Tag: Technology

What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Your’s is Mine To

File this article under further proof digital “rights” management means you don’t own your content. Apparently Sony, Ubisoft, and EA have decided to do everything they can to thwart you from buying used games without them getting a cut.

There is a list of games in the article that will not allow you to access certain parts of the games unless you register it online. If you purchased a used game that has been previously registered then you have to pay the publishers $20.00 to get a new registration code.

This kind of practice is really sickening. What the three mentioned publishers are really saying is that you don’t actually own your content and have no rights to use it as you see fit. But what’s really fucked up is this quote:

Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform, but the launch of the PSPgo and the ability to access the PlayStation Store directly from PSP-3000 were significant steps towards fighting piracy and getting consumers to download digital games legally.

Buying a used game isn’t piracy anymore than buying a used CD. The fact that somebody actually implied it here is simply retarded. Digital “rights” management is a scan through and through. I’m hoping gamers out there are smart enough to simply refuse to buy these titles. These kinds of practices need to be discouraged.

It’s funny to me how we treat digital media different than physical media. Let’s use the stereotypical car example for this. Let’s say you purchased a new Government Motors (Not that I’m picking on anybody) car. Government Motors decides you need to register your car in order to unlock the radio and heater. This registration is uniquely tied to your person so when you see it another person can’t use the radio or heater until they reregister it with Government Motors. In order for the a new owner to register it Government Motors will require a $5,000 fee.

That sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?

Another Invention That Can Be Used For Good or Evil

Uh oh we have yet another invention on the market that can be used by both good guys and bad guys. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I learned about this amazing invention.

The device is called the Impressioner. It’s an electronic device that can tell locksmiths how to cut a key for a lock. This would allow a locksmith to easily create a new key for a car lock without the whole trial and error things. Of course the article points out the device can be used by thieves as well.

What the article fails to point out is that car locks are incredibly insecure. With a simple device called a Slim Jim (A flat piece of sheet metal with a notch cut out of it) you can open the lock on almost any car door in a matter of seconds. In fact it’s much faster than trying to make a key. In other words people are getting worried about something that’s already broken.

A Novel Idea

I found a rather novel idea today. A person by the name of Darrel Ince is requesting scientists to release the source code for applications used in their research. It’s mostly directed at the Al Gore’s Apocalypse group of “scientists” but is a good idea in general. From the article:

Computer code is also at the heart of a scientific issue. One of the key features of science is deniability: if you erect a theory and someone produces evidence that it is wrong, then it falls. This is how science works: by openness, by publishing minute details of an experiment, some mathematical equations or a simulation; by doing this you embrace deniability. This does not seem to have happened in climate research. Many researchers have refused to release their computer programs — even though they are still in existence and not subject to commercial agreements. An example is Professor Mann’s initial refusal to give up the code that was used to construct the 1999 “hockey stick” model that demonstrated that human-made global warming is a unique artefact of the last few decades. (He did finally release it in 2005.)

A software application is, in essence, little more than a series of mathematical algorithms. No scientist will be taken seriously if they come to a conclusion but refuse to publish the math. Seriously try to get a scientific paper published without including the algorithms you used to come to your conclusion. You’re research paper will hit the shredder faster than the speed of light (Which will require some research into how that happened).

But somehow when the math is done on a computer nobody thinks it needs to be published. Software is never perfect. Computers aren’t good at doing most tasks outside of basic arithmetic. Doing floating point math on a computer without writing a library specifically aimed at the task is an estimation at best. At least if the code is published other people can see the logic being performed and find any bugs that could lead to an improper result. The scientific process need to remain an open debate otherwise it’s no longer science.

I would also go so far as to publish the exact specifications of the computer the software was run on. There have been quite a few problems found in processors that lead to incorrect answers under specific conditions.

Back to Firefox For Now

I’ve been using Chrome for Mac for a while now and honestly I really like the browser. But there is one fatal flaw, the inability to extensions to tie deeply into the browser. What am I getting at here? Simple, extensions like NoScript and Flash Blocker can’t work properly in Chrome.

Most of the extensions in Firefox I use revolve around making the browser more secure. To this end one of the first extensions I install is NoScript. NoScript is an extension that allows you to block all scripting on sites you don’t specifically white list. This is useful for blocking malicious behavior on many websites. The extension also prevents cross site scripting attacks. Well I’ve been curious when or even if NoScript will be made available for Chrome. The bottom line is it never will be since there are no hooks in Chrome to allow extensions to selectively interact with scripting elements.

To further compound the issue Chrome’s cookie handling, at least on the Mac version, is unusable. When I hope the cookie browser in Chrome it just hangs there and I get the spinning beach ball of death until I have to force quit Chrome. Of course I’ve been seeing a lot of tracking cookies popping up which has gotten to the point I’m finding absurd. There are no extensions for Chrome that allow me to block all cookies except those I specifically white list and I really want this behavior.

This means I’m forced back to Firefox which I’m not horribly fond of. In Chrome each tab is a separate process which means you close it all the memory is freed properly. Firefox on the other hand never seems to properly free up memory from closed tabs and windows which leads it to eventually consume insane amounts of memory. Hopefully the newly release 3.6 will be better than previous versions. If it’s not you’ll be seeing more browser oriented bitching coming up on this blog.

Say Hello to the Dumb Gun

Here’s a bad idea in motion. It’s a $10,000 .22 “smart” gun. The principal is simple, the gun only fires when it’s close enough to a watch that the owner would need to wear.

Of course one would inquire about the usefulness of a gun that fails to function because the battery in a watch died. Furthermore the designers put a nice bright LED on the guns that is green when the gun is activated and red when it’s not. Of course in the middle of the night when you don’t want to give away your position you’re rather fucked. Speaking of the night what happens if somebody breaks into your home and you have to act fast? Grab the watch, throw it on, and fire?

This gun looks like failure incarnate.

The iPad

My friend Chris summed up my thoughts on the new iPad as well:

Its perfect, I was just thinking the other day: Wouldn’t it be great if I had an iPhone that didn’t fit in my pocket and couldn’t make phone calls? Or a netbook with no keyboard and 50% glass.

Yeah I’m not impressed. I’ll also add wouldn’t it be great to have an e-reader with an LCD screen so I can replicate the experience of reading books on my laptop. I really don’t see where Apple is going with this thing.

MacBook Air USB Ethernet Adapter Works on All Macs

Just a heads up to a question I had for a while but never found a definitive answer to. Apple has a USB Ethernet adapter for the MacBook Air which lacks any Ethernet interface. They advertise it as only working with the MacBook Air and if you ask an Apple Store employee they will tell you the adapter doesn’t work with any other Apple computer.

This made little sense to me since I assumed the driver for their adapter is included in their operating system. Anyways I purchased one because I need access to two separate networks at work. Anyways I’m happy to report the adapter works perfectly with my MacBook Pro laptop.

The adapter works very well. Being it plugs into a USB port (The theoretical maximum data rate of which is 480 Mbps) the adapter only runs at 10/100, so no gigabit for you. The data rate is good enough for the purposes I have at work but I wouldn’t want it for home use due to speed issues. Every application on the Mac, included my beloved and needed Wireshark, see the adapter as a standard Ethernet port and interact with it accordingly. That was my primary and honestly only requirement.

On the downside there are now status lights on the adapter. This is very annoying as I often use the status lights to determine if a port has gone dead or if data is flowing. Either way it works and that’s what I cared about most.

Body Scanner Fail

Bruce Schneier linked to a video of a person sneaking bomb components pasted on of those fancy full body scanners the TSA wants to put everybody through.

The video is in German but you can tell what’s going on even without knowing the language the French fear.