Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

Coffee, tea or glee?

by David Holtzman

This week TSA is contemplating changing the rules defining permissable items on aircraft. They're purportedly going to relax the restrictions on sharp objects in favor of monitoring for explosive devices. Small scissors, screwdrivers and tools with blades under 7 inches will be legal again.

Sounds like a great idea to me. TSA has to check 1 in 4 bags anyway because of screwdrivers or nailclippers. This frees them up to prioritize on real threats to the aircraft--explosives. Bombs are much more insidious because they don't necessarily set off metal detectors, can look like any normal device and don't require a lot of space.

The Association of Flight Attendants disagrees. According to the Washington Post, many flight attendants disagree. They quote the association's spokesperson, Corey Caldwell, as saying that:

When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safety but the aisles will be running with blood.

So...Enough. Enough hype. Enough hyperbole. Enough scare tactics.

9/11 was a bully's wet dream and I'm sorry to say that the underpaid, overworked service people that work for the airlines have jumped on we frequent travelers' genitals with stilleto heels.

I have personally seen uncountable incidents of abusive behavior coming from flight attendants and baggage handlers, each time citing "security concerns" as the reasons for things like: asking for a pillow, complaining about a meal or asking for more ice in a bloody mary.

I'm going to say something slightly un-PC here; I liked it a lot better in the 70s when stewards and stewardesses were young and enthusiastic and saw their job as a kick. I hate to fly, really hate it and I was reassured by calm and pleasant people. Today, I get flight attendants who look and act like a hated family aunt. Mean demeanor, unwillingness to help unless pushed and mildly narcissistic tendencies as evidenced by the inter-attendant gabfests that seem to occupy much of the flight.

Sure, attendants get hurt on airlines. Sorry about that, but they're not firemen or emergency medical technicians, they're SERVICE PEOPLE who occasionally have to rise to the occasion and act nobly, just like a waitress that gives a choking restaurant patron CPR.

Stop the scare tactics. If being a flight attendant is that bad a job, find another one. If the airlines are (as I suspect) paying their employees badly and treating them miserably, don't take it out on us. Your personal job disssatisfaction is not a national security concern.

Posted on November 30, 2005

No woman, no-fly

by David Holtzman

In the history of American bureaucracy (imagine how many binders that would fill up!), it's hard to come up with a more confused agency than the Transportation Security Agency. Sure there's been more corrupt organizations (Hoover's FBI) and more inane ones (Bureau of Indian Affairs), but TSA has a tough job; it can't be much fun herding all those annoyed people through metal detectors, patting down sweaty people and inspecting more shoes than a bowling alley employee.

Created right after 9/11 (November 2001), the TSA currently has a 5 billion dollar budget and has bloated faster than Momma Cass after eating that ham sandwich.

The sort of random behavior at the various airports seems odd, but I put that down to working out the bugs in the system linked with Heart-of-Darkness style local backwater leadership. Shoes on, shoes off, belts yes/no? Watches, fondue forks, whatever.

If that's the price that I have to pay to avoid being smeared across a skyscraper, fine. Inconvenience me as long as you're respectful about it. Always say "sir" when you announce an impending cavity search, for instance.

But the biggest problem, as always, comes from secret listmaking. It always comes back to that. The newspapers would have daily travesty stories about stymied fliers, if in fact, the media was covering that kind of story.

The no-fly list is a mess. Surprisingly enough, it's a technology problem. Search just isn't good enough to do what they want. Names are lousy identifiers of individuals unless it's something really distinctive like Deadly McTerrorist.

A story came out a few months ago about a nun, Sister McPhee, who was put on the no-fly list. But not just any nun--Sister McPhee is in charge of all Catholic education in America. She's a boss nun.

After a series of humiliating events at airports and FOIO requests, she found out that an Afghan man had used the name "McPhee", no first name, and was a suspected terrorist. Solely on the strength of that, the good Sister found out that it went down on her Permanent Record.

She had to pull strings to get off the no-fly list. She called Karl Rove.

Good for Sister McPhee. It happened to Senator Kennedy and he also pulled strings. I hope that everyone else that's been messed up by this setup has the ability to do the same thing.

It's a poor system where the ombudsman is the guy running the country.

