Erich Boleyn's Home Page

Contents

• Tam's Webpage and Family Photos
• Musings
• My Local Pages/Projects
• Vacation Photos
• Various Personal Tidbits
• Why is this domain called "uruk.org"?

[Ed note: this section is under spotty construction, as always]

So, what follows are a bunch of pieces on things I've distilled from my experiences. I appreciate feedback on these topics so feel free to Email me with commentary as desired. On the first one below I'm particularly interested in soliciting feedback/commentary/additions.

• Written by me:
  • Making an OS that Doesn't Suck

  • Software Architecture/Design Ruminations

  • Ruminations on being a Software Engineer

  • DRM on a system you own that is based on keys you do not know is Wrong. I may be OK with DRM on hardware you lease from someone else having unknown keys, perhaps an indefinite lease, but it is not ownership if you can't circumvent it.

  • Intellectual Property is a Privilege, not a Right. There is nothing basic to life that requires IP laws.

  • Intellectual Property and Privacy Law musings:
    • Accepted "Intellectual Property" practices in general put ideas into a kind of Black Hole where they never come out. The model here is that once a business of any sort "owns" the intellectual property, if it isn't considered Worthy of Immediate Use, it very likely disappears forever. These practices are very bad for society as a whole. Intellectual property is supposed to encourage concepts to be used.

      A better practice would be a requirement for all intellectual property to be available in some form, or it would have no legal protection. For example, requiring RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) licensing terms being available. And reasonable requirements on searching Prior Art, plus reasonable expiration limits and possibly no automatic assumption of validity.

    • Removing Fair Use is Wrong. There is no societal justification for this. Examples would be the DMCA "anti-circumvention" provisions and the new Trademark Bill (Feb 2006). Copyright, Patent, and Trademark Law, as-is, is already too strong, and should if anything be weakened.

    • The DMCA is a travesty, and should never have been signed into law.

    • Indefinite "Intellectual Property" is Wrong, with no societal justification. "Intellectual Property" of any sort should be only a scope- and time-limited monopoly for it to have any benefit to society as a whole in furthering progress. Else it is just a law to say that only one person/entity is allowed to do something (in this case copy something or use a patent) with no public good coming out of it.

    • The "Patriot Act" is named badly. I honestly don't think that people who consider themselves patriots and believers in the United States Constitution and what it was written for should consider enacting this legislation as patriotic. It is taking away critical American protections.

  • We Need Uniform/Known EULA Licensing for Software: If you don't get all the rights due the owner of any copyrighted material (such as a book), it should be clear you have a Lease, and you don't Own it. This says, for example, that Shrink-wrap licenses should be illegal. I honestly think that this is the only way to effectively convey to the consumer what they are agreeing to.

  • "Patents in Standards" is an Oxymoron. Any "Standard" which is legally encumbered in any way hurts the whole industry that uses the standard, and will burden future support and compatibility, as when it isn't profitable to make devices or software that uses the standard any more, the cost of using it will cause it's destruction, making support of it impossible. I.e. it is higher cost, encourages spotty support and fragmentation of standards use, and finally is anathema to the public need for long-term archival!

• References to things written by others:
  • Of course, following Coverage of Technical Legal Issues at Groklaw

  • I think any Company or Government IT system (and even some individuals should think about this) for operations, data storage, accounting (you name it, really) has to very strongly consider that proprietary document formats, backup formats, and backup software/hardware interfaces are dangerous. What happens if a company needs something fixed or even another copy of software and the original seller doesn't want to do it or has gone out of business? You're screwed.

    A wonderful piece about this is the Peruvian Response to MS FUD about a Bill Requiring Open Source Software for Government Operations. Simply Excellent.

• CVT Timings Program for X11/X-Windows and FB modelines -- CVT is the replacement VESA standard for GTF, including reduced blanking timings for LCD and Plasma panels.

• Multiboot Proposal -- a proposal for a uniform booting methodology for 32-bit OSes.

