I realized yesterday that there is no way in hell that I’m going to finish a pair of knee-high socks during the Knitting Olympics. That is unless I go without sleep, or grow another pair of hands so that I can type and knit at the same time. But I’m happy with the way this one is going so far.

I know it’s old news by now, but I was going back over the President’s State of the Union address yesterday and I couldn’t help but chuckle at his call for improvement in math and science education. It’s a message that I completely agree with, but it’s funny coming from a man whose party has such utter contempt for science.

Several recent titles released by Sony have special anti-copying software bundled on them. On a Windows PC, there’s a feature called autorun that lets Windows check a CD for special software to run before it tries to access the actual music content on the disc. Most publishers use this to provide some kind of multimedia add-on that make the CD more fun to play on your PC. But Sony has done a very naughty thing and included a rootkit on their CDs.

A rootkit is a software package that is designed to give itself and any accompanying programs administrative access to your computer. In this case, the software installs itself, hides itself so that you cannot locate it, and then makes sure you can’t make more than two copies of the CD. Sony figures that this will help keep piracy down. (Never mind the fact that industrial-grade pirates don’t use PCs to make copies.) The big media companies, including movie and record producers, are scared to death of modern digital technology because it makes high-quality copying so easy. They don’t want people to distribute copies of movies or songs without paying for them.

The problem is that they are so zealous that they’ve forgotten that while they may own the copyrights to the movies and music , they do not own our computers. That’s the line that Sony crossed with this new software.

A press release on Sony’s site states very plainly that the software is not a security risk. That’s a lie, plain and simple. It’s already been exploited by at least one virus. See, the Sony software alters Windows to not display any file whose name starts with “$sys$”. That introduces a huge security problem, because it removes your ability to control what files are on your computer. Imagine for a second that Sony called you up and said, “Hey, we’ve modified your credit card statements so that you won’t see any transactions going to companies whose names start with ‘S’. Don’t worry, this isn’t a security problem.” Anyone going to buy that?

Personally, I think that current copyright and intellectual property law is really, really screwed up. Patents and copyrights are supposed to encourage innovation, but they are increasingly being used to preserve monopolies and defend revenue streams. But even if you accept the current laws as being fair, companies like Sony are overstepping their bounds. With this rootkit software, Sony is using the same techniques as organized crime. There are already two lawsuits against them for this in the US, and I hope many more follow.

Update
It just keeps getting worse. Looks like Sony has provided an uninstaller, but if you use it, you’re leaving your system wide open for even more security headaches.

Now that I’ve gone through it, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Sitting in a 1940′s-era wooden chair with cheap padding isn’t exactly fun, but the lawyers and witnesses on both sides did very good jobs of conveying information to us. Not all of the information seemed especially relevant to the case, but I did my best to absorb it all and process it.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

A few years ago, Mr. Cash and his wife were flying their twin-turboprop private plane from Anglefire back to Texas, having just spent some time in a cabin they have up there. Mr. Cash has been flying for years and uses his plane for business and pleasure. Over the mountains, the left engine suddenly lost power. It was still running, but it wasn’t generating enough power to produce any thrust. They had to make an emergency landing.

Mr. Cash contacted Madripoor Motors, the company that manufactured their plane’s engine. Within two days, Madripoor had delivered a new cylinder to replace the one that had failed. It appeared that the intake valve for on that cylinder had broken. The cause of the breakage was never determined.

A few months later, Mr. Cash and his wife (and their two dogs) were again flying their plane, this time from Texas to Anglefire, when the exact same symptoms appeared. The left engine’s power dropped suddenly. It spewed oil onto the fuselage. Another emergency landing took place. Everyone was fine, including the dogs, but they were very shaken up and very upset.

It turns out that it wasn’t the same failure as the first time. This time, the exhaust valve had failed rather than the intake valve. And instead of the valve stem breaking, the entire valve stem had been ingested into the cylinder. This did some pretty spectacular damage to the inside of the cylinder (which we got to see in court). The plaintiffs and the defense both agreed that sucking the valve inside the cylinder and ripping the aluminum inside to chunks is not typical behavior in an aircraft engine.

This time, Madripoor Motors asked Mr. Cash to return the entire engine to them. They said they’d need it for 8 to 10 weeks, and if they determined that there were problems due to their manufactured parts, they’d provide warranty service. Mr. Cash wanted them to handle it the same way they’d handled the last issue, namely by sending a replacement cylinder. Madripoor refused and asked him what would make him happy.

