To paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson, “There are no coincidences, only synchronicities.”

I’ve just had an extraordinarily telling synchronicity.

The buzz around the office today was that Microsoft has finally released the “long-awaited” (their words) Internet Explorer 5.2 for OS X. “Inspire me”, the website says. So, like much of the rest of the planet, I went off to be inspired (or, at least, not to be left behind) and invested in the 7.1 MB download.

As I was downloading the new IE, I had the sudden urge to check for updates to my current favorite browser, OmniWeb.
As it happens, The Omni Group has just released OmniWeb 4.1 (weighing in at 6.6 MB), the latest in their series of great OS X apps. What a treat, I thought to myself: I’ll have two new toys to play with at work tomorrow. Let’s get these installed…

Going with what I know, I started with OmniWeb. Installation of apps in OS X is almost pathologically easy with .dmg’s: double click to open, then drag it to where you want to put it, and you’re done. In about 20 seconds I had OmniWeb 4.1 up and running happily, with bookmarks imported and preferences kept, without answering a single dialog box.

Now on to IE 5.2. It appeared as though Microsoft is finally “getting it”: they too have a .dmg package. But lo and behold, once opened it reveals not the browser, but an installer for the browser. Hmm, the last program I installed that needed its own installer was DigiTunnel, and that’s really because it’s system software (it adds a new control panel to your system preferences, after all…) Okay, proceeding with a cautious (and probably unwarranted, but nevertheless generous) benefit of the doubt, I ran the installer.

Next, I was prompted for my administrator password, not in the traditional system dialog box, but in a custom prompt with the friendly title “Authenticate“. Why does IE need my administrative password? OmniWeb sure didn’t. This is just an App. A web browser. Not a new device driver, not an encrypted tunnelling package, but a simple network application. Why does it need the equivalent of root access to my box just to install itself?

Fine. I’ll give you my password, just this once. I was then presented with the standard EULA (click accept) and an OS 9 style installation dialog (click install).

What is this? I was now presented with the following incredible dialog box:

(click cancel, click quit. Quickly.)

I’m sorry, Microsoft, but you’ll have to do better than that. In fact, never mind. I know that you won’t comprehend this, but listen: This is now a universe where laptops can stay up for weeks on end, always return from sleep, update their network parameters without rebooting, install software without “quitting all other applications”, never, never die with a blue screen of death, and only ever reboot after installing software for really good reasons. Which is probably what you’d have me do after installing IE 5.2.

I wouldn’t know, because I never got that far. Yes, Microsoft, your “free” software has finally asked too much of me. The Installer is gone, evaporated from my trash can, bits recycled for more worthwhile pursuits. I think you’ve gotten enough of my time, disk space, and most of all, my attention, and I’m officially bringing the relationship to a close.

Consider this the EULA for all future interactions with me and my machines: Be nice, play fair, have fun. Any violation of these three key rules is a violation of the agreement, and will be met with immediate reallocation of the offending bits.

Fortunately, Microsoft doesn’t (yet) own everything, and there are alternatives. Try OmniWeb. Try Mozilla. Better yet, do something more interesting with the Net than look at web pages.

But don’t put up with guerrilla ideological war for mindshare masquerading as a monopolist profit model with no real value masquerading as junk software with fascist licensing. Demand more! It’s alot of fun, honestly…

What are your experiences with Microsoft’s offerings for OS X?

We need net “radio” that pulls its content, as-needed, from a P2P sharing space.

The “broadcaster” would really just provide an ever-refreshing playlist, a window on the last X minutes of contiguous content, with reliable (hash) identifiers naming each segment of media to play. “Tuners” would fetch the playlist, and scour any and all available sources for matching content fragments, grabbing them seconds to minutes before they are needed, playing them for the local listener in order and without gaps, resharing them for as long as possible, discarding them when necessary.

Some of the fragments might be content that is already widely available (popular tracks), perhaps listed as a series of acceptable alternates, while other fragments would be custom content, recorded and shared out over P2P networks nearly-live.

Call it “Judio”, for “Judo-radio”, because it emphasizes the use of a tiny, smart control channel to leverage a giant amount of content on outside networks. Generalization to video or other media content is an obvious extension.

Gnutella and other P2P networks could conceivably be (or grow into) the role of being the content-cloud. A single person on a dialup line could publish the control channel that many thousands of “listeners” follow.

Would a station publishing such a playlist require a broadcasting license for the copyrighted content to which they refer? It’s debatable… the “station” is not making any copies. Finding, acquiring, and playing copies is completely up to the listeners.

