4th Week: Five wins Neighbours soap fight

It is done, then... the BBC report that from spring next year Neighbours will be moving to five from BBC One.



Thanks to the wonders of timeshifting, the adverts won't really bother me. Were the BBC right to not pursue its most popular daytime TV show? IMHO yes - a ~300% price hike is nothing to take sitting down. five are willing to pay (and it has nothing to do with them being part of the same company as Fremantle Media, Neighbours' distributors, of course) and I'm glad, because I do like to watch the show. Both ways, we win.

4th Week: Note to Facebook...

...contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the world is American.



A few days ago Facebook launched their new Marketplace, which as the name suggests is a place for buying and selling things. In dollars.



Yes, that's right. The only choice of currency is the dollar. It doesn't matter if you're British, European or Japanese, you can only put ads that have a $ next to the price.



I was about to say "and nobody bothers to convert from GB£ to US$ to put the price up" but then I realised, who's to say it's US$? Why can it not be Canadian dollars, or Australian? Pick your exchange rate, people! Then pay up but only the converted amount.



I put to Facebook that this might be considered false advertising on behalf of the sellers, if they demand in GB£ what is being advertised in $. Their response:

Hi James,



Thanks for your feedback concerning Marketplace. We are

working hard to make this product as useful as possible to all

users, and we welcome any suggestions. Let us know if you have

any further questions or concerns.



Thanks for contacting Facebook,



Ryann

Customer Support Representative

Looks like it's going to take a while...

3rd Week: Blair to stand down

The shock news item of the day: BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair will stand down on 27 June





HOORAY!

3rd Week: Own Your Own Integer!

Well, since AACS LA claim to own an integer and are threatening to sue people who use it, lots of people have decided to ensure the security of their own portion of the set of positive integers ℤ.



http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155



Any attempt to publish or use the number

BA 84 46 1D 08 21 0D F4 9A 7C 2D BA CA 34 A1 68

within the United States (where the DCMA applies) will be met with... aw, heck, I can't be bothered to sue you. In fact, given that generally it doesn't matter where you are but they'll try and sue you under the DCMA anyway: I hereby license the reader to use, copy, redistribute or otherwise modify (including, but not limited to, the operations of "subtraction" and "multiplication") the above Number indefinitely and without limitation, as long as this notice accompanies it.



(If you're reading this and thinking "WTF? You can't copyright numbers!" then you're in good company. Try telling that to AACS LA.)

2nd Week: Update: Microsoft in "We Came Up With This Idea, Really, And Patented It" Shock

On Wednesday I mentioned how Microsoft were trying to claim UAC was an amazing new idea that they had come up with, rather than it being a badly-copied sudo from the Unix world.



Now apparently, it transpires that Microsoft managed to patent UAC in 2000.Except, of course, they didn't patent "UAC", they patented:

a method comprising: executing an administrative
security process under the administrative privilege level; the
administrative security process accepting a request from a user process
executing under the non-administrative privilege level to initiate a
particular administrative method, the user
process calling the administrative security process with parameters
comprising (a) an identification of the particular administrative
method and (b) arguments to be provided to said particular
administrative method; and the administrative security
process calling the identified particular administrative method on
behalf of the user process and providing the arguments to said
identified particular administrative method.

Which, in all but giving it a name, is sudo. (Read the full text here.)



Surely you can't argue now that software patents are anything other than a bloody stupid idea. When there's blatant prior art (sudo was around since the 1980s, not the 70s as I previously stated) a patent should not be given. It's clear that either the people granting the patents are being paid by Microsoft to not investigate fully (unlikely, since almost certainly this has happened elsewhere) or simply are not qualified to make decisions on technology matters.



Worse still: the patent explicitly states that "the invention is not to be limited to such specific examples, and the
inventions
may be practiced in general purpose computers or computers with
operating systems other than Windows.RTM., such as Unix or Linux."



How the f*** did this get through? And why does the European Parliament repeatedly need convincing that software patents are a bad idea?



