Messages

176

General Software Discussion / Re: Some HomeSite Replacement Help?

« on: August 14, 2007, 06:10 PM »

Thanks again for all the input. I've seen many of these before, particularly HTML-Kit, as I've been searching for a HomeSite replacement for a few years now. In fact, I have a KeyNote file that I keep with my comments on free HTML builders/editors I've evaluated, as there have been too many of them to keep track of in my head.

Hmmm... looking over my file now, I can't see why I stopped using HTML-kit. I think it's that I just never quite climbed over the learning curve. It seemed like to do anything you had to install a healthy number of plugins. Plugins always trip me up. I can never decide whether to install them all at once (which lengthens the learning curve, sometimes to infinity) or install none of them and then spend time hunting around for one whenever I come up against something I can't do in the base package. This keeps the learning curve shorter, but extends the time it takes to install and configure the software, sometimes to infinity. 

Neither approach is really conducive to just installing the program and moving on to being productive with it. IMHO, the learning curve for a text editor, even a complex one, ought to be near zero, especially for someone like me who's been using them in one form or another for decades now.

My notes for the freeware version of DHE Editor say that it looked like a nice development tool, but it was too limited in it's support for HTML elements, and it lacked code (HTML) view! Also, it used a proprietary format for saving it's files and couldn't open HTML files directly.

I'm primarily interested in free / open source offerings not (just) because I'm cheap, but because the company I work for recently changed their policy about software on company-owned machines. No personally-owned licenses are allowed to be installed - only company-owned (or potentially company-ownable) licenses. So if it costs money, I'd have to put in a special request for purchase and installation by the company - which probably has about a 50% chance of being added as a line item to the 2010 budget, then with swift approvals and some luck, an expected installation date of December 2012.  

I'd almost chance it for E (it looks amazing!) except that I already have one such request in the works, and I don't want to be seen as a troublemaker... at least any more than I already am.

Oh well. I'll take another look at HTML Kit. I know they're constantly working on it.

Thanks again... and extra thanks to Mouser (or whoever's responsible) for the front page post about this thread too! 

177

General Software Discussion / Re: Some HomeSite Replacement Help?

« on: July 30, 2007, 03:13 PM »

Wow, thanks for the responses, everybody. I'll need a while to wade through all this.

178

General Software Discussion / Some HomeSite Replacement Help?

« on: July 27, 2007, 09:30 PM »

Hi everybody -

I used to use Allaire HomeSite as an HTML editor. I wasn't crazy about the bloated size, slow load times, or the annoyances that came with it, but it had a few features that made it super-valuable. The biggest were its handling of snippets and keyboard shortcuts.

A snippet was a custom text block or a pair of custom text blocks. Think HTML or BBCode tags as a start. For example, you could define a snippet to start with the (tr)(td) tags, and end with the (/td)(/tr) tags. Then whatever you had highlighted when you applied the snippet would be placed inside those tags, effectively making it into a table row.

This went hand-in-hand with ultra flexible keyboard shortcuts. There were intuitive defaults; Ctrl-B was mapped to the (b)(/b) tags, Ctrl-I was mapped to the (i)(/i) tags, etc. But I could also assign Ctrl-T to my table row snippet if I wanted. Any keyboard shortcut could be re-assigned this way, to either a program command or a text snippet. (My other faves were Ctrl-Space to insert the non-breaking space escape code and Ctrl-Quotes to insert the quotation mark escape code.)

Once set up, using the snippets and shortcuts made editing raw HTML almost as easy as regular word processing.

These days I use Notepad + + as my default HTML editor, and while I think it's mostly terrific, it doesn't have these two killer features (that I can see.) It has other stuff I consider essential, though, like color-coding of HTML code, flexible and capable search & replace, etc.

Does anyone here know of a text editor akin to Notepad + + that also has full keyboard customizability and text snippet support? I figured if anybody knew of such a beast, it would be someone here!

Thanks in advance! 

179

General Software Discussion / Re: Are any icon editor & manager decent priced?

« on: July 23, 2007, 12:38 PM »

I was going to post about IcoFX but Curt beat me to it!

I use this in combination with IconsExtract (www.nirsoft.net) which can pull the icons out of any exe, dll, cpl, running process, etc.

