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| BACK IN BIDNESS AGAIN |  | Category: Tech
Tuesday, March 26th, 2002 @ 09:27 pm
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Gremlins got to my shit.
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For those of you not in the know, my Linux router crashed around Thursday or so and this is just about the first contact I've had with the outside world via the internet (besides work where its pretty impossible to work on the site). I'm just getting a shout out to all my brethren that we're still alive here. I have no idea what happened to it, but the machine died, and when I got it back up shit just wasn't working right. I could go into it but I'm pretty damned sure you don't give a rat's ass, so I'll spare ya.
In seemingly unrelated news, I did (or didn't) get my hands on a copy of what could be called Warcraft III beta. Or then again maybe I didn't because that would be illegal. But, if I did (or didn't) play it, it seemed that my computer was (or wasn't) too damned slow to play it (or not play it), if I even had it that is, which I'm not saying I do.
In seemingly related news, I also got my hands on that Freedom Force demo that Tycho from PA has been shittin' biscuits about for the past half a week or so. I have to commend them, its pretty damned fun, and wicked original. Its top down (at a moveable angle), 3D, freeform play (as in not turn based) where you run around scenarios such as urban areas or docks, as a superhero. Just running around picking up cars an throwing them at people and crazy shits like that. You can even design you own characters with custom powers and such. You can play as a team of superdudes (and superbroads) at the same time, so they allow you to do that cool Baldur's Gate-ish pause so you can give all of your guy's directions, then unpause and they run around batshit doing all the stuff you told them to. But its still not turn based. Trust me.
Well, in closing I guess I'll say that due to the recent experiences I had (or didn't have) with Warcraft III, combined with a few other little things that have been making my proverbial ass itch, I think my next investment will be a new computer. I'll aim at the P4 low one Gigahertz range, but I'm in an bad way with mula at moment, what with a vacation coming up and all. Oh, yeah, and there's that little incident that happened about two weeks ago where my student load people finally tracked me down, ripped all my tax refund outta the IRS, and began garnishing my wages. Those fucks will burn in hell.
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| BNETD - THE LAW BE DAMNED | | Category: Tech
Friday, March 15th, 2002 @ 03:06 am
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Morons.
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Let me brief the uninitiated before I step into the shitstorm: The game company Blizzard, makers of such fine games as Diablo(I & II), Warcraft(I & II), and StarCraft, provide a service on the internet called "Battlenet" which provides owners of said games to congregate online play each other. Battlenet also provides "authentication checks" to make sure you're not trying to play a pirated (read: stolen) version of their game.
After a while a open source project begins, under the name Bnetd (pronounced "bee net dee" I believe), which emulates the "Battlenet" service so that people can play these games with each other without the need to go to Blizzard's horribly crappy service. The inevitable happens and Blizzard slaps a cease and desist letter at the Bnetd team saying they have cracked their "proprietary" copyrighted service and are allowing people to play their games while circumnavigating the copy protection scheme (the authenticity check).
This is a completely shit-brained attempt by Blizzard to cover their own hubris. Allow me to explain:
The popular game QuakeIII has piracy authentication when playing online (much the same as Blizzard's games do), BUT, it is completely independent in regards to the server you are connecting that coordinates the multiplayer game at hand. Why didn't Blizzard do this? Good question. To inadvertently destroy fair use of their software. Fair use is (in laymen's terms) basically defined as the ability to do whatever the fuck you want with something you bought. Period. Blizzard would rather control how, when, and on what terms you can and will use YOUR property. Not their intellectual property, but the software you bought. This is quite akin to the debate over whether or not region encoding of DVDs is legal(i.e. the inability to play an American DVD in Japan). Both retarded situations are quite akin to McDonalds saying you can only eat the cheeseburger you bought while in a row boat, wearing a tutu, and singing "God Save The Queen".
Enter Penny Arcade. Now from where I sit, it seems to me that they guys at penny arcade seem to be taking no stance on the issue, yet are posting the insane ramblings of one of their readers that happens to claim he's a lawyer. His entire spiel is that the Bnetd team "stole" Blizzards "proprietary code" and "eviscerated" their copy protection scheme. Fuck that. Allow me to indulge in what I refer to as "butt raping this ass clown's argument":
Bnetd ... want[s] to steal Blizzard's property and get away with it.
