One more thing - while doing some research for my last blog post on movie piracy, I heard a CTV reporter give the following quote: “... police seized roughly 150,000 pirated DVDs... worth about $40 million dollars.”

I'm no math wizard, but that puts the DVDs at $266 each. 150,000 pirated DVDs would only have retailed for $750,000. But then again, with the movie industry telling the media what to say, I guess they need to over inflate their case.

Recently, there was a major movie piracy crackdown at a mall near me. Police arrested 15 people, in 13 stores - seizing 150,000 DVDs.

That may seem like a lot of people, and a lot of DVDs, but I was at this mall today (less than 1 month after the arrests) and the movie stores are back in operation. The oddest thing to note is that the prices have risen - $8 for a pirated DVD disk, instead of the old price of $5. So obviously the risk has increased and so must the reward. (Also, a couple of stores have closed, so there is a bit less competition.)

But these stores have been selling these illegal DVDs for months (a year at least). And most of the stores are back in operation. If it takes another year to close them again, then essentially they will never be closed. If you take a year to remove a weed once it pops up, you will never be rid of weeds.

The movie (and music) industries have a major problem on their hands. To date, they have been hesistant to respond creatively to it. The problem is that the entertainment industry creates some highly desirable products that are expensive yet easily copied. Also, people would like to enjoy their entertainment in many different forms, some of which the industry does not allow.

When expressed like that, there are only four things that can be changed:

a) the desirability of the products

b) the expense of the products

c) the ease at which they can be copied

d) the entertainment media

To date, the entertainment industries have only been focusing on (c). They introduce new copy protection schemes, force hardware manufacturers to implement them, and try very hard to quash new advances in technology. They will sue TiVo if they make it easier to transfer recorded shows to your iPod. No peer-to-peer transfer service is acceptable, no matter what legitimate uses it might have. They've gone so far as to rewrite the core of the Windows OS using the same techniques as virus writers to make it harder to play music CDs on your computer.

Price is an important variable in the equation, to which the industry has not really addressed to date. As $5 (or $8) pirate DVDs are thriving in the shopping malls, people do not necessarily want to pay $30 for a DVD. $25 for a music CD is a bit much as well. So one way the industry can combat piracy is to significantly lower the cost of its products. What if a CD cost $8? Or a DVD cost $10? The media itself only costs pennies, so there is still plenty of profit for all parties involved at those prices. And people are far less likely to pay $8 for a crappy camcorder copy, instead of $10 for the real thing.

Now some may point to the advent of the 99 cent music download as a new breakthrough on price. I'm not fooled. A whole CD download still costs $14, and the cost of packaging and distribution is almost nothing. Downloads are still too expensive. Songs should cost 10 cents each.

Finally, we get to the issue of the entertainment industry not allowing consumers to enjoy their products as they wish. They set artificially low limits on the “number of burns”. So if I purchase a song through PureTracks, I can only make three copies. And if I want to enjoy that music on a non-WMA player like the iPod, I have to either break the law and turn the song into an MP3 or purchase it again in another format.

Another related issue to media is the way the movie industry controls the format. Movies must come out in theaters first. Six months later they come out on DVD. This idea has been expressed before: but what if I don't like going to the theater and I want to watch the latest Harry Potter movie at home. Why should I wait if I am willing to pay for the DVD? There is no reason to wait except that the industry wants your money twice (or more than twice if they can). So you pay to see it in the theater, and then buy the DVD.

The worst example of this was the Lord of the Rings movies. Each movie was released three times - once in the theater, once on DVD, and then once again a year later on “Extended Edition” DVD. How many LOTR fans saw the movie multiple times in the theater? How many bought the regular DVD and the special edition several months later? Is one movie worth paying $150 to see?

So here we are at the end. No further to the ultimate solution probably. But as the subject line says, Something's Got to Give. The movie industry will allow itself to be destroyed by piracy while they desperately hold on to the old model of overcharging consumers, and forcing movie releases to follow the traditional schedule. Thus regular, law-abiding people (of all ages) are forced to go and buy pirate DVDs by the armful. Why pay $150 to see a single movie when you can see 30 for that price?

The first step to defeating piracy has to be “stop ripping the consumer off”. And yes, maybe Jim Carrey won't be able to make $20 million per movie. Maybe this will force movie budgets back down from the $200 million per picture heights they are at. But these changes must happen. They simply must. Consumers are making it happen with or without the industry's approval.

As a programmer, I take a certain amount of interest when Hollywood uses computers in movies. It's just that sometimes I wish they did things a bit more realistically.

