free variable

Ack

I recommend to everyone — but especially to my friends finishing dissertations, and doubly especially to those in Computer Science — Olin Shivers’ amazing acknowledgments section from the scsh manual, which I first encountered as a young Scheme nerd a long time ago. (Philip Greenspun’s gloss on Prof. Shivers’ acknowledgments is pretty delightful as well; scroll ahead to the second block quotation and prepare to be amazed.)

Irrationality

Speaking of acknowledgments, I make brief and jocular reference to the “preface paradox” in the draft preface of my dissertation. This is one of my favorite paradoxes (originally due to David C. Makinson). The basic idea is that a writer believes every individual claim in a manuscript is true (or else he or she would not have committed them to paper); however, some writers claim that their work inevitably will be found to contain some errors. As a consequence, writers are in the curious position of believing the conjunction of every claim in a book and believing the negation of the conjunction of every claim in a book. Whether or not this is irrational is — I guess — an open question with a few plausible solutions.

Pioneering sound designer and electronic musician Delia Derbyshire apparently had a stash of hundreds of unreleased recordings in her attic when she died in 2001; their existence became public knowledge this week. The one that will probably get the most nerd attention is this glitchy excerpt, which Paul Hartnoll describes by saying that it “could be coming out next week on Warp Records.”

I think Hartnoll is only slightly hyperbolic with “next week”, but seriously, listen to that short track. Does it sound like it’s 40 years old, or does it sound like Artificial Intelligence? It could easily be early Autechre or pre-RDJ Aphex Twin.

Think about the pop-culture climate of the day: #1 pop songs in the late 1960s included such innovative, groundbreaking compositions as “Hello, I Love You” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Consider also that Derbyshire wasn’t using synthesizers: just manipulated sounds (from tape), electronic oscillators, and various filters and signal modulators. The article quotes Hartnoll again, regarding Derbyshire’s retirement from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: “I think she got a bit disheartened and a bit bored with it all when the synthesizer came along and it all became a little too easy.”

Pretty much.

RIYL: electronic lapels, Stockhausen on AFX and vice versa. If electronic oscillators and musique concrète are too modern for you, why not build a cornemuse?

Philip Greenspun, arguing that you should send RAW format photos directly to a competent lab for prints (rather than tweaking and postprocessing them yourself first):

Karl Marx deplored the division of labor inherent in an efficient Capitalist economy. Marx thought workers would be happier if they handled every step of a production process from taking the customer’s order to putting the finished good in the customer’s hand. Marx had apparently never suffered the frustration of being an incompetent Photoshop user.

There’s definitely an analogy between postprocessing your own photos and — for home recordists — mastering your own tracks. What’s odd is the difference between how these two are perceived; few musicians are willing to master their own songs, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t tweak their own photos.

Well, this entry into the “themed-snack” marketplace is basically the dumbest thing I’ve seen since I learned that Sony was bankrolling “Are We There Yet,” a PG-rated children’s comedy starring Ice Cube:

Next up: “United States Currency-O’s,” “Fruit-Flavored Powerbook Keycap Snacks,” and “Whole-Grain Picture-Hanging Hardware Kit.”

(via Wolf Rentzsch on twitter)

Here’s a shout-out to the Sable group at McGill. They’ve just released a new version of the Soot compiler framework, which I’ve used extensively in my dissertation work. If you need to analyze or transform Java source or bytecode, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Here’s a fascinating ruling from the US District Court in Seattle, indicating that the transaction by which someone acquires a copy of a software package and the legal right to use the same is a sale and not a license:

[A]s Vernor’s lawyers pointed out, the distinction between a lease and a sale is based on the actual characteristics of the transaction, not merely on how the transaction is described by the parties. [...] AutoCAD customers pay a lump sum at the time of purchase, with no obligation to make further payments or to return the software at the conclusion of the supposed lease.

As a consequence of this, the first sale doctrine applies, and Autodesk is unable to prevent customers from disposing of copies of AutoCAD by transfer or sale. I can’t imagine that this won’t be tied up in appeals for at least a decade, but I’m reeling at the implications.

