Out of Cheese

I've been impressed, disappointed, and

I've been impressed, disappointed, and amused at the reaction to my weekend note suggesting how to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who served in Congress from 1992 to 1994. (Side note: Marjorie's husband Ed, himself a former member of Congress, is currently on trial for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars after getting caught up in one of the Nigerian spam scams.)

Of course, William and everyone else who read my note had no way of knowing this. :) I've put most of that background aside in the past six years, since I turned to computer science at Stanford instead of polisci. But I still read Roll Call twice a week, and while I'm not a political junkie by any means -- I'm much more interested in policy than political games -- I'm not too far out of touch with that side of my life. So anything I do with politics these days is definitely much more of getting back into it than wandering in for the first time.

Checking referers for this page

Checking referers for this page just now, I noticed a link from somebody's mailbox. That's not uncommon -- I saw a referer link from the Exchange mailbox of someone I know at Homestead over the weekend (hi, Homestead people!) -- but what's more interesting is that this referer link wasn't password-protected. I'd strongly advise against getting an account with Web2Mail if you care about the security of your email, since I just managed to read somebody's inbox there just because they clicked on a link from their email to this page.

There's quite a bit happening

There's quite a bit happening in Philadelphia baseball news this week. Harry Kalas was inducted into the Hall of Fame yesterday, and Scott Rolen was traded to the Cardinals today. It's great to see Kalas in the Hall of Fame -- I've listened to him announce Phillies games since I was 7 or 8, and he makes the game magical. I hope he has many great years remaining on the Phillies' broadcasting team.

As for Rolen, I'm sorry to see him go. The Phillies should have backed him more strongly when Dallas Green criticized him last year, but I'd still have hoped that Green's comments wouldn't have engendered the kind of feelings Rolen has had toward the Phillies and their fans since last season. I wish him luck in St. Louis (where he'll be joining another player who didn't want to play in Philly, J.D. Drew), but I'm also glad that the long and painful saga is over. Here's hoping the Phils can open their new ballpark in 2004 with a rotation of Padilla, Myers, Smith, Wolf, and Duckworth.

Dave Winer wants to raise

Dave Winer wants to raise $5 million to defeat one or two members of Congress who support a bill introduced by Rep. Howard Berman that would allow companies to disable or hack into computers that they believe are infringing on copyrights.

Right off the bat, though, there are a couple of problems with Dave's proposed efforts:

• Berman and another co-sponsor, Howard Coble, are both running unopposed this year. Mounting any sort of campaign against anyone running unopposed is simply a waste of time, effort, and money. Yes, it sucks that so many members of Congress run unopposed, but that's how reapportionment skews things in most states.

• A new organization can't raise $5 million in three months, especially if you're talking about hard money.

That's not to say that all hope is lost, of course. It isn't impossible to draw up a game plan for making a difference in the 2002 elections, close as they may be, and for forcing some people in Washington to notice. Here's how to do it:

• Review the list of co-sponsors of Berman's legislation. Contact someone who pays close attention to Congressional campaigning -- Charles Cook, or someone with similar expertise -- and find out which races are likely to be competitive in the fall. Cross-reference that with the list of co-sponsors to find a race or two to target.

• Double-check with the campaigns of the opponents of whoever you're targeting to make sure they oppose Berman's legislation. It doesn't do you any good to work for the election of someone who won't support you.

• Hire at least two full-time staffers to work through Election Day. You'll need one fundraiser, ideally based in Washington and experienced in soft-money fundraising, and another campaign coordinator who can figure out what to do with the money. More people might be necessary by mid-September, but you'll need two right off the bat.

• Someone, either the staffers or someone associated with this effort, needs to have a very good understanding of federal campaign law. In particular, there are many regulations that govern how organizations can spend soft money to influence elections, and it all changes after this election thanks to McCain-Feingold. You don't want to be thrown in jail because you raised money without understanding the regulations that constrain your efforts.

• Establish a fundraising target. You don't need $5 million in a single race. $500,000 is more like it, or even less than that. Spend it right -- targeted TV ads on the right stations at the right time, targeted phone calls, well-written mailings, etc. -- and it'll make a much bigger difference than $5 million spent without rhyme or reason.

