Where others tread to fear.

I was reading an article over at one of my favorite web sites. It appears that the MPAA has borrowed the RIAA’s handbook on how it deals with online music sharing, rather than learning from the mess that has been created. They are suing web sites that host trackers for BitTorrent. You can look at the introduction page on the link to get an idea of what BitTorrent does. It's actually a pretty brilliant and useful piece of software. I've actually recommended it as a distribution system for lab images on campus.

The latest suit and action concerns a site that hosted a tracker for Star Wars Episode III before it was released into theaters. In truth the people responsible for making the file available should be the ones prosecuted. It is illegal after all. The responsibility of the site to police all of the hosting that they provide is really the question here. BitTorrent allows a site to run a tracker and provide a link to the material without ever actually coming into contact with the material. It’s similar to having a bulletin board on which anyone can post their name as having or wanting a file. It’s like a matchmaking service. Someone else is actually distributing the file. The torrent search sites merely help you find that person.

The other thing that I really love is how George Lucas is claiming that it’s stealing money from the box office. Under most circumstances, the movies you can download are of questionable quality at best. Plus, watching a grainy, staticy, lower resolution video capture on a pc with mediocre speakers is not what one would call a theater quality experience. Also, it usually doesn’t stop people from going to the theater, unless they find out the movie sucks. The fact that George can claim this while SW:EIII is making money hand over fist is quite humorous. The logs show that 10 thousand or so copies were downloaded. That’s a whole lot of money George. Way to go showing off your ass hat again.

As you can tell I have issues with George’s business decisions. He didn’t want to release SW 4, 5, and 6 on DVD because he was afraid of piracy. DVD or video tape doesn’t really affect how easy or difficult it is to pirate something. I went to a site to join a petition to try to change his mind. My reasoning at the time was that DVD would be replaced in a few years with a HD quality video system. If he released it to DVD then he could release it again in the HD system later. Boom, milk that mother twice. I always wonder if he finally realized that, or if the whole thing was merely to make more stir for the actual DVD release. The Star Wars projects that seem to have the least contact with Lucas appear to do the best. It’s a strange paradox.

I personally have used BitTorrent for many things. Just this week my VCR and I had a misunderstanding about how much room was on a tape. I lost by the way. So my recording of the season finale of Smallville was spotty at best. I hopped on a BitTorrent search site a few days later and found a recording of it. Took me 18 hours to download, but I got to watch the finale. I’m going to delete the file this week. I don’t want to distribute it. I just wanted to catch something I missed without waiting for reruns. What's wrong with that? And yes Ty I'm still thinking about the Replay TV. I’ve also downloaded tech demonstration videos, promotional videos, freeware utilities, software patches, etc.

BitTorrent has too many legitimate uses to be killed. Sites will continue to pop up, and software will be developed to offer services that people want. You can either fight each one that comes along to try to maintain the status quo or you can follow where the consumers lead and figure out how to profit from it. Most people are willing to pay for services and content, but they want convenience and ease of use in return.

Get ready for another litigation roller coaster.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Expectations and Anxiety

Well this morning at 9AM I had the wonderful opportunity to be interviewed for the job position I mentioned in a previous post. I was interviewed for the same position about 2.5 or so years ago and obviously didn’t get it. Interestingly the person who did get it left after 9 months. The next person that got it, I didn’t apply on purpose, just left 2 months back. That’s right 2 people in less than 3 years. Part of that is due to the coworkers, but I know the two people and should be able to handle them a little better. I feel I have a better opportunity this time due to the other two people leaving so soon, and I know lot about the university, department, and job. I think I’ll be able to pick up a lot of the other information quickly. Here’s hoping, but I’m not holding my breath.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

And one to grow on.

I was reading a friend’s blog, Uppwords, and he had a post on which I had to comment. However, the comment became exceedingly long, so I turned it into a post to promote his blog. I say to you sir, bravo. The post was about the current view many people have towards video games as a child’s form of entertainment. Please do read it.

