Chess Computers and Classical Music Recordings:

I've noticed an interesting parallel between chess computer programs and early 20th century recordings of classical music. Both were expected to make their respective field lifeless and less interesting, but both drove a flowering of skill and involvement instead.
Recorded music was despised at first by many artists for trapping a single performance and replacing the direct interaction of performer and audience. But recordings brought music, played at its best, to much greater audiences than ever before. And part of that audience was the performers themselves, who heard all their mistakes and practiced hard to greatly raise the standards of skill in musical performance. (In the old days, the usual way to rise to the highest level of performance was to travel to where the best players were, and learn from them.)

When a chess computer bested the world champion, it was feared that humans would lose interest in chess. Computers were expected to play lifeless, unartistic chess, but recently they have been producing some really fine games. Chess computers have brought highly-skilled chess play to a much larger audience. Tutorial programs and chess-playing computers make it much easier for anyone with inherent ability to rise to Master level and beyond; but in the old days, the only way to get really good at chess was to travel and play in international tournaments, were the great opponents were.

Collected Closed Captions:

Do you watch movies and TV with the "Closed Captions" (an onscreen script, more or less) turned on? We do, because we want a fighting chance to understand what people are saying. When captions are added to a movie, the captioner has time to think carefully about how to describe sounds other than speech. You’ll see useful texts like “subway in distance”, “talks in Greek”, or “subdued punk rock sounds.” Here are a few of my favorites:

• (No audible dialog or sound effects)
  
• (Both chuckle evilly.)
  
• (door snicking shut). You can look it up: this use of “snick” is reasonable, if obscure.
  

Pick High-hanging Fruit:

I believe I'm pretty good at choosing good Temple Oranges, but I do not know how to select the best of any other fresh produce. I do have a tactic though, that seems to work pretty well for me. I reach way back into the bin to pick anything that looks good. I figure most of the people who can really tell good from bad have shorter arms than I. By the way, those wonderful Temples are in supermarkets right now, don't miss them.

DRM: Hooray, a Senate Comittee gets it!

Our civilization seems headed for a very bad technological time. Simply put, congressmen who are 30 and 40 years removed from technical innovations, and judges just as (too) old, will make bad law about exciting new advances in technology that they fail to understand, stifling innovation. But maybe there's hope. An EFF article about a Senate Commerce Committee hearing tells us what happened during a hearing on two bad proposed laws that seek to protect current audio and video providers against innovation and copying: the rather defective Broadcast Flag and Audio Flag laws. Senator Sununu (NH) and 82-year-old Ted Stevens (Alaska) "got it." The artical I've linked to says:

This is a momentous occasion: two powerful senators have woken up to the impact that these proposals will have on their voters. As more and more lawmakers get wise to how these things will harm their constituents' interests, it will get harder and harder for entertainment mouthpieces to go crying to government to enshrine their cushy business-models in law.
[Sununu] pointed out that "we have a whole history of similar technological innovation that has shown us that the market can respond with its own protection to the needs of the artists." And he concluded with one of the most damning depictions of the ahistorical nature of the flag (clip from Congressional RealVideo) you'll hear on the Hill:

"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?"

Senator Stevens's daughter has bought him an iPod, and Stevens pointed out that these proposed laws would prevent him from using the iPod in natural ways to capture and timeshift radio programs.

The EFF article (worth a full read) ends: "As the hearing showed, the holes in these flags are large, and its complex consequences are dawning on both houses. And God help the broadcast flag-makers if someone buys Senator Stevens a video iPod."

And here's what the EFF reporter means: If Senator Stevens wanted to buy a DVD and play it on his iPod, he might soon discover that the Digital Copyright millenium Act, which our congress passed just a few years ago, makes it illegal in the USA to try to figure out how to do that.

DRM: Hooray, a Senate Comittee gets it!

