BT et C

Seven things that probably you may not know about me

2009-01-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ow! Tagg'd!!! And also STTPYMNKAM is presently a Google whack.

Much as I hate anything chainletterary, this one's got too many hackers onboard to just ignore.

1. My full name is, sorta, Matthew Wayne Ignatius Crouch, hence "mwic" .. the Ignatius being my self-chosen baptismal name.

2. I gravitate toward ppl like Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel -- basically anyone who "doesn't have a chance."

3. I was a Young Republican once.

4. Like Luke, I converted to Catholicism after a nondemoninational upbringing.

5. I have three boys, named Thelonious Otto, Benjamin Britten, and Sasha Nicholas

6. I stopped reading novels for about 3 years, then started again this year.

7. As a general rule, I dislike eating anything sweet.

On to
1) Michael Mason bro-in-law and sympatico
2) Lorna Jane Mitchell, fellow hacker and as usual way ahead of me since she's already done her 7.
3) Justine Lam of RP fame
4) Mary Kate Rivet, my godmother
5) The great Melanie Bettinelli friend and sometime roomie
6) Tyler Fields coworker and facebooker
7) Josh Calvert. Nuff said.

---

And now the rules:
* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter

Can RP people miss a target?

2007-11-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

For kicks, I think the Ron Paul campaign should say something like this:

"We'd like you to contribute 2 trillion dollars by December 6."

Just see if it happens.

Plug

2007-10-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

An Open Letter to Allen Wastler

2007-10-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

You are smug. Real smug.

You couch your contempt for Ron Paul supporters in mock admiration for our "organization" or some such nonsense, and imply that we have "hacked" your poll in some way. You contend that you "haven't seen [Dr. Paul] pull those kind of numbers in any 'legit' poll" and I consider that a challenge.

Mr. Wastler, define the time, place, and mechanism for a poll you would consider "legit". I guarantee that Ron Paul will get over 50%.

One minor proviso: it has to be similar, in some way, to a free election in a democratic society. You can't just call your 50 closest friends and ask them. Extend an open invitation for people to come express their preference among the GOP candidates and, once again, I guarantee Dr. Paul will come out with over 50%.

Have a ballot box in the middle of Death Valley if you want. Put it outside your office. We don't care. We're coming out and we're going to demonstrate (again, and again, and again) that we are real Americans with rights.

RCP on RPC

2007-09-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Blake Dvorak of Real Clear Politics amuses and sort of enlightens in a piece called "Ron Paul Country", but makes what seems like a blunder to me, one that is based on a common misunderstanding:

As much as many Republicans might want out of the United Nations, most would balk at abandoning Israel to the mullahs, or Taiwan to the Chinese. In either case, it is not terrorists reacting to some real or imagined slight by the "Great Satan," but sovereign states whose belligerence is checked only by American power.

It is this talk of "abandoning" our allies to which a non-interventionist takes exception. Why look further than Dvorak's two examples? There aren't any US troops in Israel or Taiwan

He is correct that American power is checking belligerent states; he is incorrect to suggest that military power is the only mechanism, or even in these two cases the relevant mechanism, of doing so. Non-interventionists believe that in most cases military interference -- or even presence -- is counterproductive.

Non-interventionists of this stripe are, so far -- and thank God -- apparently in control of our Israel & Taiwan stances.

NB: I'm not a military policy expert by any means; please correct if I'm drastically wrong about something here.

A Pet Peeve

2007-09-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

The respectable and intelligent Hugh Hewitt has some interviews from the Texas Straw Poll, and I think they're great.

One note, though, about one of Hewitt's lines of questioning: he asks nearly everyone whether
-They want Dr. Paul to run as an independent if he fails to get the GOP nomination
-Whether they would support the GOP nominee if it's not Dr. Paul
and/or
-How they'd feel if they didn't get behind the GOP nominee, and Hillary "consequently" wins.

As a sometime Green, I have heard this line before. It was used to try to guilt Nader supporters into abandoning their candidate so that Gore could beat Bush.

