The Open Web Conspiracy

So Google has announced that it will drop support for H.264 in future iterations of its Chrome web browser. WebM will be the favored format for video rendering inside the web browser. Until this announcement very little people really knew about WebM. It was considered as a pet project of Google, like so many others. But with all the press of the last few days, it's impossible to ignore WebM anymore.

What people didn't realize is that Google paid a good amount of money for this technology. Not to make even more money out of it, but simply because the video inside the web browser was going nowhere. It was either the expensive H.264 or the "low" quality Theora for those who can't afford it. So Google bought On2 and VP8 with it and made it free and completely open. The exact kind of technology that is mandatory in W3C standards. They also converted most of their YouTube library to WebM (in 360p and 720p IIRC) which probably also costs a lot in storage.

The tone of most reactions to this move was "how dare you Google?". Which is pretty astonishing when you think about it. People blamed Google for abandoning H.264 in a web browser. Completely ignoring the fact that Mozilla and Opera have always been on that position. AFAIK the web has not collapsed because of this decision. In fact FireFox is now the dominant browser in Europe and Chrome is the fastest growing one. I don't see how this move is going to hurt anybody already serving video on the web.

Not only that but Mozilla and Opera are the ones to thank for the existence of HTML5, the ones that stood against MSIE and it's proprietary way of interpreting the CSS standards. Once again there's going to be a war on standards. This time Google is joining the party. And once again the standard should win in the end. It's not a matter of who has the biggest one, but what an open web means and doesn't mean.

Everyone who has been involved in the Audio/Video business knows how much patents are a nightmare to deal with. A real way of stopping innovation. It also costs a lot of money for small players, to the point were real business is almost impossible if you don't have a size large enough. At CoreCodec a large amount of our revenues were going each year to the MPEG LA for the use of MP3, H264 and AAC. On many products we didn't make any money other than what we had to pay for patents. If there are better business alternatives, everyone should embrace them.

In the flow of articles/comments I read a common argument coming back was that H.264 is already there. Yes, but almost noone is using the <video> tag right now. It's only at the experimental stage. They confuse the web browser and the entire video ecosystem. Everyone who's interested in the story of that <video> tag knows that although a great idea it was a problem due to browser fragmentation and the lack of agreement on the codec, H.264 being out of the question for many key players and likely the W3C who approves the standards. Now there's a solution in sight. Again a solution for the web browser not for the whole world of video. It's not a first arrived/first served system. If H.264 doesn't fit the bill there is no point continuing (or ever) supporting it. Because in the end something else will have to be used. This fact has always been known by all users of the <video> tag from the beginning.

Also it's not because something is there that any future development should stop. In fact everyone working with the <video> tag knows that it's an evolving technology that is bound to change until it stabilize. There are a lot of things coming like adaptive streaming (IMO the most important part of streaming that will make browsers useful players), transparency (for better integration of video in rich UI), 3D (3D WebM files are already playable on YouTube) and even likely some form of DRM if the browser is going to become the universal "cloud" video player. All of these changes will require many investment for people providing online video. The sooner they know what are the possible choices and the ones that will be the best investment, the better.

Plus the video on the web is still in infancy. Adaptive streaming is coming (and IMO the real stopper right now for real use of the browser as a video player), live streaming is coming, 3D is coming (should browsers support MVC too like on Blu-Ray?), transparent videos (for better integration in UIs) and likely DRMs will come too if video rentals are ever going to work without Flash/Silverlight on a desktop. So don't assume that was exists now is set is stone and should never change. All these technologies will require work and money from the people serving videos. The earliest they know the options and the likeliness of success, the better choices they can make. And there is no reason investing time and money in something that will not last in the end. What is clear now is that WebM is not a pet project, it's here to stay.

I've been involved in the development of WebM even before it was out (no surprise that I'm a supporter then). And one thing that stroke me so far was that the most active in its development were Mozilla (3D and live streaming) and Opera (live streaming). Chrome has always been trailing with new features of WebM or even bug fixes. Now Google is finally putting its money where its mouth is. It's being pragmatic AND ideological, not one OR the other. The support of Flash being the pragmatic part here. Not only that but Adobe has been a supporter of WebM since day one (and even before). I wouldn't be surprised if Flash would support WebM in the future. That would make sense for them too. If that ever happens, WebM will be the format that would play on all platforms, unlike H.264. And would likely be decisive in making WebM the first choice when putting video on the web.

