A beautiful past

With high technology surrounding most of us every day, it is sometimes hard to imagine spending more than a few hours finishing a correspondence. Outside of works meant for publication to wide audiences (and sometimes inside even that limit) most of us spend minutes rather than years composing our output.

However things like The Parker Library housed in Corpus Cristi at Cambridge University allow us to quietly remember some people spent lifetimes on one copy of one book. And they produced results we work to preserve today. Whenever I see illuminated manuscripts I sink into the images, the depth of detail and the sheer physical beauty therein. It is incredible. I hope you like their website!

Inspirational Quote:

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails [. . .] when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever. [sic]” (Basbanes, 35) Medieval Book Curse

PS: those who spent lifetimes on these manuscripts did not take their use lightly :-D. Like DRM, but for monks.

Music for Choir (and Classical Music Archives)

Hey all,

Right now I am learning two new pieces for the Carnegie Mellon Repertory Chorus: “How lovely is thy dwelling place” (English translation of “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen”) from Brahms’s Requiem and “O Magnum Mysterium” by Nancy Galbraith. Because we learn all of our music outside of class, I have been tying to find a way to do this effectively. Other than moving my 45 minute solo practices to about an hour with half an hour dedicated to those two (or more) I also wanted to listen to what “How lovely” should sound like.

When I became a member of NPR they gave me 6 months access to Classical Music Archives which is a members-only music site with tons of downloadable music (with some restrictions, some DRM stuff). I found a midi of “How lovely” which has helped me a lot, but in the past I have found major classical artists recordings of just about anything I wanted to listen to. They also have instrumental, though that not really my thing.

They only include music which is in the Public Domain so with some files you have a lot more creative freedom than anything you get from iTunes.

Anyhoo, I love them and they make my life easier. I hope you have a great day!

Inspirational quote:

How lovely is Thy dwelling-place

O Lord of Hosts,

O Lord of Hosts,

Thy dwelling-place,

O Lord of Hosts,

For my soul,

it longeth, yea, fainteth

it longeth, yea, fainteth

for the courts  of the Lord;

my soul and body crieth out

my soul and body crieth out

yea, for the living,

yea, for the living God

How lovely is Thy dwelling-place

O Lord of Hosts,

Blest are they,

O blest are they that dwell,

that dwell within Thy house;

they praise Thy name evermore,

they praise Thy name evermore,

they praise Thee,

they praise Thee,

praise Thy name evermore!

How lovely, how lovely, is Thy dwelling-place

–From “Requiem” by Johannes Brahms

Happy Day!

To a certain brother I have, here is the first of 2 gifts. The first are a bunch of quotes I collected while at the EFF (Can you guess why I’m putting them here?). The second is more physcial and will be seen soon.

15 quotes on Free Speech
1. “The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.” (Judge John Kane)
2. “To some of us, preserving the Net for free speech is more important than anything in the free world.” (Ron Newman, netizen)
3. “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” (Salman Rushdie)
4. “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” (William Orville Douglas)
5. “Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.” (Eugene Gladstone O’Neill)
6. “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.” (George Bernard Shaw)
7. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people.” (John Fitzgerald Kennedy)
8. “Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.” (Colin Powell)
9. “All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!” (Kurt Vonnegut, author)
10. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” (Noam Chomsky)
11. “If the human body’s obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me.” (Larry Flynt)
12. “Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.” (Nadine Gordimer)
13. “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” (Mark Twain)
14. “[O]ne man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric” (John Marshall Harlan, Supreme Court justice, 1971)
15. “All of us can think of a book… that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.” (Katherine Paterson, American author of childrens books)
16. “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.” (Evelyn Beatrice Hall, of Voltair’s attitude) ——- this was my senior quote!!!—–