For icon management, I just use the file system. They all show up in the Explorer window!

180

General Software Discussion / Re: GMail Drive in My Computer

« on: July 23, 2007, 12:30 PM »

I signed up for a system similar to XDrive called http://www.mediamax.com. Haven't used it in a long time, so I don't know if they're still open & free, but it gave you a lot of space & looked promising at the time. I don't remember them having shell integration for file management, though. As I recall they had some desktop app you could run if you didn't want to use the web interface.

Seems they're blocked by the corp firewall for some reason now, so I can't check them out at the moment. But take a look.

By the way, if you hate AIM (or Y!IM or MSNIM or any of those other bloated-size, feature-poor, vendor-specific IM clients) go to http://www.ceruleanstudios.com and check out Trillian. It lets you connect to all the chat networks (even ICQ and IRC). It's free for the basic edition, which is pretty full featured. Or if you like FOSS better, lookup Pidgin (fromerly GAIM) which does the same thing.

181

General Software Discussion / Re: Real time video mixer software needed

« on: July 23, 2007, 10:57 AM »

...right now looking for a webcam program that only has the webcam video and not the title bar or the file, edit, etc. bar

Look at CapTV2 from http://www.micromediaenterprises.com. It is free & does exactly this. You can also toggle the window between 2 different sizes just by double clicking. Also lets you capture stills, video, etc. Neat, general-purpose webcam app I've been using for years.

182

General Software Discussion / Re: Working with (display+format+restructure) big amount of data (text+graphics)?

« on: July 20, 2007, 01:38 PM »

There's also a commercial product you may want to lookinto: askSam

It's a database system designed to handle free-form text. It has a lot of capabilities, and I would imagine a fairly steep learning curve, but this is often the case with truly useful applications.

From the website:

askSam is a different kind of database - a free-form database designed for users rather than programmers. askSam makes it easy to turn anything into a searchable database: email messages, word processing documents, text files, spreadsheets, addresses, Web pages, and more.

askSam can import existing word documents and turn them into "reports." You'd have to dig a little to see if it can handle the output you're looking for. There are two quick tours, one for researches, and one for general users.

The company (and the product) have been around for a very long time, so it is definitely a mature and robust application. There's a free trial version available. The "standard" version is $150, but the version you really want is $395, so it's not cheap. But it might be a worthwhile investment of time and money if it makes your life simpler for years to come.

183

General Software Discussion / Re: K-Meleon listed as one of top browsers...

« on: July 20, 2007, 09:35 AM »

The new Snailware site (mentioned in another thread here) did a write-up on this as a good alternative for older, slower computers. I'm going to see if I can get it to run on my mother-in-law's old Win95 Pentium-1 box.

Currently, she's using Off By One (http://www.offbyone.com) which is very small and fast but only does HTML3.2 and has some other major limitations.

184

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 19, 2007, 11:40 AM »

I was thinking recently about how pervasive the lie is in our society. Every culture has its blind spots and its irrational beliefs, but just think of how many outright lies you see and hear in the course of a typical day, and never give a second thought to:

"Your call is very important to us."
"Act now! This is a limited time offer."
"Comes with a lifetime warranty."
"I'm sorry we can't do that because it's against policy."
"No credit? No problem!"
"A lifetime of happiness begins here."

This last one graced the cover of a piece of junk mail that came through my slot. What an incredible claim! You mean I can ditch my mountain of debts, my dead-end job, my mean-spirited spouse, my obnoxious in-laws and my crumbling, money-pit of a home, and enjoy happiness for the rest of my LIFE, just by opening this envelope! WOW! 

(Disclaimer: Actually, none of this is true for me. My debts are manageable, my spouse and in-laws are wonderful, and I like my job. Well, the money-pit house bit is kinda true.  )

Anyway, the envelope contained an offer for combined voice, internet and cable service from the local cable monopoly. Now, is there really any way in which such a mundane offerring could, by any stretch of the imagination (of anyone other than an ad agency) be construed as the gateway to lifetime happiness?

Why do we take these outrageous, constant lies for granted? I tend to think our cultural drenching in advertsing has something to do with it.

185

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 17, 2007, 12:18 AM »

I offer an alternative story of how and why democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and they vote accordingly.