• Spend the next four to six weeks raising money. Few people in our industry know how to raise money effectively, and while I'm firmly in the category of those who don't know how to do it, I have a vague sense of how it works. Most important is to get certain people who have many connections and believe in your cause -- Tim O'Reilly would be one, Dave Winer is another, and there are many more -- to commit to raise a certain amount of money from their colleagues (say, $20,000 or more) by, say, September 15th. Don't just put up a web page and point people to it; that's useless. Get people on the phone, calling their friends and saying, "We're trying to toss out of Congress. We're trying to raise $500,000 by September 15th to do it. Can you give $500?" Follow up with them if they're wavering. Don't take a soft no for an answer. Fundraising is not fun, but if you work hard at it and do it right, you will be successful.

• Once contributions start coming in, make sure you know what you're doing with them. Have a game plan in mind, knowing that federal law prohibits direct coordination between soft money spenders and campaigns but that you can still figure out how to spend your money effectively. Find out what kind of campaigning -- TV, mailings, GOTV efforts, etc. -- will be most beneficial to the candidate you're supporting, and do exactly that. People in the district will notice.

• When it's all said and done, contact your supporters to let them know they made a difference and you appreciate their efforts. Keeping them as contributors is imperative for future campaigns.

In the end, whether you're successful or not, realize that the Berman bill isn't the only issue that shows that Congress doesn't understand technology users. Take the fundraising lists that you built throughout the campaign and hire a full-time staffer to raise money for 2004. By the summer of 2004, if you run things well you may have $1 million or more to spend on campaigns, and you'll have a much better sense of how to do it right. That's when people in Washington will notice, and that's when the fight will be much more even than it is today.

Want an indication of just

Want an indication of just how much Mac OS X has changed the open source world? Here's a quote from Doc Searls' notes on the O'Reilly open source convention that's going on this week: "About 4/5 of the laptops here are Apples." Last year, that would have been 10% or less. Now it's 80%. And all of that for a system that's not GPL'd, which to me proves that the open source community isn't full of nearly as much zealotry as some would have you believe.

I finally got to see

I finally got to see a writeup of Jackpot today, only three months after it was played.

More on the Game later for anyone reading this who hasn't played....

I just noticed tonight that

I just noticed tonight that U.S. Airways didn't credit me with any mileage for my flight from Philadelphia to Seattle on the morning of September 11. We landed in Champaign, IL, where I spent two days before taking a bus up to O'Hare and flying from there to Pittsburgh and then on to Seattle. I did get miles for those two flights, but no credit for the Philadelphia-Champaign trip on the 11th.

I've filed a mileage adjustment request. I'm quite curious to see what they'll do with it.

Anyone want a Ring? Yep,

Anyone want a Ring? Yep, the One Ring, the greatest of the Rings of Power, forged by no less than Sauron himself, can be yours for only $129. With a certificate of authenticity, no less.

KernelTrap mentions a terrific patch

KernelTrap mentions a terrific patch for Linux -- kernel panics in Morse code. That would make for a great MacHack hack for next year.

Eric Belsley of the Mac

Eric Belsley of the Mac Resource Page mentions in Friday's edition that he's going to law school next year. Last I knew, he was a math professor. I wonder what led him to make that change.

Amazon Light is a nice

Amazon Light is a nice application of the Amazon Web services APIs. I doubt this is what Amazon intended when they released the APIs, but it probably doesn't hurt them. It definitely makes for a good Amazon experience if you have an idea of what you're looking for.

Real Player is now available

Real Player is now available for Mac OS X! I'll never have to run Classic again now that I can listen to Phillies games with a native version of Real Player.

Amazon announced a Web services

Amazon announced a Web services interface yesterday. This is big news, although it didn't get much press. They've managed to take their store, with all of the creative ways they've found to present its products, and open that up to the creativity of the rest of the world. They've provided exactly what Tim O'Reilly asked for in his MacHack keynote -- an interface that allows developers to glean information about the products they (or their users) want to track, with the net effect being that Amazon can become a very valuable information resource, and not just a store.

I'm looking forward to seeing other companies follow suit. Google led the way, and Amazon's now followed them. I wonder who's next?

Neil Gaiman writes about Terry

Neil Gaiman writes about Terry Pratchett for the Financial Times:

The oddest thing about Terry Pratchett, all things considered, is the lack of respect he gets from people who don't read him. After all, he's one of Britain's bestselling authors, and he became a bestselling author the right way, which was from people reading the books and forcing them on their friends.

I'm always amazed by the number of people who haven't read Terry Pratchett's books. I try to get people to read them, but it isn't easy -- there's nothing that describes the Discworld novels very well. "Like Douglas Adams but more consistently funny," is the best I typically end up saying, but that doesn't do Pratchett justice. Gaiman's right -- nearly everyone who reads Pratchett's novels loves them, but he doesn't get any attention.