15 quotes on Fair Use

1. “People confuse ‘fair use’ with ‘personal use.’ They are not the same. Fair use is a set of guidelines used by judges in a courtroom. Personal use is your activity on your computers at home,” (Ted Cohen)
2. “Fight piracy; don’t squash innovation,” (Joe Krauss)
3. “By definition, all fair use is unauthorized. The whole point of fair use is that it is unauthorized, but noninfringing use.” (http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/20000907_eff_comments_hdtv.html)
4. “Fair use is important to innovators as well as consumers. It’s fair use that allowed the VCR to innovate on top of the television,” (Joe Krauss, head of DigitalConsumer.org)
5. “Media companies, under the guise of piracy, are asking congress to give them more control over fair use. Hollywood wants to control innovation.” (Joe Krauss)
6. “The copyright bargain: a balance between protection for the artist and rights for the consumer,” (Robin Gross)
7. “We’re on the path of creating monopoly business practices out of copyright law,” (Robin Gross)
8. “The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don’t believe me,” (Jonathan Potter, Digital Media Association)
9. “The record industry is still pissed off that other people are making money off their business, even if it promotes their products and increases their sales. I think they’re still mad about radio,” (Jonathan Potter)
10. “Fair use is always going to be a gray area, and it should be. We need to allow for things we can’t see yet,” (Robin Gross)
11. “Just let me use the technology I want at a fair price,” (Jonathan Potter)
12. “‘Fair use . . . what use is it?’ Or so ask the corporations, adding “After all, we can’t make money from people doing things under fair-use law . . . so whose bright idea was it anyway? And why can’t we get rid of it?” (http://www.deadjournal.com/users/clasher/23812.html)
13. “Preserving fair use necessarily means preserving an ability to make copies that the authors do not expressly permit.” (http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/20000907_eff_comments_hdtv.html)
14. “For what it’s worth, here’s my rule-of-thumb for determining fair use quote of another weblogger’s post. Consistent with not misrepresenting what the original weblogger wrote in toto, I quote only enough to provide my following comments, critical or otherwise, their raison d’être or jumping-off place, and just enough to whet my readers’ appetite for the reading of the original weblogger’s entire post, which, except in those cases of my withholding for charitable or protective reasons the identity of the original weblogger, is always linked.” (http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2004/09/fair_use.html)
15. “The Fair Use Doctrine is one of the most important limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright holder. It allows that copyright can be infringed because strict application of the law impedes the production and dissemination of works to the public.” (http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/WOissues/copyrightb/copyrightarticle/whatfairuse.htm)

15 quotes on Innovation

1. “The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.” (Arthur Koestler) “What actually urges [the scientific investigator] on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.” (H L Mencken)
2. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” (Galileo Galilei)
3. “For artists diving into a new technology, it is a triple short-cut to mastery: you get a free ride on the novelty of the medium; there are no previous masters to surpass; and after a few weeks, you are the master. Try that with the violin.” (Stewart Brand)
4. “What actually urges [the scientific investigator] on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.” (H L Mencken)
5. “You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success - on the far side of failure.” (Thomas J. Watson Sr)
6. “When you’re the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you’re basically saying, “I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.” That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked.” (Larry Ellison)
7. “You ought to be able to show that you can do it a great deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.” (Ernest Hemingway)
8. “A game in which you fly around in space and shoot up other space ships? That is the stupidest idea that I have ever heard.” (Atari manager)
9. “It’s fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn’t make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, “Oh yeah, this stuff is good.” (Larry Ellison)
10. “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to management than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.” (Nicolo Machiavelli)
11. “Innovation has never come through bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s always come from individuals.” (John Scully, Chairman, Apple Computers)
12. “Economists and historians alike realize that there is a deep difference between homo economicus and homo creativus. One makes the most of what nature permits him to have. The other rebels against nature’s dictates. Technological creativity, like all creativity, is an act of rebellion.” (Joel Mokyr)
13. “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” (Andre Gide)
14. “You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.” (Denis Waitley)
15. “The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it.” (David Ogilvy)

15 quotes on Privacy
1. “The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.” (Mark Twain)
2. “Privacy is the right to be alone—the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man.” (Louis D. Brandeis)
3. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.” (Gibran Kahlil)
4. “Why doesn’t everybody leave everybody else the hell alone? (Jimmy Durante)
5. “Modern Americans are so exposed, peered at, inquired about, and spied upon as to be increasingly without privacy–members of a naked society and denizens of a goldfish bowl.” (Edward V. Long)
6. “Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.” (Marlon Brando)
7. “Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.” (Lewis Mumford)
8. “Isn’t privacy about keeping taboos in their place? (Kate Millet)
9. “The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.” (Justice William O. Douglas)
10. “I’ve always been very zealous about not invading other people’s private spaces.” (Peter Jennings)
11. “Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need’s sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place.” (Phyllis Mcginley)
12. “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.” (John Perry Barlow)
13. “Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize the oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all… It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.” (Justice Hugo L. Black)
14. “You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren’t allowed to be normal.” (Johnny Depp)
15. “Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.” (Justice Louis D. Brandeis)

Enjoy!