Wow. This strikes me as incredibly nihilistic. It also reminds me of a headline that ran in The Onion at one point: "American People Ruled Unfit to Govern" However, this Cato-quip is just a theory. What if you substitute "misinformed" for "irrational"? Seems to me it would still hold together. Anti-market bias could be not understanding "the invisible hand" or it could be just not believing in it. But I'm right there with him on the anti-foreign bias. I do think Americans are fairly xenophobic, to their ultimate detriment. I attribute this to geography more than anything, though.

Americans equate prosperity with employment not production? Could this be due to the fact that there are far more wage-earners than factory-owners in America? It's certainly not due to the fact that Americans understand that labor is the true source of all value  As for pessimistic bias... this is a tricky question. Yes, people can be irrationally pessimistic. On the other hand, gains in the economy over the last few decades have not led to corresponding increases in wages or the standard of living for most people, they have led to increased stratification of wealth. If you work for someone else for a living, and if you don't own stock, you probably have a legitimate reason to be pessimistic. It seems to me the burden of proof is on the theorizer to show that pessimism is an irrational response.

You make some good points about Google search results. I think we're just using slightly different definitions of bandwidth. From this post, it seems you're talking more about attention bandwidth than ability to push bits over the wire. And you're right - there is fierce competition for those top spots on Google's results list. A whole cottage industry now exists to coach companies how to get their site listed on that first screenful.

Honestly, I get the idea that (Jimdoria's) coming at the argument from the point of view that the movie's point is self-evidently correct, or at least so honorably intentioned as to be beyond challenge. So any viewpoint that has the temerity to challenge it must be, prima facie, evil and not deserving of our attention.

Honestly, I am baffled as to where this came from. I haven't seen the movie, so I'm in no position to comment on its content or accuracy, and I don't recall that I did so... (scanning old posts...) Nope, I haven't really commented on the movie in this discussion at all, except to say that it's propaganda. How did you draw this conclusion?

I am not put off by the screening company making money because Michael Moore is well known as a producer of propaganda. His movies usually have a particular viewpoint that they advance fairly ruthlessly. Nobody considers them neutral or unbiased sources of information. I do have that expectation of a search engine.

I consider it unethical because it amounts to "bait and switch". Google has built a business and a reputation based on accurate, unbiased search results. This is the service I expect from them, and I'm willing to look at advertising to pay for it, provided the ads are kept separate from the "editorial" results. But if they are secretly gaming their own results behind the scenes, they are abusing the trust that forms the basis of our relationship.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Disney & Sony have never to my knowledge chosen "Do no evil" as one of their guiding principles. Google did, so I expect it from them. Establishing a relationship built on trust, and then abusing that trust for personal gain falls well inside my personal definition of "evil".

Your assertion about consumer vs. corporate power is disingenuous. Consumers have power when they act en masse, but you ignore the enormous power corporations have to prevent this from happening. Your Nike analogy is kind of a strange choice, given that Nike has been accused of exploiting both child labor and slave labor, and yet their sales have continued to be strong, even during the times when these accusations were being made and validated. Revelations of Nike's unsavory labor practices in much of the major media were met with gigantic advertising and promotion campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and a public relations effort to convince the public that the problem had been taken care of while keeping the status quo mostly intact. Faced with abundant evidence of wrongdoing and abundant, readily-available alternatives to their product, the marketplace shrugged and kept buying Nike's shoes.

I guess forced labor and child labor are not repugnant enough, hence the need for your human skin analogy.... but even then I wonder. There's also the example of a certain auto maker whose expensive, finely engineered cars continue to sell well despite the company's history manufacturing devices for mass execution. I'd be more specific, but I fear doing so would invoke Godwin's law and shut down the thread. 

Free market justice can be swift and complete, if it's dealing with something consumers care about. But this is a mighty big if, and often it is well within the ability of corporate interests to control this factor. To my mind, justice that hinges on the attention spans of a highly fickle, easily-manipulated mass of anonymous strangers is a very questionable kind of justice.

Finally, Senator X, as evil as he may be, is a public servant and at least some record of his evil deeds is available to me as a member of the public. Corporate records are private property and are not similarly available to me, meaning that if CEO Y is even more evil, I'll probably never find out about all the evil things he's done to me and my community, or be able to hold him to account for them. Again, the fact that our public institutions are not accountable enough is no reason to hand over their functions to a system that is even less accountable.