In the end one can always think of it as a big conspiracy from Google, Mozilla and Opera to free the web from audio/video patents, and keep the World Wide Web utopia alive and kicking.

2011: The Year Apple Went Back To Its Niche

Hello I'm Steve Lhomme. You may know me from the Matroska (.mkv and .webm) format I (mostly) created, or working for years on CorePlayer from CoreCodec on platforms like Windows Mobile (5 & 6), Symbian, PalmOS, iOS, Android, etc or lately from my work on the Plume Twitter client on Android for LevelUp Studio.

For many years I've followed and been involved in the rise of mobile computing and smartphones in particular. I've used and developed for about any of these OS'es (that would allow some form of native code). In that time I've seen the growth of the iPhone (from the early version without a SDK where we had CorePlayer already running) up to the point it became almost a world of its own. And with great power comes great responsibility. Except that Apple has been acting very aggressively, for their own profit.

Recently I've started noticing an unfair bias towards Apple from the press and from friends. Either because one gives credit to Apple for more than they deserve or because it gives advantages to the Apple platform that IMO is not good (more on that later). While Apple was mainly the only player with a modern platform, it was fine. But now that Android is on level with iOS and exploding in market shares, it's time to rethink the old habits.

The current situation is that on the OS level Android is more or less at the level of what iOS offers. The OS was not meant for tablets and thus the ones sold so far leave to be desired. It seems that Honeycomb (Android 2.4 it seems) will leap forward and make Android more than decent on tablets. I personally think the tablet market is overrated, but that's another debate. On the hardware level there is certainly a lot more experiment & innovations on the Android side. We now have dual-core, tiny devices, up to 4.3" screens, 4G/LTE, car dashboards, 5" and 7" tablets, tablets as TV companions from Vizio or Panasonic, etc. And depending on your needs, there's usually one device that is exactly what you need. Just like not everybody wants to be dressed the same, not everybody needs the same from their phone/tablet.

But with all the CES announcements, I've seen plenty of news/comments on Apple fanboy sites, that whatever, the iPhone/iPads are better. Even before Honeycomb was demonstrated and devices were tested by real persons. For many Apple has become a religion to follow, and denying all other "gods" that are not theirs. This is not new (Mac vs PC). But it's always surprising when it comes from bright minds. And it's even more dangerous when a whole economy has been built on feeding solely the iOS ecosystem (and 30% of it in Apple's pockets).

Things have changed radically since the last 6/12 months. Android is now dominant globally and even in the symbolic USA market. Unlike iOS it's completely free and open. That's why hardware and software innovations are now happening there. And the trend is not going to change. The head start that Apple had is now gone.

The freedom in Android means anyone with a Windows, Mac, Linux computer can develop for free their software and run it on their devices without paying anything to Google. That is not possible with iOS. One can easily see which one is going to be picked by coders in developing markets. Not only that, but Android doesn't require a PC for synchronization or system updates. In doesn't require you to put your billing information in iTunes before buying apps. In a world where more and more people use a (smart)phone and not a PC, that's an important growth factor. One may argue that poor people don't buy apps. But they are likely to buy food, detergents, gas, etc. So the advertising model can work in these areas. So I think the smartphones are going to be a lot bigger there too. It's a lot better if it doesn't require a PC.

Because of all this, I think Android is going to explode even more this year. And unless Apple has something special about to be released (rumors don't seem to show that), it's going to lose even more significant market shares. And like the Mac vs PC war, it's going to end up in a niche for trendy/hip/rich people. Which is probably fine for Apple as long as it has a good share of the #2 position. History is just repeating.

NOT sent from my iPhone (yes, I still use one)

Upgrade your music/movies

So a lot of people are talking Steve Jobs comments on the DRM issues. I haven't read it yet. But it made me think about the digital economy for content/entertainment.

