Local Insanity

Now that I’ve had Leopard for a while I think I’ve settled the dispute between Time Machine and File Vault. Time Machine won out.

The problem was that FileVault works by setting up an encrypted disk image that is mounted in the /Users directory, rather than /Volumes where things you mount yourself (like DMGs) go. This allows you to pretty much transparently interact with your files, blissfully unaware that they’re being encrypted/decrypted on the fly, however to Time Machine your whole home folder is just one file. So while I’ve heard something about being able to access stuff by digging around in the bowels of the directory structure that Time Machine sets up on the external hard drive, you can’t use Finder’s interactive file restore system, making it much less useful IMO. After all, backup is an old problem that has solutions, but the whole point of Time Machine is to make it easy enough to actually use.

So my solution was to instead put everything that I wanted encrypted into an actual encrypted disk image that I just mount myself. This also had the benefit of slightly speeding up my system, especially login.

I was a little disappointed by Apple’s decreasing the price of the iPhone by $200 so shortly after it came out. That’s 33% off, quite a big discount and, for some early iPhone adopters, a slap in the face. I felt like this: I was willing to pay for it at the full price, and I did — lowering the price doesn’t invalidate my decision. And so I was prepared to continue to enthusiastically support Apple, but maybe adding the caveat that you really ought to do your homework before you buy, and even then you might get screwed.

But not now. Apple has decided to give every iPhone owner $100 back. Apple rocks and I’m glad they chose to do right by their early adopters. Thanks guys.

I saw an article in the NY Times today that said NBC would be removing its content from the iTunes Store, which includes shows such as Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and The Office. I sent an email to their black hole of a customer service dept. Here’s hoping it has some effect. Reprinted here:

I just read about NBC’s decision to remove its content from the iTunes Store when the contract with Apple is up. While I respect NBC’s right to choose how to distribute their content, this decision has removed the most convenient way for me to watch the shows that I used to download on iTunes: Battlestar Galactica and Heroes.

If these shows had not been available on iTunes I never would have started watching them and it’s likely that if they disappear I will stop watching them as the alternatives - watching them as aired on TV, watching them on NBC’s website, or downloading them illegally via torrents - are not acceptable to me. I should also say that the latter alternative, torrents, is the closest to the iTunes experience for me and thus is the most likely one for me to engage in.

All that to say that I hope you can overcome whatever obstacles to placing the content on iTunes you encountered and to remind you not to be greedy, as the existing agreement yielded prices that were reasonable for me and I believe that if your plans for increased prices, video bundling, or other complications were allowed by Apple that you would lose me as a customer as surely as you will by removing your content. Thanks for listening.

Update: Another letter has appeared on iLounge — it’s a better read than mine.

So apparently those articles I’ve read online were real: you can fly without an ID as long as you’re upfront about it. It may even help to utter the magic word “selectee”, which apparently means that you’re volunteering for additional screening. For reference this was on Southwest with one checked bag.

Dear Apple,

You win, and five minutes with the iPhone was all it took. Please accept the enclosed $600 along with my appreciation for kicking the mobile phone world squarely in the nuts.

Sincerely, Brian Donovan

I’ve started watching some of the YouTube videos featuring Ron Paul, a presidential candidate for the 2008 elections. He is, amazingly, very much in the image of what I’d like for a President - or any politician for that matter - to be: straight-talking, honest, and intelligent. That he and I agree on several issues is a nice bonus.

One thing that he seems to discuss frequently is money, our monetary system, the Federal Reserve, etc. He, like Ayn Rand, claims that “if you study monetary history throughout thousands of years, you will find out that paper money has been tried many, many times and it never succeeds - it always ends badly” (source, 8:50). He advocates a gold-backed monetary system, or what Ayn Rand calls a system based on an “objective value”.

Here’s the part I don’t get: why gold? Gold is not an end in itself any more than paper (or even digital) money is and requires the same faith that there exists a person who will exchange it for the good or service that you wish to obtain. Rand’s description of the ideal currency sheds some light on this. I believe she calls it an objective value because gold has intrinsic usefulness, but still only for one who can use it. Therefore a hunk of gold is useful for a) making various instruments and scientific equipment and b) making jewelry. You cannot eat it, it cannot build you a house, and you cannot sleep on it.