Besides, this last bit compares the theoretical, ideal-world, best case scenario for the free market against the messy, real-world, worst case scenario for the other side. Hardly sporting, old chap. And are you really asserting that people are irrational when they vote, but perfectly rational when they buy stuff? I find that a very odd worldview.

186

General Software Discussion / Re: How to work with (display, format, restructure) big amount of structured data?

« on: July 16, 2007, 08:23 PM »

Hi Armando -

Amplifying suleika's suggestion, I'd suggest you take a look at TiddlyWiki: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

TiddlyWiki will do a lot of what you want, and addresses many of your concerns. It is a strange beast - halfway between an application and a document. What it is is a wiki system written entirely in JavaScript, and therefore it runs entirely in the browser. Your tiddlywiki is a single file that you can take with you (or save on your hard disk) but you can also put it on a server or other network spot and access it like a regular web-based wiki. You define chunks of content that can be as long or as short as you want, and you arrange them however you like by opening and closing them. It uses a fairly comprehensive wiki format for editing. Since the content is all HTML, it should be indexable by any search engine you've got.

Outlining and other formatting capabilities are similar to what HTML provides (hardly surprising.) You can even create tabbed sections within the body of your text, if you'd need that for some reason. Tags are built in. Topics are tracked by both a main menu of links (which you maintain) or by an automated list that lets you view topics by timeline, by tag, by link info, or just all in a list.

Printing is going to be pretty much limited to what your browser can handle, so that might be a concern. On the other hand, all formatting based on CSS so it's immensely customizable if you know what you are doing. (It's possible to create custom CSS files for print and do some fairly sophisticated DTP-style layout - or so I've read. Don't ask me how to do it, though! :-) )

You can set Tiddlywiki to make backups whenever you save it (or whenever it autosaves) so corruption shouldn't be an issue. It has some synchronization features as well. It's really kind of hard to believe this thing does so much and works as well as it does, and requires only a web browser. It's an amazing system! Oh, and it's open source, too.

187

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 13, 2007, 05:13 PM »

I'm not an economist either by profession or avocation, so I'm not in a position to participate in an informed debate about the finer points of economic theory. I haven't read the book you recommend, so I'm not really in a position to discuss that either.

Was it "unthinkable" to engineer an economy before Smith? I'd argue that mercantilism (which predated Smith and to which Smith's work was a reaction) was an effort to "engineer" an economy. I'd also say that government policies regarding tariffs and trade, imports and exports, the setting of interest rates by the Fed, etc. are all efforts to "engineer" an economy. The planned economies of the (so-called) Communist states are a particular approach to engineering an economy. The fact that a single approach fails does not automatically invalidate all other approaches.

Do economies arise by evolution? Well, yes and no. In any competitive system there will be winners and losers. This is "selection" but is it "natural selection" i.e. evolution? A city grows by similar processes, but I don't think this makes cities "organisms". Cities are structures built by people, partly planned and partly unplanned, partly based on the natural environment and partly in opposition to it. The same is true of economies. Also, is the biggest, strongest society that subsumes others automatically the best? This is just what I meant by scale bias. Couldn't it be that it's simply the most ruthless, or the best armed? Can we be sure it's always the best ideas that are winning out? I don't have your faith in this, and I'm not sure it can be proven.

As I see it, economics tries to understand (and predict) why a person, given a range of choices, will opt for a particular one.

This is one of the things economics does. I think it falls short as a concise, complete definition of economics, however. Wikipedia's is "the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services," a definition that seems centered on the exchange of value, and although monetary value is not specifically mentioned, I think in most modern contexts is can be inferred.

However they also give as an apt definition "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses" which hews much closer to CWuestefeld's definition. So perhaps I am being too restrictive in my understanding of economics as being primarily concerned with markets, GDP, spending vs. saving, etc. Still, I think this is the "common" conception of the term, even if it is not entirely accurate.