The offensive assumption in this line of questioning is that some candidate -- by virtue of belonging to a "major party" -- has a right to my vote, and I have to defend my decision to give it to someone else. Sorry, but I find this abhorrent.

If Ron Paul is not the Republican Party's nominee, and runs as an independent, I become the GOPs political opponent. I am one of their obstacles; they have to try to defeat my candidate, by winning me and others over.

They may think that they have a right to my support because I'm "conservative", but they're just wrong. Giuliani does not have a right to my vote because I'm Catholic, and Hillary does not have a right to my vote because I'm a woman.

Fine, I'm not a woman; you get the idea though.

GOP: Run someone who can win. If you don't, you will lose and it will not be Ron Paul's fault.

Scandal!

2007-08-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Colin McNickle searches high and low for a genuine conservative to undo the damage done 1994-2006 when the Republicans outright succombed to temptation and betrayed long-held principles.

Unlike most informed Americans, he does *not find what he's looking for in Congressman Ron Paul. Why? McNickle has discovered a scandalous flaw:

... you simply can't put out of your mind his resemblance to Timothy Leary. On paper on many issues Paul doesn't look bad. Watch him in a debate and two words come to mind: blotter acid

Is there a dailywtf for politics?

The other candidates on the GOP side get pretty competent refutations of how their conservative words don't match their records, or in a couple cases how they don't even bother with conservative words. Dr. Paul gets the oddest guilt-by-association attack I've seen (and if you're an RP watcher, you've seen some odd ones).

In fairness, McNickle takes a moment to add that Paul is also "a flop on defense". No explanation of that charge seems necessary to him.

Here's the official platform of the GOP of my state (Texas) on National Defense:

We continue to encourage and support:
1. funding for a strong national defense, which guarantees maintaining a military which stands ready to defend our nation and increases combat readiness;
2. continued funding and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative
3. disengagement from countries in which we have no clear national defense interest;
4. “America First” priority in protecting the citizens and borders of the United States;
5. not entering into any new arms control agreements with any nation that is not currently complying with previous agreements;
6. the military never being deployed except to defend against an invasion or in protection of the United States’ direct, vital interests; and which may include pre-emptive action
7. maintaining our military’s effective combat strength sufficient to defend our nation’s borders and its strategic interests;
8. expiration of the special emergency war powers of the executive branch unless renewed by Congress in 6 month intervals; and,
9. the immediate deployment of the United States of America’s Military Forces to secure America’s southern border.

If you don't have time to read all that, I think it can be summarized as "Ron Paul is pretty much right about everything." We could quibble about things like the definition of "pre-emptive" (google is your friend), but the fact remains that RP is far from a "flop".

He doesn't look all that much like Leary, either.

Ron Paul -- The Perfect Imperfect Candidate

2007-08-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

I've been getting quite annoyed recently with the general tenor of RP discussion by a lot of blogs & zines who ought to be jumping for joy at the fact that Dr. Paul is running for president. It goes like this, usually

"Ron Paul's great -- just what this country needs -- but ..."

And then we get a discussion of some flaw in RP's views, or some election pitfall that could trip him up. We often get an authoritative-sounding discussion of why, alas, he cannot win the nomination or the office. What we do not get, sadly, is cojones. By that I mean an endorsement: "Americans should support Ron Paul". Why not?

Because the writer has discovered action X by Ron Paul isn't fully synchronized with the true libertarian understanding of line 213 of the Constitution, or something. Egad!

Might be true. And we could conceivably argue about it for several days. Meanwhile:

Ed Crane asked Giuliani whether he "believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review... The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently."

To summarize, Giuli said "yes, the president has that authority, but trust me I'm a nice guy and won't do it much." In other words, Crane said "should we have habeas corpus?" and Giuli said 'No.' While you argue about the interpretation of line 213, the frontrunners have all more or less burned their copies of the Constitution to the ground.

