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djotaku's twitter feed
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- no more cable tv for me. Saving $53/month!
- http://tinyurl.com/653oo5
- I just got 2 achievements on Spore! http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Spore. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- just started playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. http://raptr.com/djotaku
- Awesome concession speech by McCain, I actually felt really sorry for him
- obama won!
- Partaking in the age-old tradition of following the election all night long.
- just started playing Solitaire. http://raptr.com/djotaku
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Jun
30
I don’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog, but I hate going to the movies. I’ve nearly given it up. The only exceptions are Pixar movies and the very few movies that I can’t wait until they come out on DVD to watch. So today I went to see WALL*E with my wife and slightly younger brother. It is, literally, the BEST Pixar movie ever created. The only reason I’m okay with the fact that they waited this long to come out with the movie is because it allowed them to get so awesome at creating movies that it looks beautiful!!!
First of all, like most Pixar movies, there’s a short film at the beginning. Right from the intro screens, you’re clued in on the fact that this is done in the slapstick, physical comedy style of the 1940s Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons. Let’s just say that my brother and I were laughing so loud and cracking up so bad, I’ll have to watch it at least another two times to catch everything I missed from my eyes watering up. It’s that funny - if you’re a fan of physical comedy. And, of course, Pixar has character emotional expression down to an art form.
Then the feature film came on and it was great. In a way, WALL*E is “An Inconvenient Truth” for kids. But to say that is to do a HUGE disservice to the guys at Pixar. Really, the whole point about how rampant consumerism caused the Earth the be so polluted that we had to leave is so that we could have this extremely cute robot cleaning up the Earth. So, it’s no spoiler that he’s the only robot left cleaning. Everyone was talking about this: from Pixar to some of the trailers for the movie. Basically, we caused such a mess that all human life is sent away and we leave an army of WALL*E robots to clean up the Earth. Eventually, the task is SO daunting that we’re left with our one WALL*E. He’s diligently cleaning up when the humans send a probe to see how the cleaning is coming along. This causes his love interest to enter the picture. Again, no spoilers yet. Now, when she first appears on the scene, oh man, it was exactly the type of humor that my brother and I love. We were shattering that theatre with our laughter.
I loved so much about the movie, the story, the visuals, the characters. But what really blew me away was how two robots who can only convey emotions by moving their eyes, heads, and hands (the robots can’t talk except for a very small amount of words, but I don’t want to ruin it!). My wife really got sad about something that happens to one of the robots - and it’s just a robot! And the way the “female” robot acted towards WALL*E’s advances, conveyed pure feminine energy. It was just great to watch. Now for a few spoilers.
<spoiler!!!>
Things I loved in the movie:
- the iPod and the role it plays with the movie
- the references to Space Odyssey 2001 such as the Auto Pilot looking like HAL 9000, the music when the captain first wakes up is the same as the music when the pen is floating in 2001 and the use of Thus Sprak Zerathustra
- My brother caught that WALL*E’s powered up sound is the sound of turning on a MAC
- the giant WALL*As at the space ship were great
- I loved the little OCD cleaner robot. He was, without a doubt, my favorite secondary character in the movie
- The robot sanitarium was a hilarious scene
- The part where the silhouette of EVA made WALL*E panic was pure animation history - I’ve seen that in so many of the old cartoons from the 1940s
- The part about how the corporation wanted to keep people fat and lazy so they were easy to control was a great social commentary - in fact the whole thing was great - it was much more sci-fi than I thought it was going to be
- Also, I loved how the story was revealed bit-by-bit like when he rolled by the area where the space ship took off and the videos went off. It had a very tragic feel to it because the videos seem to feel like the humans will be back really soon
- With the video only for the Auto Pilot to see where it says that the work was too much and the world became too toxic, I was left wondering:
- did the CEO and his workers die on Earth? IOW, did they remain on Earth to supervise the cleanup and were so sure of their machines that they didn’t take a ship to leave?
- did they see all the WALL*Es breakdown? Or did that happen after the humans were dead. I mean, WALL*E was around for 700 years!
- I loved the cameo by the actor who played the CEO of BnL.
</spoiler!!!>
Ok, I think I saw a Pizza Planet truck, but I blinked. Can anyone confirm that? Also, I kept my eyes open, but didn’t see any Pixar toys amongst the trash. On the one hand that could have been a conscious decision on their part to say that their toys would never end up in the trash. But I was really hoping for a cameo! If anyone spotted a cameo, let me know.
Go see it right now. I don’t know if it’s going to have an awesome opening weekend, but go see it if you enjoy animation at all you MUST go see it!
—–
Or you may know it as WALLE or WALL-E, but the commercials and wikipedia have it looking more like WALL*E.