I'm sorry to admin that it's a stigma that many things carry. Chess is viewed as a very adult game, but I can play a game based on the same principles if I start up Age of Empires^tm or Civilization^tm. Why is the computer version stigmatized? Computer chess doesn’t carry that. In fact computers have beaten some very accomplished chess players. Why does Monopoly^tm and Risk^tm garner more respect than SimCity^tm or a Real Time Strategy game? Do people think that they are easier for some reason? Because I will tell you they can test the abilities of some of the smartest people I know. And the computer version is often made difficult without depending on random chance for a lot of the difficulty. In Monopoly^tm a die drives a great deal of success or failure, but in SimCity^tm it’s mostly your decisions and shortsightedness that are your downfall. Some games are for children, some games are for adults, and some work well for both. Some of the most fun I’ve had with family and friends is playing four player versus on Mario Cart 64^tm. To automatically assign video games to one category is shortsighted and it does the creators of some of the games a disservice.

The same thing happens to genres such as Science Fiction and animation. It’s an elitist view that new and different things that are not mainstream entities are not capable of being worthy of praise and having true merit. They are merely computer games or laser blasting science fiction stories or cartoons. What possible use could they be? It took a long time for literature to truly begin to recognize that SF could tell wonderful stories in ways that are extraordinarily difficult to tell in classical literature. It’s still an uphill battle for movies, television, and games to get recognition. But then Alfred Hitchcock received lifetime achievement awards from the Directors Guild of America and from the American Film Institute, without ever having received an Oscar for best director. I’m just glad that things like Princess Mononoke, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 2001: A Space Odyssey, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and other try to break out of the neat little compartments people build for movies of their genres.

I'm reminded of when I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise visited an androgenous civilization. One of the male crewmembers and a scientist from the planet began working together. The scientist revealed that sometimes deviants were born in their species that had predispositions towards male or female as a throwback to earlier ancestry, and that she had a female predisposition. They hit it off, but her people saw such deviations as an illness, so they took her into custody and adjusted her brain to eliminate the feelings. This episode came on during the whole “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” thing with the US military. I happened to watch it for the first time with 2 people that didn’t like homosexuality, or the possibility that they could join the military. That day we had been having a heated discussion about the topic, and I shut up when I realized I couldn’t get them to look outside of their narrow view. I often play the opposing opinion just to get people to widen their view of the world. Near the end of the episode Person 1 wondered, “Why can’t they just let her leave with him?” Person 2 turned to Person 1 and said, “You realize they are talking about homosexuality?” I must tell you that the wave of recognition, shock, and seeing the amazing view of having been shot straight out of the little rut (s)he lived in his/her eyes was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. (S)He was shaken to the very foundations. Person 1 then turned to me. I simply said, “Yup,” and then I went back to watching the episode to let the person thought about it. I have found very few genres that can pull someone so far out of their normal point of view, without their knowledge, and then suddenly pull back the curtains to show them where they really are. The timing was almost inbelievable, and I dearly loved it.

Here’s hoping for more expectation exceeding, viewpoint widening, fun loving, genre straddling, excellent works of entertainment and education.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Offshoring Science

I was over reading one of the web sites I frequent, and I was reading their science articles. I love them, because they highlight a week’s worth of science on the web. It’s a nice little shot of “Cool” and “Look at that.”

This one touches on a topic that has been steaming my broccoli for quite some time. Sorry for that language there. It seems that South Korean scientists have used donated unfertilized human eggs and a nucleus to create a new stem cell line. That makes the line genetically and biologically compatible with the nucleus donor. In other words the cells would not be rejected by the donor’s body. This can be a large step towards using undifferentiated stem cells to repair areas of the body or even replace organs. It’s interesting that this comes from South Korea, but not really surprising. It’s also of note that the stem cell line did not come from a fertilized egg. Though some would state that getting the egg to grow and divide using new genetic material is equivalent to fertilizing it. This stuff gets thick when you start delving this deep into reproduction and genetics. All in all I think it is a nice piece of scientific work that could reap untold benefits. And it looks like it walked the ethics lines with room to spare.

