The age of digital music distribution is upon us. Just in the past couple of weeks we have seen the introduction of Apple's iTunes download service and RealNetwork's Rhapsody subscription service. Adding to the buzz, Microsoft has announced new upgrades to its DRM system that will allow subscription services to better protect media that is loaded onto handheld and portable devices. In a series of three articles, CNET explores these announcements and what it might mean for the present and future of music distribution [CNET].

I tried the Rhapsody service this week and I was very impressed. For $10 per month, Rhapsody gives you access to over three-hundred thousand music tracks. The selection was great even given my less than mainstream tastes. However, there were some notable omissions. It will take a while for the licensing to catch up with the services. The biggest question, however, is will consumers use these services? I think they will, but it may take some time before the public is fully educated about why digital distribution is good for them. 3:47:21 PM    comment []  

"What is notable about the success of iTunes is that it has been achieved not by a music company but by a computer company. And this makes sense, because it was a computer solution that was needed, not a music one. Even more impressive is that Apple's coup has been accomplished relatively simply and cheaply. It owns nearly everything it is using: the Web browser software (Safari), the computer media player (iTunes), the portable digital music player (iPod), the streaming technology to play music videos (Quicktime), the software that creates the service (WebObjects), the computer itself (Macintosh) and the operating system (MacOS)" [New York Times][via Scott Loftesness]. 11:25:58 AM    comment []  

The more we learn about weather patterns and global warming, the more we learn how little we understand the problem. New research suggests localized temperature increases in the U.S. and possibly elsewhere is due, not to CO₂, but to irrigation and concrete [Nature]. 11:02:36 AM    comment []  

WASTE is a new secure P2P system being developed under the GPL by Nullsoft [Slashdot].

WASTE is designed to enable small companies and small teams within larger companies to easily communicate and collaborate in a secure and efficient fashion, independent of physical network topology [Waste].

P2P clients like Gaim, Trillian and the like are already being used to share huge volumes of files. Making the connections secure will make this type of trading less accessible to prosecution by the RIAA and its ilk. 10:44:21 AM    comment []  

There's a new book out on using the OSS Snort program for intrusion detection versus commercial systems [Slashdot]. 10:36:47 AM    comment []  

Governments are getting more and more involved in the OSS vs. Proprietary debate.

I am sure this is a first. The President of India has urged Indian IT Professionals to develop and specialise in OSS rather than Windows. To be noted is that he made the speech (look for the "Think Different" section) at the famous Indian Institute of Information Technology (India's foremost academic institution equivalent to MIT). Also he reminisces that his meeting with Mr.Gates were difficult due to differing views concerning OSS and Security. What should be noted about him is that he is not a politician, but a scientist and an independent thinker foremost [Slashdot].

Smart people around the world are starting to think about software. The dialog has been primarily maintained by the technical community in the past, but input from the non-technical world is going to be telling in the overall debate. Ultimately, whether OSS thrives or is maintained in a limited niche will depend largely on how the debate continues in the non-technical community. 10:32:26 AM    comment []  

When I first heard about Sun's JSTL library, I thought it would be just a rehash of the Struts tag libraries. I was wrong and now that I know what JSTL can do, I will never go back [JSTL]. 5:32:58 PM    comment []  

One of my big complaints about most IDE's has always been the lack of power in the editors. IDE's provide a number of nice features like code completion, integrated debugging, etc., but often lack some of the power that the pure text editors provide. My view on this matter may soon change with the Vi plugin for Eclipse [MJWall]. So far it is not a full implementation of Vi, but it's a start. What would be really nice is to have full Vim implementation in Eclipse. Anyone interested? 11:14:36 AM    comment []  

Eclipse Checkstyle v3.1 was recently launched. The tool will scan Java source and highlight sections that do not conform to certain stylistic standards [Checkstyle].

In addition to using the Eclipse Checkstyle plug-in you can also use Checkstyle from the command line or as part of an Ant build [JSurfer].

This might be useful if you are working with a team of developers and are trying to enforce a common coding style. 11:10:14 AM    comment []  

Jakarta Lucene is a Java library for text indexing and searching [Lucene][via Simon Brown]. 11:06:17 AM    comment []  

Dave Winer has been whining about the current state of software development and how nobody wants to pay for software [here][here].

I pay $1 to ride the subway downtown. It costs $300 to fly to NY and back (two hours in the air). A cab ride to the airport -- $40. My monthly rent is in the thousands. Medical insurance about $10,000 per year. Everything costs money. So does software. Don't fool yourself.

