Thursday, January 19, 2006

Thursday, 1st Week: Neighbours Crash Latest

All here at SJC are saddened by the continuing events in the Bass Strait off Tazmania. A website has been set up at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjoh2340 to give information about the known survivors of what the police are calling a "suspicious" crash. The Neighbours following in the TV room wish to pass on to the families of those affected - to Harold, Janelle, Karl and Extras - as well as their friends and neighbours - our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time.

Susan HAS to survive! Her and Karl are still in love... and they both know it...

On a serious note - the first in this post! - it's worth a comment about the reactions to such an event that people have. Harold, a Salvation Army member and re-committed Christian, could be criticised as being naive for suggesting "They're all OK". Many people would react in anger, as Karl did: "What does God say, Harold? Did He tell you why He lets Isabelle survive and not Susan? This God of yours, in all His infinite wisdom!? If ever I needed any evidence there's nothing out there, this is it."

Harold's reaction to this time of crisis is the right one: committing himself to prayer. However, the prayer he prays serves not as a petition to God, but as a way of simply making himself and those with him feel better:

"Dear Lord, we pray for the lives of our families and our friends. Please, we know you'll look over them, you'll protect them and send them back to us safely. Amen."


Being a Christian does not mean living a trouble-free life. Jesus himself said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34). The latter half of Revelation depicts Jesus holding a scroll, while a multitude of "natural" and supernatural disasters occur on Earth. I don't understand the mystery of suffering: but I do know that God is in control. Nothing that happens on Earth will ever catch God by surprise. This is not saying that God causes such suffering; but God can use suffering in order to change us - that is, his followers - to be more like him. The Psalmist says,
"For you, O God, tested us;
you refined us like silver." (Psalm 66:10)

But Harold heads straight for his Protector in this time of crisis, because he knows that is where he will find refuge. He will find God's peace - and it will be a struggle for him to get there, in the days ahead (I haven't read any spoilers, but I'm fairly confident). And there are times in our lives when we do struggle to be in God's presence; times when even the most committed Christian finds it hard to pray. These are the times when it's important to be around our Christian friends and family, for the support and prayers we know they will be able to give. (Cue Harold's Salvo friends?)

Karl's argument is difficult (even impossible) to explain away. But in his emotional outburst is a flawed argument which can be seen in the harsh light of day: First he blames God for what has happened, and that Susan is still missing; then he uses this to "prove" that there is no God. How can God be blamed for something if he doesn't exist?

Susan is a wonderful person. Izzy... well, she's Izzy. It is clear that Karl is both still hurting from what Izzy has done to him, and still in love with Susan. And human nature is slow to forgive, and our love imperfect. But take a look from God's point of view: Both Izzy and Susan are His creations. He loves them both equally - despite the wrongs of their lives. It's the same love that, back in the real world, is offered to each one of us today: a love so powerful that it was willing to sacrifice Jesus, who was "by very nature God", that he should take the punishment due to us for our own wrongs.

So the message to Karl (should Susan be confirmed dead and not found next episode) is: God is grieving with you at the death of His child, whom he loves. But trust in Him - and you will find the comfort that only He can give.

The message to Harold is: Trust and know that your God has not abandoned you. He is your strength, your protector, your fortress. Though all around, waves come crashing down - Christ the Rock does not move.

The message to you, the reader, is: Do you know that you are loved by the living God? Loved so deeply that he was prepared to lay aside his majesty by coming to Earth, humbling himself and becoming "obedient to death - even death on a cross." In fact, " This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." (1 John 3:16)

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Tuesday, 1st Week: On DRM and all that

This came out of a conversation I was having on IM last night. Thought I'd share it with the world, as it's quite close to my heart. Firstly, the conversation, minus any names.



(22:49:54) ###########: :P i like windows media player. i find it easy to use for my purposes

(22:50:47) James@SJC.Linux: Yes, but under the hood there's a lot of stuff I disagree with on a lot of levels. I think a lot of what they're doing ("they" being MS, as well as the major record/media companies) is very wrong. *I* want to control what I can and can't watch or listen to. I don't want some major company doing that for me. If I buy a DVD, why shouldn't I be able to watch it how I want?