Posted on November 29, 2005

Flash flood

by David Holtzman

Macromedia's Flash started off as a good idea. Having a graphics-rich, programming language was an incredible boon to early web programmers; the strength of its platform interoperability offsetting the proprietary nature of the product.

In the early bad-boy days of the Commercial Internet, Flash was used to push the edge of html. You could do things with Flash; animation that dazzled like disco sequins, operating system agnostic graphics and interactive marketing tools as entertaining as a clown.

It's evolved since then and I mean that in an Intelligent-Design-Sarcastic-kind of way.

First it was the goofs; the emailed animations like a blender full of dancing hamsters or a bigmouth singing bass.

Then it was the drawn-out Flash intros on web sites subjecting the browser to endless "loading" warnings to show an expensive not-so-clever animation that palled quickly after the first viewing.

Now, Flash has found its true niche. It's the whore of Madison Avenue. The most annoying popups on websites are built with Flash. Plus the newest abomination; the full-page Flash ads run on credible web sites like the Washington Post. Sure they say "skip this ad" now. How long will that last, I wonder.

Lastly, take a good look at what Flash can do from a privacy perspective sometime. Right-click on a Flash ad and bring up the settings menu. There's settings that say things like "Allow washingtonpost.com to access your camera and microphone?" It defaults now to Deny, but the implication is clear--someday it might default to allow.

Why would anyone in their right mind ever click "allow"? What does it say about the future of Flash ads that this option is even in there?

By the way, if you're using Firefox, there's an excellent free product called Flashblock that will disable them.

Posted on November 28, 2005

Free Martha; jail Sony

by David Holtzman

I fail to see the difference between Sony and a hacker. The media company's recent abortive attempt to plant trojan DRMs on much of music-loving America's home computers is as bad a security story as I've heard. Sony used two different systems, First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software, and tampered with between 20 and 25 million audio CDs. This was, of course, the prototype test; presumably they would have upped the ante if they'd gotten away it.

They're now being sued by the state of Texas and by the EFF

But what inquiring minds would like to know is why no government activity? If Sony was a 17 year old Finnish kid who'd just cracked the encryption on a DVD, let alone planted Trojans, then "he" would be already locked up in a hard-core prison, eschewing showers and hastily marking out his first jailhouse tattoo with a magic marker and a butter knife. So why not Sony?

Why isn't the government suing on behalf of US consumers?

From a security perspective, isn't DHS worried about widespread trojan propagation? From a consumer perspective, isn't the FTC concerned? From a protective view towards constituents, isn't Congress appalled?

Posted on November 23, 2005

Tasty/Tasteless?

by David Holtzman

The Washington Post reported today that on President Bush's just-completed Asian trip to Japan, South Korea and China, Mr. Bush "visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary people." Several senior officials ate at Outback Steakhouse in Korea instead of a Korean restaurant.

What can be uglier than an American who would sit in Korea and eat a Bloomin' Onion?

Politics are politics, but my friend, food is food. Screw with interest rates, but keep screwtops off my wine bottles. Never trust a man who eats a Jack-in-the-Box in Jacarta, a Pop Tart in Pamplona or cheese-in-a-can anywhere.

I no longer trust the Bush Administration. A man who doesn't care what he eats is capable of anything.

Posted on November 22, 2005

Cyberseniors

by David Holtzman

The generational reaches in technology are far vaster than simply explaining how to use a piece of software. Most seniors do not get IT--the whole enchilada, the big picture, the gestalt. They don't understand basic principles of how to interact with the machine world and they probably never will. They're not vested in it enough to make the effort and it would be an enormous amount of work to assimilate the cultural underpinnings of the "always-on" generation.

There's an opportunity here: build software and electronic gadgets that are aimed to an older age group. Make them useful and friendly and not require any special knowledge. If I were 65 years old and walked into a Best Buy for the first time to buy Christmas gifts, I would be terrified. What's the difference between an Xbox 360 and an Xbox? What's a Tivo do? Just buying a cell phone is frightening.

It's time that gadgery and gimcracks grew up. Electronics are no longer for the geeks and the kids. They're not even luxuries anymore...They are the window into another world where information is found and decisions are made and to be shut out is an early intellectual death.

