Filesharing is not a technical problem, is it? I mean, the internet makes it easier to duplicate and distribute, but easier duplication and distribution are neither good nor bad: they just are.

Filesharing is a human problem. Much like littering is a human problem. It’s actually a pretty good analogy, because both are pretty much impossible to stop, and even though they are enforced as crime, most people don’t really do much littering and thus aren’t really in fear of the law. Those who do a lot of littering are a lot better at it, but are the subject of law enforcement, as they should be.

Filesharing is like littering in another way: if everyone does it all the time, the world will be full of garbage/an entire music ecosystem will collapse. (We can call agree that garbage everywhere is bad, though a lot of people would like to see our current paradigm of music as a commodity die a rapid death.)

Now, if you agree with what I have written thus far, you probably would also agree that we can’t seek technical solutions to human problems. That is to say, you build a better firewall, they will build a better way to get around it. Trust me, the people with a will to duplicate and distribute will find a way to do so, no matter how hard you try to limit them with your technology.

The human solution to the human problem is to help people understand why supporting the people who make music is important. Or that movies are expensive to make (the way they’re being made). Or that television is free because it’s supported by advertising.

These things make sense, right? If no one supports artists, every artists will be a hobbyist. There won’t be any professionals. If no one goes to the cinema, no films will be made. There won’t be any revenue in it. If no one watches the adverts, no advertisers will cough up the money to pay for television.

These are not unreasonable positions. They’re not necessarily right, but they’re not some party line for the gullible consumer.

But you see, we still have a human problem.

The organisations that represent the people that make music, films, and television are not very nice. In fact, they make filesharers look like lambs: especially groups like the RIAA, who literally sue grandmothers and children for thousands of dollars.

Add to that the general perception that record labels exist simply to screw artists over — and if you view the amount of money artists make for music sales versus the amount the labels make you’ll realise how accurate that perception is — and you see why people don’t care what the **AA’s say.

People don’t care because people have pretty good bullshit detectors.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. This isn’t — and I’ve said this before — a binary issue where one must consume, and in consuming must choose between two masters, the pirates and the East India Company. You can opt out. That’s legitimate.

But in the end, that’s a human choice as well. Build a better system and the people will come with their dollars. But you can’t stop a human problem with a technical solution. Especially a technical solution proffered by the dog that bites the hand.

I constantly marvel at the unbroken stream of offal emanating from Christian bookstores. Constantly. Now, I don’t like to be sexist, but it seems, from my experience at least, so take this with a grain of salt, that most of these books are bought by well-meaning but gullible women.

In church this Sunday I saw one of these woman with a book by Bruce Wilkinson, something to do with unlocking the secrets of abundance of some such. If sounding curiously like prosperity gospel isn’t bad enough, the cover of the book had three — THREE — trademark symbols on it, as if they meant to be remarkably clear that the secrets of abundance somehow involve having your own brand name and an enterprise whose mission is essentially to hoodwink people who have stopped using whatever critical skills they may have ever possessed.

All this is a preface to a little passage I read this morning, when I picked up a book called “Getting Anger Under Control”. Which, I might add, is a pretty noble sentiment and a good idea, etc etc. The only problem being I never actually got to read the book because the dedication in the front — the first few sentences — actually blew my mind. I mean, I’ve got a gasket loose in here now. I’m dazed and confused.

So, I’ve reproduced the passage verbatim, as is my fair use right:

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, occurred as we were doing the final editing of this book … Americans responded in disbelief and wondered how this could happen to us, a peace-loving nation. But what was intended to dishearten and destroy us took a different turn. It brought out a heroic spirit of brotherhood and revealed that the church is still the soul of America … These deplorable acts of violence brought about a righteous indignation that caused our country to unite against godless terrorism.

There’s so much wrong with that little paragraph that I won’t even address the things I bolded up there (yes, that was me), except to ask this: Is that really what Americans think of themselves? Really?

I assure you not a single other nation on the face of the earth, including their beloved allies to the north, and their “special relationship” allies over the pond, thinks of America a peace-loving nation. Nor do they think that the church is the nation’s soul, or if they do, it scares the living daylights out of them.

And, in the last analysis, it would be hard to explain why America declaring war on “godless” terrorism is anything more than rank hypocrisy.

Women, stop making excuses for your men. They’re not having a bad day, they didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed, they don’t just every once in a while do that, they’re not flawed but essentially good people, they’re not whatever excuse you’re making.

