Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

The presents are open, I’m drinking coffee, Michele is wearing her new watch, and the kids are eating chocolate and playing with their toys.
Merry Christmas to all. Even if you are not religious, please enjoy the spirit of love & giving.
I’ve got to scoot now, I’ve got to review the Fry’s ad for tomorrow’s big sale.

In two hours I need to get the turkey for tonight’s dinner in the oven. Michele is in here now trying to keep me out. Doesn’t she understand I need to get my cooking groove on?
I’m attempting to cook the turkey & ham in the same oven. 27 pounds of meat to be ready by 4 o’clock….
Hurry up!

Today I announce a new word, Rantosphere. The word ‘blogosphere’ is tired and old. Rantosphere will take the reins of the internet meme buzzword train for a while.
It must be a new word since Google has zero hits for it and thinks I mean rotosphere.
The rantosphere is the collective group of web sites and weblogs that mainly focus on ranting about various issues.
Bow down before my intellectual prowess.
Since am the inventor of this word, I can choose the licensing of my word.
I hereby declare that this work, Rantosphere, is licensed under the Creative Commons ShareAlike License.

I was reading about Lessig’s Challenge on geekandproud. While I like the idea of increasing support to groups that fight for the civil liberties, I’m not sure this one is clearly thought out.
These kind of campaigns tend to have some sort of goal or end. Even the kings of money raising, public radio, don’t raise money around the clock.
I don’t see a end or limit to this challenge. Are people really choosing to double the effective cost of of all audio-visual media, telecommunications, and internet access? Are they willing to do this forever or is there an end in sight? The repeal of the DCMA? The repeal of the Sonny Bono copyright extension act? The collapse of the RIAA/MPAA?
Let’s look at the size of a monthly commitment to Lessig’s Challenge in my case:
$80 – internet access
$50 – home phone
$80 – mobile phones
$20 – Netflix
$30 – (2) CDs
$20 – (1) DVD
$30 – Set of movie tickets
$35 – DirecTV
There’s probably more, but let’s add this up. It totals $345. That’s a lot of money I just don’t don’t see people being able to follow through with this kind of spending forever. It sure would nice for the EFF, but I think it is unrealistic.
What’s the right level of giving? I dunno. I should probably think on it a bit more. I’m going to go watch the Lessig presentation before commenting more.

I’m in the bathroom watching the girls take a bath. I’m sitting with the laptop on a small stool while the girls jabber on.
Yesterday while at Fry’s I saw two pieces of software that I had to have. The first was a copy of Railroad Tycoon for linux. It was $4.99. $4.99. Even though WinXP is my main gaming platform, I couldn’t resist having the game for five bucks. There were several other games there for linux, all cheap, but I thought this one would be the most fun.
The second thing I saw was DVD X Copy. Supposedly, this software can make a duplicate of a DVD, even if it is a dual layer disc. All you need is a DVD-ROM and a DVD burner.
It’s no big secret that my employer doesn’t like this type of thing. They have filed many, many lawsuits to stop this kind of software.
A while ago, I played with various DVD rippers to see exactly how easy of difficult it was to rip a DVD. The process generally was three parts. First was the actual rip where the MPEG data was pulled of the disc and placed on a hard drive. At the time, the 4-10 GB of space needed to store a DVD was costly. You had to devote a significant portion of your hard drive to storing the files.
The next part was converting the high quality MPEG to a lower quality MPEG for storage purposes. A program like TPMG could crush a full DVD into two 600 MB files. 600 MB files would fit on a CD-R or be used to create a VCD. The conversion process was long, usually several hours long. In my tests, I’d start the conversion at night, leave the computer on, and by morning the conversion was complete.
The visual quality was a little less than a VHS tape. The final step of burning the file to a CD-R as a VCD took time and resulted in two discs for each movie. All in all, you were probably talking about a 6-10 hour process to go from a DVD to a workable low quality duplicate. I felt that the general public wouldn’t take to this. It simply took too long and required several technical choices. I could tell that someday, the process would be simple.
[break while I get the kids out of the bath]
It appears that someday is today. The DVD X Copy software says that they can *copy* a DVD in less than an hour. Technically, all the pieces are there and it should work that quickly. With DVD burners now going for < $200 and blank DVDs going for around a dollar the opportunity for individuals to copy DVDs is here. I haven't tried a burn yet since I don't have a DVD burner yet. I'm waiting for the post-Xmas sales. I'll post here when I give it a try. My industry is going to have to deal with the reality of this situation. The genie is out of the bottle. For years, people have been able to copy VHS tapes, but it hasn't killed the VHS market, because most people don't want to take the trouble to copy something. I don't think this will lead to widespread copying either, but there are some people that will do it. I read somewhere else a comment about the idea that people won't buy things they can get for free, the writer says that if this was true then public libraries would have killed off book publishing long ago. Enough for now. I have work tomorrow and I've got a few things to do tonight.

