Perhaps you’ve heard about Apple and EMI striking the first blow to crumble the wall of Digital Rights Management on music. I really can’t comment on the blessed event itself without tripping over somebody else’s analysis. There is one tangental point to all of this that I think is very interesting: this move will be a big step in breaking the walls of Apple prejudice in the minds of geeks.

A name like Craftsman to a carpenter is like the names Microsoft or Apple to a geek and there’s generally a sense of product loyalty (or repulsion) with either. In the case of Apple, a lot of geeks are still biased against the company for their previous history of proprietary technology and the decline in the quality of their products during the late 80s and early 90s. Recently Apple has been doing a lot of things that have been gaining back the trust and the iPod and the Mac have demonstrated that not only can Apple create some really slick products but that they can also do it in a way that is thoroughly standards-based. The proprietary nature of the iPod and iTunes ecosystem tied together with DRM was one of the last major arguments left.

Oh, and in addition to my post of March 23rd, add AAC to the list.

Lastly, I promise no more Apple-based articles for a while. I need to branch out into things I know a little bit less of.

I watched the movie Jesus Camp earlier today. I’ve had an interest in the religious right for a while, so it didn’t shock me as much as it was probably meant to. It didn’t need to try to shock me, however. There were no voice overs or interviews to guide the people to their craziness, just a group of people being filmed. There may have been some bias in the editing of scenes to make evangelicals as fanatical as possible, but some of the things the they said make me doubt it was necessary.

My purpose in writing about the movie isn’t to rant about it, but instead to discuss (read: shamelessly promote) Camp Quest, the camp that I volunteer at every year. While watching the movie I couldn’t help comparing their camp, and even their movement, to mine.

Becky Fischer, the “main character” of Jesus Camp, makes it clear that she wants to get Christianity into kids early so that there’s a better chance that it will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Strategically this is a great idea. What frightens me is that they are telling their kids that they should want to lay down their lives for Jesus and that Muslims teach their kids to become bombs.

In comparison we have Camp Quest doesn’t actually do much in the way of teaching absolute truth. While we may not append every statement with ” as far as we know”, most if not all of our counsellors will gladly say that they are not completely sure of any of the things that we teach them. We teach them the value of careful and critical thought with a heavy dose of skepticism of everything. It seems to me that our desire to teach kids and then tell them to decide for themselves shows more conviction than evangelicals in our ability to obtain the truth, even if we don’t have conviction in what we currently know is the truth.

This hits at a tough intellectual chewing point in the freethought/humanist/atheist/agnostic/skeptic movement: why exist when you have nothing to push. The reason is because the movement is at it’s core defensive. Defending congress’ duty not to make laws respecting an establishment of religion, defending against the lingering paranormal and the pseudo-scientific claims by promoting the skepticism and critical thinking that should be taught more completely in public schools, and defending the integrity of people who say that they can be ethical without belief in a higher power.

Such a movement almost doesn’t exists in more progressive countries (such as some in Europe) because it doesn’t need to. This is not because everybody is forced to be atheist (you know, like in China, where that is so not working). It’s because everybody is a lot more laid back and reasonable. Ironic considering the first amendment was a pretty progressive thing at the time.

The line blurs a bit further. Always a good thing, I say, unless of course it causes an epidemic of ovine influenza.

I’ve been awaiting the amorphous, brainless organ blobs that they’ll be creating to grow our replacement organs. I honestly have no idea if that would be better or if sheep is the next big fad in organ growing. I think I’ll tentatively choose the blob because of the above mentioned cross species disease factor.

Blobs: 1
Sheep: 0

Come on, Dolly, sell it to me. You’re losing to non-existent beings with no cognitive abilities whatsoever!

Anyway, it wasn’t mentioned in the article, but the lab is looking for volunteers to try the organs. They’re targeting Bush loyalists due to the fact that greater than or equal to 15% of their genetic make up is the same as a sheep.

Apple’s Proprietary Past Precedes Present Plans

Apple is often accused of using only closed standards. This was true 10 years ago, but a lot of things have changed since then. Unfortunately the closed nature of the iPod, iPhone, and iTunes music store have had a reverse halo effect on those who remember Apple’s past and aren’t looking at their present any further than their entertainment devices. While Apple computers have gotten easier to update since the transition to Intel, I’ll admit that the designs of some models make that somewhat difficult. Still, there’s much standardized love to be had in the Apple computer world such as:

• Apple has led the industry in the implementation of USB, Firewire, DVI, Bluetooth, and gigabit ethernet
• Every application in OS X can print to PDF
• OS X can host AFP, SMB/CIFS, web, SSH, and FTP services
• OS X reads everything above plus HFS(+), FAT(32), NTFS, NFS, WebDAV, ZFS (soon), and more
• All Cocoa-based OS X applications support Unicode
• OS X can connect to Active Directory, LDAP, and SLP
• Address Book exports to the vCard format
• Dashboard uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• iCal exports to the iCalendar format
• iChat supports the AIM and Jabber protocols
• iTunes rips to the MP3 format by default
• Mail uses plain text files (with some XML mixed in) to store messages
• Preference files in OS X are XML formatted
• Preview, OS X’s viewer, can read and save BMP, GIF, JPEG(2000), Photoshop, PICT, PNG, SGI, TGA, and TIFF

I slipped for three days. Technically I’m slipping now because this post won’t have much to it aside from whines that I’ve been looking for a job and empty promises that I’ll do better.

I did want to share a good quote I read just now from a man named Dave Farell who was quoted on this site saying “The devil is in the details, but exorcism is in implementation”.

Ah, software engineering quotes.

I applied to four companies this past week. This more than doubles the number I’d already applied to. It this exponential trend continues as I expect, I will be applying to 485 jobs per week in less than a month.

On the topic of increasing numbers, the Flytown picture I put up in my last post got 92 views on Flickr, doubling or tripling the number of views I’ve gotten on on recent popular pictures.

That “# views” note at the bottom of every picture is an interesting example of training (one could more innocently say helping) photographers to find out what works to create a really good picture. Obviously this shows what most people like and what is most instantly visually pleasing since a view is when somebody clicks through from a thumbnail amongst many other pictures. I think that the photographer needs to keep in mind what they want too. Woody Allen once said “When I put out a film that enjoys any acceptance that isn’t the most mild or grudging I immediately become suspicious of it.”

In other news I watched Serenity twice yesterday (the second time with Joss Whedon’s comments). That’s about the level of excitement that yesterday held as I wasn’t really motivated to get much done. I did have a shot of Bailey’s in honor of St. Patrick, though. And in honor of my tastebuds.

Oh, and I’ve been doing this blog for a month now. I don’t know how that happened.

I realized today why I don’t like to drink caffeine. It’s a hack (as in like software). A quick and ugly fix that gets the job done until the time comes that it inevitably fails you and another hack is necessary. Sure, it feels good at the time but you know it can’t last.

On the other hand there are more complete solutions such as getting more sleep, eating healthy foods, and exercising. Just like best practices in software engineering I’ll admit I’m nowhere near perfect in this regard. I realize, however, that it’s a more thorough solution that gets at the root of the problem rather than trying to fix it’s symptoms.