After two days of feverently trying to install Gentoo, eventually succeeding, I must admit that the distro just isn’t for me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy waiting a few years for samba to compile. I’ll probably be installing Arch by the end of the day.

Ever since I managed to convert my iRiver portable music player from a MTP device to a UMS device, I have been using my own linux laptop to rip CDs and put them on the device. Lately, however, my computer broke down, and I, being tired of the current music assortment on my player (I tend to get lazy and stay with the same songs until they start getting on my nerves). Due to that, I found myself, for the first time since my player became a UMS device, using Windows Media Player to rip my CDs.

One of the interesting thing about modern information companies is their love-hate with their own customers. On one hand, they want their information to be bought (or “licensed”), but on the other hand, they want to control its use so that they can milk as much money from it as they can. Thus, the RIAA, MPAA and BSA playing “good cop, bad cop” with the record company, one of them outright abusing information consumers, while the other one pretends to be nice and secretly sneaks malware into their media.

The most interesting thing about the issue is how they manage the PR disaster DRM can be. Some of them just lie outright; some of them take leaves from the white house’s book, giving their right-restricting initiatives positive names; the most interesting of ideas, however, is Microsoft’s. While the others try to hide what thier programs do, Microsoft puts on DRM a spin of the type that wouldn’t disgrace Saddam’s (or Bush’s) government during wartime.

As I was saying, this was the first time in quite a while I used Windows Media Player to rip my CDs, and the player, in its infinite wisdom and generosity, offered me to use DRM to protect the content on the CD from illegal sharing.

Do’h! I don’t believe that I could have used content unprotected from my choice to share it! I mean, it’s so insecure to be able to choose what to do with your music! Obviously, I have to protect me from myself!

After a bit of consideration, however, I decided to decline, mainly since I don’t know if the iRiver, after having been modified by Linux hippie commies like myself, would even supports Microsoft gracious security offerings.

What can I say, if it were not for the fact that my family was in Israel, I would have never agreed for a 24 hour (door to door) flight with multiple stops at different airports with a huge amount of handbags. No matter how plaza and five stars a vaction might be, it just doesn’t compel me to go through these hells-on-earth (and sky) known as the airport and airplane.

First thing first, I hate it when we get the meals, eat them, and then have to wait for the crew to pick them up, while stuck in my seat in front of the trash and leftovers from what is, for lack of a better word, called “food”. What happened, never heard of this magic word called self-service?

On the other hand, one must agree that considering the complete lack of space in an aierplane, this might be out of the question too. It’s near impossible for two people to navigate in the micron-thick passageways.

And to make it worst, there are always buisness and first class before coach. Always too high-priced, always a dream of sanity out of reach. Space for the legs, comfortable seating, possibly even edible food. When it comes to flying, one could hardly wish for more (since frankly, one never gets the former anyway, unless they have loads of money to waste).

Then one gets to the airport, just to find hideous lighting, horrible signs (including a sign for baggage claim, pointing directly to a wall), the awful baggage claim (you know what, I might just want to follow the sign), loads of useless beurocracy, and other fun stuff.

Once I actually got home, I just fell onto my bed, and went into blissful sleep (only to wake up at 3 AM, 4AM, and 5 AM; damn jetlag).

For quite a while now i've been woking with a book called "concepts in modern algebra", which teaches a more abstract type of algebra than most high school classes do. However, my teacher told me that newer books are likely to have more updated terms and a better focus, and said he'll bring me one. Also, the more practical branch of my algebra learning was semi-halted at the same tie because I was waiting for my teacher to get some packet for me.

For about two weeks, the teacher has forgot to bring the book. I got the packets from another teacher (and they sucked badly, but that's another story), and worked on that (boring). Meanwhile, I was still waiting for the teacher to bring the more modern book, and learning from my apparantly outdated book. That is, until I started finding mistakes in it, such as the fact that it claims that for every binary operation with an inverse there will be only one inverse per element. while that is prvably true for ascossiative binary operation, the following binary operation shows that it can be wrong:

There was no actual proof in the book, and I decided that maybe it's time to find a new book. after a few more days without the modern abstract book, I decided to ask my teacher for the name in order to see if I could find it in the library, he said that the chances are slim, and referred me to the same other teacher from which I got the specific books. So I went there, and that teacher told me that i'll have to buy the bookmyslef, but at least he gave me some names.

This independent study thing is quite harder than I thought it would be.

I’ve been feeling pretty down lately, but that’s hardly news. I usually get a bit depressed during the winter, or during the summer, or anytime.

It really does feel bad to be passing through all of this, not knowing why the hell i’m feeling so bad. Also, I seem to have less and less time.

In unrelated news, please take you time and visit the virtual soapbox ,also known as Commentary.