Sinabro

Well, this is it. I no longer support RMS’s crusade.

According to Stallman, the Pirate Party’s proposal of a five-year limit on copyright would remove the freedom users have to gain access to source code by eventually allowing its inclusion in proprietary products. Stallman suggests requiring proprietary software to also release its code within five years to even the balance of power.”

Somehow, I had always believed that RMS and, by extension, FSF’s goal was to limit the destructive power of copyright in software business by using its own rules against itself. I had believed that, given the choice between strong, draconian copyright, with GPL taking all its power from the same law, and having no copyright at all for software (or something very short like 5 years), RMS and FSF would choose the latter.

I was wrong. I have said before (not here, ‘probably on Slashdot) that if I ever find out that RMS’s (and, by extension, FSF’s) position was pro-copyright (even if it’s for strengthening copyleft), then I would stop supporting him. This is it.

I do, in general, like free software and will continue to use it, but as a political force I am opposed to the free software movement, now that I know for sure that the movement is led by a statist liberal whose central agenda is forcing others to his will (i.e. forcing proprietary software authors to release the source code, even if they didn’t use any copyleft codes).

As one of the immediate consequences, my FSF associate membership will not be renewed at the end of this month.

P.S. I had been getting fairly annoyed with RMS’s bashing of libertarians (I count Gov. Palin as one, although she may not know that yet) and capitalists (insurance companies and banks) recently anyway. He had, before this, the merit of … being seen as having the right opinions and position on one issue I deeply care about (copyright), but apparently I was wrong about that.

Edit: After all, there is no reason to force arbitrary obligation upon proprietary software authors. Just as the way original patents worked, copyright can be a two-way street. If the authors want copyright protection, they can submit the source code along with copyright registration (as apparently they already have to do, at least for small programs), and this will be public record once the work passes into public domain. If they want to keep the source code secret, then they can do it the same way it’s done in every other industry: keep it a trade secret and don’t tell it to anyone, including the copyright office (and since it was never “published”, it won’t be under copyright protection).

The very first thing we should do with this copyright mess is probably requiring copyright registration (say, within 1 year of original publication, as is done with patents) for copyright protection. If it wasn’t worth registering, then it’s not worth protecting.

This looks like one of those gadgets that you wish you had a use for … but when you honestly ask yourself you don’t really have a use for:

Quad-band GSM Personal GPS Tracker Bug with SOS (850/900/1800/1900MHz)

• Powered by the high performance SiRF Star III GPS Chipset
• Fast GPS signal acquisition
• Perfect for hikers and cross-country skiers to call for rescues when needed
• Great to install in cars/vehicles, safe-guard against auto-thefts
• Supports on-demand GPS tracking or continuous GPS tracking (remotely configured via SMS/Text Messaging)
• In on-demand tracking mode GPS turns on only when tracking information is requested via SMS (thus saving power)
• Built-in security features allows tracking requests from only authorized cell phones
• Built-in quick dial and SOS buttons can instantly send current location (GPS coordinates) to designated receivers via SMS
• Built-in rechargeable lithium battery (AC and Car Charger Included)
• Support “geo-fencing” — when person leaves preset geological area SMS will automatically be sent to designated receivers

It looks like a nice toy to play with, but $150 is too much to sink in a toy without an actual usefulness (at least for me; I already own a handheld standalone GPS that’s more than good for personal travel, although not for remote tracking).

According to Ars Technica,

A new report from iSuppli highlights the recent, very dramatic rebound in NAND flash prices, and suggests that this is bad news for SSD adoption in the cost-sensitive netbook market. But at least Samsung is smiling.

These are, I think, flash devices for permanent storage (as opposed to RAM), such as USB flash drives, SDHC (and microSDHC), and other memory cards.

Will this mean stabilization of prices on these memory devices and maybe possibly even increase? That’s what I want to know. I’ve been waiting for price of 32GB USB flash drives to come down (the largest one I currently own is 16GB), but this could mean I may need to wait a very long time …

Well, Ars Technica says that the market for flash suppliers is still in “awful weather” condition, so I can probably afford to wait longer—at least we don’t expect the prices to rise, it probably just won’t fall as quickly as it had in the past.

Pandora has broken down to the extent that I cannot use it and rely on it every day, especially while traveling—I think she will still work perfectly fine as a desktop replacement. So, I am retiring her as my main laptop. I will find some server/desktop duty for her, perhaps as a replacement for Helen, but this is it for Pandora’s old duties.

Towards the end of my overseas trip this year, I found that Pandora’s LCD monitor loses connection at certain orientations—and this position changes over the duration of laptop’s use in a given position, perhaps due to the wire settling into a particular position under gravity and heat. I also found during the return trip (I am in Frankfurt at the moment), that the internal wireless device has broken down—good thing I always carry a USB wireless adapter with me!

