Happy Yellow Pig Day, and happy
birthday to Cory.
Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested one year ago today (on July 17, 2001).
Now he is free. It didn't have to turn out that way. Dmitry
started off as a "Russian hacker" -- an archetype inspiring
considerable fear in many people.
(We should distinguish computer security and copyright enforcement,
so that we should speak of "computer security and l'havdil
copyright enforcement" -- but I have to say that I'm reminded of
Feynman's story about how people reacted when he learned to pick
the locks at Los Alamos. They decided to keep him away from their
locks: "That was their solution: I was the danger!")
Today Dmitry Sklyarov is many other things to many other people --
a folk hero, a subject of songs and poetry, a name to conjure with,
an example in terrorem deterring attacks on DRM, an example
held up in white papers and cited in court cases, a graduate student,
a father. He is also a free man. It didn't have to turn out that
way.
The Egyptian Licorice Tea from
Yogi Tea is really, really
good.
Let's talk about people who have been misled:
[Sandra Banning, mother of Michael Newdow's daughter] described
herself and her daughter as practicing Christians who are
active in their Elk Grove church. [...] The girl replied "that
it was OK because she will still whisper 'one nation under God' and
no one will know she is breaking the law," Banning said.
(Bob Egelko, "Girl in pledge case not an atheist, mom says",
San Francisco Chronicle, July 16; see
another version of the story)
So Sandra Banning, or somebody, told her daughter that
Michael Newdow is trying to make saying "one nation under God"
against the law (and lock up all those theist kids or
something?).
The law in the U.S. is that you can pray in public, you can pray in
private, you can pray in public school, you can advocate
religious belief in public school, you can wear religious
symbols and slogans -- if you are a student. And this
is perfectly proper, and an important part of religious freedom
and free expression. What you can't do is have the public
school advocate a religious belief.
If lots of kids think that Michael Newdow is trying to stop them
from saying that they believe in God, then they will have good
reason to be angry with him (even if they're his daughter -- maybe
especially if they're his daughter). But of course that's not
what Newdow is trying to do.
His complaint is with religious activity on the part of government,
not religious activity on the part of students.
Maybe many children think that, if adults try to lead them in saying
something, they must say it, and if adults don't lead them in saying
something, they may not say it. But an earlier Pledge case --
as some people observed, before the Pledge included "under God"! --
says children don't have to say what the adults expect them to.
That's Barnette. And another case says children have
their own free expression rights and can say things adults don't
approve of. That's Tinker. Fixed stars, schoolhouse
gates.
The free expression (and free exercise) rights of young people are
important to me, but I see a tendency to minimize them. The
separation of church and state in public education makes
especially strong sense if we think that young people have their
own beliefs -- very possibly distinct from their communities' or
their parents' -- and their own rights to express those beliefs.
Maybe Newdow's and Banning's daughter doesn't yet know she has
those rights -- but Banning ought to know it. And she ought to
tell her daughter: you can say whatever you want, and you can
disagree with your father, and he's not trying to take that right
away from you.
I haven't written much about actual concrete advocacy arguments,
but you can
check out the latest in Microsoft advocacy
versus Linux. I think the bottom line is that Microsoft is saying
"we're reliable, we're predictable, we're comprehensive, and you know
exactly what you're getting". It's not totally surprising that
these characteristics, and especially the broad theme of predictability,
would appeal to corporate IT managers.
What does surprise me is that Microsoft argues that Linux users may
suffer from vendor lock-in because certain Linux applications or
other software are not standard across all distributions. Vendor
lock-in is one problem free software users are particularly unlikely
to experience.
I went with Praveen and others to the concert at the Fillmore given
by They Might Be Giants. (Other people,
including
Leonard
and Zack
Weinberg, went to see the same show the night before.)
Noe Venable opened, which I
found odd, because I also heard her open for Dar Williams last week.
Dar and TMBG are rather different, but they chose to have the same
person open for them. (Noe's music is much closer to Dar's, I
think, than to TMBG's. They are both female singer-songwriters who
have songs which tell stories, and the similarities don't end there.)