People have been buying music at 128 kbps (MP3 or AAC or WMA) or DVDs in 480i resolution, and with DRM. If they want to get a better quality music/video or without DRM, they would probably have to buy it again. In software you usually get free upgrades or pay less than the full product for an upgrade (even Microsoft does it). So it should be the same for music. If you want to buy the same music in lossless or transparent, you shouldn't have to buy the whole thing again. That was necessary when you had to buy a physical object to upgrade your qualiyt (tape/LP to CD, VHS to DVD). But from digital to digital, there's no need. The only problem is to do that you need some DRMs :(

So the non use of DRM might actually mean there won't be cheap upgrades... How ironic !

The Universe Is Too Big For Aliens

According to this study, we haven't really met the aliens (officially speaking) because the universe is too big and it would take them too long to probe it and find us at the time we are developped.

There's probably some truth in this, but it considers that travelling at the speed of light is not possible or even close. But it's already possible in labs. It doesn't take in account teleportation that already exists in labs too, the use of dark energy, maybe telepathy and all that stuff we don't understand yet. So I think the answer is not there yet... Maybe we are the first ones to be that advanced in the universe ? Or that the matter is not travelling, only the souls ?

New Concepts Catalog

This article lists all the modern concepts that will shape the future of science and intelligence.

I haven't had time to read them all and the related articles, but a lot of them seem interresting.

DivX is bye

It's now official. I'm going to leave DivX, Inc. on the 31st of January. I will be concentrating on the CoreCodec products like CorePlayer and also on matroska related stuff.

For the whole time at DivX I have worked on DrDivX which is open source and available on SourceForge. I hope the project will still continue and evolve even after I left. Maybe I will still contribute here and there. Especially since it relies on a CoreCodec product: CoreMake to create the project files on Windows (MSVC++ Express) and Mac (XCode).

I decided to leave because I've been working on 2 jobs at the same time for many months and it's exhausting. Now that CoreCodec has some financial stability I can safely switch to this prefered job and work on the technologies that we create.

The revolution according to Apple

So yesterday Apple unveiled the iPhone. There's a lot of buzz about it, but once it gets down what will remain ? Engadget list a few of the missing features. But Apple presented it like there was nothing close to this before...

So what's new about this (smart)phone ? The big touchscreen. Even a technology they call multi-touch. So maybe the revolution for Apple is to be able to use 2 buttons (fingers) when the Apple computers only do one (unless you buy a 3rd party mouse).

That's it. All the rest exists and is available elsewhere. The iPhone will be available in June in the USA and in Q4 in France. Far from revolutionary and a big late. If Nokia release their internet tablet that does 3G phone they are done...

Free Will

What is free will ? IMO that's (so far) the main difference between machines and living objects. And it's more than a technical debate, as it implies that we are just machines and that sophisticated machines could have it too (as an inate property ?).

This article covers what free will might be after all... That's the first time I see it mentioned, while I've been convinced that's a crucial point for the future. If machines can have free will too, then they can decide on their ownn (and without us).

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

“If people freak at evolution, etc.,” he wrote in an e-mail message, “how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines, and is that conclusion now clearly warranted or is it premature?”

EU Governments aware of the machine rise

This article is mostly about what the BT (British Telecom) manager said about the importance of women in the future. But there's this interresting quote :

"The government is aware of this trend," he insists. "The EU is looking into it, not just in terms of machine intelligence, but as a problem of globalisation and machine intelligence leading to a surplus of men. It doesn't want large numbers of unemployed men standing around on street corners. We will see lots of demonstrations"

It surely is the biggest challenge of the coming decade. A whole new/different society to build, based on new values (or just the good old money...).

Big Brother is the future (and vice versa)

A nice article about Vernon Vinge's views on the future. And especially about security and privacy. It's clear that people will want more privacy, but technology will also allow to monitor people more efficiently on whatever they do. It's hard to know where the thin limit will be, and nobody has really started to work on that among politicians...

An interresting quote too about the real economic power :

The leaders of most powerful countries are coming to realise that the most important natural resources are not factories or the size of armies. Economic power is in the size of the population that is well-educated, creative and generally happy enough to be optimistic enough to want to do something creative.

France is the enemy

I usually like the NYT articles since they are usually well informed and give a good overview on a subject. But this article got me wondering...

Apart from the doubtful humour about a foreign country and their citizens (What has possessed the French?) the article is just a plead for Apple's cause, no less. Apparently the author considers that Apple is the only online music retail store worth considering. And that it needs to be protected as such. If that's not a defense for a de-facto monopoly I don't know what it is.