(22:52:19) ###########: that doesn't really bother me, but i don't have the 'under the hood knowledge' like u do

(22:52:52) James@SJC.Linux: If you pay money to buy a Westlife CD, you have the right to listen to it. Agreed? (The whole issue of why you'd pay money to listen to Westlife is another matter!) ;-)

(22:53:37) ###########: :P yes, i have the right to listen to it

(22:54:13) James@SJC.Linux: Exactly. Not, "I have the right to listen to it on a particular CD player", or "I have the right to listen to it for thirty days from date of purchase and then it will wipe itself". Or even worse, "I have the right to listen to it on a particular *company's* CD player". Do you see where I'm coming from?

(22:55:33) ###########: yes, but still, i don't experience that problem, or any equivalent problem

(22:56:23) James@SJC.Linux: Not yet, but that's where we're headed. The capability is just about there, it's just when they decide to start using it. And there's a lot of legislation going through the EU right now. I don't want that to be the future of digital media. If you could only play Sony/EMI CDs on Sony CD players, [Sony employees] would get a lot more commission but people would complain in a big way. And we could very well see exactly that happen with computers very soon.

I really do have some grave concerns about the future of digital media. The scary thing is - most people, like the very good friend I was talking to tonight, have little or no knowledge of what "Digital Rights Management" (or, as it has been frequently termed, Digital Restrictions Management) could mean. A very scary thing is that people don't care. They don't care because right now, it just works. They can download music, video, play it on Windows Media Player, or in iTunes, maybe move it to their iPod or Pocket PC, and they see no problem.

I think the Sony CD analogy above is quite a representative one. For the people who own Sony CD players, there's no problem. They expect (rightly) any CD they buy can be played in their Sony hi-fi. They do not care about the issue because they do not see an issue. (This is not an attack on Sony or their customers!)

I'm on the other side of the fence. As you can probably tell from the above, I don't run Microsoft Windows, but a Linux distribution, Kubuntu. (To use the CD player analogy: I don't use Sony, I use a CD player made by a small, independent company.) One of the problems, and it's digital rights related, is this: technically, it could be illegal for me to watch my DVDs on my computer.

I'll explain. Most DVDs use a copy-protection device, an encryption so that it can be viewed but not copied. The trouble is, you need to decrypt the disc in order to watch it. On Microsoft Windows, and as far as I know on Mac, this isn't a problem: you have WinDVD, PowerDVD, or whatever (commercial) program to watch DVDs with. No problem so far. But, the code used to decrypt a DVD for watching can also be used to decrypt it for copying. With commercial software, that's not a problem; the company writing the software buys the right to use the decryption code (essentially) and includes it in their program. The end user (viz. you and me) never see the source code, so the decrypt is quite safe.

Most Linux programs are open-source. This means that, unlike with commercial programs, you can actually download a copy of the programming code used to create that software. You can also (if it's released under the GNU Public License) actually rewrite as much or as little of that program as you want. Use bits of its code in your own projects. You can see the issue here: if you release the DVD decryption code as open-source, then anyone can get their hands on it and the encryption is useless.

Thing is: I need to be able to install a copy of that decryption code to be able to watch my DVDs. This I have done. libdvdcss is the name of the package that is essential to watching DVDs, and you won't find it in any Linux distribution. In order to protect themselves from possible legal action, the big players in the Linux world (understandably) do not include this library in their packages. You instead have to download it from elsewhere. This is, possibly, illegal.

Wait, wait - back up there. "In order to protect themselves from possible legal action" - for letting their users watch their own DVDs? What's gone wrong?

Microsoft's WMA and WMV formats, and Apple's AAC format - probably many more - all contain code that only allows certain devices or software to play the file. Again - if you use Windows Media Player for all your video and audio, not a problem for you. But not exactly fair competition, is it? If you just so happened to want to use software from someone other than Microsoft (say) - what if that software can't play your files, because of this DRM blocking? (And there is a high likelihood that software that can play it has used reverse engineering at some point - again, a legal grey area.) It's not just stifling competition - it's removing it. Windows Media Player comes installed by default on probably 98% of home PCs sold in Britain today - maybe higher. Why bother to install anything else, now you've put your favourite air guitar album on to your PC? If it won't work with other programs - why go to the effort?

And that, in my book, is not fair on the competition; and inevitably, bad for competition means bad for consumer. We've already seen this: the lack of real competition for over a decade to Microsoft's Windows OS has resulted in Windows XP. Sure, it has some good features. OK, the default settings make it look like it was designed for a three-year-old (or maybe by one?) and the focus on tasks, rather than tools, is not to my liking - I like to be able to control options, not just click a button and have something come out close to what I want. But that's not the point.

