Category: General

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No Comment: Copyright

I was going to comment about this book on copyright.

I do want the book cited.  The writer– himself gifted in language– strongly recommends the book.

I have been interested in copyright issues for a long time, but especially since the late 1990’s when I was convinced that the music industry had disastrously misjudged the technological landscape and invested all of their strategies into trying to kill online access to music and videos.  It was Apple who first realized that it really wasn’t about the money.  The typical down-loader spent far more on buying records and CDs than the average non-downloading citizen did.  It wasn’t that millions of users were so eager to obtain music and video without paying for it: the truth was they just wanted access.  They wanted to be able to find a recording or movie they liked and listen to it or watch it without having to go to a physical store and place an order and wait– forever– for some distributor to finally acknowledge their preference and ship it to them.

Apple charged people for every download, and, astonishingly, people bought it.

We have a reached a point now where I believe the sale of actual music or video files is no longer the salient point.  The point is eyeballs, email accounts, registrations– whatever attracts the user to the website, to the click-throughs, the data.  The question content owners are going to ask is not “did you pay for the song” but “do you have an account?”.  Can we sell your eyeballs?  Can we hit you up with ads?  Can we spy on you?

The second thing that has become apparent is that, in spite of what the industry keeps telling us, the artist is not getting paid.  The average amount an artist was paid for an album sale in the 1970’s was about $1.  The average amount he receives for a download from iTunes or Spotify is too small to measure.

Who is getting the money?

Spotify and Apple and their cohorts.

 

 

 

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You Bad, Bad Person, Ani Difranco

In 2017, the progressive singer-songwriter Ani Difranco announced that she was holding a retreat at an antebellum estate in Louisiana.  Sharp-eyed witch-hunters immediately dug up the history of the mansion: turns out it had existed during the time of slavery and was occupied by slave-owners, much like most of Louisiana.

DiFranco’s choice of venue for the retreat was called “a very blatant display of racism” on a petition at Change.org that collected more than 2,600 signatures.[81]

On December 29, 2013, DiFranco issued an apology, announcing that she was cancelling the retreat, stating that

i am not unaware of the mechanism of white privilege or the fact that i need to listen more than talk when it comes to issues of race. if nottoway is simply not an acceptable place for me to go and try to do my work in the eyes of many, then let me just concede before more divisive words are spilled. …

i think many positive and life-affirming connections would have been made at this conference, in all of its complexity of design. i do not wish to reinvent the righteous retreat at this point to eliminate the stay at the Nottoway Plantation.

at this point I wish only to cancel.[82]

The singer’s statements were called “remarkably unapologetic” on Jezebel,[73][76] and “a variety of excuses and justifications” by Ebony.[78] Additionally, a piece at The Guardian said the announcement made “much of the idea that this was all a mistake, with no indication of remorse.”[80]

DiFranco issued a second statement and apology on January 2, 2014, following continued criticism. In it, she wrote “… i would like to say i am sincerely sorry. it is obvious to me now that you were right – all those who said we can’t in good conscience go to that place and support it or look past for one moment what it deeply represents. i needed a wake up call and you gave it to me.”[83]  From Wikipedia

The only thing more disgusting than the self-righteous denunciations of an artist who has been unfailingly consistently enthusiastically progressive all of her life is the craven apology she issued.

In other words,

…yet by the end of the film, Charlie hasn’t been forced to acknowledge his neglect as a husband or father.  [From an attempt to cancel the film “Marriage Story”.  Sorry– I forget the source.]

All while Nicole has never even been asked to admit that she took advantage of Charlie’s New York credibility to enhance her own standing as a “serious” actress (who wants to move to LA to star in a sitcom).

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, mostly.  The characters are less compromised  than they are in most similar comedies.  There’s a bit of heart there, and a real edge to some scenes.  The argument in the motel room stings, and that’s good– it makes their reconciliation later richer.

But there is the artistic disaster of the ending.  Here’s what’s wrong with it:

First of all, and most importantly, John Hughes clobbers you over the head with the sentimentality of it all.  The characters give each other long, meaningful looks, to make sure you get that this all means a lot to them.  Neal’s wife is actually demeaned by it– she looks like a lapdog reveling in her own desire to longingly yearn for something yearnful.  Nobody in the real world conveys how much something means to them like that, at least, not without making everyone around them cringe.  When Neal and Del look at each other and Del looks at Neal’s wife, Laila, I do cringe.

