Jun

25

less than a week left now…

Category: Me | Leave a Comment

By this time next week I will have been married for around six hours. We would have been married under God and with all of my relatives as our witness. We would have had some fun, albeit muted fun, at my reception. If things to go plan, we would have been at our wedding night hotel for about two hours now. In about six and one half we’d have to start getting ready to fly to New York. And twelve hours from this time next week, I should be in New York City, resting or helping get things ready for the New York Wedding. Of course, I’ll volunteer to help, but often times in their culture, this is women’s work to be done. That’s fine with me, I’d certainly try for a nap if I could get one because even we were sleeping at this time next week, we’d still only have six hours of sleep after running around all day. Wedding days are notorious for using up not only all the energy you have, but also your energy reserves. Hopefully I can sleep on the plane to New York, but I don’t usually have good luck sleeping on planes. I have to make sure to find my travel pillow before I go.

I’m really excited. I’m not showing it outwardly because that’s not how I am when I’m excited about things in the future. I usually save that kind of reaction for the day-of. But I’m excited; especially because my fiancee is coming down this Monday. I haven’t seen her since Memorial Day - it’s the longest time we’ve been apart since Freshman year summer. (or maybe one of the winter breaks…Soph) So, we’re missing each other. It’s directly responsible for my lack of sleep. If she were here, I’d be able to go to sleep earlier because I’d see her all afternoon and evening and that would be enough. Right now we usually don’t get to talk until around 9:30pm and I’m supposed to be sleeping by 10p if I want a chance at a decent night’s sleep. Needless to say, that hasn’t been happening. However, once she’s here I see us getting a lot more sleep because we won’t have to stay up just to talk to each other. Plus we’ll have Saturdays and Sundays seeing each other all day long.

Well, I need to get to sleep myself because, unlike most of the other posts which I just scheduled to come on at midnight, I’m actually writing this one at midnight and I have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow to help my dad finalize the house for the wedding reception.

  

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Jun

25

DMCA To be hit with a battering ram

Category: Computers, DRM, News, Video Games | Leave a Comment

Video game fans may recall the dissapointment when, last year, uS courts forced Bnetd servers to shut down. Bnetd, short for Battle Net daemon, was created by some hackers who had become very upset with Blizzard’s Battle.net. There was rampant cheating and latancy problems. They did what any hacker would do when confronted with a software problem - develop new software that fixes is. They created their own servers to play Warcraft (and Diablo, etc) on and life was good. that is, things were good until Blizzard too,k them to court and won an injunction against them. The judge had cited that law which I hate so much, the DMCA, as one of the reasons why this software was illegal. Also, he said, Blizzard’s license (which you have to agree to or else can’t play the game) says that you can’t do this. Aha! I knew I should have been reading that crap instead of just clicking next to install my favorite software.

Now they are back and have appealed to the 8th Circuit Court saying that the DMCA doesn’t apply. Indeed, many agree that it does not apply in this case. However, they may still lose on the basis of the license they agreed to when installing the softare. A CNET article seems to thing this is likely.

I found their partners in this appeal to be an interesting assortment of characters, a motley crew indeed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is providing free legal assistance. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Consumer’s Union, and Public Knowledge. I was not surprised to see the EFF there as they, along with the Free Software Foundation, was working hard to protect the right to hack. At first glance, however, I was a little surprise to see the IEEE there. They are a very respectable world-wide organization, of which I have been a memeber since my Freshman year at Cornell. I think they add the greatest amount of legitimacy to this appeal as people will respect them more than a hacker group. The CNET article didn’t explain why they were a part of this, but I figure it has to do with preserving the right to reverse engineer.

The right to reverse engineering in the US is both a blessing and a curse. If you are the one who is being reverse engineered, you view it as a blight, but to consumers it’s one of the best things that can happen. Were it not for reverse engineering, we wouldn’t have $350 computers at Best Buy. It was the ability to see what IBM was doing and then copy it that allowed computers to get more and more affordable beacause competition ALWAYS drives down price. Any company will fight the lowering of the price of one of its products, but it is inevitable. To stop this from going on prevents growth and efficiency. Yes, we may have messed up IBM’s ability to sell computers, but look at the market which sprung from this: CD-ROM, CD-R, digital cameras, affordable scanners, nearly infinite storage, and so on. Thus, to keep the world going, I think the IEEE is seeking to ensure that the right to reverse engineer.

I hope the Bnetd guys win this time.

  
Mood: win one for the little guy

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