And so I must ask: How is it better than paper (or bits) for the average person? How does it safeguard my wealth in a way that paper money cannot? This brings me to another quality of gold which might play an even larger role than any inherent utility: its scarcity. If we allow gold to become a claim on the product of another man’s effort, it is possible that I could produce more of this claim by mining gold - this is exactly why a seashell currency on the coast doesn’t work: they’re relatively plentiful and require little effort to obtain - but gold is hard to find and hard to obtain once found. I think that what Ron Paul and others are saying is that our paper money system is just like the seashell-based economy, only worse because we actually print the money at will.

Nevertheless, I don’t understand how such an economy can move rapidly. If there is a finite amount of gold, there is a finite amount of wealth, right? Not according to Rand, who was nonetheless in favor of completely abolishing paper currency. How do I reconcile this apparent contradiction? Which premise have I left unchecked?

UPDATE: I’ve been listening to What Has Government Done to Our Money?, and in the first few chapters the major takeaway for me is that money must have been a commodity. This is an interesting assertion and makes sense when one thinks about the development of a society from a barter society to a monetary society, but it begs the question: what commodity backs our money now? It’s not gold, at least not completely. It’s not silver. One suggestion is that it is the ability of the government to tax the population, and that sounds scary.

So I hopped on the Tumblr bandwagon a while ago, but I didn’t tell anyone. I was waiting to see whether I’d be able to fit this particular bandwagon into my workflow, and I think I have. I’ll start posting short stuff I find interesting or amusing on my tumblelog, and continue using this blog for my own writing.

Someone cracked HD-DVD, finding the particular hex key used to defeat the encryption. When the key was posted on Digg they took it down — presumably in response to a lawsuit or a cease and desist from the MPAA. In response Digg’s users posted tons of stories all linking to or containing the key (more).

While I fully believe that content owners should be able to make money from their content, I think that the steps they’ve taken to restrict the use of the content is absurd. Very recently a subset of the music on the iTunes Store was made available at higher quality and without DRM. That’s a huge step forward, in my opinion.

To the RIAA/MPAA: People don’t want to be pirates, they want convenience — and DRM is not convenient. Yes, you will lose some sales to piracy, but your real customers will appreciate not being treated as criminals.

Oh, and here’s the key: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. If you’d like to protest the MPAA’s stupidity in trying to control this key and show your support for Digg, who is now going to fight it, I suggest you put the code somewhere. Let’s make it ubiquitous! I’m using it as my AIM status message.

Ze, it’s been a fun year. I found you a couple months in to my previous job and brought some necessary good humor to that time in my life. Since then you’ve provided many an inside joke, a song to hum, and a memory to laugh at as I walk down the street and realize I’m going the wrong way.

Now you leave as I’m getting into the swing of my new place, leaving it to us to educate those around us who glare when we talk about Giant Babies, Earth Sandwiches, and Sports Racers. I wish you well in whatever you choose to do, and if you ever feel like doing an encore, you know where to find me.

I’ve been meaning to write some about what’s going on recently, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. The guys who stole my laptop have been caught! I had to go in to the police station to identify my stuff and the suspects. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good enough look at the guy to id him in the lineup, so I didn’t mark any particular person as the one. I don’t know what’s going on with the case, as I haven’t heard from the inspector since then — and they still have my stuff.

Next up is Attendio, which is going pretty well — always a lot of work to do. I’ve started working on a replacement parser for the search stuff using Ragel, which I’ll blog more about later. There were some extra tickets for the Cake concert at Bimbo’s last weekend, so I got to go. It was pretty cool, and it was interesting to actually see Cake live — the lead singer doesn’t look quite like I expected, though I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting.

The apartment hunt has been sort of stalled, with Jen’s place still looking like the best bet. I’ll probably be deciding pretty soon.

I rented six movies the other day:

• The Departed: Great movie, keeps you on your toes
• The Science of Sleep: Makes you feel very dreamy
• A Scanner Darkly: Trippy, goes a long way without much plot
• Stranger than Fiction: Funny, yet somewhat serious
• Babel: Very serious, very heavy — interesting points made and good cinematography
• Lady in the Water: Takes a while to get to the point, kinda dull

It’s too bad the movies weren’t better, but oh well. I got my bike back up a few weeks ago, and have been using it to get around a little bit, though BART is still my primary mode of transportation.