Gaiman's a terrific author in his own right. I really should read American Gods and Coraline someday. I just have to finish Aaron Hillegass' excellent Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X first....

Since mentioning here that I'm

Since mentioning here that I'm thinking of law school and trying to reconcile that with my programming background, I've had a couple of people suggest that I consider patent law, and specifically technology patents. I've ruled that out, though, and I should probably explain why.

First and foremost, I don't believe in software patents in the way they're currently granted. The current state of American patent law allows a patent to be granted on nearly any concept in software, regardless of how technically challenging, innovative, or independently reproducible it is. Patents are supposed to be novel, non-obvious, and useful. In the software realm, only the meaning "useful" is unquestionable. "Novel" is traditionally defined by the existence (or lack thereof) of prior art, but unlike many other fields there is no good collection of searchable prior art for software. Most software doesn't have its specifications published in a journal, and nearly all software is only used internally or has its implementation protected as a trade secret. Additionally, "non-obvious" is very unclear for software. I've seen the term replaced with "involving an inventive step", but that leads to the question of just what an invention is. As far as I'm concerned, if I can describe a problem to a room of ten competent software engineers and two or three of them come up with the same solution as me, the solution ought to be considered sufficiently obvious to not be patentable. But that's just my view; the Patent Office disagrees.

In any case, I don't think that software should be unpatentable in principle, but rather that the Patent Office grants far more software patents than it should. That leads to my second point, which is that a patent lawyer's primary interest is not ensuring that good patents are granted. Patent lawyers' clients are companies or individuals who are trying to receive patents, not trying to build a better patent system. As a result, a patent attorney is often inclined (and pressured) to try extremely hard to find any patentable claim, no matter how small or absurd, and, for any such claim, to try to make it as broad as possible regardless of the resulting constraints on innovation. That's what the best patent lawyers do, and by declining to do that I wouldn't be acting in my clients' best interests.

As an example of all of this, a few months back my team was trying to think of components of our product that were patentable. Now, in all probability there wasn't much if anything new about our work, and there was literally nothing in it that represented a major new idea in computer science, but that doesn't matter. Companies want large patent portfolios so they can engage in patent swaps with other companies, so the best companies at that game try to patent anything they can get past the Patent Office. Someone else on my team mentioned that a component of the code that I worked on might be patentable. Everyone else agreed, but I was sitting there knowing that if I gave the problem that we'd solved to a collection of first-year computer science students many of them would have solved it the same way. It's an uncommon problem, but not a difficult one, and it would be absurd to be able to prevent anyone else in the field from solving it.

In any case, the patent lawyer who we were dealing with was rather excited about the application, and she went off to do a prior art search. A couple of months later she came back with two articles, one of which matched our work to a T. It was a rather obscure article, though -- the kind of one- to two-page piece that was probably published because the journal had some space that it needed to fill. Without that luck, we'd have filed to patent this incredibly simple idea, and probably been granted the patent...even though the idea was almost certainly not novel and was definitely not non-obvious by my definition. It's just that the problem wasn't something that would typically lend itself to publication in an academic journal (or publication of any sort), so the Patent Office wouldn't have any idea that it wasn't new or non-obvious.

To make matters worse, when I told the patent attorney that the article she found was exactly like our work, she was extremely disappointed. She pressured me to find any way in which we could still put a claim together, but I said (honestly) that there simply wasn't anything different in our work. She wasn't very happy about that.

I don't want to end up like that. I don't want to work as a patent attorney in a system that encourages applications for and the granting of bad patents, and I never, ever want to be in a position where I'd be pushing someone to find some obscure part of an "invention" that might be ever so slightly different from something that was only published as prior art by pure luck. I sincerely hope that I can do better things for society in my life than that, so that's why I have no plans to go into patent law.

According to MacCentral, the Wall

According to MacCentral, the Wall Street Journal has an article that quotes Kevin Browne, head of Microsoft's MacBU, as saying that sales of Office v.X for Mac OS X have been rather disappointing, and "If things don't dramatically turn around, we'll be evaluating this business with Apple." Browne's chief complaint is allegedly that Apple hasn't done much to promote Mac OS X.

Browne should know, as Microsoft as a company must, that sales of boxed copies of operating systems pale in comparison to operating system copies from new computer sales. Very few people pay for upgrades to their operating systems, and I imagine that's especially true for upgrades like Mac OS X that effectively require the purchase of entirely new software. Even at its upgrade price, Office v.X increases the cost of upgrading an existing Mac OS 9 system to Mac OS X from the $129 cost for the operating system to over $400. That's not Microsoft's fault -- it has to charge for Office, and the price of Office on the Mac is largely the same as the price of Office on Windows -- but it certainly decreases the already small number of people willing to upgrade their existing systems.