Look, sin is sin. I don’t talk about it a lot, but still, those are the facts. Whether your husband or your brother or your father or your boyfriend is having sex with animals or screaming curses and throwing stuff at the wall or beating you or constantly demeaning you, it doesn’t matter.

It comes down to whether you’re helping or hurting? Because I know this much: excuses never make anything better. You cover something up, it doesn’t go away. It grows.

While Windows updates, let me write a quick post.

One thing I hate about Windows is updating things. Every single time some system file is modified or something big changes, you have to reboot your computer. This is a pain. I don’t like rebooting my computer. There’s no real reason that it shouldn’t just run for ever and ever.

Now, admittedly I used to be one of those people that just accepted that Windows will, by the nature of the beast, just have to be restarted every few days or so. Then I installed Ubuntu at home and (even with pre-stable Beryl running) I have had two months of uptime, only interrupted by a power outage. Two months! That’s unheard-of in Windows Desktop Computing Land.

Windows isn’t that unstable anymore, I guess. It’s just the damn updates. All the time. I mean, I thought these things were supposed to be released on “Patch Tuesday” or something?

It’s like Microsoft said, “Oh, okay, you people want security? We’ll give you security!” and then went on to punish us for wanting security with their implementation. If this stuff hasn’t been made better by the time I absolutely must install Vista, I’m going to get a little angry.

It’s like this, see? If Ubuntu, a Linux distribution that is supposedly “not ready for the desktop” according to the shrill cries of Windows and Mac fans, can manage to do every single little update (excepting upgrading the kernel itself) without restarting anything, why can’t Windows?

Come on, Microsoft. You’ve been trying to make a desktop operating system for something like 15 years now and this is what you give me? I’m sick and tired of this crap. I am forced by the software ecosystem in this country to run Windows. I expect better.

Okay, let me complain a bit here.

What is it with people writing emails in all caps? It’s like yelling, it’s impolite, and it doesn’t get your email noticed any better than if it were a politely worded note of reminder or whatever.

I’ve noticed this seems extremely prevalent in the business world, especially among secretaries and purchasers, and especially (though I hate to say this) female secretaries and purchasers.

To recap, when you TYPE LIKE THIS in an email, you are doing the equivalent of shouting. My inbox is the virtual equivalent of a sacred temple where people file in to have their requests granted one by one. Would you so disrespect a temple irl? I think not. But I am a benevolent master of that particular domain (if you pardon the sort-of pun). I won’t punish you.

Much.

I think it’d be helpful if more people studied evolution. Even if they don’t agree with it.

I say this because I’m sick of hearing people describe evolution as a concept using terms that just barely approach the concepts, as if we’re all children unable to grasp the actual arguments, facts, number, and other miscellanea.

Maybe we’ve just been listening to our own propaganda too long or something, but it seems everything that come from the so-called “Creation Science” movement is simply designed to reinforce the faithful, not convince the doubter. I mean, let’s be honest, if evolution isn’t about science as Creationists say, then creation science is also very much not about science. They’re instead both like different interpretations.

In quantum physics we have data that seems mathematically provable, but escapes our mindspace. Quantum physics doesn’t make sense until you interpret it, and even then it’s pretty wacked out.

Maybe the beginning of the world is like that too. But one thing I’m sure about is this: the amateur creation scientists that come to the table with their half-formed opinions about why evolution is stupid do more damage than good.

Why do we look at hybrid cars and automatically think “greener” and “more environmentally friendly”?

I could take a jet engine and pair it with an electric drivetrain and have the Batmobile; is that greener or more environmentally friendly?

You see here how English is taking another one of its strange little forks. Hybrid is starting to become a word that means other than what hybrid meant 20 years ago.

Bonus paragraph for the old timer vote: remember when LOL was just a collection of letter? And ROFL was when that “special needs” kid wanted some breakfast? Yeah, those were good times. And get off my lawn!

China is Microsoft, with tanks. Interesting idea.

Here’s another thought: the US needs to get its financial shit together now, get out of the red, and start working on revitalizing the economy before all those bogeymen, such as hyperinflation and death by deficit, become real.

If that means cutting your army in half, so be it.

If that means cutting the federal government in half, do that.

If that means raising taxes, raise them.

Then you’ll be in some decent financial shape to meet the Chinese juggernaut once it become economically powerful enough to make demands even on the mighty US government. Maybe that will never happen; I mean, part of me wants to think that China is about to go through some crazy socio-economic upheavals in the near future as a billion or so people are confronted with potential wealth. But another part of me wants to say that the Chinese government will successfully maneuver its populace into a position of world power, even world dominance.