Let me share a brief anecdote: A dumbed-down version of Propellerheads Reason came with my first real audio interface. It was crippled in nearly every way and basically served more as an advertisement for the real product than as a productive tool. I’m sure one could have used it to make real music, but I didn’t; I played with it for a little while and then shelved it. One day, after installing some additional memory in my powerbook, I tried running this fractional Reason again. It demanded that I re-authorize, since I was “running on a different computer.” This level of draconian copy protection — on, essentially, a piece of shovelware — was enough to get me to drag the Reason folder to the trashcan and never think about it again.

My initial reaction to this ruling is: “well, it would be nice if all of these weird special-cases for copyright as it relates to sequences of bits were abrogated,” but I think the future is probably a lot darker. If “no resale” provisions are unenforceable, then it seems that the copy protection schemes for commercial software are about to get a hell of a lot more onerous. You think that you shouldn’t have to tie a serial number to a particular machine or authorize on-line? Wait until you have to tie your license to a statistical model of your typing patterns, or re-authorize online every time you start the application. You think that a scheme that sees a RAM installation or operating system upgrade and says OMG WTF THIS IS A TOTALLY NEW COMPUTOR is ridiculous? Wait until you lose your authorizations by switching to a different wireless network, or installing some new user-space applications. (This is not too far off, as those of us who remember MAC address-as-machine-ID schemes know….)

Think about two other things that were “licensed, not sold” before this ruling: DRM-infested digital media and fonts. In the case of subscription-model or rental digital media, this ruling appears not to apply — since those are transferred via a transaction that does not resemble a sale. In other cases, though, like iTunes movie “purchases,” or pay-per-song music downloads, one would have to circumvent some DRM in order to resell a song or movie. Therefore, it seems that the first sale doctrine (as re-established by this case) conflicts with the DMCA, which prohibits circumvention of copy protection (and does not have first sale, fair use, or even “hey, this copyright is expired” provisions). Of course, one could argue that it is fine to resell the bits constituting a digital download — they’d just be useless to anyone other than the original purchaser.

It’s perhaps more interesting to consider how DRM-free downloads (like Amazon MP3 or iTunes Plus) are affected, since there is no DMCA conflict here, and these are sold under conditions that explicitly forbid resale. An even greater version of this conundrum comes up with commercial fonts, which not only prohibit resale but are licensed with a whole host of restrictions ranging from more-or-less reasonable (don’t copy our font files for your printing company) to mildly outrageous (don’t actually use these fonts to produce documents or designs that anyone else can see). Of course, people who abide by these licenses do so because (1) hey, we agreed to this and it’s the right thing to do and (2) our license to use this font will be revoked if we don’t, rendering our investment worthless. If the transaction in which, for example, I give veer.com some money and they send me a bunch of weights of some nice face is a sale and not a license, though, that seems to impact point 2.

Erik Barzeski and John Gruber posted about the ecto-illumineX deal earlier today. Since a lot of people are now arriving here via searches for “ecto illumineX,” I’d like to draw attention to this comment from illumineX CEO Gary Longsine, who claims that active development will continue and we have nothing to fear. I also am encouraged that it appears (based on Ado’s reply to my initial query on the ecto forum) that he will continue developing ecto in some capacity.

My take is this: I haven’t bought a MarsEdit license yet. ecto 3 is turning into a great tool, and I’m inclined to give Gary the benefit of the doubt — especially since he indicates that he has big (and specific) plans for ecto.

Wittgenstein designed this toy.

UPDATE: OK, perhaps Jastrow designed the toy. But Wittgenstein’s late work certainly popularized it.

(This image, taken well after sunset, is merged from several exposures; the dynamic range isn’t great, but it is better than I can usually get with such a long exposure. It isn’t too grainy at this size, but it is at larger sizes.)

Observant readers may note that my sidebar is now flickrized. I think that’s pretty cool, but I’m a nerd.

I think I’ve fixed all of the comment problems this site has been having. For now, potential commenters will have to answer a simple arithmetic question. (I suspect that this will reduce the number of comments on some posts a great deal.) Feel free to try it out and let me know if there are problems.