I will admit I was imprecise in my language when I used the word democracy. I was referring to specifically to American democracy (and similar modern forms of democracy) which includes the concept of human rights and personal freedoms. Again, I believe that this is the common understanding of the term, just as "communism" is generally assumed to refer to Marxist states, rather than Shaker communities or Benedictine monasteries. But if you were seeking to ding me just for the extra semantic points, you did it.

There is quite a leap taking place in the bit about cartels/monopolies. It's the necessarily that bugs me. This is one example of one kind of cartel that may not be bad for consumers. Quite a far cry from providing evidence for a general rule that "monopolies aren't bad for consumers"! And a very, very shaky foundation upon which to base a broader assertion, which seems to be that common wisdom about monopolies is wrong. (And don't think I haven't noticed that we've slipped into discussing "consumers" rather than "citizens" or "people", linguistically flattening the individuals in question into just their marketplace activity.) Anyway, some more succint questions might be:

• Is competition required for a free market?
• Does price fixing among supposed competitors interfere with a free market?

It may be true that governmental efforts to control monopolies generally do more harm than good, but is this really relevant? The fact that response to a problem is incorrect has no bearing on whether a problem is real or not. 18th century medical efforts to control infectious disease generally did more harm than good. It doesn't follow, however, that infectious disease was therefore not a problem in the 18th century.

CWuestefeld saw 2 prongs in Grorgy's post. I saw two examples in support of his main claim: There is virtually no such thing as a free market. I'd agree with this. Free markets are ideal forms and as such do not, and I'd go so far as to say cannot, exist in the real world. The real questions are: "why would we want them to?" and "how much control do we want the marketplace to have over the rest of our society?" I just don't get the whole "power in the hands of a big government is to be greatly feared, but power in the hands of big corporations is to be much desired" school of thought. (Although somehow it always calls to mind that old Bob Dylan lyric "you just want to be on the side that's winning.") The marketplace is responsive and has its efficiencies. But it's got equally large pitfalls and blind spots as well. Also, speaking of circular arguments, the logic behind this ideology seems to be that our elected officials are not accountable enough to the citizenry, so we must turn the reins of power over to entities that are even less accountable. Huh?

To bring things back to the original point, it's clear people must first understand issues in order to act on them in an enlightened way. What's not so clear is the rest of CWuestefeld's equation. The "finite amount of bandwidth" is kind of a bizarre claim, IMHO. I see it as an attempt to justify Google's tactics by taking the old false scarcity created by broadcast journalism and applying it to the Internet, where no such scarcity exists. And let's be clear, we're not talking about charging for the delivery of objective information, we're talking about rates for advertising - the delivery of highly biased information with the specific purpose of promoting a particular agenda.

BTW, Sicko is not advertising. It is propaganda. Propaganda is highly biased and persuasive information with a political intent. Advertising is propaganda with a commercial intent. And Ms. Turner's battle cry is simply "Fight propaganda with advertising!"

Also, CWuestefeld later said:

If Google does act unethically, then it's certainly our prerogative to take business elsewhere, but we can only do so if we debate the issue.

I'd say we can only do so if a viable alternative to Google exists. And there's the danger of a monopoly. A monopoly is to the marketplace what an autocratic government is to the political space. Absolute power concentrated in too few hands. Millenia of human experience tell us that absolute power is always abused sooner or later, leading to corruption and injustice. The only way to prevent the creation of absolute power in a system is to rig the system so that such power is checked before it arises. In the U.S. we have three branches of government that act (so far, mostly) to prevent absolute power from occurring in the government. There is no such mechanism in place in the free market, except for perhaps the "invisible hand" which I don't believe in. That's why I don't think the free market by itself is sufficient to ensure a just society, and why I'm so leery of turning over the functions essential for the functioning of democracy to the marketplace.

Finally, sorry, but I'm not going to do citations. This isn't a thesis paper or a peer-reviewed journal, it's a discussion (in the Living Room, remember?) My opinions are my own, based on logic and my observations and experience. I try to abide by the rules of reason and civil discourse (no ad hominem attacks, straw-man arguments, etc.) but I'm not going to start adding bibliographies to my posts.

188

General Software Discussion / Re: A better wireless network finder?

« on: July 12, 2007, 11:13 AM »

I believe NetStumbler can also auto-configure your system based on the networks it sniffs. I haven't used it but I've used the PDA version (MiniStumbler) which had this ability.)