Most operating system upgrades, then, come from new hardware sales. Those sales have been down dramatically this year, as both Microsoft and Apple have noticed. Browne, then, would be more correct to blame low sales of Office v.X on the economy rather than on Apple's operating system marketing (or lack thereof). It's not Microsoft's fault, as Phil Schiller seems to say (according to MacCentral), but neither is it Apple's. If more people were buying new computers, more people would be buying Macs, and Microsoft would sell more copies of Office v.X. It's that simple. Until the economy perks up, both companies will just have to make do with lowered expectations.

So Dave Hyatt is leaving

So Dave Hyatt is leaving AOL and going to work for Apple. I wonder what he'll be working on there. Logic would say that he knows web browsers best, specifically Mozilla, and that Apple desperately needs a browser control, so perhaps he's doing that.

On the other hand, perhaps he's tired of browsers and just wants to work on something cool. Apple's certainly a good place for that.

OK...I'm quite impressed. 18 minutes

OK...I'm quite impressed. 18 minutes from the time I sent my mail to a response from Apple. Of course, the response was merely "Thanks for the note. We'll look into it," but that's still a terrific response time.

I just submitted my first

I just submitted my first security issue to Apple's Product Security team. It's a bit nitpicky, but it is a potential security problem. I'm idly curious to see what their response time is on a weekend. If I hear back from them before Monday I'll be quite impressed.

One of my roommates was

One of my roommates was displaying Windows XP's aquarium screen saver last night and I was ever so slightly jealous that I hadn't seen anything quite that good on Mac OS X. I was browsing VersionTracker this morning, and what do you know -- SereneScreen has released a Mac OS X version! $12.95 later, I have a variety of fish wandering around my screen. They're a welcome change from the Aqua Icons screen saver.

The media's all abuzz about

The media's all abuzz about a security problem in Apple's Software Update, which is susceptible to a DNS spoof attack. While this is admittedly a problem, I have to say that I don't really think it's a big deal. If someone's spoofing DNS on your network they can trick you into doing more or less anything, so the fact that they can do it via Software Update isn't really impressive.

Should Apple fix it? Sure. They just have to sign their downloads and they'll never have to hear about it again. But I'd much rather see them focus on changing password files to not be world-readable first. I'm surprised that hole hasn't received far more attention than the DNS spoofing problem.

It's GCC 1, Eric 0

It's GCC 1, Eric 0 so far in my experiments with precompiled headers in Apple's latest GCC 3 builds. My note on the projectbuilder-users list has the details.

On a completely different note,

On a completely different note, I found Mark Jason's talk about why Design Patterns is misguided to be interesting. I've been using design patterns for years without knowing the exact names for them, yet every so often someone gets very upset when they hear that I haven't read the book. I've purchased a copy so I can now say that I've read it (er, once I've finished it), but I haven't gotten too much out of what I've read so far. Just because I know that the design that makes sense happens to be called an Adapter pattern doesn't mean that I'm suddenly designing that code any different from how I previously did it...which was an adapter, but without the capital 'A'. Maybe I'm just lucky enough to have picked up a good sense of design, or maybe I'm being short-sighted and silly. I'm not sure.

In the past year I've

In the past year I've done a fair amount (for a programmer) of both public speaking and writing, yet I don't have much formal training in either. I've improved in both over time, but that's more through my personal evaluation of what works and what doesn't than anyone telling me what good practices are.

Today I came across Mark Jason Dominus' Conference Presentation Judo presentation and its notes, which seem to say that I'm learning the right things. Here's an assortment of his suggestions for speakers:

• Go to the bathroom before the talk begins. This is really important.
• Don't waste time on lengthy topic introductions. The audience doesn't get anything out of them.
• Have sections for your talk. Some (most?) folks will tune out at some point, so by dividing your talk into sections you let them have points where they can get back into it again.
• Move quickly. Nobody can remember all of the details of a talk, so rather than spending time reiterating the details, move on. And cover the material in different ways so those who don't get the first example will understand the second.

There's more, but these are some of the highlights. I'd like to think that my MacHack talk managed to hit most of the points here, which I think is a good sign.

The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article in tomorrow's issue about a raging controversy in American nutrition. Specifically, the article notes that the low-fat recommendations that Americans have heard for the past twenty years weren't based on incontrovertible research and that an increasing number of research studies are showing that a low-carbohydrate diet works well. More interesting, though, is the claim that the prescribed low-fat diet may in fact be contributing to America's obesity epidemic, if not the epidemic's primary cause. I don't normally care one whit about diets or eating recommendations, but this is rather interesting if it proves to be correct.