Either way, there’s a lot of stuff we need to do before either of those things or something else entirely happens.

According to a recent news story or twelve, Steve Ballmer (who leads Microsoft in some way that I’m too lazy to quantify) doesn’t think the iPhone will be a success.

Now, most of the people I know who are talking about this are simply waving it off as grandstanding, sour grapes, abject fear, or all of the above.

But I don’t think it is any of those things. In fact, I think Ballmer is right. He’s very right.

It all depends on how you define success.

For Microsoft, success clearly means being dominant in every market that it enters, for better or for worse, making money (Windows and Office are practically licenses to print money, if you’ll excuse the pun) or not making money (Xbox, Zune, etc). For Apple, success is much less clearly defined; they have something like 2.0% of computer buys worldwide.

Maybe Apple is following Nintendo’s lead: don’t be the 900 kilogram gorilla. Be the second, or third, or seventh in the market, but make money. Be a niche product, but be something people will want. In that, Apple and Nintendo are, I think, something of business strategy kin. They make good products that have that certain something, and though they may fail some of the time, in the end they’re still around, and while Sony and Microsoft try an create something that appeals to a wide range of people to create mass market penetration, they’re in the background grabbing the headlines and dominating side markets (portables gaming systems, portable music players).

It doesn’t always work that way, of course, but I really have to question the prevailing wisdom on this subject: what is the best long-term strategy for a company? I have to ask this for myself as well as thinking about Nintendo and Apple. Do I want a company that has mass market penetration, or a company that has niche products that have a certain something, or is it possible to do both?

It’s an interesting question. Look how long Nintendo has been around. Look how many market leaders in how many segments have risen, achieved dominance, and fallen back to “meh” level.

Back to the iPhone; if it costs $500 and only 1% of people buy into the platform, who cares? If Apple makes money off every single device, then they have 1% of the market. That’s what, 13 million phones? That’s a nice slice of profit right there, and a toehold into the market. So yeah, I think Steve and Steve are both right; it probably won’t be a success, but at the same time will probably be a great success.

This is how the future will come to you.

Industry and the government will begin suggesting fingerprint scanners, retina scanners, RFID chips, and closed circuit cameras. After all, industry wants to know what you do with your time in order to sell you stuff, and the government wants to know what you do with your time for national security interests, or to fight crime, or for whatever reason you insert there.

Both industry and government are exercising self-preservation and self-propagation. If you are more enticed to buy because adverts are better targeted to your individual preference, industry preserves and increases itself through your dollars. If you are less inclined to speak out about the government, less inclined to think independently, and less inclined to flex your rights, governments preserves and increases itself through annexing your former freedoms.

Once you’re used to fingerprint scanners on your appliances and gadgets, retinal scanners at your bank and ATM, RFID chips in your credit card and keyfob, and closed circuit cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, you’ll see them popping up everywhere, even in places where there isn’t a clear reason for them. You will be watched constantly, though a disorganized collection of devices, few of which are connected together.

In the meantime, your computer hardware will be standardized along a set of guidelines, ostensibly to provide better security and stability. Operating systems will begin to run only on this secure hardware platform. Everything else will adapt or die. Eventually, new protocols will be adopted, so that any non-compliant device won’t connect to the network. Slowly but surely everything on the internet will gain a real, physical address. Privacy and anonymity will disappear, the chilling effects of which will ensure that free speech will also begin to disappear. This push will again come from vendors (who desire software/hardware locking), the government (who don’t like the idea of anyone being able to do anything), and parents (who want to easily be able to monitor what their children are doing without any actual effort).

One day you’ll wake up and notice that all these databases have been linked together. Suddenly, you are being watched by the industrial/governmental establishment, along with everyone else, and there is nothing you can do. Your RFID chips are being tracked, your eyes are being scanned, your fingerprints are being read, and your face is being analyzed. You wake up one day and realize you have a chip in your arm, a chip in your car, a chip in your wallet, and a chip in your computer, none of which is directly controlled by you, and all of which you cannot escape.

The scary thing is that no one person is responsible for this. You won’t see a total information agency trying to scan everyone and spy on everyone all the time. There will be all these separate data streams, and one day some legislature or agency will come along and merge them into one.

And it will all be done for your security, your safety, and your children.

Thing is, this isn’t a bad idea. Probably the last thing you thought you’d see coming from my blog, right?

If there’s no way to exempt anyone from it, if there are no powerful men that are “excused” from the program, if it’s truly universal and truly egalitarian, it could be a very good thing. It could be a combination of personal history and personal witness.

The only question is this: could any human ever design such a system?