(criminal) The irony of Sony DRM

Just over a year ago, the Sony rootkit DRM scandal broke, depicting how an arrogant Sony BMG had chosen to subvert the security of millions of PCs in order to protect their intellectual property through DRM. If an individual had done it, this would be considered a serious crime, but Sony got away with what amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist.

Like many like-minded people, I started a personal boycott of all Sony products from then on. I had never bought Sony stuff before anyway -- too little bang for the buck, if you ask me -- so this was only a symbolic gesture.

Recently, I wanted to buy a small, mains-operated, single-piece (no separate speakers) table-top stereo with a digital FM tuner. All other features were negotiable/optional.

After weeks of searching, literally the only brand that offered anything like this turned out to be a Sony. Since the boycott was over a year old, I gritted my teeth and bought it....

...and found the following text in the user manual:

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Music discs encoded with copyright protection technologies

This product is designed to playback discs that conform to the Compact Disc (CD) standard. Recently, various music discs encoded with copyright protection technologies are marketed by some record companies. Please be aware that among those discs, there are some that do not confirm to the CD standard and may not be playable by this product.

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Delicious!

It is so cool...

...to have a son who's taller and handsomer than me :-) And I see his lanky figure, slightly stooped like many tall people are, and flashback to how he was when he was born, and at 2, and at 4, and all sorts of other memories...

Man, what a rush!

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Note to myself: go see a psychiatrist. Second non-technical blog-post in as many weeks, Something seriously wrong...

DNA - After Hrs - Tom Cruise tops least favourite poll - Daily News & Analysis

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1068650

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise is trying his best to change his image but most Americans still consider him too strange and have voted him the least favourite star in a recent poll.

Only 12 percent of respondents said they would make a big effort to watch any of his movies and 34 percent said they would not see one at all [emphasis mine - Sita]. They were creeped out by his passion for Scientology, reports pagesix.com.

Good to know there are people like me in the US too :-)

Now why can't Americans show the same good sense and intelligence when selecting presidents?

(malware,DRM,quotes) CIO Blogs - Musings on Vista

http://blogs.cio.com/musings-on-vista

Another great article from my favourite CIO columnist. Again, nothing we haven't read in other places, but he brings it together very succinctly and clearly.

Some quotes [text in brackets is mine]:

Overall, Microsoft delivers client operating systems whose virtues make end users happy and whose vices cause problems for IT.

...

It's addressed some of the problems in XP in ways that end users are likely to see as intrusive and inconvenient. In other words, they've bandaged their vices in ways that will wound their virtues, which is a poor strategy.

...

There's only one problem with this situation [Trusted Computing] -- changing hardware will break the end-to-end chain of security and result in an inability to access the data (see here, particularly page 2, for an interesting discussion of the implications of Trusted Computing and hardware).

...

I would hate to be the IT help desk person who has to explain to an end user that because the motherboard of the computer went on the fritz and the backup encryption keys aren't available, all data on the machine is lost.

...

I know that no end user is going to see this functionality [DRM] as helpful in his or her daily life. This seems like functionality put into the system not to serve the actual user, but to appease a powerful constituency that, through money and legislation, can bring more pressure to bear than can individual users. I predict an uproar around DRM when Vista rolls out, and a widespread rejection of new-gen media on PCs due to the onerous requirements.

Love and Marriage

The other day there was a toastmasters club meeting in the office, where one of the table topics was "Love before Marriage, or Marriage before Love?"

My first question, considering both my sense of humour and the fact that I'm an incorrigible flirt, was "does it have to be with the same person?"

Good joke. Or was it a joke? Maybe I was serious ;-)

But it got me thinking. A lot of my younger friends have just gotten married or are about to take the plunge, and -- while I will always behave like an immature, childish, almost juvenile, brat, and I will always be proud of it -- I can't really escape the fact that I am actually 44.

So here're some thoughts on the subject, and some free advice. Buddha had the great insight that desire is the root of all suffering. In terms of human relationships, I'm sure the specific desire is the desire for importance. Also called ego :-)

And everyone knows that ego comes from being insecure. [And no, I don't mean that type of "insecure"!]

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It seems to me that, in terms of relationships, there are 4 types of people in this world.

1. most insecure: no deep feelings at all, even if she seems very friendly and vivacious to a casual observer. Will never trust anyone enough to open up or appear vulnerable. Always on her guard.

   Love before marriage? No way! Just hope that there will be some love after marriage. And pray that she marries at least a type 3 or a type 4!

2. somewhat insecure: has feelings and is capable of lots of love, but is very very guarded. Can morph temporarily into type 1 if there's a problem! Won't tell anyone when she's hurt -- swallows it all and burns up inside.

   Sounds like a stereo-typical girl? Believe me, I've seen guys like this too!

   Love before marriage only with a type 3 or a type 4.

3. still a little insecure: enough that he can't admit it even to himself :-) Projects an overwhelming image of confidence and mastery over everything.

   Finds it very difficult to say "I need you" to anyone. In fact, anything sentimental is accompanied by a joke -- sort of like an escape clause!

   Even a type 2 may wonder if he has any feelings at all. But if you're a type 4, you will quite easily see that he needs you but just isn't saying it, and that he does have feelings deep down but will not show them, and so you'll probably be fine!

   Most definitely "love before marriage" material, but he won't push it if things don't work out, so he may well end up with an arranged marriage. Just hope it's not to a type 1 :-(

4. hardly any insecurity: can happily, without an ounce of diffidence or reluctance, tell someone "I need you" :-) You always know where you are with him. Cannot hide his feelings if his life depended on it.

