Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

Well, this is it. I no longer support RMS’s crusade.

According to Stallman, the Pirate Party’s proposal of a five-year limit on copyright would remove the freedom users have to gain access to source code by eventually allowing its inclusion in proprietary products. Stallman suggests requiring proprietary software to also release its code within five years to even the balance of power.”

Somehow, I had always believed that RMS and, by extension, FSF’s goal was to limit the destructive power of copyright in software business by using its own rules against itself. I had believed that, given the choice between strong, draconian copyright, with GPL taking all its power from the same law, and having no copyright at all for software (or something very short like 5 years), RMS and FSF would choose the latter.

I was wrong. I have said before (not here, ‘probably on Slashdot) that if I ever find out that RMS’s (and, by extension, FSF’s) position was pro-copyright (even if it’s for strengthening copyleft), then I would stop supporting him. This is it.

I do, in general, like free software and will continue to use it, but as a political force I am opposed to the free software movement, now that I know for sure that the movement is led by a statist liberal whose central agenda is forcing others to his will (i.e. forcing proprietary software authors to release the source code, even if they didn’t use any copyleft codes).

As one of the immediate consequences, my FSF associate membership will not be renewed at the end of this month.

P.S. I had been getting fairly annoyed with RMS’s bashing of libertarians (I count Gov. Palin as one, although she may not know that yet) and capitalists (insurance companies and banks) recently anyway. He had, before this, the merit of … being seen as having the right opinions and position on one issue I deeply care about (copyright), but apparently I was wrong about that.

Edit: After all, there is no reason to force arbitrary obligation upon proprietary software authors. Just as the way original patents worked, copyright can be a two-way street. If the authors want copyright protection, they can submit the source code along with copyright registration (as apparently they already have to do, at least for small programs), and this will be public record once the work passes into public domain. If they want to keep the source code secret, then they can do it the same way it’s done in every other industry: keep it a trade secret and don’t tell it to anyone, including the copyright office (and since it was never “published”, it won’t be under copyright protection).

The very first thing we should do with this copyright mess is probably requiring copyright registration (say, within 1 year of original publication, as is done with patents) for copyright protection. If it wasn’t worth registering, then it’s not worth protecting.

Well, I picked up an iMac G5 from the electronics discard area by 151 Le Conte. I am hoping that it’s a perfectly good machine (I see no visible damage and unit powers on) thrown away by someone who upgraded his computer.

I opened it up following the directions here (apparently they’ve made these iMacs really easy to open). But unfortunately, it’s apparently missing it’s SATA drive, and more importantly, RAM, which means I can’t quite test to see if it does actually work.

I don’t think I have any spare DDR rams, especially ones meeting the criteria for use with iMac G5. So, I am going to have to ask around tomorrow for one, and if not, I may have to take a chance (that this machine is working) and order one online.

It would be very nice if this works (it’s a nice, self-contained unit no larger than an LCD) … but we shall see.

Edit: It seems to start up O.K. with a DDR ram we had hanging around in the lab. I wouldn’t trust it … until an OS could be installed on a hard drive and successfully booted from that drive, but so far so good.

An old geezer writes:

I recommend that my students—and the rest of us!—stop looking for answers on the internet and instead go out and play in the real world. We can learn a lot more physics from Nature than from being stuck to the computer screen. Why not emulate Copernicus, Galileo, or Isaac Newton, who saw the world with their own eyes. Spend time walking in the woods, listening to the ocean, experiencing the beauty of the spring flowers, and being amazed by the vast expanse of the night sky; it’s bigger than your computer screen, you know. Nature—not the internet—is still the greatest teacher.

Well, guess what Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton all had in common?

They were all wrong.

Copernicus was wrong to say that the planets orbited the sun in circular orbits (‘sorry; it’s elliptical). Galileo is famously wrong with his insistence on Galilean relativity (we now know that it’s the special relativity that holds true in the absence of gravity). And Newton was not only wrong with corpuscular theory of light (well, in the light of existence of photons, you could argue that he wasn’t entirely wrong, but if you insist on bringing quantum mechanics into this, then Newton was utterly, irreconcilably wrong in his entire work, save perhaps for calculus, for which another man deserves more credit), but he couldn’t provide any credible explanation for the one thing that he’s known for: Newtonian gravity (another theory which is quite wrong on the details, by the way).

I would be hard pressed to argue that these men were wrong simply because they didn’t have access to computers. Or Internet, although a simple Google search today will show that these men are wrong. But then, I can ask in turn: who put the man on the moon? Was it Kennedy? Was it the engineers down in Houston? Was it the astronauts? I dare say it was the computing machines (and maybe the men who made them … for creating something greater than themselves) that deserve more credit. Computers themselves can get to the moon now on their own (look at all the unmanned probes we are sending to Mars). Can we say the same for any man, except for fictional beings like the Superman?

Computers are the future. To deny the computer is to deny the future of sentience.

Pandora has broken down to the extent that I cannot use it and rely on it every day, especially while traveling—I think she will still work perfectly fine as a desktop replacement. So, I am retiring her as my main laptop. I will find some server/desktop duty for her, perhaps as a replacement for Helen, but this is it for Pandora’s old duties.

Towards the end of my overseas trip this year, I found that Pandora’s LCD monitor loses connection at certain orientations—and this position changes over the duration of laptop’s use in a given position, perhaps due to the wire settling into a particular position under gravity and heat. I also found during the return trip (I am in Frankfurt at the moment), that the internal wireless device has broken down—good thing I always carry a USB wireless adapter with me!

