The Daily Goob

I had my last exam today which means that even though school doesn’t officially end until Monday, I’m now done with my first year at UTD. I don’t want to sy that it’s gone by fast, but looking back it is surprising that August doesn’t seem as long ago as it should. It will be nice to have more than three full months off, however (even if moving is included in that time frame).

After jumping through what seemed to be way too many hoops, I finally registered for an IS class that will allow me to participate in the Far Future Conflict Game course in the fall. On Wednesday I went to see the kind of stuff that they’ve been working on, and overall it sounds like it’ll be extremely cool and fun. The problem arose from that additional course putting me over 18 hours (wouldn’t have been a issue if there wasn’t the stupid Physics lab), but it all worked out fine after I spent a good 20 minutes walking back and forth between 3 different buildings.

This past week I’ve gotten back into FFXI, so not sure if I’m going to reactivate WoW this summer or not. I haven’t even begun to get into everything that either game has to offer, but just from reading separate things on each of the games, it appears that FFXI has much more “diversity” at higher levels than WoW. Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll see.

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I realized this morning that I never posted the solution yesterday to the brain teaser, and as the title says, I doubt anyone was really waiting for it.

The answer: there is no missing dollar. All $30 is accounted for; the manager has $25, the bellboy has $2, and the men have the remaining $3. The problem arises from how the money is laid out at the end of the brain teaser. Of the $27 the men paid, $25 is with the manager and the other $2 is with the bellboy. Therefore, adding in the $2 the bellboy has again is a mistake since it is already counted in the $27.

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Three people check into a hotel. They pay $30 to the manager and go to their room. The manager finds out that the room rate is $25 and gives $5 to the bellboy to return. On the way to the room the bellboy reasons that $5 would be difficult to share among three people so he pockets $2 and gives $1 to each person. Now each person paid $10 and got back $1. So they paid $9 each, totaling $27. The bellboy has $2, totaling $29. Where is the remaining dollar?

Someone asked me this before the baseball game today claiming it was an “unsolvable problem”, and I very quickly shot that statement down by proving that there was no missing dollar. Just to give me a reason to post tomorrow I’ll hold off on giving the answer, but it’s really not all that hard when you sit and think it through.

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Tech-minded people always have one thing that can be complained about: the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or DMCA. First off, let’s establish where I stand on the issue. As a future producer of digital media, I respect the fact that copyrights need to be honored and enforced, and DRM is a solution to go about doing this. As a both current and future consumer, I want to be able to (privately) do what I wish with the content that I buy, including but not limited to: making backup copies, copying media for remote access over a home network, and transferring copies to other devices (PMPs) for personal use. At least those three things I believe fall into the realm of “fair use”, meaning there should be no legal issues for me to accomplish those goals. Enter the roadblock, the DMCA.

Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems

(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

…

(3) As used in this subsection–

(A) to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner

The effects of this?

Example 1: Ripping DVDs, which are encrypted via CSS, to a hard drive is not permitted since doing so “decrypt[s] an encrypted work…without the authority of the copyright owner”. My personal thoughts? Nice intention, but poor execution. I personally have no moral/ethical issues with using solutions to copy my legally purchased DVDs onto my own computer for personal use. (Note: I did not just admit whether or not I actually do it.) I do have issues, however, with people renting movies and copying them as I don’t believe that is covered by “fair use”.

Example 2: Purchasing music/videos from places such as iTMS, MSN Music, SonicStage, etc. that are DRMed cannot legally have their DRM stripped. This I’m torn on, since if the DRM allowed users to do what they wished (within reason) with the content, there would be little need to srtip it except for those who are completely against DRM or wanted to do something not permitted. The problem here is that not all forms of DRM are compatible with each other and not every device supports all flavors of DRM. Luckily for music there’s an easy out: burn the songs onto a CD (which esentially all music store DRMs will allow), and then just rip it back onto your computer. Videos are tricker since this “loophole” doesn’t exist, but the demand isn’t to a critical enough mass yet that cracks are widespread (although some do exist). Again, my content that I paid for, I should be able to use it as I wish on the devices that I want to.

