Possession

Well, it’s that time of the month again. Yup, that’s right, it’s time to pay the rent on my cottage in the countryside.

They’ve got quite the scam going here. I haven’t actually played Asheron’s Call in about half a year now, but every month I still fork over my $10 USD to keep the subscription alive, and log in at least once in order to refresh the cottage’s lease.

Why? Well, in one word: Stuff.
Continue reading “Possession”

old_dog->learn((ptr = new Trick));

Too many are the days where I head to the office, grind away, wander home, collapse in bed, and wake up the next morning feeling no better off than the previous day. Sure, some work got done, the bank balance is a bit bigger, but did I reallly improve any? Did I learn anything at all? Maybe I did, but it didn’t ‘stick,’ or was too trivial, and got lost along the way.

So, as a test, the new plan is to post here each day at least one new thing that I learned that day. Anything, work or personal, theory or practical, technique or tip, as long as it’s something I didn’t know before. It may be too technical, personal, or irrelevant to hold your interest, but who cares — this is for my benefit, not yours. :-P

Today’s (very boring) lesson is:
Continue reading “old_dog->learn((ptr = new Trick));”

Music, Eh?

The arguments over digital music rights and file sharing still rage on, and everyone seems to be talking past each other due to different assumptions about just what rights we actually *do* have when it comes to music copying, rather than what they should be. That of course raises the question, just what *are* those current rights?

Well, in Canada anyway, the relevant legislation is part of the Copyright Act:

Copying for Private Use

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of

        (a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,

        (b) a performer’s performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or

        (c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer’s performance of a musical work, is embodied onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer’s performance or the sound recording.

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):

        (a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;

        (b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;

        (c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or

        (d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.

(found via Slashdot)

So what does this mean? Basically, if you can listen to a piece of music, you also have the right to make a copy for your own private use. For example, if you’re listening to it off the radio, recording your own copy of it is perfectly fine, as long as you keep it private. It’s this portion of it that has suddenly become relevant and caused people to start proclaiming “File sharing is legal in Canada!!!” Well, they’re *half*-right…

The downloading portion is apparently perfectly legal, as it is covered by the above legislation. What’s not so clear is whether it’s legal to have shared it in the first place. The case cited in the story above found that placing files in a shared folder did not constitute ‘distribution,’ but that sounds like a loophole and a particularly weak point of the case. This, if anything, is what will likely be challenged and potentially revised.

Assuming it does get changed, this creates the rather odd situation where downloading shared music will be perfectly legal, it’ll just be a violation to share it, versus the situation in the States where both ends of the transaction are considered a violation. Odd solutions are, however, in keeping with Canadian tradition… :-)

The other effect the above legislation has is that it clarifies just what you can do with songs that you own. Some people would argue that no, you don’t have the right to even make MP3s or to copy songs to iPods or other computers and such; copyright’s ‘fair use’ only allows single backup copies and in the States the DMCA prevents even that if it would mean circumventing copyright protection. Fortunately, since if we own the music we can always ‘broadcast’ it to ourselves, and the law lets us make additional copies with no specific restrictions on purpose or format or copy protection, again as long as it’s for our own personal use.

Sounds fair to me. Certainly better than what they’re having to put up with in the U.S. right now…

Google Ogles E-Mail

It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that Google’s e-mail service wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke after all, but it’s already raising its share of controversy.

The main controversy seems to be over the plan to show ads based on the content of the e-mail you’re currently reading. The normal gut reaction to this is that it’s an intrusion into our privacy, since after all the e-mails are meant to be read only by the recipient, not Google.

Really though, this is a red herring. As long as the e-mail is being stored by Google, there’s no guarantee of any kind of privacy to begin with. Google claims that the scan results are kept private and people are saying that that’s not enough and they don’t trust Google to stick to that, but by the same argument there’s no reason to trust them even if they weren’t scanning them for ad targetting. For all we know, the Google admins could print out randomly picked e-mails and laugh at them over coffee.