Are audiences that dense that they don’t get that Laila’s happy he’s home, or that Del appreciates the welcome?

But let’s go back to the critical artistic failure in this sequence.  Del, having finally delivered Neal to his Chicago home, bids him farewell at the train station, presumably ready to head off to his own home for the holiday.  Having Neal gradually realize that Del doesn’t have a home is potentially clever, but it’s handled clumsily, partly due to the fact that Hughes didn’t intend for the film to end that way until most of it was already shot.

So Neal sits on the train making broad, obvious facial expressions, showing how he now regards Del’s disastrous intrusions with amusement, and then he realizes that Del doesn’t have a home to go to for Thanksgiving.  It wasn’t necessary.  It wasn’t necessary at all.  Neal could simply have looked thoughtful and then headed back, and most of the audience would have got it, at least up until the point that he finds Del still sitting in the train station.

Why?

Why is he still there?

Is he planning to sit there overnight?  Is this what he did before he met Neal?  (In the original screenplay, more sensibly, maybe, he follows Neal right up to his house.)  Why is he not at least headed for a hotel, given that it is revealed that he doesn’t have a wife or a home.

The truth is Hughes couldn’t come up with a better solution to the problem of getting Del to Neal’s house for Thanksgiving so he could indulge in the rest of the smarmy, sentimental staring exchanges.  Del is sitting there waiting for the script to take him away.  Hughes didn’t think about what a real Del would be doing at that moment.  At least, not after the earlier draft in which he follows Neal home.

Del immediately volunteers that his wife died years ago and he has no place to go: he becomes self-pitying, one of his most annoying characteristics.  Nobody bothered to work this scene: Del caves in immediately.  Come on, Hughes: you’re not even trying!

Neal’s question– what are you doing here– is almost romantic and sounds like it would have more resonance directed towards a woman.  He could have said, “darling, what are you doing here?” with the same intonation.

It might have been more interesting if Del had been in the middle of buying a ticket to some place and Neal got back to him before his departure, and we were given to understand that Del will deny that he has no place to go and Neal will pretend he believes him but invite him over anyway, since it’s so late, and Del will “reluctantly” accept.  The act of saving face is almost always believable.   And Neal will diplomatically add, “you could stay the night– but I’m sure you’ll want to get back to your own family tomorrow so we won’t keep you.”  And Del might have clued in that he can be aggravating and shouldn’t press his luck.  And then Neal’s wife could bugger it all up by insisting Del stay longer, so he can resume destroying every vestige of order and comfort in Neal’s life.

Neal’s family– the actors– are clearly standing around waiting for lines when Neal and Del arrive at the house.  Not one of them has anything to do, as expressed by the actors, except wait to say their lines.  This is the sure sign of a weak director.  Laila’s look towards Neal seems the product of severe heartburn or indigestion, but no, as I said, it’s the result of the actress not being aware of any existence outside of her role as adoring wife, the loving, indulgent, patient Madonna perhaps we all wish our wives had turned out to be.   Was Hughes running out of ideas here?  She greets Del and invites him to join them for meal and looks at Neal inquisitively and says, “is Del going home tonight?  You’re not going home tonight are you, Del?– Why don’t you stay?  We can give you the pull-out couch in the rec room.”  Get practical.  It wouldn’t have been has big and loud a message as her heartburn expression but it would have had far more impact because it would have been believable.

Instead, she just stares, like a lovelorn sheep.  Not even the slightest irritation at Neal’s delay.  Almost every wife will assume that no explanation will adequately account for a husband being home late on a holiday– there will be something to blame him for, even if, only a little.  Did you really try to get the earliest flight?  Why did it take you so long to drive from St. Louis to Chicago?

“Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is a clumsy, sloppy film with numerous errors of continuity and location, which is not surprising for a young, commercial director.  Hughes had directed several successful films before this one and– surprise– many of them have similar flaws, as when Ferris Bueller lends his girlfriend out to his buddy Cameron, or Andie chases Blane out into the parking lot, or when pretty well all the characters in “Breakfast Club” turn into emotional exhibitionists because, after all, they are needy adolescents (who look like they are in their 30’s, for the most part).

