Sunday, January 29, 2006

Naked Truth

Background

After the post Burnoff: Part 1 - The Bad Guys Win, a commenter in digg.com said
What utter crap. Really. Beyond lame. We need a "Another idiot spamming his blog" problem category.


At about same time, How to Save the World has a post on BLOG Why Republicans Want a Huge National Debt citing a much-admired, one of the world's richest people Warren Buffet's worry about US trade deficit.

Once upon a time, on a sunny evening with a distant rainbow in the east, sitting on the wet green lawn near the roses, Albert and Trebla went into an argument AGAIN...

Albert: Hey, Trebla, why you publish an article while I am busy?

Trebla: Don't be so angry. I am just trying to help!

Albert: Someone is suggesting to spam us!

Trebla: Then he should spam Warren Buffett too. If anyone doing an honest prediction and when the result does not align to your liking, and then you want to spam that person to shut him/her off, that's is NOT the way the web works. BTW, we are not Americans and we are not under their jurisdiction anyway. Don't worry.

Trebla: BTW, Dave Pollard's analysis would not likely to sound right to that commenter too!

Albert: But, neither of us is economist, do we claim that we understand what is being discussed here?

Trebla: That's exactly the point, no one is expert in every field. However, we are still free to base on our intuition to share opinions in the way we like.

Albert: Knowledge is built socially. That means that it is throught this discussion process that we learn.

Trebla: What my piece has done, when read objectively, is to acknowledge the risk of the current US policies (and government) starting the decline of this great nation. This is partly due to the short-term nature of the governance both in government and large companies.

Albert: You mean the short-sightedness of the people leading the government and the large companies.

Trebla: Yes, when the CEO or chief executive is driven by short term rewards, in many situation, they will not look for long term impact on the decisions they make. Like the "user-pay" policy for educating our next generation, it is totally selfish and against long term good of a nation, but a number of "developed" countries, like Australia, are promoting it as a national policy!

Albert: True. If we come up with a scenario, based on this user-pay policy for education, it would look good right?

Trebla: Definitely. You want me to try to do another piece?

Albert: No, thank you. I think we better stick to the current discussion mode.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Burnoff: Part 1 - The Bad Guys Win

Background

Tarmle described a very dark scenario when going to movie was a big deal because of the DRM saga in USA. (via BoingBoing)

Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it's not a trip to be taken lightly.


Once upon a time, on a sunny evening with a distant rainbow in the east, sitting on the wet green lawn near the roses, Albert and Trebla went into an argument AGAIN...

Trebla: Albert is currently busy working. So I will do a solo today. Let me just describe to you what happens at the same time OUTSIDE USA.

Now that the creative people in USA found it very difficult to live and be creative, many have moved to the resort-like islands in tax-heaven Pacific Islands. After all, the world is flat! They can live anywhere and still work for these international companies.

Since the outsourcing starting in the late 1990s, China is now producing about 90% of all hardware. They don't really respect the copyright laws in USA. Although USA has been threatening to block free trade with China if they continue to ignore USA copyright laws, but the fact is that USA economy is now so weak and dependent on China that the threat is more like a joke. These Chinese manufacturers have mastered the production skill and anyone who can read Chinese will be able to flip a few switches behind their machine in order to turn off the DRM devices (just don't tell your next door neighbour). Of course, these machines are supposedly illegal in USA, but somehow, they are selling like hot cakes. After all, there is nothing not made in China anyway.

Apart from USA, the world is now using an alternate Internet called altNet. It was built when the second tech bubble was bursted 2 years after the DRM laws sponsored by MPAA were passed. Chinese and Indians bought all these dark fibre outside USA and built the alt-Net. Alt-Net is expanding faster than ever. It now has 10 times the traffic of the old Internet.

Besides USA, everyone is running their computers on Linux - actually, there is no more new software which does not run on Linux. These always on Linux machines formed the peer-to-peer backbone of altNet. People are sharing their storage media in their computers in return of storing their own files on other's computer. These days, no one is storing their own data on their machines. All files are stored multiple times (in small fragments) on many remote servers. They are assembled on demand through special 64K encryption so that they are always backed up at multiple locations. They are so secured that not even the big brother can look it. All inter-computer connections are made ad hoc with security keys created on demand and dropped between packages. These operating systems deliberately drops all trace of package passing through their machines.

Those living outside USA enjoys free digital media thought alt-Net. All those DRMs put on the media was removed by hackers around the world. Somehow, these hackers even can release the content before it was released in USA - partly because the huge processing time required to encode the media with the DRM.

Creativity everywhere else except USA has been blooming at ever faster rate. Good people are leaving USA. For the first time in history, USA has a brain-drain problem. Those left in USA are the poor, uneducated, welfare dependent. The economy is weak and the national debts is at all time high reaching 50 times GDP. The world bank is busy discussing how to rescue the USA economy. The UN is talking to move its headquarters from New York to Beijing or Bombay.

People in USA is now asking why? How comes the greatest economy in the world can collapse like this? They still don't have a clue!