Posted on November 21, 2005

Naked to the machine

by David Holtzman

The omniscience of the computer may offer solace from privacy invasion in an unlikely way. There are many things that are done by humans that could be done by computers, where the result may not be sensitive, but the intermediary stages are.

No one cares if a machine sees what they're reading, watching or browsing on the Internet. It's like getting undressed in front of a cat.

If software were designed so that it used encrypted databases for its internal functions such that the computer knew the key and there was no easy way for the programmers to get it, then humans would only be able to see the output, not the intermediary data needed for decision-making.

For instance, computers could scan thousands of nude pictures, looking for signs of cancer and only showing the pictures that were rated "suspicious", preserving the rest from casual voyeurism.

A more topical example would be counterterrorism. Most citizens would have less grief about a computer sorting through the electronic details of their personal life if human handlers were denied access to the details of the innocent.

Food for thought.

Posted on November 18, 2005

Patriot Act Redux

by David Holtzman

It's a shameful day in Washington. The skies are gray and dreary, appropriately enough. A bi-partisan Congressional negotiating group has come to an agreement on renewal of the Patriot Act. The compromise measure is somewhat watered down, but the worst provisions are intact.

All 16 provisions of the Patriot Act are being extended. 14 permanently, 2 for seven years. The "temporary ones" deal with roving wiretaps against the individual, not a specific phone line and accountability for governmental demands for information.

The most heinious parts of the Act, allowing investigators to access bookstore records are now law.

The charge was led by Rep F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. , a Wisconsin Republican. I suggest that in the future the word "Sensenbrenner" be used as an adjective for privacy violation.

About the only thing that was taken out of the bill was an insane provision allowing prosecutors in terror cases a second chance to get the death penalty if a jury seemed disinclined to do so.

This is a sad day for America. The Patriot Act has not saved a single American life, and in point of fact, is primarily aimed at U.S. citizens, not foreign nationals. Let's catch the people who destroyed the World Trade Center, not Americans who read the wrong book.

For those of us old enough to remember the cold war, consider the Iron Curtain. It was touted as a defensive measure to protect the East from attack, but the broken glass, the razor wire and the landmines were aimed inward, to hem in those within.

The Patriot Act is our Iron Curtain.

For more info, see:

Washington Post
Ny Times
ACLU

Posted on November 17, 2005

Animal House invades Iraq

by David Holtzman

One of the many memorable scenes in the movie Animal House comes when Flounder cries after seeing that his brother's car has been demolished by his frat brothers who borrowed it for a road trip. Otter tries to put his loss in perspective by telling him, "Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f**ked up -- you trusted us!"

I wonder how many times George Bush has seen this film--the ultimate frat movie because his new spin on the war on Iraq sounds like it came right from Otter's mouth. As I understand the administration's current argument, they are saying that since Congress knew what they knew, if the White House is wrong, then so is everyone else. Think of President Bush's face leering intently into the camera, "You f**ked up -- you trusted us" while Vice President Cheney puffs out his cheeks with food and says, "See if you can guess what I am now. I'm a weapon of mass destruction. Get it?"

Animal House the movie : A-
Animal House the war: D

Posted on November 16, 2005

Women will listen to James Taylor singing the phone book

by David Holtzman

And men will watch anything with the James Bond theme playing, including cartoons. Some audio clues are so engrained into our unconscious that we react as a nation, as a gender or as a generation accordingly.

We're at an interesting plateau in our pop culture, because we come preequipped with a library of audio cues that preceding generations didn't have. We're preloaded like a PC that comes with MS Office instead of Works (does anyone actually use Works?).

Every visual thing becomes so much more powerful when a recognizable music tag is attached to it. Nike used the Beatles Revolution, teen movies today use the music of teens 40 years ago. Think how recognizable the beginning of some songs are like Back in Black by AC/DC, Thriller by Michael Jackson or Hard Day's Night by the Beatles.

Today's pop culture is recycling musical tags to quickly generate emotions and overlay them on top of something graphic.

What will tomorrow's pop culture do? Probably the reverse. They'll take the video images today and use them to garnish future sound.

I imagine we'll see new art forms follow from these entertwined uses of pop culture video and audio. Where's Andy Warhol now that he would really be appreciated?

