High time to switch back to a weblog hosted on my own web site.

It is still called Concern.

Big news! My proposal was accepted for Google's Summer of Code!

OK, Livejournal gets an F minus in usability for not actually letting me edit the “last entry” that I posted, because I want to run a spellchecker over the entry. It keeps showing me the Negativland entry, that I posted before I went out a-drinkin'.

I mean, the entry is “posted” enough such that I can see it in my own page, but not enough such that it the most recent entry I've posted? What, exactly, is the fuck?

I was using MATLAB and Emacs earlier today, copying some results from the former into a LaTeX document I was preparing. I had the two windows of the two applications filling the screen, such that I could see the values in MATLAB that I needed to copy into my document, and it occured to me that this kind of thing is something I do often — not just being able to see two windows at once, but creating a little one-off system where I can fairly mechanically perform a task, but nonetheless do the task manually. I find it's a little short-term memory trick: you memorize a simple set of operations (like type three digits; type space-ampersand-space; repeat) and do them fairly mindlessly but quickly.

In the absense of perfect usability — which I'll define as “do what I mean, every time,” this seems like a good compromise. That is, you set up your system such that even if you can't do exactly what the user wants automatically, you allow the user to do what he needs, on his own. Adapting to a very simple repetitive task, especially one that you create yourself, is probably pretty easy for people to do. Taking advantage of that is a hallmark of good usability.

A nice interview with Negativland's Mark Hosler. There are some other cool videos about Negativland on the site, too.

Also, the internet is creepy: David Brom's inmate page. Brom was the guy who murdered his family with an axe, and which incident Negativland wrote a press release about, saying that the cause of the murder was their song, Christianity is Stupid. The picture of Brom is teh creepy; the smile on his face really does say “my entire life is now fucked.”

Wherein I complain more about other free software hackers, and post some code.

I was kinda considering “renaming” myself, so I'd be C. Scott Marshall. I like the name Scott better, and it seems like it's easier for people to hear when I tell it to them.

What do you think?

I really do wish that you cared for me.

I really dig this band. It's mostly piano, drums, and vocals in a punk/caberet motif, but it's energetic and smartly written. Their self-titled album is great; I'd say half the songs are stellar, and the rest are really listenable. Their new album seems to be about the same deal, at least on my initial listenings — about half the songs really catch me immediately (I like “Sex Changes,” “Backstabber,” “My Alcoholic Friends,” and “Shores of California”) and the rest are enjoyable, but not all that memorable.

I am extremely proud that I had reason to leave myself this note on my computer: “make goatseagate logo.”

I've traveled about 2,477,080 miles in a circle, thusfar.

This is an idea: create a checklist of what you actually did this weekend, and post it to your weblog.

Saturday:

• Sleep until noon.
• Fix coffee, fried eggs, grits.</p>
• Try to work on homework on projective geometry.
• Listen to podcast.
• Listen to podcast.
• Go for a walk along the shore.
• Prepare soup. Eat soup.
• Prepare salad. Eat salad.
• Go out and see Inside Man.
• Get violent, loud, and extended flatulence and diarrhea.
• Watch Moog.
• Go to bed.

Sunday:

• Sleep until noon.
• Fix coffee, hard-boiled eggs.
• Attempt to watch Bittorrent-obtained copy of The Passion of the Crist, because it is Easter after all, fail to get subtitles to load.
• Continue to fail to get subtitles to load. Fail at searching Google for answers.
• Do dishes. Curse open source for never fucking working.
• Move subtitles file to correct directory. Watch first half of Passion.
• Do laundry.
• Eat bagel dog.
• Watch second half of Passion.
• Finish laundry.
• Try to work on homework on projective geometry. Get nothing done.
• Watch The Breakfast Club. Marvel at how the moral for the Ally Sheedy character is all wrong, and how the nerd never gets any. Enjoy 1980's music.
• Eat cereal, banana.
• Shave.
• Go to bar
• Drink Maker's and soda.
• Drink Red Hook.
• Drink Red Hook.
• Drink Red Hook.
• Return home; eat cheese, pretzels.
• Compose livejournal entry.

