I moved the wall from the sidebar to a tab

http://doubleshotexpresso.com/the-wall/

I did this on the recommendation of chuga66, because I felt I could add a lot of useful features to the wall if it were on a page rather than the sidebar.  some feature I will add soon:

email notification option
integration with the special project I’m working on (not announced yet!)
CSS make over (i.e. more prettyful)

I’ve been trying to figure out precisely how to express to people what this website is about, but however specific my explanation is, I always feel like I failed to properly define the purpose of it.

Seth Godin’s TED talk helped me realize a better way to explain it to people:

“It turns out that it’s tribes, not money, not power, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people, not ’cause you force them to do something against their will, but because they wanted to connect.  What we do for a living now, all of us I think, is find something worth changing and then assemble tribes, that assemble tribes, that spread the idea, and spread the idea, and it becomes something far bigger than ourselves, it becomes a movement.”

Here’s the link to the TED talk:
Seth Godin on the tribes we lead

Written by user rachabomb.

On the surface, Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity appear to oppose each other’s views of faith, however, in a more thorough analysis of the texts, one can see they are making the same claim. The intention of this paper is to examine the concept of faith, then apply it to the similarities and differences between Kierkegaard’s and Feuerbach’s arguments in order to establish a claim which supports that both philosophers agree that faith is a phenomenon that can only be obtained through the acceptance of the absurd. For the purpose of providing a foundation for my claim, I will first define faith as the acceptance of the absurd, then clarify its meaning by examining the phenomenon of the absurd.

I will then introduce each philosopher’s concept of how one must obtain faith, then further exemplify them by using the biblical examples of Abraham to illustrate Kierkegaard’s argument (that faith is derived from the strength of the absurd), and of Jesus turning water into wine to illustrate Feuerbach’s argument (that faith is derived through the ability to imagine miracles). Through the reflection of these examples, I will demonstrate how both these arguments must be included with one another. The conclusion of my argument will claim that if Kierkegaard’s concept of the strength of the absurd and Feuerbach’s concept of the ability to imagine miracles must be mutually inclusive within the phenomenon of faith, then both philosopher’s arguments of how faith must be obtained agree with one another. Read the rest of this entry »

correlation has never implied causation and never will.  This is an extremely important phrase that is the basis of the FSM, and one of the strongest arguments against videogame legislating politicians and lawyers.

It’s a logical fallacy to assume that the amount of lemons imported from Mexico has anything to do with the amount of fatal car wrecks in the U.S.

Or that the decline in piracy since the 1800’s (the “arrghh!” sort of piracy) has led to the onset of global warming.

Or that the rise in violent crime is a direct result of the increase in popularity of video games.

Or that Hurricane Katrina, and the 2006 Tsunami are acts of “God” because of our “lack of respect”.

Knowing this logical fallacy can significantly improve your ability to debate issues of statistics or trends.

Read about the phrase, starting here

Clarifying the meaning of “conservative”

First of all, today’s “republican” is a neoconservative, not a conservative. The early republican party supported hard money (i.e. a gold standard), were anti-slavery, opposed entering into World War I, and World War II, and opposed membership in the League of Nations (now the United Nations). Although the republican platform began to shift toward a more liberal (I don’t mean that as an insult) stance with the election of Richard Nixon, and even more so with Ronald Reagan, there still persisted a bit of the non-interventionist belief. Republicans opposed intervention in Somalia and the Balkans in the early 1990’s and, in 2000 George W. Bush ran for president on a platform of non-interventionism and “no nation-building”.

No central bank, no government welfare, non-interventionist foreign policy; these are conservative values. But the definition has changed, hence the term “neoconservative”. Today’s republicans subscribe to a unilateral, GTFO-of-our-way foreign policy with a focus on military might (and pre-emptive war) as opposed to diplomacy. They are in love with the idea of central banking and government bailouts, and they want to expand the United States role in United Nations and the “global market”. Today’s republicans are not conservative, nor are they sensible, practical, or objective in their opinions. They are neocons. Ronald Reagan, George H Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, Rudy Juliani, Mitt Romney, Bill Orielly, Leo Strauss, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield, to name a few.

ewww, I feel all biased and opinionated now…but you get the idea.

