Two Slashes

Even with the Olympics having come to a close about a week ago, the only name people seem to have stuck in their heads at the moment is Michael Phelps, the Olympian swimmer who walked away with eight gold medals and set numerous world records in his run for those medals.

While Phelps was standing on a podium getting the reward for his efforts, a different kind of Olympic-style test of strength has been brewing here in the United States, a contest with plenty of records lining up to be broken of its own accord.  (And I really need to quit doing *#$&ty post introductions like this one.)

I don’t typically pay attention to politics; I don’t really care who’s President, Senator, Governor, or any one of the tens of other elected positions as long as there isn’t a significant impact to my life.  To me, one candidate is as good as another, especially if things work transparently and their actions (and misactions) don’t change the way I go about my daily business, and I have a reasonable expectation that whoever ends up elected is at least as well-qualified as I am for the office they’ve been elected into.

Take Bush for example; everyone (alright, myself included) has bashed him time and time again for the state of affairs in the Middle East.  I have no idea whether I would pretend nothing was happening or send in the troops, launch a few missiles, and have the entire Armed Forces deployed before lunch, and it’s my inability to make a knowledgeable and fair decision that makes him a better candidate for that office than I am.  If it weren’t for the fact that the media constantly bombards you with claims of his failure as a leader of this country (or the war stuff), he might never have even been seen.

This election year has things playing out a little differently than normal, however.  We have an African-American running for President (having nearly squeezed a nomination over the wife of a previous - and notorious - office-holder), and a female vice-presidential candidate, neither of which (to my knowledge) has ever won their respective seats in government.  (I don’t see any ladies on this list, do you?)

What this sounds like to me is not a vote merely for the sake of “exercising our right as Americans” but a popularity contest in the sense of which candidate you’d rather see being awarded a Guiness World Record and which “invisible barrier” will be broken for future elections, if they all haven’t already been shattered by the current candidates.

I would have taken the time here to analyze the scenarios of what would happen should a woman become President (either by vote or incapacitation), but the concepts of a “Presidentess” or the “First Gentleman” are too humorous for me to discuss seriously.

Don’t take me wrong when I mention that, once again, I don’t have enough information to say that either Obama or McCain is superior to the other, but someone has to have noticed that this is bigger than just a four-year vacation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s a chance for the prospective record-breakers to get more material for those bestselling autobiographies that are due to be released any day now (and will no doubt become required reading for at least one high school class due to their lessons in perseverance, dedication, or some other related but meaningless literary tripe).

Unless something motivates me to get off my sorry backside and register to vote (and then actually convince me to go to the polls on Election Day), I’m not going to have any more involvement in this election than retaining my right to the occasional rant.  That aside, it’s up to (the registered voters of) America to choose which recordmaker President/Vice-President they want to take office.

And by the way, someone can remove the parentheses from my keyboard now.  I won’t be needing them for a while.

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of geekdom’s most famous titles.  If you don’t already know where I’m going with this either by the date (and time) or the title quote, I’m referring to the original Wargames.  (Notice I say ‘original,’ as Hollywood saw fit to retrofit a sequel this year as well.  Perhaps in celebration, perhaps simply because they’re running out of material and saw a chance to recycle.  Any guess at the reason is as good as mine.)

Regardless, Wargames still stands as one of the required movies on any techno-buff’s watchlist, and for good reason.  While we may not be headed into nuclear war anytime soon (Requisite “In Soviet Russia…” joke here), the movie packs several remnants of geek culture of the time up in a family-friendly (it’s not often I can genuinely use that) but reasonably accurate(-for-Hollywood) bundle.

I really don’t have too much to say at the moment, so I’ll make it brief.  Here’s to simulated nuclear holocaust.  And hoping that any of Joshua’s siblings don’t have that level of control over the United States.  Joshua - would you like to play a nice game of chess?

It’s a funny thing, how I tend to perpetually suck myself into discussions of P2P problems and flaws in reasoning. But it’s just too tempting to poke fun of the very people responsible for the evolution of file-sharing in the first place.

Wired has a blog article discussing the definition of distribution - what constitutes giving files to other people - and frankly, it’s not so much a definition as an utterly faulty assumption that every available share will be scoured, ripped off, and offered up again.

“You don’t have to prove actual distribution. You need to prove there’s works in the share folder, and that is distribution,” said Joseph Geisman, MPAA’s chief intellectual property attorney, as he described the so-called “making available” concept.

Why shouldn’t you have to prove distribution? After all, I find it very ridiculous to assume that just because something is made remotely accessible, it is accessible publicly; to even pretend this is a legitimate argument requires looking at each situation on a case-by-case basis and examining how each is configured. For example, I (and yes, I will admit it) keep a remotely-accessible share of my music and software backups via Samba. However, here’s the rub: It’s only available to anyone on MY Hamachi network, and considering I highly doubt anyone will be joining that anytime soon, I think it’s safe to say that I’m sharing only with myself.  (It’s not the KaZaA share folder, but I doubt they’re going to be making that distinction anytime soon.)

