Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave a talk about digital rights management (DRM) at Microsoft Research a couple of weeks ago. It is a very good talk. He explains why DRM systems don’t work, are bad for society, are bad for business, are bad for artists, and are a bad business move for Microsoft. Not bad for one talk…

I have spent much of the evening blogging when I should have been cleaning off my desk, paying bills, and doing some light work. Oh well, it was fun for me. I hope you enjoyed it, too!

To give you some background on my new aquarium, I have been talking about setting up an aquarium since shortly after we moved. My plan was to set one up in my office first, and then set one up at home later. Becky got tired of me talking about it and never doing anything about it, though, and got me a 20 gallon extra high tank for our anniversary. She set it up in the island paradise bathroom that she was decorating for me. I would still like to setup that office aquarium, too. Maybe for Christmas or my birthday…

(Sorry that some of the pictures are dark. The flash produces too much glare off the glass surfaces in the room, and I was anxious to get the post up, so I didn’t want to wait for a sunny day to bring in adequate light through the window. The overhead lights are incandescant, which would give the room an orange glow. So, that just leaves us with the florescent bulb in the fish tank – not really adequate for general photography.)

Short of having an ocean view out the window, I must say that this is one of the finest views from the loo that a person could hope to have.

And, in case we forget what we’re after, we have this handy treasure map to guide us right into Nassau.

One of my favorite details in the room is the parrot. The towel bar is absurdly close to the surface below, making it useless for towels. So, we might as well use it for something.

Finally, I failed to mention in my previous post that in addition to the tropical island themes, we also have some Jimmy Buffett references sprinkled throughout. I knew I left that salt shaker somewhere…

Above the right end of the salt shaker, you see one of the new residents of the tank. At the moment, the only residents are four zebra danios. They are quite twitchy and difficult to photograph, as you can see here. I won’t add anything else until the tank has cycled in 4-8 weeks. (“Cycling the tank” means allowing the beneficial bacteria time to setup shop in the biological filter, converting the ammonia created by fish metabolism into nitrite which is then converted into less harmful nitrate. There is a good site on setting up an aquarium and cycling it here.) After the tank has cycled, I’ll probably add a couple more zebras, a few tetras, and maybe one or two other things. We’ll see!

When I have a poor customer experience with a large corporation, I like to complain here. Part of me thinks that maybe some upper manager will be trolling the web one day and will come upon my rant. If not, I hope that maybe I can save some poor soul some trouble. At the least, though, I get my rant off of my chest, and I can go about my business. Perhaps it would be more productive to write the company a letter, but I doubt it.

I have been a regular customer of UPS for my overnight package needs for some time. I have a web account setup and linked to my credit card, and I keep a supply of UPS Letter envelopes in my office desk drawer. If I need to overnight something, I punch up the UPS website, enter the shipment information, and print my label and receipt. There is a drop box down two flights from my office. It is very convenient.

Recently, however, I have had occasion to send several packages to the same individual. The address to which she asks me to send packages is a room on the 4th floor of her building. It is a mail room, and someone is sitting there throughout the business day who signs for packages and puts them in mailboxes. So, I have addressed my overnight packages to the 4th floor room. My addressee’s office, though, is on the 11th floor. The last two times I have sent a UPS letter, I have gotten an email from UPS a couple of weeks later notifying me that they were charging my credit card an additional $10 for an address correction because they delivered to the 11th floor. Each time, I call and I complain, and they take the charge off of my card, but the whole process takes about 15 minutes. It is 15 minutes, though, that I shouldn’t have to take because the delivery person failed to do what I asked.

Now, if I were consulting, I would bill at least $100/hour, which raises the question of whether or not it is really worth my time to make a 15 minute phone call to get my $10 back every time this happens. Yet, my inner cynic is betting that UPS is counting on me not to call so that they can pocket an extra $10, and that is just wrong. I’m not sure what to do about it, though, as other delivery services are far less convenient. Thus, I give the world this rant.

…pictures of puppies.

The NY Times Magazine today has a very interesting interview with President Reagan’s son.

I really wanted to link to this editorial in the NY Times, but now it, too, is expired. Let me give you the short version from memory, though.

The editorial noted that the procedures used to certify and secure electronic voting machines are far less robust than those used to certify electronic gambling machines in Nevada. Gambling machine code must be submited to the gaming commission, who then arranges to certify the code. (That is, to ensure that the machines treat players fairly.) Any changes, no matter how small, must also be submitted to the gaming commission, and any bugs discovered must be reported. The gaming commission also goes around to casinos performing spot checks to insure that the binary code loaded on the machines is identical to the code which was certified.

Contrast this to electronic voting machines. The companies who manufacture them have refused to release the code, claiming that it is a trade secret. Well, so is the code for electronic gaming machines, but if you want to play in Nevada, that’s just the price you pay. (Furthermore, I don’t think the gaming commission releases the code to the rest of the world – just to those doing the certification.) The voting machine code is certified by companies which are hired by the companies who make the machines. This is like allowing construction companies to hire their own building inspectors, and it definitely calls into question the certification process itself. Finally, voting machine companies are patching and fixing bugs well after their code has been certified – one of the things that got Diebold in trouble in California – a practice that completely nullifies the effect of certification. (But seemed to be necessary in many cases to get the buggy machines to even work!)

So, my preference would be for electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail to allow machines to be audited after the fact. Barring that, though, let’s at least subject them to the same rigors faced by Las Vegas gambling machines…