Greenhouse Effect

I wrote this back in the early 90’s when I was walking to work every day. The rhythm of walking was quite conducive to composing metered verse. Plus, it was pretty boring to walk the same route each day. I wrote this over several days, and wrote it down after I had worked it all out. I was hoping to use it as song lyrics, but never got around to it.

It was a hot summer, and the signs of global warming were there, if you wanted to see them. Back then, it wasn’t called Global Warming. The warming of the atmosphere that results from excessive carbon dioxide is also known as the “Greenhouse Effect,” because the atmosphere retains heat like the windows of a greenhouse.

Green House Effect

Chorus
Couldn’t go outside cause it’s so hot
And the sun burnt a hole in the sky
I thought I was cool but I’m not
And let me tell you why:

GREEN HOUSE EFFECT

The sun’s so hot it’s cooking my brain
Just like an egg in a pan
I can’t think and I need a drink
How ‘bout some shade and a fan

There’s no relief from this brutal heat
And it just gets worse every year
Those experts say everything’s OK
And we’ve got nothing to fear

I thought they were right until the other night
When my street washed into the sea
Something about a polar melt
and crazy meteorology

You can’t hide from a rising tide
and temps to a hundred and three
We trashed the earth for all it’s worth
Only took one century.

Chorus

I thought technology would be the remedy
But it turned into the disease
Without our cars we wouldn’t turn into Mars
A planet without water and trees

The dinosaur lived for a million years
and died off suddenly
Now we’ve achieved our worst fears
Extinct from insanity.

Who needs to go outside anymore?
I’ve got my cable TV
I’ll turn on the home shopping store
And crank up the AC.

We can all live in caves of steel and glass
While the earth dies off in the glare
We’re safe inside the concrete mass
Let’s ignore this ecological scare

Chorus

As long as I can drive while I’m alive
To my job in the factory
Our industrial might will make everything right
Until we wash away in the sea.

– Monday, June 19, 1995, 3:15 PM

Vista DRM spells disaster for the data center

[Note: the article, that inspired this, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection is in text-only format]

It looks like Microsoft has made a huge bet with Vista: it has integrated its DRM technologies into the deepest innards of Vista. Device drivers are notably affected.

I think this means that Microsoft is ceding the server market to Linux and Unix. It seems that Vista DRM will lead to a number of unintended outcomes:
        •        Class action lawsuits against Microsoft & hardware manufacturers when people realize they can’t play their legally purchased content on legally purchased hardware (already happening).
        •        A grey market of non-US hardware that is dedicated to playing content in a specific format without restrictions (HD DVD players, for example).
        •        A booming Chinese hardware industry that produces computer components either without DRM restrictions, or pirates the DRM chips without licenses.
        •        More piracy, since trying to play legitimate copy-protected material is more trouble than it’s worth, and you always run the risk of paying real $$$ to buy something that won’t work on your computer. Piracy will become not only cheaper, but more reliable than actually buying the content.
        •        Reverse engineering of DRM which will render all of the major DRM formats completely useless (HD DVD & Blu-Ray have just been cracked: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/0259244)
        •        More lawsuits after hackers take down millions of Vista PCs with easy-to-implement DoS attacks.

I also think that Microsoft is going to lose a lot of customers on this. Because the new OS is so brittle, and prone to crashes & other problems they will not be able to “move into the living room” as they had hoped. Their Media Center PC will continue to be a horrible joke.

Many people now use their computer to create content, not to play it. The whole DRM approach is based on the idea of treating customers as passive consumers (and criminals) instead of content creators. Either Apple will realize this and capitalize on being “not Microsoft” or they will be sucked into the same vortex of stupid lawsuits and brittle hardware, lousy device drivers, and otherwise vulnerable computers.

But most significantly, I think that the Vista DRM scheme will result in MS losing the server market to Linux, despite their control of SUSE/Novell. Red Hat & free Linux will never be so vulnerable as Vista, simply because Microsoft has the copyright on the vulnerable DRM technologies, and they are using it to try to control the digital content distribution channel.

Cringely may be right about the desktop — or not — but I think this means MS is forever going to be a consumer company, and will not gain control of the data center or the back office. I doubt they are having much luck with, say, Exchange server these days. I don’t think the Navy will be running any missile cruisers on Vista, either, once they see how bad the security is. I think MS has decided to go after the content distribution channel & other consumer markets, and is giving up on the server market.

I think they are putting all their chips on “red,” as it were, by building this so deep into the OS. They may score big, or become irrelevant.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 1:25 PM