I took an amazing hiking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountain range
this past weekend to celebrate Ben's birthday. We drove to about 7,600
feet, hiked up through a mountain pass at about 11,600 feet, and
then camped for two days just below the pass by a mountain lake at
about 10,600 feet. I think it was the most physically strenuous
thing I've ever done in my life.
The hike itself was only about 3 miles, as the crow flies, but the
trails, where there were trails, constantly wiggled back and
forth, and, as Ben predicted, the hike involved about 5,000 feet
of changes in elevation, or nearly a mile.
For those who are curious, we started from a point called Mineral
King and hiked into Sequoia National Forest, through Glacier Pass,
and camped by Spring Lake.
I wrote a letter to Wolfgang (about 26 pages, and, in keeping with
tradition, containing a detailed description of how a CRT works).
I learned a lot about myself on that trip.
Other items [from among his memories] were put in order so that they
established a natural progression. [...] The further the structure
grew, and the more coherent, the more significant new items became and
the easier it was to fit them in.
(Asimov, "Lest We Remember", in The Winds of Change ... And Other
Stories, p. 186)
My horrible joke:
"Forsan et hike olim meminisse iuvabit."
My letter suggests that we camped at 36 deg 28.208' N,
118 deg 33.687' W (WGS84). Yes, we had a GPS with us.
You can get a
rough look
at that neighborhood using TerraServer; they also have the
corresponding site in
an old USGS topo map, on which you can clearly
see Spring Lake, the location of our campsite.
And EFF now has a "Fair use has a posse" sticker. It's great!
This picture,
from
Biella's
site, shows the party I had during LinuxWorld last week, just
before I set out on the camping trip.
A bunch of things happened in the computer world while I was away.
Rather than providing links, I'm just going to post this entry
and hope that you've followed the news for yourself over the
weekend.
I do want to mention that
Annalee
was critical of us for being too ambivalent about trusted
computing:
Even the EFF's resident geek, Seth Schoen, admits
the Palladium technology is appealing in certain ways.
Annalee's concern here, I think, is that my writing about
Palladium so far has shown a technologist's aesthetic, so
that I admire Palladium's technical cleverness (especially
the elegance of sealed storage, which I realize is a
concept shared with TCPA), and have yet to focus on the
possible risks to the public's rights in copyright, etc.
(I've taken to saying "public's rights in copyright" in
preference to "fair use", because the public has dozens
of rights in copyright, and fair use is only one part
of those. Other people find that phrase clunky or awkward.)
And I am preparing some analysis for EFF about all that,
and trying to be fair to everybody, but in the meantime,
I've supposedly said mainly that the Palladium technology
is neat.
I do say so. I hadn't expected to be seen as too soft on
Microsoft, but I can understand why Annalee is concerned.
I will say that Microsoft has been very helpful to us in
letting us know how this technology works, sharing technical
details, answering our questions, and not requiring an NDA.
What would be most impressive, if Microsoft wanted
to show off its benign intentions, would be some further public
statements against the CBDTPA and DRM mandates, as well as a
show of agreement with Gary Shapiro's admission that
"The DMCA was a very flawed law. We signed off on it, and it was a
huge mistake." (This is actually mostly orthogonal to whether
Palladium is a good idea. But many people I've spoken to have
worried about what may happen to people who discover and publish
Palladium security vulnerabilities. This is especially of concern
in light of Scott Culp's "it's time to end information anarchy"
essay and the reports that Microsoft is supporting the legislative
end of the "responsible disclosure" movement.)
Also, send somebody to LinuxWorld who can talk about Palladium
there.
(Thanks to Riana for finding the Guardian article.)
