As I type this, I am ripping Evangelion Death and Rebirth. Why? Because I disrespect Anno Hideaki? The exact opposite. I love Evangelion so much that having bought the DVD, I want to rip it to my hard drive in Divx format so that I can play it whenever I want. I will not be trading this online in peer-to-peer networks for love or money. What I am doing is against the law, specifically the DMCA. It is quite unlikely that criminal charges will be filed against me because the MPAA is looking for heros like Joh Johanson, 2600, or the four programmers who index the networks. I am advocating and participating in this civil disobedience because the DMCA is not a just law. It is a law that attacks creative and productive individuals for creating extremely useful products which greatly help people who legally purchase media and simply wish to use that media fairly. For example, had DVD Jon not posted the DeCSS code on the internet, I would not be able to watch Evangelion (since I only run Linux and almost exclusively open source software), and thus I would not buy Evangelion. The MPAA has this inkling that a person will not buy a DVD because they can spend fifty hours downloading an extremely low quality version off the internet. Do the math, it's cheaper to buy the DVD. CDs on the other hand are much easier to trade in the form of mp3s and have decent quality. But that means that the RIAA has a perfect means of capitalizing on that market. Using low fee per song they could easily make money by providing a service (imagine that). They would continue their business without these costly lawsuits, lobbying, and bullying tactics that have bankrupted many legitimate businesses. Might I also add that their lawsuits have done nothing to dent the trade of music? Even the full destruction of all p2p services would not stop free trade of music. A DDOS attack on Dalnet? Darn, we switch over to another system. RIAA shuts down yet another college search system? Code one by hand. It only takes an hour to write a decent network crawler. Are they going to arrest everyone for writing software that looks for files? This is a very interesting repeat of the historical VCR lawsuit. People can copy movies with VCRs. VCRs should be illegal. VCRs are vital for many legitimate uses including security, history, and private fair use entertainment. And if you didn't know, the MPAA gets paid due to VCRs, let alone movie rental places. People use VCRs to copy tapes illegally, it's true. But I'd like to see VCRs illegalized. The MPAA would go down like a crazy bitch (not to insult crazy bitches), not to mention Blockbuster, Scarecrow, etc.
Programming: is it a means or an end? It was pretty simple for me to answer this question earlier, but now that I think of it, it's a bit more complex. Usually when a person compares means and ends they are judging whether ends justify means, visa versa, or whatever the case. This argument is not so complex, it is simply whether an activity can be seen a mean or an end. As simple as this question is, it has defined my actions to a very high degree for the past 8 years. Eight years ago, I was 13 years old and I decided my future. As if I haven't told this story before, I'd like to explain a bit about my past. Since I was old enough to understand my surroundings, my family has used computers. From the Commodore 64, Amiga, 386-25, 486-66, Pentium 90, Pentium Pro, right on up. At age 10, I started watching my dad program. He programmed a lot because when I was 10, he quit his job as manager of a convenience store and became self-employed programmer. He programmed in FoxPro DOS and moved right up the line. He currently programs in VB.NET. So growing up, I watched him. At age 13, I spent 10 hours working for him on a mall security incident project written in the brand new Visual Basic 3.0. It was pretty hard because I didn't understand things well enough, but my work was fruitful. I got things done, I learned a lot about how a project gets done, and my dad got his project done. He paid me the absurd salary of $10 per hour for it and he in turn charged the client $40 per hour for my work. But in the weeks to come, I decided that I would not program for money; programming for a living. My brother made a similar statement but meant something completely different: he was not going to program, period. I meant that I would program for reasons other than a living. That's right, not to make money, but for a dream of something better.
Another day, another pair of amazing truths learned. The first one is pretty simple: JF can be much better than it is. JF Final may be decent, but not even 1% as good as it could/ should/ would. I want to do a bunch of things, none of them will be easy.
Yesterday I actually posted the Making of JF, so here I am again today. Posting it did take courage and a bit of time, but it was worth it. When I say courage, what do I mean? From my short time as an Army Cadet, I learned that courage was not to be above fear, but to fear and to face what you fear. For example, one that the military teaches: if one fears death (common among humans), one can put themself in harms way (with the right amount of sanity, protection, and reason) and face their fear, you will be a couragous person. What usually goes through a person's mind is that since your survival rate is high, there's no reason to fear. What there is to fear is the probability. Your future life (friends, wife, kids, job, etc) has been reduced to a probability (one of my rants long explained without proper backing that the Cold War was as bad as WW2 because the fate of the Earth was reduced to a probability that two extremely ill-tempered people would not act rashly). But then if you die, you won't mind much, will you? More logically, a person might fear that something terrible will happen to him/her and that s/he will have to live with it. Anyway, the courage that I displayed yesterday was simple, yet profound. I fear that my life will be waste. I fear that my words will amount to nothing for me or for anyone else. I fear that I will change my mind in the future and that the words I speak are lies. So I try to keep on topics that are important whether I get them right or not, and I try to think them through. Much of what I say is subjective rather than objective. For example: "Speaking freely is a right that I hold very close to my revolver." That is a fairly subjective sentence. It does not say anything that a person could refute very easily. It says something about myself. While others may agree or disagree for themselves, it is true about me. If you find something that is not true in these rants, I would not be very shocked. I think as quickly as I can think and I write as quickly as I can type. Also, you must appreciate the millions of characters that I put in JF. The data file is in fact ~ 1.7 MB which means that I have about 0.3 million words. If all of them are true, I would be very surprised. If half of them are logical, I'd laugh. If one tenth are understandable by a person who doesn't know me, I'd probably call that person a genius.