Mr. Cash had his lawyer send them a letter saying that he wanted a new engine. The letter went unanswered for about a month and a half. Mr. Cash filed a lawsuit.

Three years later, a jury was selected and the case was heard. After three days of testimony and evidence, we retired to the sumptuous jury room (yes, I am being ironic) and deliberated. We’d been at it for about five minutes when the bailiff called us out into the hall again. One of the jurors, I believe he was #1 in the original lineup, was asked into the courtroom while the rest of us waited outside. A few minutes later he emerged. A few minutes after that, he was called in again. When he emerged the second time, he walked right on past us down the hall to the elevators. He’d been excused and we were told that the lawyers on both sides had agreed to continue with only eleven jurors.

The deliberation process was very interesting because we were given a set of questions written in legalese and very sparse instructions on how to continue. The only procedural guidance we were really given was to select a foreman and have them be responsible for sending back any questions and for giving the final verdict to the judge. The nature of our discussion was left entirely up to us. Oh, we were told not to draw lots or flip coins.

In the end, ten of us decided that Madripoor bore no fault at all. I was the only one who didn’t sign their name to the verdict. I thought that it was unconscionable that Madripoor should have broken off communications with Mr. Cash after he sent a letter from his lawyer. Granted, that’s a pretty heavy-handed way to engage in negotionations, but I didn’t think it warranted Madripoor’s withdrawal from the negotiation process. Everyone else pointed at the letter that Madripoor sent which said “please send us your engine so we can examine it” and said that with that act alone, Madripoor had fulfilled their warranty obligations.

Not the first time I’ve been the only one in the room who saw things a certain way. I suspect it won’t be the last.

I really enjoyed the process though. I have a high opinon of all of my fellow jurors save one – the one who got himself excused. After the case was done, the judge let us come back into the courtroom to tell us that the gentleman had been released because he’d gone up to the plaintiff outside of court to ask him about his airplane engines.

I mean, come on. That was just stupid.

I woke up this morning to the radio. It was “call in and bitch about whatever you want” day, and someone named Samantha was calling in to gripe about the fact that the media never report any of the good things that are happening in Iraq, just the bad. Her boyfriend is a Marine over there, and she said that people should realize that we went over there to get rid of Saddam Hussein and “give the people a government that would work for them and their culture”.

I called in with a rebuttal. Basically I just read this Defense Department press release which I’ve linked to before, which outlines our reasons for going to war. No, it wasn’t to bring democracy to the Iraqis. It was to disarm Saddam, because he had enormous stockpiles of chemical, biological and probably nuclear weapons.

Ahem. Except, of course, that he didn’t, which makes our government either incompetent, or liars, or both.

Anyway, having successfully tilted with that windmill, I got in to work and tried to figure out which end of a huge steaming pile of, um, work, to attack first. I could give you the details, but unless acronyms like IDNA, DNS, ACE, RIPE and ARIN really get you hot, you’d probably wake up to find yourself drooling on your keyboard. (Luckily, those acronyms do get me hot, so I had some fun.)

And then in the middle of the day, I got reverse stigmata on my right hand. I had gotten up to talk to someone on the other side of the building, then came back and sat down to start typing. I looked down at my hand and saw that the back of it was covered with blood. No idea how I cut it or how long I’d been leaking. Very weird. Not sure if that means anything or not.

After work, I took a cue from Staceyjoy and threw away a ton of crap that I’ve been needlessly clinging to for years and years. I sold a whole lot of books at Half Price books and got a pittance for them, but it was more than I would have gotten if I gave them to Goodwill. Stopped by Kelly’s house, where some of my stuff has been sitting ever since we broke up, and retrieved it. Most if it went straight to the dumpster, but I did find a couple of books that I’d like to hold on to.

Now I have come home and munched a fast-food dinner. In a minute I’m going to bust open my laptop and get back to work. One of the problems I’ve been having at work is that some very old code which has lain fallow for many years is now being used again, and it’s crap. I’m going to write a program which will scan that code and create automatic tests to see if it’s working or not. Having those tests around will make working with the code much safer, and less likely to result in my dismissal and/or suicide.

And then I shall sleep.

Anyway, I’ve finally disovered a way to get meaningful answers directly from President Bush.