Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Spore and DRM

One of the most talked about aspects of the computer game Spore is the digital rights management (DRM) software being used to prevent unauthorized copying. The SecureROM software restricts each copy to being installed on a maximum of 3 computers. Beyond that, you can call Electronic Arts and beg them to let you install it more times. Given that hardware upgrades can make your computer count as a ‘new’ one, this might happen to a lot of people.

As DRM software goes, this really isn’t that bad. It doesn’t run an annoying program in the background, like the awful Steam system that accompanied Half Life 2. It also lets you play the game without the DVD inserted.

Arguably, the key to this issue is the following: somebody is always going to crack the DRM and release pirated copies of the game without it online. As such, DRM does not stop unauthorized copying, but does inconvenience the people who actually shell out the money for the game. As such, DRM is both useless and unfair to legitimate customers. As the Sony DRM debacle demonstrates, it can also open massive security holes on the computers of those who run it.

P.S. I will write a full review of Spore once I finish it. My first impressions are quite positive. One major suggestion to anyone trying it: play a very aggressive species for the first four stages (basically winning by killing everyone). Then, start a new game at the space stage with a blank state species. If you bring your hyper-aggressive species out into the galaxy, you will spend all of your time manually defending each of your planets from attack. It is infinitely less frustrating to build an empire based on trade and teraforming, earn lots of badges, make alliances, buy some awesome weapons, and then start busting people up if desired.

The world’s most extensive data centres

In an article for Nature, Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing, describes some of the world’s most colossal data centres. These include facilities for gene sequencing, particle physics, internet archiving, and so forth. The article includes some vivid descriptions of the massive scale at which data is being interacted with, as well as some of the technologies associated. Describing the ‘PetaBoxes’ that contain copies of much of the web, he explains:

[H]oused in these machines are hundreds of copies of the web — every splenetic message-board thrash; every dry e-government document; every scientific paper; every pornographic ramble; every libel; every copyright infringement; every chunk of source code (for sufficiently large values of ‘every’, of course).

They have the elegant, explosive compactness of plutonium.

Far from being static repositories, many of these places have been designed for a near-constant process of upgrading. They maintain spare capacity into which 1 terabyte drives can be installed when the 500 gigabyte drives become dated (and then 2 terabyte drives, and then 4 terabyte drives). The ones with the greatest capacity use huge arrays of magnetic tapes, archived and accessed by robotic arms. The data centre at CERN (where the Large Hadron Collider will soon begin collecting data) includes two robots, each of which manages five petabytes of data. That’s five million gigabytes: equivalent to more than 585,000 double-sided DVDs.

One of the most interesting issues described is heat and the mechanisms through which it is addressed. The section describing how emergency shutdowns need to occur in the event of a cooling failure definitely comes across powerfully. Describing a facility in the Netherlands, it says:

The site manager Aryan Piets estimates that if it broke down and the emergency system didn’t come on, the temperature in the centre would hit 42 °C in ten minutes. No one could cleanly bring down all those machines in that time, and the dirtier the shutdown, the longer the subsequent start-up, with its rebuilding of databases and replacement of crashed components. Blow the shutdown and stuff starts to melt — or burn.

The main system being discussed is actually surprisingly climate friendly, since it uses cool lake water and pumps rather than air conditioning equipment to keep the drives and servers at an acceptable temperature. Hopefully, it is something that other firms with massive server farm needs are paying attention to. The article mentions Google several times.

For the geeky and the curious, the whole article deserves a read.

Paper backups of digital files

One thing well illustrated by history is that the records that endure are the ones that got chiseled into stone or, failing that, at least put on paper. Given the issues of long-term reliability relating to hard drives, flash memory, and writable optical media, someone wishing to preserve information for the distant future might be well advised to make a paper copy of the parts that are most critical.

PaperBack is a mechanism for facilitating exactly that. It includes software to convert about half a megabyte of any kind of data into a pattern that can be printed onto paper. For some kinds of highly compressible information, it can manage three megabytes per page – as much as two old 3.5″ diskettes. It also includes code for scanning the data back into a digital form. While I doubt anybody will be doing this for multi-gigabyte video files, it may be a worthwhile thing for some kinds of information. Anyone building the modern equivalent of an ancient Greek tomb might be especially well advised to consider the software. Hopefully, future generations will prove as capable at deciphering JPEG images as those in the recent past did at deciphering Linear B.

A compiled version of the software is available for Windows. Mac and Linux users will need to compile the code for themselves.