Posted on November 15, 2005

Blarney Google

by David Holtzman

I started writing this as a cautionary piece against Google. It's certainly merited. Many other people have pointed out the danger of having a company whose fangs are gently pressed against the pulse point of the infosphere. See the end of this note for a change of heart:)

Google can affect what we think is important by tweaking their search algorithms. 75% of external referrals on the average website come from Google. Even a good-faith algorithmic change would reflect the bias of the company, just like a librarian's view of obscenity and appropriateness affect the offered reading material.

Google could hose up the intellectual property rights of millions of authors. They're digitizing the world's knowledge and quickly too. Who knows what they will do with it? They're the single biggest interpreter of the Fair Use Doctrine at the moment; everything that they do becomes a cultural norm.

Google could spy on everyone. Google Maps and especially Google Earth is getting too good. They're becoming a benign, public sector version of the National Security Agency.

Google is poised to be a privacy problem. Google could privacy-hump gmail users if they wanted to. They dip into email to present relevant banner ads. By itself not a problem, but oh, it's very close...

So with all this, Google is poised to become a big, big problem. But I'm not worried yet. The reason is that so far, they've shown a marked inclination to be benign, they respect technology and believe that the flow of free information is important to society, they treat their employees well and so far, the founders haven't gone gotten out of ego control, publicly anyway.

Somebody has to do what they're doing. I'd rather that it's them than the government. So I have three suggestions for Google to keep them on the straight and narrow:

1. Be transparent. Expose search algorithms and relevance ranking strategies.
2. Be ethical in your data dealings. Be Caesar's wife, do more than the law requires. Consider appointing an outside ethical advisory board.
3. Don't make backroom deals with the government. You may have already, although I hope not. The potential for abuse is frightening.

Emulate Dr. Frankenstein and not the monster and we global villagers can leave our torches at home when we come to call.

Posted on November 14, 2005

Sony pulls spyware

by David Holtzman

Sony announced today that it's pulling their controversial copy protected CDS from the market temporarily. They had released 20 or so titles that had root kit software on it, so when run on PCs, they could install a small program that would stop the music from being ripped and copied onto an ipod and control the number of copies made of the music. Unfortunately they opened a nice big back door for anyone else that could slip in a program named the same and get unrestricted access to the schmuck, sorry--customer's computer.

What would we do if Sony was a small neighborhood store instead of a big multi-national? I wonder. The kinder souls amongst us would boycott them, the more aggressive would probably introduce the store windows to their two good friends, Mr. Brick and Mr. Bat.

(sigh) I miss small towns.

Posted on November 11, 2005

Hello Mr. Chips

by David Holtzman

For those who don't know, all US passports must contain RFID chips by October 2006. These chips will automate the identification process at border crossings for citizens and visitors as more and more countries succumb to the Bush administration's coercion and convert over to an RFID-enabled passport system.

Bruce Schneier makes an excellent argument in Wired on why adoption of these chipped passports is premature.

They are also dangerous.

Even though the current design calls for metal foil in the holder, there are too many cases, as Schneier points out, where passports have to be presented while traveling.

It's bad enough that terrorists are trying to pick out Americans from groups and our kids are sewing maple leaves on their backpacks, do we have to be electronically culled from a crowded airport or train terminal?

No experienced technical person believes the government's claims that these passports will only be readable from a few inches. The history of technology is one of size, speed and distance. Every signal will be picked up farther, given enough time and suitable motivation.

I have no doubt that there are other reasons for using these chips. Like many historical rules on encryption, the government typically relents when it believes it has a technological edge. It's highly unlikely that someone in the US hasn't worked out a long distance method of interrogating passports. If we can, so can someone else.

There will be more and more pressure over the coming years to create remote interrogatable national ID cards of some kind. I believe that it's inevitable and probably useful for protecting Americans. If you know who the Americans are, by definition, you know who the aliens are too.

What worrys me, however, is the lack of any constraints on what can be done with the information. "Government" is a large word; there are ethical people and not-so-ethical ones that come and go with each administration. I fail to believe that anyone can vouch for millions of current and future employees, some still in school, claiming that they will protect our private information without being legally forced to do so.

If we have to have these passports and other ID cards, let's put in place legal protections severely punishing government workers that abuse our trust.