   Appears to be much more vulnerable than the others because he gets hurt easily, but that's only because his hurts are more visible, and he has no qualms about telling you he's hurt. In fact the other types are more vulnerable, because they can get hurt and not even realise it themselves :-(

   This type can't even think about "marriage before love" without breaking into a sweat :-) It has to be "love before marriage".

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No prizes for guessing which combinations are better than others :-)

In fact, it is my theory that in every love marriage there is at least one type 4, or both type 3. Other combinations do not seem capable of leading to what is usually thought of as a love marriage.

And I'm not saying type 4 is the best or type 3 is better than type 2, etc., in the long run. One you get married there're all kinds of behavioural traits and attitudes that you don't see earlier, and that will drive you up the wall regardless of what "type" the person is -- carelessless, forgetfulness, attitudes towards money or work, family, importance of parents, religiousness, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Many of those aspects can be just as important as ego.

(religion) The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/atheists_the_ne.html

Best quote:

Ask a deeply religious Christian if he’d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don’t seem so bad lately.

And yes, he was joking about Bill Gates running for President. I'm sure of it...

(process,funny) Six Sigma

Best stuff I've seen on Six Sigma in a long time:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208900&cid=17033026 says/asks:

Six Sigma -- I find it hilarious. Basically, they took the work of Walter Edward Demmings, widely regarded as the driving force behind Japan's industrial turnaround, repackaged it, and called it "new". Demmings cane up with "kaizen" or the process of continual improvement. Basically, no process is complete unless it has a feedback and improving mechanism

For anyone who is an expert: What has six sigma added to this paradigm?

Then http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208900&cid=17033512 replies:

Bureaucracy.

At least in GE's implementation of Six Sigma. They found a way to take what is essentially the engineering version of the scientific process, wrap it in so much red tape that it is unworkable (a 12-step process that really had 15 steps) , and put it in the hands of every worker in the company. Originally they gave bonuses for doing it, but eventually they took those away and declared "Thou shalt not get a raise without a Six Sigma Project." What ended up happening is that people refused to make any process or product improvements unless they were part of somebody's (preferably their own) Six Sigma project.

It was ridiculous. You ended up with one person optimizing a part of a process, while the person in the next cubicle was eliminating the entire process in favor of a more unwieldy one. Then, six months later, somebody else would start a new project that essentially put the original process back in place. Of course the problem was that they were using a distinctly product-oriented procedure, and trying to use it to solve process problems.

Don't even get me started on the math. They would assume normal distributions for everything. Never mind that one of the steps was to prove normalcy. If that test proved it wasn't normal, you were instructed by your "Black Belt" to assume normalcy anyway -- even if a Weibull distribution was clearly the correct choice (like in timed exercises). Idiots, I say. And then they had PHB's (called "Black Belts" and "Master Black Belts") trying to tell engineers how to do math, when they didn't even know how to use a simple Q test. If they saw a data point that didn't support their theory, they just called it an outlier, and deleted it.

You'd think after nearly two years of not working at GE, I wouldn't get so wound up about it. I guess as an engineer, it really gets my goat when people use math improperly.

[I normally don't copy entire tracts of text, preferring to just give the URL and leave it at that, but in this case it seemed necessary and useful...]

Schneier on Security: BT Acquires Counterpane

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/bt_acquires_cou.html

Bruce Schneier's Counterpane Security has been acquired by British Telecom.  Read comments on this page.  In particular, I like Bruce's nomination of "Best blog comment ever", which shows the difference between security as theorised and security as practised :-)

Hilarious!

(religion) The Church of the Non-Believers

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html

Thanks to a former colleague ( http://diviya.blogspot.com/2006/10/one-post-too-many.html ) for the link.

Nice article, worth a quick read. A bit long-winded, and there is much that even agnostics and atheists will disagree with, since it seems to explore all sides equally :-)

But it's too philosophical and too abstract for my taste.

I'd appeal more to personal experience with religious people, though I agree that would be difficult to convey in an article. Your parents, your friends, relatives, and colleagues at work affect you much more directly than Khomeini or Pat Robertson.

I've always maintained that it is not religion, but the overt display of religion, and organised religion, that are the problems. I don't know how far that's true, but it certainly seems that way to me.

Overtly religious (this is almost always the same as "overly religious", but there are exceptions here and there) people eventually acquire a selective humility. They are humble to their God, and pretty egotistical and nasty to the rest of the world.

Of course, they have no clue they are even egotistical, let alone nasty -- they'd be stunned if you told them, and probably die of a kernel panic if you managed to prove it to them! (Fortunately it's practically impossible to convince them, so we will never be guilty of murder!)

In most cases they have lost the capacity for self-introspection that is needed to realise what they are doing to the other person. They are so immersed in their God that they can never say to themselves "what if I'm wrong", because it automatically means the same as "what if God is wrong"!

In fact, they seem to really and truly believe that they have a direct line to God. It's essentially the same thing that makes "Muslims" like Khomeini issue fatwas against Rushdie or "Christians" like Pat Robertson call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Overtly religious people issue fatwas every day, whether they realise it or not, and whether they say them out loud or not.

On the other hand, my experience has been that atheists (and the very few covertly religious people I know) are pretty nice people!

That, to me, is the biggest reason for advocating, if not atheism outright, at least the suppression of religious exhibitionism.

PS: I think the author of the article must be a nice guy. His article ends: "...no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong." :-)

finally, competition for George Lazenby

Daniel Craig!

Here's hoping he is also a 1-shot wonder like George :-)