First off, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  Go forth and kill a snake.  Or drink a green beer.  Or … something!

Second off, sorry for the lack of updates lately.  I haven’t been feeling well.  I took my wife to the hospital for tests a while back and, of course, got sick.  (Because hospitals aren’t exactly places of congregation of the healthy.)  I got “well” in that I kicked the disease quickly enough.  But because I had to get some time-critical work done, I hadn’t been taking days off to rest, so it was just a struggle day-in, day-out, with weekends barely just giving me enough time to keep going.  I literally could pull myself together just enough for work.  I didn’t have enough left in me for blogging.  So anywhen, sometime in the future I’ll go through my notes and backdate posts, as I tend to do.  Now that I can take time to recover.

Third, the main point of this blog.  So I’ve been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky lately.  I recently-ish bought it on Steam for dirt cheap.  Even though I hate, detest, abhor Steam, and almost always make sure to buy the disk instead of the music, game, or movie because of rights issues, this one time I caved and “downloaded” the game.  From Steam no less.  I’m a hypocrite of convenience.  I hate myself.  But I’ll get over it.

Anyway, so I’ve been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and enjoying it.  I think it might actually even rate as one of my favorite video games.  I wish I’d bought it sooner.  It’s a lot better than the first.  Not just in being more of a challenge, or in being able to do simple basic things like repair an item, but it just all plays / feels / works so much better.  I especially like the upgrades and the item maintenance.  (Even if I still don’t understand why you can’t do stupid things like permanently tack weld a scope to a Viper 5.)  Except for, you know, the bugs.  Those darn little things that forced me to restart the game because the main plot device broke and I was eternally stuck.  Nerf!  Oh well.

But so the thing is, just this weekend the darn game kept crashing.  Not even crashing out of the game, but in a weird in-game-ish stuck thing where it was like the underlying engine was still running, but the 3D graphics portion had crashed.  So there was no longer a user interface.  It just became a black screen with a mouse cursor.  That’s it.  Sometimes it’d be in the middle of playing.  Sometimes just in the menu trying to load a game or change 3D settings.  (Trying to debug the crashing.)  And sometimes even while the advertisement logo movies played while starting up the game!  It was absurd!

After much gnashing of teeth, trying offline mode in Steam, even trying to set the CD key in multi-player even though the single-player game doesn’t really use the CD key, I was going crazy.

Until I thought about it.  I’d just seen Windows do an update.  Could that somehow be it?

Yep!

I know, I know, I really should turn off the automatic updates because Microsoft does throw  out some real turds.  And this was one of them.

Update KB2670838 happens to update Windows 7 with some changes to Direct3D, DirectDraw, etc.  Yup.  Damn.  And sure enough, Microsoft “fixed” Direct 3D just enough to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky incredibly completely totally bonkers unstable.

Well nerds to that!

So I uninstalled Windows Update KB 2670838 and sure enough, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is nice and stable again.  Imagine that.

So if you still play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, I hope you find this blog because chances are, right now you’re not playing it because of this bug in Microsoft’s “fix” to whatever problems they thought they had.

Or, honestly, goodness how many other video games are crashing right now because of KB2670838.  Heck, programs in general.  Movie players.  Who knows what else uses those engines?  I don’t know what Microshaft is thinking about releasing that PoS, but that update was most definitely neither thoroughly tested nor kosher. 

So be warned!  If you play video games, pay close attention to how often things crash after you install KB 2670838.  You just may find yourself uninstalling that particular Microsoft update!

It’s a dream come true for biological engineers: MIT researchers have created a “biological circuit” e-coli bacterium that can perform 16 boolean logic functions and store the results in a strand of DNA written using recombinases. It’s the first time that living cells have been turned into an organic computer. Well … almost.

The brains of every living thing aside, the MIT smart-bacteria is still missing one vital feature: the ability to read stored information back. So the computational logic is still somewhat missing as it’s only one-way. But it’s a huge breakthrough all the same.