Metadata in the news

Hey,

So, a little bit less political today. Ok, just a little calmer. Here are 3 really cool articles on where metadata shows up in the real world.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/06/26/piracy-lessons

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/29/2837/

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9546242&CFID=13851491&CFTOKEN=81503514

The first is about how pirates use metadata to accurately show their downloaders the facts about whatever they’re downloading (and explaining why legit movie retailers could learn something about product information from said pirates). It is nice to see a comparison of the quality legally and illegally obtained movies simply because this kind of discussion does not happen in mainstream media. I would like to point out that I abstain from pirating movies and music because, though I think the current life + 70 years term of copyright is unreasonable it is the law and I need the moral high ground to argue for the reduction of copyright to some more reasonable period.

The second link is to a NYT article on the deeper aspects of the allegations that the NSA holds vast databases full of metadata about private US citizens. This is interesting in the first place because I don’t like the idea of the NSA going for datamining expeditions nor do I like them having huge databases about US citizens just in a general way. In the second place, it is suggested that this data mining program was the program which the current Attorney General and previous White House Counsel asked John Ashcroft (then Attorney General) to continue when he was in the hospital. Attorney General Gonzales has testified under oath that there was never any major controversy in the DOJ over the wiretapping and that the discussion with then Attorney General Ashcroft was about other security matters, potentially this data mining operation. As The Economist says “And perhaps Mr Gonzales is merely a weasel and not a perjurer” (this week’s ed).

This final story does not actually mention metadata it mentions how aid agencies are using online databases of people’s names and locations to allow families separated by disasters to find each other. This is an incredible article talking about the shifting relationship between donor and victim and how technology allows people in aid-needing countries to ask for the aid they need. A few cool quotes:

“Télécoms sans Frontières (TSF), a French voluntary agency (total staff: a dozen), goes in with the UN team that does the first needs-assessment in the hours after disaster strikes.”

“The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, a group of agencies bent on learning from past mistakes, notes that “local people themselves provided almost all immediate life-saving action and the early-emergency support, as is commonly the case in disasters.””

“Family remittances are already a bigger source of transfers to poor countries than government aid.”

I wonder if TSF wants an intern? Just kidding, I need college. But seriously, I think it’s amazing that the same technology which can be used to track digitized books and DVDs can be used to track everyone from innocent civilians to innocent victims of disasters. It’s all in how that metadata is used. But wouldn’t it rock to program for the UN? On that note, here’s my goodnight quote:

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the love of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” Robert Southey

Raids on Mod Shops

I must admit I am breaking what should be a cardinal law of journalism: I am writing about a subject I do not fully understand. However I am including the recent raids on mod shops in my blog precisely because I do not fully understand what “modding” is in a legal sense and I want to get down what I feel while I’m still a n00b. Below is the post I am referring to throughout my writing today:

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EElyEEkAllysyVJWYQ.php

Then the Google definition for “mod”,

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=bTL&q=define%3A+mod&btnG=Search

And finally the first mod website which I found. I have linked to the “about us” page because I suddenly realized when reading it that one could make money from reviewing video games–not something I have enough expertise to do myself, but something certain other people close in blood and relationship could do. eh hem.

http://www.ocmodshop.com/aboutus/

So in the first article (which I found via the “Hack a day” window from HackADay (http://www.hackaday.com) which lives on my iGoogle page. Just cuz!) a modder is raided by the FBI–ok, now this is scary. In the post above the modder refers to the people who raided his house as “the ICE”. Because I found the post on a game oriented site I thought it might be a slang term (like calling police pig, the popo or the fuz). But I wanted to be sure so I looked it up. My first his I couldn’t believe: ICE = “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement”. And guess what the headline for their mainpage website is? “Game Over: ICE, Industry Team Up in Gaming Piracy Crackdown”.

