mikeShriver

The second camera I acquired recently, a fully-manual Fujica ST801, got it’s first roll back yesterday. I’m a little more impressed with the results of this roll. The Fujica is fully-manual so I have to spend a few moments with it before I can take any photos. It’s very intimate, and requires more patience than I have had to use in the past. The results were overall better than the AE-1, which reinforces a general distrust of things unnecessarily computerized.

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Tags: Eyes, Fujica, Hobbies, kodak gold 200, Photography, ST-801.

Two new cameras arrived last week. My collection of Lomo cameras has deteriorated down to a disused Holga, and so I hit up ebay for a replacement to my 35mm options. Turns out high quality cameras from the 70′s run less than the eternally trendy lomo-style point-and-shoot’s. I scored a Fujica ST-801 for $35. I expect to be processing the first rolls from that camera sometime this week.

I ran a roll through the old Canon AE-1 that my dad brought up from Salt Lake. I’ve got a batch of expired (2002) Kodak Gold 200 that I intended to run through my ill-fated Smena2 (RIP), so I shot a test roll to get a feel for my new toy:

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Tags: AE-1, Eyes, Hobbies, kodak gold 200, Photography.

…A man who can still find awe in the bigness of things.

On Mission India and the Size of the Universe

During our conversations, you expressed a rare wonder at the expanse of the universe. My whole life I have been confronted by astronomical charts, and the enormity of the universe has become familiar idea. After I got back from my trip to India, I looked up some information about out place in the universe, and I think you might be interested in some facts I have taken for granted. This stuff always amazes me when I stop to think about it.

A few years back, an astronomer with some spare time on his hands took the most powerful telescope that we have available to us, The Hubble Space Telescope, and pointed it at a completely black patch of the night sky. He was curious about what he would be able to see if he left it focused on the blackness of space, and the image he came up with is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field:

It is an incredibly striking image by itself, but just seeing it doesn’t really reveal all of its implications. To fully understand it, you need some background information. The relative sizes of the objects in our galaxy can provide a good starting point.

First, our own home. The earth is about 40,000km around at the equator. I know you fly halfway around the world with regularity, and so you have an easy reference point for the size of the blue marble (the flight from Chicago to Mumbai is 12,978 km, and about 16 hours).

In comparison, the Moon is 10,921km in circumference, and about 3,475km through the middle. That is about the distance from the top of India to it’s southmost point in Tamil Nadu. The moon orbits at a distance of about 405,700km. If you were travelling the same speed as that Mumbai-bound jumbo jet, it would take you about three weeks to arrive at the Moon.

The Sun is about 100 times the diameter of the earth and is 152 million km away, which would take you 21 years to reach in your airplane.

Here is where things get really big. We are out of the range of kilometers, and have to switch to a larger unit, the lightyear. One lightyear is defined as the distance that light travels in a single year, and it is approximately 9,461,000,000,000 (nine and a half trillion) km. Which is a way bigger number than I can even comprehend. In comparison, it takes the light from the Sun only 8 minutes to travel the distance from the Sun to the Earth. It takes that same light about 6 hours to get to Pluto, at the edge of our little solar system.

Our sun is one of about 100 billion stars that make up the Galaxy we reside in, known as the Milky Way. The Milky Way is shaped like a flat disk of two outwardly spiraling arms. The disk is about 100,000 lightyears across, and about 1,000 lightyears thick. The closest star in the Milky Way to our sun is 4 lightyears away, a distance that is practically impossible for humans to cross. We will likely never even travel outside our own little solar system, past Pluto.

I have to admit that I have a hard time visualizing the distances that I’ve described so far, because they are so vastly outside my range of experience.

Now, go back and look at the first image. The original of this image is pretty large, but it covers a small portion of the sky. If you walked outside under a full moon and looked up, this image would cover a patch of sky about 1/10th of the size of the moon. The image is so small, it would take 13 million of them to cover the entire sky. There are no single stars in the image. Every single speck in the image is a galaxy like our own Milky Way. That means that thousands of galaxies fit into that tiny little speck in the night sky.

The first time I saw that image was a moment of epiphany for me. I can’t fathom the sheer insignificance that even our own unfathomably huge galaxy commands in the universe, not to mention our own tiny planet.