If Ron Paul "can't win" against these guys, that should make you angry. On a scale of 1 to 10 Ron Paul is about an 8 and no other candidate is above 5. Why keep covering the fact that he isn't a 10? (End rant)

On Scientific Polling

2007-07-23T12:04:00.001-07:00

I'm a little out of practice, but as a once-trained philosopher I thought I'd hold forth on the topic of "scientific" polling that is intended to predict the outcome of an election or primary. Let's begin with a hypothetical situation.

Suppose you would like, for whatever reason, to know which restaurant people are going to go to for dinner. Here are some relevant parameters

-There are six restaurants, and all require reservations. Making a reservation is not very difficult, and is not *more difficult for one restaurant than for any other.
-Three of the six restaurants -- McRomnald's, Julie's, and the Thompson Steak House -- are discussed frequently on the Food Network. The others are rarely mentioned.

You call a few hundred people and ask "At which of the following restaurants would you like to eat?" And you list the six restaurants. The results come in

30% say "Julie's"
30% say "McRomney's"
22% say "Thompson Steak House"
The other 3 each get 6%

You type up your results and call it a day. Congratulations!

Now... I hate to rain on your parade but there's a glaring problem with your method.

A lot of the people you just called are not going to *any restaurant tonight. They're going to eat at home. They might want, or even expect, to go to one of those places ... but if something comes up they won't bother.

Time to blow my cover: I'm talking about presidential primaries. As a matter of fact, a *very small number of respondents are going to vote in the primary they're being asked about. The epistemological problem is that one action (picking up the phone and answering a question) doesn't "map" directly enough onto the second one (making the reservation, getting in the car and going to the restaurant/polling booth).

All is not lost, though. You can try to make your list of phone numbers better by restricting it to to "likely diners". Perhaps you only call people who own a car. Or you might get a list of people who ate out last year. This is the usual method -- but I submit that there's a *much better one.

As it turns out, you have a great source of data that can help you, but before we get to it I have to throw another wrinkle in your survey.

Now you're not calling about tonight; you're calling about "Super Friday" -- a Friday that's occurring next February. So there are more parameters:

-The people you call have to look up, then remember, the date of Super Friday, and go to the restaurant on that day.
-They obviously can change their minds between now and then.

It's starting to sound impossible. Suppose you had a bunch of money to invest in a restaurant, and you got paid back depending on how well they did on Super Friday. You might be inclined to call it a crapshoot, or you might just spread your investment among the top 3 restaurants and consider your bets hedged.

But don't forget I told you about a great source of data that can help you:

You can get the reservations lists from all these restaurants. You can even go tonight and see which one(s) are full and which ones are empty. If you do this every night from now until Super Friday, you discover something astonishing:

People are just packing it in at the Ronpaul cafeteria. The reservation list is as thick as a phone book. There's a line out the door and down the street every night. Clubs are booking their private functions there. Some of the people going there are nuts, but some are good amateur cooks, and a few are professional chefs.

McRomney's and the other restaurants also have some people in them, most of the time.

For whatever reason, the Food Network isn't talking much about the Ronpaul cafeteria. When they do mention it, they postulate that there's a glitch in some people's restaurant behavior, because after all why would they keep going to this place if it's never really mentioned on the Food Network?

I am 100% open to discussion of flaws in my metaphor, but it seems to me that the following activities "map" more closely than the ones mentioned earlier:

1. Going out and talking to people, hanging up signs, etc.
2. Going out and voting in the primary.

I think 90% of the people currently doing #1 are doing it for Ron Paul, even if only 2% of the people answering their phones are in his camp.

As a result, I am one of the (apparently few) who will not actually be that surprised if Ron Paul wins the nomination, which is to say if the current 'shape' of political action continues to go as it is currently going

Open Letter to America, from MSM

2007-07-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

[Note: "MSM", one of the blogosphere's favorite acronyms, stands for "mainstream media"]
[Note2: This isn't really from them; it's a bit of satire]

Despite our many efforts to play nice, and our elaborate production values that bestow upon you the idea that you know something about what's going on in the world, you continue to annoy us. Most recently, you have spammed/messed with/cheated on our scientific presidential-campaign polls, by which we determine whom you would like to elect president.