According to the MPAA’s definition above, that’s still enough to be prosecuted - even though there isn’t a soul in the world with a copy of anything I have. It’s cases like this that demonstrate indirect proofs aren’t enough to determine the intent to share.  My collection is shared - with the protections necessary to keep it to myself - and by that vague monster of a definition, I would still be looking at the same fines as anybody else, even though nobody else has access to them.  (Obviously a security breach would be different - but I wonder if proving that would help much in this case.)

During the Thomas trial, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis instructed jurors they could find unauthorized distribution — copyright infringement — if Thomas was “making available” the copyrighted works over a peer-to-peer network. The jury decided her liability in five minutes.

Here’s another problem: We’ve got so many technically-challenged people involved with these cases (judges, juries, lawyers - everyone; yes, I realize we need people who will be impartial but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a brain or any knowledge of how what they’re talking about works) that all it takes is a scare marathon compliments of the **AA lawyers for them to decide guilt in less time than it takes to boil pasta.

“It is a distribution by putting works in a shared folder. You can deem that copies are being made. That goes for the indirect proof,” Geisman said. “Having it in a shared folder is indirect proof of actual copying of another user.”

The only thing this indirectly proves is that our legal system needs an infusion of intelligence and competence to match the times if we’re going to see these parades of pointless lawsuits end. Perhaps the money they pay to the lawyers should instead be invested in other things - like the artists, studios, and various audiovisual studios that provide the content for them to rip off. I mean, there’s obviously a problem if even the artists would rather download (or promote an alternative means to paying for music).

Perhaps Trent Reznor and his OiNK comments (previous link above) are the best way for the double-A’s to get a clue to revamp their business model:

“If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

Fine, I’ll discuss something else next time.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(Thanks to Randy for the post title idea. )

If you didn’t already know, Defcon is this week.  For the uninitiated, Defcon is basically the world’s biggest hacker convention, started by Jeff Moss.  (Well, I’d call them ‘crackers’, but for reasons of word association, they choose to use the word ‘hacker’ so that’s what I’m going to be using for the remainder of the post as well.)  Geeks from all over the world come together to trade tricks, put their skills up with or against one another (in fun), and give discussions about various topics people find interesting or helpful.  In fact, it’s such a popular place that attendees are routinely barred from entering the United States (the convention is held in Las Vegas) or sometimes arrested.  It’s actually so popular that numerous agents from the FBI attend just to get an idea of how far behind their skills are, and what the current “hot targets” are.

It’s because of this last item that one of the Defcon activities exist.  Called “Spot the FBI Agent”, it consists of nothing more than convention members ratting out people they feel are FBI agents.  Purely out of fun, it’s designed just to play to the paranoids and very detail-oriented individuals.  In fact, any journalists attending need to get permission to do almost anything, ensuring the security of people admitting any crime they may have committed as long as the journalist and their group honors the “contract” they have signed.

Of course, regular attendees only have their code of honor as a safeguard against people being arrested over admissions of guilt, among other things.  Which is why one of the Dateline producers, Michelle Madigan, was caught and publicly lambasted for trying to covertly record admissions and proceedings inside the conference without anyone’s approval…and without a journalist’s badge.

All I have to ask is…why?  I’m sure it might be interesting to record and play back to the world the underground goings-on of the security world (there’s more than just computer security at stake at the conference, you know) and spin them in a broadcast in such a way as to make people paranoid over using postage stamps or doing trivial things…but as we all (at least, those of us in even the loosest of circles) know, not only does this all happen without a glance by “civilians”, but it’s a necessary problem.  Yes, I said necessary.  Afraid?  (I’m more than happy to discuss it, but not now.  Get in touch with me or wait for me to post about it.)

Anyway, back to the why?  What would possess someone to attempt to infiltrate a meeting of the utmost professionals of the stealth/surveillance/underground attack trade just for a five-minute story?  I mean, FBI agents can’t even walk around,and they’re not even supposed to make any indication that they’re an agent; it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the plot.

This isn’t “To Catch A Hacker.”  This is people sharing knowledge and helping to make the present and future a better place, even if it costs some people their freedom or a few dollars (in bandwidth and beverages of course).  Remember, without testing our current systems, we cannot strive to improve them, and consequentlythe quality of life as well.  How are we to compare our level of quality of life if it’s always the same?  How would we know how much better it could be?  This is people improving the lives of others; sometimes at great personal risk.  I mean, there are people who write virii just to patch the holes the virus uses to cause damage (alright, in the case of that link, the backdoor was a bit over the top…but all in all it did help, right?).  And as much as anyone wants to believe it, there are good people in the fight too.

