DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) was introduced some years ago, and pulled headlines e.g. with Sony’s “invisible on the Running Processes software” that was secretly installed onto computers when a music CD from Sony was loaded. I personally bought a number of songs on iTunes a couple of years ago only to realize they’re unplayable on my main machine because it doesn’t support DRM. Since then, it seems iTunes music is DRM-free, but I’m still wary of touching the thing again.

Game software copy protection goes far back beyond that, of course, and in contrast, GCP (I invented this acronym, probably) can be justified a bit more. Music is something that we, on a nearly instinctual level, love to share with each other, be that by playing together or listening together or simply showing each other the kind of stuff that makes us feel certain ways. Music is such an integral part of the human society that’s been with us for as long as we’ve had hands to play with or mouths to sing with. The industrialization thereof is perhaps the most critical error of ours. Games on the other hand may have been with us for a long time (Go for example dates back to the 4th century BC), but it’s not as intimately associated with sharing as music. That said, game piracy of course thrives just as any other software piracy does, and the game developers seek new methods to battle the piracy.

Most recently, Ubisoft, the makers of titles such as Assassin’s Creed, have decided to take this a step further, thus evolving the DRM. Rock Paper Shotgun has an article on the subject of how Ubisoft not only restricts the player from starting the game without doing an online check to verify the game has not been pirated, but it even throws the player out of the game if their internet connection at any point in time drops offline, while playing.

I actually think that’s pretty awesome. I mean, the balls required to do that? Not to speak of, the conviction that their players will be loyal to the point of ridicule, that they buy the game anyway. Reminds me of Metallica.

To most people, there are two options out there when it comes to computers — Windows or Mac OS. The former is cheaper (in the sense that its hardware is cheaper) but stable as nitroglycerin (improving, but I’ve yet to meet a Windows user who doesn’t regularly reinstall Windows and/or suffer from crashes or failures sporadically). The latter is more expensive, tightly controlled, but prettier. And more stable. And unless you’re a gamer, or simply used to the former, there’s really no reason to go with anything else, unless you treasure money over convenience. Then to some of us there is also linux, the open source alternative. It’s great, unless you want to play games on it, in which case it blows monkey brains.

Personally I’m the monkey brain blowing type, and I know how bad that sounds. I used MS-DOS and then migrated, unwillingly, to Windows, and from there I bounced back and forth between linux, which was a reeking pile of clusterfuck poured delicately over a yummy-looking pile of maggot-excrement and Windows. Still, linux did beat Windows even then, because Windows back then was about as useful as a web server made up of glued-together sheep wool and saw dust, with no ethernet port, and so finally linux is where I remained. Mac OS was like an unfathomable, lurking beast in the village marsh — I knew about it, I’d even seen it occasionally, touched it once or twice, but … as a kid I happened to like games, and Macs just didn’t have much of that back then.

This was back in the ’90s though. Ten years later, I find myself running Ubuntu 9.10, released about 4 months ago, and it feels like I installed Windows 3.1 all over again. The new pulseaudio service that is supposed to handle what ALSA cannot, is filled with wagons after wagons filled to the brim with stinking diarrhea, stretching to the horizon and beyond, steadily and irrevocably being injected into my blood stream. It – literally – fucks – with – everything – I – do. It fucks with mplayer, it fucks with Firefox, it fucks with World of Warcraft, it fucks with Skype, it fucks with Ventrilo. It literally clusterfucks itself into fuckblivion, and it just keeps on fucking itself like a horny teenager on prom night. Pardon the French. It has, for some ungodly reason, a new input method handler (for non-alphabetic languages, like Japanese), which resulted in me having to help my fiancée rip it out and put the old one back in because the new one — you guessed it — sucked balls and worked nothing like what a Japanese person would expect.*

And then on the far, far other corner of the spectrum I am simultaneously using my new MacBook Pro and iPhone, learning the ropes of Xcode and reading up on iPhone development in general. It’s cool. It’s closed. Oh, so closed. It puts me, the soulless donkey, between two stacks of hay into which the disastrous organizational abilities of Open Source has peed in the one, and the detrimental-to-evolution, devastating-to-our-rights Apple has peed in the other. Neither pile looks very convincing right about now, but hunger is the greatest spice of all, or so they say.

A fellow developer sent me a coupon to get his game on my iPhone to test it out right before it was going to be shipped, and then I got “this coupon can only be redeemed on the US iPhone Store”. That was the first cultural shock that lead down the path of cultural shocks. To develop for the iPhone I actually have to buy an Apple Developer account for (at the cheapest) $99 a year. It’s unthinkable for an old commie linux user like myself that I’d actually have to pay money to help them make their product better, by adding content to it, but it’s Apple, and they are in their own playing field.

