Mayhem & Chaos Blog

DRM

Thoughts on Sun's open DRM

My albino-samoan brother Todd asked about Open DRM -- I wasn't inclined to comment on this, but since there was a request I'll give it a few thoughts.

Slashdot introduced this project with this comment:

If DRM is the future of controlling our media files, then perhaps the open source community can at the very least ensure that the dominant delivery system is an open standard.

DRM may be here, but I've yet to come across an example where DRM is working and benefitting the people/company that deployed it. Lots of DRM follies abound! I look at this new open DRM scheme in a similar light to cryptography. Crypto that is not vetted by the public tends to be broken quickly because it missed crucial portions of the review process to ensure that its worth anything. Open DRM might be a little harder to crack after the public has had its say in it, but then again, I doubt that many hackers will line up to make it better. Unlike crypto, there is no inherent value in DRM.

That is the only difference I see between open and closed DRM. All of my points about why DRM sucks and why it will ultimately fail still stand. DRM is an attempt to fix a social 'problem' with technology and that never works on everyone -- it merely inconveniences everyone and a few will hack it to let the content leak out into the open. Remember, in order to crack DRM, you only need one person to crack it -- and DVD Jon is still very much on our side. And I'll point out again that all the copy protection schemes that were employed in the late 80s and 90s have gone away -- DRM has we know it today will follow copy protection into irrelevancy before too long.

Can anyone show me a good example of a piece of content that was released on DRM only and was not found on a P2P system hours after its release? Can anyone give me an example of a DRM system that actually works and doesn't piss off the users?

Friends

Goodbye Bug, Hello WRX!

Our 2002 Turbo Beetle (aka Naranja) has been giving us significant maintenance issues as of late. The check engine light has been on constantly for the last 6 months. The car looses power sporadically. The car lost all of its coolant, randomly. When the 'battery' died, it looked a lot more like the car fried its brain and we had to have it towed. The car was on its third instrument cluster and second automatic window motor. The stereo wouldn't work for a couple of days after a hard rain. Random plastic pieces on the interior fell off. Not stuff that should be happening with 45k miles on it. (If you ever plan on buying WV, make sure it was made in Germany, not Mexico (the first digit of the VIN must be a G).

Jean and I checked the pay off and current value on the bug and decided it was time to get rid of the bug. Since I got the scooter, I hadn't been driving the bug nearly as much and Jean needed to work to establish credit, we decided that this car would be for Jean, and not for me. Then we checked what kind of car Jean wanted and it turns out the dealer here in SLO had the exact same model Jean wanted -- that doesn't happen often! We handed them a deposit, got the bug detailed, turned off the freaking check engine light and drove to the dealer today.

We traded the bug for $110 under blue book, but got a $2250 discount on the WRX. We also had them throw in the armrest extension for free and then things looked pretty good. Overall, I'm pretty happy about this deal -- and since Jean is going to be using the car 80% of the time, she is also going to make 80% of the payments. This means that I am saving $125/month by doing this, Jean is improving her credit and we don't have a maintenance nightmare on our hands. Pretty good all around, Jean is happy, I'm happy. Yay!

And really, this car *is* Jean. Right color, right attitude -- just wait until she puts a serious subwoofer in it.

Open source

Leadership in politics, corporations and open source

Joi responding to Mitchell's post about open source leadership is prompting me to write up some thoughts that have been circling in my head for some time. Mitchell says:

... what does it take to guide a foundation, as Allison does? Well, it takes a sense of people, and good intuition for what sorts of seemingly simple topics are likely to generate giant tensions if not handled delicately. It takes knowing when to let an issue fade away and when to make sure it is completely resolved. It takes an ability to find a common ground, and enough presence (or trust, or reputation, or *something*) to get people to consider that common ground.

Spot on! Joi quotes "Leader-Follower essay by Dee Hock - the founder of VISA" and goes on to say:

What I saw in the leaders of open source projects and in the communities in general was a very strong sense of this kind of leadership. Open source projects have their share of politics and petty problems and clearly leaders of other types of organization do and should exhibit these sorts of leadership traits. However, I definitely saw something special in these open source leaders which reminded me of the leaders that Dee Hock described. They had strong ethics, were humble, were extremely sensitive of the needs of their community and lead more through coordination and management of processes than through exercise of authority. This was in stark contract to some of the conversations I have had at various CEO forums where people talked about "human resources" as if they were cogs and seemed to feel that the CEO had some divine right to more money and more power.