I found this quiz on Lew Rockwell’s site that gauges your political alignment. Read the explanation, then click the link to take the quiz. At the end it lets you guess which alignment you think you might fit under the most. I chose left-libertarian, and that’s what it calculated. A while back I came to the conclusion that I was a “progressive-libertarian”. I’m glad I was pretty much right about that (according to his quiz anyway).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy14.html

a foreign policy of freedom

The war on Iraq was illegally initiated. Congress passed a war resolution, allowing the executive branch the authority to practically wage the war themselves, instead of constitutionally declaring war. A neocon would rationalize that Saddam Hussein is evil, might have weapons of mass destruction, and might be connected to the Al Qaeda network, and that we need to stop Saddam before he does any more damage. He may see a moral obligation to wage war against Iraq, or he may even see it as a religious obligation. So a neocon would vote YES on the war resolution, and in so doing break the law.

Read the rest of this entry »

Free software doesn’t necessarily mean that it costs 0 money to get.  That’s not what “free software” means. What it does mean is that once you own the piece of software, you are allowed to do anything you want to it, without legal repercussions.  You can install it on any computer you want, as many times as you want, you can look at the coding behind it, and modify it to your hearts content, then release your customized version, so that others can use it or modify it.  You can make your own plugins for the program, or download other peoples plugins.

Now, today in class, my instructor showed us a piece of software called Pro Scores:

http://www.videocopilot.net/products/proscores/

Pretty awesome software it seems.

Now, if this were free software, it would be cheaper.   From the product description:

“For those who have purchased production music, you know that a SINGLE track can cost anywhere from $25-$100 with premium stuff well into the hundreds of dollars and they don’t include layered versions. “

The software comes with 50 full-length, layered orchestral scores, so yes, you are still getting a lot, for a little.

Ways to make this product better:

1. If the music used in the software were licensed under creative commons, the cost of the product would go way down.
2. If the software were free and open-source, people could take advantage of the very rich plugin selection that would inevitably take root. (think Songbird, Wordpress, Pidgin, Firefox; all free software)
3. If the software were free, more people would buy it, because the community surrounding it would add an extra layer of support (on top of the company support), via plugins, forums, and extra music.

In fact, that’s a popular way to earn money from free software.  Sell it with the promise of top-notch technical support.  That’s a good way to attract business customers because business customers generally don’t have time to surf forums for answers.

They could charge 30 dollars for Pro Score, and get a ton more money.  I’d buy it.  But alas, I am forced to torrent it, because I know I’ll have more control over the product if I do.

i am writing this as a test, only a test, and please don’t respond to this test, because it is just a test…duh.

This is the Congressional Act that will enforce the February 2009 transition to digital:

http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.s2048.032102.html

It’s a short read, please, for your own sake, read it.

Now, I’ll explain why it’s a form Digital Rights Management.

Here is an excerpt from Section III of the legislation:

(a) PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORTS. –

(1) IN GENERAL. — The Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, shall make a determination, not more than 12 months after the date of enactment of this Act, as to whether –

(A) representatives of digital media device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners have reach agreement on security system standards for use in digital media devices and encoding rules; and

(B) the standards and encoding rules conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e).

——————-

There will be a period of 1 year after the enactment of this legislation in which the private sector must negotiate on security standards to implement on all digital content. After 6 months, the FCC, who will spearhead these negotiations, will report to congress about the progress of the negotiations, and if need be, an extension of the deadline will be granted.

Once a security standard(s) is in place, the FCC has 30 days to make it an official rule and adopt the standards. Upon this adoption, they have 180 days to publish an official final version of the security standards, and when they do, it will take effect 1 year after publication. So in February 2009, if you don’t have a digital signal, you will not receive broadcasts.