You can also buy a stand-alone Wi-Fi detector. The best one IMHO is the ZyXEL AG-225H. Locates wireless networks, shows you the signal strength & level/type of encryption, recharges from the USB port, acts as a USB wifi adapter and will even serve as a mobile wifi access point. Its the wifi Swiss army knife!

189

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 12, 2007, 09:59 AM »

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree, CUWestfield. For one thing, I have a philosophical problem with regarding Economics as a science, although I can certainly see the parallels with biology. I think my issue here hinges on what you call "emergent, self-ordering systems". In nature (the realm of the hard sciences), absent a religious component, there is no inentionality. Systems do not act to organize themselves, it simply happens. This is not true of economic activity. Economic activity is always the result of intentional human activity, although the consequences may be unintended ones, and the overall complexity of the system is daunting, as you say.

Economies do not just arise. They are built. And like all human structures, they are built with particular goals and priorities.

The "science" of Economics is generally one of measurement, not of direct observation. And the method of measurement is not trivial in determining the conclusion. Currently, Economics assigns no value to anything that doesn't generate economic activity, and assigns positive value to anything that does generate economic activity. I see this as a deeply flawed approach to mirroring or even understanding human reality.

Under this scheme, a clear mountain stream has zero value unless it can can be converted to some economic activity, such as food production, energy or tourism. A polluted stream has more potential value, as there is a need to clean it up, which generates economic activity. Yet the stream's intrinsic value is immediately obvious to just about any actual human being who stands beside it, because humans instantly recognize there are kinds of value other than monetary.

Economics also exhibits scale bias. According to the rules of economics, large-scale economic activity is intrinsically more valuable than small-scale economic activity, as monetary value is generated more quickly and efficiently. But small-scale economic activity generates positive non-monetary value: good will, strong community ties, heightened political awareness, a sense of personal well-being for the participants. Economics cannot measure these and so their value is effectively assigned to zero.

The entire basis of economics is monetary value. And that's the problem: I am highly distrustful of making monetary value the final and absolute arbiter of what is good for a society and its members.

This is what's so fundamentally wrong about Ms. Turner equating advertising with democracy. Advertising is "might makes right" although it's economic might rather than brute force at work. But this is actually the opposite of democracy, where the central tenet is that the mighty cannot be allowed to simply overpower the weak if we are to have a just society.

190

Living Room / Re: totally pathetic comparison about apple and microsoft

« on: July 11, 2007, 02:23 PM »

I can't see the video from my office, but if It's the one I think it is (with the Pee-Wee Herman music and the list of system requirements that expands off the box) it was actually created by Microsoft.

It was an internal spoof they produced (or had produced for them) to demonstrate why people love Apple in a way that they don't love MS. It wasn't supposed to be made public, but it was obviously too good to keep under wraps.

191

Living Room / Re: I got six Pownce invites first come first serve.

« on: July 11, 2007, 02:16 PM »

I'd like an invite if they are still available. Thanks!

192

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 11, 2007, 02:14 PM »

Aw, thanks, Mouser! 

Actually, I am a professional writer, or rather I was, if you count technical writing as professional writing. I was a tech writer for years, and did write the (very) occasional column for trade magazines, although some of these were done anonymously.

Unfortunately, product cycles being what they are, I probably couldn't point you to a single thing online that I've written, other than my blog, which is also a very occasional affair.

Anyway, thanks for the compliment! 

193

Living Room / Re: How to best share documents, notes, links with coworkers?

« on: July 11, 2007, 10:49 AM »

You might check out Zoho office. It also has many of these features. Google's apps are a good choice too. Although they let you collaborate remotely, there's no reason they won't work just as well for an internal team.

There's also the 37Signals web apps, which integrate these features, but I think to get everything you have to sign up for more than one of them (at least Campfire & Backpack.) Check out http://37signals.com which has links to the individual apps.

194

Living Room / Re: Google in Sicko Storm - Welcome to democracy google style

« on: July 10, 2007, 02:41 PM »

I think the Register article makes the essential point here very nicely. When the cluetrain leaves the internet, and heads into the real world, it jumps the tracks. It's great for people to talk about letting your employees be themselves and tearing down the walls between companies and their markets. But if you really do this, and one of your people says something unpopular, the attack dogs that make up the modern media will eat you for lunch.