Sorry about the language. It's been a long week, I've had far too little sleep and I have 25 minutes to do 2 hours' work.

2nd Week: 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

Just thought I'd share that with you... (If you haven't a clue what I'm on about, then read up at Slashdot.)

"Again, you've got to ask - what's the point of DRM? It doesn't matter that the average person won't have the ability to crack their HD-DVD software, or that the company will be able to revoke the code using its fancy-dan systems. All it takes is for a couple of pirates to get their hands on it, and all those Aarrh, Jim-Lad! movies are sitting pretty. The sheer number of people trying to crack any security system makes such protection a totally asynchronous battle - it only takes one lucky hacker."

(Richard Cobbett, PC Plus)

Let's be clear, this is no justification of illegal distribution of films. Rather, it is more evidence that DRM is defective by design, that it cannot fulfil its remit but rather imposes unnecessary limits on legitimate consumers.



The other point of interest to bring out of this story is the question of how much censorship is possible, and how much is acceptable, in this so-called "blogosphere".



Oh - and no prizes for guessing the representation, in hexadecimal, of x in the equation

2^6 * 5 * 19 * 12,043 * 216,493 * 836,256,503,069,278,983,442,067 = x. ;-)

2nd Week: Microsoft in "We Came Up With This Idea, Really" Shock

Arstechnica published this post yesterday, quoting Microsoft chief security advisor Peter Watson talking about Vista's User Access Control. If you don't already know, UAC is, in Microsoft's own words:

"a new security component Windows Vista. UAC enables users to perform common tasks as non-administrators... and as administrators without having to switch users, log off, or use Run As. ... By separating user and administrator functions while enabling productivity, UAC is an important enhancement for Windows Vista."

It's similar to, but has some major differences to, the user/superuser model that's been used in Mac, Linux and other Unix-like systems since the 1970s.



Says Mr. Watson:

"If you look at it from an architectural direction, User Account Control
is a great idea and strategically a direction that all operating
systems and all technologies should be heading down."

Uh, hang on a minute... Just read the last two paragraphs again, will you... "should be heading down"? Is this another case of Microsoft taking an idea that others came up with ages ago, changing the name, and pretending it was theirs all along and how silly of others to not have thought of it?



From the blog article:

"This is a new revelation for the company, but let's not kid ourselves:
this general approach to process elevation is older than Windows
itself."

2nd Week: IBM vs. SCO

So, shortly after revealing to us that they own the entire Internet and every device connected thereto, we find out that SCO also have the right to tell Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, that he can't talk about their righteous crusade against anyone who might be using this Interwebbynet for themselves...

"We are also concerned about the statements about SCO's litigation claims made by Linus Torvalds... Because of Mr. Torvalds' position in the technology world, his comments about SCO's evidence in this case are given particular weight in industry and popular press... It is unlikely that Judge Wells would allow ... Linus Torvalds... to publicly comment on SCO's litigation claims..."

Quite, quite extraordinary. Those guys just don't know how to quit... but oh noes! I have a friend whose father works at IBM! Don't tell Judge Wells I said that...



The full letter, from a lawyer representing SCO to a lawyer at IBM, is at Groklaw with the full story here.

2nd Week: Feisty, Xinerama and Myth

Found out what was stopping MythTV from loading under Fiesty: it doesn't like my dual-monitor setup. Trying one more thing, then going back to Edgy on Avenger if it doesn't work.



OTOH, Chimaera is happy as Larry, whoever Larry is.

1st Week: Adventures in ThinkPad Land

I welcomed a new member of the family today: an IBM ThinkPad T41. Came with some second-rate OS installed, but I wiped that straight away. More details later but here's the short of it:

What Worked Out Of The Box

• All of the base setup (once I'd rid myself of the Windoze restore hidden partition)
• Wireless ethernet
• Beryl (whizzy window effects). OK, so technically not "out of the box" because you have to install it, but that wasn't exactly hard.
• Hibernate/resume
• Power management inc. CPU frequency scaling
• Mythfrontend (meaning that the problem on Avenger is localised, and I should look into it further)
  
  

What Didn't

• Suspend/resume

Not bad at all, IMO. Bear in mind I've only had this for a couple of hours and currently the only way I can access the internet with it is to spoof Avenger's MAC address (don't tell Matt...) - hopefully I can find a wifi hotspot to properly test the wifi hardware. And eventually get a wireless router so I can share the connection with Avenger, and even stream TV to the laptop (whose name will be decided shortly by Heather).