Here are “subsections (d) and (e)”:

(d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. — In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that
will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that –

(1) the standard security technologies are –

(A) reliable;

(B) renewable;

(C) resistant to attack;

(D) readily implemented;

(E) modular;

(F) applicable in multiple technology platforms;

(G) extensible;

(H) upgradeable;

(I) not cost prohibitive; and

(2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code.

(e) ENCODING RULES. –

(1) LIMITATION ON THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS. — In achieving the goal of promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible, while preventing as much infringement as possible, the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine.

(2) PERSONAL USE COPIES. — No person may apply a security measure that uses a standard security technology to prevent a lawful recipient from making a personal copy for lawful use in the home of programming at the time it is lawfully performed, on an over-the-air broadcast, premium or non-premium cable channel, or premium or non-premium satellite channel, by a television broadcast station (as defined in section 122 (j)(5)(A) of title 17, United States Code), a cables system (as defined in section 111(f) of such title), or a satellite carrier (as defined in section 119(d)(6) of such title).

————————–

If you’ve read my last post, “The Archaic Oppression that is Digital Rights Management”, then you are aware of HDCP. Well, HDCP is compatible with (d) and (e) and will undoubtedly be lumped in with the security standards.

You haven’t seen the worst of this Act yet (unless of course you clicked on the link above and have already read it). Section 5 makes it illegal for manufacturers of digital media devices to sell devices that are not equipped with standard security technologies.

Section 5:

(a) IN GENERAL. — A manufacturer, importer, or seller of digital media devices may not –

(1) sell, or offer for sale, in interstate commerce, or

(2) cause to be transported in, or in a manner affecting, interstate commerce,

a digital medial device unless the device includes and utilizes standard security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 3.

(b) EXCEPTION. — Subsection (a) does not apply to the sale, offer for sale, or transportation of a digital media device that was legally manufactured or imported, and sold to the consumer, prior to the effective date of regulations adopted under section 3 and not subsequently modified in violation of section 6(a).

—————

There you have it. NOT having HDCP and the other DRM security will be illegal unless your digital device was manufactured, sold, and purchased before the date of enactment.

subsection (b) here is perhaps the only relief, as the Act continues to restrict consumers by criminalizing circumvention of “standard security technologies”.

Section 6:

a) REMOVAL OR ALTERATION OF SECURITY TECHNOLOGY. — No person may –

(1) knowingly remove or alter any standard security technology in a digital media device lawfully transported in interstate commerce, or

(2) knowingly transmit or make available to the public any copyrighted material where the security measure associated with a standard security technology has been removed or altered, without the authority of the copyright owner.

(b) COMPLIANCE WITH ENCODING RULES. — No person may knowingly apply to a copyrighted work, that has been distributed to the public, a security measure that uses a standard security technology in violation of the encoding rules adopted under section 3.

————-

This is similiar to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

This is like force feeding a baby, only, we, the “consumer” are the babies and the government is the overzealous, over-protecting parent. We are forced to update ourselves for the enrichment of retailers. That’s what I think these ridiculous measures amount to and it makes my blood boil.

I mean isn’t this “consume or suffer” mentality a bit revisionist?

Because of this, I’ve decided to compile a kind of guide to become DRM free, at least as much as your wallet might allow, before February 2009.

——————-

To start it off I’m going to put a seemingly popular phrase into a different, more honest context. That phrase is:

“HDCP support/ready”

The deception here is in the word “support”. The phrase should be changed to “HDCP Required for displaying premium content”. Please read my previous article “The Archaic Oppression that is Digital Rights Management” for clarification on this issue.