One of Google's core values is supposedly "do no evil" or some such. This may have even been their guiding principle once - and by once, I mean when they were privately held. But when a company goes public, they no longer make their own rules in any meaningful sense. They play by the rules established by Wall Street, and those rules are actually pretty gung-ho when it comes to evil. (Oops, sorry, I didn't really mean "evil", I meant "fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value".)

I always have to smile at the mention of the invisible hand, though. It's a 230-year-old metaphor, yanked out of its original context about the balance between foreign and domestic trade, and given a whole new life as a universal palliative. The invisible hand takes the frightening, highly ambiguous complexity of the real world of market dynamics and reduces it to a simplistic, soothing mantra which assures us all will be well. Whenever the invisible hand shows up, I take it as a clear signal of what kind of discussion is actually taking place: one about religious belief.

And yes, someone who says that advertising=democracy is either so calculatingly cold as to be sociopathic (hardly impossible) or rather befuddled on the finer points of what democracy actually is. There's an old saying that goes "never attribute to malice what can be explained by mere incompetence". So I tend to think Google's Ms. Turner probably spent the social studies class that covered democracy passing notes and doodling on her workbook.

195

General Software Discussion / Re: Audio Editors?

« on: July 06, 2007, 09:58 AM »

For a great article on doing noise reduction yourself, check out this link to DV magazine:
http://www.dv.com/fe...p?articleId=23902993

You may need to register (for free) to view it, but it's definitely info that's worth your time.

196

General Software Discussion / Re: free batch conversion ps to pdf?

« on: July 06, 2007, 09:26 AM »

Ghostscript can do PS to PDF conversion. It's free & open source.
http://www.ghostscri...com/awki/Ghostscript

Edit: Actually, this link might be more helpful:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

197

General Software Discussion / Re: A question about DRM

« on: July 05, 2007, 06:44 PM »

Curt, if you've got Windows Media Player and a music CD, you can make your own DRM files. In WMP 11, if I choose Rip and then More Options.. I can click on the Rip Music tab and check the "Copy Protect Music" box.

Then what happens, according to the help file, is:

If you copy protect the tracks that you rip from a CD, the ripped files are protected, which means that media usage rights are required to play, burn, or sync the file. If you copy the files to another computer and try to use them, you might be prompted to download media usage rights for that computer. There are a limited number of times that you can download media usage rights for your ripped files.

Wouldn't know what this actually means, as I'd never use such an option myself and can't see why anyone else would either. 

Lashiec, locking out FOSS is part of the strategy as well. Check out the second link about content producers. "Good" hardware will be illegal to manufacture. (Actually, according to the first article I linked, you can't even get Vista to play HDD content at full 1080P resolution. The DRM-compliant components needed do not yet exist!)

198

General Software Discussion / Re: A question about DRM

« on: July 05, 2007, 06:06 PM »

Microsoft is working on several DRM schemes. The DRM embedded in Vista applies to HD content only for the time being. In other words, consumers are unlikely to be aware of the presence of DRM now, just after Vista's release, as it is currently only applied to content that is expensive, not widely available, and requires expensive hardware to play.

There is nothing in theory or in practice to prevent MS from applying this DRM to any content. They have already changed their marketing speak from saying Vista's DRM protects "premium content" to saying it protects "commercial content."

For the the best summary I have seen, check out A Cost Analysis of Vista Content Protection. Even if you just skim it, you'll see enough to at least furrow your brow. And as much as I love to point out how greedy and awful Microsoft can be, it's not possible to lay this monstrous infant exclusively at their doorstep. They're simply following the dictates of the content producers: the movie and music industries, which had been refining their particular blend of evil for a hundred years before Microsoft was even a gleam in Bill G.'s myopic eye.

Anyway, this is only one piece of their DRM strategy - applied at the OS level to what's generally considered media (audio and video). But there is also MS' copy-restriction in Office. This feature was added into Office 2003, but it requires an extra server component from MS and extra software installed on the client PC in order to implement. With Office 2003/2007 on Vista, this will not be the case, and as companies adopt Vista they will find it easier to implement end-to-end copy protection for documents, e-mail, etc.