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May
30
Big Buck Bunny has been Released to the net!
Category: Blender, Movies, computer animation | 
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Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.
Here’s the Blender Institute’s latest movie. It’s much, much better than Elephants Dream. Check it out!
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May
5
Written Friday, 2 May 2008
Today I decided to upgrade my Mythdora to the latest verison, 5.0. I downloaded the CD media and booted into the install. I had to do a text install to be able to watch it on my TV. Then I just needed to yum install the kmod-nvidia drivers. (Although, first I had to uninstall the previous nvidia drivers - they were neither automatically upgraded nor uninstalled) I started at about 1930 and was able to be completely up and running by 2055, just in time so that I didn’t have to missmy 2100 recording of “Best Week Ever”.
The only major issue was that my current theme didn’t work, it was missing all of the words. But by using the keyboard and scrolling down and remembering where setup was, I was able to get to the setup menu and change the theme and then it works. I think it was just a problem of the prevoius theme being cached and there have been some changes to the included themes.
One of the most noticable changes to the themes is that (where the author has coded it in), a date and time stamp are now supported. So from your “Home” menu you can see what time it is - pretty convenient. The weather forecast now works - it was broken in 0.20. They’ve also added in a new “Movie Times” plugin which tells you when movies in your zip code are playing. The system status page now gives better, and more relevant information. Under the Mythdora Tools they’ve added “Mythdora Cron Jobs” to help out with certain tasks you might want to set cron to automatically run for you.
One great new feature is the ability to mark recordings as having been watched. I was able to do this manually and I hope it also does so automatically. Sometimes we’re left wondering if we’ve seen an episode before (especially if we didn’t delete it) so this would be especially helpful. Another feature I’m looking forward to learning how to use is the Watch List that lets you know in which order to watch episodes.
There are other great features, some of which I have yet to figure out how to take advantage of. To see them, see the release notes. I wish I had taken some before and after screenshots of Mythweb, the plugin that lets you manage most of MythTV’s features over the web. It has REALLY been improved. Here’s a really good example of how it looks now. Before for the videos your recorded, it would just show a small thumbnail, now, if you click on the recorded show, you get a plethora of information (and it looks neat too!)
Overall I was VERY happy with the great job the Mythdora team did on this release. The upgrade went very smoothly and the new features are working very well.
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Feb
3
Another Look at Thoggen (Part 3)
Category: Linux, Movies | Leave a Comment
So, to wrap up a review I started a long time ago.
So I took a good look at the files and I had an xvid at 704×400 (I cropped a little) and an ogg theora with 720×480 resolution. Generally speaking, the ogg theora had much better audio/video sync. Throughout the entire film, the audio was just as in sync as on the DVD. The xvid file lost sync little by little, but never to a ridiculous degree. (Although it has happened to me with other discs)
However, I found the xvid to show less compression artifacts at full screen. However, the video fidelity was just barely better. In fact, whenever I have the time before a trip I always encode in ogg theora.
So, in [this long delayed] conclusion, I say OGG is the best if you want good audio/video sync, and want to support Xiph. Xvid is good if you want others to be able to watch it too. The worst part about Thoggen is how ridiculously slow the encoder is, but I think work is being done on this and it should be fixed relatively soon.
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Oct
5
Is it really stealing?
Category: MAFIAA, Movies, Politics, RMS, tv | Leave a Comment
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them.
If you don’t believe that illegal copying is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “prohibited copying” or “unauthorized copying” are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.” - rms on Piracy in Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding
Photo by redjar on flickr, used under a Creative Commons License
Copyright apologists often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to describe copyright infringement. At the same time, they ask us to treat the legal system as an authority on ethics: if copying is forbidden, it must be wrong.
So it is pertinent to mention that the legal system—at least in the US—rejects the idea that copyright infringement is “theft.” Copyright apologists are making an appeal to authority … and misrepresenting what authority says.
The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down. - rms on Theft in Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about copy protection and unauthorized downloading of video content. I saw unauthorized instead of illegal because I believe that, using common sense principals, it is easy to see that this should not be an illegal process in some circumstances. My arguments in this post hinge on ethical and logical assessments of the situation, not legal arguments in any way shape or form. IANAL (I am not a lawyer) so don’t use the opinions of this post to legally justify your actions. I do encourage you, however, to use them to try and persuade our leaders that the rules need to change.