See, being slightly biased against anonymous postings, I had heaped a tablespoon of salt in with my interpretation of the first article. Below is the above named article with my own commentary inserted. WARNING: I want to say now I don’t really like the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and I am excessively paranoid about government’s views on copyright and intellectual property being influenced by industries with embedded interests (rather than being influenced by the consumer’s need for a public domain or the artist’s need to build on the past. You can tell I’m biased already :-D).
Game Over: ICE, Industry Team Up in Gaming Piracy Crackdown
32 search warrants executed in nationwide intellectual property rights investigation

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from 22 offices assisted by representatives of the electronic industry today executed 32 federal search warrants in 16 states as part of an investigation into the alleged sale and distribution of illegal modification chips and disc copyright circumvention devices. This investigation represents the largest national enforcement action of its kind targeting this type of illegal activity.

/*

Note how “representatives of the electronic industry” helped federal agents to execute warrants? This is probably my lack of legal knowledge but I thought warrants could only be executed by representatives of the*elected government*. And I never like seeing the government be so coordinated in its enforcement. I believe in inefficient bureaucracy.

*/

The search warrants were executed at businesses, storefronts, and residences located in California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin at locations associated with subjects who are allegedly involved in the direct importation, installation, sale, and distribution of the devices that are of foreign manufacture and smuggled into the United States.

/*

Two of the first article’s claims seem to be verified circumstantially here: residences (his grandmother’s house, his girlfriend’s house) were targeted and his stated home state (Ohio) is listed as a state where such raids took place. Also, interestingly, “This enforcement action is the result of a year long investigation conducted by the ICE Office of the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Cleveland, Ohio”. So Ohio ICE had a home team advantage here. That quote will come up later.

*/

The modification chips and circumvention devices allow users to play illegally obtained, pirated and/or counterfeit software on video game consoles including Sony’s Playstation 2, Microsoft’s XBOX and XBOX 360, and Nintendo’s Wii. Modification chips and swap discs for gaming consoles violate laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the makers of the gaming consoles, game developers, and others in the industry have incurred billions of dollars in losses worldwide due to sales lost to those selling counterfeit and pirated video games.

/*

See, my suspicion is that modding can have uses other than the illegal. This is like the old refrain in the pre P2P-is-how-you-down-load-any-big-file days when P2P = Pir A Cy (If the RIAA and MPAA had cheers. Which they don’t, really.) Unfortunately this is where my lack of knowledge of the legal implications of modding kicks in. But I generally find the people who do it for a living know more about what they do than the people who were assigned to prosecute them. Here’s a rebuttal from the first site’s admins:

“HSD - Xbox-Scene and it’s affiliate sites do not condone or endorse piracy, however we do strive to discuss, educate, and explore methods of modifying and operating game consoles in ways not originally intended or envisioned by the manufacturers. We whole heartedly believe in the right to backup your investment. “

So putting those two statements together, I gather than modding can be much like the other weird but not always infringing uses of products which users sometimes get into. The moral equivalent of importing a song bought form iTunes into Garage Band and trying to edit out the irritating crowd noise but being stopped by iTune’s DRM

Maybe someday I’ll tell that story.

*/

Counterfeiting and piracy is estimated to cost the U.S. economy between $200 billion and $250 billion annually and results in the loss of up to 750,000 jobs according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

/*

Remember when the record industry was selling the line that people who download music are stealing from artists? Remember when the music industry (but sadly not the recording industry) didn’t bother to court online customers until iTunes pushed? I’m sorry, I am cynical about such large claims of American loss to pirates. I’ve heard it before.

*/

“Illicit devices like the ones targeted today are created with one purpose in mind, subverting copyright protections,” said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “These crimes cost legitimate businesses billions of dollars annually and facilitate multiple other layers of criminality, such as smuggling, software piracy and money laundering.”