It also depends on how well it works in practice. It would be kind of tacky if an e-mail about Uncle Bob dying of cancer gets accompanied by ads for funeral services…

The other major issue is that any old e-mail will be retained by Google indefinitely. This is more a matter of control than privacy, and it’s much more debatable. If I want to delete an e-mail, does Google have the right to retain it in its archives, even though it may not show up in my inbox anymore? The e-mail is arguably my intellectual property, but it’s also Google’s equipment. Presumably the agreement we’ll have to accept to use Gmail will give them this right, but is it a right they can even legitimately demand?

I dunno, I’m not an IP lawyer… :-P

In any event, it’s good that all of this is getting aired out now, so that people are aware of what they’re getting into. Lawsuits to block it and/or force it to change seem a little extreme, though. There’s always the simple answer, too: if you don’t like it, don’t use it…

To Register Or Not To Register

Spam is no longer constrained to e-mail; it’s now an ongoing problem within the blog communities, through anonymously posted comments that direct you to the usual array of porn, penis pills, and Prozac. MovableType in particular has been a favourite target due to the simple comment system and it is now essential to run the MT-Blacklist plugin to automatically catch most of it. It’s not a perfect solution though as some spam still leaks through, and you have to be vigilant and keep the blacklist up-to-date.

The MT authors have a new authentication system planned for the next major release though, called TypeKey, which is supposed to solve the spam problem completely. That introduces a few new wrinkles, though…

– It introduces a dependency between my site and another site that didn’t exist before. If their site is down, then you won’t be able to fully use my site. Six Apart seem to know what they’re doing (they already run the fairly large TypePad) and it’ll *probably* be fairly reliable, but it’s still another point of failure.
– Movable Type may be relatively popular, but there will still be a large number of people who won’t already have a TypeKey registration, so having to go and obtain one will be extra work to them.
– And the usual array of privacy concerns, information tracking, etc. for the ultra-paranoid out there. :-)

The net result of all of these is to reduce the odds that someone will comment due to the ‘annoyance’ factor. A first-time visitor that might have left a quick greeting might not bother if it looks like it’s going to be a hassle.

Fortunately, it looks like there will be a middle ground: the comment policy can also be set as ‘moderated,’ where they have to be approved before they will appear, and this can be combined with the TypeKey service so that fully authenticated comments will appear right away and people who don’t want to use it can still leave comments that just won’t show up immediately. What remains to be seen is just what the annoyance factor on having to actually use and choose between these modes will be… And spam will still be able to be submitted in moderated comments, but at least it won’t actually reach the front page.

One wonders why I would even care for a site this small, but hey, I’m a control freak with nothing better to write about at the moment… :-)

Arcades (Not The Roman Column Kind)

One of the duties delegated to my iBook is to be my main emulation machine. Console systems, the Atari 8-bit, the C64, and others were all part of my early computing and gaming days, and when nostalgia kicks in I like to revisit them once in a while.

Looking through the recent changes to MAME though, I suddenly realized something: I didn’t know these games. Of course you don’t fondly remember everything and at some point it’s no longer nostalgia but merely recent history, but I’d never even heard of most of these games let alone played them.

At some point I fell behind somehow. As a younger kid I was your typical vidiot that you’d find in the arcade in the spare moments of the evenings and weekends, but right now if you stuck me in an arcade I’d stick out like a sore thumb. Somewhere along the way I went from one state to the other, but I couldn’t really tell you exactly when.

So what happened?

1) Time. One of the things you lose as you grow up is all that copious free time that enables you to stand around the arcade for hours at a time in the first place. Maybe just chores at first, but eventually you pile on studies, a girlfriend, a job, other friends, and before long you’re a salaryman fighting to squeeze in any relaxation time.

2) Money. Games started getting expensive near the end of the ’80s and start of the ’90s. Sure, most classic games were still a quarter, but any new games were usually 50 cents, or even a buck for the really snazzy ones. You didn’t really get much value for that money either; whereas a classic game you were semi-decent at could last a while, the new games were over far too quickly if you sucked, and the cost didn’t allow you many attempts to hone your skills.