So, what can be done? The biggest thing is probably the Digital Media Consumers’ Right Act (DMCRA) which has been introduced as a bill twice. That appears to take care of both of the examples outlined above, and just skimming through the summary I believe would address many of the issues people have with DRM and the DMCA. Even from the producer/copyright holder side, I don’t think I would be opposed to this as it still doesn’t legalize piracy, and people are going to crack the DRM anyway. Make your consumers happy, and they’re more likely to support you and continue to do business with you. Screw them over, and…well, you’d be Sony. ;)

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Since I want to stall working on my design document for just a little while longer, I figured I’d make a blog post. Instead of droning on about my life (and since it usually doesn’t suck, that makes my posts kina uninteresting), I figured I might actually start something where I make every post actually have some substance. You be the judge whether I accomplish that or not.

It’s not necessarily directly tied to moving, but within the next year (hopefully sooner) I get to set up a home media network for us. Aside from this just being a cool thing in itself, I also get to spend lots of money in the process (always fun). So, this is how I envision everything working if the stars and planets align correctly and the media gods look favorably on me:

Cable will come into our house from Comcast and at least in one location feed into either a Tivo Series 3 or a Media Center PC (with a Cablecard slot to record all channels). On either one of those devices, shows will get recorded automagically and I hopefully won’t have to resort to taping up to 4 shows a week anymore on VHS tapes. If using a Tivo, the files will be moved over to a PC and from there freed of their DRM; if a HTPC, then the files just need to be stripped of their DRM. These TV shows will then be transferred (if necessary) over to an always on, network storage drive where they can be accessed throughout the rest of the house. DVD rips will also be stored in this same location. From there, andy PC in the house will be able to access and watch the files. The next step is getting a device that can be hooked up to at least the most frequently used TVs that can stream this video also (other TVs wouls just have a direct cable hookup). If stored on a XP-based computer, then most MCE devices should do the trick (a 360 for my room, and then other devices for probably at least our media room and my parents’ room). Orb would also be a great addition here since it could then stream over the internet so I could watch stuff at UTD, my dad wouls have access when he’s traveling, etc. If going the Linux route, then compatibily becomes slightly more complicated. Setting up (small) Linux computers with MythTV or something would be an option (but one I’d rather avoid), so seeing if there was a way to get MCE compatibility would be the first step (and finding an Orb alternative since Orb is Windows only). Since most of this would be wireless, upgrading out network would also be in order (currently we just have 802.11b, but hopefully 802.11n will be finalized and relatively cheap by the time this gets implemented). The total cost to get all this done. Well, a HTPC costs more initially than the Tivo (at least the Series 2 currently out), but there’s no recurring subscription fee. Leaving out my 360 since I’ll be getting that in a few months anyway, I’d put the cap somewhere around $1250. Yeah, not the cheapest project in the world, but I think it’s one of those things where you don’t really understand how useful it’d be until you actually start to live with and use it.

Also, the second anniversary of this blog happens to be one month from today (I promise I didn’t plan this, it just happened :) ). This also means I have one month to make 5 more posts to keep at the same pace I did for the first year (I made 90 the first year, and this is post 175). If I can’t do that…well, I guess I’m just more pathetic than we all thought.

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The first part of this post should have been made last Saturday or Sunday. I’ll let this speak for itself though:

Yes, that would be our state ring :). I have a few more pics of it (including the sides) up on my Flickr account. That would be the “up” mentioned in the title.

As for the “downs”, we’ve (possibly) sold our house twice. Now, before anyone goes arguing that that’s impossible, the first contract was rescinded at the end of last week, and there’s a new one pending right now. This equates to us most likely moving by the end of June, something that I know is inevitable, but I also know I won’t enjoy. Sure, there are a few good things which will come out of it (support from my dad for setting up some kind of a home media network, likely living closer to UTD, etc.), but if it were up to me, we’d stay in HP.

The other “ups” are pretty minor (99 on a physics test and then getting my apartment situation for next year taken care of), so I think that should do for a while as far as blog updates go. Seen a few movies recently, but I’ll work on mini-reviews for those later. Now it’s time to go finish up physics HW and devote time to writing my 40+ page design document — /joy.

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