Ever have one of those days where everything just ...

Jim's Blog — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 06:53:00 +0000

Ever have one of those days where everything just seems to piss you off? Well, today I did, again. Well it seems to happen about twice a week, but this is the first time I felt like writing about it.

The day started innocent enough with the traditional Sunday sleep-in. The crap started in the evening when I decided to go get some groceries at the Super Wal-mart. Wallyworld has its own way of pissing me off, but that's not today's subject. The drive is. The drive from home to Wallyworld. And then from the land of the Smileyfaced mark up to mark down marketing gimick to home.

To start with, someone on the news mentioned something in the Middle-East so all the gas stations had to raise their prices about a nickel a gallon from yesterday. I just registered my truck, so the excise tax is fresh in my mind. You know the tax they charge based on what they think your vehicle is worth so they can fix the roads? Yep, that one. I was thinking of that huge amount of money I had to pay for the privlege of beating the hell outta my truck with every pothole, rut, crack, crevise, frost heave and canyon I hit. Yep, that excise tax goes a long way to NOT fixing the roads.

What does seem to be happening is this epedemic, not of the Bird Flu, but of traffic lights. It seems that one shows up on just about every street corner. And if the that isn't good enough, they are always timed just right so you hit every red light in line. It was so bad, the news did a story on it. The City spent lots of money and time and more money. They came up with a solution. Put up MORE traffic lights! Sooner or later you will have to drive up to a green light, its like the law of large numbers!

I can guess what the authorities are thinking. If the roads are rough enough, people can't speed. But! Rough roads aren't safe, so let's put up lots of traffic lights to make people stop so frequently, they never get up to the blazing speed of the 25 mph speed limit. Between the two, should keep traffic slow enough to not need to set up speed traps, thus leaving the police with ample time to either chase down real criminals, or more likely, make sure they can enjoy that hot cup of coffee from the local donut shop without interuption.

Of course now after buying all the traffic lights, they will need to raise another tax to fix the damn roads.

Paying Again and Again and Again

Jim's Blog — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 06:56:00 +0000

This is a little rough, but its the way I feel. If you would like to take the responsibility of editing my work, please email me at jdm3@miscon.com

There have been several posts on blogs all over the net about this. There are numerous articles, collumns and journals too. I think what is going on is how Congress, acting on behalf of big business and bigger money. The buzz word now is DRM, which means Digital Rights Management. DRM is really restrictions on how the customer can use digital media. This has been an issue ever since equipment exsisted for an end user to make their own copies of stuff, like Reel to reel tapes.

For years, no one cared. Our Copyright laws were fine, until the music industry objected to cassette recorders. Oh my god, someone could copy a song played on the radio and escape paying the music companies for the song. This got worse with the popularity of VCRs. People could record programs without paying for them. I thought that dealing with the advertising was paying for the use of the program? No? How about that ever expanding Cable TV subscription bill? You pay and then you pay again.

With the computer, people needed software. Sure enough, the software had to be protected from copying. Especially from the paying customers. See, I don't believe it is really about keeping people from making illegal copies, its about making people who were willing to pay for something once, to pay again and again, needing the same software for each computer that they own, like Microsoft Windows. Paying and paying again.

Weren't there fights back in the 70's and 80's about privacy dealing with cable tv and telephone service. Remember when you had to pay for each TV hooked up to cable? That stopped, and now the cable company is getting that fee per TV back again by selling digital signal that needs special equipment to watch. They, being the cable company, or Satelite broadcaster, rent the box or just a card to go in the magic box that decodes the signal so you can watch that digital signal.

Now the TV broadcast services use a digital menu to let you know whats on and when. They also use the same digital menu to feed digital recorders like TiVO units and cable DVRs. In order for the recorder to work right, you have to pay a subscription to make the box you bought or rented to work. Paying again and again.

Music. You buy a CD. You can play it on a CD player. But you only like one or two songs so you want to copy them to your own Mix CD. NOPE can't do it, the CD is copy protected. So to make your mix CD, you have to buy the music AGAIN from something like iTunes. Now you get a nice new MP3 player. You want to use that same music on your MP3 player. NOPE, its copy protected! You have to buy it AGAIN in a format that your MP3 player can read.

Now, the pirates, they just 'rip' the CD and use the music as they want, and trade with their friends, but the honest customer, pays and pays and pays. If you don't pay, you download it, the music company takes you to court to force you to pay. So these copy protection schemes really just punish the customer for being honest.

Along with the copyright law, were some, now long forgotten laws that protected the interests of the people. As forgotten as the language the ancient Egyptians spoke and wrote in heiroglyphics, called the 'Fair Use Statues'. The idea was even though the copyrights were owned, copies could be made, without paying for them again, for certain uses. See according to the letter of the law, you buy that CD, you can use the music any way you want provided its you own personal use. Not to sell copies, but you could put the music on your mp3 player, etc. The music companies don't like it, so they make it hard to do with copy protection. You violate the copy protection they sue, but why isn't there a protection for violating the Fair Use laws? The rights of the people? Bought and Paid for by your representatives in congress.

Doing Things the Right Way

Ever have one of those days where everything just ...

Paying Again and Again and Again