I can't believe that I'm doing this, but to quote Spiderman, "with great power comes great responsibility."

Posted on November 11, 2005

Why doesn't Interpol want me to watch Hellboy?

by David Holtzman

We've become a nation of mandatory consumers. In the 30s and 40, advertising informed us. In the 50s and 60s it entertained us. In the 70s and 80s and 90s it coerced us. Now we're being forcefed our pap whether we like it or not; in the movie theatre, in magazines and yes, on DVDs.

The DVD protocol has a little hook in it that allows the producer to force us to watch the FBI warning that's intimidating us not to become pirates. Arrgh. They set the flag for that part of the DVD and lock out the menu button and the fast forward capabilities.

Okay. This is not good, but at least it was only 10 seconds or so, no worse than the infamous dancing soda pop at the theatres exhorting us to run to the concession stand.

But now, it's the FBI warning and if that's not enough for us world-travellers, we're threatened by Interpol, too. Arrrr.

And now it's commercials, too. The first offender was Disney with the 2000 release of Tarzan. Not the good Johnny Weismuller version, but the sucky modern one. They included four minutes of "must-see" commercials on the DVD.

All the studios are doing it now, commercials, pirate warnings and their stupid vanity logos for their production houses.

Just to make it worse, I have a 5 disc DVD carousel. When I zip through the tray slots trying to find a movie, I have to watch the mandatory couple of minutes on each one. Arrrrr.

I just want my movies. The hell with their ads and their egos and their stupid parochial warnings. Like professional DVD pirates are going to quit and push a broom for a living because they saw a stupid Interpol warning.

I bet that there are people out there in movieland, just wanting to watch their DVDs bought with their hard-earned ducats, who are getting angry. If they weren't going to "steal" movies before, I bet they do now. Paramount, prepare to be boarded. Arrrrrr.

Posted on November 10, 2005

Would the Gestapo have outsourced?

by David Holtzman

The United States government is bound by law to handle private information of its citizens in certain ways. Since 9/11 and the Patriot Act, these strictures have loosened considerably, but they're still there. The Privacy Act of 1974 and the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, were strong steps towards a transparent government.

I realize that it's not exactly a news flash, but these protections have been cut down to size quicker than John Bobbit.

Any fool that believes in their government so much that they don't require a check and balance deserves what they get. Being a patriot is not being a lemming; good citizens ask good questions.

But these protections still exist, even though they've been diluted. However, the current administration has a stated policy of using commercial database companies like Acxiom and Experian, presumably to avoid exactly the kind of scrutiny that 30 years of privacy policy attempted to impose on the federal process.

By buying information on U.S. citizens from 3rd parties, government agencies skirt the law. They buy background reports and credit checks on Americans and then incorporate the commercial information into the governmetn data bases, making the unregulated, unchallengable documents part of a target citizen's permanent record. Data doesn't go away, either. Once it's in a database, it will always be there, somewhere.

There are many good articles talking about Bush Administration abuses of the Patriot Act like this one link:

By outsourcing domestic spying, our government has removed itself from checks and disturbed the delicate balance of a government's need to know and a citizen's right to privacy.

History is full of cautionary tales of nations that continually resort to the utlitarian argument of the means justifying the ends. They don't end well. These protections are important and working with the annoyances of compliance with civil liberties is the price that bureaucrats must pay, just as the occasional uncomfortable scrutiny is the price that WE must pay to be free.

Databases are lists. Outsourcing the creation of these lists to circumvent oversight does not legitimize the list makers. And these lists are dangerous.

I do not trust those who scribble in secret and shroud their motivation in jingoism.

All good ethnic cleansings start with lists.

Posted on November 09, 2005

Mailing list pillow talk

by David Holtzman

I had a Vanguard 401k account many moons ago. Years actually. As part of the signup process, I stupidly gave them my email address. Since then I get a "newsletter" from them every month which I don't read. Most of the time I just delete it or set it up to get popped by a junk filter. Still, like the forgotten onion, it makes it presence known.

So I "opted out" last week. I clicked the link and went through the little "Are you sure that you want to unsubscribe?" wheedle that they do. I even clicked the "Are you really sure?" plaintive whiney screen.

Today I got a note back; they're sorry but "We were unable to locate an account with the e-mail address you provided" and they can't unsubscribe me.