The author completely ignores the fact that worry most people about the iTMS and DRM in general: locking content in a proprietary solution. When you buy on the iTMS you can only use the content on your computer or your iPod. The iPod doesn't support any other form of DRM and the Apple DRM is not available to license. So if you have $200 worth of content from Apple and for some reason your computer crashes you lose all of it. And if you want to listen to your music on a device on another device you can't. And that's precisely what the french law proposes to get rid of. Make sure that the user has control on the content he bought, not the companies that make hardware and softwares.

penalize companies that harm consumers, not the ones that succeed by building better products.

Better products doesn't mean they don't harm consumers. In the long run locking yourself in a technology and having no technical means to get rid of it (legitimately as the law puts it) is a hidden suicide... I'm still waiting for a class action against Apple by users pissed that they can't use their content elsewhere than the Apple world. Then we'll see who is harming consumers (with a monopoly enforced by digital lockers).

Apple largely created the online market for legal music.

I think there were many other DRM solutions before Apple presented theirs.

Second, iTunes has lots of music. Largely because of the innovative iTunes FairPlay copy protection and digital rights management software, Apple persuaded major record labels to let them sell much of their best content online. The combination of simplicity and variety proved a huge winner.

There have been reports about the recent attemps by record labels wanting to change the price policy of the iTMS. The idea was to have new content more expensive and older content cheaper. That sounds totally fair. But Steve Jobs and its marketing decided that the unique price was better. It's funny that the technology provider (because of its market position) think they can impose how content owner should sell their stuff... The result is that there won't be a deal renewal, but the content will remain on the iTMS. The difference is that content owner could pull out their catalog at any time, turning the iTMS into a useless technology and the iPod owners in despair. The huge success of the iTMS will turn into a catastrophy... So in short I don't think the picture of labels being happy with an all in one solution (where they have no voice) is a realistic picture.

If the French gave away the codes, Apple would lose much of its rationale for improving iTunes. Right now, after the royalty payment to the label (around 65 cents) and the processing fee to the credit card company (as high as 23 cents), not to mention other costs, Apple's margin on 99-cent music is thin. Yet it continues to add free features to iTunes because it helps sell iPods.

At least it's clear to everyone what the FairPlay is about: sell iPods. That's the very reason why Apple make their best not to open it to any partner (just look at the flop of the iTunes phones).

Now would opening (doesn't mean breaking) Fairplay would boost the iTMS: yes. Would it boost music sells: yes. Would it boost iPod sales: likely if you can convert WMA DRM to Fairplay. So what is wrong about opening it ?

Apple argues that sharing the codes could make the pirates' job easy enough to wipe out the legal market.

That's considering licensing technology is a public publishing. AFAIK Microsoft Janus (DRM) is licensed to many companies and there's no tool online to crack it. This argument is just FUD created by Apple and spread by "journalists".

Agitators might claim that this is the very goal of the French bill: why else would it also reduce the maximum fine for consumers caught illegally downloading music from 300,000 euros (about $371,000) to just 38 euros (less than $47)?

It's funny how the journalist considers paying 300,000€ for downloading a track online is OK. The 38€ fine is per download. Only when a law is fair it can be respected.

Usually, rich countries don't meddle with others' intellectual property because they fear retaliation. So why don't the French fear retaliation now?

Retaliation against France. Now we have big words to defend Apple against France (one of its biggest market in Europe)... In short the author is saying: don't mess with a USAn company or we'll retaliate on other markets. I guess he/she must have a lot of Apple stocks to go so bold on an industrial (and actually a cultural) choice.

One reason may be that they have concluded France will never really compete. If the Internet will always have an American accent, why not go after it? Sometimes, the red flag of revolution is surprisingly hard to distinguish from the white flag of surrender.

There were 2 options in the law: global license which would be a tax on download or DRM interoperrability. Both are considered good routes to make the digital economy fair and flourish. So I see innovation possibilities where the author see surrender to a monopoly.

Before declaring pre-emptive war on iTunes, however, perhaps the French would do best to remember a lesson from 1789. Sometimes the very people calling for revolution are the ones who end up losing their heads.