Of course everything costs money. But I wonder if it isn't just a bit of a conflicting interest for Dave to think that people should spend more on software. He has been in the industry all through the heyday and continues to be invested in software. Of course he wants people to pay for it. I would certainly appreciate it; it's my business too. However, people will get what they pay for and they know that. But, like MP3's, software is easy to steal and even Microsoft's Herculean efforts to prevent software theft have not been fully successful. Furthermore, protecting software can actually give users an incentive to look elsewhere. So, quit whining, Dave. It's just annoying. You're voice is now becoming high profile and I don't think anyone wants to hear you snivel. 10:12:43 AM    comment []  

I friend of mine has brought up the topic of open-source textbooks on his weblog [The Ruminant] and then, today I came across a new site that indexes open-source journals [DOAJ][via MetaFilter]. I think this is going to turn out to be a great source of information and content that may rival weblogs. Certainly the information will be more authoritative than many weblogs are. 8:15:35 PM    comment []  

This 360^o panoramic view from the top of Everest is awe inspiring [Panoramas]. Though I'm not interested in risking my life to climb the world's highest peak, I can certainly see why it might be appealing to people. The physical and mental strain is paid with a major sense of accomplishment and the opportunity to see what other people can only dream about. I climbed El Pico de Orizaba, Mexico a few years ago and it was an amazing experience. Everest would be 10 times harder and 10 times more satisfying. 3:17:21 PM    comment []  

About three weeks ago, I started doing yoga. Since I play soccer twice a week and I am a referee for soccer three times a week, I do a lot of running. My physical fitness and stamina are very good as a result, but I have found that my body's flexibility has been deteriorating. Realizing that I was ignoring an important aspect of myself, I decided to give yoga a try in order to have a more holistic approach to physical fitness.

If you know me, you know I don't care for New Age concepts. Yes, I did use the word "holistic" above, but I don't take that to the extremes that the New Age adherents do. I think that a holistic view of your body and mind is good, but I don't attribute it with mystical or spiritual properties. So, as I begin to do yoga, I enter with a certain degree of skepticism, but also with an open mind.

Yoga is a technique ideally suited to prevent physical and mental illness and to protect the body generally.... By its very nature it is inextricably associated with universal laws: for respect for life, truth, and patience are all indispensable factors in the drawing of a quiet breath, in calmness of mind and firmness of will. -- Yehudi Menuhin [Jai Ma Yoga]

Okay. This is essential New Age flowery talk and I just can't go to that level. But, my experience in Yoga has been eye opening.

First of all, the physical elements have been very intense. Like I said, my main focus is flexibility and yoga is definitely pushing me beyond anything I could have imagined. However, it isn't just about flexibility. In my limited experience, I would say that only 1/3 of the focus is on flexibility. Another 1/3 is on muscle tone and strength. Many of the poses are physically strenuous and I feel its effect in my muscles even a day or two later. The last 1/3 of yoga focus is mental; breathing, relaxing, focusing.

I'm hesitant to use the word "meditating" because there are so many different ideas attached to this word, some of which don't necessarily represent my point-of-view. However, "meditation" is a good word to describe the last 1/3 of yoga focus. When I say "meditation", I mean it in the sense that your are bringing your mind into yourself. You make yourself aware of things that you normally ignore; breathing, balance and mind state. While still avoiding New Age exaggeration, I will say that these are important things for a person to be aware of.

Finally, the whole experience has had an emotional effect that I found completely surprising. For those of you who don't know me, I am usually very even keeled and rarely emotional. Yoga has brought out emotions in me in the most unusual ways. For one, I have felt bursts of emotion while doing yoga. This is completely inexplicable to me and I can only liken it to the way the Christians will invoke the Holy Spirit to describe feelings they have while practicing their faith. Furthermore, these emotional effects have lasted well into the day after doing yoga and have made me feel more at ease and more aware of people and the world around me.

I find it amazing that such a seemingly simple thing could have such an overall effect far beyond the purely physical. I don't know how it will affect me in the long run; that remains to be seen. However, the short term effects promise an overall long term benefit and I am looking forward to see how it might change my worldview and my outlook on life. 1:34:15 PM    comment []  

"Microsoft is working on a version of its DRM software that supports expiration of files on portable devices" [Slashdot]. 12:57:50 PM    comment []  

I know I've mentioned this before, but I am going to start posting detailed information onto my weblog for inclusion in the topical pages that I am now building... BitTorrent is a decentralized, OSS download manager that optimizes downloads through p2p. A user offers a file for download on a regular HTTP server and sets up a BitTorrent server to manage the uploads. When a user selects a link to a bittorrent metafile in their web browser, the metafile is loaded into the BitTorrent client. The client will simultaneously download from the source HTTP server and any other clients that are currently sharing the same file. Once the download is started, the client will also begin to share the file it is currently downloading and will continue to do so until it is closed. 10:29:18 AM    comment []  