No great news today. I spent the day with my father-in-law and my wife’s cousin. We did a little shopping at Fry’s. OK, I did a lot of shopping at Fry’s today. Just a couple more things and I’m done.
I was hoping to squeeze in a geocache, but no luck. The rain came down before we had a good chance to get out there.
We made gingerbread houses at the Diggs tonight. The kids and adults all had a good time. Pictures when I get a chance.
Last night I watched two new shows Conquest and Mail Call on the History Channel. They were actually both very good. I’ve got Season passes for them now.
I’m yawning now, so I’m going to post this and go wrap presents.

The girls have terms for the types of days. There are school days and home days. They don’t say vacation day, holiday, or weekend. They say home day.
I’m having a home day today while the rest of you wrestle with last minute work issues before the weekend. Muah-ha-ha-ha.
In a previous post, Dee asked in the comments about Burger King tacos. She suggested that BK tacos were going away. The Horror!
I called the local Burger King and they assured me that the tacos were here to stay. Still a bit concerned, I called the Burger King Customer Support line (305) 378-3535 to find out the truth.
I spoke to Nicky at Burger King and she said that there was talk of stopping the sale of tacos at some stores. She said that there were no specifics, but that she could confirm that in some locations, the tacos may be stopping.
I may have to organize a protest. Let me ponder…
On the political tip:
Trent Lott is resigning as Senate Leader. Thank you, thank you. I take full credit for this thanks to my fabulous ‘send him a pen‘ idea.
OK, enough weblogging, I’m off to have fun.

I went shopping last night for gifts. On a Wednesday night, Best Buy was quite crowded… I had a list of what I was looking for, otherwise I would have been sucked into the aisle after aisle of DVDs, games, and other cool stuff.
My father-in-law was along for the trip and he was dsitracted by the plethora of techno-goodness.
We stopped by Zany Brainy to pick up stuff for the girls and got a ton of good stuff. Itold my father-in-law that Michele woudl not approve of my choices. He didn’t believe me. So we bet a dollar on it. Of course, Michele disagreed with the majority of my choices and I won the dollar.
For some strange reason, I am still looking to buy GMRS radios. I need to choose between the Motorola and the Uniden options. Any suggestions?

Okie, dokies. I feel asleep early yesterday night. This resulted in a serious lack of websurfing and nazi-killing….
In a comments thread below, BillB requested the direct link to the Firefly cancellation news. Here’s the news from the director Tim Minear. Here’s the news from Entertainment Weekly.
My brother Matt did a cool new flash animation for his work. Check it out. Matt’s skills are impressive.
Over on Anita’s weblog, I found a link to a test to see if you are a PHB (Pointy Headed Boss). Hopefully I fail the test. I think the writer of the test is Anita’s husband.
Mister P’s fun with his automobile continues. If ever there was a man that needed a wife to straighten him out, it is Mister P.
I was reading about the Creative Commons site today. I’m not sure I understand it fully, but I’m sure someone will explain it to me. From what my cursory glance reveals, it’s a method to declare rights to your works in varying levels of control over what people can do with the content. Traditional copyrights are pretty black and white in what people are allowed to do. The Creative Commons people appear to offer shades of grey.
Best. Casemod. Evar.
That’s enough for now. I need some sleep.

The holiday is approaching at light speed. My daughters are quite excited. They already had the fun of Hanukah and now they get to enjoy Christmas.
We decorated the tree yesterday. Much fun was had and we had the traditional ‘how do we put lights on the tree’ arguement.

Left is the trimmed tree. Right is the tree without the harsh flash of the camera.
Yes, we hung real candy on the tree. There are wrapped candy canes and chocolate icicles. We are indulgent parents.