Our civilization seems headed for a very bad technological time. Simply put, congressmen who are 30 and 40 years removed from technical innovations, and judges just as (too) old, will make bad law about exciting new advances in technology that they fail to understand, stifling innovation. But maybe there's hope. An EFF article about a Senate Commerce Committee hearing tells us what happened during a hearing on two bad proposed laws that seek to protect current audio and video providers against innovation and copying: the rather defective Broadcast Flag and Audio Flag laws. Senator Sununu (NH) and 82-year-old Ted Stevens (Alaska) "got it." The artical I've linked to says:

This is a momentous occasion: two powerful senators have woken up to the impact that these proposals will have on their voters. As more and more lawmakers get wise to how these things will harm their constituents' interests, it will get harder and harder for entertainment mouthpieces to go crying to government to enshrine their cushy business-models in law.
[Sununu] pointed out that "we have a whole history of similar technological innovation that has shown us that the market can respond with its own protection to the needs of the artists." And he concluded with one of the most damning depictions of the ahistorical nature of the flag (clip from Congressional RealVideo) you'll hear on the Hill:

"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?"

Senator Stevens's daughter has bought him an iPod, and Stevens pointed out that these proposed laws would prevent him from using the iPod in natural ways to capture and timeshift radio programs.

The EFF article (worth a full read) ends: "As the hearing showed, the holes in these flags are large, and its complex consequences are dawning on both houses. And God help the broadcast flag-makers if someone buys Senator Stevens a video iPod."

And here's what the EFF reporter means: If Senator Stevens wanted to buy a DVD and play it on his iPod, he might soon discover that the Digital Copyright millenium Act, which our congress passed just a few years ago, makes it illegal in the USA to try to figure out how to do that.

Did you speak to a Lady? Or a Tiger ...

I was in Manhattan for an important, early morning meeting. In fact I was there the night before, because the powers that be had decreed I would arrive well-rested and on time. I checked in to my hotel and called a nearby Japanese restaurant I had long wanted to try. I made a dinner reservation and walked over.

Things were mildly chaotic at the restaurant. I was the only person waiting to be seated, yet for a few minutes no one noticed me. Finally the manager bustled over. I explained I had a reservation and gave my name. He checked quickly and told me he had no record of any reservation. I explained I had called the restaurant barely twenty minutes before. "Did you speak to a lady?" he asked, "or a woman?"

I was pretty sure there was a mistake in his question somewhere, but I also felt that there was only one permissible answer, so I gave it:
"A lady!"
He consulted feverishly with a few staff and then gave me a table for a delicious meal.

Finger Memories - hard to erase ...

Virtuoso pianists play notes faster than ought to be possible, considering the time it takes for the brain to tell a finger what to do. I believe pschologists say the speed is made possible by "pipelining", where the brain stacks a long series of rapid commands to the fingers that they respond to in series. For most of us, these pipelines are built through practice and repetition. We experience pipelining in our computer typing, the mysterious process by which awkwardly typed words eventually flow from our finger tips.

For example, in my other blog, I've become enamored of the "blockquote" html tag. At first I typed it awkwardly, and then carefully copied and pasted it, but now I can type blockquote faster than I can paste.

So if you're with me here, I hope you'll understand what an awful time I'm having with Gmail this week. There are a lot of great things to say about Google's mail agent. Originally Google thought we would all save ALL our mail, and Google would diligently search it when we wanted to find something. (Gmail has by far the best and easiest email search I've ever experienced.) But eventually Google understood that we all want to delete some of our mail, and they gave us a Delete function in the "More Actions" list box. I've got a finger pipeline for clicking on the that list box and selecting Delete to get rid of mail. ("More Actions" invokes a big list of commands, including the ability to place any tag I've defined on an item beofre I archive it. So please imagine me picking Delete out a of a real list of alternatives.)

But let's face it, even with a good spam filter, most of us use Delete a lot. So Google did the RIGHT thing - I admit that - and gave us a separate button to Delete email. So now, whenever I want to delete, I select the action box, survey the command list in confusion, then pick up my mouse and click the new Delete button - twice, once to close the action list and once to delete the mail. My "efficient" finger memories are costing me a lot of time.

