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Civilized
I was on the phone with my dad a couple weekends ago and he asked if I was playing Civilization 5. He’d heard that Dan was playing it and was surprised that it was still around and Dan and I were still playing it. I told him I was playing it and reminded him that…
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Rethinking Ebooks
Until now I’ve been quite against ebooks. Back when I was in college I had an iPaq and I downloaded the Microsoft reader to it. I bought about 3 – 5 books for it and, at first, I thought it was great. It would allow you to annotate the book and highlight passages. And it…
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About Me
I am a creator and technology geek and the two often overlap. My interests include programming, writing, photography, creating comics, building computers, and video production. I prefer free operating systems like Linux and BSD. I prefer interpreted languages like Python and Perl. I’m learning new programming languages by solving problems in Advent of Code. I…
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Another Reason Why People Illicitly Download TV Shows
My father-in-law is over today and he’s been dying to watch the Bizarre Foods Paris episode. I’m opposed to buying video media off of iTunes because of the digital restrictions management (DRM). But, he’s been wanting to watch that episode forever and we no longer have cable so I can’t record it onto MythTV. We…
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End Game Piracy: Open Source
As 2008 has proven – draconian digital restrictions management (DRM) does not stop people from illicitly using computer games. Spore, whose DRM was so bad they got ratings bombed on Amazon.com, was the most pirated game of 2008. The DRM caused hassles for legitimate users and did nothing to stop illicit use. This is always…
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My History with Browsers Part 1: A History Lesson of Sorts
At first I used Internet Explorer because we had a free trial of MSN. Then we switched to MCI, who used Netscape (although you could also use IE) and I mostly used Netscape. I think this was around Netscape 4 or 5. I really liked Netscape A LOT and used it almost to the exclusivity…
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iPod Shuffle
For years I had been saying that I would not buy an iPod product. After all, they sell music in the iTunes music store with DRM on it. All of my music on my Linux computer is in the OGG format and it can’t be played with iPods. However, when it came time to buy…
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Why the TV and Movie Companies have it so wrong
Let’s pretend I’m Joe College-Grad Consumer and I’m trying to evaluate how I should obtain my video content. I’m interested in watching shows as they come out – not later when they’re on box sets. Let’s see, I could buy my content on iTunes, Amazon Unbox, or some other such service. If I buy my…
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That was fast!
Ars Technica is reporting that Netflix is promising that they will be working very hard to get Macintoshes supported. Looks like they read my letter and now they have my brother covered. Now they need to work on Linux support. And drop the DRM because I guess they ignored my paragraph on how it’s BS…
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An Open Letter to Netflix
I am not an unreasonable man and I full understand your need to focus on making your “watch now” feature debut available exclusively to Windows users. After all, they do make up about 90% of computer users. However, I do have some problems with this as a long time plan. First of all, it does…
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Top 5 most liked videos on Vimeo
Aida’s Life: The Interview on Vimeo 3 Likes 250: Vimeo News! on Vimeo 3 Likes DRM on Vimeo 1 Like Existential Ponderings on Vimeo 1 Like The Creative Commons on Vimeo 1 Like
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Why buy digital music??
While thinking about digital music recently, and how great it was the BMI decided to sell some of its music on iTunes without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). However, these tracks will cost $2 while the DRM’d tracks will cost $1. First of all, this seems to be a scheme to prove that the public doesn’t…
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We won the first battle!
The first battle in our war against those who would wield DRM to prevent us from having fair use over our movies and music has been won. EMI, a Bristih Music label with bands like The Rolling Stones, has agreed to release songs on iTunes without DRM. Please, try and support them and show them…
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Movies pirated by the Movie Industry itself!
Despite what the MPAA claims, it’s not us consumers who need to be restrained by DRM, but their own people. This website demonstrates how movies are pirated by the movie companies and members of the Oscar committee. Here are some key quotes: For the last few years, the movie industry’s battles with Internet pirates offered…
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Finally, some rulings that make sense!
Joystick.com reports that judges are finally starting to make some rulings that make sense! We all know (if from nowhere else, than from this blog) that the DMCA is evil. It allows all kinds of restrictions to be placed on you, even though you were a good citizen and bought the content legally. For example,…