I’ve had a problem for awhile with FireFox that I just can’t seem to solve.  Flash content just doesn’t seem to want to load.  It’s not all Flash either.  Some of it loads, some doesn’t, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason.  My temporary solution was to use IETab to switch to IE’s rendering engine, but that wasn’t a real solution.  I even uninstalled and re-installed both Flash and FireFox to no avail.

My main annoyance with this problem was listening to new music on Amie Street.  I would load up the player’s page only to find the Flash music player not working.  Then I would need to view the source code, copy the Flash URL from the source and paste it in the address bar.  Once that loaded up, I was able to listen to the music just fine.  However, viewing the source and copying and pasting all the time was annoying.

Today, my thoughts turned to Greasemonkey.  I had installed it to use the Popup Alt script (so FireFox would display the image’s ALT attribute like IE does).  Why couldn’t I have Greasemonkey detect when I went to an Amie Street music player page and redirect me to the appropriate Flash URL?  I had never written a Greasemonkey script before, but I knew that they used JavaScript.  I made a new script, and also loaded up the source to the Popup Alt script to use for reference.  Within a matter of minutes, I had a simple script written that worked perfectly.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Amie Street Playlist
// @namespace      AmieStreet
// @description    Redirects from Amie Street player page to actual Flash file
// @include        http://amiestreet.com/player.php?*
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
   if (!(document.getElementById(’amiePlayer’) == null)) {
       document.location = ‘http://www.amiestreet.com/static/swf/amie.swf?siteMode=true&’ + document.location.search.replace(/\?/, ”);  
   }
})();

This script first looks for an element with an ID of “amiePlayer”.  If an element exists, it redirects the page to the SWF file (passing the querystring parameters along).  Simple and effective.  No, it doesn’t solve the root problem of my mystery FireFox+Flash bug, but it does help reduce the annoyance factor and makes Amie Street usable for me again.  I just might have to look into writing other Greasemonkey scripts.

A few weeks ago, I posted what I thought should be done about copyright penalties.  I left out one important point, however.  I think that copyright terms have grown out of control and need to be brought back in line with what was originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers.  Specifically, copyright should last for 14 years with one optional 14 year extension.  (You would need to apply for the extension.)  After that, the copyright would fall into the Public Domain and could be used by anyone.

That’s the way things were when the United States was founded.  Over the years, the optional extension became an automatic one, and was eventually rolled into the term itself.  In addition, the length of time that a copyright lasted got longer and longer.  Right now, a copyrighted work (for example, this blog post) made by a single author lasts for 70 years after the author’s death.  I happen to be in my 30’s.  Let’s say I live another 50 years.  This means that this blog post will enter the public domain in April 2128.  Of course, I won’t be around to see the blog post enter the public domain, but what about my children.  My youngest child is almost 1.  Let’s suppose that he lives to be 90 and has his last child at 30.  (Just for nice, round numbers.)  This means that my grandchild will be 91 when my work enters the public domain.  Presumably at that point I would have great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren milling about.

If this blog post was made for a company, then the copyright would last for 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is less.  (In this case, 95 years.)  This gives us a slightly better figure of the copyright expiring in the year 2103, when my hypothetical grandchild would be 66.

Even assuming that this blog post winds up being a huge money maker for my descendants/company (huge assumption there), copyright was never supposed to be about ensuring income to the descendants of authors and artists.  It was never meant to be a perpetual money maker for companies.  Copyright was designed as a compromise between the publics’ need to use the work to create more works and the author’s need for monetary compensation.  It creates a temporary, artificial monopoly on the work.

The author gets ownership of the work for a short time to generate revenue.  This gives them the incentive to make the original work and to make more works.  They know that the work won’t immediately get sold by someone else with the author left in the cold.  The public, meanwhile, gets assurance that the copyright term will end and they will be able to enjoy the work (and base more items off the work) without needing the original author’s permission.

With a perpetual copyright, you start running into problems tracking down the owner.  Say you wanted to make a film about Romeo and Juliet.  Who would own the copyrights to Shakespeare’s works?  You could spend decades researching that question without any success.  All copyrights *must* end or new works would be crippled.

So my proposal (let’s call it Jason’s Copyright Sanity Act) would be to limit copyright to the original 14 year term plus an additional, optional, one-time 14 year extension.  I might compromise to 20+20, but that’s about it.  I would also compromise by allowing an assumption that any works created up to 28 years before the JCSA was passed could be assumed to have applied for the extension.  As one final compromise to companies/individuals holding copyrighted works, I would phase copyrighted items out to the Public Domain a decade at a time, starting with the oldest items.  The first year after the JCSA was approved would see items from 1922 - 1929 fall into the Public Domain.  The year after that items from 1930 - 1939.  And so on until we were caught up.  It should only take 5 or 6 years to get fully caught up.  Of course, this whole proposal would have very little chance of passing through Congress as the content lobbyists would kill it on sight.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, you’ve probably heard about the recording industry’s lawsuits against file sharers.  Now, I have no sympathy for people who willfully infringe copyright and yes, in my mind that includes downloading a song.  (At least in the US, it does.  Canada’s a different story.)  However, any sympathy I might have possibly had for the recording industry has long since been countered by their sleazy tactics — both to individuals accused of file sharing and to the artists that the recording industry claims to  be fighting to protect.