I hope that this information is interesting to you. It certainly has made me wonder at the enormity of everything. My understanding of it all is pretty limited, but feel free to ask me any questions you have, and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge.

–Mike

Note:  A full version of the Hubble UDF image can be found here:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/image/a/

Tags: astronomy, epiphany, rimi, saji, universe.

The vending machine ripped me off today. It alarms me how much this bothered me. I don’t normally buy from machines, but today, I was especially hungry, and therefore desperate. One dollar in, my selection made, but my delicious corn-based onion-themed snack remained lodged in the silver maw of commerce. I had to have this, so I broke a five at the coffee stand and threw more money at the problem, in order to push my previous bag within my ever-desperate reach. Of course, the second bag stuck, as well, and my impotent anger grew.

I gave up on the endeavor, the last the I wanted was 3 bags of Funyuns. Fuck, I didn’t really even want the first bag, it just seemed like the most appealing thing in there at the time. So, now I am out 2 dollars for 2 bags of shit snack-food that I didn’t want in the first place. And, I’m still hungry.

I call the number listed on the machine, and hang up as soon as the phone is answered. To my surprise a living human picked up the phone, and the last thing I want to do is interact with a human being. A machine was good enough to rip me off, can’t a machine be good enough to recompense me?

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The founders of The Pirate Bay have been on trial in Sweden on charges of copyright violation. Final arguments wrapped up yesterday, and a judgment should come in the next few weeks.

The most interesting note from the trial: Witness for the defense Professor Roger Wallis, who testified about the impact of file-sharing on CD sales, was asked if he would like compensation for his trouble, travel and time. Wallis declined, instead asking that flowers be sent to his wife, Görel.

The community of filesharers responded with an overwhelming show of gratitude, sending over $4,000 worth of flowers the Wallis’ home (and that was before the news his Slashdot’s front page).

Wallis, a professor of media technology at Kungliga Tekniska högskolan in Stockholm, testified against the IFPI’s assertion that CD sales declines are due largely to online downloading:

There’s a multitude of factors that effects the decline in sales. The most important reason is that the CD isn’t a practical form of distribution when people want their music on their computers or on MP3.

He also drew upon the commonly used comparison with the VCR and personal tape recorder technology that came along in the 80′s. Personal tape recorders became an important part of music culture, allowing for cheaply produced independent music to be distributed underground, away from industry control.

The outpouring of gratitude puts a positive face on a group that is often labeled as criminal. If we can keep this kind of thing up, we stand a far greater chance of winning the hearts and minds of the general population, after all, who can resist a group that regularly sends flowers to adorable old swedish women?

Tags: copyright, IFPI, TPB.

I have recently applied for a job at my Alma Mater. Being a Christian affiliated university, there are certain faith requirements for prospective employees, and probing questions that must be answered upon application, prompting (for the first time, really) to actually try to articulate my position on faith. I’ll include the actual essays below.

Note: I have already been notified that I didn’t get the position I applied for. This probably had more to do with the current economic troubles the school is facing than the essays below.

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Tags: christianity, church, employment, faith, SPU.

I’m walking down the long hall of an early 20th century Methodist temple, towards the high gothic sanctuary and the hard pew where I will be spending the rest of my evening completely enraptured by the man who most influenced my current philosophy. Around me are the devotees, with their long hair and dark colored clothing, each hefting what can only be described as a tome, and eagerly awaiting the words of our priest.

The gathering is, of course, not a religious one, but a book signing. The Author is Neal Stephenson. The volume being brandished is Anathem, a novel that is, in true Stephensonian style, as grand as it is detailed. It is a sprawling yarn that tells of a culture that holds intellectual curiosity in the same spheres as the people of Earth would regard a monastic order.

But I am not here for the novel, I have not even read it. In fact, my attention span has collapsed under the sheer length of at least the last three of Stephenson’s epics. I am here because of a lesser known work written almost ten years ago, a long essay that I came across during my freshmen year of college. It is something that the author certainly considers one of his minor works, something that he would pass over with a dismissive comment if it were brought up at an event such as this. It is called “In The Beginning Was the Command Line” and it is the single most influential thing I have ever read.