So if you get into a legal dispute with your employer, or you decide to turn whistleblower on some illegal or other questionable activity at your workplace, you may just find that any evidence you've collected to bolster your case suddenly renders itself inaccessible when you try to present it.

So let's see, Microsoft's plans are to use DRM to lock down video, audio, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail... what's left?

199

General Software Discussion / Re: A question about DRM

« on: July 05, 2007, 03:04 PM »

Sorry if I came off a bit harsh. I wasn't trying to suggest that PaladinMJ was interested in pirating the video clips. I was trying to mock the attitude of the companies that implement this kind of DRM. In other words, they ASSUME you are a pirate even when you only want to apply fair use rights to content you paid for.

I guess the sarcasm got lost somehow.

I also get frustrated by posts like this, because they make it obvious to me that there are people such as PaladinMJ and cmpm who don't know what DRM is and I feel like they really should know, but how does one effectively spread the word on something like this? Even here, where I'd expect posters to be fairly tech savvy, knowledge about DRM seems to be far from universal.

DRM is an abhorrent practice for many of the reasons stated. It deprives law-abiding people of their rights while presenting no hindrance at all to big time criminals. It's stated purpose is to prevent "causal" piracy: preventing "ordinary" people from copying media to share with their friends & family. Transparently, it's purpose is also about forcing consumers into purchasing the same content multiple times thus inflating profits. And with Windows Vista, DRM is sunk so deep into the operating system, and has its tentacles in so many different places, there's hardly anything you can do on your computer won't be subject to a tug on the string from some corporation or other.

I've read some articles recently that say that DRM is on the ropes, but as much as I want to believe this, I find the idea hard to accept. Corporations have been plotting and building and lobbying for years to gain this power. They are not just going to give it up. It fits in too neatly with the top-down command-and-control mindset that most of them use to govern themselves - the very essence of their existence. Power is hardly ever surrendered, it must be taken away - and the only way to do that is to all but eliminate the demand for copy-protected content.

But how can such a thing be done?  Most people don't care about "rights" or "large institutions versus freedom." They just want to watch a movie.

Actually, now that I think about it, I regret the message that I posted earlier. Everyone who gets bitten by DRM wants what PaladinMJ wants: a quick, technical fix that will just make it go away. As long as people think that such a thing is out there, for only the cost of a few dollars or a post on a message board, they're never going to feel stuck enough to wake up and realize that "go along to get along" only invites further and more severe abuse.

Well, I may not be able to solve the problem, but I can at least stop perpetuating it. I hereby pledge that I will never again offer technical advice for circumventing DRM, even in the abstract. The only thing of merit I said in my earlier post was that he should call them and demand his money back. Although I meant it as a joke, I realize now it's the only thing that will make the slightest difference in the long run.

So PaladinMJ, I'd urge you to call up Direct2Drive, complain vehemently that their copy protection is abridging your fair use rights, cancel your subscription (if any) and demand a refund. They'll probably come back with some blather about a license agreement or terms of service you agreed to when signing up for the site. Don't back down. You can tell them that these "clickwrap" agreements have never been held up in court (they haven't) and that recent federal court rulings have shown that one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it terms of service agreements are "contracts of adhesion" and are therefore legally unenforceable (which is also true). If you don't get satisfaction, call your credit card company and see if it's not too late to reverse the charges.

Don't say anything about BitTorrent though.  Oh, and take lots of notes, you might need 'em.

200

General Software Discussion / Re: A question about DRM

« on: July 03, 2007, 01:38 PM »

Breaking video out of DRM is going to be tough, as the entire point of DRM is to keep you from getting to the video so you can do whatever you want with it. Didn't you know that when you paid for the clips?

Anyway, have a look at this: http://www.hmelyoff....index.php?section=8.

It's a filter that lets you record screen activity using a video capture program. (You'll need your own capture program, but this shouldn't be too tough to come up with.) You might be able to coerce it into recording your movie into an AVI as you play it back.

Or you might end up with a recording of a big black box. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

As for the costly lesson, why not call them up, complain that you've downloaded their DRMed clips but now you can't rip them into files for sharing on BitTorrent, and demand your money back? What's the worst that could happen?