So far I haven't heard any voice in France against the proposed law to defend iPod. All the voices are crying that there will be less space for private copy. So the author is just fantasazing and maybe he thinks Bush will attack the french (once more) to defend Apple. That will make the french even more proud...

Lilly Is Here

As any other father I want to tell the world that my baby Lilly was born yesterday (2006-04-26) at 21:35 in Hawaii. She weighs 3.9 kg (8.6 pounds) and measures 53cm (21 inches). She has dark hair and blue eyes.

It's both a wonderful and happy moment as much as a sad one. Unfortunately I couldn't be there for legal reasons. But Cecilia and the baby are doing fine so that's just enough to be happy. We'll be together in Europe around june.

Welcome to the world Lilly!

1366x768 & 750Go

In the modern world advertising for false information can be punished. Yet tech companies have found legal ways to cheat on their product specifications.

My LCD TV claimed to do 1366x768 pixels, as many (most) of them do. But when I plugged it to my computer only 1280x720 (720p) were available. I thought there might be something wrong in my setup even though I didn't notice any resizing effect typical for LCD (blurry when not in native). I only found out the trick with an HDBeat article. The TV does only have 1280x720 real pixels. They only pretend to have more due to the overscan found on analog TVs (analog TVs cut the borders of an image). So there will never be 1366x768 physical or displayed pixels. This number is just imaginary.

Seagate also announced a 750 GB harddisk drive a few days ago. But don't expect your OS to report 750 GB when you plug it. HDD manufacturers have decided a long time ago that 1 GB = 1,000,000 bytes and not 1,024x1,024 bytes. It didn't make such a difference for small disks. But now the difference is 34.75 GB (real bytes). If they keep the same trend, a 1 TB disk will actually contain 953GB (70GB or 5% less).

DRM myths

I don't want to become a DRM advocate, but when I read articles like this I feel like a more balanced view should be expressed.

Both Lessig and Stallman are smart people. But it turns out they are very idealistic, and unrealistic, in their opinion on DRM and freedom in general.

The values of the Free Software Movement are the freedom to cooperate, and the freedom to have control over your own life. You should be free to control the software in your computer, and you should be free to share it.

The GPL that Stallman wrote (or was the main driving force) doesn't give you the freedom to share. It is an obligation. You replace a freedom with a constraint. It really feels like someone is deciding for you what kind of freedom is good for you. So it's always surprising to see him attack other Open Source licenses (that sometimes give you all rights) in the name of freedom.

Now about DRM, the freedom given to people (restricted rights) is exactly what they paid for. If they want more rights they should pay more money, and if they agree on less rights, they should pay less. That's the very basic reason why renting a DVD is cheaper than buying it. And the market, in other words the consumers, will decide what kind of rights they want. It's just unfortunate that the whole content market is ruled by oligopolies (on movies and on music) and therefore the DRM offers/choices are very scarce. But this has nothing to do with why DRM is good or bad.

the whole point of DRM is to deny your freedom and prevent you from having control over the software you use to access certain data.

When smart people start using stereotypes that means there's something fishy going on. After all the whole GPL relies on copyright laws. And Stallman, as such, is a strong defender of copy rights (copyleft as they call it) and intellectual property. But apparently electronic ways to ensure the rights are always respected are not good. He probably considers that doing this in court is preferrable, even for people who earn no money on what they create (like most GPL devs do).

Second-Hand Digital Content ?

As the market for DRM is slowly maturing into a digital economy, it's interresting to think about how it's going to evolve. Namely what will happen to the content you paid (for a premium price given the real cost of the medium) after you don't want it anymore ?

So far you could sell your old vynils, CDs or DVDs to a second hand shop. And that created a real economy where people would purchase something they would keep for a few months and then get rid of it. But I think this possibility might soon become the past.

Consider the Managed Copy system introduced in future DRMs or the interroperability law in France. It allows you to go from one DRM format to another. But it's just a copy, the original is still intact. So if you sell the copy, you still have the original. You become a distributor and not a second hand seller, especially since you have the digital ability to make thousands of copies to sell. I don't think any content creator, major label or studio will ever let you do that.