Scott Loftesness has a number of pages on his weblog that he uses to track links and postings on topics of interest to him. After seeing one of these pages [Living with Groove] I decided that I really liked the concept and have just started one of my own [P2P Download Solutions]. One of the main reasons I keep a weblog is to keep track of things that are of interest to me. Combining the standard reverse-chronological format of weblogs with this topical page approach is a winning concept. I liked what he has done so much, that I am even stealing his format for titling these topical pages. Hope you don't mind, Scott <grin/>. 6:02:17 PM    comment []  

Today, I went to CNET's download.com to get a copy of Trillian. After searching for the application, CNET presented me with a download page. But, I noticed something on the page that I hadn't noticed before. In addition to the standard "Download Now" link that I have become accustomed to seeing on the page, there was a link called "Fast Download". I decided to try it out and what it turned out to be was a download manager provided by Kontiki.

Once the CNET/Kontiki application is installed it runs continuously in the background and launches automatically every time you start up. It attaches your computer to the Kontiki network and makes your hard drive and bandwidth available to CNET and Kontiki for the purpose of distributing their software offerings [Zeropaid].

Maybe everyone isn't happy, but I think this type of application is absolutely something that should be on everyone's computer. However, paying money to some company for the honor of providing the service may not be the way to go. But this or something like BitTorrent will eventually be used for nearly every download on the web. 5:51:34 PM    comment []  

This is an excert from a email I received today:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: BILL GATES -- I have just released eChicken 2003, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part of eChicken.

I did a little Google search and found a much longer version [chickenjoke.com]. 2:28:58 PM    comment []  

Here's a really nice overview of character sets and character encoding for Japanese [Japanese Text Encoding]. 11:36:35 AM    comment []  

Coming from a background in hard sciences and computer science, I have often been biased when I hear the theories and approaches of the psychological profession. I generally find their theories to be simplistic and have always found it doubtful that they were on the right track.

For the past 100 years, we are supposed to have been living in “the psychological century”. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists did not exist before Freud, yet by the 1970s there were 200 therapies on offer, ranging from Synanon to Insight to Rolfing. At certain points in the 20th century there were more psychology graduates than any other kind. The psychological jargon that has entered the language stretches from paranoia to penis envy, and from id to identity crisis to inferiority complex. So why, amid all this new professional apparatus, are behavioural problems more widespread, depression more common and psychotherapeutic drugs taken in unprecedented quantities? Could it be that psychology is failing? I think so. In fact, I think it has failed big-time. Furthermore, it has failed not just in the sense that more people are ill or unhappy, it has failed technologically, philosophically and is already in an advanced stage of decomposition [Times Online].

I think the study of networks and simple systems are giving us some important insights into why artificial intelligence and psychology research has failed; the underlying systems may turn out to be simple, but the resulting behavior can be irreducible. In other words, the outcome of a system can not be shortcut. Why is this important? Well, if it turns out to be true, then the only way to predict the outcome of a system is to run the system and see what comes out. This defies the general thrust of existing sciences that are geared around shortcutting physical processes by defining systems that can predict the outcome of a given system. However, it is only possible to shortcut a system if that system is reducible.

Psychology tries to shortcut the processes of the human mind by defining rules of causality that attempt to express universal truths about human beings. If the human mind is a reducible system, then this approach has some chance of success. However, I think the subtle differences in the nature and nurture of a given individual will result in potentially significant differences in the behavior of an individual. My intuition tells me that the human mind has more in common with the irreducible systems that we see in chaos theory and Wolfram's automata than it does to the predictable (and reducible) systems of physics and the hard sciences.

The understanding that we are developing of systems is going to eventually come around to save some of these sciences. However, it isn't a silver bullet. It is a salvation only in the sense that we are going to understanding the failings of the past and make the best of the future. However, the new face of these studies will not look anything like the old. 10:55:02 AM    comment []  

Last night, as I was flipping through radio stations in my car, I ran across a presentation being given by Edward Said [KUOW]. Mr. Said, an Arab-American, was discussing Iraq, Israel and other issues that are affecting us and the world. I was really impressed by his lecture. He is not only very articulate and knowledgable, but he also seems very even-handed in his approach to the various conflicts between the West and the Middle East. 11:13:15 AM    comment []  

Total lunar eclipse tonight in North America [ArsTechnica]. 10:44:41 AM    comment []  