I usually attend these things with a certain level of detachment. I tend to think that the hype, the aura of anticipation and awe that usually surrounds these things is unfounded. Any successful author, no matter how brilliant, is subject to a certain amount of inflation and I tend to distrust anything that large groups of people adore without reserve.

Of course there is always an exception to attitudes like this one, especially for someone as emotionally inconsistent as I am. Neal Stephenson is certainly no more deserving of my devotion than Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut, or Thomas Pynchon. My rational brain knows that. But I still found myself stammering like a lovestruck schoolgirl when I stood before him to get my copy of Anathem signed for a friend.

And, of course, I forgot to bring ‘In the Beginning’ to have signed for myself. Damn.

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The popular news aggregation site Digg is experiencing an upswell in comments because of actions it has taken against some of it’s members. There are reports that Digg has recently removed content and banned usernames and IP addresses of users who have posted stories containing a cracked AACS device key that can be used to decode movies stored on HD-DVD. This action was taken, presumably, in the face of a DMCA takedown notice sent to Digg on the part of the AACS group, the organization that controls the AACS content protection system. According to a comment on freedom-to-tinker.com:

The Processing Key will decode any current HDDVD release for which you know the Volume ID.

It is obvious why the AACS would want to keep such a key under tight control. Unauthorized HD-DVD players that used this key could be used to copy movies into a DRM-free format. Many Digg users see the ability to copy a DVD they purchased as a fundamental right. In copyright law, there is a clause called ‘fair use’ under which a legitimate user is allowed to make a copy of a work as a backup, or for personal use. DRM destroys that ability.

The apparent willingness of Digg to bow to the powers of evil has sparked a flood of Digg users expressing their discontent with their favorite news site. Post after post has related to the offending key. Some Digg users have gotten creative, printing the number on T-shirts, converting the number to other forms, and even colors.

The DMCA states:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that–

`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

`(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

`(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

By posting the key in various forms, the community aims to question what, exactly, counts as a “circumvention device.” It i clearly established to be illegal to post the key to the internet in its hexadecimal format. But what about if it is published in decimal format, or binary? What if instead of the internet, someone wears it around on a T-Shirt. What if the hex codes are split into six digits, and those clusters then interpreted as colors? Has a circumvention device been disseminated then?

A similar thing happened on a smaller scale when the infamous ‘DVD Jon’ wrote and distributed his program “DeCSS” which was able to decrypt and play DVD movies. The comment storm on Digg seems to want to bring the debate about circumvention devices back into the public sphere.

There is much talk on Digg right now about ‘digital revolution’ or ‘revolt.’ Of course, the comments posted on Digg are nothing like a real political revolution. This is merely the irate voice of the young generation speaking up about something they feel strongly about. There is a great deal of concern that the current corporate, money driven culture poses a sincere threat to the rights of free speech that Americans enjoy.

The DMCA has a provision in it that allows for a web site to escape culpability if it immediately complies with a takedown notice, no questions asked. This clause can be, and has been used to coerce web sites, ISPs and hosting companies to remove user content without any option of recourse on the part of the user. This has staggering implications for free speech activists. It means that anyone on the internet, at any time can be silenced with no reason given, and not chance for rebuttal. This is what we are seeing on Digg right now. Digg’s seeming willingness to cave into the requests of the big companies has severely upset its freedom of speech-loving users.

There are, of course, other issues. For instance, the need for the AACS group to take legal action against sites that distribute their secret keys illustrates a major problem with this supposed ‘content protection system.’ It becomes obvious that this system which is designed to protect digital content is no better at protecting the content than the means it replaced were.

Before AACS, and other forms of DRM which have failed similarly, creative works were afforded protection via laws that made it illegal to copy and redistribute someone else’s creative works. Those laws still exist, but the internet has made copying and redistribution of creative works, especially music and movies, trivial. DRM as an artificial barrier to the ease with which files can be copied in order to reduce the amount of copied music on the internet.

The primary problem with DRM is that it is only as strong as it’s most guarded secret. Unfortunately, for DRM to be useable, that secret has to be distributed to all the legitimate users. Once that key has been distributed to legitimate users, it is trivial to distribute that key to the illegitimate users as well. New laws must be created to make it illegal to spread the secrets that DRM relies on. This is where the DMCA comes in. The DMCA states:

`(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

This portion of the law was designed, essentially, to protect the protectors. Previously, copyright protected the creative work itself, with the creation of DRM, copyright has been extended to protect the secrets that are used to protect the creative work. See the problem? We started out with a system of laws designed to protect creative works, now we have a system of laws to protect the secrets that protect the creative works. Ultimately, the only thing that actually ‘protects’ the content is, as it always has been, the law.