And it's too bad, because given the digital possibility one could buy a DRMed movie (as in ownership, not renting) watch it, and then sell it for (almost) the same price. It would be fair to the buyer since the copy he would buy would be like brand new. Then this buyer could watch it and sell it after for (almost) the same price. etc. And if you put a website in the middle that acts as the middle man to find buyers/sellers for a content, it can be instantaneous. That means, the content you buy would be just as valuable as the price you paid, minus the price you resell it. It could be 0 in some case.

It could even make you earn money if the content is in high demand and there's no offer to sell it (the rule of offer vs demand). As in the analold world some content could be produced at a limited amount of items (DRMed copies) and the collectors would rush to buy one and maybe sell it for twice the price or even more. They could also sell a rare copy 10 years later for an expensive price (if all other copies have been destroyed).

Too bad the current DRMs won't let you do that...

The Cure for Information Overload

I just saw this link on Kurzweil's website. Apparently it's on to something The Cure for Information Overload. Maybe a way to crash google's search engine.

America: No More

I haven't updated this blog because I've been busy and haven't read many impressive articles lately. But what happened to me on this sunday (26-03-2006) deserves a bit of sharing.

I was on my way to Hawaii from France to join Cecilia that is going to have our baby very soon (Lani Amour, a girl, is due for 22-04-2006). But when I entered the USAn territory in Seattle I was refused the entrance. They considered I was an illegal worker even though I'm just running my company based in France while I'm away. I was not in the USA to look for a job. I was just going there because that's where Cecilia is, because I wanted to be there for the birth of my first baby !

When I arrived at the first desk, the guy saw that I was in the USA recently for twice 2 months, and the explanation that I was coming to see my girlfriend and our baby didn't convince him. He sent me with a red card to another desk, hidden from all the other passengers.

On this second desk they quickly sent me to another room even more separate to be asked a few questions. They asked me what I was going to do there, what was my job, what was I doing from december to march in Hawaii and from may to august in Los Angeles. I was trying to be clear enough that in each case I was not working illegally. In Los Angeles I was just there for a job proposal and I was only compensated for being there (I actually lost a lot of money being there waiting for something to happen). I never signed a contract and decided to leave when I realised they could never get me a visa, and so I could stay in the USA to live with Cecilia.

Before I went back to France I managed to get a job interview at DivX and they were very positive. So positive that they engaged me to work from France, as I couldn't get a visa easily (the USA have put very strong restrictions lately on the quotas of foreign worker). So I created my independant company in Paris, and I work as a contractor for DivX, paying my taxes in France.

Given the nature of my job (programmer), I can work from everywhere as long as I have a connection to the internet. That's what I was doing when I was in Hawaii for 3 months. I went back to France to clear my 90 days visa waiver and be able to come back for the birth of my child. But the authorities decided otherwise.

First they thought I was just finding an excuse (the baby) to enter the USA. They could have called Cecilia to see if my (supposedly) alibi was true. But they didn't for a long time. Then they thought I was working illegally for DivX. But it's not the case as I work for myself, from France. Being on the road doesn't change much. I wasn't on a business trip, because I was just there for family purposes. So, after they realised that it was a tricky case, they decided that they would make me pay for my stay in Los Angeles last summer. Even though I was not the one who requested to move there, even though I was promised a visa, even though they paid for the trip and (most of) the hotels. For me it was more a job evaluation than a job. I even spent 3 weeks during that time with Cecilia, one week in Hawaii not having any contact with Los Angeles.

Now that's the story, and I probably have a lot of wrongs on my side. I didn't even deny anything. I explained calmly, for 7 hours in a very hot room, my situation and that I had no intention to look for a job there because I already have one in France ! But my fault was to work for a USA based company, that was too many coincidences. That and the fact that the first time they called Cecilia noone answered and that the address we use in Hawaii in the address of her mom's store (because there is no postal service up in the mountain, where they live), or the fact that I'm renting my apartment in Paris while I'm away, or the fact that I was travelling with no luggage other than my carry-on full of baby clothes and typical french food. That was too many strange facts put together to sound true. Even though it was the plain and simple truth. The truth is that our stay in the USA was temporary anyway, we were planning to move to Europe when the baby is born. Now we even have a solid reason to do it!

