OS X is built upon an operating system developed in a comparable fashion. I like to think I've done my part in this: I've publicly released a scientific computer code under the GPL, and this blog is covered by a Creative Commons license that works in much the same way. Sharing is good, and should be encouraged.

In some cases, freedom of information is something of a mixed bag. There are campaigns underway to make scientific research freely available, both publications and the underlying data. Making articles available to as broad an audience as possible is certainly a good idea, especially given how much of the work is publicly funded (e.g., everything I work on). Some scientific journals are not so thrilled, and have actually been hiring expensive consultants with questionable track records (like supporting Exxon's campaigns against environmentalists), to argue that making scientific information freely available is somehow a form of government oppression (?!?). Thankfully, astronomers have made this issue moot for over a decade. Every paper I've ever published was released on the arXiv preprint server, which is completely free, whereas a journal subscription will run you thousands of dollars annually. Virtually every paper in physics is released this way, and it's fantastic. In a field where success is defined by how broad an impact you can make with your publications, you want as many readers as you can possibly get. This is not to say refereed journals don't have a place. Certainly, being able to get a paper approved by an independent peer review is still a certification of quality, and it reflects negatively on a paper if it doesn't eventually pass that standard, so the journals seem to be panicking over nothing. Access to data, on the other hand, can be a bit more problematic. More than anything else, it is really hard to train someone from the outside how to interpret the long strings of seemingly random numbers that most scientists produce. It doesn't even necessarily solve the problem of fudging results, since all it requires is for one to fudge the data files themselves, rather than just the plots. All in all, so long as scientific results are available to the broadest possible audience, I think it serves the public good; beyond that, we are starting to get into peripheral concerns.

The clearest cut case of freedom in the information technology world is the campaign being waged by the media corporations against their customers. The recording (RIAA) and film (MPAA) industry media conglomerate groups are among the most shortsighted businesses in the world, just after American car manufacturers. Simply put, they are suing their biggest fans because some of those fans have basic technological skills. Let's face it, it is painfully easy to copy a CD, and not much harder to do so for a movie (25 million Americans have managed to do it). The genie is out of the bottle, and it isn't going back in. Companies try to lock in content through all sorts of ridiculous Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, but it serves mostly to annoy. I bought what turned out to be my favorite album of the past year, Bruce Springsteen's "We Shall Overcome", but couldn't play it in my computer or DVD player (or iPod) because of the copy-protection. That CD was returned to the store double-quick. Nice move, idiots. Instead, I ended up buying the album from itunes, which itself has copy-protection issues that just got it banned in Norway. Of course, defeating Apple's copy protection, which limits replay devices to iPods only, is a piece of cake. You burn a CD with the songs, and read them back into the computer, making them free and clear in a completely legal fashion. DRM isn't being used to stop copying, it's being used to make it less convenient. Simply put, media companies hate you and think you are an idiot. They are correct often enough to keep trying their BS. In its newest incarnation, media companies have all sorts of protection schemes built into their new high definition next-generation DVDs, the competing formats known as HDDVD and BluRay (think Beta vs VHS videotapes). The systems they used were so impressive that the same guy cracked them both, within a week of each other. Nice job, guys. Just so we're all clear, this is definitely a project by the recoding industry, not the individual artists, who make more of their money from concert ticket sales. Unfortunately for the industry, the value of the albums themselves, measured by the cost to obtain them, is getting smaller because of modern technology. No CD is worth paying $20 for, especially when your local library has a copy (not that I am recommending you do anything legally questionable like make a copy, of course, since that would be wrong). To sell these overpriced albums, try adding some value. Throw in a DVD movie, or some really cool artwork to hang on a wall. Better yet, let's try joining the current century. DVDs are now widely available under subscription models, as are movies via On demand type services. The music industry can try the same kind of thing, or it can die. Then again, some artists can prove themselves to be visionaries, too, boosting their popularity by allowing their listeners to share music legally, as with last week's featured band, Jim's Big Ego, and their album They're Everywhere, released under a Creative Commons license. The future is here, and those that try to fight it (Microsoft, the RIAA) are going to get swept away if they're not careful. It can't happen a moment too soon if you ask me.