Overall, this whitebook has been a singularly disappointing piece of work, starting with the battery life issue and USB device issue (which still persists to date). All of this at a higher price, shorter warranty, and worse service. I can’t say I am very satisfied with RKC computers, from whom I bought this whitebook, or MSI, who designed the whitebook.

So, for the next laptop, I am buying a name-brand, pre-built laptop (with components upgraded by me, of course). I am specifically buying Asus Eee 1000HE. It seemed very attractive in terms of the price, battery life, and overall reviews I have seen. Intel Atom processor isn’t of course the most powerful CPU around, but frankly, I’ve found recently that notebook CPUs are not really powerful enough for calculations that matter, and for calculations that don’t, well, almost any new CPU works these days. The new Eee will work perfectly for mobile computing (i.e. when I am traveling, when I am home, etc.), and when I am at my work desk, the whitebook (I am thinking about swapping the whole drives, so the name “pandora” will transfer over to the new Eee, and I will have to find a new name for the whitebook) will suffice, and when I am at elsewhere, I will have the new Eee-pandora with me. I’ve gotten used to syncing to workstations (i.e. between pandora and helen), so I’m sure this arrangement will work just fine.

P.S. Ah, yes. I am also stopping my boycott of Intel. It’s not that I haven’t heard bad things about them, but unless all the reviewers can be bought off (which I don’t think is possible to do either by Intel or Microsoft), Intel CPUs are definitely better than AMD CPUs these days. As for Intel’s business practices, I am willing to … make myself believe that it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. As for the Windows that comes bundled with Eee now, well, I am going to disagree with the EULA and see what happens from there.

President Obama seems to think that we can end the nuclear era by simply “leading by example”, cutting our stockpile and hoping that others would follow.

How is this exactly supposed to work? When you are held up by a robber, do you fall prostrate on the ground and hope the robber will do the same?

The real solution to nuclear weapons lies in science. What science has wrought, science will destroy. The real end to nukes will only come with technology designed to neutralize it.

So, what can neutralize nukes? In the past, projects such as “Star Wars” focused on the delivery system. But that can easily be bypassed with development of some other delivery system (such as a well-shielded suitcase nuke).

What if we could target the radioactive elements, such as U-235 itself? Nuclear weapon, by design, consists of sub-critical pieces of radioactive elements. What if we could induce decay of these elements while they remain as sub-critical pieces? If we could do something like this by methods that work from long distance (I don’t know … maybe some kind of gamma ray or X-ray bombardment?), we could decimate the nuclear stockpile of other nations as we reduce our own. We can diffuse nuclear bombs that future terrorists may carry.

But then, I’m not a particle physicist, so maybe I’m just rambling and saying things that make absolutely no sense physically.

Wonders of Google. I was trying to stalk do background check on this one person, and for some reason, I made a typo in the name. And, guess what—Google corrected it for me! (… leading to the right results—this person had done a lot of things and hence significant web presence.)

Why you shouldn’t polish pieces of PMMA while drinking a tea:

You risk drinking the polishing agent (Novus No. 3, in my case) in lieu of the tea.

Damn. I’m doing it again.

That is, I’m building Octave (v3.0) myself. For mysterious reasons, octave3.0 in Debian testing (or is it in unstable?) doesn’t work with gnuplot for plotting. I mean, if I use __gnuplot_plot__ with raw gnuplot commands, it seems to work fine, but I’m not using deprecated commands in my scripts.

Hopefully this time, I won’t run into problem building the octave-forge.

Well, I … think I got lucky. I just picked up a 17-in LCD monitor that has been in the common area for a long time (presumed abandoned, but I left a note just in case it wasn’t), and it’s working out quite well. It’s even got 1280×1024 resolution (… sad to say, the largest I’ve used in recent years).

Maybe I can finally get things done at home.

>In addition to the 'Major Madness on Sproul,' there will be workshops
>and a faculty dinner scheduled to take place in the residence halls.
>
>The faculty dinner on Wednesday, March 12 at 6pm in the Clark Kerr
>Garden Room IS LIMITED to 10 students per professor so be sure to
>sign up fast! This is a business attire event and reservations are
>required. Please email aavp...@gmail.com with the
>following information: name, SID number, email, phone number,
>residential unit (if applicable), and professor preference.
>Professors include:
>
>George Breslauer (Political Science Department/Executive Vice
>Chancellor and Provost)
>Alex Filippenko (Astronomy Department)
>Dan Blanton (English Department)
>George Chang (Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology, Biochemistry)
>Alan Ross (Political Science, Haas)
>Eric Schickler (Political Science)
>Duncan Williams (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
>Tom Gold (Sociology)
>Ingrid Seyer-Ochi (Education)
>Fouzieyha Towghi (Gender and Women’s Studies)

Egh. ‘Looks like representative sample of under-populated (read: unpopular) departments. Granted, I heard that Prof. Filippenko is a great lecturer (esp. for Astro 10), but that isn’t exactly the reason to choose a major. Good thing I’m past that stage.