After 6 hours they finally managed to reach Cecilia on the phone. They didn't tell her anything at all, just that they were holding me in Seattle. You can imagine the shock, for her and the baby. And it was a schock for me too when they announced me they will put me in the first plane to France. I realised I won't be there to support Cecilia when she will give birth. I realised I will not see my baby for a long time (every day will seem like a year). I cried a few times... I wouldn't normally cry, but I was up for about 26h with almost no sleep in the plane (to be on the Hawaiian time when I arrive). I had a nervous breakdown. The officer (a woman) didn't even give a shit about it... She told me she had Cecilia on the phone but that she didn't say anything. I was very suprised, not only because I know Cecilia would have tried to know more (the officer told her she didn't know much, and she couldn't tell more), but also because during the second hour, as I realised I missed my flight, I asked if I could call Cecilia to tell her not to go to the airport and they said I could call her later. They never let me call her at all.

They asked me questions over questions for a long time. Even though most of the time I was waiting for them to make their computer work or decide who was going to ask me the questions. I was supposed to answer yes or no to questions that would require a lot more explanation, given the complexity of the situation. As an example I told them I'm a software engineer, and I also told them I'm a programmer. But they have no idea what it's about and they were wondering if I was cheating or something.

They asked me a lot of questions. And they only kept the ones that were against me. For example they didn't note the date of the baby's due birth, which is exactly in the middle of my trip. They didn't note that I run my own company in France and that's the contract I have with DivX. (they went online to check if DivX is a real company, none of them ever heard about it). They didn't keep the fact that when I was in Los Angeles I was promised a job and the required visa, and that I decided to leave because they wouldn't work on any of these and I was losing money being in LA without a job. That I wouldn't go back and forth in France before the 90 days limit if all I wanted was to be an illegal alien.

That's a very strange way to make justice when the people against you is also the judge. I had no lawyer to help me, to tell me I was way too tired to answer all those questions. Way too tired to sign a paper all against me. And the other incredible part about this kind of justice is that you are not even allowed to appeal.

I guess I was refused because the situation was too complex for them to believe it. But I didn't play with them, I said all the truth (apart from the fact, at the beginning, that I was still in contract with DivX, in case they would think I was just going to San Diego to work). But I paid for my past year of being in planes and trying to be somewhere where we can stay for a while with Cecilia. I was just for my past in the country of the 2nd chance. The country of personal liberty. I didn't get any of these. They were only kind not to put me in jail at night and allow me to go to a hotel while they were holding my passport. In the morning the main officer led me through the airport to the gate of my flight. I was treated like a criminal.

Everybody who knows me knows that I value justice and balance and truth among anything else. So it was even more a shock to be treated this way, to put me in such an unfair situation. Just because they don't want any foreigner to steal their precious jobs (I already have a contract to steal such a job from a USAn, so it's even more stupid).

Now my baby is going to start her life without me. Cecilia will have to dream of me holding her hand while she's giving birth. The country of freedom won't let me do that.

DRM: who are the thieves ?

It's been established now that the Sony-BMG XCP system to prevent users from ripping their own CDs contains LAME and FAAC code. These are open-source softwares and the license clearly establishes that all inclusion in a software must be advertised as such, and if the code is an intergal part (static in the main code) of it, the whole software must follow the same license.

So DRM was created to avoid music stealing. But instead they (Sony BMG) stole some developpers code, clearly violating their IP (I happen to have some code of mine in LAME). Fighting "stealing" with stealing will certainly not help their cause. Actually they just prove in some case it's better to do it for your own convenience...

When Science Prefers To Be Blind

Again it's about the Dalai Lama (no, I'm not a boudhist)... This time it's about a scientific lecture were the Dalai Lama was invited to participate and talk about a study on the effect of meditation on brain waves and how it can affect the surrounding environment.

Some scientists have petitioned for this to not happen. Just because they think :

But many scientists who signed the petition say they did so because they believe that the field of neuroscience risks losing credibility if it ventures too recklessly into spiritual matters.

I'm sure there is a lot to discover there. If only they tried...

Modern Life Tricks

It's funny that to get well organised and efficient you need to cut on too many useless interruptions. I guess that's the point we all reach when spending a lot of time online & working on a computer. Usuing very few and simple tools. But that just do what they are supposed to do: help our memory and reduce the context switching.