Now, you might just be wondering, what, exactly, is this actually good for?

Well it’s certainly not going to revolutionize computers for a start. Reading DNA is not exactly something that we can do quickly. But in that our squishy organic bodies aren’t exactly conducive to machine melding, this opens up a whole new world of medicine at the very least.

For example, tests for cancer can be, well, rather invasive, what with the poking and the prodding and the cutting and all. Biopsies are a b____. But imagine a world in which your doctor could give you a yogurt beverage laced with these genetically engineered bio-circuits programmed to detect cancer. You drink. You poo. And then the hospital examines the resultant DNA output and viola, you know if you have cancer or not.

Part of what makes it so effective is that bacteria like to reproduce themselves, and as they do this, the information stored in the DNA becomes duplicated as well. That’s what DNA is there for. This creates a high redundancy of the information that makes it much easier to extract the resulting data than trying to find a single solitary bacteria cell before it dies. The more they multiply, the easier it is to find a copy. So it’s actually conducive to working with our own biology as by the time that smart-poo makes it out our back ends, there’s plenty enough redundancy of the data to be found.

And similar to your smart-poo future of easy disease identification, likewise in the future your doctor could even offer you a much less dangerous form of chemotherapy where the drugs are embedded with biological circuits that self-destruct only when they’ve reached a targeted area, delivering the medication only to the cells that were targeted. The beauty of a biological circuit that can alter its own DNA is that it can be “programmed” to self-destruct by intentionally making its own genetic material non-viable once it has completed its mission. It’d be a much safer solution than flooding your whole body with medication, and would make you a whole lot less ill.

Another such application of a bio-circuit is that you could make bio-sensor strips of a suspended bacteria gel that change colors when they detect pre-programmed drugs, toxins, diseases, or even explosives. Imagine no longer needing the nose of a dog, but using a simple strip of gel that absorbs particulate from the air. The simplicity and low cost would allow these bio-sensors to be utilized anywhere and everywhere.

Not to mention, potentially, being a mechanism which can one day be used to re-write DNA in living hosts to cure someone of a genetic disease. Bacteria programmed to use recombinases to alter targeted ‘bits’ of DNA are an awfully close to being the very tools you’d need to fix our own genes.

The ability to engineer a biological circuit can go a great way to changing our whole world.

And there’s always the Dark Side. Cynics will no doubt point out that any tool that can be used for good can also be used for ill.

So it may come as something of a sigh of relief that we’re still a long way off from any of this. But the building blocks that were once separate are now being put together. It’s fast becoming a question of “when” rather than “if”.

If you’ve updated your iPhone to iOS 6.1 and you’ve found your device constantly drained of battery life, or your data plan has maxed out really quickly for no apparent reason, or your network carrier has begged you not to upgrade to iOS 6.1 because it’s brought their network down (yes, that has happened), well, Apple finally has an answer: it’s the Sync of Doom!

Yes, from Apple, the same company that brought you Antennagate, now we have the Sync of Doom! (I love saying that!) What happens when you have an Apple iOS calendar app syncing to a Microsoft Exchange server for calendar information? Well, usually nothing unexpected.

But!

… If you do that and happen to change a single instance of a reoccurring event, an Apple bug will cause the iOS app to infinitely attempt to sync with the Microsoft Exchange Server.

Flooding all servers in between your iPhone and the Exchange Server with useless sync attempts, often dragging those servers to a crawl.

Not to mention causing your iPhone to chew up your 3G or 4G data plan like it was nothing.

Or for that matter eating up the battery of your iPhone by keeping the phone constantly communicating wirelessly and never able to go to sleep internally.

As the Sync of Doom! from Apple’s buggy iOS calendar app continues trying over and over and over to sync to the Exchange server.

Basically, this is really a bug that should have been caught long before release.

But wasn’t.

The Sync of Doom!

