Legend of Zelda 2

Tonight's next edition of Ye' Old Blog is all about the links.

The first is to a new blog of Shannon's to supplement her jewelry site. It is at http://peaceofmindjewelrygallery.blogspot.com. It's new, so there may be lots of changes yet, but it is ready for viewing.

Link #2 is courtesy of Ian. A good post to send to all of the people who have been failed by the computer industry thus far. These are the people constantly coming to you with problems because these devices just aren't simple or reliable enough. This stuff is probably worthy of its own page that could be updated as we think of additional ideas.

"Peeling the years away and we can't relive it"

Had to include a tribute to REO Speedwagon as my title, from my favorite song of theirs no less. I saw the live on Thursday night and it was a fantastic concert. Even if you don't respect their music, you have to give props to them for having played and toured continuously for close to 30 years. No breakups, reunions, changed band members, just the original lineup consistently playing tunes.

Now to the good stuff. I have discussed the idea of software updating with others on numerous occasions. I know Ryan, for one, is very dissapointed with the current trend of almost all applications suddenly having their own method of checking for and installing updated versions. He would like to see one standard mechanism available in the OS for all to use, and I agree.

I was thinking of that a bit tonight, and came up with another idea. Not only would like I like to see this added as a common feature in the OS utilized by all (or most), but I think it could be used to improve software backup/restore as well. One of the things I love about having almost eliminated pay software from my computer is the reduced number of backups and copies of programs I have to keep around. I have switched to almost entirely open source, freeware, or stuff I have written myself. The beauty of the open source and freeware stuff is that it is generally widely available and archived via the Internet. Rather than keeping copies of everything, I can just go download them all if I was forced to reinstall.

Now, here's where I came up with my idea. If this centralized software update facility existed, it would be cool if it could essentially keep an up-to-date restore image for your PC at all times as well. You could periodically burn off a CD with all OS, driver, and software updates in use on the PC. A cool option would be to choose between full downloads or simply a list. In my case, I would be perfectly happy with a list of software. If I wanted to restore, I could simply pop in this CD and it would use the software update mechanism to grab and install all of the packages. The other option would be to maintain a full copy of the most recent version of everything. This would be useful if you had a slow connection, wanted to be more mobile with the installation, or simply wanted it to be quicker -- none of these really matter to me.

This whole process could be extended to include configuration for all apps as well. That could all but eliminate any bring up time when installing on a new PC.

An additional piece that would improve all of this would be a modified installer for the OS (are you listening Microsoft?). The installer should install enough basics of the system to enable network connectivity, limited to some approved locations, and the software update mechanism. This shell OS could then grab any critical OS updates before finishing the OS install. This would eliminate the problem of unpatched machines being infected with malware almost instantly upon connection to the network.

Some of this is a ways off yet, although none is technically all that challenging. Most of it could actually be pulled off very quickly today. I would love to give it a try if I had the free time -- I will hopefully leave that to someone out there who finds this interesting and does have the time.

"Ahh, it'll take a little time, might take a little crime to come undone..."

I held off as long as I could, because I think this issue has already received far too much attention, but I just couldn't keep from throwing a post up here about it.

I am referring to the whole hubbabaloo concerning Rockstar Games and the 'Hot Coffee' hack [NSFW] to their Grand Theft Auto 3 game, and the recent announcement today by the ESRB.

On the boards I read the voice of reason seems to be peeking through, but I'm not so sure about the general public. Good old Senator Clinton (among many others) has latched onto this with all her might. It is obviously the most pressing issue she could be facing right now. I mean, it's not like there are any other issues facing this country, right?

Let's step back and get a good perspective on this. A game was produced where the objective is to steal property, cause serious injury or death to other humans, generally disregard all laws and personal rights. Oh yeah, and you can beat anyone or anything with a giant purple dildo. That's all cool, ESRB gives it a nice M 17+ rating. However, the second we see some pixalized, partially clothed, completely uninteractive sexual activity in the game, it suddenly needs to be AdultOnly and banned.

I will concede the moot points of some that this is the correct action of the ESRB given their rating system. Yes, sexual activity in a game would constitute an AO rating. That's where I stop agreeing though. First, this was a hack put out by some third-parties who found some unused code in the game and created a patch to access the videos. Let me repeat, for the deaf senators in the room: Rockstar games did not intend this to ever be accessed. As someone who writes code for a living I know all about various corporate decisions that result in all kinds of commented out and inactive code being in a final product. Yes, not cool or allowed for a government, mission-critical application, but perfectly acceptable for a recreational end-user application.

Now, the next and more relevant point. This is the part that has been discussed to death on places I frequent, but since it obviously hasn't sunk in with the American public I will post it again. Why should sexual activity be considered adult-only, but not extreme and pointless violence? One is required if we wish the human race to continue, generally is pretty enjoyable, and doesn't appear to damage others in most cases. The other has no actual benefit. I'm not saying we need to ban violence because that is ridiculous, just get our priorities in line. Nipple slips are not the end of the world, neither is a little sex. The only reason we feel otherwise is years of twisted viewpoints being pushed down.

Leave the game alone. Hilary, quit wasting taxpayer money and go sit on your husband's face. BooYah!

Partly Crappy, chance of rain

Just a short post, and a question. Why does Blogger's spellcheck and search (or lack thereof) sucks so much?

I wanted to find a certain blog the other day, and only remembered part of the name. Blogger gave me no way to search for this. The only search ability was to search a specific blog. Even that just takes me to google.com and does a "site:" search. Other sites have cleanly integrated Google searches, why can't a Google subsidiary manage this?