*/

Oooh, washable monies. oh, she means the other kind. Again, I would like to point out the many things which the software industry hates because they have potentially infringing uses. But I won’t, because it would make me sad. It is however interesting to note the claim of smuggling, because that is one of the implied accustations in the first article (or that’s what I got from the ICE agent’s questions about the poster’s software from Canada).

/*

As the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE plays a leading role in targeting criminal organizations responsible for producing, smuggling and distributing counterfeit products. ICE investigations focus on keeping counterfeit and pirated products off U.S. streets, and on dismantling the criminal organizations behind this illegal activity. In fiscal year 2006, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE marked an 83 percent increase in the number of intellectual property rights (IPR) seizures, including 14,675 seizures of counterfeit goods worth more than $155 million, a 67 percent increase from the year before. ICE investigations resulted in 219 arrests, 134 indictments and 170 convictions in intellectual property rights violations.

*/

I’m not going to comment on each of those numbers, but look at the whole picture there: I see a government agency with more power than reputation, with more money than track record and with a burning need to prosecute to prove itself. It is also part of the Department of Homeland Security which is also being given more powers than I am comfortable with such a one-presidency agency having. This stuff makes me scared.

*/

Between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, ICE agents arrested more than 700 individuals for IPR violations and dismantled several large scale criminal organizations that distributed counterfeit merchandise to nations around the globe. At the same time, ICE investigations into these networks resulted in 449 criminal indictments and 425 convictions. Together, ICE and CBP seized more than $750 million worth of counterfeit goods from fiscal year 1998 through fiscal year 2006.

/*

And see, here I get this stuff. We’ve gone from the hacker-next-door to the Russian Mafia in one brisk sweep. Large crime organizations, I like those being taken apart. That “88 percent of software, 80 percent of DVDs and 66 percent of music recordings in Russia are counterfeit” is *not ok*. It speaks of badness in many many ways. But what is the real connection between modders and mafiosos? Really?

This enforcement action is the result of a year long investigation conducted by the ICE Office of the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Cleveland, Ohio.

// See? I told you I would come up.

The names of those targeted, addresses and case specifics are not releasable at this time.

/*

So here it is. There is no way for me to check to see if the poster from the first article’s claim was accurate. Given then what s/he said s/he was doing sounds a lot like what ICE was cracking down on, it seems a likely story.

*/

The investigation is being coordinated with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland and assisted by the Department of Justice Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS). In addition, ICE has received valuable technical assistance during this investigation from ESA and other industry members.

/*

And here’s the closing theme of the story: “CE has received valuable technical assistance during this investigation from ESA and other industry members”. This article begins and ends with industry helping the government crackdown on stuff that hurts industry. Logical but wrong. Wrong because the government should not be focusing the largest arm of the largest security coordinator in the US (on the planet?) on one group’s needs. Wrong because it means those ICE agents who were ‘assisted’ by “ESA and other industry members” *could not have helped but to be biased against the modders*. In the article at the top, the poster seems to have been doing illegal things. But they took his XBox and 360. Why? In the post at the top the modder says “All the chips and relative parts were taken on the recommendation of the computer forensics guy who was to be doing the analysis on my things”. Was he part of the “technical assistance” which ESA provided? Ok, so here’s the scenario which most wiggs me out: a private citizen (ESA member) advises government agents with the ability to search and potentially seize another private citizen (modder)’s belongings. Maybe the ICE agents have special training in modding. Maybe they don’t. If they don’t, can’t you just see them following the advice of the ESA member on what to take? Sounds a bit like theft to me.
Industry Points of Contact:

General photos and video of the gaming products and circumvention devices and data detailing the impact of counterfeiting and piracy on the industry may be available by contacting industry representatives.

* Entertainment Software Association: Dan Hewitt, 202-223-2400, dhewitt@theesa.com
* U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Katie Wilson, (202) 463-5375 (general impact of counterfeiting and piracy on U.S. industry)
* Nintendo: Eileen Tanner, 509-628-1993, etanner@golinharris.com Microsoft: Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, 503-443-7070

//Again notice the deferral to industry specialists.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of five integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

//and we finish with national security. Goodnight.

Feeling Elephants: the title explained. Also, a selection of tech vocabulary–not for the non-geeky!