 

 

 

 

 

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Be Careful Little Eyes What you See

In the category of “you couldn’t make this stuff up” is the story about a North Carolina police department that arrested a 17-year-old boy for having nude pictures of himself on his cell phone.

This is in a country in which 3/4 of the population will admit they don’t know what the 3 branches of government are.  They certainly don’t know what a marginal tax rate is.  And they will never know what common sense really is; they will think they have it, but they will be wrong.  Sense is anything but common in America.  And they will never, ever be able to independently assess the question of what is terrible about a teenager having nude pictures of himself on his smart phone.  You just have to say “nude”, and “pictures”, and “teenager”, they will howl with outrage.

We live in a world in which we can be surrounded by morons who say, “but that’s what the law says” or “it may seem strange, but that’s what the law says”, or “we are complete morons so we only do what the law says”.

Are you telling me there would have been serious consequences for a sergeant or a detective who said, “I don’t care what the law says, no, we are not going to prosecute a teenager for taking pictures of himself”?

A young mother in Utah who took her shirt off in front of her family has been charged with lewdness.  Her husband took his shirt off too, but he is not being prosecuted.

Of course not.

That would be stupid.

Do you have a mirror in your bathroom?

 

 

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Qubits

The ultimate goal of quantum supremacy would be to use qubits to crack encryption codes.  NY Times

I have read this many times, about the latest advance in computer technology: it will be able to crack encryption codes.

I have a simple question: if an application is programmed to deny further attempts after three, or maybe five incorrect password entries, how will even the most powerful quantum computer in the world be able to “crack” the encryption?  Sure, it can bombard the server with every conceivable combination of numbers and letters and symbols, but after each try, most servers will lock the user out for at least 20 minutes.  So it will have to wait until the application resets the login function, which, obviously, can be as long as a diligent programmer wants it to be.

So, how would a very, very powerful computer get around it?

Is that statement in the article just a glib teaser, designed to excite the reader?  I think it is.  Or perhaps they envision a computer that is so smart, it can hack into the operating system of the target device and over-ride the login time-out restrictions.  But then, maybe we could use an equally smart computer to devise an operating system that cannot be easily hacked.

Speaking of super computers…

Microsoft warns users against putting applications in any folder other than “program files”.  Why?  Because if you do, Microsoft’s “hotfixes” may not install correctly.  So why is that a bad thing?  Here’s why:

Microsoft hotfixes, updates, and security updates may not be installed correctly.
New versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Microsoft Windows Media Player may not be installed correctly.

In other words, if you don’t put applications in Microsoft’s preferred location, the applications will not be in Microsoft’s preferred location.  If you don’t get the most current hotfix, you might not be able to install the latest hotfix.

I install most of my applications in a folder called C:\apps, and continue to harbour a burning resentment over the fact that Microsoft will just go ahead and create folders under “program files” anyway, just to be really, really, definitively stupid.

The real message is, we own your computer.  When you browse your computer and see a label called “my computer”, it means Bill Gates’ computer– not yours.

 

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The Telephone Shoe

If Microsoft had invented the telephone, we would now have telephone-shoes and telephone-lamps and telephone-doors and telephone-clocks and telephone-pants and telephone-chairs and so on, because the telephone allows you to “collaborate and share information” and every technology will fail to promote collaboration and information-sharing because the problem is not the technology but the employee; but every employer believes that a new form of an existing technology will work better even if the old one didn’t really fail.

That is why we have Sharepoint and Onedrive and Outlook and Teams and Facebook and Twitter and Yammer and Skype and Messenger and so on and so on and so on. They’re like diet plans. The reason people keep buying the next one is precisely because the old one did not work.  It didn’t magically eliminate the bad habits that really caused the problems.

Not one of these applications really provides any real communications functionality that did not exist 20 years ago in Eudora. They just provide more fonts and… emojis. And they facilitate Microsoft taking over the management of your company’s information systems so that you will have to pay them forever in order to continue to access your company’s data because you will not even know where your files actually reside.

They are on Azure. They are in the cloud. The cloud is a Microsoft server you can only reach with a Microsoft application which will be licensed, not purchased.

And if you read this far, you have too much time on your hands.