I expect to learn the new pipeline in a week or so. Meanwhile, please pity me.

Remember the arms race between the Drug Runners and the Police in Florida?

The NYT has an article in the Scence Times of January 24, 2006 about what the Journal of Cell Biology does and plans to do, to catch doctored photos in article submissions. (Here's a copy of the Times story that may stay on the web for awhile.) It's officially illegal to submit a photo to this journal if part of it has been altered, but it's okay to uniformly alter the whole image (make it brighter, say). They have techniques for detecting whether part of the picture was dimmed or erased, and they will soon have programs from Dartmouth steganographer Hani Farid to detect cases where part of the image seems to have a differently oriented light source. Harid's programs will also detect exact copies of parts of the image within the image, because a common way to erase something is to copy part of the background over it.

Near the end of the article they quote a doubtful editor, Emilie Marcus, who notes that the whole process of scientific journalism is based on trust. She asks "Why say 'We trust you, but not in this one domain?'" And she's definitely on to something. Which brings us to the arms race between the drug runners and the police in Florida. There was a time when the police needed the fastest possible boats to catch the runners. And the runners needed even faster boats to escape. And they both got their boats from the same designer, who did very well creating ever faster boats. (I didn't fact-check that story, hope it's not an urban myth.)
Any good applied math programmer could write programs to smooth, adjust or roughen images in order to conceal exactly what Hani Farid's math will look for. And then someone can write software to detect that type of image manipulation, someone can write software to conceal it, and so on. We're looking at another war that will definitely profit the programmers, and Cell would be clever to try to make Trust work.

Vatican Copyright: 3 to 15 percent:

The Vatican has apparently decreed that the written words of any recent pope are governed by a copyright, and require a fee of 3 to 5 percent (15% if you try to ignore this) to print. Naturally some publishers are aghast, and it's not clear how this edict plays with the church's desire to "spread the Word." But it makes perfect sense to me. In the 1960's, a little man used to hand out short pamphlets about his own view of religion, as related to him personally by the almighty. In fact, one of his pamphlets explained that every word he wrote, although not copyright in the USA, was n fact fully protected by god, who preferred to be known, not as the Almighty, but rather as the Copy-Righty-Mighty. Frankly I've waited far too long to see the next application of divine copyright.

How do you rein in a portable computer?

I saw my first Compaq portable in 1985. My group needed a PC, and they told me to drive to another building and pick up this Compaq. When I arrived, I had to wait twenty minutes while people figured out how to give it to me. A strong steel chain secured it to a desk, and the key to its lock was not easily found. An immobile portable computer seemed ironic, but my coworkers assured me there was a lot of corporate theft in that building.

Sugar Cube ALERT!

Here's an important public service message for you: Domino has made an important change to Domino Dots, their sugar cube product. If you use sugar cubes, you've got to know about this change! But first, some background:
You're probably aware that when a company downsizes a food product, they make a big fuss about it. Ads and packaging tell you the food is New and Improved. The package may be larger, the price may be higher, but the total contents have gotten smaller. There are many ways to shrink foods, so you've really got to watch the manufacturers of all your favorite products. (And the same happens to cosmetics and many other product supplies you use around the house.)

Now as far as I know, Domino Dots have been changed without any of these “warnings.” This is a surreptitious repackaging, perhaps because the product didn't get smaller. It got LARGER. Yes, there are now twice as many calories in every Domino Dot, and you should cut your consumption of these neat li'l cubies in half. Domino has obsoleted recipes that use sugar cubes! (And there are such recipes.)

The new cube LOOKS just a little larger. In order to double in volume, each dimension has to increase by the cube root of two, which means only about 25% each higher, wider and deeper. This photo will give you a clue:

Just an ordinary bathroom scale:

A company I worked at bought some computers from a nearby vendor. These computers were being used on a military project. One day the vendor sent one of their maintenance people to us with a bathroom scale. I escorted him to the room containing their computers. He placed one of their machines on the scale and weighed it. Then he drove back to his office.
I was really puzzled by this apparently inefficient task. After all, they could have asked me (or just about anyone who worked here) to bring in a home scale, weigh the computer, and email the results to the vendor. (I wondered if the weight might be critical for some military mission; but if so, why trust a bathroom scale?)
However it turns out that another prospective customer had asked a vendor salesman, “How much does that model computer of yours weigh, anyhow?” And sending someone to our place with a scale was the easiest way for the vendor to answer the question.
Go figure.

