Tumbleweeds and such
Is it just me, or did the internet just get very quiet? Almost… too quiet. And I’m not talking about MP3s.
Napster's New Deal
Once a song goes through the wash, it is important to note, it will always stay ”clean” — it never turns back into a standard MP3. Instead it will remain in a special, scrambled format which can be played only by the recipient, who would be in sole possession of the decoding key.
Here’s Napster’s new plan for staying around… I simply cannot wait for them to do this, so I can start the stopwatch to see how long it takes for a hacker to crack it. My guess would be a couple hours. They’re talking about using the Napster protocol to scramble files in different ways when you download a file. The file gets scrambled depending on what you’ve paid for: if you paid for the ability to burn CDs with the MP3s, the file you get is encrypted with the ability to do that. You have a ‘key’ that decrypts songs for your own use. If you don’t want to pay, you get the ability to listen to songs for a few hours or days… Which is what I’m assuming people will hack: the encryption mechanism that converts MP3s into scrambled Napster files. They’ll make it so you can convert them back into regular old-fashioned MP3s.
I wonder what 'The comic book store guy' thinks of it
Microsoft has decided to eliminate volunteer peacekeepers in the fantasy game ‘Asheron’s Call’…. a game in which multiple (read: thousands) of people take part in an epic adventure online, graphically. Like merging the graphics and internet play of Quake 3 Arena with a MUD. So the volunteer peacekeeping peeps are gone, and everyone’s pissed off. They’re going to be replaced by full-time, paid employees of Microsoft. What’s interesting here is not what MS has done (which is what the article is about), but how people are reacting to it. These player are really, really, really mad. Apparently they’re so mad, they’re cussing in chat rooms, and there isn’t even anyone there to keep them from doing it… They seem to not realize that it’s a FUCKING GAME. One dude mentioned how much time he’d spent moderating: close to 1000 hours (in no specified time-frame, but still).. I guess it isn’t a game to most of the players, it’s their whole lives: “There’s just a lot of hand-holding and commiseration among the volunteers. This whole ordeal is turning into a full-blown grieving process for a lot of us.” Hoo-boy.
Petroleum Based Products Amaze Me Once Again
This is one of the coolest ideas I have seen in a while. Someone invented plastic that heals itself. Its not like it regrows enormous parts that have broken off, but it does extend the lifetime of plastic parts that have to put up with the normal wear-and-tear of daily abuse.
Democracy: We Deliver
We just bombed Iraq. Why? I don’t know. My first inclination is to blame it on the kid-in-a-candy-store syndrome, but it is probably way to early to pass such judgments.
It's like a Titanium Ferrari
So I made a quick trip down to my friendly neighborhood MicroCenter tonight, to sneak a peek at the new PowerBook G4… I think some sort of Homer Simpson drooling thing would be appropriate here…. So I think I’ll get one. To quote Ferris Bueller: ‘If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.’
Raiding Homes?
Things are getting a bit extreme with the whole Napster ordeal. The Belgian police are now raiding homes of Napster users. It isn’t like a nationwide raid, but they are tracking users “by the thousands.” This was all done at the request of the record labels. Sounds sketchy to me.
More Windows Madness
I was thinking about marketing terms and mottos for Windows XP and these are the best I could come up with;
WindowsXP – What do you want to rent today.
WindowsXP – Featuring Auq— er, I mean Luna
WindowsXP – Fischer Price Consumer Release 1 SP12
WindowsXP – It will eXPlode onto your computer. (literally)
WindowsXP – Xperience Crashes
WindowsXP – Now with iPicture for your porn.
WindowsXP – Playing catch up, again.
oh well, this just got boring….
Accident or terrorism?
A Palestinian bus driver plowed into a throng of young Israeli soldiers and civilians at a crowded bus stop near Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning, killing eight of them, injuring about 20 and transforming a routine rush hour into a tableau of carnage.
Pud won
If you voted for Pud of FuckedCompany on Women.com, he’s won. Yipty-frickin-do.