Actually, I was convinced a long time ago that the whole closed off, shut off, hold my ears and screw my rights deal was a failure, as proven by Microsoft time and time again, but seeing Apple now, today, was as big an eye-opener as was the first time I ever visited the (North American) South — I’d been convinced from childhood that religion was being phased out in the world, in favor of reason…

Ultimately, I’m conflicted. As I grow more accustomed to the antics of my MacBook (and indeed, to a non-Mac user, there are quite a few, like the unwillingness to maximize, for one), I grow impatient with the bullshit of my main desktop (linux) machine, I grow annoyed with the feeling of being chastised and told where to stand and what to do by my Mac, and if there’s one thing I’ve become more aware of, it’s my rights as a user. The iPhone and the upcoming iPad are clearly changing how we think about computers in general, and while half the crowd aren’t half as impressed as Apple wishes they were, there’s such a huge potential in these two devices alone that nothing will be what it used to be by the time they’re old news.

So Apple is the pioneer, and we’re dragged along. I’m excited and, ultimately, conflicted.

(* I’ve seen this before. I’ve been using linux for over 10 years. I’ve seen the pattern. It’s time to stop this retarded behavior, folks. You can’t throw something random into the distribution, release it and “hope for the best”, and then have it actually working better than its counterpart three years later. It’s not acceptable anymore. We’re better than this. But I saw it with Firefox, replacing Mozilla. I saw it with ALSA, replacing OSS. (Fuck, ALSA replacing OSS is even today a big clusterfuck of clusterfucks where people sacrifice baby maggots daily just to get their set up of game + team speak app of choice in place.) And I see it again, with pulseaudio and ibus.)

After seeing the results of the election, I can’t help but feel renewed hope for the country that I once held in so high a regard. For the first time in years, I felt an inkling of the desire to go there again. So many bridges burnt the past 8 years, and the efforts involved in building them back up will no doubt be great. Is it possible to repair all that damage? I’m talking, mostly, about the international relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

I have never in my life seen so much hatred, and disdain, toward the United States as I’ve seen the last couple of years, from anyone of any nationality or age. Can that hatred be turned? I am hopeful, but the years to come will turn that hope into belief, or disappointment.

One might wonder why I even care about the election of a country of which I am not a citizen. I have friends there. It is a good reason. More importantly, though, I realize the impact the United States — especially when there is bad leadership involved — can have upon the world as a whole. Wars are waged, backed by invalid reasons, and the current economic crisis which affects the whole world is, at least in part, the result of such leadership.

Here’s to hoping.

“The characteristics of foreigner criminals visiting Japan.” (“来日外国人犯罪の特徴”)
A handbook “sponsored by the Shizuoka-Ken Head Police Station, the Shizuoka-Ken Association for the Prevention of Crime”

Link to Zone81 blog where this masterpiece is printed in its entirety (though without Japanese you won’t get much out of it — the pictures are fun to look at though).

I’ve been looking around a lot for some form of confirmation on this one, but my Japanese sort of fails me. What I did find was almost as bad though. Practically every prefecture in Japan has a [prefecturename].go.jp (government dot japan) page which lists “visiting foreigner criminals/crime in Japan”, divided into racial heritage with cute little diagrams and such.

Before I came to Japan, I knew it would be one of the few places on earth that I could go to and be “mistreated” for being a white male. Not a lot of places where you can get that these days. I knew, and I came here anyway, because I am fascinated by the Japanese language, the people who speak it, their culture, and how they came to be as isolated and “we vs them” as they appear from the outside (and from the inside as well, to a great extent). If I had wanted good treatment and smiley faces and chirpy birds, Japan would not have been on my list of places to go.

Some days pass and all I am greeted with is friendliness, openness, a willingness to accept each other as brothers across the world, and such floweriness. Today, as I came home from my test-ride to my potentially new school (was timing it to see when I had to get up in the morning) an old lady walked across the street as I was buying a coke from a … uh … jidouhanbaiki (the fuck is that in English?). I looked at her and she looked at me for a sec, and then she nodded and smiled and I nodded and smiled back. I realized that the Japanese are big on greetings. Even if you don’t know a person, you might nod to them if you end up inadvertently trampling into their bubble — such as looking at them while they happen to be looking at you. I tend to turn my head away and do my thing in those cases, but I think a Japanese might have nodded or something to acknowledge the other’s presence.

Then other days I am baffled by the blatant racism and ignorance that permeates this place. Such as the above “handbook”. I think part of the problem is that 20% of Japan’s population are all above 65 years of age. Old people tend to forget about equality and understanding cultural differences and such things. Sadly.

Democracy is a wonderful invention, for if you gather enough stupid people in the same place, they will end up making so many dumb decisions that they eventually destroy themselves. It is the extension of Darwinism from nature into society.