More later!

-2nd Week: The Term In Review

Hilary Term 2007: A summary of things, in no particular order or coherence.



I lost something, and gained so much more.



I learned some things - one or two of them about computer science.



Three months - a long time in politics and in Oxford. I've kept mostly quiet about the personal stuff on this blog, but those who know me well enough know what a rollercoaster it's been. But I've learnt that "immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine" is no understatement.



I found some new friends; I lost some old ones. I still run Linux. I gained some facial hair. I still accept no responsibility for any damage you cause to your computer by running dodgy operating systems, but against my better judgement, I'll probably help you sort out the mess you made. Especially if there's a cup of tea involved.



Some people... well, some people need to be taught slowly and painfully how to use computers properly. Others just seem to make life easy for you even when you have to explain things slowly and painfully. And some are even thinking of switching to Linux. Woot.



They ripped out the old college organ, and dumped it in a skip. Dave and I managed to rescue some bits of pipe. They're now standing next to Bob. (Don't ask.)



The bandwidth of pigeon-post is approximately comparable to that of a twisted-pair ethernet connection, if you ignore the effects of the Big Pigeon-Post Pigeon that Eats Pigeon-Post. And his bigger cousin, the Big Pigeon-Post Pigeon that Does Not Eat Pigeon-Post, is just scary.



I was acquainted with the Sock Man of Loughborough (and Andrea, I'm very disappointed you didn't introduce me when I visited you way back). That's a highlight, for sure.



Wow, it seems a long time ago that I was last in Portsmouth. And I'm back there in about 13 hours' time. I should get packing...

-2nd Week: Boris Johnson vs Portsmouth

"Outspoken Conservative MP Boris Johnson has been criticised for labelling Portsmouth as a city full of drugs and obesity," report the BBC. Various figures from the city have demanded that Boris resign/be sacked/apologise/be tortured to death/purple monkey dishwasher.



Portsmouth North MP, Sarah "One Flyer Is An Election Campaign" McCarthy-Fry, seems to think she is both able to determine who is fit for being a front-bench MP (because, you know, she has so much experience of that herself) and that she knows exactly how to "encourage young people in Portsmouth to go on to higher education".



As a young(ish) person from Portsmouth who was fortunate enough to be able to go on to higher education at one of the best establishments in the world, and on behalf of all my like-aged, like-educated friends, I say to her: I laughed out loud when I read the article. Long live Boris Johnson! Ms. McCarthy-Fry, credit for replying to my letter of way back, but go do something useful like representing your constituents, or maybe talking to some real young people before you decide how they're reacting to Boris.

11th Week: My degree is over

I made the mistake of downloading EVE Online on Tuesday. Why is this a mistake? Because it's a really rather good game...

You see, the danger of being in Oxford for so long and hence sitting on top of the rather fast JANET is the temptation to go online and do Stuff. In this instance, after several references in PC Plus (including a whole-page article on how good it is) I decided to see if they had a Linux client. My intentions here were, of course, purely academic.

As it happens, there is no Linux client (though there are whisperings) but there was some discussion about running the Windows one over Wine. Being a Computer Scientist, I could hardly resist the challenge... and as it happens, there was not much of it. Using Wine 0.9.33, it (mostly) Just Works. The sound is a little jittery (as with most DirectSound things under Wine) but the game is just as playable this way as through Windows. Plus, it means I don't affect my uptime by rebooting every time I want to play.

So, these last couple of days have been spent in and out of the Eve world, running a few missions, mining a few asteroids, and generally not doing anything relating to my degree... The possibly good news is that I have 12 days left of the free trial period, which perhaps not coincidentally also will mark the end of my stint in Oxford for the time being (I'm going home for a bit).