Their spellcheck is equally or even more pathetic. Okay, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that it might know words such as blog, given the nature of the site? Then, I had typed "abou" and it didn't even think to suggest "about", and in fact asked me if I was really sure before allowing me to change it. Just an example, but a good example of how badly it works. Come on Google, you were able to pull off a moon-mapping site, but you can't integrate some search and spellcheck?

Try this for fun - spellcheck something with an apostrophe in it. Yeah, cool huh? A little later I realized I was dumb for even using Blogger's check. I have spellbound installed for Firefox, use that and everything's cool, everything's smooth.

It takes a nation of millions to make us dumb

Apologies to PE for the title, they've been a majority of my listening the past few days. If you don't own any of their stuff, go get some (Sorry, I suck at amazon links).

I was taking a quick break from homework and sick kids and read something on Engadget that, without warning, ticked me off a bit.

The article was a review of peerflix, a service I think is at least an interesting idea. The basic premise is that you "trade" your movies with others, kind of like a cross between netflix and ebay. There is a $1 transaction fee and shipping involved in each trade, so really it is like purchasing used movies for $1.60, since you do not return these movies, you technically own them.
I heard about this service a while back and thought it was interesting, but would have preferred it were simply created as a user community, trading for free. The idea of the company siphoning profits ala eBay didn't seem necessary here. However, I can see where fraud and such would make a user-driven community of any worthwhile size somewhat difficult. I wouldn't be confident that peerflix had completely addresses those issues though either.

Back to the point, the article starts out by questioning why anyone would buy a DVD rather than rent them. I hate this logic, this isn't the first time I have encountered it. I don't personally understand why people would want to go hunting or fishing, having no real interest in it, yet I understand there are people who do and I let them do their thing. I do happen to watch movies that I like several times, making it much cheaper to simply own the movie, especially when I have rarely paid over $15 for the movie.

After slamming movie purchasers, the author goes on to debate the potential copyright issues with the service. This would be a legitimate discussion, but he misses any valid points. Instead, he comes up with this gem:

"Fleeting consumption makes DVDs an excellent content source with which to start. The Peerflix terms of service discourages swapping pirated DVDs, noting plainly that 'users may not illegally copy DVDsÂ' and that 'as a User, you acknowledge and agree that you have valid title and ownership rights to any DVDs that you make available.'

But avast ye maties, Peerflix can'’t prevent DVD copiers from keeping their pirated version and selling the original. Besides, once you've '“traded' a DVD, you gain title to the one you receive, and making a copy technically falls under fair use. Peerflix may be trafficking in legal physical product, but the fluidity of media it could create raises new questions around what is ownership."

I hate this ridiculous argument also. He states Peerflix can't prevent people from violating copyright after executing a trade. That's right, and it also isn't any of Peerflix's business at that point. Moot point.

Next, you have the steaming pile that is the second quoted paragraph above. "Making a copy technically falls under fair use" -- sure, as long as you don't get rid of the original. Otherwise, it's a copyright violation, and again has nothing to do with Peerflix. Stupid, circular, redundant logic.

The article goes on to state how this could really "kick into gear" if they started doing this with CD's. Huh? Why are CD's different? Because the RIAA is a 900 lb. whore? Sorry, I don't see the difference.

I'm finished ranting, so here is my summary take on this. Peerflix is a less-expensive and potentially larger selection version of the used CD/DVD/video game stores that exist on ever corner strip-mall across the country. The rules are no different because this is online, learn what logic is and apply it, rather than writing worthless drivel about something partially technology related on a gadget blog.

All PR, no Teeth

Yesterday, Google announced a Firefox version of their Google toolbar. I was an avid user of their Internet Explorer version of the toolbar when I formerly used that software abomination. In fact, the loss of the toolbar was one of the last remaining things keeping me from switching to Firefox.

Unlike some, I utilized most of the features that came with the toolbar, as opposed to simply using it for searching. I found the form auto-fill to be the greatest creation ever, including the ability to save credit card info. The display of search words was also fantastic.

Once I switched to Firefox, I ended up finding googlebar, combined with Autofill and Spellbound to be an adequate substitute. The latest beta development version is even better, with gmail notifier added, as well as some nice localization support for maps and such. I do not have any use for the pagerank feature, but if I did there is an extension for that as well.

Now, back to the announcement. I was very excited to hear that Google had an official version of their toolbar ready. I installed it and gave it a try. However, I ended up being less than impressed. In my opinion, it just simply isn't ready for prime-time yet, and I think they need to put some additional effort into development. I think if they waited this long to release their own, they should at least attempt to support all of the features of the IE version, and why not pick up some of the cool additions that the googlebar had implemented?

My first annoyance was the lack of separator bars in the toolbar, or any ability to add my own. The icons all seemed to run together. The gmail icon was there, but it did not include notification of new messages, making it mostly useless. The form-fill is included, but for some bizarre reason (probably privacy related) it does not handle credit card info. Also, the drop-down list available from the Google image itself was nearly useless, as opposed to the very useful list when clicking the "g" for the googlebar. Finally, the translation feature was horrible. You have to specify one language that will be translated, and it worked very poorly. There are numerous better translators available as extensions for Firefox.

The only feature I found somewhat interesting was the AutoLink features that linkifies street addresses, shipping information, etc. This is really cool and I would like to see it incorporated into googlebar or a separate extension. Should be fairly trivial to implement these using Google's published API's.

In the end, I uninstalled the Google toolbar and went back to the googlebar. You are probably thoroughly bored with this whole discussion by this point also. I will say in Google's defense that they still list this toolbar as beta (hey, isn't everything Google a beta?) Also, I like the fact that they kept a link to the googlebar right on their main toolbar site. It is small, but at least they acknowledge its existence.

Now, let's see if Google puts in the extra effort, or if the googlebar team instead polishes the few remaining edges and removes any need for me to use the official version.