Now of course I received this through email, the same email address that I gave them. The fact that they even have a process contemplating sending an email to someone saying that they don't have their email is ludicrous.

I don't like spam. I consider it a violation of my privacy and an annoyance that I have to deal with it. It's easier to pick on the felonius ones trying to overtly rip us off than the crap that comes from "real companies", but I I actually prefer the Nigerian foreign minister messages to these dressy institutional ones, because they're easier to filter.

Why are companies so arrogant that they think that we want to hear from them?

It's not just Vanguard of course. It's everyone. Go into any consumer-facing company and grab the young blond-haired guy with round wireframe glasses. He's the marketing guy and it's his fault. He came up with the bright idea that people want to get informative blurbs from the disposable companies that they work for. You know what I'd really like him to do? I'd like him to answer his freaking phone when I call his company and stop making me play menu mambo.

I have a hard time maintaining a meaningful relationship with these kinds of companies. I'm not married to them. I don't want to hear their opinions about anything. How come when it's over they can't just roll over, shut up and go to sleep?

Posted on November 08, 2005

Mathom city

by David Holtzman

I was just at Best Buy looking for something that I actually needed, (a movie, a game, something important like that) and I stopped to look past the glitter and glitz of the packaging; really looked at what they're selling.

Most of it is garbage.

There's huge categories of things that don't work, that nobody needs and that once bought, will sit around your house forever until you die and some other idiot buys it an estate sale and then it sits around HIS house, the curse passed on from victim to victim like a monkey's paw until someone has the guts to stop and yell...enough.

CD cleaners-- garbage. Cheap-ass solitaire programs--garbage. Extended warranty plans for solid-state electronics--larcenous garbage. Might as well buy the Brooklyn Bridge. You'll do better standing in the middle, collecting tolls in a beat-up tin cup then you ever will trying to collect on an in-store service plan.

Nobody needs the little fluffy cell phone covers and the USB flashlights and the cutesy screensavers.

J.R.R. Tolkien came up with a great word that describes this dreck--mathom. To quote the good professor:

Anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort

I have rooms full of this stuff. Chochkis from trade shows, power plugs to nowhere, old disks and drives and gizmos and gadgets that don't even look pretty. I realize that these guys make their money from the extras. Hard Rock Cafes make more money from the shirts than they do from the (cough) food. It's not their fault that they sell, we're the ones dumb enough to buy. Consider that the next time you see a cute mousepad shaped like the Rock's eyebrow. Above all, never, never buy anything whose title contains the words "Collector's Edition."

Posted on November 07, 2005

Another thing that you can do with one hand...

by David Holtzman

Information technology is about content. What's an ipod worth without mp3 music? What's a computer without software? A DVD player without movies? New information technology is meaningless without the promise of tasty consumable content.

Whenever I see new gizmo, I think about this and wonder what it will actually be used for. it's like looking in an old person's kitchen gadget drawer and guessing what on Earth you're looking at.

So, the video ipod. What's it for? Will Steve Jobs make back his R&D nut with $1.99 clips of Desperate Housewives?

I don't think so.

So, what's the compelling content that will drive sales of a handheld video device?

Porn.

There's a great song in the broadway show, Avenue Q Where Trekkie Monster sings about the value of the Internet.

Link: Avenue Q song

To quote some of the lyrics:

The Internet is for porn
The Internet is for porn
Why do you think the net was born?
porn porn porn

Posted on November 04, 2005

Microsoft makes a lousy father

by David Holtzman

Technology is only as good as its next task. We don't want it do any more or any less than we wish--at that moment. It's tough, maybe, but hey, that's why WE get to throw THEM out...for now, anyway. When products do less than we think that they should, they're underpowered and we get wistful; we look around, our eyes caught by each pretty, shiny gadget that catches our wandering eye.

Worse technology offers more than we want. Like VCRs or graphic equalizers. Don't tempt us with idiotic choices, it's confusing and makes us restless. It'd be like going to McDonalds and ordering a happy meal and having them ask to do your taxes or give you a bikini wax. Kind of creepy.