To be really lame and create a chess example, picture the board full of all the pieces you have at the start - bishops, rooks, pawns, and so forth - and the colors stand for both sides of the puzzle.  Picture a game going on, but when a piece is supposed to be taken off the board, it merely gets moved somewhere else on the board.  All in all, it sounds like a game with no clear-cut winner, right?  But think of it this way as well - both sides get to continue to see how each person plays, improve their own game, and experiment with various counterattacks in a neverending cycle.  (Alright, maybe this example is lame, but it gets the point across.)

Gah, I’ll shut up now and quit reporting news.  Though I can only hope, with any luck she’s probably clearing her desk sometime, not only because of being fired, but out of her public humiliation.  And I smell a new game (or modification to an existing one ) for next year.  It’s just a shame I couldn’t go.

Note: I realize this is somewhat qualified to file under “Geeky”, but I think it can safely stay out due to the fact that I’m not going to get overly technical with anything the average (l)user wouldn’t pick up.

Web browsing, e-mail, chatting…they’re all things we do on a daily basis (and in my case, so does checking my site hit statistics, among other things). And for as long as anybody’s known them, they’ve been strictly two-dimensional. You point, click, and read in an interface designed for you to get the most out of what you want to look at, rather than staring blindly at a 1000-pixel-tall toolbar or a progress bar bigger than the grin on your face when you order your favorite meal.

The point I’m trying to make is that the delivery systems are two-dimensional because the content they deliver is two-dimensional as well. The text on a web page, for instance, doesn’t all consist of WordArt and Flash, especially if the people involved in designing the site had any shred of common sense. In short, there’s absolutely no need to add in a z-coordinate when the information displays just fine using x and y. It’s overkill, and it overcomplicates things.

Not to nitpick anything in particular (especially on an app that’s still in development), but I’ve come armed with examples. Take a look at 3D-Mailbox, for instance. This e-mail client promises to revolutionize the way you look at your e-mail by (what else) giving you a 3D interface with which you can act upon your communications. The e-mails file in one-by-one looking like various beachgoers, and where they go in this “oasis” designates how important they are. The fat people wading too far out into the shark-infested waters are spam, while the scantily-clad women tanning nearby are the trusted e-mails.

Now, here’s my first gripe: Why should my e-mails get so separated that there are only a handful at any one location? I prefer being able to stare at the big picture, but if I have to navigate around so much to do make a mental picture for myself, you’ve ruined everything. Why do unread e-mails go here, read e-mails go here, things the program can’t tell are spam here, and this here and that there? (Yes, I realize the bottom half of the application is a standard e-mail list…but if you’re going to the trouble of making a 3D app to do away with a standard “old-fashioned” list, why should that even be necessary? Eh? Eh? I’m waiting.)

Not to barrage the developer even more, but remember what I said about site traffic statistics? Yup…the same people that brought you 3D Mailbox have also developed a way to see who’s on your site…in 3D. Explain to me why I need to see a Greyhound drop off a few people when someone finds Two Slashes via Google. How about I just open up my copy of FireStats and read about the person who just showed up.

It gets worse beyond these too. If it weren’t for the fact that Second Life has a game(-ish) concept behind it, I’d almost call it a chat client.

Does anyone remember the old Microsoft-developed IRC (Internet Relay Chat for you newbs), aptly called Microsoft Chat (not to be confused with the Microsoft Network or any other Microsoft (blank) application)? That crazy application that turned your “bland” IRC-based communications into a fun, yet colorless, comic strip. Yes, the very same one that bungled up IRC standards so badly, the people who actually know how to use a proper client (who are still horrified when they find MSChat users spamming configuration settings to control their character’s emotional state) shudder and go into fits of rage. (Though on the other hand, I have to commend MS for providing users with a very serviceable free IRC client for their operating system…provided it was used in a standard “line” mode rather than with the comic garbage.)

There are times and places to go right ahead and use the third dimension.  But when it overcomplicates even the simplest of day-to-day tasks, there’s obviously been a step way too far over the line.  People refurbish old computers and sell them (or give them away to relatives) for use as basic web browsing and e-mail rigs.  I don’t get why these should be just as powerful and expensive as the usual gaming rig to look at what would be represented by any other application as meaningful text.

The day I need a three-dimensional client for anything is the day my communications can no longer be expressed in text.  I mean, I thought concepts like the bubbly IncrediMail were horrible (and why the f**k is it still around!?)…but then again I should have realized that if there’s a market for emoticon-splashed messaging, it was only a matter of time.  What’s next - an e-mail client that projects a hologram of some long-since U.S. president to announce new messages in “Ye Olde Englisch”?