So we haven’t moved forward since the DMCA was passed, in fact, we have really moved back. One unfortunate downside to the creation of DRM has been widespread problems accessing content by legitimate users. DRM has spawned a huge number of competing formats in the marketplace for digital media. Most proprietary players won’t play a compteting player’s format. Purchasing an iPod or Zune all but locks you into that vendor’s online music store. If your music player breaks and you decide to go with a different brand, you won’t be able to migrate your old music collection to your new player.

From here on out, though, Digg users have two choices. They will most likely settle back into their normal lives of digging and commenting on stories that interest them, letting the memory of this unique event fade away. If they truly believed the things they so loudly proclaim, though, they will take their voices to the people: friends and family, strangers on the streets, and most importantly, their politicians. If they can do that much, they may have a real revolution on their hands

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It is becoming increasingly apparent that the current ways of selling music have become obsolete. Record companies are losing business and money. Not only that, a lot of us are sick of hearing about the music industry’s addiction to its outdated business model. Today alone, there have been three stories on Slashdot about the RIAA’s legal antics, and from the looks of those stories, it doesn’t look good for the music industry.

In 2002, when the RIAA started it’s campaign of lawsuits again individual filesharers, the internet community responded vocally. Bloggers and their readers were outraged at an action that essentially amounted to extortion by lawyer. While Anger and frustration were common themes, concern and fear for the victims was also present. People spoke out against the frivolous cases brought against people who lacked the motivation, or even the means, to infringe on the RIAA’s copyrights. It seems like every third day for years a new story has hit the frontpage about some deceased old lady, single mother, or technologically isolated family that has been slapped with an infringement suit. The actions of the record companies were so obviously evil that it was hard not to feel contempt for them. Well, now some of those cases are starting to wrap up, and it is beginning to look as if the RIAA is not only evil, they are also losing the war.

Of course, a few stories on Slashdot hardly make a trend. Still, the lawsuits that make the frontpage there have serious implications for the future of the industry’s litigation campaign. For instance, because of the outcome of one of the Capitol Records vs. Foster case, the RIAA may be forced to pay legal fees for defendants which have committed no wrongdoing. This, alone, will force a major change in the RIAA’s tactics.

An even bigger indication of the industry’s obsolescence comes from their own financial reports. Music just isn’t selling like it once did. Industry representatives will tell you that it is due to uncontrolled digital piracy. They argue that people who download music no longer have to buy it, so they don’t. That scenario is likely true, but it lacks the scope to address the wider issue. Listeners are simply starting to acquire their music differently, and if the industry is going to survive this shift, they are going to have to adapt faster, and this means killing off some of their favorite products.

One of the biggest casualties of the now-ubiquitous internet is the album. It used to be that a record label could sell a group of 15 of songs based on the merits of the single. The quality of the rest of the album was largely irrelevant to the listener at the time of purchase. The other 14 songs could be as great as the single, or, more likely, they could could just be filler. As a listener your options were to either buy the whole album for 15 bucks or to get the single for two or three. Now, though, anyone can purchase any single track they like for about a buck from an online music store. consequently, the album, as it has existed for decades, is not selling like it used to. People have better options. Pretty soon only the nostalgic will want to spend money on a physical album, and that market has already been filled with vinyl.

The good news for the industry is that digital distribution costs are radically lower than the than the costs to distribute physical media. The bad news is that if they don’t realize this soon, they are going to become irrelevant. The drop in cost of distribution is already being taken advantage of by independent labels and artists. Bands are starting to realize that they don’t need a big label to become successful anymore, and without artists to support the big record labels, the mainstream industry is going to collapse in on itself.

If their behavior is to be any indicator, the big record labels realize that their doom is forthcoming. These recent legal actions are the last struggles of a business trying to force its old business model to work. It won’t work, market forces are too powerful to strongarm with a few lawsuits. It’s probably for the best, though. I would love to see more diversity of music and independent bands succeeding through underground marketing.

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