After that, who knows...

10th Week: Something for Nothing?

Or at least, for US$3?



I came across a site - www.freepgs.com - that offers advert-free PHP/MySQL hosting for a one-off payment from $3. So, what did I do? I PayPal'd my $3, got signed up, and uploaded the latest SVN of my content-management system (the one that drives the OICCU website). A quick E-mail to them as some of their defaults are a bit too restrictive - by the end of the day they've sorted it and all is working smoothly. Too good to be true? Not so far - I'll keep you posted.

10th Week: In the news today...

I'm ill, so to waste some time here's a few stories that caught my eye, and I'll try and put the world to rights.



Firstly, if anyone still thinks software patents are a good idea, then you will be pleased to know that the linked list has been patented by a Ming-Jen Wang. (For the non-CompSci reading this, know that the linked list is one of the most primitive data structures used in computer science and is used by just about everyone.) Surely it's only a matter of time before someone patents "Hello World"...



Keeping with the computing theme, if any of you still think that Windows Vista is a good idea, then you will be pleased to know that security company Kaspersky Labs have stated "There's a question mark if Vista security has improved, or has really dropped down." Brilliantly, in the same article a Microsoft spokeman is quoted as saying "...[Kaspersky] have one of the best insights into Microsoft security products".



My old Maths teacher once told me, "The best way to picture something in four dimensions? Don't!" Now mathematicians have detailed a 248-dimensional structure with... I don't know, presumably some purpose. The title of the lecture in which this is being presented? "The Character Table for E8, or How We Wrote Down a 453,060 x 453,060 Matrix and Found Happiness."



And finally, if there are any of you who still think DRM is a good idea, know that 75% of customer service problems at a major online music seller are caused by DRM. From the article:

According to Musicload, DRM "makes the use of music quite difficult and hinders the development of a mass-market for legal downloads." The lack of interoperability is unfair to customers and prevents true competition between music services, in other words.

The MS Approach to Security

Don't Let OneCare Eat Your Email - AppScout



"Oh, look, that file might have a virus... AAAGGHH! PANIC! DELETE EVERYTHING THERE! WIPE IT ALL OUT! ... oops, there goes the user's entire E-mail account. Oh well, who cares? Not me. They're paying for me, you know."

7th Week: Belated geekiness

A couple of weeks ago, Peter T and I took various tools to Martyn Layzell's Mac G3. The laptop was officially certified dead before Martyn could get anything from his hard drive, so it went to the resident St. Aldate's geeks to see what we could find.

When I got there (carrying essential caffeine supplies), the keyboard had already been taken out, and we started work on the outer bottom shell casing... Or, we tried to, but none of the allen keys in St. Aldate's were the right size. Peter had a flash of inspiration: maybe it was using American sizing? A dash to Robert Dyas, and the laying on of hands by our worship pastor (j/k), and a jolly good prising with a screwdriver and the casing came away at last.

This had taken so long that I had to leave for a class at this point (Programming Languages), but I left Peter and Martyn with my camera to photograph the end result...

A ridiculous number of fixings...

And lo, a MacBook with hard drive removed!

6th Week: Blair really knows what he's talking about!!!!!1111one

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Right Honourable Anthony Blair MP, has responded to an online petition to ban the use of digital restrictions management (DRM) for digital content (read it here).



In a complete and total misunderstanding of what DRM is, what it does, and why it is used, the response reads:

"...However, DRM does not only act as a policeman through technical protection measures, it also enables content companies to offer the consumer unprecedented choice in terms of how they consume content, and the corresponding price they wish to pay."

Um... no.

4th Week: StarWarsGame extends Game...

This is actually genuinely part of my OOP practical. (Note: contains spoilers for the game!)