So what cooks my cousin of cabbage with vaporized water? Well this event is something that Americans can get used to more and more. Free science appears to be struggling in the US. Federal money is being channeled to projects that support political views and directions. That isn’t that different from any other time this century. The main difference now is that it is leaving a much larger number of scientists and projects out in the cold. Not to mention that politics seems to be playing a much larger roll in influencing which scientists get to represent the US. Instead of the best in the field, we may be reaching down the ladder for someone who says what the administration wants. It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This has been happening in many areas of science, but is most prevalent in climate change, environmental impact, energy consumption, pollution, etc. You know, all the stuff that will affect human civilization for the next few centuries. Being that this is something I keep part of an eye on, along with computing, it gets to me. Knowing what friends have told me about the areas they watch, it seems to be indicative of the administration. It’s also one of the primary reasons I didn’t add my name to the list of people in my state that bowed to the Republican candidate for President. Just tighten you belt and hold on. Maybe we will have some better choices next time.

The thing is that most of the people who study science and discoveries say that throwing money at one area usually won’t advance it more that a few years. In truth it has to be “time” for something. A series of inventions, discoveries, and knowledge have to come into existence before the next step can be taken. All of the sciences and industries are related in this way. The best you can hope for is to spread money around and try to speed up the whole process by a few percent. You can’t predict that a new plant may contain a chemical that makes paint less polluting, that software for imaging the body can be modified to find oil in the ground, or that a plastic designed for strengthening tires can help stop bullets.

Sure there always need to be guidelines for safety and for ethical reasons, but blocking exploration entirely will only make it find somewhere else to call home.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Movies and sleep deprivation

Believe it or not I actually made it in to work on time this morning, unlike some people I know. He also beat me to the post, but somebody has to do some work around this place. These things aren’t just going to break themselves. Let’s get on with this thing, but first I bore you. Ha. So there.

As my last post stated I went to the 12:10 AM showing of Star Wars Episode III last night. I had originally intended to take this afternoon off and see the movie a little after lunch, but I was talked into going to the midnight showing. We got to the Theater at 10:25, a full 1:45 before the movie was set to start. It was a good thing too. There were several hundred people in line when we got there. Smartly we had already purchased our tickets several days before.

We stood in line and talked, went to the bathroom, and tried to avoid the TV News camera that was there. It seems that a gathering of this many nerds in one building is apparently a very news worthy event. I think it was primarily a warning for normal people to stay away from the theater. “Billy, see what playing too many video games can do to you. It makes you either fat with log unkempt hair or skinny with a scraggly beard.” I recognized some of the people as escapees from the basements of the computer science and mathematics departments. That was the front of the line though. As you moved farther back down the line it began to turn into normal college and high school kids with a few adults thrown in. I was right at the separation point of ubernerd and the almost normal person, right where I should have been. I say almost normal because anyone who goes to a movie at 12:10 AM can’t really be normal. Anyway, I had fun watching people play with their light sabers, don their Darth Vader and Storm Trooper masks, walk around in their Jedi Robe, or wonder how the father expected the 5 year old to stay awake or quiet.

The seating took place rather calmly and collectedly about 30 minutes before the movie. Dex managed to get into our theater by saying he was with us. They were checking tickets to keep the theaters evenly loaded. Dex’s original ticket was different, because he had mistakenly purchased a ticket to the wrong cinema, a miscommunication. He managed to get one of the last 40 tickets earlier that evening and exchanged his other ticket for a Saturday one for his son. Next time we are going to send one person to buy all the tickets.

We sat for half an hour before the previews started. I was actually amazed that there were only 3. I’ve been to several movies lately with what seems like 5 or 6 trailers. No wonder a 2 hour movie has 3 hours between showings. Anyway, there was Fantastic Four, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Stealth. Fantastic four looks like it may not suck. Mr. And Mrs. Smith looks like I might be able to drink to it. Stealth made me think of Macross Plus, so I reserve judgment. It was at this point that it became clear. The audience was not the loudest I have ever been in, but they were going to make loud comments and spontaneous outbursts of laughter and awe precisely at the times I wanted to listen closely. I had been prepared for this, but Dex seemed a bit miffed. Such is the side effect of seeing it with The Great Fandom. To them the first watching is for golly jees. The third watching is where you look for details and poo poo the people doing the whooping that you were doing just a few hours earlier.