Noe Venable has a beautiful singing voice, and she can hit amazingly
pure notes. Her web site has several downloadable tracks, including
Juniper, which she performed at the Dar
Williams concert (though not at TMBG).
Here's my attempt at her lyrics:
Mama, oh, Mama,
I don't wanna come down,
not if it's all like it was on the ground,
hiding my feet cause I'm too shy to dance,
hiding my face behind both of my hands.
Mama, o Mama, don't make me come down,
'cause I don't know what will come out of my mouth.
People will hear, they won't know who I am,
People will hear, and they won't understand.
Mama, I've seen them, the others like me,
once I could see it was all I could see,
the silent procession that crosses the snow:
with skeleton ladies like skeletons go.
Mama, o Mama, I can't let you know
how my trouble began, but I can't let it go.
Plummeting into the nightmare below
I'm better awake and I'm better alone
Mama, oooooo
Mama, oooooo
Mama, o Mama, up here where I'm free,
I have seen beauty you wouldn't believe:
Juniper's ledges and Juniper's birds
where Juniper's edges and mine become blurred.
Mama, o, Mama, if you only heard
the reasons for living, the freedom of words,
the blooming balloon of a thought being born
safe in the branches of Juniper's arms.
Mama, oooooo
Mama, oooooo
Mama, o, Mama, I'm not like you think,
a harrowing walk down a narrowing street.
If I had my way I would bring the whole world,
every sleepwalker and each hungry girl.
Mama, o, Mama, and old Uncle Tom,
my father the preacher, my daughter the song,
tell every bell to just wake up and ring
tell this old choir to just shut up and sing!
Oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
Mama, o, Mama, I'm holding your hand,
in these glorious dreams in which you understand.
Mama, o, Mama, we're spinning around,
Mama, o, Mama, don't make me come down.
Oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
oooooo
Dar and Noe both, I think, have singing voices which differ
dramatically from their speaking voices. In Noe's case, it's even
more extreme, because she speaks with a high-pitched, sing-song
voice with certain cadences which make her sound like she might be
ten or twelve years old. When she sings, though, she seems to have
perfect control, like an opera singer, and, as I said, a tremendous
purity. (One of my companions at last week's concert suggested that
Noe might cause glasses to shatter with her voice.)
I disliked two things about the TMBG concert. First, I didn't like
the volume level. This was an actual "rock concert", and so it was
very distinct from (for example) the Dar Williams concert last week.
I covered my ears with a sweatshirt practically the whole time, and
it was still very loud. It was much louder than necessary for the
whole audience to hear clearly.
At other events I've been to with amplified sound, the main point of
the amplification was to be sure that everybody could hear. At this
event, there was also whatever motive drives rock concerts to be
almost painfully loud, so that some people who attend them actually
suffer physical injury.
Second, I didn't know a lot of the songs! As I wrote
a few days ago, I know Dar Williams
songs so well that I can detect a change at the consonant level.
But I only own one TMBG album (Flood) and know a few
other songs of theirs from radio play. But TMBG played many newer
songs and, I'm told, some things which were not yet released on
any album. It's really a lot more fun for me to know the songs in
detail than to hear them for the first time.
One song I did know, which isn't on Flood, is "Older".
It's available
for legal free download in Ogg
Vorbis format. (Do me a favor -- if you don't have an Ogg
player, go get one, and download "Older" to try it out. It will be
a good thing in the future that you have an Ogg player.) The band
interrupted "Older" in the middle with another song and then picked
up exactly where they'd left off. They liked doing things like
that. They love jokes and puns and, in a lot of senses, they're
extremely geeky.
Old favorites on Flood which did get played were
"Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "Istanbul" (hooray!). The nachos at
the Fillmore were pretty tasty (although they cost $10 for small
portions). Maybe it's a better tactic to eat dinner in some nearby
Japantown restaurants.
I had a great time dancing to "Istanbul", which is an upbeat song
with a tremendous inner geekiness to it. Maybe historical
consciousness is so rare that if you show historical consciousness
you are automatically geeky.