• GRUB -- my GRand Unified Bootloader supporting the multiboot proposal, the free UNIX-like OSes, and support for chainloading DOS/Windows NT/etc.

• Intel SMP (via MultiProcessor Specification) for Free OS's -- (currently old, may get updated!) page on getting various free OS's like Linux, FreeBSD, and the Mach4 microkernel to run SMP on machines compliant with the Intel MultiProcessor Specification. Code examples will be provided.

• Emulation Software R&D WWW Page -- info on the topic and a listing of "interesting" emulators.

• Tam's Webpage and Family Photos
• 2003 Short Trip to Yosemite
• 2004 Trip to the Yucatan
• 2005 Business Trip for Tam to China
• 2006 Trip to Greece

This is me playing with my digital camera:

My current day job is working with Mike Haertel and Jules Blake-Kongslie at Ducky Technical Services. Previously, I have worked for NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. I used to be a software engineer, though I'm not sure my current job is so easily compartmentalized, other than being used for lots of random tasks using my background in software at multiple levels (BIOS, bootloader/kernel through user level, incl. GUI), and x86/ARM/MIPS (level of knowledge in order from most to least) processor, system, and simulator architecture. Yes, I do actually like working with computers. Tragic. The irony is that people then tend to assume it's all I'm interested in, even though outside of work I spend plenty of time with friends/family/etc.

The Microsoft spell-checker has in the past said my name must be "Reich Boolean"... the thousand year rule of computers. Scary, huh?

I am apparently a classic ENTP according to the Meyers-Briggs system of personality classification. A test and other references available on the web, The Keirsey Temperament and Character Web Site, is interesting, to say the least. It says that I'm very social, enthusiastic, and interested in most everything about both things and people... which is what my friends tell me are both my best and most irritating traits.

I like close community a lot, and used to live in a Cohousing community in Portland, OR called Trillium Hollow. For more information about this kind of thing, you can go to the Cohousing Network web site. It's been an interesting way to live... kind of like a "kinder and gentler dorm".

I'm a partly vegetarian. I sometimes eat meat, but not by preference. This is not for any kind of grand social purpose so much as it's just healthier to eat that way and I physically feel good if I stick to it. I don't smoke, do drugs, caffeine, heavy sugar, etc. I do, however, have a weakness for good food of different kinds, particularly in good company. I once had a friend tell me she'd "love to corrupt me". I know several people who'd practically kill to be told a line like that, heh heh.

Here are some links to references about the actual story. They are: Gilgamesh, The Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ and The Sumerian Mythology FAQ, Exploring Ancient World Cultures: The Near East, and ABZU.

The text that I liked was Gardner, John & Maier, John _Gilgamesh_:Translated from the Sin-Leqi-Unninni Version_, Vintage Books, Random House, New York, 1984. A tablet by tablet parallel text translation with notes and commentary by the late author of _Grendel_.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is more-or-less the earliest known written story of a man searching for immortality. The interesting part of the story is that he never achieves it, but speaks with the last man who was granted it by the gods.

My motto: "I'll live forever or die trying" is meant only paritally tongue-in-cheek. To some extent, I really do want to find a way to physically extend my life-span. The Life Extension Foundation is interesting, though I can't say how much of their agenda I agree with.

Basically, most people I know aren't fundamentally bothered by the idea of what will happen to them after they die. The issue to me is not pain, nor any other kind of "suffering" per se, but simply... I don't want my conciousness to go away. It gives me an insane case of the willies even thinking about it.

I've always been very good at realizing the implications of even abstract things and connecting them to reality. Thinking about things in the long term is very normal for me.

If nothing else, it is a very effective psychological game that has allowed me to get on with my life and enjoy it without being in a panic over the fact that I would die someday. Will I really be able to accomplish physical life extension? I really don't know... in any case I don't feel it's been time wasted, as I have a better understanding of how important life (and living it to it's fullest) really means to me... plus it has driven me to learn a whole lot of really nifty things.