It was then that the Lucasfilm logo popped up on the screen and the crowd went nuts whooping and flailing about. And then something struck me in the chest. It startled me for a second and then I looked for the stealthy projectile. I found it on the floor and for a second thought it might be a sexual aid. I then realized that in someone’s excited state they had over flailed and launched the 10 inch plastic tip of their light saber at me. I could see the story, “Man Loses Eye in Lightsaber Mishap at Star Wars Opening”. Then the Family Guy episode with Luke doing the laser eye surgery came to mind. It wasn’t pretty, but it was funny. I took some solace in the fact that it would ruin the guy’s week if he couldn’t find it. I saw him looking for it after the movie and gave it back to him. Yeah I’m a soft touch. Next time I’m taking my safety glasses, because there really is no more important safety rule.

Holy crap that’s a lot of text that has nothing to do with the movie. Why didn’t one of you speak up and tell me I was rambling. And now for the rest of our show.

One thing you must know is that I enjoy many forms of entertainment and the varying degrees of quality that exist therein. I’ve tried to explain my varied taste before, but most people see it as unrefined at best. I tend to look past what others call bad acting, predictable plots, poor production quality, etc. to find other things of merit. Most of the time I see a play, poem, song, script, or story as a walk though another person’s imagination. I study and think about the paths this person has chosen that mimic or differ from what I have seen before. To me most stories are predictable, to some degree. There are only so many paths that an audience will watch and enjoy. Others have seen me pull lines out of the air almost word for word before the character says them. I’ve watched Monk, KOTOR 1 and 2 and other stories, predicting the outcomes at just over the halfway mark. For many stories the outcome is trivial. The journey is what is of consequence. And I dearly love when a story takes a turn I did not see. It’s like finding a secret cache of possibilities that you can treasure and examine. So take any review or opinion with as large a hunk of salt lick as you want. I figured you might need that before I talk about movies.

Star Wars Episode III

In two words, Utterly Predictable, but really what did you expect? You’ve seen the first two and the next three, so bridge the opening and there you have it. I mean seriously it’s supposed to be epic, and that is usually pretty formulaic. I mean the 4^th-6^th episodes are utterly predictable if you have seen the first 3. Now beyond that, it was a thoroughly enjoyable movie. The actors have matured and have a better grasp of the story and their characters. But most of all, this movie is a whole lot more like the 4^th - 6^th episodes than it is like the 1^st and 2^nd. There’s a lot more fighting, and it seems to be choreographed better. I definitely feel the Lightsaber swordplay was studied and practiced more. The CGI is more subtle and doesn’t steal the scene as often. Don’t get me wrong, there are showy things, some small jets and flying come to mind, but for the most part the action is large enough to compete. The only CGI that was really bothersome was the representations of the main characters. I swear I saw a CGI Obi-Wan that looked like a face texture wrapped around a smooth balloon shaped head. The shading and shadowing were nonexistent or completely wrong. I don’t want to say anything about the plot because it’s too easy to give large pieces away, but betrayal is the theme for the day.

If you haven’t seen the Star Wars Clone Wars animated series I suggest you do so. You should be able to rent the first series, and Cartoon Network will probably be showing the second series again. It leads from the end of the 2^nd Episode right up to the beginning of the 3^rd. And I have to say it has great story, action, and character development. And it is cannon, or official story line. It helps make Anakin even more real and helps change your view of Vader forever.

Now for the condensed review from Yoda:

“If Star Wars you like, then see it you must. If Star Wars you do not like, then something else you should see.”

And my condensed review:

“It’s worth a full price ticket the first time, but only a matinee the second. Anything beyond that and you should wait for the DVD.”

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Lazyboy Posting

That's right the DSL is back online, so I'm posting from the comfort of my Lazyboy recliner on my laptop. Turns out it were some bridge taps or some such thing on their end afterall.

I was perusing SciFi.com when I saw this link that caught my eye. Yes that is right, Kelsey Grammer is going to be Dr. Henry "Hank" McCoy, better known as Beast, in the next and third installment of the X-Men movie franchise. I have to admit that he has the voice and demeanor, but they are going to have to make one hella suit or some good CGI to pull that off. I'm actually hoping for a suit of some kind. Given that they have the same actors with the addition of Angel and Shadowcat with Jauggernaut as a villan, I am excited that the movie may be as good as the previous ones.

