Author: Shawn K. Quinn

Apple sets a new low in hypocrisy

Just when you think you’ve seen everything:
a recent Mashable article describes a rejection of the EFF’s iPhone application (the EFF’s own article is also available). EFF’s transgression was to include a YouTube video containing a certain profane word (hint: you can only say it once in a PG-13 movie) in its subtitles. The problem here is that this same YouTube video is accessible via the iPhone’s YouTube application, among with others that probably would have made the late George Carlin blush.

This is not the only example of Apple blundering with an iPhone application rejection. There are also the Baby Shaker blunder (article on telegraph.co.uk), the initial rejection of the Nine Inch Nails application (forum post on nin.com), and the rejection of a Project Gutenberg e-reader (article on boingboing.net). Examples abound, but the underlying theme here is that Apple feels the overwhelming need to play nanny and censor everything in its iPhone app store.

Apple should realize this is unsustainable. The sooner someone releases an “iPhone-like” phone that is not subject to Apple’s nannying, censorious whims, the better. Bonus points if it can run iPhone applications as-is.

What was Tweetdeck thinking?

A recent Techcrunch article absolutely stunned me. The developers of Tweetdeck are doing something I find absolutely disgraceful: charging services to appear in their proprietary Twitter client, to the tune of $50,000 or so.

Charging for ad banner space is one thing. What Tweetdeck is doing is exactly a reason I use primarily free software (free as in freedom, as defined by the FSF and Richard Stallman): it is nothing short of an overt exploitation of the power a programmer has over the users. I would go as far as to say it is an implicit violation of the trust users (people like you) place in the people writing the software the users plan to use.

Worse, this is far, far more insidious than a breach of trust committed by a programmer writing a virus, worm, or trojan masquerading as a legitimate application. This is the programmer– or the programmer’s boss– playing deity here, deciding what services are included with a program on a basis most arbitrary to the users.

At the very least, I think honest developers adopting such a scheme should tell their users who paid to be included, and about how much. Ideally, they would make a full disclosure of those who did not meet the criteria for inclusion.

Just so we’re clear, in the case of Tweetdeck,  I’m not holding my breath.

Who really owns purchased media files with DRM?

While I do realize this is a little old, it’s a topic that’s also not likely to go away any time soon. Earlier this month both Electronista and BoingBoing reported on the remote disabling of text-to-speech for Amazon Kindle e-books. The Authors Guild is claiming that text-to-speech is an unauthorized audiobook performance and is thus subject to this particular facet of copyright restriction.

But, in particular, the Electronista article linked above mentions some interesting questions asked of Amazon. I quote part of the article here:

I’m specifically interested because Amazon has announced a “DRM-free” version of the Kindle format and I’d love to sell my books on the platform if it’s really DRM-free. To that end, I’ve put three questions to Amazon:

1. Is there anything in the Kindle EULA that prohibits moving your purchased DRM-free Kindle files to a competing device?

2. Is there anything in the Kindle file-format (such as a patent or trade-secret) that would make it illegal to produce a Kindle format-reader or converter for a competing device?

3. What flags are in the DRM-free Kindle format, and can a DRM-free Kindle file have its features revoked after you purchase it?

An honest company would answer “no” to the first two and the second part of the third. I really would like to trust Amazon here. However, this is the same Amazon that has arbitrarily locked accounts for “excessive” returns, while intentionally not defining “excessive.” Another Electronista article tells the woes of someone who just wanted products that worked. Not entirely unreasonable for a consumer to want, in my opinion.

I am still awaiting an e-book reader that does not support DRM at all, only unencumbered formats like PDF and DejaVu. This is a product I would not mind buying. The music industry learned DRM doesn’t work, the TV and movie industry is assumably not far behind. Why do book authors insist upon trying to hang onto it?

Too hot for Germany?

From the BBC comes this rather chilling story about how Germany may outlaw paintball and laser tag. (A similar story from Spiegel is also avaiable.) The proposed bill comes in response to a school shooting at Albertville School.

Thankfully, lawmakers in the US have had more sense than this. As far as I know, paintball and laser tag are both still legal in all 50 states. As a long-time laser tag player, not only do I think the ban is a bad idea, but I believe that when paintball is outlawed, only outlaws will have paintball.

The lumping of laser tag into the same category is a particularly troublesome one. Most laser tag centers (most notably the corporate-owned Laser Quest chain in the US and Canada) have made ever-so-slight changes to the Player’s Code or equivalents thereof, even going as far as getting rid of “play to survive.” I don’t see how anyone can get the typical laser tag game, which usually has unlimited lives, mixed up with any type of war simulation.

In short, this is an overt move toward a thought-police state, and should be reupdiated as such. If you’re in Germany, please let your legislators know just what a dumb idea this is.

Is new technology in sports cheating?

While browsing recently I happened to find a very insightful article about sports and technology. Several major sports are referenced including golf, swimming, and tennis.

Of particular note is a quote from Martina Navartilova:

To me, using “illegal” equipment is the same as cheating with performance-enhancing drugs.

Or, put another way, cheating is cheating, whether with drugs or equipment. Navartilova’s reference to what would happen if we allowed major league baseball players to use graphite bats really brings it home. The technology is there, but allowing it would completely change the sport. Heck, we may as well not call it baseball anymore; it would make more sense to just rename the sport “Gone Home Run” because that’s what it would become.

Make no mistake about it: I am a fan of technological advances. I have posted on Twitter at least once how little I will miss CRT-based monitors, film, and magnetic tape-based media. (That could probably be extended to magnetic floppy disks as well.) There is, however, a very thin line between new world records set by performance of the athlete(s), and a new world record set simply because the technology which allowed it has only now become viable.

I don’t follow every sport; however, I do understand what Gary Hall Jr. is saying when he refers to times in swimming being measured in hundredths of a second, because races and world records used to be decided by those kind of time margins. When new world records in swimming are set by a difference of whole seconds in the past four years, you can’t tell me that it’s just the athletes that made it happen.

Is there really a difference between beating a world record by four seconds with steroids, or beating a world record by four seconds with a new swimsuit that simply didn’t exist five years ago?