To those of you who have not heard yet, Diablo 3 was announced this week at a Blizzard event in Paris. That’s right, 8 years in the making and they finally have a tech demo to show off what we all knew was eventual: a sequel to a game that was just that good.

Go on, head over to their website and watch the entire thing. Then go change your pants because you’ve most likely messed them by time it’s over.

The only downside is we all know that Blizzard is notorious for being VERY slow in their development. In fact, only World Of Warcraft has been deserving of their lethargy. Let’s hope Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 come out soon enough for my grandkids to enjoy (I’m not exaggerating, they started in 2003, that’s a long time for a project that picks up an existing physics engine).

So there was an article about a BitTorrent tracker admin who was recently convicted of 2 felony charges relating to copyright infringement. Apparently, he uploaded Star Wars Episode 3 just before it opened in the theatres, and then pleaded to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement. He took a plea bargin, served some jail time, and is now on house arrest. As part of his parole agreement, he cannot use a computer without the government’s monitoring software. That sounds reasonable given the charge; at least he wasn’t banned from computer use completely.

Well, apparently the monitoring software is windows only software. Or at least it was geared for Windows. He’s unemployed and is playing the “I have 2 felonies and cannot find a job” card, so Windows is out of his price range. Therefore, he’s taking legal action against the state that is trying to force his hand here.

There are 3 main things wrong with this. First, unless the agreement said he had to use Windows specifically, his lawyer might be able to argue that they test the software under Wine to ensure that everything executes to their standards. Running Windows software is not necessarily a new concept in Linux. I’m sure he should be able to find an “expert witness” willing to testify if the government’s standards are met for the software to be run from Linux.

Secondly, and more importantly, he is missing the big picture. He committed a FELONY (actually 2). That means as a felon he will no longer be treated as a full citizen. In most states, he cannot vote or serve on juries. While most people don’t want to do either of those things, they are absolutely critical in making American citizens free. Now that he is a felon, while still on parole no less, he is now awarded few rights most of us are granted. While on parole, he is expected to do as told or risk being sent back to prison. Since he has 2 felonies, he’s now one strike away from being sent to prison for some real hard-time.

Lastly, it’s very ironic that someone who was uploading bootlegged/free movies is now being forced to buy a legitimate copy of Windows. It’s also ironic that since he was unwilling to pay attention to the FBI warnings, he is now a second-strike felon complaining about being forced to use Windows. If he had heeded the warnings, perhaps he wouldn’t be in this predicament. Ignoring the law does not make you exempt from it; neither does ignorance.

After all, he did take a plea bargin. His chance to fight this was before he accepted the plea. Instead, he rolled over and only afterwards does he have a problem with the agreement. As the old saying goes, if he wasn’t willing pay for the crime, he should never have committed it. Take your lumps with the rest of the criminals of the world. As much as people dislike the copyright law, it’s still a law that must be treated as such (revoked by legal means only). It’s like the pot smoker who gets busted and then complains that he isn’t allowed to smoke it for medicinal purposes in his state, after pleading guilty.

Fifteen years ago from yesterday, there was without a doubt one of the largest riots in America’s history. Los Angeles erupted into rioting and the entire nation suddenly paid attention.

For those of you who were either too young or apathetic to know what was going on, I’ll redirect you to the Wiki page with all of the gory details. Retrospectively, people had grown tired. They were tired of being oppressed, tired of being poor, tired of their fellow man, and tired of being tired. The only way most people knew to react was by assaulting, killing, burning, rioting, looting, and destroying anything they wanted. The whole thing was sparked by the trial of the Rodney King beatings, but turned out to be just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In the end, America hasn’t changed much. There is still oppression, negligence, hatred, racial tension, and turmoil as much as existed in 1991 and 1992. The only lesson to learn is America has selective short term memory.

It really grinds my gears every time Mr. Bush opens his ignorant mouth.

I had the unpleasant experience of listening to Mr. Bush’s rhetoric about the war in Iraq and his new plan to fix things. He has landed this country in one giant pile of a putrid mess that is the Middle East. The title of this post basically describes is half-assed approach to the problem.

He still refuses to call it what it is by using the term “sectarian violence.” Say it with me Bush: civil war. That region is about 3 seconds from sliding into an extremely bloody civil war and our presence there is not making matters any better. Let’s face it, it’s fairly clear they will be unable to sustain democracy now and in the distant future as well. The reason behind the violence is far more motivated than land or greed; they kill one another because of religion. Last I checked, it was called a Crusade in my history book, which is a much grander and nobler term than what we have been deeming their war. No matter how you look at it, their war is a war that can only end like a Highlander of religions: there can be only one!

I can’t stand to hear this political leper talk about protecting freedom in a foreign land that obviously doesn’t care. I am sick and tired of Bush using the tried-and-true terrorist scare tactic to make me think I can sleep safe at night. We are not more safe now than before; if anything, we have stirred the hornet’s nest and should expect brutal retaliation.

It’s as if he has a million voices saying the same thing in one ear, and the only thing coming out of his mouth is “stay the course + 21,500.” Wake up Bush, America no longer wants to sacrifice its brave men and women to wage a personal war, that you seem determined to win no matter the cost. If you are going to call this a “war,” fight it with every available man and woman willing to serve. Stop half-assing a solution to a military problem and do something that will actually win the war (note: I feel that increasing the CIA’s eyes and ears in the area with people capable of infiltrating the loosely knit civilian opposition.