On Saturday I mentioned how Half-Life 2 is taking us closer to realism in video games [May 10]. Now, there is a Doom III preview available [ArsTechnica]. You really need to download this preview and check it out. The graphics are amazing and the movement and articulation of the characters is eerie. I really believe that it won't be too long before photorealism is achieved in video games. 10:41:41 AM    comment []  

Check out this method for using iterators in Java:

List fooList = allFoos.getList();
for (Iterator fooIterator = fooList.iterator(); fooIterator.hasNext(); ) {
  Foo foo = (Foo) fooIterator.next();
  // do something with foo
}

I never thought of sticking the iterator within a for loop, but I like the way it groups the iteration code into a single structure. 11:40:52 AM    comment []  

Access to public information just go easier with the National Priorities Project Database [NPPD]. The site provides a search engine that combines a number of public databases into one place. The databases cover information relating to topics such as agriculture, education, labor, environment, transportation and more. 11:35:55 AM    comment []  

Good news! I was hired on full-time at Loudeye. I had been working there since December until they decided not to extend my contract after the end of April. So, I had a week and a half vacation until they called me up yesterday and said that instead of extending my contract, they were going to hire me.

I thought Loudeye should send out a press release <grin>, but I guess this post in my weblog will have to do. 5:35:17 PM    comment []  

Here's a neat little demonstration of the power of CSS [Zen Garden]. Make sure you try selecting a couple of the different page designs available on the site. 2:57:51 PM    comment []  

Libranet is a new commercial Linux distro, based on Debian, that is targeting the desktop Linux market. Check out the review with screen shots [MadPenguin] and their website [Libranet]. This distro seems to have all the newest goodies and best of all, it is based on Debian, which means you also get the 'apt' utility. 2:44:40 PM    comment []  

My contract at Loudeye ended last week, and I have been using my newly available time conquering Halo. Halo rocks, by the way, but it doesn't compare to the upcoming Half-Life 2. Check out this brief preview of the game [shacknews] and don't miss the screenshots! Valve has definitely taken game realism to a new level. I can't wait to get my hands on this game, but first I will need to update my video card because the one I have won't be able to keep up with the fast amount of computation that is required to make this game possible. 2:36:54 PM    comment []  

Fast-Talk Communications out of Atlanta has a system that can automatically scan audio files for specific words [Technology Review]. In the past, this would have required that the audio be first transcribed into text. Fast-Talk's technology, on the other hand, is able to search the audio directly be converting the audio track into phonemes, the discrete units of sound that all languages are composed of. I wonder when we can expect Google to buy this company and include audio search into their engine. 11:32:47 AM    comment []  

I very cool video codec comparison [Doom9.net]. Does side-to-side comparisons of video encoding with several video codecs, including Windows Media Video V9, RealNetworks RealVideo9, DivX and more. 11:15:21 AM    comment []  

Yesterday, I expressed doubts about the efficacy of Apple's iTunes AAC DRM solution. Here's what one Mac user (clearly not a l33t h4x0r) did to bypass the DRM.

The only other Mac player I can find that claims to play AAC is only for Mac OS v9, and does not appear to recognize the [iTunes] bought file, so no help there. I do however have an app that hijacks the audio stream before the speakers and allows you to play with equalizers, balance, etc. Oh, and it lets you save the result as an MP3 as well as playing it through the speakers.

I fire it up and a few minutes later I have an MP3 that I can't tell from the AAC. So much for that definition of protection [Slashdot].

I'm sure there is an easier way than this, but it seems Apple's DRM is just enough to keep the industry happy without actually providing any significant level of protection. 12:44:21 PM    comment []  

Government is one place where the choice of using open-source software (OSS) is motivated, not only be cost and productivity, but also by issues such as public transparency and continued access to data into the future. These requirements are a result of the fact that the government works on behalf of the people in this country.

Governments are special entities and their functions and operations can be at odds with proprietary software applications that are developed for multiple purposes. Governments have special obligations to protect the integrity, confidentiality and accessibility of public information throughout time like no other entity in society. Therefore, storing and retrieving government data through secret and proprietary data formats tied to a single provider is especially problematic, since the usability, maintenance and permanence of government data should not depend on the goodwill or financial viability of commercial suppliers.

Furthermore, citizens have a right to transparency in public acts, which may be hampered by secret, proprietary software. A clear example of this is e-voting software. I expect no one would seriously defend the right of proprietary software companies to prevent political candidates from inspecting the software that tallies the votes in elections. There are many other public acts that fall into the same category. So many, in fact, that the onus should rightly be placed on companies to justify the use of proprietary software in purely governmental settings [Newsforge].

Now, the City of New York is meeting on these issues. OSS advocates as well as commercial software representatives will be there to present the various points of view. 12:28:12 PM    comment []