Utter horseshit. There was no "stealing". It is completely legal under fair use to reverse engineer a product you own. And seeming as the communications between the games and Battlenet aren't even encrypted, you can't even attack it with that shaky "breaking proprietary encryption" shit in the DMCA. They started this program from scratch by examining the packets transferred between the software and battlenet. THERE WAS NO STEALING. Perhaps listening to someone talking to me is illegal too under this logic?
[Battlenet] is a completely proprietary application for use with a completely private and proprietary piece of software by licensees of those completely private and proprietary products.
Yeah, Battlenet is a completely proprietary application. So? They never stole, altered, or in anyway even touched Blizzards Battlenet application. Oh the games are proprietary. Why yes they are, yet I don't recall the Bnetd team running it through a disassmbler and trying to steal the code. They were playing it, just like fair use allows. They saw what it was trying to connect to and plugged what they wanted there. Didn't take a dime out of Blizzard's pocket in the process either. You sure you're a lawyer?
To continue, its seems the farther he gets into it, the more he beleives there was "theft" involved:
You're just the goddamn thieves that stole their code, but you're completely ignorant of any foul play.
Ok, this is the last time I'm letting the "stealing" shit by. Let me explain to you what "theft" is (never thought I'd have to do this with a lawyer). What does Webster have to say about it: 1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means. Seeming as all of these have to do with taking something, it doesn't apply here. And don't give me that copyright infringement is stealing shit. A) they never had the (copyrighted) Battlenet application, and B) As a lawyer you should now that time and time again, in court, that copyright infringement in no way equates theft anyway. So stick a sock in that stealing shit, please.
To round off how I feel about it all, I'll say this: A) I believe you should be able to play a game you bought legally, under any circumstances you choose. B) I believe Blizzard should not loose any money to piracy. C) Blizzard choose the most retard, greedy assed copy protect/multiplayer scheme know to man and now are using their power to keep people from what amounts to thinking bad thoughts.
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| MORPHEUS - DON'T DO IT | | Category: Tech
Tuesday, March 5th, 2002 @ 09:20 pm
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Dumb Bastards
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I felt I had to post something due to my long absence. Its just that not much has been "post worthy" I suppose, or I haven't had the motivation to scribble down all my amazingly brilliant ideas and plans of late and share them with the world. Well, if only I had any amazingly brilliant ideas and plans as of late...
Basically I'm posting this to send a message to all ex-users of Morpheus: don't switch to their new client. If you're thinking about it, stop. If you already have, uninstall the fucker. Then download Gnucleus instead. Lemme give the skinny on why (of course, most of my friends read slashdot and already know, so this isn't going out to you).
Morpheus basically took the source code from gnucleus (which they offer freely), added a shitload of banner and popup ads to it, slapped their logo on it, and plunked it out there for everyone to download. In brief: if you download Gnucleus, you are getting the EXACT same thing as Morpheus, without the ads.
For those of you who haven't switched and don't know anything about it, basically Morpheus didn't pay their bill to the people that own the network that Kazaa & Morpheus used (which was much more reliable) so they got booted and had to switch to the gnutella network (free, less reliable, but impossible to shut down ala Napster).
As a side note, I downloaded the source code to Gnucleus for shits and giggles, and while skimming through it I thought up a feature I would like added to it. After a couple moments of perusing it, I think I kinda had an idea about how to add it, which I thought was pretty farking cool. The only problem is it requires Miscrosoft Visual C++ to compile, which I don't have. So, ptttb to them, they don't ever get to see the amazing advancements I'd be able to offer them.
On the same subject, I've been having a big time inkling into getting out of Visual Basic, and more into the "real" shiznit, mainly C++. I've been writing php for quite some time now, which is syntactically quite similar, so I think I have enough warm-up knowledge to embark on this voyage. Of course, I have no idea how to setup the cywin/gcc/fltk/etc sandwich I'd need to begin developing for free on a windows machine. I have gcc (the compiler) on my Linux machine, and I can do all the console (aka text mode) shiznits I want, its just that I don't have X-Windows installed on it, so I gets no GUI fun. The initial learning curve for these things looks like Mount-fucking-Everest from where I'm standing, so that will probably be on hold till someone can shove me ass deep into it all (**cough*john*cough**).
