REACTIVEradio

A few days ago, I was browsing one of my regular sites, and came across a link to HarpzOn.com, a site created merely days earlier by Mitchell Harper, who wanted to spread his knowledge about all things business.  I got to his page, and I was immediately blown away with the quantity and quality of the articles he had posted in just a few short days. (As of this writing, the first item he posted was on February 27th [9 days ago], and in that time has since made 32 posts.)

Much of his advice is centered around the online advertising market with articles like “Turn $20 Into 500 Visitors On SitePoint” or “Is It Possible To Setup A Profitable Site In 24 Hours?” however he has a real estate business as well, which he imparts wisdom from from time to time.  I’ve read many blogs about online marketing, and I’ve got to say that most of them are just crap.  They rehash the same useless information over and over (e.g. “to make money you need visitors to your site”) but Mitchell takes it a step further and shows you that with StumbleUpon.com, you can pay 5 cents a click to have X number of people to your site a day.

He posted an article requesting people to review his site, and I’ve got to say: he gets two thumbs up from me.  In less than a week, I’ve become a loyal reader, and can’t wait until his next juicy post is uploaded, so I can start getting even more traffic.  He’s got great business sense which just emanates from every post, and at least to me, he seems like he’s good great information and also great intentions.

Definitely check him out; I know I will.  Again.

I want you to do me a favor.  Take a long hard look at that circle right there.  Now I want you to tell me what color it is.

If you said pink or magenta, you’d be very wrong. In fact, it’s not a color at all.  “Poppycock,” I can hear you say. “That’s a load of bollocks!” some of you have surely cried out (if you were English, I guess). “It’s not black or white, therefore it must be a color!” In any other circumstance, I would have your back with that one, but this is a special case.

Before you get out your pitchforks and start calling me a witch (wait, is witch just the feminine form?  What’s the masculine version?), I’m going to prove to you in a couple of different ways how the color magenta is really just a figment of your imagination. No, this isn’t one of those stupid jokes where some idiot uses a bunch of circular logic to make you believe something stupid like whales don’t swim or something; well OK, I may be an idiot, but this is very real and based on physics.

Proof #1: Staring at a computer screen for fun and profit

Stare at the above circle for about a minute, focusing on it the entire time. After you finish your minute of silent staring while your co-workers wonder if you’ve finally lost the last of your marbles, stare at something completely white (e.g. a sheet of printer paper). What color is the circle that happens to appear on said sheet of paper? If you said green, you’d be correct.

But wait, shouldn’t green be complimentary to red?

“What gives,” you ask.  The truth is, the complimentary color to red is actually turquoise (a.k.a. cyan). Our elementary schools have been teaching us the wrong goddamned art theory, and I for one have had enough! Whose streets? OUR STREETS!!! *ahem*  I apologize for that.  Anyways, complimentary colors are actually defined by their position relative to each other on the ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) color scale.

Proof #2: Color spectrum fun

If you take any color, and go exactly half way backwards/forwards from where you are, you’ll find that color’s complimentary. For example, you’ll notice that the brightest red appears at about the 20% mark. If you go half way across the chart (to the right), you’ll find that thin line of turquoise. Orange? Half way up is blue. Purple? Half way back is blue.

Here’s the point where you should be asking: “But where does green fit in in all of this? How can something in the middle have an opposite? Wouldn’t that be black?”

Not quite.

You see, magenta on a computer screen is created using a circular color wheel model. You add a little red and a little violet, and presto finito: magenta. The problem is that in reality, you can’t have light coming from both ends of the spectrum at the same time. The longer wavelength (the color red) would mix with the shorter wavelength (violet) and effectively cancel a portion of each other out, and we’d end up with… green.

So how are we able to see the color magenta even if it doesn’t exist? Well, it’s a combination of a few things, but mainly it’s that our brains seem to intuitively know that we have a penchant for infinites. Whether it’s the fact that round things seem to roll better, that we ourselves live in an infinite universe, or even just that we like donuts, our brains just seem to “know” that we like fully circular concepts, so it somehow tricks us into believing that the color wheel can exist, even if in reality, it’s not circular at all; it’s actually more of a plane (and by plane, I mean flat and extending; not shaped like a 747).

You still don’t believe me? Ok, where do you think the names “ultraviolet” (as in ultraviolet/UV rays) or “infrared” (as in your TV remote) come from? One is just below visible red in the wavelength scale, and one is just above violet. And the scales continue on in both directions too; the colors we see are just the visible wavelengths. X-rays? Same thing. Just lower frequency. Sound? You got it.

Now that I’ve shattered your childhood dreams of ever being able to research the color magenta and how it could potentially be a source of infinite energy for your master’s thesis, feel free to delve into the art of sandwich creation; I could really use a pizza sub right now.

I was browsing Reddit today, and came across a link to a website where a developer had decided he was going to take the software piracy fight into his own hands. This person had programmed an application for Mac computers that allowed people to make videos using their desktops, which would they could later use in training videos to show where someone would click to perform a certain function.

Now this application seems to pirated quite frequently among the Mac community and as such, the developer implemented a feature that would check the registration key you used to “register” it, which isn’t uncommon nowadays with the advent of the internet and subsequently file sharing programs like BitTorrent or Limewire. The difference between most other programs and his, is that if the key you use to register it is known to have been stolen, it will erase a random file on your computer.

Now I will admit, I have used software that I may or may not have obtained completely legally, but regardless, does my breaking the law give the creator the right to delete data off my hard drive? No where in the License Agreement does it state that “by breaking the terms of this agreement, you give the creator permission to delete random files from your computer”; it just does it.

On the website where he explains his actions, almost every post after his lambasts him for the actions and suggests that he should seek legal counsel. I’m not saying that every person on the internet knows everything there is to know about law, however the sheer number of people suggesting it would indicate that he might have something of a battle on his hands.

I guess what’s got me most up in arms is how he is determining which keys are legitimate; what happens if the key I legally purchase is somehow misidentified as being stolen? I would lose my data, and he would very quickly lose me as a customer. He would also quite quickly find a subpoena in his hands demanding that he pay me reparations for my lost files.

Or from another perspective: when you pay for software, 99 times out of 100, you are paying for the right to use that piece of software on a single machine. You give programmer money, he gives you the right to use his software. Which key you use should never even be considered. For example, let’s say I pay Microsoft $300 for a copy of Windows. In the most strictest sense (according to their usage agreement), I’m not paying for the box, the manual, or even the CD, I’m simply paying for the right to use their software. This is why technicians with large corporations with hundreds of computers are able to install Windows on their PCs with any of the keys they purchase; Microsoft doesn’t care which PC has been installed with which key, they just care that each PC has a licensed purchased for them. If you use the same key on every one of them, what the hell do they care? The fact that I have a legally purchased key or keys in my possession is my proof that I have the right to use that software.

My main worry surrounding all of this is its potential for abuse. I now know that the developer has taken it upon himself to protect his software by deleting files if he believes I’m breaking the rules. How can I be sure that this is all he’s doing? Deleting random files by any other software would be considered a trait of malicious intent at best, and a trait of a virus at worst. Should it not be treated as such?

At any rate, I do believe that programmers should fight to protect their intellectual property. As a musical artist, I know the value of people stealing my work, and I believe that owners of that property should fight tooth and nail to keep control of it. I do not believe, however, that instilling fear in not only the pirates, but also well-intentioned, paying customers is the right way to go about it.

As an alternative, perhaps the program could remove itself when these keys are detected. At the very worst, it would be a nuisance for the paying customer who may have to call customer support to get a new code, but I would hazard a guess that the developer would rather that than a lawyer.