Do you float?

Some people do not float. I've known several people who had a very hard time trying to tread water. People generally "know" that everyone can float until they meet a counter-example. I remember one swimming teacher who carefully explained to us that as long as we relaxed we would float. One student, six feet tall and very thin, proceded to sink under water with only his thumbs showing, which he twiddled for about twenty seconds.

One of my uncles used to win bets by sitting on the bottom of a pond for thirty seconds, completely under water. He did not float.

Bigger Haystacks, Smaller needles:

When we discovered that the NSA was recording hundreds of thousands of domestic communications without a warrant, an inevitable scenario developed: Apologists would say, “Okay, make them stop. We'll just be less safe from terrorists.” And then the rest of this scenario is silence. No one seems to have had the presence of mind to explain, on the spot, why that apology is likely very silly.

Security from terrorism costs money, and we have only so much to spend. The NSA program was obviously quite expensive - state of the art pattern matching to the data – and there are many other ways the same money could be spent. (A hint: protect our chemical plants.) And how many terrorists did the NSA catch? We'll probably never know if they tracked anyone down, but a story in the New York Times today clarifies just how expensive the program was.

I must say that when I first read about what they were doing, my reaction was to imagine a gigantic new haystack – the domestic phone data – and wonder if there might be any needles therein. But I didn't imagine this: that the NSA flooded the FBI with poor leads based on their data. FBI agents had to check out many vague suspicions, and according to this quote, never found anything.

Do you feel safer from terrorists now, knowing that the NSA was wasting the FBI's time?

Doggish Logic:

Years ago we were traveling with our baby and our dog, when our cheap foreign car died. Hours later we were towed to a motel. Few repair places knew how to deal with our unusual car, and we expected another long tow in the morning to get it fixed. But now it was nighttime. The motel owner eyed our dog doubtfully and said “She's welcome here as long as she doesn't bark.” He put us in a large room with a number of chairs and a large bed.

Barking was a definite prospect. Our basset hound eyed the room, whining miserably. In desperation I went to an overstuffed chair, patted the cushion vigorously and spoke a familiar command: “GO: to your bed.” Our basset happily climbed into the chair (she loved soft chairs and knew that we preferred her to stay OFF them at home), settled down and slept through the night.

The normal meaning of “GO: to your bed” was: go to your own dog bed. Somehow our dog understood I meant to make the chair her bed in this strange place. Maybe when she was whining, she was asking “where am I supposed to sleep?” Thank goodness we communicated.

How do you get into your car?

Last night I opened the driver's door of my car. I faced away from the car (away from the side) and lowered myself onto the seat. Then I slowly turned to the right, swinging my legs forward into the car. I suddenly realized that this action seemed utterly natural to me; but three or four years ago, getting in side-saddle like that was always humiliating and awkward.

I used to open the car door, stand next to the driver's seat facing forward, lift my right leg up and into the car. Then I would shift my weight, crouch and bring the rest of my body inside. But I developed a serious knee problem. And about 20% of the time, when I lifted up my right leg, the left knee – bearing all my weight – screeched in pain.

I regrouped and found this new side-saddle way. I was sure I would always be ashamed of it. I wish I'd been a bit prescient, saying to myself, "you'll feel humiliated getting into a car for three or four years."

Miserable background behind the Optimus Keyboard:

I deeply regret that I cannot provide references for the story I'm about to tell you. Please consider the Optimus Keyboard, in which every key has a display to show what that key can do at the moment. It's a neat idea, but it would have been much more valuable when the concept was invented, back in the early 1980's. In 1985 I worked with a good graphics programmer named Michael something who was despondent. He later committed suicide, partly because of this invention.