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| ARE YOU READY FOR THE PEPSI CHALLENGE?!?! | | Category: Tech
Wednesday, October 10th, 2001 @ 12:23 am
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I couldn't help myself. I know I've opened up a world o' online shit by taking the step, but its done now, I guess we'll have to see where it goes.
I'd like to say that I did it in retaliation for the Jack and Cokie debacle, but in reality, I just couldn't help myself. May god have mercy on my soul.
Well by looking at the commenting on the last update, I see that most parties involved are stumbling back into the world of internet access one by one, so it shouldn't be much longer till we have a regular hootnany round these parts. Writers, I guess you can take this as your cue to get the old creative and bodily juices pumping again and get back into gear. Of course I'm still not paying you, and don't expect too much fame, or any for that matter, but what the fuck else are you going to do with your misearble lives? Ya, that's what I thought. Fix needs to get his pictures over here (which might be a chore, you can upload through the website again, but you'll have to upload them, then go back and re-edit your posts to point them to the new locations), and Ian needs to go through and edit a bunch of his image tags, mostly case errors; we're on linux now, it pretty strict about that shit. Of course I can help with all this shit, I'm not above it all.
I may be a little weak on the posting for a while, just because pretty much all my 'website' time is going into getting the site back to its former glory. I got the photos section back up, and this time is database driven so writers can add their own from the website. Pretty shnazzy shtuff if ya ask me. Of course there are still things to be worked out, most obvious of which is the cam is down, but that'll be a little tricky unless I want to get a webserving windows machine here at home to serve the cam off the cable modem, webcams seem mighty tricky under linux, but we'll see.
And there you are, another real, live update from the man himself, Nipsey Russell. I'm here all week and remember, the 9:30 show is completely different from the 7:30 show. BRRAAAAAK!
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| WELL FUCK ME SILLY AND CALL ME SUSAN! | | Category: Tech
Thursday, October 4th, 2001 @ 09:17 pm
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Once more into the fray! Sorry for the downtown kiddies, but between rewritting the site, working with my work project in full ass out swing, and chronic alcoholism, getting the site in a somewhat working order has been a triffle difficult.
But fear not, I am back, I am in charge, and yes, I am naked. Many thanks to the foo man for helpin' a nigga out like he did wiff gettin' da admin section workable under php, it was complete retardation on my part. Once he got it working I realized what I was doing wrong the whole time I was trying.
But enough about the geek shiznit, lets get on to more news about me. I still drink alot. I still look at more pr0n than any healthy man should. I still have my devilishly handsome looks and my rapist wit about me. What's more to say? Well for one, Ian's finally moved back in town, and debauchery of all kinds have insued. He's still working on the job and apartment angle so he's not in his element yet but he's getting there. The good thing is he's in town and I can kick his ass till he posts more, all the while brandishing more of his high velocity wit and Tom-Cruise-like homosexuality. We have only just begun.
So... what's happened in my absence from the ole' WWW. Oh ya, some towel headed camel pluggers blew up my towers. I know they weren't my towers persee, but it was in my country, on my soil; that means they fucked with my shit. I think they should die. All of them. Even the women and children. Now I know what you're saying, "but they're innocent!" Well, fuck 'em, we're cooler anyway. Besides the fact, even if we kill the rotten fruit, the garden will still be there, so we have to deal with it. John has a nice rant about it on his site, you anti-war fucks out there should give it a read.
But anyway... the site is back up, updates will commence again, and with time, this will grow once more to be my massive empire from which I will launch my plot to rule the known (and throw unknown in there too for good measure) universe.
I'm pretty sure I'll be redesigning the site now, I just made it look exactly like the other one (kinda) becuase it was easier than recoding AND redesigning it at the same time. Talk to you later, and keep your dicks outta the light sockets.
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