Author: Shawn K. Quinn

The IRS in Sacramento: a lack of common sense about cents

I’m almost at a total loss for words on this one.

KTXL-TV in Sacramento reports on a car wash owner that got a visit from an IRS tax collector.

Aaron Zeff, the owner of a local car wash in Sacramento, California, was informed of the IRS visit by his manager. From the report:

“I looked at the letter and I couldn’t believe what I saw. The number was astonishing. Four cents,” Zeff said.

Coupled with late fees and penalties – coming to a total of $202.35.

“If we knew anything about it, if we received any correspondence we would’ve immediately addressed it,” Zeff’s attorney, Ashley West said.

And further down:

And whether it’s a half-million dollar debt, or a mere nickel, the investigator said… failure to pay, is a failure to pay.

Just about every other business will write off small debts under $1 (or rough equivalents abroad). One of my former car insurance companies even wrote off a back premium payment of nearly $20. It’s far cheaper to simply write off such small sums than collect on them.

More troubling than that is the absolutely ludicrous and insane difference between the principal and the amount after penalties and interest: a factor of over 5,000. Assumably, this is done with the intent of justifying a collection effort. All this really does, though, is anger the taxpayers, the people whom the IRS (and any government agency) is supposed to serve in the end. I am certainly horrified at this egregious misuse of resources, and no amount of trumped up penalties will make it right in my mind because it’s just plain silly to apply over $200 in penalties regarding a debt of less than a dollar.

For tax scofflaws who owe hundreds, thousands, or even millions in taxes and make no attempt to resolve the debt voluntarily, such draconian and ruthless “squeeze the turnip until we get blood” tactics are justified. Those are the people ripping off our government.

The IRS would do well to apply some common sense to these cents-only debts. Do the same thing so many other businesses do: write them off. We have far worse problems in this country than someone who owes taxes in an amount easily payable in coins.

On community, respect, and trademarks: the story of Nexuiz

About a month ago or so, I started playing a community-maintained GPL first-person shooter (FPS) called Nexuiz. I checked it out after tiring of OpenArena; I played tons of Quake 3 Arena back during my second round of getting into proprietary PC games back in the day, so OpenArena fit me style like a glove at first. But Nexuiz had a bit more of an allure to it, and after a while I realized the more I played Nexuiz, the more I liked it.

And it took me a while to really put my finger on why. I remember a certain player saying something like “I’m surprised you haven’t given up already” during a particularly bad game. And the players came to know me as the guy that has really weird taste in maps, but I’m welcomed and appreciated. That’s what it was: the community around the game, as much as the game itself.

So it was a bit of a shocker to pop on the IRC channel and read a whole bunch of flaming and controversy about a console (PlayStation 3) version of Nexuiz being made by a company called Illfonic. What upset everyone was not the console version itself, but that the domain name nexuiz.com had been repurposed to promote almost exclusively the console version, at the expense of the community-developed GPL version for the PC. (I’m not linking to them here for reasons that should become obvious.)

Now, there’s all manner of bad blood against Lee Vermeulen, the nominal owner of the nexuiz.com domain (he did not actually transfer the domain to Illfonic) and Alientrap (Vermeulen’s company). It’s widely believed that Mr. Vermeulen just saw the dollar signs and acted on his own best interests, caring little about the community around the game. Many consider Vermeulen’s actions paramount to theft and fraud against the community that made Nexuiz what it is while Vermeulen sat mostly idle. Contributing to the ill will is that Vermeulen’s idea of who was actually in Alientrap for the purposes of splitting the income from the licensing deal leaves out several people who thought they were “in” but are being left out in the cold.

In the coming days it would become more obvious that the name and goodwill behind it meant as much to the community as the game itself. I never really saw this happen with any other FPS game, whether it be any version of Doom, Heretic, Quake, Half-Life, etc. As it stands now, the next move is a fork of the Nexuiz codebase and probably a name change. I view this as very sad, very unfortunate, and something that should have been unnecessary, but it highlights the advantage of free software: if one doesn’t like the direction a project is taking, one can always take the source code, fork and begin one’s own.