Brought to you by Apple.

There is some good news however. If your phone is suffering from the Sync of Doom! you can manually make it stop. Disabling and then re-enabling the connection to the Microsoft Exchange server seems to fix the Sync of Doom! (Which is basically to turn your calendar off, and then back on.)

Of course when the Sync of Doom! bug will actually be fixed is another matter entirely. It hasn’t happened yet, that’s for sure. When Apple will get around to releasing that fix, you’ll just have to wait to find out.

So if you’re an iPhone user and your calendar data comes from a Microsoft Exchange Server, you’re going to want to be extra careful.  Consider this your warning.  There’s a bug, but with diligence you can prevent it from eating up your data plan, eating up your battery life, and bringing networks to a crawl.  It’s not a virus.  It’s just Apple being Apple lately.

This Valentine’s Day let’s share the love with a little green.

Electric cars seem to have a few issues when it comes to traveling distances. Batteries just take too long to charge, and don’t hold as much juice as we’d like. Not even the great and mighty Tesla (the car company, not Nikola) has managed to solve that problem just yet.

However, chances are, sometime in your life you’ve seen (in real life, or on TV) an electric train, subway, trolley, bus, or other wheeled vehicle of some type that runs on electricity provided by a grid that it’s connected to. You know, that really tall hook thingy that grips those overhead wires? Or the dreaded train/subway rail that you’re not supposed to touch? It’s a common enough concept and makes sense in limited areas. In fact, it’s more energy efficient for a vehicle to grab its power as it travels than it is to lug around a big gas tank.

So why don’t electric cars use the same approach?

Well, all of those wires overhead everywhere could get awfully difficult to maintain for one. And if you used something lower to the ground, chances are some numbskull would electrocute him/her-self crossing a road.

Well, that is, unless you asked Tesla (Nikola, not the car company) to come up with a solution.  (Wardenclyffe Tower anyone?) Sadly, being dead, no one thought to ask Nikola Tesla how to power an electric car without plugging it into the road. So it took us an awfully long time for we mere mortals to think of this: We could always charge an electric car wirelessly as it drives.

Thanks to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science soon two electric busses will be able to travel along the road from Gumi station by recharging their batteries wirelessly from induction loops embedded in the road along the route. No zappy-zappy to humans. It’s effectively the same technology that lets some cellphones and even toothbrushes recharge wirelessly, only applied to moving vehicles.

And if you eat the cost to put this same kind of technology into urban areas, you could easily design a gridwork of roads where electric cars, busses, trolleys, etc. can recharge themselves as they drive. All without wires.

It could become a green-city utopia.

Even major highways, tollways, turnpikes, etc. where longer distance driving is done could be augmented with sections of induction charging to allow electric cars, that drive on the right roads, to eat up the miles indefinitely without ever needing to stop for a charge, which would make electric cars infinitely greener and more convenient than their gas-guzzling compatriots at that point. Imagine driving thousands of miles without ever having to stop for fuel even once.

In theory, it’s possible. And Korea is the one showing us how.

Not content with making fools of themselves, the folks over at Oracle are having another poke about Android being copyright theft of their Java. They’ve filed with the US Federal Circuit Appeals Court in an attempt to overturn their loss when Judge William H. Alsup of the US District Court ruled that Google was not infringing upon Oracle’s copyright of Java, mainly on the basis that APIs are not covered under copyright.

More specifically, copyright does not protect “names, titles, short phrases or expressions”, including, “catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions.” Those are covered under trademark law, not copyright law, and it’s a whole different ballgame.

Also not protected by copyright law are, “listing of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas.” Which in software terms is the same thing as APIs.

So on these grounds, copyright does not cover APIs.

Hence Google hasn’t infringed Oracle’s copyrights by using the Java APIs in Android.

So ruled Judge Alsup.

The court of law set its standards for modern interpretation of aged laws not designed with software engineering in mind.  And frankly, pretty much everyone but Oracle agrees with this, gets it, and is perfectly content with it that way.