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Until it Stinks

Sir Joseph Bazalgette may have saved more English lives in Victorian England than any other single man.  I bet you never heard of him.

You need to know about Joseph Bazalgette because, perhaps in the future, a new Bazalgette will be remembered in the same way that he is, for saving us from global warming.  For the same reason: because the stink has become overwhelming.

There are profound similarities between Victorian-era London and the entire world today.  Victorian-era London had a major problem: it had millions of people living in close quarters who were all generating a lot of shit.  They were enjoying the convenience of not having to take any expensive measures to deal with their shit.  They just dumped it into the city drains and the drains dumped it into the Thames and from the Thames it came back.  Yes it did.  The tides and the variations in the flow of the Thames caused all that excrement to wash back up onto the shoreline where it splashed about and eventually worked its way into the drinking water and food and into the mouths of children.

This was not merely distasteful: it was poisonous.  People died of cholera and other diseases, and the smell was absolutely terrible.

Think about the government of that city.  When did it finally think that it might not be such a good idea to dump all of their shit into the river?  The truth is they always knew it was a bad idea.   They just didn’t have the courage to make the tough decisions required to do otherwise, including raising taxes to pay for what was needed.

What was needed was a massive complex system of pumps and reservoirs that took all the human waste and channeled it further out into the river at low tide.  It’s never been clear to me why this didn’t backfire as well, but it didn’t, and the system worked pretty well until they finally figured out a way to dump it into the North Sea.  Joseph Bazalgette designed and built that system.  I hope there is a statue of him somewhere in London.

You may wonder whether dumping it all into the North Sea was much of an improvement.  Well, it was for the people of London.

In any case, the similarities to climate change are uncanny.  And the lesson learned is simple.  People are too stupid to make modest measures in time to save themselves from having to take drastic measures when it is almost too late.  As the Marshall Islands sink into the sunset we can only wish that it would produce a stink that would envelop Wall Street and Washington.

Unlike London’s shit, climate change may not be so forgiving.  There is no way to take the carbon and dump it further out from the earth’s atmosphere.

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The Idiots at Microsoft

From Techradar: ‘Microsoft feels your pain: it knows the update process can cause problems every now and again, which is why it’s developed a troubleshooter program specifically for it – search the old Control Panel for “troubleshooting”, then select ‘Fix problems with Windows Update’ from the list on-screen.’

Yes, that’s very comforting when you boot up your Surface Pro 3 and it tells you that it has finished installing 100% of the updates (something I tried to configure it not to do, but which it does anyway)… for 3 hours. Idiots: you can’t bring up the Control Panel if your failed update application has locked up the computer, rendering your laptop useless. Which is what it tells you it is preventing by endlessly patching it’s defective software.

The mentality that created the problems in the first place are not going to fix the problems it created. Windows 10 is monstrously inept for the user, but brilliant for Microsoft which wants everyone to pay for Windows as a service rather than an application and has successfully strong-armed hardware makers into making their products incompatible with earlier versions of Windows. I will be sticking with Windows 7 as long as I can on my desktop.

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Making it Up

I you don’t look very deeply into it, when the Democrats say Trump is corrupt and then Trump says that Joe Biden is corrupt, it might sound like the same thing.  A lot of people probably think it is the same thing.  And they probably never find out that one of them is just making it up.

And that is why we are seeing a significant breakdown in the political system in the U.S.  There used be a fundamental agreement between the parties that a basic level of decency and honesty is observed.  You might think that’s a laughable idea when it comes to politics, but I will remind you that Ted Kennedy once went to dinner at Jerry Falwell’s house.   The two were very surprised to find there was something to respect in each other.

Nixon, confronted with impeachment, resigned, because he didn’t want to go down in history as the clod who had no respect for institutions or the law.

Let’s remember the names of all those who defend Mr. Trump.  I would gladly donate to the cause of erecting a monument somewhere in Washington D.C. listing the politicians who defended Donald Trump during their time in office.

 

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Klute: The Devilish Film

“Klute” is a devilish movie.

If you asked any man to candidly express his biggest frustration with women, you are likely to get an answer like this: “I don’t know what they really want.”