Here's what you are doing wrong: you are telling your friends and family about Ron Paul. You are writing about him -- in emails and on websites -- and including links to our polls in your various writings. People are reading these things, thinking about them, clicking the links, and so on. Obviously, we cannot allow this to continue.

We understand that your engaging in this activity may have been an honest mistake resulting from your ignorance, so we have decided to issue you this firm-but-gentle reminder of how things work:

1. We will tell you who the frontrunners are. If we have not yet held forth on this topic, compile a list of the people who are about to give us tens of millions of dollars for advertising. Those are the frontrunners.
2. No talking. When we are done telling you things, finish your meat loaf and go to sleep. Or watch American Idol. Whatev. Come back tomorrow.
3. We will occasionally call you and ask which of the frontrunners (see above) is your favorite. Please stay on topic; all we need is the name of a frontrunner, k thanks.
4. Remember: you can't believe everything you see and read on the Internet. You can only believe everything you see and read in newspapers or on TV broadcasts by God-fearing media companies worth at least $750 million.

We sincerely hope this problem can be cleared up quickly, and with civility.

MSM

zomg I was as Smart as Ron Paul for a second there!

2007-07-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago a guy on NPR was talking about the inflation scare, saying don't panic 'cause -- once you exclude energy and food -- inflation's actually not really manifest. Hm.

Wait, not "hm"... I laughed out loud. I wanted to call in and say "once you exclude my mortgage, my bills are really low!" Maybe there's a reason to exclude gas and food from this calculation, I don't know. But I was pleased to see Dr. Paul echo my thoughts in the final seconds of this video.

"If you don't eat, and you don't drive, and you don't have any medical bills, you don't have any inflation to worry about!"

Why is this fudging of the numbers allowed? I don't get it. Standard accounting practices reveal that official deficit figures are lower than reality by a factor of four. Tom Coburn and the transparent government movement need to look into this stuff and give us information that means something.

So Very Very Onboard Now

2007-06-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

After about a decade of near-total political nonintervention, I found a guy who wakes me up. Will go into more detail later, but in a nutshell:

This country is almost certain to get into deep military and economic doo-doo in the next decade. Almost. The field I'm surveying is full of men and a woman who are willing to talk about anything and everything *except the critical questions. There are two elepha^H^H^H^H^H^H colossal prehistoric mammoths in the room and they are

-Our disastrous foreign policy and its disastrously incompetent implementation
-Our *absolute, unconditional *love for expanding government spending and either borrowing or printing money to cover this

Ron Paul (I bet a bunch of you guessed it already) is the only one I've seen with political and moral courage to confront these things. And he confronts them with enviable intelligence and historical background.

So I've become an organizer of the Dallas-Fort Worth Midcities meetup group, and I'm 100% not kidding, and I'm not going down without a fight, and I'm not caving in to the CW that says "he has no chance".

And a plug: If you think America could benefit from a return to the mandate-for-government set out quite clearly in our Constitution, or if you even just think these problems should get some airtime, please help our group out with a contribution (paypals below). I met with these people yesterday, and was astonished at the energy and seriousness that they brought to this admittedly-uphill battle.

That's all for now; I'll be expounding more on individual RP positions later.

Donate to DFW-MidCities Ron Paul Meetup

The Categories

2007-05-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

Ballmer has (to his detriment) got a bit more specific with his FUD on free software violations of Microsoft's patents.

He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

Thanks, Steve. We're going to go ahead and second guess you, because we know it takes awhile before you and your kind get around to telling people why exactly they owe you money.

PS: There are no "Linux graphical user interfaces" -- don't know if this was the reporter's error or yours, but we'll assume you meant KDE and GNOME and, um, change "the way design elements are set up". Hehe. This'll be fun.

PPS: I have just downloaded copies of your 6900+ patents. Some friends and I are going to look them over. We'll get back to you sooner than you probably wanted...