This summer I had my first non-family non-babysitting actually-being-paid-with-money kind of job. One of the things I realized is that when I am learning about something new (jbpm (java business process management), java, whatever) I spend a great deal of time getting detailed knowloedge of only one aspect of it. This reminded me of the old story about the blind men and the elephant. See below for pretty shiny hyperlinks.

I wasted a good part of my day with this. It is my vocabulary list for my job, as a software developer. I found dozens of definitions for each of these so please tell me if I just described the elephant’s tail in detail but missed it’s trunk or foot. For an explanation of this metaphor see here.

For a less clinical description, see here.

These are a mix of jargon I knew and jargon I’m learning. Most people don’t care what DSL stands for, but knowing the technical definition helps a true understanding.

And now, for the tech vocab:

CVS: Concurrent Versioning System. CVS is an open source version control and collaboration system.

component: [Definition quoted from the CCA Forum] A component is a software object, meant to interact with other components, encapsulating certain functionality or a set of functionalities. A component has a clearly defined interface and conforms to a prescribed behavior common to all components within an architecture. Multiple components may be composed to build other components.

beans: A collection of Java components

ide: Integrated Development Environment.

jbpm: java business process management

server: A process that runs on a host that relays information to a client upon the client sending it a request. Servers come in many forms: application servers, web servers, database servers, and so forth. All IP-based servers can be load balanced. See Web Server.

SDR: Stanford Digital Repository

execute: To perform a data processing operation described by an instruction or a program.

sql: Structured Query Language (SQL), pronounced “sequel”, is a language that provides an interface to relational database systems. It was developed by IBM in the 1970s for use in System R. SQL is a de facto standard, as well as an ISO and ANSI standard.

CGI: common gateway interface

Perl:(Short for Practical Extraction and Report Language), is a programming language specifically designed for processing text, and because of this trait is one of the most popular languages for writing CGI scripts. note from me: this is acutally wrong. On more research I found that Perl was just a name the creator came up with and liked and then defined. go figure.

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

Schema: A schema is the set of objects (tables, views, indexes, etc) belonging to an account. It is often used as another way to refer to an Oracle account. The CREATE SCHEMA statement lets one specify (in a single SQL statement) all data and privilege definitions for a new schema. One can also add definitions to the schema later using DDL statements.

XML or here: (eXtensible Markup Language) A widely used system for defining data formats. XML provides a very rich system to define complex documents and data structures such as invoices, molecular data, news feeds, glossaries, inventory descriptions, real estate properties, etc. As long as a programmer has the XML definition for a collection of data (often called a “schema”) then they can create a program to reliably process any data formatted according to those rules. Or: Extensible markup language; a markup language for documents and data structures such as invoices, molecular data, news feeds, glossaries, inventory descriptions, real estate properties, etc. As long as a programmer has the XML definition for a collection of data (often called a “schema”) then they can create a program to reliably process any data formatted according to those rules.

JMX: Java Management Extensions or JMX is a Java technology that supplies tools for managing and monitoring applications, system objects, devices (e.g. printers) and service oriented networks. An interesting detail of the API is that classes can be dynamically constructed and changed.

API or here: Application Programming Interface. In the world of software, APIs are structured abstraction layers between the gory details of an individual application, operating system or hardware item and the world outside that software or hardware. Or: A formalized set of software calls and routines that can be referenced by an application program in order to access supporting system or network services.

UI: User Interface. The user interface of a program is the part of it with which a user (person) interacts, such as a menu, button or toolbar. Mozilla’s user interface is often referred to as the Chrome.

DIP: Dissemination Information Package-the means by with information in a digital archive is conveyed to a user of the archive. The term comes from the Open Archives Information System model.

DSL: Digital Subscriber Line is a technology for bringing high-bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines. A DSL line can carry both data and voice signals and the data part of the line is continuously connected.

bre: business rules engine

lisp or here: (which stands for “LISt Processing”) is a programming language oriented towards functional programming. Its prominent features include prefix-notation syntax, dynamic typing (variables are type-neutral, but values have implicit type), and the ability to treat source code as first-class objects. Or: List Processing Language — A high-level computer language invented by Professor John McCarthy in 1961 to support research into computer based logic, logical reasoning, and artificial intelligence. It was the first symbolic (as opposed to numeric) computer processing language.

