Fugato

For all the students of electrical engineering and physics in the world who are male, have no social life and are severely sex-deprived (i.e. most of them) and have trouble motivating themselves to master their semiconductor physics … help is on the way.

Not help with sex, though. You’re in EE, so you’re beyond help there. But help with semiconductor physics motivation.

Yes, there really is such a thing as Britney’s Guide to Semiconductor Physics.

And yes, it really is a guide to semiconductor physics.

Listening to a Todmobile CD while grading the Signals & Systems exam, I just happened to look at the back of the CD cover, where I saw some text that raised an eyebrow. The text (in Icelandic) roughly translates to:

This compact disk contains copy protection.

It can be played in CD and DVD players and PC home computers. Minimum requirements: MS Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP, Pentium II or higher, 64 MB RAM, 50 MB free disk space, Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, and DirectX 8.0 or higher.

Interesting. Microsoft and Intel must be thrilled to know that the music industry is starting to declare Pentium and Windows to be “requirements” for playing a CD in a computer.

They’ll probably be less thrilled to know that I’m playing the CD happily in my computer, which has neither an Intel CPU nor a Microsoft operating system, and thus certainly not Internet Explorer 5.0 or DirectX 8.0.

Hm, maybe somebody actually implemented that same DirectX 8.0 copy-protection handling in all the linux CD player programs I have on my computer? I don’t think so. But of course, this called for a little experiment. I used grip to read the CD into MP3 files. Playing the MP3 files works fine and sounds fine, and their MPEG information section even has the Copyright bit off.

If this is their copy protection, it’s a good thing they’re not trying to sell car alarms or condoms. :)

So the music distributor put that notice there just for fun? Or to dent their sales a little? Or in the tenuous hope that it would cause people not to try to copy the CDs?

Or maybe some shady character offered them “a technology,” perhaps even “a solution” (I hear those “solution” things are particularly good sellers!) that he said would protect their CDs from being copied, and they, hm, “bought it”? :)

Hm, a little googling reveals that the protection apparently “worked” for Magga Dóra at least. Magga Dóra, maybe you should consider linux? :)

Oh, and a bit more googling brings up an article that clears things up: indeed the protection works only in Windows and Mac OS X, and even there, apparently people “can bypass the system entirely by holding the shift key every time they insert the CD.”

By holding the shift key! Har!

So this “copy protection” consists of writing something on the CD that tells the computer “don’t copy me”… and that has no effect unless the software reading the CD knows to read that bit and respect it. So all that software they call “required” is not required to play the CD or even to copy it … it is just required for the “copy protection” to work!

That’s a little like saying “this car theft protection system requires the potential thief to be born after 1982, and to have a good understanding of property rights and a keen sense of morality.”

—

[By the way, this post illustrates the fact that grading an exam is an astoundingly unenjoyable way to spend one's time: any tiny little idea serves as a sufficient excuse for taking a break and doing something else. Good thing I only do three exams per year!]

I’m in a University exam right now. Spending my exam time browsing and blogging and watching the others. Not doing the exam.

This is only partly because I don’t know the material worth a damn. It is mostly because I am the teacher.

This is fun. Watching others in an exam. A privilege only afforded to those who (a) teach or proctor, (b) kick way too much ass in their classes, or (c) kick way too little ass in their classes. It offers interesting sights.

On many faces, a look of intense concentration. On some, intense consternation. And then there’s this one guy, Poker Face Dude, who, just like in all the lectures, looks consistently placid, indifferent and slightly bored as if to say “so when do things start to get challenging?” I’m expecting him to back that expression up with his exam performance; people usually wear that look for a reason. Or maybe he just finds my class boring.

The exam is long, time is short, but one guy spends his time painstakingly unwrapping a lollipop, very slowly, trying not to be noisy (and inevitably failing, in the curious kind of silence you get in an exam room, where the hum of radiators and the collective sighs of the students stand out clearly along with the occasional paper shuffle).

Half the girls in the room forget to turn their cellphone off and it rings. (That’s not misogynism: just one cellphone ring because just two girls. This is an electrical engineering class. And yeah, I’d prefer different gender ratios. We all would.)

Eight-minute warning. Sighs of stress. I don’t enjoy stressing people out, but I do enjoy seeing the determination, the ambition that gets manifested in exams — and that is related to stress. And conversely, it breaks my heart when someone turns in the exam half-way through and leaves, and they’ve only done half the exam. It’s like the perfectly decent-looking people who walk around with greasy hair and blubbery waists and a sour pity-me expression, not because they can’t do anything about their appearance, but because they gave up midway or didn’t even try in the first place. Keep at it, dammit! Roll it around in your head. You can figure it out. This fatalistic “I’ve already lost” mentality is horrifying to me — and almost universally it’s simply false.

Ok, I have to yank off their exams now. Thoughts truncated!