Since XP was released, there have been countless security updates. Googling for 'xp security updates' returns about 18,900,000 pages (that's pages not updates - not even Microsoft could be that bad!) If anyone has a definite count, please let me know. And that's just the security updates - not the non-security updates that maybe you need to stop your computer from crashing every five minutes.

When you bought XP (if you did - and if you bought a new computer with it preinstalled, you did), you were supposed to be buying a finished product. Coded, compiled, packaged, and on the shelf ready for you to buy. I bet you didn't think it would be delivered in instalments.

Some updates are inevitable. But if you bought a new car, and you had to take it back to the garage about once a month (if not more) for them to tweak something; replace one of the instruments on the dashboard; change how you unlock the car; suddenly discover that if you're doing 50mph and you turn left too hard, the roof falls off... etc, would you be happy? According to the AA website, the Ford Mondeo has had 17 recalls in ten years. XP could probably clock up that many in a fortnight.

This isn't all Microsoft's fault (shock!). For a decade, there has been no real effective competition to their vision of the home computer (and it is a whole vision, not just an OS). PC users rarely cross over to Macs - will this change with the new Intel-driven Apples? Linux - of which, you will have picked up, I am a great fan - is still too fiddly for the average user who's grown up on Windows and used to everything being done for them. I have great respect for those few who find their way to the Kubuntu forums, switching from Windows to Linux - and, when things don't work exactly as they want, rather than throwing a tantrum and going back to MS, actually try and learn a bit about how things work in Linux, how to set it up the way they want. Those who persevere, rarely regret it.

But for many users they simply do not perceive a choice, nor the need to have one. The thing is, unless we work hard to make sure there is a choice - that digital media remains free - we won't have a choice but to follow with Bill Gates' vision of the digital home: your Windows PC streams WMV to your Windows Media Center (sic) box, which acts as your television (even though at present it's broadcast driver architecture (BDA) - the bit that lets it act as a TV, in essence - is completely messed up - and that's not just my opinion). Your Windows Pocket PC can get WMA audio streamed to it as well. Then maybe, one day, someone will say - "Hang on - surely there's a way I can do this?" And there won't be. Because it wasn't in Bill's vision (or it was coded badly and never works, more likely).

This vision of the future scares me. A future where, unless you follow a single company's way of doing things, you won't be able to listen to your CDs, watch your films, watch television. But the vision of the present - the present where this is happening, and nobody seems to notice or even care - that vision scares me more.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Monday, 1st Week: The Boys Are Back In Town

...actually, I was back in town last Wednesday (well, briefly on Monday). This is pretty much a sort of catch-up for the events of 0th week (the holiday, or 'vac', ceases to exist when you revert to Oxford reality).

So, 0th Week! The CU Houseparty to the Frontier Centre in Northamptonshire. A great couple of days away - good company, good teaching, good food (always important in any Christian context!), and an amusing walk past at least four "No Entry" signs (or similar). And mud.

Bought a couple of books from the bookstall (courtesy IVP!) - at the moment I'm reading Jesus Driven Ministry by Ajith Fernando. It's a very good book. I'd recommend it to anyone in any form of Christian leadership.

Got back to Oxford on Wednesday evening. Had to survive a whole 24 hours more without my computer, as this was being brought up on the Thursday by my parents. It's now up and running with the latest svn of MythTV, and with the signal booster I installed a few scant minutes ago I have now solved my reception problems with the three muxes I had trouble with. For some reason I can't get a lock on Sky (690MHz) without moving the aerial up a shelf; but if I do that, I can't lock on five (714MHz); and the bit error rate on the other muxes shoots up. Got to be something to do with the strange architecture of the Sir Thomas White building... and I see they're still transmitting on 554MHz, something to do with the mobile TV trials in Oxford using DVB-H. Can't watch it though... ;-)

Enough technobabble. There's plenty happening this term: hopefully my first laundry of the term will be less eventful than the last one. I'm using the Tommy White machines this time, just in case! Major protests by the animal rights lobby (or at least the yobs who claim to be on that side) are scheduled for this term. This was the scene on Saturday on Cornmarket Street: around 50 police and four horses (of undetermined sexuality), but no obvious protesters by this stage. Reports are that around 500 people turned out in the end. Some of them (it sounded like) were rattling the fence at the bottom of my staircase. The fence withstood the attack.