“Klute” is too specific and particular to answer that question cleanly.  All it does is raise the possibility that men are generally being hosed when they think they have been given an answer.  It also indirectly raises the question of whether women are being hosed when they think they have been given the question.  All in that dark brain of that self-possessed, insidiously clever woman, Bree Daniels.  (She is variously called “Bree Daniel” and “Bree Daniels” in the film– check it out.)

Here’s a summary:  Tom Gruneman, a businessman in Tuscarora, PA, disappears one day.  After six months of frustration, his boss, Peter Cable, and family, hire a private detective and family friend, John Klute (Donald Sutherland, who is wonderful in the role), to undertake an investigation to try to determine what happened to him.  Their only real clue is an violently obscene letter found in Gruneman’s desk, addressed to an escort named Bree Daniels in New York.  In this well-made film, the family does not appear to be totally shocked– they’re more concerned about the disappearance, than they are shocked by the indiscretion,  at the moment.  But that colorful little detail adds a murky, dark texture to the quest.  What was he up to?

Klute goes to New York and contacts Bree Daniels.  She refuses to see him at first.  So Klute takes an apartment in her building, below hers, and succeeds in tapping her phone and recording her calls.  He uses the recordings as leverage to get her to agree to meet with him.  When she does, she tries to entice him in the most predictable way imaginable, but he is clearly unmoved by her exotic allure, and her sexuality.  Instead, he persuades her to lead him on a dark exploration of the world of drug addicts and prostitutes in New York, to gather information from anyone who may have had contact with Gruneman, including the  prostitute who gave him Bree’s name.

At one point, she asks him what he thinks about her glamorous life in the city and her friends: he tells her they are pathetic, and she is wounded.  She liked to think she was somehow shocking and roguish (oddly, like the Sally Bowles character in “Cabaret”, who also seemed to take a special pleasure in the illusion that she was somehow shockingly outrageous).

This narrative is periodically interrupted with Bree’s therapy sessions with a female  psychiatrist.  Bree tells her how she feels about her job, how it gives her control and power over men, how they are easily manipulated, and how she needs to know that they desire her.  These are some of the most corrosive passages in the movie.  They are among the most corrosive passages in any movie (the only serious competition probably comes from “Carnal Knowledge”).  Do you think you know your wife?  Even worse is the “You Don’t Own Me” aspect of it: Bree is consummately independent, self-contained, needless.  She wants life on her own terms.  She doesn’t need or expect anyone to enter her life to protect or manage her.

She thinks she might become a model or an actress: in another caustic scene, she goes to a cattle call for actresses, and we witness how the women are lined up, examined, and judged clinically, and rejected.  And we learn how Bree sees the way society judges women.

Here’s brilliant artistry: we aren’t give the “Shawshank Redemption” treatment here, and asked to be shocked and outraged at Bree”s treatment at these auditions.  Instead, we become aware of how deeply embedded this kind of objectification is– it is casual and routine, and Bree herself isn’t shocked.  It is a far more powerful statement than the more usual Hollywood treatment, in which Bree would demand attention, receive it, and glow with triumph while earning the grudging respect of the cruel casting directors.

There’s nothing caricatured or mean about this scene, other than the subject: the casting directors act in a way that is a caricature of how we judge beauty and worthiness.  It’s just the way we do business.  Bree understands that and plays along with it when necessary, but you can see how her options are really limited.  How different, really, is the industry that also dehumanizes the subjects of our gaze, manipulates them like objects, punishes them for not matching our illusions about beauty and privilege.

It raises the question though– why doesn’t Bree just get an education and look for a regular job?  She’s smart and attractive.  “Klute”  answers that question: because it would only result in her being used in different ways, being pressed into conformity, and forced to sacrifice her independence.  It would be part of the package that Gruneman and John Klute himself represent, and they illustrate to her that even the powerful members of that society are drawn to the outliers, the rebels, the divergent.

It challenges the most fundamental assumptions about sex and sexual relationships and power and privilege and desire.

Spoiler Alert

In the end, perhaps as a concession to the audience, Bree does decide to take a chance on a more conventional lifestyle.  It doesn’t feel totally plausible to me, but it doesn’t hurt the story very much, artistically, because it doesn’t anesthetize the viewer with drippy music or a pastel sunset.  They both know it won’t be easy.

And the astute viewer knows that it probably won’t work.

[updated 2019-09-23]