One student said “That was an experience.” Uh-oh.

Somebody forgot to label his exam. That’s not a problem really; he had not written anything in it either.

Hugh Macleod draws and writes stuff. I like most of his drawings; he has a knack for nailing stereotypes, banalities, despair, hubris, etc. I like much of his writing too … but I don’t like how he tends to embellish it with exercises in “proof by intimidation.” Examples:

It’s all about being utterly fucked if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Somebody tell me, what’s so hard about that? How come people don’t get it? Seriously, I want to know.

It’s so frickin’ obvious.

Like I’ve said before… it’s so frickin’ obvious.

(Sorry, Hugh, for using you as the example here. I’m sure you’re a good guy ‘n’ all. But you do have the top two Google hits for so frickin’ obvious. You’re kinda fair game.)

Proof by intimidation is one of the various ways of arguing your point irrespective of the value or truthfulness of that point. It is the act of implying to people, by sheer force of self-confidence or arrogance, that they’d better agree with you or else they’ll risk exposing themselves as stupid by “not getting it,” because after all, “it’s so frickin’ obvious.”

People who use proof by intimidation are not necessarily mistaken or lying. They may just be really sure of themselves and get a kick out of showing it. Or they might even see some kind of practical utility in tactically defusing their readers’/audiences’ critical thinking. Maybe just to grab attention, so that a mind is more open to their point; “ploughing the field,” which is just fine if they then plant decent seed in it.

But when you notice this tactic, it sure undermines their credibility. Raises alarms in my head: “Bullshit alert! Somebody find me a devil’s advocate, quick!”

And I suspect most of the time I don’t notice it … so it works like a charm. Bogus ideas get inserted in my head and become familiar, trusted thoughts. I bet a lot of our prejudices get planted this way.

Note to self: don’t do this.

Second note to self: blog about this, so that people have something to nail you with if you do do this. :)

Fancy that. The world’s ten geekiest hobbies have been established, and I don’t have any of them! Not one. Dang. This is most disturbing. If I’m not geeky, I’ll have to go find a whole new cultural identity to mindlessly adhere to. I don’t have time for that.

Nono, ‘sokay, my cultural identity is intact, because these guys missed a few:

• Blogging about a cultural identity to substitute for geekiness … on a Saturday night at 5 am. Grievously sober.
• Patching libgphoto2 to fix a problem with downloading large movies from a digital camera … slightly earlier on the same Saturday night.
• Submitting the patch (a very trivial one) to the gphoto2 project. And doing it right now instead of tomorrow (despite being very sleepy), for the sole purpose of being able to include that item of geekiness in this list.
• Spending the previous four days being immersed in the entrails of a database server by a personage known as The SQL Goddess.
• Finding pleasure in using obscure words instead of normal ones, e.g. “entrails” instead of “guts,” and “personage” instead of “übergeek.”
• Noticing how frustratingly close “entrails” is to being an anagram of “internals.” Dagnabbit!

No.

Really.

A ten-year jail sentence for a Cuban?

I don’t mean a Cuban citizen. US Citizen [ya know, them free ones]. Cuban cigar.

This can’t possibly be true. Can it?

US citizens can be thrown in jail by their own government, for up to ten years … for smoking a Cuban cigar … while in Cuba … or anywhere else in the world.

Sounds like a hoax, an urban legend. But the document Cuban Cigar Update issued two weeks ago (Sep 30) — on the Department of the Treasury webserver — does seem to say this. And it even provides a phone number and fax number, for us to report on any offenders we might know of.

The Regulations prohibit persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States from purchasing, transporting, importing, or otherwise dealing in or engaging in any transactions with respect to any merchandise outside the United States if such merchandise (1) is of Cuban origin; or (2) is or 2 has been located in or transported from or through Cuba; or (3) is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba.

[...]

Criminal penalties for violation of the Regulations range up to $1,000,000 in fines for corporations, $250,000 for individuals and up to 10 years in prison.

It does say it applies to “persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” … don’t know what that means. Are US citizens / permanent residents subject to US jurisdiction wherever they are? So an American who smokes marijuana in Amsterdam (where it’s legal) could theoretically be thrown in jail for it on his return home, if someone happens to catch him? Or does “subject to the jurisdiction of” mean something more specific here? (E.g. diplomats stationed abroad?)

I must be misunderstanding/overinterpreting this.

Hjalti er að fjalla um hvers vegna Bandaríkjamenn fá ekki að kaupa lyf í Kanada (þar sem þau eru miklu ódýrari) og flytja þau yfir landamærin.