This sign, on the westbound side of Johnson St., reading “Foot Massage For Woman:”

As a friend who was with at the time pointed out, the really weird thing is that some of the phone tabs were removed.

I don’t usually post shouts-out to friends, but I have to congratulate Tiffany and Josh at the birth of their daughter Fiona. Her initials remind me of a song, but I can’t quite put my finger on it….

I’m currently listening to Fearless Vampire Killers from the album “Bad Brains” by Bad Brains

And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Socrates, recounting an exchange between Theuth and Thamus, in Plato’s Phaedrus

If this formulation is correct, and literacy impedes one’s capacity for memory, how much more does the TiVo hurt one’s capacity to concentrate?

I’m currently listening to Xerxes from the album “Pieces In A Modern Style” by William Orbit

Mark Dalrymple has redone the Borkware Miniblog, which now has more content and an RSS feed. Mark has written a lot of articles about Cocoa and OS X, including a very nice tutorial on screensaver programming; it’s nice that he’ll have another outlet to share his perspective and expertise on Mac programming issues. (His screensaver tutorial was so good that I read it, understood it, and wrote a crummy screen saver, all while watching a movie.)

I’ve hacked up my reblog.py script (first mentioned here) so that it works around every issue I’ve discovered in transferring from RSS2 feeds to MetaWeblog API post structs. (Not least among these is the hilariously deficient ISO 8601 parser in WordPress.) I’m about to use reblog.py to fold in all of the b-side links into the main post database. I’m afraid this might appear as a “massive post explosion” in some syndication readers.

Once I can figure out the best way to generalize the script and make it more robust, I’ll distribute a new version. In the meantime, I’m crossing my fingers that this huge import works.

UPDATE: It worked. The b-side entries are now in the post database — this means that they appear inline (with a little “link” icon in “free variable blue”) and can accept comments.

I upgraded Wordpress recently (to 1.2), but managed to break the syndication feeds for at least some readers in the process. Feeds and feed autodiscovery should work again; if not, please let me know.

I’ve added “asides,” à la photomatt.net. I was going to come up with a clever name for my “asides” category. However, it is extremely appealing that “aside” could (with some stretching) be seen as a play on the b-side, so I’m sticking with it. (I chose “b-side” as a nod to the “b-side” of a 45 RPM single; a lesser-known song that was paired with a hit.) The b-side is where I’ll be putting one-liners: links that require little explanation. The “asides,” on the other hand, will be those posts that are more link-oriented than regular posts, but not trivial enough to fit on the sidebar. Asides will have a light blue background, and will be marked with a . In addition, asides are open to comments; I don’t have this capability for b-side links.

The whole backstory will have to wait for my triumphant return from a weekend road-trip. However, I feel it is in the best interests of America if I point out as soon as possible that the following statue is RIGHT OFF THE INTERSTATE in De Forest, WI (ca. 25 miles west of Madison).

I’m currently listening to Sarabande from the album “J.S. Bach: The Six Partitas (I)” by Joao Carlos Martins

I upgraded WordPress last night. Apparently there is some potential security exploit in the 0.7x series I was running. It didn’t look like my installation was vulnerable, but I was getting exploit attempts, so I figured it was a good excuse to upgrade.

My CSS-fu is so weak that I was unable to adapt the WordPress 1.0 template to my old style (the kerning was all wacky on the fonts), so I found a new style that I liked and hacked it up (probably making it worse in the process.)

For comparison (and for my RSS-only readers!), here’s the old style — you can click on the thumbnail for a larger view:

…and the new style:

It will be a little while before I can get features like the b-side working again, but there is apparently a much less painful upgrade path for modified versions of WordPress now — there’s a well-defined place to put user “hacks.” Also, the current WP supports trendy Apache mod_rewrite chicanery, so the permanent link URL for this post is sensible: http://blog.willbenton.com/archive/2004/03/27/upgraded-wordpress/ instead of something lame and unmemorable like http://blog.willbenton.com/index.php?p=105.

Of course, comments on the new layout are welcome.

Update: I’ve changed the color scheme and (more-or-less) fixed the b-side