Stop fucking raining!!!

This is a good album. I haven't paid much attention to the Orb since Orblivion, which mostly sucked, and some of their stuff is too kooky even for me, but this really is the Orb staying true to what they did on The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and U.F.Orb, but updating their sound for this day and age we're in.

The album — besides having the best title ever — has Fehlmann's unmistakable signature all over; it is very reminiscent of his recent works like Visions of Blah and Lowflow, but it's saved from that good, but overly serious (and German) vibe by Dr. Alex Paterson's ceaseless nonsense that colors every Orb album.

This is probably my favorite Orb album, but that's mostly because the early stuff sounds dated now.

Some OS X hacking, wrote a screensaver: Interaggregate2 is basically a re-implementation of the “interaggregate” hack from xscreensaver.

Also, I'm playing with iWeb to make that page. It's kind of a yawn.

Yes, I only just found out about Leeroy Jenkins, because I am a dork, but still, it's really pretty funny.

Is that you get to truly experience how much static electricity you build up shifting in your chair.

I've been reading the draft of the new GPL, and it looks, to be blunt, extraordinarily bad. One of the most questionable parts of the current draft is in the first section, which is meant to guarantee your rights to access the source code:

Complete Corresponding Source Code also includes any encryption or authorization codes necessary to install and/or execute the source code of the work, perhaps modified by you, in the recommended or principal context of use, such that its functioning in all circumstances is identical to that of the work, except as altered by your modifications. It also includes any decryption codes necessary to access or unseal the work's output. Notwithstanding this, a code need not be included in cases where use of the work normally implies the user already has it.

I get that the point of this is to try and prevent people from doing “TiVo” things: using free software alongside non-free software in an embedded product, and digitally signing (or encrypting) software loads placed on such a system, to verify that the image is an “authorized” one before installing it.

Sure, professionally I have an interest in embedding free software into a non-free product. But ignoring that (especially since I don't like my job all that much), this clause is doing nothing more than building insecurity into all GPL-licensed software. As worded — and I think, in any wording — such a requirment nullifies any security one might want to build into a system based on free software, whether it has non-free parts or not.

The requirement is naïve, almost ludicrously naïve, to assume that users of cryptographic keys are benign agents; that is, either TiVo Inc updating the software on a box to fix bugs or add features, or the owner of a TiVo uploading his own custom image, to support Theora and Vorbis. Not, say, some attacker who is trying to illegaly obtain someone else's recorded TV shows, or (worse!) someone's personal information; nor someone gathering a legion of spam zombies.

I mean, to even the armchair cryptographer it's a ludicrous thing to say that you have to make cryptographic keys public. It's such a backwards position, I don't think the FSF has gotten any opinions from computer security professionals on this.

There may be a compromise. It is possible to, say, use a more elaborate PKI system such that the company that sells a product could grant the rightful owner of a device permission to modify it as he sees fit. That's one of the rightful applications of a PKI. I find this way of doing things pretty appealing, too; if I buy a piece of consumer electronics, I do want to be able to do whatever I want with it, including reprogramming it. But, that has to come at a price: I have to be given control without giving everyone else control.

That's a great solution, I think: it gives the individual power, while allowing the manufacturer to retain some control. The problem is that something like this is far too complicated for anyone to accomplish, and so it would put an undue burden on those trying to use free software.

The FSF is right about many things, but is also often fanatically wrong. I think that if they do strong-arm onerous requirements into the next version of the GPL, they'll be sounding their own death knell, because noöne will want to coöperate with them.

I don't usually mind Yoga people — it's their money they piss away on that bullshit, and it's usually silent — but tonight they've been playing some crap chants and drums. And it's the same song, for like two hours.

Hint: drums and “Na-Na-Na” are accents in good music. Just having them alone sounds like shit.

The problem with tags is that no one can agree on how to separate them: is it whitespace, or a comma?