My mother and I decided that the free “movie” tickets we received those months ago should not go to waste — you know the ones that require Windows? Anyway, since I do have a lap top with Windows preinstalled on it (I would rather assfuck a snail than pay money for Windows, pardon the french) we figured we might as well hook it up to my monitor/speakers and watch some movies.

So she came over and, cunningly, she brought her knitting… stuff, with her. For various reasons, the rest of this post is in bullet form. Enjoy!

1. I plug my wireless thing, my monitor and my speakers into my lap top and boot up. The wireless keyboard does not work. I use the laptop keyboard “for now”.
2. I give up on the “for now” concept, pull the wireless thingie, plug in my wired keyboard and mouse. Nothing’s happening. It died? I end up doing the “hold-it-fer-five-secs-m8″ trick to force a reboot. My mother is getting the hint, and pulls out her knitting stuff and goes at it. I admire her foresightfulness.
3. Computer finally gets back up, but that reboot took 10 minutes, what the fuck? Anyway, the wired keyboard + mouse work now at least, imagine that. I log in and start up Firefox and head over to sf-anytime.com.
4. *meep* They require Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or above. I knew that’d happen. I happen to have IE 7 installed. I try to start it up…
5. And then I try to start it up again.. thinking maybe Windows didn’t actually realize that when I clicked on that icon I wanted it to start — if I click it again, maybe it will get the hint.
6. And then I try to start it up again, thinking that it might, just might, have missed the fact twice.
7. Reboot. Or, attempt to. Everything’s frozen. 5-second-killer-c-c-c-combo!
8. Back inside, I decide to do a Windows Update. Ha! Thought I! Windows Update uses IE which, currently, does not work very mightily.
9. I cunningly decide to open Firefox, head to sf-anytime.com, and tada! There’s the “if you want to upgrade to IE, click here” link. Yeah, I want to upgrade to IE. Upgrade. Yes. Let’s upgrade ourselves, because upgrading ourselves to IE is such an upgrade. Anyway, I download IE via the functional browser, Firefox, and start up the installer.
10. It wants to make sure I have a valid version of Windows, for my sake, so that I may buy a legal version in case I was handed a dirty one. So thoughtful of them! Now it wants to reboot.
11. Okay, we’ve rebooted. That took 10 minutes. I log back in and it wants to delete the old version of IE. Fair enough, I prefer a clean upgrade. Ha.. haha. It takes 10 minutes to remove the old version. (What on earth? I’m beginning to suspect the hardware is fried on this thing, except that it works perfectly fine in linux, and while, as we all know, linux is superior in every single way, shape and form, it does not have the ability to magically use broken hardware.) It wants to reboot. Wow, this reminds me of when I was a little ignorant and exceptionally dumb boy who used Windows .. what was it? 95? I think so. Anyway, I quickly grew up. Moving along.
12. We’ve rebooted again. It wants to install IE now. Yay! Finally we’re agreeing about something. Well, sort of anyway. It seems stuck.
13. We’re waiting for it to unstick itself. I am beginning to recall my Windows l33t-ness which is a Zen-monk’s patience incarnate. Yes sir. Meanwhile, I’m explaining to my mother whose wide-eyed, incredulous stare has been glued to the monitor (all the while knitting away on whatever it is she’s knitting) for all this time that in Windows, it controls you, and you obey it. (She’s been using linux since she started using computers some 3-4 years ago. Exclusively. Windows scares her shitless, and believe me, it scares me shitless too.)
14. I decide to make some coffee while we wait. Suddenly my mother yells excitedly, “It’s finished! I think.” I look at it and, believe it or not, but the little shit rebooted! It didn’t even ask! What the hell? I log back in, and it starts doing some weird “Setting IE up, customizing your computer, optimizing the hyper drive”, whatever. I ignore it and drink my coffee. Afterwards, I am faced with a dialog telling me it wants to upgrade Windows. No, it needs to do so. Okay then, I let it.
15. 30 minutes later it’s done. We sat down to watch the movie at ~8 pm and it is now 10.30 pm. Will we finally get to see that movie? That remains to be seen.
16. I load up IE (it works this time) and head over to sf-anytime.com. Or I try. It seems Internet is down. Huh. I open up Firefox and go to google. It works in a flash. Hm. I close IE, reopen it, do not hit ESC to stop it from loading “blabla.msn.com” this time. Wait it out. It loads up fine. Try sf-anytime.com again, and this time it works. The wonders of Microsoft.
17. After installing a DRM thing (a little piece of my soul died when I clicked ‘install’), we finally got in, to see exciting titles such as …
18. … movies that were hip 20 years ago. That, and a few obscure titles from 2004. Is this a joke? The selection is pretty large, I give you that, but there’s literally nothing on there worth watching. My mother finally points out a movie (Zozo by Josef Fares) that she said I’d like, so we watch that one (super-condensed review: started out great, ended suckily). Or we try! Ha. Ha. Ha.
19. Or as Santa would put it – ho. Ho. Ho.
20. We are told that some DRM error occured. For some magical reason (I think it’s my ancient Windows intuition pinging me from someplace), I decide to upgrade Windows Media Player. I do so. I try again.
21. It works.
22. Except it’s now 11 pm.