Google’s web browser

Google is in the process of rolling out a web browser, called Chrome. The defining characteristics are mostly on the back end, in terms of how it deals with processes and memory addressing. That being said, the foundation is being laid for what ought to be an unusually stable and secure browser.

The whole thing is explained in this comic book. The beta version is available for Windows, but we Mac users need to keep waiting for a while yet.

P.S. Another piece of software I am excited about is Spore. I have been a big appreciator of SimCity, SimAnt, and the like. The opportunity to evolve intelligent organisms on my shiny new computer is one I anticipate eagerly.

Frontline episodes

The entire archive of the PBS investigative journalism program Frontline seems to be available online for free. Some of the more interesting topics covered include:

There is certainly a consistent – and fairly critical – focus on the controversial actions of the second Bush administration. That being said, the quality of the programs seems to be quite high.

A supercomputer on every desk

One product of globalization and technological advance is the amplification of the ‘pygmy and giant’ phenomenon. On measures like wealth or fame, the world is probably more unequal than ever before. There are faces that would probably be recognized by a significant majority of those alive on Earth – probably a situation that has only existed for a few decades at most.

At the same time, technology is sometimes a great equalizer. For instance, the world wide web lets virtually anyone with literacy and moderate wealth speak to a worldwide audience. The range of capabilities is also narrowing in other areas. For example, Wal-Mart supposedly has about 583 terabytes of sales and inventory data stored at its headquarters. That sounds impressive until I remember the 1 terabyte drive sitting on my desk. It cost about three days worth of after-tax pay and serves the major purpose of protecting my data from the failure of the disk in my main computer. At a moderate personal expense, I have 0.17% of Wal-Mart’s storage capacity.

The amount of computing power you can get per dollar (or per watt of electricity), continues to increase dramatically. For the price of a sports car, you can build yourself a supercomputer. It is interesting to speculate upon what the democratization of computing power will lead to. Will it just mean increasingly realistic games and ever-more-bloated word processors, or will some genuinely game-changing applications emerge? The fact that someone can host a webpage like this for under $40 a year suggests the potential importance of this confluence in technology, economics, and innovation.

Link rot

Anyone who has been running a website for a few years (and paying attention) will be familiar with the reality of link rot. Sites get redesigned or removed from the web and, in so doing, links you have made to them in the past cease to be functional or lead to the right content.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a huge amount that can be done about this. For the people doing the linking, there is only so much effort that can be devoted to making sure old links are still current. It is feasible for a few critical links (blogroll items, links in key posts), but not in the case of hundreds or even thousands of old entries. If the content had been moved, there is at least the theoretical possibility of combatting link rot through updating. If the content is simply gone, there is really very little that can be done.

Those being linked can probably do the most in response. When they move from one type of site organization (or one site location) to another, they can provide tools to help those brought in through old links. The gold standard is to automatically redirect people to the correct pages in new locations. At the very least, sites should provide a mechanism for lost visitors to search for the content they wanted.

Track stolen laptops with Adeona

Those enthusiastically toting their MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs to coffee shops and university libraries should take note of Adeona: a free program that helps recover laptops in the event of loss or theft.

Installation is very simple: download a file, double click an installer, and choose a password. Once the program is running, it can be forgotten entirely unless needed. It won’t give you the name and phone number of the disreputable person who made off with your lovely portable Mac, but it will give you information about any network the computer has been connected to. If your computer has a built-in camera, it can also be used to snap a picture of the perpetrator. That function probably also justifies putting it on any desktop PCs with an integral camera, such as the 20″ and 24″ iMacs.

The software isn’t exclusively for Apple products (though those who shell out the cash for Steve Jobs’ toys might need it most). Versions are also available for Linux, Windows XP, and Vista.

Enforcing open source licenses

An American court has ruled in favour of Robert Jacobsen – a man who wrote software for model trains and released it under an open source license. Ignoring the requirement in the license that derivative work credit the original and provide the original code, a commercial company made a product using the code. Under this court decision, the violation of the open source license means that the company’s behaviour consitutes copyright infringement.

I personally see a lot of value to the ‘some rights reserved’ approach of Creative Commons and others. By not requiring payment for non-commercial usage, such licenses can avoid blocking the experimentation of hobbyists. By reserving rights over later commercial usage, they prevent the abuse of materials created for general public usage. Such licenses provide the flexibility to share, along with the assurance that others will share in return.

Seeing the legal integrity of such contracts upheld is thus especially gratifying. For information on the Creative Commons license applied to my blog posts and photographs, see this page.