The very baddest, most evil technology doesn't ask, it does. Like a weekend warrior dad, it tries to be parental, in a most inappropriate way. It pops up windows that you don't want, replaces text that you just typed or checks your music licenses, to "help you". In short, Microsoft tries to be the ineffectual digital dad that sometimes embarasses you, sometimes pisses you off, but that you haven't showed off to your friends since you were a little kid.

Macs on the other hand are like the coolest father that you never had. Mac apps wait for you to tell them what you want, then they try really hard to do it for you, even if it's not completely legal. Like itunes DRM doesn't REALLY stop you from copying music (burn a cd, then import it back as mp3s). Mac apps slip you a beer when mommy isn't looking.

Posted on November 03, 2005

Ads in movies

by David Holtzman

I can't be the only one tired of the rapidly growing parade of ads at movie theatres.. New York and Connecticut have been looking at passing ordinances fining theatres that don't post actual movie start times. Over the last two years, the actual start times of the films have been creeping to around the 15 minute mark from the published time, subjecting the audience to dozens of commercials.

It's not just movies; ads are encroaching into our personal lives everywhere. It's not like we have that much discretionary time anyway, do we really need to give back another 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there to being an audience for fizzy, bouncy, insipid advertising?

Ads are on the backs of cabs in New York, subway cars in Washington DC, cars in San Francisco. Every square inch of unused space is being sold to someone to use as a tabula rasa for their marketing messages. What's wrong with white space? It's impossible to relax with the bombardment of neon and noise that makes up our daily urban life.

And the best part of all this is movie studios are complaining that box office is down this year. What a surpise. Lousy movies, ten dollar stale popcorn and enough ad stimulation to make you feel like Alex in Clockwork Orange, strapped to the chair, watching ultra violence with his eyes forcibly kept open.

Lucky man. At least he gets Beethoven.

Hollywood doom articles:
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/56019.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/26/news/midcaps/movies/

Posted on November 02, 2005

Sony hacking consumers' computers

by David Holtzman

Brian Krebs in the Washington Post refers to an article by Mark Russinovich at SysInternals that Sony is using a "rootkit" to install anti-piracy software on unwitting home PC users trojaned on some of their music CDs.

Brian Krebs on Computer Security

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

The CDS are marked "Copy-protected" on the Amazon listings and on the CDs themselves. Amazon describes it as:

Content/ Copy-Protected CD
This product limits your ability to make multiple digital copies of its content, and you will not be able to play this disc or make copies onto devices not listed as compatible. Content/ copy protected CDs should allow limited burning, as well as ripping into secure Windows Media Audio formats for playback with most compatible media players and portable devices. In rare cases, these CDs may not be compatible with computer CD-ROM players, DVD players, game consoles, or car CD stereos, and often are not transferable to other formats like MP3.

It doesn't say a thing about installing a digital tapeworm onto your computer. Apparently when you load a protected CD, you're prompted with a nebulous comment about accepting the EULA (Electronic User's License Agreement). If you blindly hit enter like I usually do, it's a fait accompli. As Lady Macbeth said:

I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

By the way, the new Santana CD has this protection scheme on it.

Sony has gone too far. The insane fear of copying has caused them to insert a potentially malicious, certainly harmful piece of code onto their customers' computers. What separates the innocent from the guilty, the crook from the victim, the pirate from the civilian?

Posted on November 01, 2005

Protect your hard drives

by David Holtzman

I've seen a few stories like this lately. Wired has a story about a couple of young men who started a company called WantedList, a sort of Netflix of porn [Wired 13.11: Skin City]. In the article, they talked about how they needed some initial customers, so they made a deal with a firm to search the hard drives of users of Kazaa to find good porn consuming candidates.

This trend is disturbing. There was a big hubbub ten years ago when it was believed that AOL was looking through cache on a hard drive. It was never confirmed, but I wonder if it would bother people as much today?

Google does something similar with gmail. They scan emails and show targeted ads geared to the content of the message. Their privacy policy says that they don't share content with the advertisers and I believe them, but...

We all have a pretty good idea where all of this is headed; the convergence of digital devices and the rapid transformatiion of a predominately physical world to a mostly digital one. Digital in the sense that communication, trade goods and even identities are reduced to the their lowest computable denominator.

I hope that we develop sufficient cultural respect for privacy before this happens.

Posted on November 01, 2005