I occasionally reflect upon my hatred towards Microsoft Windows. I mean, people do use it, and there has to be a reason. Sometimes, a friend of mine decides to switch over to linux, saying they’ve “had enough!”, and I help them out. But inevitably, they will come to a point where they think “Dude, this is just too much work. I’m thinking of installing Windows again,” and I always tell them the same thing: “Yeah, do so. You should use what feels best for you.” One thing is abundantly clear, however, and that is that I personally cannot use Windows. It’s following a philosophy that I can understand, but never agree with. The philosophy of “handling stuff for me”. This philosophy works great for an absolute beginner, but not so great for a person with a tiny bit of adventurism in them. Try to “play around” with Windows and you will kill Windows. And I’m completely ignoring things such as virii and worms and trojan horses and whatever have you. The way I see it, those will come to linux as well, when linux has a big enough player base. What I do believe though, is that it will take an idiot to get a virii in linux, and it will be more about fooling people than it will be about brute-forcing one’s way into another person’s operating system, as is the case with Windows.

Security holes exist in both places, and I remember one time when some Windows advocate said in response to an article, “Where are the linux people now?” Well, my answer to that question is, “We’re somewhere else, not giving a shit,” because the blown-up “security holes” mentioned in that article were for specific pieces of software. It’s a much bigger deal when a security hole applies to every single computer running a particular operating system (i.e. a kernel flaw), and you will find very few of those in linux. Unpatched, that is.

In any case, there you have it, my Windows experience for the year. And believe me, I am not looking forward to a second one. Those movie tickets I got (I have like 6 of them) will remain unused. If you find something at sf-anytime.com that you’d like to see, let me know, and I’ll get you a code, but you better hurry — they expire on new years, GMT+1.

I read a FAQ earlier about intellectual property (by the pro-IP lads), in which a question was exactly similar to this:

“Q: Is it legal to say the word ‘foo’ while chopping another human being to little pieces with an axe?”

“A: No, it absolutely isn’t!”

I mean… I can say that anything and everything is illegal if I word it right and quote the wording just so.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/19/us_space_policy/

Space = the 51st state? Lovely. Want some fries with that megalomania, Mr. President?

Yesterday was “valvaka”, which I guess translates to “election wake” for the Swedish government the next 4 years. Me? I was sleeping. The thing was meant to happen at 11 pm and I usually go to bed around 10. So why bother, eh? Today, I woke up confused. They say the blue (I guess those would be the liberals) won, but other reports say the social democrats had more votes. I’d check, but you know, I’d need to install Flash to do that, and Flash as we’ve already concluded, does not like me. (And let me clarify that the feeling is quite mutual.)

Anyfuckingway, I looked out the window and this was Kalle’s place at 7 in the morning, September 9th:

Pretty foggy, huh?

When I signed up for my new ISP, I received 3 movie tickets as a thanks. That’s pretty nice. However, the movie tickets turned out to be movie tickets for “viewing movies online.” I.e. a movie industry move to tackle those pesky downloaders.

Unfortunately I don’t have Windows.

Unfortunately for them.

If they expect a consumer to support their business (i.e. not download stuff from the ‘net) and purchase their products, they had better try harder than this. The movie site which provides the movies (sf-anytime.com) dismisses its linux users indifferently, saying DRM technology is unsupported on the platform and thus, the linux users can go fuck themselves. Using their hard earned movie tickets, perhaps. The same, by the way, goes for the Mac users. Yessir, you wanna be legal and watch movies from home, you better be using Microsoft Windows. “With all the doubts of crystal clear,” as Peter Murphy puts it.
So I contacted my ISP, saying I would like reimbursement for the 3 tickets I got. They did reimburse me, a whooping $2 US or similar. (Though in their defense, those tickets are still valid — I just have to go to some funny friend who’s dumb enough to run Windows.) Gotta give it to them, though. I definitely didn’t expect them to give me anything at all.

Conclusively, the message from the Music and Movie Industry is clear. Download stuff online, as you have no other option. “Buy the DVD,” you say? Well, sure, but that, too is borderline illegal. The encryption algorithm for DVD playback has already visited court on one occasion, and who knows when that whale resurfaces. “Buy Windows,” you say, and I shall steeple my fingers and snicker.

Update (2006-08-20): I emailed my ISP telling them that my mother is in the exact same situation, and she, too, got the $2. Cute. (But to be honest, it’s actually not $2. It’s $1.39 according to the current exc. rates.)