I learned a lot about public relations, trademarks, goodwill, and community from this incident. I’ll summarize a few of the key points:

  • Communication is key when it comes to communities and community projects. If you’re part of a community project and the registration for the domain name or the Web hosting account is in your name, that does not make it yours outright. If there is any doubt at all in your mind as to whether others might object, consult with them before making any moves. This is especially true in the case of games being adapted to proprietary game consoles, something many who respect their freedoms will object to on philosphical grounds.
  • Goodwill and trust take a long time to build and can be lost very quickly. Few people in the community now trust Mr. Vermeulen. I sure don’t. I don’t really trust or like Illfonic a lot either. I cannot honestly say I wish the console port of Nexuiz much success. Now to be fair, it’s not really Illfonic’s fault that they are less liked than they otherwise might have been had Vermeulen been more transparent with the community in his dealings. But that’s the way things are. There are still people who will call it “FeeNex” or “Noxuiz” (the latter being pronounced a lot like “noxious”) thanks to the dubious circumstances under which the console port came to be.
  • Trademark law as it stands appears not to adequately recognizes a community-based or community-held trademark for a non-profit project such as Nexuiz. In general, copyright, patent, and trademark law needs to be brought up to current times now that free software and community-based projects are often the rule rather than the exception. This goes beyond software, it also extends to things like BarCamp and other community-based events.
  • The community is often just as important as the thing that brings that community together. I still talk to someone from the Dance Dance Revolution/Bemani games scene of the mid 2000’s even though that scene has mostly died off and I probably could not play DDR worth a damn today were I to try again.

As further developments arise, I may follow up on this post. This is still ongoing as I write this.

Save the date: A Day Against DRM, 2010 May 04

DefectiveByDesign.org recently published an article entitled “The decade of DRM.” Included among the events were four events prior to 2000 that would set the stage for the introduction and proliferation of DRM (digital restrictions management), arguably one of the biggest steps backward for computing freedom ever.

Even as far back as 2000, a lot of devices that we do not ordinarily think of as computers are in fact exactly that. Television sets, VCRs, CD players, DVD players, portable audio players, mobile phones, copiers, printers, scanners, fax machines, and the list goes on; all of these have computers (microprocessor-based logic) built into them somewhere. In 1980, this was unheard of, but now, it’s a fact of life. I still remember my late grandfather’s rants about these new cars with “all this computer [excrement]” that made them much more difficult to fix.

We have yet to change one thing, and it’s probably one thing that should not be changed. Computers are still, by themselves, incredibly dumb. One would think this, by itself, would discourage widespread adoption of DRM. Sadly, this is not the case.

The recording industry (RIAA) has realized DRM is not in their best interests. However movies, e-books, and cable television continue to be saddled with obnoxious restrictions. It’s often said that locks only keep honest people honest, and this is the same with DRM which is just a cyberspace equivalent of a fancy padlock. Those who do not respect copyright or draconian laws like the DMCA will crack the DRM and share anyway. CSS (not the stylesheet language, the DVD encryption method) was cracked very on in the lifespan of the DVD format. The Blu-Ray AACS key has been changed several times, and it just gets cracked again and again. Copies of these movies, as well as scans of books in PDF form, are easily obtainable on peer-to-peer file sharing networks and sites.

Meanwhile, people who have legitimately paid for video and audio recordings get unwelcome surprises when license servers disappear and they try to play recordings they “own” on a new computer. (The term “own” and “ownership” is kind of pointless with DRM, as even if one still has a copy of the recording, it can be rendered useless on an arbitrary basis. It’s like having a CD, DVD, or book that can just vanish or turn to dust without warning.) Don’t believe me? Ask these baseball fans who got bitten by MLB’s change in DRM licensing servers. Or the many people who bought into Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM scheme.

Perhaps the worst example, however, is when Amazon reached in to thousands of Kindle e-book readers it sold and erased copies of George Orwell’s book 1984, back in 2009 July. The content of the book itself makes the message even more chilling than it would otherwise have been.

DRM is an anti-social technology and I feel it is out of place in a world where “social media” is the new buzzword. The sooner it dies, the better.

Rotten Apple dealings, part number gee-I-lost-count

I’m combining my commentary from these three recent stoies into one post, because they are all about Apple’s latest shenanigans and I don’t want to post three in a row.

The first two are about yet more arbitrary iPhone app rejections. ZDNet’s The Apple Core blog reports on Apple taking out certain wi-fi discovery applications, on the grounds they use an undocumented interface (i.e. something Apple decided was too good to let just any old programmer use). Another one is more troubling; TechCrunch reports on the phone radiation monitoring application Tawkon and its denial.

Both of these examples have something in common: they highlight the arbitrary nature by which iPhone applcation developers can be put out of business. As it stands now, the iPhone developers are at the mercy of Apple.

