RGB Rant on the software industry

RGB recently posted a rant/editorial to the beowulf list that discusses Microsoft as a monopoly and why we should be afraid of (not hate) Microsoft, even if we use their products or work for MS. His arguments are based on history, economics, and human nature instead of MS hate. Long but an interesting read. The font used in the linked to site sucks, copy it somewhere else :)

12 Angry Men

Nate at work recently recommended the movie 12 Angry Men. Em and I recently watched it on the free movies section of Comcast On Demand. Other than the opening and closing scenes the movie takes place entirely in a jury deliberation room. The story line involves a jury that must decide whether or not an 18 year old is guilty of murder. The group is made up of a diverse cross section of society and personal histories. As the group struggles to come to a verdict the individuals tackle lots of issues including personal bias, what is beyond a reasonable doubt, and the place in society for those who are likely to cause it problems.

The movie left me with a few observations that afford further thought. If juries really think about/discuss cases put in front of them it should be hard to be sure beyond reasonable doubt that someone is guilty. Can our legal system operate if it is this hard to convict someone? even if it can’t operate, how much are we as a society willing to give up before we convict an innocent person?
One of the more interesting topics touched on during the discussions was that the young man may have been doomed to commit a heinous crime during his life because of his upbringing. One juror pushes farther and states that because he is doomed to this fate he and those who were not Nurtured properly in their youth should just be locked up before committing any crime. This statement scared me quite a bit as researchers have a profiling computer program that assigns a murder score to an individual that indicates how likely they are to murder. This program may be used by law enforcement initially in probation risk assessment, but I suspect will creep into other aspects of law enforcement as well, possibly becoming a thoughtcrime like detection system. In a similar vein the UK is looking at legislation that will allow the detaining of those who fail to pass minimum mental health standards (Nature, previous was Nurture). I don’t think that the society that we know and enjoy can exist if these ideas are promugulated and basic liberties are attacked.

In short, watch the move.

Itunes and DRM

I recently recieved a marketing email from apple touting the wonders of itunes 6, trying to entice me as an itunes5 user to make the upgrade. Untill I can use the media I purchase on the devices I use every day I have no desire to upgrade. My response.

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“Along with all those wonderful features I get completely unusable music and videos. I can’t play it on my linux only laptop (cant use a mac laptop because it only has one mouse button, and windows is just flat out unusable for both stability and ui).

“What if I want to play my music on something other than an IPod in 10 years? Woops, can’t do that either. Integrate my playlists with a mythTV box, nada. I know you like your vendor lock in that the encryption provides, but I like choice and as soon as that goes away so does my business, which i believe currently is $500 to $600 in song downloads alone. I have spent most of my life listening to the radio and being happy with the price/performance, I imagine I can go back if I have to.

“I really do like the ITunes store, being able to download music legally has opened a new world to me, but I won’t purchase media that I can’t exercise my fair use rights with. Thank you for your work in producing some wonderful products and I hope to see the day when I can use those products in ways that may not have been envisioned by the creators.

“The mark of a great and lasting product is to have it used in many unique and exciting ways that the inventor never conceived.”

Regards,
Josh

Schneier essay on the Value of Privacy

Bruce Schneier has a very interesting article about why privacy is inherently good, and not worth giving up for increased security (most of which is just perceived and not real security anyway). The Value of Privacy