Here we go. As reported by Helsingin Sanomat, the new DMCA-like copyright law proposal remains unmodified by the parliament. Should the motion pass, new regulations will criminalize trivial day-to-day consumer activities, such as transferring music from a copy-protected CD to an MP3 player.

Apparently many representatives don't even understand the problems the new law would raise, although some voices of reason are being heard. Mostly the parliament has been worried about church music, however...

On a funnier note, the recording industry has spoken their mind on the law proposal. Unsurprisingly, their appeal is plain evocative lobbying without any factual value or response to the problems at hand.

Btw, other people are also blogging this.

Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey was an interesting conclusion to the Space Odyssey series (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001). The book by itself is slightly boring and doesn't really carry a plot rather than describes events and environments in a typical Clarkeish, ethereal style. It does, hover, provide some kind of closure to the whole monolith/sentinel issue and mankind's relation to it.

If there was anything disappointing in this book, it was the computer virus thing. You will simply never make me believe that viruses, which are inherently smart blocks of code that utilize specific operating system or application features to spread and wreak havoc, could be applied to some generic alien technology. It just makes me think that the writer doesn't really understand what it's all about.

That said, I would recommend 3001 to anybody who's been reading and enjoying the Odyssey saga from the beginning. If you don't know what 2001: A Space Odyssey was all about (just seeing the movie is probably not enough), you won't enjoy 3001 either.

I decided to make just one big conference trip this year and went to IFA, Berlin last Monday, flew straight to IBC, Amsterdam on Wednesday, and finally got home Saturday evening.

IFA was cool, although pretty much a consumer show. It was all about who's got the biggest LCD's and plasmas, with Samsung apparently still being the leader with a 102" plasma and a 82" LCD. HDTV was also quite visible, with a lot of new HD satellite channels coming up during 2005-2006 in Europe.

IBC on the other hand is the main professional event of European broadcasters, and the conference sessions weren't disappointing this year either. Although they ran out of space in some of the technical HDTV sessions, which pissed of a number of people who paid good money for it (including me).

Everybody probably knows that the primary argument on HDTV is now whether to go for 720p or 1080i resolution, i.e. 1280x768 with progressive scanning or 1920x1080 with interlaced scanning. EBU had set up a demo with both major resolutions displayed at various compression techniques and bitspeeds. Personally, I go for 1080i. The resolution advantage is just so clear, with 720p looking more like plain, ordinary tv.

The "final" resolution of HDTV is generally accepted to be 1080p, but there are currently some technical limitations to it. The main argument from EBU members seems to be that the coax wiring of production studios is limited to a bitspeed of 1.5 Gbit/s, while the full uncompressed HD-SDI signal requires 3 Gbit/s. Personally, I think it's better to upgrade a couple of studio cables than let people suffer everywhere for a poor decision.

In fact, going with 720p could prove disasterous for HDTV in Europe, because the 'wow' effect is just not there. The advantage of 1080i resolution, on the other hand, is instantly visible to ordinary people, and it's also the resolution that most US tv shows and movies will be released in.

By the way, Sony had an impressively small consumer HD camera on display at IBC. IFA on the other hand was already full of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD recorders and players. I would say that HDTV is coming now and it's coming fast.

Anyway, a week on the road (well, on airplanes, hotels and conferences, really kind of stresses you out, so trying to recover from some fever and flu now...

If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and repeat the sequence.

You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around your own apartment?

-- William S. Burroughs

Okay, maybe you already know about this:

http://www.google.com/talk/

Yet another instant messaging system... This one, however, uses an open protocol (Jabber), so you can use a number of other clients than Google's own. Some are listed at Google's own site.

Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said:

"You are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous and earn vast sums of money."

And so the pair set forth together, thinking to conquer the world.

Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them:

"The Tao lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seeks fortune, for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time."

Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.

http://www.kungfo0.org/data/funny/tao-programming.html

The Tao of Programming

A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice-presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying 'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity exist?"

The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"