Yesterday, CNet posted a story about how the recording industry was told by a judge that “making available” isn’t grounds for copyright infringement.  This is a good thing since many P2P applications can share out portions of your hard drive with little to no notice.  Sure, technically minded folks would easily see what’s happening and change the settings, but Joe User isn’t going to know to do this and could wind up on the receiving end of a lawsuit without having any intention to illegally distribute copyrighted material.

CNet is celebrating this ruling as one more victory against the recording industry’s shotgun approach to lawsuits.  (Sue everyone, press for quick settlements, and seek to bankrupt the people who try to fight the lawsuits instead of settling.)  While I agree, I think that a bigger win would be getting Congress to update the fines involved for violating copyright.

The fines involved were set up by Congress back at a time when the major copyright infringement worry was commercial operations.  The kind that would, today, burn a hundred copies of a DVD and sell them on eBay for $1 each.  The fines were set at $750 to $150,000 per infringement.  It didn’t take into account what I call “casual infringement.”  I define casual infringement as copyright infringement without seeking a profit.  So selling DVD copies illegally is commercial infringement.  Downloading/sharing the latest hit song on a P2P network is casual infringement.

Now that we’ve set up a distinction between the two, we should have differing fines.  After all, why should a home user who shared out 12 MP3s face the same fines as someone who sold burned copies of that music in an attempt to illegally profit off of someone else’s work?  Should both the profit seeker and the home user face fines of $9,000 - $1.8 million?  I would keep commercial infringement fines at the current levels.

Casual infringement, however, I would reduce to be more in line with the actual “damages.”  If a user shares a song, the damage to the recording industry isn’t $1.8 million.  At most, it is the amount of money that sales of the song would have brought in had the downloaders bought the song instead.  We can’t
know just how many people downloaded from a particular sharer’s song.  Not unless we got access to all of the ISPs log files and even then how do you take into account partial file transfers such as on Bittorrent?  So an arbitrary amount should be set.  Let’s say 10 downloads will be assumed unless you have proof of a more exact number.  This will keep the fine at the end high enough to be a real penalty without turning it into a life ruining event.  Assuming 10 people downloaded the songs, the recording industry is out 10 times the price that those 10 people would have paid for the songs.  (There’s an argument about “lost sales” here and I actually agree with it, but let’s put that aside for the moment.)  At iTunes and other online shops, you can buy music for $0.99 per song.  This gives us a fine per song of $9.90.

In the case of a home user who shared out 12 MP3s, the fine would be $118.80.  Not a trivial amount to be sure, but also not bank-breaking.  Of course, a more realistic scenario has the recording industry suing someone who shared out 1,000 MP3s.  In this case, the user would be facing a $9,900 fine.  Much less than the couple hundred thousand dollar fine current copyright law would lead to.  Yet, the user is sure to feel a financial sting (despite they aren’t bankrupted) and will reconsider doing it again.

Of course, this proposal has little to no chance of becoming law.  If anything, Congress’ ear is bent towards the industry which is asking for higher fines.  (Something which was just pulled out of the still bad for consumers Pro-IP Act.)

By now you’ve probably heard about Photoshop Express.  While it might sound nice in concept, being able to use “Photoshop” online for free, for now I’m recommending that everyone steer clear of it.  The problem is not in the features of the tool, but in the Terms of Service.  Right now, they state:

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

So basically, if you upload a photo and share it out to show to friends and family, Adobe could take your photo, use it in advertisements, use it in posters, and sell it to third parties to use for pretty much anything.  Meanwhile, you not only wouldn’t see a penny from this use, but you couldn’t even take the photo offline to revoke their rights to do this.  (Notice that it is a “perpetual, irrevocable” license that you are granting them.)

Adobe has stated that this Terms of Service clause wasn’t meant to imply what people are taking it to mean and they will revise it to be clearer.  When they do that, I might or might not be willing to use the service.  However, until they do so, I don’t plan on letting my images get anywhere near it and I recommend that you don’t either.

For awhile now, I’ve had a chocolate chip cookie craving. I tried some store bought, but they didn’t satisfy my cravings. Since I recently purchased the The Peanut Butter & Co. Cookbook and had quite a bit of luck with the recipes, I decided to try their Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie recipe. It probably didn’t help my attempts to keep my weight down, but man did they taste good! In fact, 24 cookies came out of the oven yesterday (even though the recipe quotes 18), but only 3 are left! Time for another batch.