There have been many classic examples of bad uses of computers in movies:

* Independence Day: Jeff Goldblum's character does a number of wonderful things with computers in this movie. Most notably, he quickly whips up a virus that can infect the alien technology and bring down their shields. He does this using a wireless network. Wow. Lucky for Jeff, the aliens were using Apple Macs, since the code he wrote and compiled on his product-placed Mac laptop ran seemlessly on the alien ship's computer. And good thing the aliens provided detailed specs on how to turn off their shields beforehand, because getting that to work on the first attempt would have been impossible otherwise.

Jeff also uses a huge countdown clock to demonstrate how little time remained until the attack started. The kind of countdown clock where the numbers take up the entire width and height of the screen (actually, is there any other kind?). “Quick, we're running out of time. I even spent a couple of hours writing a giant countdown timer to prove it.”

* Mission Impossible: Perhaps the funniest use of the Internet of all time. Tom Cruise is searching for a villian who goes by the name “Job”, as in the biblical Job. So he brings up an Internet search engine and enters “job”. No hits. Searching for the word “job” in Google today returns 900 MILLION hits - no joke, 900 million. But in Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise got no hits. Zero. Of course, through 3 or 4 minutes of intense Internet searching, he does eventually find a person who goes by the name “Job” in some random forum, and it's the right person.

Mission Impossible also does the huge password box trick. Like when you are asked to enter your password, the textbox takes up the entire height and width of the screen. That program is done by the same person who does the countdown clocks no doubt.

And wouldn't it have been infinitely easier (and safer) to create a fake list of CIA agents (with fake names) than to break into CIA headquarters, drug people, bypass laser vents... yadda yadda yadda all the way up to having to stop the villian from uploading the real file off the train? Create a fake list - she has no way to verify it.

* The Net: Sandra Bullock got virtually “erased” from all the databases in the world because she accidentally clicked on a small “Pi” icon in some application. The Pi icon revealed a bunch of secret stuff noone wanted revealed. Who was the idiot, however, that put the Pi icon to be clicked by anyone who came along? If you don't want secret stuff revealed, don't publish it.

* Jurassic Park: 12 year old girl reboots a Unix computer to reset the park security systems, that uses a 3D zoom-in interface. Just like the security systems at school no doubt.

* The Fifth Element: How come every bomb has a big LED timer? If I were inventing bombs, I would not put an LED or anything that would help the intended victims escape. And how come the ships computer knew exactly how many seconds there were remaining til the bomb went off? “2 Minutes till Total Desctruction. 60 seconds. 10, 9, 8...“ Was the bomb somehow tied into the ships master computer? Why?

* Swordfish: If you cannot hack into this computer that uses 128-bit encryption in 60 seconds, we will kill you. Ah, so this whole use SSL for Banking business can be hacked in a minute huh? It looked like he did it by guessing passwords randomly. “pass“. nope, “password“. nope, “12345“. nope, “54321“. nope, “rosebud“. it worked! whew, i just cracked a top-secret computer! I am so smart.

Then for the big job, Hugh Jackman created a worm using a 5- or 6- LCD screen computer (why so many screens?) using no code. Just point and click. Drag boxes on top of other boxes. W00t! I just programmed a multi-headed hydra.

* CSI (TV show): almost any information you can think of exists in a searchable database somewhere. “I'm comparing the victims shirt against a database of all known shirts. Aha! This style of shirt was manufactured in Japan in 1972 and sold in 16 retail stores in Washington State. But only 5 of these shirts were ever sold! I'm printing a list of the owners now.“ Where do you get all these obscure databases? Truthfully, nowhere. A database of all known shirts does not exist.

Searching for fingerprints is fun. The computer doesn't do it's work quickly and in the background - it displays every fingerprint on file, correlates the significant markings of the given print against that data record graphically, and then moves on to the next print. At 2 prints per second, the computer can search around 7000 prints per hour. Man, getting a fingerprint match in CSI must take days. Weeks even.

Did you know that a computer could take an audio tape, subtract out the primary conversation on it, subtract out the background noise of cars driving by, and pick up the tiniest background whisper? And then match the whisperer to the suspect? Neither did I.

Some plot devices are used by so many movies it's hard to remember:

* Deleting files in a spectacularly graphical fashion. The Net, Eraser, and Clear and Present Danger are just three of the movies that display the contents of each file before deleting it. So if I wanted to delete a directory of documents, MS Word opens all 20 files, and one at a time they start dissolving from the screen. That's efficient!

* The magic of elevator systems, fire alarm systems, lighting systems, and air conditioning systems... When the hero needs to shut down an elevator (turn off the lights, set off a fire alarm in another part of the building, etc.), there is always some incredibly sophisticated graphical interface showing the present status of all elevators. And conveniently, anyone can hack into them from anywhere. Even in a van parked out on the street. Just once I'd like to see the hero call to his buddy outside “Jack, shut down the elevator. Now!” and the response come back “It's not that type of elevator - stupid!”