Fisking W

2007-04-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

I hate to kick a guy while he's down, but I just came acroos this letter he offered up last year on World Intellectual Property Day. w00t!

In today's increasingly competitive world, improved enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to establishing free and fair trade among nations and to protecting consumers and hardworking innovators

This is par for the course: the world is "increasingly competitive" (?) and more enforcement, in the name of "protecting" the poor plebeians, is just what the doctor ordered. No sense of balance.

I was also pleased to sign the Stop Counterfeiting in Manufactured Goods Act. This important piece of legislation will help protect Americans from those who sell illegal products and steal intellectual property

Ye olde "stealing" metaphor, coming as usual from a sloppy conflation of copyright, trademark, and patent law into the term "intellectual property". Mr. B is, of course, using the warm fuzzy feelings we associate with property to hide a fact that would otherwise be painfully obvious:

Unauthoried copying is not theft. Technically, I believe it can be called "criminal conversion" (like when you mooch a person's unsecured WiFi and heshe doesn't notice).

'Course a lot of people will say "whatever, you're splitting hairs". The problem is that if you start allowing this sloppy use of legal terms (by presidents!), you get a regime in which the following BS is occasionally taken seriously:

It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming. (Src)

No copying is taking place here -- Mr. K is talking about using a PVR. Not only is there "theft" going on but apparently breach of contract! Geez. Better get a lawyer before you turn that thing on.

CW: What if you have to go to the bathroom or get up to get a Coke?
JK: I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.

As you can see, I got bored with the prez 'cause this stuff is much funnier. I actually do not have any contract with Mr. Kellner or his client -- I do not and will not subscribe to cable because the quality of product is terrible. Hell, for all I know it actually does have a clause saying that you will watch all the ads. I suspect it does not actually discuss the bathroom exception, but if it does *please link it -- sounds like a great read.

Hell, two can play at this game. From now on I'm going to refer to copyright overreaching as "terrorism". Maybe then I can persuade W to get on board.

A Whole New World

2007-04-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

If you're an obsessive free-software upgrader like I (sorta) am, you probably come across a line like this frequently:
"Performance-wise you should see a boost..."
-from Linux Format's preview of GIMP 2.4

This reminds me of why I love GNU/Linux. It's approximiately 180 degrees from the planned-obsolescence, forced-upgrade cycle into which assorted nonfree vendors try to lock you.

Surely you've heard, for example, of "Vista". This is an operating system that improves on its predecessor so much that you'll basically need a new computer to run it. For 80% of you, this means you'll be shelling out four figures to be allowed to do what you're currently doing, namely surf the web, check your email, and write the occasional letter.

Let's review:
Vista
-you pay lots of money
-you get almost nothing new*
-what you previously had doesn't work quite as well

GNU/Linux
-you pay nothing
-you get new functionality
-it runs faster

*Just 'cause a (costly) machine says "Vista capable" doesn't mean you're going to be able to do the stuff in the ads. So no skimping by trying to get the cheapest one. Details on an interesting example to follow in this space.

Governor of Disneyland Inflamed by Slashdot Comment

2007-03-31T09:26:00.001-07:00

except not really

Little Tinfoil, for funzies

2007-03-25T04:42:00.000-07:00

Here is Gartner's graph of Vista's expected uptake:

Certainly looks bad for us free-software folks doesn't it? That's fine, though -- I'm used to things looking "bad" and don't particularly care that much whether free software takes over the world. I just want non-free software to leave me alone and stop making my life difficult.

But... there's something funny about that image and I'll give you a few second to guess it

Give up?

Here it is: there's no such thing as a "pernonaginta". It's called "percent" because it goes to 100. Here's Gartner's graph, side by side with my corrected version:

Now, you'll rightly point out that Microsoft still "dominates". Duh. But that's the thing with "marginalization"; it doesn't work through outright lies but by subtly changing our symbolic life. I'm not going to rant and rave about this, but I suspect this kind of itty-bitty distortion is all over the place.