3) Access. Arcades seem to have peaked in the late ’80s sometime and only shrunk ever since. At the Kingsway mall in Edmonton there were two arcades that I regularly went to back in the ’80s, roughly divided into newer and older games, but it’s been diminished greatly since then. The last time I was there I can’t even remember seeing *any* games (though I wasn’t really looking, either). It’s the same in other malls too — if there are any games at all, it’s limited to a tiny little section with only a handful of the most recent titles.

4) Skill. I have to admit that I’m really not as good at the action-oriented arcade-type games as I used to be. There’s not much point to playing them then if you can’t devote the time to improving yourself, and there’s no fun if the games are ruthlessly harsh on newbies.

5) Age. Well, I’m not getting any younger. The arcade environment just makes it even more painfully obvious how much of a kid’s business it is and makes me feel like even more of a fossil. :-)

6) Home. And finally, what’s the point in going to the arcade when you can enjoy all your old favourites and embarass yourself privately on new titles in the privacy of your own home! Home video game consoles may be what finally killed the arcade for good, and looking back I can’t say I really miss it.

Burn Baby Burn II

It’s probably about time I actually got around to getting a DVD burner. I’ve been avoiding them for a while due to compatibility concerns and new developments and such, but it seems to have finally gotten to a point I’m comfortable with now that current burners support both + and -, R and RW. Sure, there’s talk of the dual-layer burners soon and blu-ray down the road, but there’ll probably be an initial ‘glitchy’ period while kinks are worked out that would delay things further yet. I don’t really *need* dual layer anyway; this is mostly for data backup and archival and recorded video, not copying, so I don’t care about fitting whole movies and special features and such on them. I’m glad I waited until the +/- problems were (mostly) sorted out, but I can’t wait forever…

Now I just have to decide on which burner. Sony’s are highly recommended, but expensive, and I’d also prefer one in an external enclosure with both FireWire and USB interfaces, so I can swap it around among all the systems. LaCie makes a whole bunch that fit that bill, but I haven’t heard any reviews yet. And I can always take an internal one from, say, HP and stick it in a separate enclosure.

Time for more research…

Halibut Barn

SpamAssassin is doing a fairly good job of keeping my inbox free of spam and most viruses. There’s always the chance of a false positive though, so I still have it keep all the spam it catches in a separate folder and quickly skim over it every once in a while. Most of it is the familiar old Viagra, mortgage, and MAKE MONEY FAST spam, but every once in a while there’s one with a subject that just comes out of nowhere…

Subject: cheaap softwaree disaster

Hey, I know our products have their faults, but you didn’t have to be so cruel…

Subject: emerge pompadour texas elan raindrop tyranny baby awkward

Duck-billed kumquat alligator shoes? Septic oriole dishwater vacuums!

Subject: The timing couldn't be better to catch this hot pick before it runs szgl xmsn zx zzqip

I hate it when things run szgl xmsn zx zzqip. It’s a mess to clean up.

Subject: Re: ask blocky

Is that an advice column for kids?

Subject: frugal macbeth

You’re supposed to call it ‘the Scottish play’…

Subject: my boss tihnks your gay

My gay what? And what does he think of it? Damn, I hate cliffhangers…

And of course:

Subject: halibut barn

Ooooh, Pottery Barn better watch out…

First You Get The Karma, Then You Get The Power, Then You Get The Women…

While I was browsing Slashdot during lunch on Friday, I was surprised to see drop-list boxes suddenly appear at the end of comments I was viewing. A quick scan for further information revealed that apparently I had been selected to be a Slashdot moderator!

So what, right? After all they’re automatically and randomly selected, it only lasts three days, and you only get five points to spend adjusting comment scores. It’s not like the site admins themselves personally anointed me and invited me to their country club. :-P

What was actually interesting about it was the effect that it had on my own reading habits. Normally I just skim along looking at the highly-ranked comments that display automatically, and any with titles that contain something that catches my eye. Continuing to do that didn’t really give me any opportunities to spend points though, since most of them were already highly ranked and the few other threads that I delved into just weren’t very interesting. I obviously had to start reading more threads if I was going to find anything to moderate.