Well put Joi! For some time I had been lamenting that most of our politicians are no longer charismatic leaders, but lying crooks who are hungry for power. In today's political climate, being the honest, straight shooting person will leave you with precisely zero chances at being elected. The muckrakers will fling poo at you until the public laughs you off the stage.

I think that the true leaders have long since left politics for a less harrowing and more (legally) lucrative private sector. Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs -- would they have been good political leaders 50 or 100 years ago? Perhaps. Instead of seeing well run countries, we see well run private enterprise.

And now that Mitchell and Joi chime in about open source leadership, its starting to dawn on me that we're about to witness another shift from the private sector to the open source world. The words that were used to describe open source source leaders were the words I have read in text books, attributed to former leaders. Granted text books can sugar coat a whole number of things (e.g. Ronald Reagan), but the general acts of leaders from ages past seem so much more cognizant of their constituents than what we have today.

And open source leaders have a really challenging job cut out for them. Political leaders have a mandate (or used to) and taxes with which to run the government. Private enterprise has income and paychecks to motivate people. Open source has much more tenuous tools available at its disposal (crediting contributors, obscure fame, community standing, etc.), yet it can change the world through massive projects like Linux and the Mozilla Foundation.

Its clear that you are a true leader when you can coordinate tons of people to change the world, while being able to offer only tenous rewards to the people you lead. And with that, I thank all the open source leaders out there!

Dumbshit Dept.

sanluismotorsportssucks.com

I didn't really need to create another website right now, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do:

http://sanluismotorsportssucks.com

I'll try and flesh that out and submit it to Google later today.

Dumbshit Dept.

On how not to do business

So, the fine folks at San Luis Motorsports have finally found my blog entry lambasting their operations. Congrats, you guys are quick on the draw!

And of course they started sputtering anonymous insults in the comments:

"Don't your friends laugh at you when they find out you ride a scooter?"

Nope. Everyone has commented on how cool the scooter is. A number of people have asked me about it, and I've been sending them to the Honda dealer in Paso Robles. This scooter is a great product, but your bias towards motorcycles blinds you to selling these and making more money. But you just seem to care about selling $30k motorcycles and you don't give a shit about what your customers want.

The last time I was in your store, I refused to give my name for purchasing a pair of gloves. True. I find that private business that requires you to give your name for purchasing something on the spot is an invasion of my privacy. I have the right to choose whom I give my private info to. But then you found my resume online (you were intelligent enough to click on the 'resume' link -- well done!) and triumphantly exclaimed that you found my resume. Yes, you did - because I gave it to you. It was my choice to make that info public. Besides, it contains info you can find with Google, so you scored: nothing.

Back to the the principles of running a business. When a customer complains about your company, you do damage control. have you ever heard about the old adage that "the customers is always right". Going on the public record to insult your customers does not qualify as a smart business practice.

I was hoping that someone from San Luis Motorsports would contact me so we could have a meaningful discussion. I'm dismayed, but not surprised to have sophomoric insults hurled my way. My friends who have dealt with you in the past told me to expect this. So, if the owner of SLM would like to have a conversation over this issue, then please call me. You have my number.

P.S. Nice job on registering the hotmail account to talk to me. The last email I received said:

"When are you going back to Texas? They are looking for you, Jackass!"

Did I say sophomoric? I'm sorry, I meant childish.

Dumbshit Dept.

Napster 2.0 isn't any smarter than Napster 1.0

While I was in Portland blogging OSCON (more on that soon) this bit of news about Napster's earnings hit the net:

Last quarter Napster lost $19.9 million--that is,the company lost nearly a dollar for every dollar it took in. Nor is Napster's (nasdaq: NAPS - news - people ) loss an aberration: From April 2003 through the end of March 2005, the company lost $97.8 million selling digital music.

Groan! This is painful -- do they think that the dot bomb days are back? Not too long ago a friend of mine who had some insights to Roxio commented to me:

Roxio is being stupid by selling off their CD Burning business and focusing on Napster as their primary business.

Amen to that. Both Apple and M$ have realized that the margins in the download business are too thin to survive. Both companies use the download sales as a (loss) leader for their other offerings -- Apple hawks iPods and M$ hawks custom music stores. To actually create a music download site on the net that has no other business to promote via its downloads is monumentally stupid. To sell your business that has hope in favor of a business that has far fewer chances of surviving is so stupid that they deserve to die. And soon, please!