Found a Senator I Like

2007-03-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

There's more complete coverage of the rebirth of SIRA over at a4fs, but I liked an exchange between this guy Rick Boucher and the Copyright registrar: (41:28 in the video. Boucher obv was not speaking in hypertext so I added in links)

Boucher: Well, we don't need an audio flag for HD radio.
Peters: I agree --
Boucher: -- and we don't need to disable the portable devices that XM is putting out to do this [i.e. reform section 115], do we?
Peters: (Pause) ... not through 115, but --
Boucher: Thank you, that ... that --
Peters: The question is --
Boucher: -- pretty well answers --
Peters: No, no, but --
Boucher: That's a great answer...

...Hm. This guy's pretty sharp.

Boucher: Why not just say that these ephemeral copies have no independent value? It's hard for me to imagine that they do, and frankly I'm a little bit surprised this morning to hear you suggest that they do after all and that your footnote was not properly stated. Tell me this: how can they possibly have independent value when all they do is effectuate a transmission that itself is licensed?
Peters: I'm not a guru in the marketplace; I stand by the statement with regard to incidental, temporary copies. The question that has come up, um, and where we actually have seen deals. We've seen contractgs where there is separate money for a server copy. Just raises for me a question of whether or not there is value --
Boucher: Well, Ms. Peters, is it possible those deals were made because of the legal uncertainty, with regard to whether or not this would be termed to be a copy unless we clearly declare that they have no independent value? I think the answer's yes.
Peters: It could be, I --
Boucher: Thank you very much.
Peters: the answer to that --
Boucher: Thank you, Mr. Chairman I yield back.

mmm... more later, I hope

*Sigh

2007-02-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

The first 5 times this happened I didn't even notice. The next 5 times I was like, "dang. Oh well you live and learn". The next 5 times I was like "that's getting *annoying!" And it has happened again and I'm pist enough to blog about it.

Here's what happen(ed)(s): I decide to try something new, find a nice tutorial, and discover an error in the tutorial. Not 3 hours later; not after mastering the material and going back to review it. No, that'd be fine and all part of the learning experience. I can dig. This happen(ed)(s) generall in the first few minutes; one of the *very *first bits of example code fails to do what is promised. ("Hello World" works over 90% of the time).

I'm reading Programming Ruby, one of " the best two technical books I have read these past years" and it says ppl with some experience start w/Chapter 2, so I'm on page one of that.

"hello world" works as does "ruby --copyright". Even a script as complex as

ruby -n -e "print if /wombat/" *.txt
works. Wow. But the next one doesn't.

ruby -p -e "$_.downcase!" *.txt

Now I'm not the kind of guy that expects everyone to do all my work for me. I love doing work; but I'd like to feel as though the work is not futile; that progress is being made. I can't feel this way now, because I don't know if 1) The tutorial is wrong, and a) what else will it be wrong about or 2) My installation of ruby is wrong and thus b) are there going to be a bunch of other things that don't work because of my installation.

And again, I wouldn't even mind if this happened from time to time. Makes you get your hands dirty. But it seems like about 2/3 of the "introductory" material I find on any technology is afflicted by this problem.

End rant.

Have You Sold Your Brain?

2007-02-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

After a couple years of self-employment, I landed what seems to be a decent job: lots of code, friendly environment, good pay. It's been awhile since I signed any employment agreements, so I read this one carefully, and frankly I'm amazed at what is in it.

Since it's a code-writing job, the pertinent section is the one on copyrights and inventions. Patents are included, too, but I don't have or expect to have any of those. The section begins

"All work product ... including, but not limited to, all Employee's inventions and ideas ... that relate in any way to the present or prospective fields of interest of [Staffing Firm] or the Client ... or that are capable of being used in, or in connection with, the business of the Client as conducted now or hereafter shall belong exclusively to [Staffing Firm], whether or not fixed in a tangible medium..."