At first I got all idealistic and figured hey, I’ll check out all of the later, neglected threads where somebody may have posted something extremely important but was ignored since most people have moved on. Of course, there were a few problems with that… One is that there are a *lot* of such comments, often in isolation, and it’s not obvious from the subject alone whether it’ll be worth checking out. Also, they often didn’t really have anything interesting to say after all. There’s probably a point at which everything worth saying has already been said, and beyond that it’s just bitches, whines, complaints, and such.

So next I started delving into the longer threads near the middle of the comments, where I encountered the next problem: decision paralysis. Sure, there were plenty of on-topic comments to choose from, but does this one really count as ‘insightful’ enough? Sure, this guy posted a bit of useful information, but with people posting so furiously there’s a lot of overlap, and maybe someone else has posted even more and really deserves the points. Or maybe not. And this post looks interesting, but it’s not really my area of expertise, so how do I know for sure? For all I know someone else is going to come along and post “No, you’re full of shit because…”

So, instead, I went to the shorter, 3-5 comment threads near the middle of the pack and spent points on posts in those instead. That seemed like a reasonable compromise between finding neglected posts and trying to avoid redundant information or overly long, meandering threads.

And now all my points are gone and I never did get those women…

Fever Dreams

I don’t know whether it’s the NyQuil or the cold, but the last couple days my dreams have been a bit more vivid and weird than normal. As usual I can’t remember most of them, but I do recall a period in which I thought that if I moved the wrong direction I would destroy my iBook. Later on, I kept thinking that I had been outbid on a couple auctions and could see them on the screen, but couldn’t get to them to rebid and they were about to close…

I’m such a geek…

Hidden Quakes

Another game that I’ve recently discovered I have the Mac version of is Quake 3. I knew there was a Mac version of it, but I didn’t know if it was on the discs that I had. I found the CD case and examined it, but it didn’t say *anything* at all about what platforms were supported. So, figuring it was worth a shot anyway, I slapped the CD into the iBook and sure enough, a Mac installer was right there.

I also have Team Arena, since it was the Quake Gold package, but right on the front of its CD it says “Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT4”. Oh well. But maybe… Sure enough, after sticking it in, there was a Mac installer for it too.

Things get even stranger though. The first thing you do after installing any game nowadays is to go and grab the patches, right? Q3 was still running in Classic mode and was a bit choppy, so I hoped there would at least be a native OS X patch. Well, off to idsoftware.com I went, but oddly enough I couldn’t find any Mac patches at all. There were Linux and Windows patches to bring it to 1.31, but nothing for the Mac. Well, maybe the 1.30 included in the Gold package really is the final version for the Mac, I thought.

After poking around a bit though, there was a file named “Patches and Updates blah blah blah.html”, and it had a URL to quake3world.com’s files section. After a quick visit there I could see that they were actually up to 1.32 for the Linux and Windows versions, but there was only a beta version of a patch to 1.31 for the Mac. It was, however, a broken link. Well goodie. Starting from the front page of fileplanet.com I worked down to the Quake 3 files and, lo and behold, there was what I really wanted: a final, official 1.32 point release for Mac OS X. Ugh, it just had to be FilePlanet…

You’d think that the company’s own site would be the place to go for the latest updates. Or that the biggest fansites would have working links to the right places. No wonder people are wary of gaming on the Mac if they’re going to treat it like the red-headed stepchild…

*Sniff*

Ugh, I’d almost forgotten just how much it sucks to get a cold. It must have been a while since my last one — although I found some DayQuil and NyQuil in the cupboards, they expired over two *years* ago…

Here’s to hoping a new batch of the big Q will help tonight… “Merry Fucking Christmas!”

Oh My Dog

Upon arriving back at my mother’s house, I have in the past been welcomed by a dog. I have been overrun by two dogs. And now I have been completely mobbed by three dogs at once: Coco, my brother’s; Shyla, his girlfriend’s; and Buka, her family’s.

They’re nice enough dogs, but damn they are a handful to take care of. It’s nearly impossible to sit down and do *anything* without constant interruptions from one of them looking to play or trying to mooch food or just wanting to be nosy…