Here are some photos:

Slashfood might call some of these photos Food Porn.

In case you want to make these cookies yourself, here’s the recipe. (You definitely should buy the book though.)

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
From The Peanut Butter & Co Cookbook.
1 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. In a large bowl, shift together the flour and baking soda. Set aside.
2. In a second large bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla.
3. Add the egg and continue mixing.
4. Mix in the dry ingredients slowly until dough is firm. If the dough is too dry, add a tablespoon or two of water until it is moist.
5. Fold in the chocolate chips.
6. Move the dough to a cutting board and shape into a log 2 1/2 to 3 inches wide.
7. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
8. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
9. Cut cookie dough into slices 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick.
10. Place cookies on a cookie sheet 1 inch apart.
11. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.

I was having some RSS feed issues with Google Reader so I’m switching my feed to FeedBurner.  Hopefully, this solves the problem.  I’ve added a plugin to help redirect you to the FeedBurner link, but you might need to manually update your feed reader to point to http://feeds.feedburner.com/JasonsToolbox.  If there are any Google Reader users out there reading my feed, let me know how this new link works.

Back in October, I blogged about a Big Idea I’ll Never Implement:  A Wii Health Club.  I envisioned it as a place that an individual or group could go to to exercise using a Nintendo Wii system.  It turns out that someone else had the same big idea.  Only they implemented it.  It’s in the Phillipines and I doubt that they got the idea from reading my blog (no lifetime membership for me, I guess ), but it’s still pretty cool.

From http://www.channeljayreviews.co.uk/2008/01/11/the-first-nintendo-wii-fitness-cafe/ :

FriiSpirit Fitness and Fun café, however, takes this aerobic activity to the next level. Founded by four friends on Katipunan road, the café’s unassuming façade better resembles a small restaurant hideaway than a fitness center. Once inside, the décor is reminiscent of a high-end techno lounge, with plush custom-made pink beanbag sofas and flat-screen televisions everywhere.

The café intends to gather groups of families or friends and have them sweat it out in a Wii-induced frenzy. The place is large enough to hold up to 50 people comfortably, even those who are swinging their limbs about frenetically in time to the games projected on the screens.

So if you’re in the Phillipines, you might want to burn off some extra weight by visiting the Wii-Fitness club.

On a related front, I’m really excited about a new “game” coming for the Wii.  I put game in quotes because it’s more of an entire exercise program than a simple game.  It’s called WiiFit.  The game sells for about $75US in Japan right now.  (US release date is rumored to be in May.)  It includes a balance board peripheral that can sense how your weight is distributed.  This means that balancing on the board differently sends different signals to the game.  For example, one of the mini-games involves tilting a platform to roll marbles into holes.  As you shift your weight on the screen, the platform tilts and the marbles roll.  Tilt just right and the marbles plunk down the holes.

They don’t stop at some fun mini-games, though.  There are 15 different Yoga exercises and 15 “traditional” exercises (push ups, squat thrusts, etc) to do.  Your weight and BMI get tracked and graphed for you with the overall goal of improving your health/losing weight.  The folks at WiiFolder.com have some demonstration videos (using the Japanese version of the game).  I’m definitely going to try to get this once it hits the shelves in the US.  “Try” being the operative word.  I have a feeling that this will quickly sell out and will be hard to come by for awhile.

I had some more ideas for the JAddTo plugin and so I just added them in now. This plugin is rapidly turning from a single-purpose plugin (put “Add To” links on a page) into something that may be of more general use and something that can be more customized.

This version adds custom CSS Classes (so more than one JAddTo item can be on the same page and can look different), adds the ability to hide the title text, and adds the ability to show the icon titles on the left or right of the icons (or keep them hidden).

Check it out at: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/JAddTo/

This is my first JQuery plugin in awhile.  I needed to put up a series of “Add To Digg”-style links on the Shooting For A Cause website.  After collecting the images and links, I realized that this would make for a good JQuery plugin.  So I wrote it.

I hereby present JAddTo 0.1.  Enjoy!

And if you know of any links that should be added, let me know.  It would help if you included an example link and the URL of an image that could be included.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been hard at work with Shooting For A Cause. This is a project thought up by the fine folks at the Digital Imaging forum at BroadbandReports.com. They decided to pool their collective photographic talent and do something for charity.

The result is a series of four calendars with different themes: Earth and Sky, Flowers, Sunrise Sunset, and Wildlife. Each calendar costs $19.99. Of that money, $5 goes to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The rest goes to CafePress to cover production costs. Neither I, nor anyone else from Shooting For A Cause is making any money from this.

So please click on the image below to buy some calendars and help us support a worthy charity. Also, please check out the “Spread The Word” tab for information on how to let more people know about Shooting For A Cause.

By the way, I’m partial to the Flowers calendar as my photo was chosen for April.