He had invented the idea of the LED keyboard, and had designed programmable keys to go with it. (For many years, I had three sample LED keys, each supporting a very small mono display). I believe that any patents on illuminated keys that he filed have expired by now.

Michael connected up with a Japanese entrepreneur who agreed to provide funding to commercialize the keyboard. Their exclusive agreement specified that if the keyboard was a failure after some time, the entrepreneur would acquire 100% rights over the invention.

It soon became clear that the entrepreneur would not provide any capital for the invention, preferring to wait until it belonged entirely to him. Our graphics friend felt he was missing the opportunity of a lifetime. In the early 1980's, every program used different keyboard conventions; dynamic LED settings on the keys would have been terrific then.

The new Optimus keyboard will apparently be quite expensive, but if I were using a computer to write in multiple languages, I would be desperate to own one.

Fake Sham:

I confess, I did not think this joke up. I'm just stealing it and running with it:

• Shampoo: Fake poo
  
• Champagne: Fake pain
  
• Champ: Fake p
  
• Shaman: Not the real article
  
• Shambles: Not the truebles
  
• Chammois: Not really me
  
• Shamash: Fake ash, but who cares?
  
• Shamrock: Much lighter than the real thing
  
• Chambre noir: Be a fake French painting.
  
• Chamomile fake'o'mile
  
• Shambling: Cubic Zirconia.

The Alligator trained me:

I'm fascinated by the ability of computer programs to train their users. A program may be abstruse and buggy, but after a few traumatic episodes we tend to use it safely and conservatively to accomplish our goals. One of the reasons that developers cannot test their own software is that it pre-trains them to avoid its bugs.

This week I realized that hardware can train me as surely as software. I bought my wife an Alligator Onion Cutter and Chopper. The chopper is a grid of sharp metal strips that you press down into a plastic form, mincing anything on the form as you go. This item greatly appealed to me as a simplified Mandolin. The most expensive Mandolins cost a lot more and get rather mixed reviews. A Mandolin can cut a veggie into small dice at one stroke if you're lucky. The Alligator has fewer moving parts (also fewer capabilities). It can dice a piece of onion all at once. It can jullienne many other vegetables.

Our first experiments with the Alligator were absolutely traumatic. Vegetables resisted the sharp knife edges and refused to cut or got stuck; dice flew into the air with a loud pop and fell everywhere; I managed to pinch my pinky between plastic surfaces when I brought the chopper down, and my finger hurt for hours. But trauma's a good teacher if you survive. I've learned that it's paradoxically easier to cut a half onion than an onion slice. I keep my fingers safe. I know to keep some vegetables well out of Alligator's reach, and I catch others to keep them from popping all over. Other vegetables happily succumb to it, forming neat little cubes or sticks for me to cook and eat.

Not Annoying. Really.

It appears that our President has signed a new law that includes a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
I haven't seen the actual text yet, and this restriction is OBVIOUSLY unconstitutional, but I'm playing it safe. My identity is now revealed in the upper left region of this blog. Here's one of many stories about the law's text.

UPDATE: There's a fierce debate about whether this law legislates anything new or poses a problem. I'm following Lawrence Lessig's advice: I don't want to be arrested for this """crime""", because the primary right US law bestows upon me is to can hire an expensive lawyer to try to prove I'm okay.

Commercial companies can't be too careful:

I was delighted to receive this email from a company I worked at. (I 've omitted a few words to make the email look even more silly):

"Santa and Mrs. Claus along with a few of Santa's helpers will arrive by special "sleigh" in the main lobby this Friday, December 23rd from 10:00-11:30 a.m. ... The information in this email may be proprietary in nature and is intended for the addressee(s) only. ..."

Okay, now I know why we don't hear more about Santa Sightings.