But losing once wasn’t enough for Oracle. They’re adamant that their misinterpretations of law are correct and so they’re appealing that decision.  Which, in theory, they have the right to do.

Of course having potentially billions of dollars at stake might have something to do with their pig-headedness.

But I’m starting to think it’s more of a mental deficiency, to be honest.  Here’s how Oracle’s appeal begins:

Ann Droid wants to publish a bestseller. So she sits down with an advance copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – the fifth book – and proceeds to transcribe. She verbatim copies all the chapter titles – from Chapter 1 (“Dudley Demented”) to Chapter 38 (“The Second War Begins”). She copies verbatim the topic sentences of each paragraph, starting from the first (highly descriptive) one and continuing, in order, to the last, simple one (“Harry nodded.”). She then paraphrases the rest of each paragraph. She rushes the competing version to press before the original under the title: Ann Droid’s Harry Potter 5.0. The knockoff flies off the shelves.

J.K. Rowling sues for copyright infringement. Ann’s defenses: “But I wrote most of the words from scratch. Besides, this was fair use, because I copied only the portions necessary to tap into the Harry Potter fan base.”

Obviously, the defenses would fail.

Defendant Google Inc. has copied a blockbuster literary work just as surely, and as improperly, as Ann Droid – and has offered the same defenses.

Clearly, the state of mind over at Oracle must be questioned if this is their idea of how to write a lawsuit.

The ironic thing is that Oracle’s cute little story of little miss Ann Droid in no way re-examines how APIs should be protected under copyright. It appears that Oracle seems to think that they’ve somehow made a point here, but it only goes to show just how much they’ve actually missed the point, in my opinion. Because essentially their little story of Ann Droid is exactly what anyone working with APIs would and has had to do, by definition. You could no more sue Libre Office for reverse-engineering Word document reading, or Foxit for PDF viewing, or Linux’s Samba and Wine for writing Windows API names and recipes for that matter.

Oracle’s whole short story of Ann Droid centers on writing a book, not on APIs.  And seems focused on confusing the laws of copyright, of trademark, and potentially even of patent depending on how you try to interpret what they’re saying and how it could possibly relate to software.

And, in fact, anti-competitive lawsuits have been filed against Microsoft for not documenting their Windows APIs more clearly. (Sometimes if at all.)  To intentionally block competitors from using APIs is not kosher.

So how Oracle can somehow think that they’re special and that their APIs are copyrightable is beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend.

But writing a short story about Ann Droid writing a Harry Potter knock-off is a whole new level of WTF?!  It’s childish.  It’s apples to oranges.  It’s ignorant.

Again, Oracle doesn’t seem to comprehend where one law ends and the next begins. They seem to think that trademark law and patent law are all a part of copyright law now, as if the three weren’t completely different things.

But then maybe it’s not gross incompetence / ignorance after all, so much as just desperation.  Surely they must know that without a shadow of a doubt they’d lose hands down in a patent law battle, and likewise in a trademark battle. Copyright is the only battleground left that they can even remotely try to claim, and that’s still the longest of long-shots as that is also a clear and obvious lose for them. But with potentially billions of dollars at stake, I guess Oracle figures that it’s worth the chance to play the part of complete and utter fools … just in case they somehow magically conjure up a courtroom equally as foolish. Which, let’s face it, just ain’t gonna happen, even if they try to invoke the magic of Harry Potter.

Frankly, I hope the appellate court slaps them down hard. These ridiculous antics of Oracle are demeaning to the whole judicial system and to software developers alike. But then with so much Java egg on their face already when it comes to security and patches lately, maybe Oracle figures that they’re already chock-full-o’-idiocy, so why not got that extra mile and become the laughing stock of everyone?

I can honestly see a future where no one uses Java anymore not because of security concerns, but because they simple no longer want to have anything to do with Oracle.