And now I have to hurry up, so that I can wait in line to see Star Wars.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Of DSL and Movies

I've been having a bit of withdrawal recently. Saturday our DSL connection started acting flakey, and this isn't a tender, butter filled pastry kind of flakey. After a restart of the connection it will run fine for several seconds, and then it slows to a 4800 baud crawl. Yeah, that slow. I blame it on the thunderstorm Friday.

At the house I rent with my roommates, we own our DSL modem. See we got DSL before Bell South started advertising it. At the time the only modem they offered was a PCI card with no firewall. So we got our own PPPoE modem and router and took care of it ourselves. And it’s worked great for around 4-5 years. Only periodic router or modem restarts.

The technician comes by and indicates that it is probably our modem, and says that if it is there will be a charge for service. Great just get it working. He brings in a new modem and lo and behold it does the same thing. Ha ha vindication. Don’t be blaming our hardware just because you haven’t seen a 3Com ADSL modem before. Yeah 3Com stopped making them in like 2001 or something. He goes to the Bell South Test Your Speed page, and after 3 minutes of trying to load the applet, it claims that java isn’t installed. He said, “That’s not supposed to happen.” Yeah bud I think you have some infrastructure problems somewhere. A line technician is supposed to come by today and replace some jumpers or something farther up the line to see if that is it. So here’s hoping.

What that ramble means is that updating this blog at home is iffy. I would normally set my IBM T42 work laptop, that the University purchased he he, on the table beside me and reencode video files, check e-mail periodically, look up info on the web, or anything else I want to do over the wireless link at the house. Since it isn’t working right I’m having to take advantage of the fact that it is slow between semesters and I can get some of this done at work. Oh well, I’ll muddle through.

I seem to get talked into a bunch of stuff. I will be joining the vast horde of unwashed geeks as they slink for their various places of refuge to the movie theater to partake in the next edition of George Lucas’s Star Wars legacy. I’m rather surprised I’m going considering that I have work at 8 the next morning. I made a compromise with some friends so that the theater will be closer to home, and with that compromise the door opened for other friends to join us. All in all I would say a good decision to make and probably a good time to be had by all. We’ll see what Episode 3 has in store. I’ll probably have something about that tomorrow, if I’m awake.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Big money, Big money, No Whammies, No Whammies, Stop!!

I've been in my current job for almost 4 years, and during those 4 years the job duties, responsibilities, and knowledge requirements have grown far beyond the initial levels. Consequently, for 2 1/2 of those years I have been promised a job reclassification to a higher salary. And it has all come to nothing.

So about 2 weeks ago I applied for a job position that came open in the same department in which I currently work, but I'm not holding my breath about it. For some reason my department has a history of hiring from outside rather than from within. Yes you work with this person already and you know their shortcomings and idiosyncrasies, but what in the world makes you think this new person will be free of those. I've watched skilled people, familiar with the organization and structure of the department, get overlooked for someone that looked marginally better on paper. Then they turn out to know less than they appeared to, and they have to go through training for weeks or months. I interviewed for another job a year ago to accentuate my point about a job reclassification. I made sure to express my intent to stay with the department long term. The person they hired left after 8 months. Someone else left after a little more than a year. Good job hiring people. Nice work.

I must admit that I am slightly more optimistic about this one though. I have heard from several people that my new boss (We were reorganized a few months back.) has me at the top of the list. It seems they may realize I am one of the few people who can put up with the main reasons the last 2 people left. That would be the two other people that work in that area. I suppose the best description would be irritating, and for several thousand more a year I can handle them. And if the salary change doesn't meet my requirements, then I can stay where I am. I do love working for the state.

So for now I sit and wait.

And that fulfills the angsty post requirement. I'll try to move on to something else next.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Peer pressure strikes again.

Well a gauntlet was cast at my feet by a friend, (Calling him a peer actually does me a great deal better than it does him.) indicating that the cause of my not producing a Blog was laziness. I was shocked that he could say such a thing and be so correct at the same time. Therefore the only reasonable course of action was to defend myself with what meager skills I possess.

So I created a starting point for something that inevitably I will ignore due to this laziness of which I have been accused. It's all very sad really.

So let the journey begin.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.