LAS: Log ASCII Standard (file format)

Stub: A temporary implementaion of part of a program for debugging purposes.

jpeg2000: JPEG 2000 is a wavelet-based image compression standard. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard. The usual file extension is .jp2.

pointers: In computer science, a pointer is a programming language datatype whose value is used to refer to (”points to”) another value stored elsewhere in the computer memory. Obtaining the value that a pointer refers to is called dereferencing the pointer. A pointer is a simple implementation of the general reference datatype, although it is quite different from the facility referred to as a reference in C++.

metadata: Data about other data, commonly divided into descriptive metadata such as bibliographic information, structural metadata about formats and structures, and administrative metadata, which is used to manage information.

mets: a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata about objects within a digital library, expressed using XML. METS is being developed by the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and is maintained by the Library of Congress.

abstraction: In computer science, abstraction is a mechanism and practice to reduce and factor out details so that one can focus on few concepts at a time. It is by analogy with abstraction in mathematics. The mathematical technique of abstraction begins with mathematical definitions; this has the fortunate effect of finessing some of the vexing philosophical issues of abstraction.

EDI: (Electronic Data Interchange) This is a set of computer interchange standards for business documents such as invoices, bills, and purchase orders. or here. The inter-organizational, computer-to-computer exchange of structured information in a standard, machine-processable format.

mapping: A process of matching a Client to a specific Console system, so that it cannot be controlled by another Console system with unauthorized access.
or here. It is the association of data field contents from an internal computer system to the field contents in the EDI standard being used. The same mapping takes place in reverse during the receipt of an EDI document.

relational database: (1) A data structure organized so that it is perceived by its users as a collection of tables. (2) A database that is organized and accessed according to relations. T. A relational database has the flexibility to generate new tables from existing records that meet specified criteria.

domain model: “The domain model should serve as a unified, definitive source of reference when ambiguities arise in the analysis of problems or later during the implementation of reusable components, a repository of the shared knowledge for teaching and communications, and a specification to the implementer of reusable components. …

Object-oriented: Programming languages and techniques where data carries with itself the “methods” (also known as “functions”) used to handle that data. An OO programmer, for instance, can write a statement such as “object.print()” without having to be concerned about what kind of object will be involved at “run time” or what its printing method is. Object-oriented code is both more flexible and more organized, so it is far easier to write, read, and change than procedural code. …

Hibernate or here: Hibernate is an Object-relational mapping (ORM) solution for the Java language. It is free, open source software that is distributed under the LGPL. Hibernate was developed by a team of Java software developers around the world. It provides an easy to use framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database.

JMX: Java Management Extensions or JMX is a Java technology that supplies tools for managing and monitoring applications, system objects, devices (e.g. printers) and service oriented networks. An interesting detail of the API is that classes can be dynamically constructed and changed.

dtd: Document Type Definition file that specifies how elements inside an XML document should relate to each other. It provides “grammar” rules for an XML document and each of its elements. DLESE’s metadata records are XML documents.
www.dlese.org/documents/glossary.html

tei: A project to represent texts in digital form, emphasizing the needs of humanities scholars. Also the DTD used by the program.
www.cs.cornell.edu/wya/DigLib/MS1999/glossary.html

Sandbox: A network or series of networks that are not connected to other networks.
www.krollontrack.com/legalresources/glossary.asp

QC: Quality Control The regulatory process through which we measure actual performance, compare it with standards, and act on the difference. Also sometimes used to distinguish inspection and test activities from other quality activities (see QA: Quality Assurance).

Observer pattern: The observer pattern is a design pattern used in computer programming to observe the state of an object in a program.

beanshellasynchronous: A type of two-way communication that occurs with a time delay, allowing participants to respond at their own convenience. Literally not synchronous, in other words, not at the same time. Example of an application of asynchronous communication is electronic bulletin board.

beanshell: BeanShell is a Java scripting language, invented by Pat Niemeyer. It runs in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and utilizes Java’s own syntax.