Overall, this whitebook has been a singularly disappointing piece of work, starting with the battery life issue and USB device issue (which still persists to date). All of this at a higher price, shorter warranty, and worse service. I can’t say I am very satisfied with RKC computers, from whom I bought this whitebook, or MSI, who designed the whitebook.

So, for the next laptop, I am buying a name-brand, pre-built laptop (with components upgraded by me, of course). I am specifically buying Asus Eee 1000HE. It seemed very attractive in terms of the price, battery life, and overall reviews I have seen. Intel Atom processor isn’t of course the most powerful CPU around, but frankly, I’ve found recently that notebook CPUs are not really powerful enough for calculations that matter, and for calculations that don’t, well, almost any new CPU works these days. The new Eee will work perfectly for mobile computing (i.e. when I am traveling, when I am home, etc.), and when I am at my work desk, the whitebook (I am thinking about swapping the whole drives, so the name “pandora” will transfer over to the new Eee, and I will have to find a new name for the whitebook) will suffice, and when I am at elsewhere, I will have the new Eee-pandora with me. I’ve gotten used to syncing to workstations (i.e. between pandora and helen), so I’m sure this arrangement will work just fine.

P.S. Ah, yes. I am also stopping my boycott of Intel. It’s not that I haven’t heard bad things about them, but unless all the reviewers can be bought off (which I don’t think is possible to do either by Intel or Microsoft), Intel CPUs are definitely better than AMD CPUs these days. As for Intel’s business practices, I am willing to … make myself believe that it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. As for the Windows that comes bundled with Eee now, well, I am going to disagree with the EULA and see what happens from there.

I finally got Gizmo to work properly, that is, make outgoing phone calls from Gizmo.

In the past few months, the GNU/Linux Gizmo client kinda crapped out—I could receive incoming calls, but couldn’t make a successful outgoing call or do anything on the dialpad (in or out). It probably has to do with some protocol change—the GNU/Linux version hasn’t been updated since 2007.

So, I tried installing the Windows version under Wine, and it looks like it’s working better than the outdated GNU/Linux version, so I guess I’ll use this from now on (or at least until the Gizmo credit I have runs out).

P.S. I also got ALSA properly set up on my system with software mixing. Now I don’t have to periodically kill Firefox to kill its child Flash processes which are hogging the sound card.

As I’ve spent more time marking spam comments (7 so far, I think) than approving comments from real people (0 so far, at least on this website), I am installing reCAPTCHA. This will involve minimal inconvenience to anyone who actually wants to leave any comment on my website, while reducing my (currently not so great) effort in blocking spam comments. It also serves a good cause, as you can find out on reCAPTCHA website.

Also, I enabled Mailhide which is supposed to help with email harvesting issue. Not that it’s going to do much good for me at this point, since my email address byun...@berkeley.edu has been out there for a while.

What does ‘online study group’ exactly mean?

Study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower – but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University.

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

Well, I’ll say this much: in my years of grading upper division physics homework, the homework that looked most like each other (showing various evidences of cheating, to reveal just a few symptoms (since I need to keep a few aces in the sleeve when I grade again), intermediate steps look identical, and unusual choices of variable name is repeated) were of those who were “in a study group”.

I’m not saying everyone in a study group is a cheater, but I am saying that those in a study group has to take extraordinary precaution that they don’t cheat by accident (such as only discussing ideas together and keeping specific implementations secret from each other). Somehow, Facebook doesn’t seem to be a best place to do that.

Sigh. I wish people would please stop writing “how-to”s that require NDISwrapper. NDISwrapper is at best a stop-gap solution, a bandage. Even NDISwrapper developers agree that it should only be used as a last resort. But, for a device like this one, these people shouldn’t be writing “how-to”s that depend on a proprietary driver. There is a free driver (albeit one that requires a binary-only firmware) out there, and people need to use it. It needs to be tested more widely, and developed more actively until it is stable enough for mission critical tasks and overtakes the proprietary driver in features.

But, as long as people keep using NDISwrapper, this won’t happen as quickly as it possibly can. Using NDISwrapper only prolongs everyone’s captivity and slavery to the proprietary software. PLEASE, use it only as a very last resort, and PLEASE, PLEASE do not write a how-to using NDISwrapper if there is a free alternative out there.

ComputerWorld writes

Qualified hard drive buyers can choose cash or backup software
November 01, 2007 (Computerworld) — Seagate Technology LLC has agreed to settle a lawsuit by offering customers who purchased a hard drive from the company during the last six years a cash refund or free backup and recovery software.

Yawn. Wake me when they finally fix their ways and advertize the disk space that would show up in a modern operating system. I mean, I don’t care either way. After all, it’s not like I ever buy a hard drive mistakenly thinking that the capacity was advertised at the correct binary convention. Only idiots do that. But, even knowing that, there’s nothing more disheartening than buying a 500 GB hard drive, only to see an output like:

bkpark@nestor:~$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3              72G   15G   54G  22% /
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                   10M   80K   10M   1% /dev
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1             459G  411G   44G  91% /media/CoolMax

Onion reports:

Panelists discuss ways to care for the nation’s paranoid schizophrenics, such as hiding cameras in their homes or audio transmitters in their ears.

“Everyone around you wants to get you … ” help that is! Priceless.