DogNose Data Werkz

Fire up the DVRs because there’s a lot of great TV coming on this year (all times Central):

And of course watch for the Sunday Line-Up: The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. Other shows coming back this year are some great ones on FX: Rescue Me with Denis Leary, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Starved.

Buy Citgo gas. ¿Por que, you ask? Because it’s Venezuelan, not Middle Eastern. Because they have locations all around town. And because they’re the ones who are helping poor Americans this winter. State-owned Citgo has pledged to sell heating oil, which is expected to double in price this winter, at low rates to poor families in New York and Massachusetts.

Yes, there’s a new GROW in town, GROW RPG. It’s a cool variation on the original, but I found it significantly easier. While the RPG variant came out several months ago, GROW CUBE is brand spanking new. And so is GROW ORNAMENT, the Christmas edition. Gotta Play ‘Em All.

A few months ago Boston.com posted their list of the Top 50 Sci-fi TV Shows Of All Time. It’s an interesting read, sure to spark debate among sci-fi fans. Their definition of sci-fi is somewhat broad, and I question several of their choices, but I don’t think they omitted anything. For bonus points, can you identify the man standing on the far left in the photo for Star Trek TOS?

This next item is very amusing. It’s a trailer for the movie The Shining, but cut to make the movie look heart-warming. After some digging, I found a New York Times article (free, soul-stealing registration required) that discusses its origins. And don’t miss out on Titanic as a horror movie, Psycho as a love story, or West Side Story as a zombie flick.

North Texas will soon get Broadband over Power Line (BPL) service, providing an alternative to cable and DSL.

Finally, Factcheck.org has released a recap of the events leading up to and surrounding Katrina. It’s an interesting read.

I thought I’d post a few things that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Some are a bit outdated, on account of me being lazy.

First, what’s with everyone creaming over the Video iPod? That’s nothing new! MP3 players have been able to play video for at least a year. This story made the front page of the local newspaper, just because it’s an iPod. This is not a technological leap. In fact, competing MP3 players had color screens long before iPod did, and iPods still can’t recieve AM/FM radio, though much of the competition can. Plus, I’ve heard a lot of people are having problems getting video to look right on iPods.

Speaking of video, have you heard of Channel101? Why, it’s the “unavoidable future of entertainment!” I heard about it because Saturday Night Live recently hired some guys that they discovered through Channel101. It is basically a site where people submit five-minute videos, and based on viewer ratings, some series are put in Prime Time and others are cancelled. The shows vary widely in quality. One of the low-quality shows is The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations, with, oddly enough, Sarah Silverman. I’ve also seen Sarah Chalke (from Scrubs) in another series, The ‘Bu. House of Cosbys was the first show to be cancelled due to legal concerns, but you can watch it at Waxy.org.

Third, Massachusetts has decided to drop Microsoft Office and instead use OpenOffice.org (OOo) for its official state business because OOo uses the non-proprietary OpenDocument Format, which is an approved format for documents. OpenOffice.org also reads and writes Microsoft Office documents, making it very easy to switch over. I salute Mass. for realizing that vendor lock-in is bad. For anyone out there who’s stuck using WordPad or WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org is a great suite that includes software for word processing, databases, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. And it’s free.

Finally, Microsoft is finally ending support of Internet Explorer for Mac. While it was a decent browser in its time (much better than the Windows version) there are such better alternatives available now, including Safari and Firefox. Good riddance. If only they would officially discontinue IE6, since it hasn’t been developed in years.

Whether you’ve played DOOM or not, the Doom movie is a diappointment. And let me tell you that my hopes weren’t very high to begin with. It was just bad. Allow me to elaborate.

Warning: some small bits of plot are revealed in this post. This is commonly refered to as “spoilers.” In my opinion, however, the entire movie was spoiled, so you needn’t worry about it.

Having been a fan of DOOM and DOOM II, I was excited to see the creatures and weapons on the big screen. DOOM never had much of a plot, so I wasn’t expecting much of one. Even there I was disapointed. The only plot similarities between the game and the movie were the use of the BFG, the use of the name UAC, and that the movie was set on Mars. Even these three elements were poorly done:

• The BFG was only fired twice, hitting nothing both times
• UAC was mentioned about twice.
• The setting was changed to Mars only after an uproar by fans of the games.