Storage decays. Paper rots, fades, crumbles. Optical storage like CDs can become unreadable in a decade or two — much sooner if exposed to sunlight or other stresses. Magnetic storage fades. None of these media are the stuff of a fossil record.

As a result, any project that hopes to communicate complex thoughts to the distant future may need to invent its own mass-density, long-lived archival media. For the Rosetta Project, as initiated by the Long Now Foundation, that media is a laser-etched nickel plate. But such plates still only have an expected usable life of 2,000 years.

Might molecular-level memories — such as IBM’s recently-announced “Millipede” — be even more robust? If they could be mass-produced, and stored away from the rampant chemical and nuclear processes (life and sunlight) that lead to decay, might they have a chance to persist for millions of years?

Sure, only advanced technology could read these tiny, molecular digital messages. But if tiny molecular digital messages are the only media that endure, then tiny molecular digital messages will be all we can consider sending to the distant future.

Or all we might expect to get from the distant past.

Perhaps the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) should be using microscopes as much as radio telescopes — microscopes pointed at hard material scooped from places unlikely to have been disturbed for millions of years. Some terrestrial geologic formations might qualify, but nearby regions of outer space seem a better bet.

The closest thing to a 2001-like obelisk that humanity ever discovers might be a pockmarked speck of dirt. Rosetta dust.

Biovariant: If you can’t guarantee that a storage medium will be undisturbed, you could make it self-replenishing, with the ability to copy and rebuild itself in reaction to external stresses. Hmm, do we know of any information-dense molecular entities that behave that way? Say, DNA? Might the Earth’s genome have begun as a consciously-designed storage mechanism and/or intentional communication-to-the-future? Might any part of the original message still be recoverable at this point? (This idea also appeared in a 1993 Star Trek:TNG episode called The Chase, and a short story called We’ll Return, After This Message, by AutoDesk founder John Walker, written in 1989 and published in 1993.)

The proposed CBDTPA law could require billions of individual “digital media devices” — every TV, stereo, speaker, PC, walkman, hard drive, monitor, and scanner — to carry enforcement circuitry — but there are only 300 million people in the country. Mathematically astute readers will note that’s less than 600 million each of eyes and ears.

Further, a single economical helmet can cover four of these analog holes at once!

I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the copyright industries’ troubles will be Digital Rights Management (DRM) helmets, bolted onto each dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license manager and instantly “fog up” if payment has not been delivered.

This will especially teach people not to listen to unauthorized
copies of music while driving.

By fastening suitably-small DRM helmets onto children at an
appropriately-early age, the citizenry’s consumptive
habits can be “arrested” (along with cranial volume) at
a revenue-maximizing developmental stage. I’d guess this is around age 13, but I’m open to the latest research. Give and take is what policymaking is all about.

So step up to the plate, senators, lobbyists, and titans of industry. Write this into the next rev of the CBDTPA. We can call it the SNEHNEA: “See No Evil, Hear No Evil Act”. Why try to haphazardly plug billions of analog holes, when you can just cap the problem at its far fewer human endpoints? (The end-to-end design principle is your friend!)

If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can cage every American’s mind.

[Intellectual Property Disclosure: The “DRM Helmet” and the “Cranial Arrest Adolescent DRM Helmet” may be covered by patents granted or applied for by Gordon Mohr. Licensing will be available on unreasonable and discriminatory terms.]

Related link: http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?channel=print_article.jhtml&doc_id=207975

Fortune’s story last week This is War, about the tug of war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over technological copy-controls, has a gem of a quote from a Disney lobbyist:

“There is a thing in the computer called the CPU, the central processing unit, right?” says Preston Padden, Disney’s chief Washington lobbyist. “All the bytes go through there, and we’re looking to come up with reasonably standardized watermark detection [that] can effectively read for watermarks on all the content coming through.”

It seems as if Mr. Padden got his understanding of computers from a screening of TRON,
Disney’s 1982 techno-fantasy populated by anthropomorphic software fighting a totalitarian “Master Control Program” (MCP). The MCP wants to absorb all other software, and control all Input/Output channels to the outside world, as part of a plan for domination — first of cyberspace, then of the outside world.

Problem is, in our real world of 2002, Disney wants all hardware and software manufacturers to submit to MCP-like controls in the service of enforcing intellectual property rights.

Maybe Mr. Padden’s screening ended early, but he would be wise to note that by the end, the insurgent program Tron destroys the MCP. The program-people and I/O towers are freed — allowing the full diversity of unfettered communication, in the service of user needs, to proceed again. It’s really quite beautiful. Eisner, Padden: a remedial viewing is in order!