Okay, now the first step toward a DRM free life style:

Don’t use iTunes

I know what you’re about to say: “But iTunes is DRM free now!  It’s safe to use!”.  And you’d be correct, but iTunes does not yet have DRM free video content, for that there are a few alternatives:

http://www.4flix.com/
http://www.getmiro.com/
http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html

Stick with XP (if you must)

Or switch to Linux (the best way to avoid DRM). But do not use Vista. Vista has HDCP “support” along with something called Output Protection Management (OPM) that checks to make sure that your computer’s video outputs (video card, integrated or pci/agp) have the “required” protection (encryption) and if they don’t, OPM will turn off HDCP, thus disabling the users ability to view HDCP protected content (which will eventually be everything on a blu ray disk, for instance).

take a gander at this excellently put-together report on Vista Content Protection:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html#functionality

Bruce Schneier, a cryptography expert puts it well:
“…Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you’re doing something that it thinks you shouldn’t.”

via http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows_1.html

Shop for older displays

Wide screen LCD monitors that are not HDCP compliant are still pretty easy to find, and getting one with both analog (VGA) and digital (DVI/HDMI) might not be a bad idea. I really want this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116391

In terms of televisions, most of us already have non-DRM displays because most of us haven’t purchased crazy HDTV’s yet. But if you have, and it has HDCP in it, sell it.

Sell it and go shopping for ones that don’t. But It’s hard to find televisions nowadays that aren’t HDCP, unless you want to go back a year or two.

Here is a good example of the unintended obsolescence cause by HDCP:

http://tv.about.com/od/frequentlyaskedquestions/qt/hdcpcompliant.htm

I’ll have to get back to you on this issue of a non-HDCP television, after I do more research.

The Video Card

Play WoW? Spore? Starcraft? Diablo? Half-Life? not a gamer? then go with a trusty nVidia 6800, a card made before the rise of HDCP. Finding a decent video card that’s without HDCP is just a matter of settling for slightly old technology. If you want to play Bioshock, Oblivion, Crysis, and whatnot, then you’ll have to get a newer card, which will almost assuredly have DRM on it.

The Motherboard

Motherboards are starting to come with HDMI ports on them and might just contain built in DRM on the chipset, so be careful when shopping. But as long as your not in the market for a new board, you’re most likely safe on this front.

Trash the Tivo

This goes back to broadcast flags, something I discussed in the previous article. To avoid them, use MythTV, which is actually more fun:

http://www.mythtv.org/

Don’t Use any of the services mentioned in my previous article

Some alternative to RealDVD:

http://www.dvdshrink.org/
http://k9copy.sourceforge.net/
http://www.mactheripper.org/

An Alternative to Steam:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3779378/PacSteam (This is Steam without DRM, it’s illegal for some reason)

To get around SecuROM:

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/announcements.php

and I believe Alcohol 120 does the same thing:

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/37081822/alcohol?tab=summary

In Linux you can create and mount virtual drives from the terminal, no extra software needed.

With the coming shutdown of analog, the onset of DRM controlled media, and new copyright policy in the form of ACTA, you need to be safe from the storm of restrictions, or face the consequence of an oppressive commercial economy. I hope this warning and guide has helped, and I urge you to try your best to go DRM free.

You know, I love the look of the Mac OS, and I could spend hours in the local Apple store just messing around with the display units. I know you love them too. But how in the world can anyone afford the absurd price tag? The economy is tanking, and the odd thing is it’s like they’re designed to appeal to college hippies. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of websites that claim you can buy a Mac for 400 to 600 dollars, and they’ll build it, and ship it. That’s all good and wonderful, but if you’re like me, and you have plenty of old hardware lying around the house, you can build yourself a fancy Mac for next to nothing.

Ok, let’s get started. Here’s what you’ll need:

*A torrent client, or a copy of Mac OS (What’s a torrent!?)
*An Intel processor that’s SSE2 compatible

For this project I’ll use an old eMachine Desktop:

Intel Celeron 2.93 GHz

SSE2 compatible

768MB of ram

40GB IDE hard drive

64MB Integrated video

I’m sure it can run on less, so if you have an Intel processor capable of SSE2, stay tuned for more to come, and let’s build a Mac for free