With regard to wi-fi discovery, the responsible thing to do would be to open up the API (interface), properly document it, and ensure that every programmer who wishes to use it may. I’m not sure of the gory details, but this certainly smacks of something Apple would just do on a whim. At least one of the applications in question is releasing a version for jailbroken iPhones, though again I will note that jailbreaking shouldn’t even be necessary to begin with.

Tawkon actually performs a very useful function, something that really should be built into most mobile phone handsets. It’s sad, but unfortunately no big surprise, that Apple’s own interest (covering up exactly how much radio frequency emissions come from its product) trumps those of the people who wish to make money by selling such an application. Does Apple really have something to hide here? I would not be surprised if the final, Apple-approved version of Tawkon is crippled beyond usefulness.

The last article is about the iPad and Associated Press, courtesy of TechJackal. Apparently the good old AP is planning to offer a paid service to read its news articles on the iPad. Yes, the same ones available for free via the web.

The closed model of the iPad breeds greedy schemes like this of dubious merit. It’s a great deal for the AP and Apple, and a lousy deal for the people out there who have placed their trust in Apple by buying their wares. I know, it’s nothing really new. It’s sad that we have so many Apple lemmings out there willing to jump on the company’s latest offering, none of whom even care about the implications behind Apple’s unfortunate use of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) where it is clearly not needed and works to the detriment of its customers.

Shame on you, Apple. Your customers and developers deserve better than this.

No room for egregious racist vandalism

First the UCSD incident, and now this.

Several news reports, most notably KMBC, kansascity.com, the Columbia Missourian, and this picture from theroot.com detail an incident at the University of Missouri where someone (assumably a pair of students) litters the area in front of the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center with cotton balls. For those that don’t get what makes this racist, it’s a reference to picking cotton as slave labor.

From the kansascity.com article:

Cotton balls were strewn across the [Gaines/Oldham] center’s lawn, walkway and bushes between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. Police said two people were seen running from the center grounds.

To their credit, the university’s staff are taking this seriously, and held a town hall meeting on the Monday night following this Friday morning incident. Jessica Silverman posted an account of this meeting to her Twitter account (skip directly to tweets about the town hall meeting). For the impatient, I’ll summarize the key points below:

  • Tim Noce, the MSA president, connecting this to not only the UCSD “Compton cookout” incident but also a UT incident against the LGBTQ community.
  • Michael Middleton, Deputy Chancellor, stating the entire university has been offended, and cracking a joke of questionable taste.
  • Roger Worthington, chief of diversity with MU police, who briefed the attendees on the investigation and mentioned talking to the FBI in Kansas City. “This was a hostile act against University of Missouri… We should respond as one Mizzou to this incident.”
  • Student concerns about lack of funding for security cameras, lack of black faculty (MU lost 9 black faculty members in the last 3 years), and cutting funding for the Black Culture Center.

Indeed, as reported in The Maneater and the Columbia Missorian since I began writing this post, the students suspected of involvement (identified as Zachary Tucker and Sean Fitzgerald) have been arrested on charges of tampering in the second degree, and at least temporarily suspended from the university. As it turns out, there is a provision in the Missouri state law for enhancing this particular charge to a class D felony, punishable by up to 4 years in prison and a fine up to $5,000 (normally, second-degree tampering is usually only a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to 1 year in jail and a $1,000 fine).

My take on this? I’m quite horrified that this type of action would take place in 2010. We, as a society, need to make a stand together and say that there is no room for this type of egregious, vile, and putrid intolerance. I’m frightened that someone considering a military career (both were in the Navy ROTC program), entrusted with the protection of our country, would dare to be involved in a senseless show of bigotry.

I saw at least one comment (on the story at The Maneater) expressing the belief a felony charge is too harsh:

9:18 a.m., March 6, 2010

Wm. Fred. Moore said:

I think that it’s way overkill to sock these guys with a felony! Unless they’ve demonstrated that they’re guilty of worse than the cotton ball prank,give them some reorientation and let them continue to grow at M.U.

(There were others expressing a similar sentiment, but I think this one is the most illustrative.)

And I disagree completely. I think given the circumstances, this overt act of disrespect and hate for human beings based primarily on skin color is felonious. I hope that by making an example of the students involved in this incident that it will deter others from such egregious acts.

I concede that they have a right to their view. Vandalism was an entirely inappropriate way to go about expressing it, and as such should be dealt with severely.