Just saw the best argument against DRM today on Slashdot.

Opportunist (166417):

DRM does not only prevent copies. It allows you to retroactively void information, provided you have power over the keys to that information. If an information is no longer to be viewable, it can be erased. Including the copy you have on your computer. Its key is no longer valid, you can no longer view it. No, you couldn't print it in the first place to have a hard copy that can't be erased.

DRM is, in fact, the ability to recreate and reshape statements. While it won't be as blatant as in 1984, where the announcer changes the name of the enemy mid sentence, it is going to be used, albeit more subtle. Whistleblowing will be incredibly hard, since you won't have any evidence to back up your claim. The evidence you had will vanish, since there won't be a key to unlock it anymore when you need it. Your key, the key you used when you were still allowed to view the information, will be deleted.

DRM is BY FAR more than the "threat" that we won't be able to use our CD writers anymore. The real danger is that you can commit a crime and pretty much flush any evidence, if you're in a position of power to create and delete keys to it.

NYT quotes LKY

"We're not going to allow foreign correspondents or foreign journalists or anybody else to tell us what to do," he said. "There are very few things that I do not know about Singapore politics, and there are very few things that you can tell me, or any foreign correspondent can tell me, about Singapore."

I don't believe that there is anything intrinsically wrong with arrogance. It's just that most arrogance is a kind of ignorance.

There was an article on Slashdot about a recent Media Lab product: essentially a bag with a hole in it. Here are some comments I agree with:

It's a freaking PDA screen showing through a hole cut in the bag. The Media lab keeps getting lamer and lamer.

- MustardMan

Journal Entry - 8 August 2017

Got to work at 8:30. Pradesh, my cubicle-mate arrives ten minutes later, muttering Hindi obscenities. He's wearing plaid pants in a pattern so garish that it would make a Scotsman commit suicide.

"Yo, Prad. What's up with the slacks? You rent Braveheart IV last night?"

"Good gracious, no," he repies. "Someone hacked my pants on the No. 6 train."

We spent most of the morning doing a system restore on his trousers. Got them rolled back to pinstripes just before lunch.

- ktakki

I thought MIT was a leading technology school. How come we keep seeing this lame crap coming from them? OMG, I twisted some cat5e into a pony and had a fashion show. Or, I cut a hole in a bag so my PDA would show through. Aren't these best and brightest supposed to be working on cool things like figuring out how to mass manufacture a fabric with OLEDs? Stop posting this crap.

I know of some pretty lame media lab research too.