Amazon to sell DRM-free MP3 Downloads

This may be worth noting. I'll keep my eyes open and let you know what comes of it. It comes down to competitive pricing, I think: iTunes is already offering DRM-free songs at a higher quality and correspondingly higher price -- generally, most people donm't care if the track is 128kbps or 320kbps, so whatever they say we're paying extra for DRM-free music. I think that Amazon could get away with lower-bitrate songs at a lower cost and beat out iTunes. Or they could play the same game and see how much people can be pressed for; the problem is, if it's no better for me to buy DRM-free from Amazon than from iTunes, why would I switch from the service I'm already using?

Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright Infringement

This frightens me.

In short, there's a bill in congress trying to make it into law which would not only increase the penalties for copyright infringement to property seizure and lifetime imprisonment, but also make attempted copyright infringement a federal offense.

So, why does that frighten me? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear, right? I don't buy it, not generally and certainly not here. Does anyone know what constitutes copyright infringement any more? It's non-intuitive. What's the line between infringement and fair use? What about the 235-odd patents that Microsoft claims open source software violates? What about the claim that posting a hex number violates the DMCA?

It really boils down to the simple fact that regular people will not know if they've committed a crime. It's non-intuitive. And that frightens me.

(And the whole thing with patents and copyrights angers me. What purpose does it serve? Who does it protect? Musicians don't see any benefit when a company makes claims on copyright. A friend of mine has received three or four patents for work she did in software algorithms, and all she got was a pat on the back from the company. And now you're going to make it a federal offense? Pardon me if I sound cynical, but this isn't a law to protect the citizenry, it's meant to appease the corporations and that disgusts me. Make a claim about protecting the economy, go ahead; I dispute that even several million dollars' loss isn't meaningful to multi-billion dollar corporations.)

I Feel Fantastic

Today was, all things considered, a very awesome day.

I decided last night that I'd skip my morning class and sleep in a bit, mostly because we had another round of interviews with potential post-graduation employers today and I wanted to be ready. Of course, I then got the urge to not sleep, as I sometimes do, so it was after 1am before I slid into bed, but I got a couple extra hours of sleep anyhow, plus took time for breakfast, so that's cool. This all on the tail of the first Thesis meeting I've had where I came away feeling good about what I was doing -- not grand, but good, like I had a handle on things.

The day went by pretty uneventfully until said interview session came around. It was once again with my favored choice of employers, a lab out in Baltimore that would get me home to Maryland. I've already interviewed with different departments and this was a new one; as I still don't have any solid offers, any additional pushes are nice.

So we go in there and there are four guys: our school's liaison, some guy for bit-level analysis, some guy for application-level analysis, and a third guy who started talking about "Information Systems Security Engineer." And I was enthralled; he said it was basically like security consulting, going in with different projects for different customers as the expert on computer security and advising them on how to get things made right so that the system or whatever comes out secure. Heavy in dealing with people, broad range of areas to deal with -- software, hardware, networking, application, putting the pieces together, everything. He mentioned being in a meeting and being the expert, having that kind o authority, and I have to admit I want to be important. When he used the phrase, "to be a ISSE you have to be a jack of all trades, master of... maybe one," I was sold.

Even more than reverse engineering and vulnerability assessment, I think this is what I want to do. Before I'd even graduated from CUA I was talking about my Great Plan which was to get an education, get some experience, and get into consulting. And they'd give me the requisite training and classes. And the best thing is that it's a skill set that would be applicable even once my scholarship commitment is paid back.

I'm psyched. I've got the guy's contact info, and he's got my resume; if I can land this job, if I end up out there doing that, I think I'd be one more step towards having the life I want. Here's hoping!