I was reading on the net the other day that someone spent about a week and managed to crack the AACS encryption scheme used by HD DVD and Bluray discs.

After reading through the entire forum, I think the only person that can claim this works is the person who wrote the code. It seems that Doom9 has a bunch of lawyers as members because everyone came out of the woodwork to offer legal advice concerning the author’s identity. After sifting through the code (in java no less), I have come to the conclusion that this is not a crack, not a hack, circumvents nothing, and the industry needs to only worry about correcting the hardware.

Basically, the download the poster provided uses a config file that needs the decrypted title keys in order to work; they are nulled out by default. To obtain said keys, you will need to do a memory dump on the HD DVD player (in this case, the XBox360 add-on). The rest of the code just performs vanilla decryption of a AACS stream, in this case the movie content.

Not all that impressive as I’m sure the hardware players will be fixed to prevent this from happening, but the key thing is this starts the cat-and-mouse game between the millions of home users and the retarded industry experts. This battle was never won on technical merits by the industry so they will likely try to win via legal means, again.

The guy said there will be some sort of announcement or release on 01/02/07, so keep your eyes peeled.

I just got done watching the 2006 gubernatorial debate in which Bell (D), Friedman (I), Perry (R), and Strayhorn (I) battled wits on the television. I usually watch debates, but I don’t remember the last one in which half the participants were independents. I am a Libertarian and intend on voting for James Werner on 11/07.

So I noted a few things that I observed during the debate that I thought I would run through in no particular order:

Strayhorn and Friedman avoided answering questions. Most questions were direct and were met with indirect answers and references to either how Perry (or other politicians) have corrupted the government or other unrelated rants. In several of the 15 second answer sections, Strayhorn and Friedman were asked questions in which they did not have answers and instead started spewing campaign rants.

The two independents said a few things that definitely lowered their perceived intelligence. Friedman once said that the “Internet is the work of Satan.” Strayhorn kept saying “in a Strayhorn administration.” Friedman kept saying that politicians are crooked and he wanted to throw them out, he even equated them to “blood sucking parasites.” Friedman refrained from answering the question as to whether his comments that “negro is a colorful word” is borderline racist. Both Bell and Perry refrained from saying anything hair brained.

Okay, so the debate clearly became a campaign propaganda platform for the Independent participants. Perry mostly spent his time defending the last 6 or so years of his policies. Bell mostly spent his time explaining how he planned on being heard over the other parties. Friedman spent his time complaining about current politicians and how he wanted to replace them with his friends like pot-smoking Willie Nelson; he also neglected to say why the current politicians need to be replaced Strayhorn spent the whole time complaining about Perry and saying “in a Strayhorn administration,” things will be different but failed to explain how.

All in all, Rick Perry was the best debater. Watching the Independent candidates against him was like watching a a 130lb greasy nerd attempt to tackle Terrel Owens. It’s no wonder people generally don’t respond well to third party candidates; if this is what they are using to judge all third parties at a glance, these two candidates did not do a service to other third parties. It’s a shame there wasn’t an intelligent third party candidate who was capable of forming a fluid thought to answer the questions posed.

See you at the polls.

That’s right, this week’s Grinds My Gears is about Apple’s recent abuse of the patent system. In case you didn’t wanted to take the time to read the entire article, Apple has decided to start handing out cease and desist letters to any company using the word “POD” in their products. Their reasoning is that consumers may confuse these products with the iPod product line.

Apparently, Apple has decided the word ‘pod’, in which they stuck the letter ‘i’ in front of, cannot be used by anyone else. From my understanding, patent laws prevent a company from owning common language words. What Apple is attempting to do is own a TON of words in the English language. In fact, under their assinine reasoning, the band POD might confuse me with the portable music player.

Screw you Apple, those third party products make up half of the iPod’s success. Since there are so many accessories to the iPod, they boost the continued sales of the device. If the PODSkins boost sales of the iPod by 10%, shut up and enjoy the unauthorized bonus. How could anyone mistake any one of the 500-something accessories and non-related items? For shame Apple, many years you have been casting a sour look at Microsoft for their heavy-handed tactics and here you are trying to defend ownership of an English word.

What’s next, are you going to claim ownership to the letter ‘i’? Am I not allowed to use it in a sentance now? Shall we stop using the term podcasting? That whole technology was birthed in the Era of the Pod. Perhaps the product should have been centered around a popular vowel and a commonly used word relating to peas.

While I am at it, perhaps Google should just shut the hell up as well. For years, they’ve been wanting to become synonymous with “search.” Congratulations, the term “googling it” or “googled it” (google as a verb) has made it to main stream media. It is official, when most people think of search, they think of Google. So what the hell is the problem? They go to all of that trouble to create a brand, promote the hell out of it, strive to be the best, and then when the word becomes common place, they complain that it loses its meaning. That is a very self-defeating marketing strategy.

I’ll never understand how a company can go to such great lengths to control your thought and speech so much so that you think of and speak of ther brand, yet don’t let it disassociate it with the actual product. Screw you both. In fact, here’s a nice search that will surely piss off a few companies.