Hot truth on a cold night:

Like many of you, we are saving on fuel this winter by keeping our house monstrously cold. But I did think of a delicious way to coddle oneself in a cold house: when you get up the morning and remove your night clothes (your PJs or whatever), drape them over a radiator. Or put them away to be washed and put your new night outfit on the radiator. At night - and this is the true test of whether you're really trying to save fuel - when you take your night clothes off the radiator, they will be cold! (Just like the radiator.)

Apologies for not blogging on both Thursday and Friday.

Call Bernarda ...

Many years ago I knew a woman who was particularly adroit at name-dropping. I'm sure you've all met such people, but this woman did something unparalleled, in my experience, in the name-dropping realm.

A number of us were sitting and making small talk. Discussion turned to the artist Ben Shahn. Someone mentioned speaking to his widow Bernarda, and wondered if anyone else there knew her. Our adroit friend said, “I know Bernarda! In fact, just his morning” - she rummaged in her purse - “I got a message" - she pulled something out of her purse - "to call Bernarda.” As she said this, she brandished a paper fragment at us. On the paper were the words:

Call Bernarda.

The urinals are on the right:

I’m sure you’ve heard stories about absent-minded professors and researchers, but probably nothing quite like this one. Several of us were drying our hands in a busy men’s room when a guy walked in, stepped up to a sink, unzipped, and …

came to his senses, sidestepping to the nearest urinal.

Watch. Alarm. 6 PM.

My watch has five alarm settings, so I can certainly afford to have it ring at 6 PM every day. The idea is that if I can't find my watch, I can listen for it at 6, and thus find it. And this week, this week, I lost my watch.

I was certain it was in the house, but could not find it. In fact I was pretty sure it was in a pile of shirts and pants waiting to be washed. But no matter how carefully I searched that pile, I was NOT going to put those clothes in the washing machine until I found my watch. Tonight, at 6, I was standing next to the clothes, listening.

And I heard my watch! A muffled sound coming from a nearby closet, where it was stashed in a bathrobe pocket. So now the laundry's in the washing machine, the watch is back on my wrist, and I can certainly afford to have it ring at 6 PM every day.

Podsafe Music (oh, the Irony of it):

In a recent entry on Podcasts and Music, I discussed a tendency of some podcasters to use music in their shows without legal permission, and possibly without the possibility of compensating the owners of the music. I've since discovered that much of the podcast world is quite aware of this issue, and has found a way to add music to podcasts legally and properly. Many podcasters offer to showcase new music from bands, and many bands, seeking publicity, have granted rights to play their music. There's a lovely term for music that is (legally) safe to use in podcasts: “podsafe music.”

There's actually a distinct podsafe music industry right now, because the heavy hand of the RIAA has created a special niche for those who want more airtime and those who want music to mix with their speech. This thriving market is an exception to the general assumption that the RIAA's autocratic approach to copyright will suppress creativity rather than expand it. You can find this copyable music at http://www.podsafeaudio.com. Here's more general advice about finding podsafe music. And by the way, here's a sweet mashup of podsafe music and copyable Flickr pictures. I hope you won't be shocked to learn that the quality of the best podsafe music is quite similar to the quality of the best commercial music.

I would like to recommend another podcast to you called digital flotsam. Its creator, P. W. Fenton, in the past, used commercial music on his podcasts, and he's quite certain that in the process, he has lead people to buy some of the music he quoted. But he's currently doing the "legal thing." He took all his old podcasts down and will put them back up as he remixes them with all podsafe music. He explains all this in a wonderful rant, in his 27th show, which I think you definitely should NOT listen to first; enjoy any of his other shows and then try the rant, which is right on-topic here. Fenton's reminiscenences are very enjoyable, and he also uses fine judgment in choosing music and other audio to play for us. I really enjoyed his unlikely story about being a policeman on Christmas day.

There's also a much bigger niche for the podsafe musicians to attack, once their music is somewhat sorted and there are some good tools to access it. In many countries, people who make parties, bars, nightclubs (etc.) pay considerable fees in order to pipe music into their places. They would not have to pay such fees (in some countries), if they used only podsafe music. Podsafe musicians would get, at minimum, valuable exposure when their music is played in these places.