The Perl community's Mark Jason

The Perl community's Mark Jason Dominus posted his Good Advice and Maxims for Programmers to comp.lang.perl.misc a couple of months ago. It's a list of all of the things that so many programmers need to hear, but which you unfortunately can't always tell them in public. It's quite entertaining.

I had quite a bit

I had quite a bit of fun today and tonight building Apple's latest GCC from CVS, then realizing that it wouldn't build correctly without the latest as, figuring out how to build cctools, rebuilding GCC, and trying to determine exactly which GCC components are required to get things to build on a Jaguar system. Ick. All this to work around a compiler bug in the version of GCC 3 in the April developer tools, and I think the bug's still present in the latest bits. I now have a workaround that I need to try on the "standard" Jaguar GCC, but I have to figure out how to get my computer back into its standard state first.

Newsbytes reports that the House

Newsbytes reports that the House of Representatives is starting to provide legislation and other correspondence in XML, with the DTDs in the public domain. This is terrific -- it'll make legislative information much more accessible.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. of the

E.J. Dionne, Jr. of the Washington Post has an interesting column on the 9th Circuit's Pledge of Allegiance decision. Personally, I wholeheartedly agree with and strongly dislike the decision. I agree with it because I feel that the addition of the words "under God" adds a government endorsement of religion that should not be mandated. But I dislike the decision because, as Dionne states, it has inspired politicians to re-examine the role of religion in our government. The Christian right is likely to use the decision as a strong motivation towards expanding religious practices in government institutions, such as prayer in schools, and with this decision in hand those efforts will be much more difficult to resist. I worry that the line to which Dionne refers will shift more towards religion than to secularism, simply because this decision forces the American public to re-evaluate it.

A great quote from Dan

A great quote from Dan Gillmor's notes on day two of the Harvard ILaw conference:

Bill Gates' "Trustworthy Computing". Computers "that can be trustworthy against the people who are using them."

I have yet to hear anyone suggest that a reasonable consumer wants DRM technologies completely integrated into her computer. Content providers want DRM for obvious reasons, and those who are planning to push the required integration of DRM are ignoring consumers in favor of the content providers. Perhaps if consumers had more of a choice of what to buy there would be a backlash against systems with integrated DRM.

Lilly says I can link

Lilly says I can link to her. Yay! Unfortunately, she's without an RSS feed, so her blog's a lot tougher to read than it should be. But in response to her question, yep, Lils, I'm reading. :)

I randomly found the Crayola

I randomly found the Crayola Custom Crayon Box Builder tonight. The color names are great. Where was fuzzy wuzzy brown when I was eight years old?

A sample from Dan Gillmor's

A sample from Dan Gillmor's notes:

Chris Lydon: The entertainment industry cannot win.

Lessig: Will people wake up to the architecture question? He doubts it.

This after Lessig spoke at the beginning of the day on how companies and governments can modify the architecture of the Internet in a way that ensures they can control the Internet's content and use, and bemoaned the fact that so few people pay attention to him when he makes this point. Lydon played straight into Lessig's hands. Of course the entertainment industry can win, since if they work hard enough they can and will control the architecture. The question is how the rest of us can keep them and the other parties that are interested in subverting the original nature of the Internet from having their way.

Every time I talk to

Every time I talk to Katie I'm convinced I should go to law school, specifically to Stanford Law so I can take classes from Lawrence Lessig. Then Katie heads back to Tracy (or, shortly, to Oregon) and I start to wonder just what I'd do with a law degree, and whether it would move me farther away from writing software than I'd like.

On top of it all, every so often I run into pages like Dan Gillmor's notes on the first day of a week-long conference on law and the Internet at Harvard. It's obvious that the discussions like these that occur more and more frequently nationwide desperately need some very technical participants. That's not to say that Lessig, Gillmor, et al. aren't technical -- they certainly are, or else they wouldn't be able to follow the discussions in the first place. But the engineers who create these systems are often left out of the discussion, and the perspective of someone who understands exactly how the technology works and also has a solid understanding of the law could only help. I would love to play that role. It just isn't clear how I could fit that into my life without putting programming behind me for good. As soon as I find someone who'd be interested in a software developer with a law degree, I'll be that much more willing to go to law school.

Maybe I should be glad

Maybe I should be glad that I left before Lilly started making mochi. The resulting product appears to be a new life form of sorts....