Kannski er það misskilningur minn, en mér finnst eins og hann sé að gefa til kynna að það sé rétt af Bandaríkjastjórn að banna slíkan innflutning, því að ef þeir afnema þessi innflutningshöft gerist þetta:

„Kanadabúar tapa vegna hærra lyfjaverðs, lyfjafyrirtækið tapar því það getur ekki stundað verðmismunun (sem leiðir til að þeir eru lengur að borga upp þróunarkostnað og þar með lengur þar til þeir lækka verð).“

Er ekki alveg jafngilt að orða þetta öfugt? Að vegna innflutningshaftanna gerist þetta:

„Kanadabúar græða [á kostnað Bandaríkjamanna ☺] vegna lægra lyfjaverðs, lyfjafyrirtækið græðir því það getur stundað verðmismunun (sem leiðir til að þeir eru fljótari að borga upp þróunarkostnað og þar með geta þeir fljótar lækkað verð).“

Ekki það að mér þyki slæmt að Kanadabúar og lyfjafyrirtækið græði — punkturinn minn er bara sá að það virðist vera mörkuðum Bandaríkjanna og Kanada náttúrulegt að renna saman, fyrst það þykir þurfa að grípa til stjórnvaldsaðgerða til að halda þeim aðskildum og gera þannig lyfjafyrirtækinu kleift að stunda verðmismunun. Án tillits til þess hvort verðmismunun er kölluð „góð“ eða „slæm“ (orðið „mismunun“ hefur nú aldrei verið vænlegt til vinsælda!) hefði ég haldið að það væri ekki sérstaklega í anda frjálsmarkaðshyggjunnar (sem ég hélt að Hjalti væri að hluta til að stúdera þarna úti :þ) að fagna svona inngripum stjórnvalda í hegðun markaða.

Þá kann einhver að segja „já en lyfjafyrirtækið er bandarískt, svo að ef maður lítur á Bandaríkin sem eitt risastórt fyrirtæki, þá var stjórn þess þarna að taka ákvörðun til að hámarka hagnað þess, og þannig á það að vera.“ Hm. Mætti ekki með sömu rökum halda uppi vörnum fyrir verndartolla á landbúnaðarafurðir og grunnvörur, t.d. stáltollana bandarísku? Þeir vernda innlendu framleiðendurna (sem losna við óþægilega samkeppni), á kostnað innlendu neytendanna (sem þurfa að borga hærra verð). Þeir sem skilgreina sig sem frjálshyggjumenn, hvort heldur sem er á hófsamari kantinum eða hinum, eru yfirleitt ekkert sérstaklega á þeim buxunum að hvetja til verndartolla eða innflutningsbanns. Það er þá líklega ekki „rétt“ (í huga frjálshyggjumanna) að líta á ríki sem fyrirtæki og stjórnvöld sem fyrirtækjastjórnir. Eða hvað?

Ég held að ég hljóti að hafa verið að misskilja í hvaða anda Hjalti fjallaði um þessi innflutningshöft.

Eða þá að misskilningurinn sé ofinn inn í þessar hraðprjónuðu útleggingar mínar um hagfræði — fag sem ég veit skrattann ekki neitt um. Það skyldi þó aldrei vera! Hjalti, feel free to put me in my place.

I’m really glad that FactCheck.org exists. And Snopes.com. And TruthOrFiction.com. And HoaxBusters. And all their brethren. Anybody working to reduce bullshit in the world is OK in my book.

And FactCheck.org I like in particular, for actively and equitably slamming those two sides that are such enthusiastic competitors in the production of said bullshit. Being (at least apparently) nonpartisan is a rare and valuable trait.

Thanks Dick Cheney, for pointing it out! :)

Turns out there is a well-known concept of a pair of stereotype personalities, Goofus and Gallant, apparently based on a comic with that name in an old magazine called Highlights for Kids.

Goofus and Gallant get used for teaching, but apparently the emphasis is (or was) on a moralistic lesson, the idea being Gallant was preferable, and Goofus’ character traits were to be avoided … unfortunately kids probably tended to think Gallant was annoying and Goofus was more fun. That tendency is illustrated in this bunch of real-world Goofus and Gallant stories.

Mr. Sun presents a succinct analogy to the two current presidential candidates; that’s where I encountered G&G. It maps pretty nicely, right down to Gallant being perceived as the “dull, polite aristocrat” and Goofus as the “hearty country boy” … and Goofus’ main attack on Gallant being about his supposed lack of resoluteness.

Gee, I wonder which stereotype I resemble more. What a poser. Hint: even his hairstyle is identical to the one I had for the first 28.7 years of my life.

Stundum slá menn sjálfum sér við. Ég held að jafnvel þeir sem fastast hafa skotið rótum í skurðgröfum sínum á vinstri kantinum hljóti að viðurkenna að í dag hafi komið dálítið skemmtileg ábending hjá ekki-síður-rótskotnum skurðgrafamótherjum þeirra, áhugamönnunum um rannsóknablaðamennsku sem skrifa á Vefþjóðviljanum.