* A single bullet can destroy a computer forever. This happened twice in The Negotiator. “The files are on the computer.” Bang - single gunshot into the body of the computer. “Oh, where am I going to get the files now. Let's go to his house.” Bang - single gunshot again. Damn. The files are lost forever. What incredible aim they have, that a single bullet not only pierces and destroys a hard drive (and the relevant sectors no less) but will cut the power supply to the computer and monitor instantly. One shot, the computer is totally and completely destroyed.

* Hacking the password, one digit at a time. Say you have a 10-character password that is used for launching a nuclear missle. A computer system that is trying to hack the password will be able to get 1 letter at a time.  So the first letter is a “T“ and it only has nine more to go. Oddly, the last letter takes a few minutes for the computer to get (even though there are only 36 numbers and letters to choose from). Passwords cannot be hacked one letter at a time - either you have the whole thing, or you have nothing. It's not like a safe.

* The phone call trace. Ah, I'll end this post with one of the most used, and also idiotic, uses of computers in movies - the phone call trace. Bad guy calls in to taunt the police. He's smart though, so he bounces his call through several countries in Europe and the Carribean before calling the cops. The cops, however, have a special phone call trace computer that graphically displays the call. An amazing yellow line bounces from the States, to Belgium, slowly makes its way to France, inches across to Germany... the line zig-zags across a map of the world... all the while the cops are trying to keep the guy on the line. The guy, however knows EXACTLY how many seconds the cops phone call trace computer needs, and hangs up 1 second before it finishes. The amazing yellow line ends up in the middle of the Atlantic (just millimeters from its final destination) and all hopes of tracing the call are lost. This is used in at least one Bond film and even Mission Impossible I think.

Luckily for the cops, all the world's phone system computers are interconnected and easily queried for traces. Unfortunately for the cops, tracing from one country to the other takes 10-20 seconds, and so the on-screen line draws itself really slowly to show the time passing. Luckily for the bad guys, such a trace takes a predetermined amount of time (30 seconds say), and if they hang up in 28 seconds, they get off Scot-free.

Today I took a SQL query - that thankfully someone else wrote - which was taking 6 hours to run, and in about 2 minutes rewrote it so that it finished in 19 seconds. From 6 hours to 19 seconds. The DBA at my office had a huge smile when he saw that.

I love days like today. As soon as I tested the new script, I should have just put on my jacket and went home, because I earned my paycheck right then.

(Sorry if this sounds a little braggy. It's really not. I am just feeling good about that particular moment and had to share. Back to my humble self...)

I'm addicted to Sudoku:

http://www.websudoku.com/

I've decided to put together some basic rules for how to solve a sudoku puzzle. Watch this space for more.

My parents allowed me to open up my very own bank account at the age of six. I distinctly remember this, and somewhere at home I have the original bankbook for that account.

One day I rode my bike to the local bank and deposited a bunch of spare change (pennies, nickels, dimes). The coins added up for $5 exactly. I deposited these into my account, at 8 years old, on my own.

But then I went outside, and tried to open the lock on my bike to head home. I could not open the lock. Couldn't remember the combination for some reason (although I must have used that combination to lock the bike up in the first place). Anyways, I tried and tried, and the bike lock would not open.

I wanted to call home but I had no money on me. And of course, I could have called collect but I didn't occur to me. Thankfully, I was standing in front of a BANK at which I had an account. I could simply withdraw the money needed to make a phone call to my mom, to ask her what the combination was again.

So, I go into the bank and withdraw the $5 I just deposited. I even ask for it in change. Out of the $5, I take 25 cents and make a phone call home. She gives me the combination. It works. Great.

Then I head back into the bank, and deposit $4.75 to my account. And head home.

To this day, I still have this bankbook. Deposit $5, Withdraw $5, Deposit $4.75... all on the same day. I should have called collect, or at worst, just withdrawn 25 cents from my account.

(And child bank accounts back then were “no fee”, so I did not lose out on transaction fees...)

When I was a young boy, I discovered that the local dry cleaner would pay half-a-cent for each wire coat hanger returned to him.

Being the brilliant (and geeky) kid that I was, one day I went though my family closets at home and took (stole?) dozens of unused coat hangers. I took them down to the dry cleaner and collected 25 cents. It occurred to me, even at that young age (7 or 8 years old I think)... what would the dry cleaner do if I returned 51 coat hangers instead of only 50? How would be pay me my half cent?

I imagined there might have been a special half-cent coin or something. Or perhaps he would have rounded up and paid me 1 more penny. I should have tried that.

Of course, my mother was pissed at me because there were no more unused coat hangers.