Last night Scooter and Leslie stopped by for a few hours. We played some video games, namely Goldeneye (yay!) and Mario Kart 64. Sadly for them, I did, in fact, conquer. Which is largely attributable to the fact that I have / had no life and got really good at video games. All in all, it was good to see them both again.

On the flip side, what the heck is up with the weather? 50 degrees yesterday. Then we have a thunder storm, lightning, hail, and a freaking tornado touch down. As if insanity hadn’t begun to ensue, the weather decides to go ballistic on us and turn freaking cold. C-O-L-D. And the winds were trying to rip the house to pieces. And now it’s about 11 outside, with possible wind chills of -15. 50 to -15. What the deuce??

If you haven’t noticed yet, I have changed my relationship status on Facebook to single. Some of you might not find that too surprising, and others of you probably had no idea. So allow me to explain (at least my angle) the situation.

Becky and I haven’t been connecting very well. That mostly is due to the fact that we are at two different places in our lives. She has a lot of things coming up, and it would make communication and spending time together extremely difficult. So we decided that to preserve the friendship, the best course of action would be to break off the romantic relationship.

I should also like to note that I didn’t make this decision because of any problem with her. Most of you have met her before, and think incredibly highly of her. And you should - she’s a wonderful woman. Unfortunately circumstance sometimes plays the trump card, and it seems that in this situation, that is what has happened.

So this weekend was fairly productive, I must say. Saturday I helped Marcus and Phil start remodeling Marcus’s bathroom. Unfortunately in the process we managed to mess up the water heater, but that also got fixed. Sunday we were able to finally (hopefully) set up the internet correctly, since our DSL modem is evil in hardware form. We are going to continue to get some stuff reorganized around the house as well, so we’re starting the process of getting that all figured out. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the whole house in place, organized, and cleaned up.

I also was able to do a lot of relaxing this weekend, which was good. I got to talk with a couple of good friends on the phone that I haven’t talked to in a while, and I went out to lunch with Austin and Linda on Sunday. Marcus and I hung out Saturday night, which was a good time as well.

Sadly, like all things, the weekend was doomed to come to a close. I really need to find a way to slow down the passage of time on the weekends, and accelerate it during the week. Or get rich, retire young, and do more beneficial things with my life. Anyone care to donate to that fund?

Melting the darkness a few inches at a time
Red spills over the horizon, thawing the frigid black
Into gentle hues of blue, leaving a burning trail of orange

Sitting at my new location, I can see the eastern sky. I’m watching the sun gather momentum as it tries to climb over the horizon. I’m waiting for those first few drops of smoldering red to break the barrier and draw morning out of night. The cars are passing quickly, seemingly ignorant of this incredible thing that is happening all around them. There are a few clouds just above the horizon, and the hidden sun is painting them a variety of hues. A jet is passing through the clouds, leaving its white tail behind. The sun happily paints it a deepening red as it prepares to burst forth for a new day. The sky begins to turn blue, almost in eager anticipation for this glorious event. The world may not notice this sunrise, but the sky waits in quiet anticipation.

These first quiet moments of the morning seem infused with contemplative thoughts, which are lost to the maddening rush of the day. Perhaps watching the sunrise each morning would give a better perspective on things. Each new day brings with it its own problems, but also its own joys and blessings. And while the world may seem so dark so many times, there is always a time when the light will melt away the darkness - and that time is a beautiful thing.

Molten gold begins to spill over the horizon - brilliantly bursting forth to illuminate a new day. Sunrise.

Wikipedia has a fairly extensive page on what DRM is. Essentially (for those of you too lazy to read the wiki page) DRM is a way to limit the uses of digital media to certain programs or hardware. For example, if I purchase a song from the internet, I may only be allowed to play that song through the software I purchased it from. DRM is the bane of all things digital. It is bloat, it is overhead, it is the digital shackles that constrains the content you and I have legally purchased to be used in limited settings and in awkward ways.

Content providers will claim that DRM empowers the users, such as noted by Microsoft itself. The claim is that DRM enables the user by making it easier to access and play content. Boing boing notes a very interesting article that discusses a letter from a DRM maker. I urge you to read this article as it highlights the common arguments that are presented by DRM providers as well as pointing out the flaws in it.

Highlighting a few of the flaws with DRM: first is the concept of the “analog hole“. When you store the file on your computer, it is in digital format. In this format it can be locked down by DRM. However, as soon as you start to play the music or video, it must be transferred to analog at some point (i.e. what you hear or what you see). The problem with DRM is that in this analog state it can be easily recorded and redistributed.

Second, think of DRM as a lock and key. The DRM is the lock. You, as the user, must provide a key to use this software. This is true as well for DVDs. For a side rant, I purchased a computer DVD player. I purchased a DVD. I should now be able to legally play that DVD on that DVD player, should I not? The actual answer is NO. I shouldn’t. I also need to have software that has paid to legally “unlock” the content on the DVD. This is only available through software that you have to pay for (or software that is free, yes, free, but is illegal here in the United States. Curse you DMCA, curse you).

But back to the lock and key concept. For the user to legally play the locked content, the DRM providers must give the user the key at some level. Do you see the flaw here? They try their best to hide the key. The problem is that by providing the key to the end user (which you must do to allow the user to play the content), you’ve essentially given them the ability to unlock any of that content. They only need to look for the key hard enough (which happens all of the time!).

Content providers have gone too far with DRM. If you don’t believe me, have you heard of Sony’s rootkit fiasco? If not, look here, here, here, here, here, or Google for “Sony Rootkit”. Use of such dangerous software tracking techniques shows an almost complete disdain, distrust and contempt for their users. This is a prime example of how DRM use is tied to the assumption that you, as the user, will pirate their digital goods.

MLB had a major problem with this as well. They changed their servers in 2007 from the 2006 servers, effectively making all of the pre-2007 DRM-laden videos unusable. Then, they tried to tell many customers that they would have to repurchase the previously downloaded content. Since the problem may not be readily obvious, allow me to explain. If you need to connect to a remote computer every single time that you want to view the content that you legally purchased, your viewing ability is contingent upon that computer being online at the time. In other words, if you bought video A from company B, and company B goes under, your DRM-laden video A that requires you to verify with company B is now useless. Think of it as a DVD that you bought in a store. You try to play it one day only to find that it can’t play because the store that you bought it at went out of business, and as such your content is no longer valid.

The issue with DRM is this: it assumes that you will be a thief and either steal the content, or distribute the content. It does nothing to empower the end user. It cripples the content, cripples access to the content, makes the end user jump through countless hoops just to use the content, and adds extra overhead. Plus, as DRM is constantly being cracked by hackers, the companies have to continually develop new DRM schemes. I have no data to look at, but I wonder how much money they would save if they removed DRM in the first place.

DRM is intended to stop pirates and hackers. The problem is that pirates and hackers know how to get around DRM. Instead, DRM ultimately ends up punishing legitimate users who only want to play their content that they legally bought and own when they want, where they want, and how they want. Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to think that you couldn’t play a DVD on any DVD player you wanted, in any house, at any time? If that seems ridiculous to you, why would you want to have a video or song that you can only play on x number of computers if y conditions are met?