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Happy Mother’s Day

E-mail fiasco (Part 5 of ??)

A couple of weeks ago, I sent my boss an e-mail asking him if he would look at changing one of our policies. It wasn’t a huge thing, but I thought that I might as well ask. I probably shouldn’t give the specifics, but it had to do with how officers man a certain station at work.
So, I sent him an e-mail explaining the reasons why I thought the policy should be changed and asked for him to take a look at it for me/us. He replied that he would look into it and take it to the sergeants meeting for all of them to mull over.
I was pleased. It was nice to not have a quick “no”, but an actual thoughtful look into the policy. That was about a week ago.
The sergeants meeting was a couple of days ago, and I got an e-mail from my boss explaining that while the face of the idea seemed like it would be ok, it ultimately wouldn’t work. I was thanked for my request and told that I was more than welcome to submit more ideas in the future. It was a bummer that it didn’t look like it was going to work. I knew that the chance was slim, but if I hadn’t of said anything, then I would be bothered that I didn’t ask at all.
I decided that I wanted some more information. I mean, the reason I was given for the denial seemed a bit broad, so I shot off another e-mail to my boss listing the reasons I thought it may have been denied and also rebutting those reasons.
I explained to him that I knew he had already made his decision, but that his explanation of the denial didn’t make sense.
Here’s where it gets a bit negative. I tried to come across as joking and light-hearted as possible so I wouldn’t sound angry or disrespectful. I wasn’t angry at all, but I am afraid that is exactly how I ended up coming across.
I started the e-mail off with a joke. I addressed it to “Big Bad [my boss's name]“. Unfortunately, this must have set a negative tone with the thought that I was accusing him of being a “Big Bad” power hungry jerk. This was as far from the truth as it could be, but with that thought in his head, every other thing I wrote came off like I was being a prick. And if I think about it now, I would have sounded like a HUGE prick if the things I wrote were taken the way he took them.
The good thing is that he caught me in the hall on my way to leave and asked to talk to me. He asked me about it, and it was obvious that he was bothered by it. I assured him numerous times that my intention was nothing malicious. I even put a PS in that assured him that everything I wrote was “with a smile and not a frown.” The thing is, is that by the time he read the PS, it was already too late.
I am glad he talked to me though. He got to vent a bit about the e-mail, and I got my question answered. Come to find out, the reasons for the denial of my original request made sense. It was nice to hear the full information, and not just a snippet too.
Jeesh, this e-mail thing sure can be a double edged sword.
The last couple of things I have been talked to about involved e-mail. Have you ever gotten into trouble, or been totally misunderstood because of an e-mail? Tell me about it in the comments.

HD-DVD cracked … or not.

Recently, if you care, a key for HD-DVD was accidentally leaked to the internet. This usually isn’t a huge deal, but it has caused quite a furor in many user generated blogs and other sites, including Digg and Reddit.
Many of these sites are taking actions, at the behest of the AACS consortium, to take this code down. Most are willingly doing so, but many users are completely outraged.
If you didn’t know, the new HD-DVDs are protected from copyright infringement by the use of a key system. This key system allows the producers of the content to allow or disallow certain players based on their key. In this instance, a key was leaked that allowed anything to play the content, including the popular operating system Linux. This was previously impossible. Now that this key is “in the wild” it is feasible to allow even non-allowed systems to play back HD-DVDs.
It seems that this breach of the key, however, isn’t going unnoticed by the owners of the content. Many websites hosting the key (a simple hex number) have been contacted and been notified via a cease and desist order. Most are complying, but not without voicing their discontent.
Here is where I may differ from most folks. I know that locking down content is a hassle for the end user, and I know that not being able to do whatever you want with your HD content is crappy. I just don’t understand all of the outcry over this key.
If I have it right, this key is only good for any HD-DVDs that have already been produced. All the content makers have to do is revoke that key, and any content produced after that date will no longer play in systems previously hacked with the leaked key. So, for instance, if I were to use the key to play some HD-DVD on my Linux system, any HD-DVD I bought tomorrow (or whenever the key is revoked) wouldn’t work, because the key in THAT disk would not jive with they key I was trying to use. (If you want to read more about it, “Página do jqr” blogs about it in technical detail.)
If I have this wrong, please let me know, but it seems just that simple to me.
SO, ya ya ya, down with the man and all of that, but by law, these guys have to ACTIVELY pursue any copyright infringements or they lose their copyright. This means that if they didn’t try and shut down these infringements, then it would become public domain and they would lose the rights to it. THAT is why, even though it isn’t that big of a deal to us, they will still pursue it.
So what does all of this really mean?
Not much, I’m afraid. The key wasn’t really hacked, it was leaked on accident, so it can’t be readily reproduced in future. The key will become useless, so users will soon be out of luck if they are trying to hack the players to play protected content.
All in all, much ado about nothing.