Quickly, to comment on why I chose the above quotes by rms. I think, as he does, (and all politicians) that the words we use to describe things end up framing the debate. When downloading of videos is called “stealing” it’s easy to get behind Hollywood’s side. After all, who is for stealing? No one. I say that stealing requires the taking of some object and denying its use to others. This is a good definition, right? If I steal your bike, you can no longer use your bike for riding. If I steal your car, you cannot get around any more. If I steal your money, you may be unable to buy the things you need to sustain yourself. However, if I download video content, who is being denied the ability to watch it? In fact, with digital media, copying is the opposite of stealing. As objects are copied, they are seen by more and more people.
So, when should you be ethically in the clear when it comes to sharing video content? I feel that anything being shown on network Tv should be legal for me to download; it’s certainly ethical to do so. Why? Because any show I can watch on network Tv is available 100% free. If I have a Tv and an antenna I can get those channels. If I don’t have to pay for them in the first place, then how can it be stealing if I download it? That would be like saying that if I used a free public wireless access point with a PDA instead of a computer that I’m stealing the network. I find it impossible and an utter failure of logic to say that anything that’s FREE can be stolen. There should be no limitations on the way I obtain free things.
Now you might bring up one of the favorite arguments of the copyright owners, “Network television isn’t free! It’s paid for by commercials! And the Tv programs you download do not have commercials.” That would be a fine argument, if there were any way to actually force me to watch commercials. It could be an infringement upon my rights as an American to force me to watch commercials. Who says I can’t use commercial time to use the restroom or flip channels? Do they expect us to watch the commercials and then go to the bathroom during the content we are actually tuning in to watch? I have to admit that I rarely ever watch commercials, thanks to my wife. She hates commercials so much that she gets antsy if I don’t let her flip through the channels. It’s the same with newspapers, magazines and anything else subsidized by advertisements - I don’t look at them. (And no one can make me!) And if I could be forced to view them, no one can force me to pay attention. Because, if they can do that, then I’m getting the hell out of this country.
One more thing on the issue of commercials. I can always get a VHS tape or computer and do what I used to do as a kid - hit pause during commercials and start recording after the commercials. I never recorded commercials as a kid. And, since I can record Tv without commercials, what does it matter if someone else has done the recording for me?
So, while the companies might have a legal case against me in court, if we look at this like intelligent, rational engineers, we see that there should be no case against me when it comes to downloading network television. They were never making any money off of me in the first place, so they lose nothing if I don’t watch. The commercial sponsors have already paid for the content and GAMBLED that some portion of the viewing public would watch the commercials. There were absolutely no guarantees, just statistics. (Which we all know are BS numbers made up during sweeps week)
So now we move to cable television. When it comes to cable Tv, I argue that I have an even stronger case to be allowed to download the content - I’m actually paying for it. Not only am I paying for the programs I watch, but I’m also paying for thousands that I don’t. In fact, since I pretty much only watch Scrubs, The Office, and The Daily Show, I’m already paying for tons of shows I don’t even watch. Plus, all of these except for the premium channels are also paid for by advertising. They are already paid (sunk cost) and, as I said before, there’s no way to force me to watch commercials.
When it comes the the premium channels, I’m paying a premium to watch it, so I think I should have premium rights to download this content. The ethical parts comes in that I should only ethically download shows that play on channels which I am subscribed to. I would not see the content on the ones I’m not paying for, so I don’t have the right to watch them. This brings me to my next topic, what should I not ethically download.
I should not ethically download any movies still showing in the theaters and not yet showing on Tv. There is no way for me to watch this content other than going to a theater, so therefore, there is no logical or ethical reason that I should be allowed to download those movies. Once they show on Tv, I should be able to download them.
As I mentioned above, we’ve always had the right to use VCRs to time shift programs. What logical difference does it make if I’m using a VCR, TiVo, or downloaded content to the the time shifting? Think about it - there’s NO difference!
What it all comes down to is control. The video companies don’t like the idea of not being in control. They don’t like the fact that Europeans can download American shows while they’re still showing in America. Why that artificial system is still in place, I have no idea. They simply have not joined the technology era. People of my age group do not want to be inconvenienced by bull crap. If there’s a real, logical reason why something can’t be done, then we accept it. But, given today’s digital world, there’s no reason why I can’t watch all the stuff they produce in Britain, Spain, or any other country whose language I can understand.
If they truly need the advertising money, then just move to a James Bond model for all video content. Have companies subsidize the cost of the show by paying to have the characters wear/use their products. Then, it won’t matter if they view it on Tv or off of the internet, they’ll have to see the products being advertised. AND, here’s why I don’t logically understand why they don’t do this. Right now video producers have absolutely no idea how many people watch a Tv show. All they know is what Nielsen Families watch. And they are occasionally wrong. For example, shows like Family Guy that apparently tested negatively or they wouldn’t have canceled it. Then they suddenly realized that a ton of college students and other people loved it. If their products were watched on computers, it would be a trivial task for them to count up how many people were watching the show. So they’d be able to accurately charge advertisers based on how many people were seeing the products advertised.