The explanation for the monsters was a UAC plot, not that they came forth through a gateway from Hell as in the game. Odd, because the movie tagline was, “Hell breaks loose.” The dialogue and plot were poorly concieved and executed; at certain points the characters did exactly opposite of what they would have done in reality. For example, when the conspiracy was uncovered, the main character, Reaper, and his scientist sister were outraged. So, of course, they wanted to destroy the evidence. Yeah, that’s a normal response. God forbid the evil plot be made public, and the guilty parties be brought to justice.

Additionally, the movie didn’t use but a few of the game monsters. I wanted to see a cyberdemon! C’mon!

The first person sequence toward the end of the movie was another let down. It was a good idea, but the “gameplay” looked more like the arcade game Area 51 than DOOM 3. It was almost comical.

On the up side, there were a few little nuggets of joy for fans, such as a scientist named Carmack and a lot of “put on your game face” wording. The special effects were good, I guess.

I found the heavy metal sountrack to be uninspiring. During the credits there was a song by Nine Inch Nails, but oddly they didn’t use NIN’s Head Like a Hole, the “theme song” to DOOM II, anywhere in the movie.

The bottom line is, I could have written and directed a better movie. Yes, me. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but this movie was an even bigger diappointment than I had feared.

You may or may not have heard about the so-called Sony rootkit. I had previously read some about it when the story first broke in early October, but recently Boing Boing published a roundup of the whole Sony Rootkit fiasco. I’m pleased that Texas, along with California and the EFF, are already suing Sony over this.

If you’d rather not read through that whole article, let me summarize: On October 31 a blogger, uh, blogged that he discovered harmful software on Sony BMG audio CDs. Sony owns several of labels, such as Columbia and Epic. If said CDs were inserted into a Windows computer CD drive, the user is asked to agree to a vague EULA. At that point the CD installs software on the user’s computer to restrict the user from making copies, and hides the software from the user. This software uses a rootkit to hide itself. It opens a dangerous security hole that allows anyone to very simply hide files on the user’s computer. If a user does happen to find it and remove it, his/her CD drive is disabled. Oh, and the software installs itself even if you click “I Decline.”

At first, Sony didn’t admit to doing anything wrong. Then it finally released an uninstaller program. However, it didn’t use it’s secret software to notify users that they had it on their computer, nor did they remove CDs from shelves that used this technology, called XCP. The uninstaller, however, was very difficult to obtain, required your personal information (that they can use for marketing), and required an ActiveX control that later proved to be yet another security vulnerability. For that reason, Sony later stopped offering the uninstaller.

Three weeks after the story broke, Sony was still advising customers to install their software, although they had finally pulled the CDs from shelves. Oh, and the other software that is on the CDs that is used for bonus content causes Macs to crash. They still haven’t admitted any wrongdoing or apologized to their customers.

To add insult to injury, Sony’s EULA is extremely restrictive. By law, you are allowed to make a copy of your CDs for personal use. However, Sony’s EULA requires you to delete these copies if:

• Your CD is lost or stolen
• You move out of the country
• You refuse to update your software
• You file for bankruptsy

Oh, and there is strong evidence that their software violates copyright law because it uses code released under the LGPL and doesn’t credit the authors. Remember, the point of Sony’s XCP was to protect copyrighted music.

This is not Sony’s first demonstration of its contempt for its customers. Recently they re-vamped their Star Wars Galaxies game, doing away with the two-year-old version. Players of the original version don’t get a refund if they prepaid for their subscription, even if they don’t want to play the new game. Sony also recently gained a patent on technology that allows them to limit video games to being played on one console. So if you buy a game, you can’t lend it to a friend, or sell it to Half Price Books, or play it on your new console in the event that your old one gets stolen or broken. They promise not to use it for PlayStation 3. Pinky promise.

I have gone on long enough, but I want to ask anyone reading this not to purchase Sony products this holiday (Christmas) season. I know I won’t, for fear of what they’ll do to me if I do.

Wake up.

There is nothing wrong with your monitor. Do not attempt to adjust the RGB. We are upgrading the transmission.

September 1st was the first aniversary of DNDW. I actually didn’t realize until I was making another post. To commemorate the aniversary of the blog, I decided to upgrade to WordPress 1.5.2 (from 1.2). I’d been meaning to do it for a while anyway.

Whoa. A picture of the post… in
the post! It’s Escherific!

The upgrade went smoothly, but I’m having to use the default template for now while I get the old one converted. So, if the blog looks completely (or partially) different, I haven’t finished restoring the old look of the site. I am including a screen shot of this post for future reference.

So have some champagne and celebrate a year of blogging. And toast to my mom as well–it’s her birthday today!