          / __   __| / _ \ |  _ \
    ______> \ | |   |  _  ||    /_____________________________
   / _______/ |_|   |_| |_||_|\______________________________ \
  / /                                                        \ \
 | |          Episode OOPII: A New GoldenGlobe Game           | |
  \ \____________________________    _   ___   ____   _______/ /
   \___________________________  |  | | / _ \ |  _ \ / _______/
                               | |/\| ||  _  ||    / > \
                                \_/\_/ |_| |_||_|\_\|__/

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
You are on the bridge of the Imperator-II class Star Destroyer Chimaera. Through the transparisteel windows you see a vast starfield.
There is a turbolift at the rear of the bridge

What now? go turbolift
You are in the turbolift
The turbolift doors open out onto the bridge. TIE Fighters patrol outside
There is the turbolift controls here.

What now? use controls
The turbolift doors hiss shut, and a few moments later you feel a slight motion as the lift descends. The doors open when you reach your destination.
You are in the turbolift
The turbolift doors open out onto a corridor
There is the turbolift controls here.

What now? go corridor
You are in a harshly-lit corridor near the belly of the Star Destroyer
A blastdoor leads out into the main hangar
Close to you, a door leads to another room
At the end of the corridor is a turbolift

What now? go blastdoor
You are in the main hangar of the starship. Beyond the magcon field lies the coldness of space
The blastdoor leads back into the corridor
An Imperial Shuttle is landed in the hangar

What now? go shuttle
There's no way to lower the ramp without the keycard.

... and that's all you're getting! I should point out that I haven't just played the game for the practical - but actually written it. (My first ideas, to extend the template we were given to read in XML-described levels, was discarded as being too advanced for the course.) There's an unexpected plot twist (well, such that there is any plot) later on in the game - I'll probably make the Java bytecode available somewhere at some point (but obviously not the source code, since some of that isn't mine and I don't want people to copy it before it's marked!)

3rd Week: Beyond Vista (or, how to cream your customers for every cent they own)

More than six months ago, I mentioned the possibility of Microsoft moving to a modular, and pay-per-module, basis for operating systems after Vista. The idea was met with a general feeling of doubt that such a thing would happen, from all on #CompSci (including my aforementioned technically-adept contemporary MSHV).

Now, a short time after withdrawing a patent application for an idea they copied from BlueJ, Microsoft have filed for a new software patent. What could the subject of this patent possibly be? Why, it's entitled "System and method for delivery of a modular operating system". From the abstract:

An operating system and method for use include a core function module, or basic kernel, providing fundamental operating system support and one or more add-on modules that allow customization of the operating system as desired. Add-on modules may provide support or extended capability to the computer including hardware, applications, peripherals, and support. ... By withholding certification, a service provider may manage illegal or undesired modifications to a provided computer. Digital rights management may be used to enforce terms of use of the add-on module in keeping with licensing arrangements.

I'm not an expert on patent law, and especially not US patent law. Lucky for me, someone at Groklaw is. Their analysis?

The patent relates to a method of delivery of an operating system where you start off with a very basic operating system, a kind of crippled starter edition, and then you pick and choose (and purchase) additional functionality, with DRM used to make sure you don't self-help. It's like modular copyleft, turning the advantages of GNU/Linux -- modularity there increases what you can do and what you can add and how well everything works -- and instead turns the concept on its head by using modularity plus DRM to restrict and contain and enforce.

The article is quite a lengthy exposition of the patent application, and I won't try and further summarise it here - go, read for yourself. Most interesting, though, is the fact that some of these "add-on modules" are there to provide functionality that you would expect - nay, should demand - from the most basic installation of the OS. Plugging in all your peripherals, for example. Or having a network connection at the speed your hardware allows. Or having as many different programs open as you want, and that your computer can cope with. All of these things are flagged in the application as things available in addition to the basic kernel (eg with the possibility you have to pay for them).

As for the DRM... I believe I have my views already well-recorded on that shocking scheme for consumer manipulation and exploitation.

It's worth pointing out, of course, that "Microsoft doesn't need a patent to use this business model, nor does a patent application prove it will use the model." But who can argue that they're not headed that way?


Technorati Tags: microsoft, vista, patent, drm