Of course, there is one other issue. That is the fact that, at any time, a friend of mine could come over with a DVD or VHS tape of some Tv show and I can watch it with him. This cost me nothing and it may convert me to a fan. Thanks to my brother bringing over The Office for me to watch, I’m now watching it on NBC. Would it not, ethically and rationally, have been the same thing if I had downloaded the first few seasons and then liked it so much that I now watch it on NBC? I think if you answer honestly, you’ll see that I’m right. Yet, the Tv and movie producers are trying to make it more and more so that stuff you buy only plays in your house. I can tell you for a fact that if I would have had to go to my brother’s place to watch The Office I would not be a fan today. There was just too much inertia working against me going to his place.
I would like to address one final issue which I also feel exactly the same way about when it comes to music. For those who cry of the apocalypse whenever someone talks of downloadable content (meaning that if everyone downloaded then the Tv and movie studios would go out of business), I have this to say to you. First of all, that’s false for the reason I outlined above - just adapt and build the commercial into the video content. But even if it did implode, I could not care less. Look at the FOSS software movement. While it is true that today a small to medium portion of developers are paid by companies to do the work, a lot of the key work for the first 20 years of the movement was done by volunteers. And look at the amazing things they created - the Apache web server which runs approximately half of the internet, the Linux kernel, countless programs which run on Linux and other platforms, Firefox - the list goes on and on. Similarly, I’ve seen a lot of amazing videos and Tv shows on the internet. Sure, there’s a lot of crap out there - monumental amounts. But I also believe there’s a lot of crap on Tv (otherwise I’d watch more than 4-5 shows). There are a fair degree of people out there with talent who simply do video work in their spare time. For some great examples, check out this work by ReMyyyx. It might not be your cup of tea, but there’s more out there like this, this, and this.
I hope I’ve helped you see past the MAFIAA rhetoric and helped you see things through the logical and ethical point of view.
Please share this with as many people as possible and even send it to your elected representatives to see if we can knock some sense into them. Leave comments, I’d love to hear what others think. They are moderated, so it may take a while to appear.
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Sep
20
If you liked 300….
Category: Movies, webcomics | Leave a Comment
Then you may find the following a bit entertaining.
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Sep
16
Stanford University, a leader in trying to get Congress and the public to understand the importance of the Public Domain have done what I’ve been dreaming of doing for a few months now. They decided to test the doctrine of Fair Use in copyrights by creating the following video. Any Disney fan should be sure to watch. Don’t know what fair use is? Don’t worry, they’ll explain it below.
In the case that the above video should be removed from youtube, download it from their page. If that page should happen to be down, then you can download it from me here.
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Sep
15
Why the TV and Movie Companies have it so wrong
Category: Computers, DRM, Movies, tv | Leave a Comment
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 content on iTunes I can watch it via iTunes or via my iPod. So if I have Linux, Haiku OS, or some other uncommon operating system I can’t watch it. Amazon does them one better and not even Mac users can watch it. If I have some other video jukebox than an iPod, I can’t watch my videos on the go. If I buy it via Amazon, I can’t even put it on my iPod. Both are riddled with DRM so if they decided to stop providing the service, I’m stuck with videos I can’t convert over to some new device. If I want to burn it to DVD to watch on my DVD player, I can’t. Oh yeah, and for some stupid reason, if I don’t live in the USA I can’t watch it until months or even years later.
Now let’s take a look at unauthorized video sources such as bit torrent. I can watch this video on any operating system from Linux to Windows to Mac to Haiku OS and any other OS with the appropriate codecs. I can put the video on anything from a Creative Video player to an iPod video. I can burn it to DVD and watch it this way. I can watch it anywhere in the world. Yet, this is free! Oh yeah, and these videos can be used for Fair Use reasons because their lack of digital restrictions management allows me to embed them into reports, projects, etc
So where did economics breaks down? Isn’t capitalism supposed to work that the more money you pay for something, the more value you get? Shouldn’t the videos I pay money for have MORE freedoms than the ones I can download? Quality used to be a problem, but now that people have HD tuner cards, I don’t even get better quality when I pay for something.
Video content producers need to get their stuff into order if they don’t want to get the point where no one will be willing to pay for their content. For me, that means videos without DRM. Don’t worry, I won’t share it with anyone. I just want to be able to watch it whenever and however I want and one whatever OS or portable player I want.
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Aug
17
That was fast!
Category: DRM, Movies, News | Leave a Comment
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 and it’s broken. I’m waiting…
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