Hm. I'm not too keen on treating ideas as property, generally speaking, but I'm 100% okay with keeping trade secrets, etc. as a condition of employment. But this goes way beyond that: every idea "capable of being used" by the Client? "Whether or not fixed...?" Sure sounds like the thoughts themselves, and all of them. At the very least, it means any website-related thoughts I have, since this is a job building a website.

But hey, I'm generous and information wants to be free. I'd let 'em use just about anything I dream up during the "period of employment." But that's not enough: they want these ideas to "belong exclusively" to them.

The person "helping" me through this paperwork assured me that the document only says I won't copy code from the client's project and give it to a competitor. Is that how you understand the above? If the verbal description of the Agreement matches the actual agreement so badly, which is binding?

if such Works are not considered "works made for hire" by operation of law, Employee agrees to, and does hereby assign all of Employee's rights to Works exclusively to [Staffing Firm]

My interpretation: the agreement's definition overrides the copyright law's definition of works-for-hire.

any inventions and ideas which (s)he may discuss with anyone within six (6) months after the termination of his/her employment... shall be presumed to have been made during Employee's period of employment... Employee assumes the responsibility of proving that he/she conceived and made any such invention or idea after his/her employment hereunder terminated

Six months of "tail" is appropriate, in my opinion, if the previous section hadn't overreached about what kinds of ideas are covered. I really hope I misinterpreted that. As to the second sentence, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how to prove when something -- other than a fetus -- was first conceived. (If you want to do this exercise, NB: say employment ends in January. You must prove that X did not conceive of Y until July. Good luck)

There's one more section I want to touch upon, because it put me at ease for a moment, then pulled the rug out. I have the option of attaching, basically, some Prior Art, which would not belong "exclusively" to the staffing firm (*so generous, since all this Art was created years before I ever heard of them.) I was considering handing over a CD with copies of all the websites I've built in the past. But these attachments

shall be disclosed on a non-confidential basis and Employee agrees that [Staffing Firm] shall have an irrevocable and free right to use such inventions, ideas, and copyrights in any way whatsoever except for such valid patent rights as Employee may have...

So (please, please tell me I'm missing something)

Basically all internet-related ideas that I have during employement and for six-months afterward belong "exclusively" to them
Any ideas I've dreamed up in the past can be exempted
But only if I give them an irrevocable license to use all of that material however they see fit. And with the mention of "copyrights" here it looks like that means copying/distributing any code I disclose..

I am not a lawyer, just a careful reader. All advice is appreciated.

SPP

2007-02-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going back to the abbreviations for awhile, 'cause they're fun.

Microsoft's "Software Protection Platform" -- the culmination of years of expanding windows-validation schemes -- is an incredible achivement on many levels. (Note: I have not used Vista and hope never to do so. Here is my source)

Misnomer of Orwellian proportions: "Platform" is just a word that one attaches to an application to make it sound bigger, so I'll ignore it. You might initially assume that the 'platform' is protecting your software, but This is not the case. Software is the subject of the protection, not the object, and it is protecting something else (from you). That something else, of course, is Microsoft. But you have to think on it a bit before that becomes apparent. Brilliant.
Undermine, chapter 1: Farbeit from me to give anyone ideas, but it seems that SPP present a fascinating attack vector. This is an application that is designed to make the machine unusable. Formerly the only such system on most machines was the power button. When Windows gets the idea (from SPP, or from __________?) that this is an unpaid-for copy, it goes into "reduced functionality" mode, and then goes downhill from there. I would love to hear a competent security research discuss the tradeoff between this obviously-gaping hole versus UAC and the other security buttresses that have been built in.
Undermine, chapter 2: The irony of it all, of course, is that SPP, like all DRM schemes, only needs to be cracked once -- at which time the major players in the software "piracy" industry will continue on their merry way. The number of pirated copies of Windows might slide a bit before picking up where it left off. The false positives -- and the support for angry customers that ensues -- will almost certainly wipe out any extra revenues from licenses purchased as a result of SPP.

The last irony is that I personally wish SPP would work, and flawlessly. I wish no one on the planet could possibly use Microsoft's "intellectual property" without paying them. The reason should be clear: the vast majority of people using illicit copies of Windows can't afford to buy it, and would thus switch to a free alternative.

New Blogger

2007-01-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

Alright, I've upgraded BT et C and the other blogs to the New Blogger. Also I figured out that I have to moderate comments... so if you left one recently, it just now appeared. Sorry.

Todays shameless plug is the Artists for File Sharing blog, which is also me, and which is also subject of my New Year's resolution to stay on top of my assorted blogs. (In related news, WS-Comments is prolly dead and gone. Confirm?)

Best SLAPP Ever?

2007-01-09T05:33:00.000-08:00

This week saw two front-runners emerge for Best SLAPP of all time (best, in this context, obviously means something like "worst")

Spocko sent clips of pretty-disturbing audio from some radio shows to the advertisers who funded it, and incurrerd the wrath of Disney (who owns the stations)

Anshe Chung goes after gootube for video containing her secondlife avatar (her avatar is the least interesting thing in t he video ;)

Barbra Streisand has nothing on this lot. Votes? Comments?

PS: While we're voting, the MASOTY Awards are coming soon!

Metaphors II

2006-11-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ballmer gives us a textbook example of the danger of relying too much on metaphors, which I just recently spoke about. Let's begin. Microsoft and Novell

agreed on a, we call it an IP bridge, essentially an arrangement under which they pay us some money for the right to tell the customer that anybody who uses Suse Linux is appropriately covered. There will be no patent issues. They've appropriately compensated Microsoft for our intellectual property, which is important to us.

An "IP bridge"... ? Curiouser and curiouser ...

If you didn't know already, descriptions of the MS-Novell deal are weird and getting weirder because telling it like it is would utterly ruin Novell. What's happening is that Novell is licensing software patents from Microsoft. They cannot say this though, because the GPL forbids distributing covered code unless you give the recipient all the freedoms you have. So we will hear about things like "IP bridges". We will hear that "Novell's customers receive a covenant not to sue directly from Microsoft" (src). The last is curiousest since the covenant's terms are not fully disclosed to the customers it is supposedly being given "directly" to.

Metaphors can be tools of enlightenment or of concealment. Take care.

Metaphors

2006-11-15T19:12:00.000-08:00

As an expert in English and Philosophy, sorta, I love a good metaphor. So delicious... at times, so clarifying. One of my faves of all time, which I never get tired of linking to, is Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law. Anyway...

A metaphor that I'm kinda iffy about is the "War on Drugs". This, of course, conveys the seriousness of the drug problem in America, the expensiveness maybe, and the determination of our leaders to protect people, etc. etc. But we can all pretty much agree that this metaphor can be carried too far; for example, should dealer, or even just a user, of drugs be considered an enemy combatant in this war, and deprived of hisher rights as a citizen?

Probably not. We instinctively know that the metaphor is being taken too-literally there.

But no one is really suggesting such things, so I'm relatively indifferent to the "War on Drugs" metaphor.

A less "violent" but more pervasive metaphor that I think should basically be discarded is "intelleectual property". This one has wandered so far afield that many people don't even realize it's a metaphor anymore.

To test whether it really is a metaphor, try to prosecute somebody under theft or vandalism laws for (respectively) stealing or damaging your ideas or words. It won't work, because at the very least most of our courts remember that it is a metaphor.

Many of our citizens, and even some senators have forgotten, and this is really pretty unfortunate. A metaphor understood as such is generally not too dangerous, but when a metaphor comes to be taken as reality a curious thing happens: metaphors are built upon it.

Once you've lumped artistic output, "business methods", and trademarks into the "intellectual property" metaphor and forgotten that the symbol doesn't "map" exactly, it's not long before you start speaking of this property's "owners", of buying/selling/renting it. Of "thieves" and so on.

Now I don't contend that one is a horrible person for using these metaphors, but I caution against using them too loosely. I personally avoid them and try to be as exact as possible when talking about this stuff.