Software: Second Life

I've had an account for quite some time, I don't remember my birthday off the top of my head but it was in mid 2006. I guess I've really not been there from the beginning, but I know one thing is for sure, I am still a n00b. I can admit it, but I will blame my video card.

My tablet was not designed to be a powerhouse gaming computer but Second Life still runs alright on my computer. My computer has a score of 3.1 under Vista for gaming graphics but I have noticed some imporvements in the game since I doubled my RAM to 2 GB. I have a shared graphics memory, up to 256 MB, but I went back down to 128 to try and fix some problems, and the new RAM I installed is of faster speed. The game does crash every now and then. However, my main problem is textures just going to solid black. This makes the game impossible to play because slowly everything blends in together. Luckily, restarting the game fixes the problem. I have been playing with some settings and I might have solved the problem.

Back to the actual game. I don't know if I want to reveal my name in this post, although it would not really matter, I am not online very often. However, I am trying to learn the inner workings of the game. I have listened to several episodes of The Traveling Avatar in hopes of expanding my knowledge about my second life. Some of them were really good. However, it has yet to be seen if it has actually improved my ability to manage my second life.

I really have not done much in the game besides wast the money that was given to me when you make an account. I don't own land, I haven't put my own money into the game (until recently and it was not that much), and I haven't made money. I really do need to get around to learning how to start turning a profit.

One of the things I plan on doing over the next week is making my avatar look more like me and have a little more customization to it. Right now it is almost the default except for a few things I have changed. Overall, I look like a bum. Hopefully, after I spend some time working on it, I will eventually post a picture of my avatar here.

Cassie has spent more time working on her avatar and she looks a lot better than me. Her hair still needs more work but she has been shopping around to solve that. She even has different outfits that all look really good on her avatar. I just have a plain white shirt. Maybe I'll get around to making some custom clothing here during my short break.

I'm glad I finally have some time to relax.

Internet: The only thing more popular than the iPhone is...

a seemingly random string of hex characters, but that is not the entire story.

I posted earlier about Kevin Rose's comment he made on an article. Well, he eventually changed his stance and allowed the HD-DVD encryption key to be posted on Digg. Heck, he even submitted the most popular story which includes the key.

Just as a little explanation according to Jared: in order to get the move off of a HD-DVD (same thing also applies for DVDs and BlueRay, except it has been cracked for DVDs for a while now) is a key to basically "unzip" the movie. That is a bad term to use, but in simple terms the data on the disk is garbage. Without the decryption key it is meaningless. The problem with the system is that the players that consumers buy have this key built in (but well hidden) and it is just a matter of time before people find it. Now, this key alone does nothing, but coupled with software means that the DRM that the MPAA "depends" on is not basically useless.

The official response after everything at Digg went crazy can be seen on Digg's Blog. Their first response was that they were legally required to take down the submitted articles in question. This is when things went crazy. Basically, there is the type of spam you get in your inbox, then there are thousands of angry computer geeks all posting creative ways of having the "illegal number" in an article. At points, it was actually quite funny.

My favorite was definitely the post that linked to the Wikipedia article about IPv6 (which just happens to have the same number of characters as the decryption key). I can't seem to find it on Digg at the moment (and no wonder the amount of diggs in a short period of time must have broke some records). In the comment of the post, more or less, said that a specific IP address was available for use in the system. It doesn't take many guesses to figure out what that IP address was.

After the madness continued for hours, a new blog article was posted on Digg, by Kevin Rose this time, which basically said Digg was going to go down fighting and leave the articles up. This was directly a result of all of the anger over people claiming their accounts were being banned and articles actually disappearing left and right for a while. The decryption key was even included in the title! Kevin's comments are so important I quoted them below:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

Back to the point I was first making, Earlier today this story only had about 18,000 diggs (I say only in jest). The article about the announcement of the iPhone had, and has had for a while, 22,000 some diggs. I just checked a little while ago, and as of the posting of this entry, the article (posted by Kevin) has over 30,000 diggs! (I am sure the 30,000 it has now will seem like a small number as the diggs continue to accumulate.)

This can be seen on Digg's top stories of all time (assuming it has not been a year since I have written this or something tops this event).

Anyone that is observant will notice I did not post the decryption key, nor a picture of the key, nor a URL said key anywhere on my blog (although the key is only 1 click away). I have a feeling the legal fallout from this event is going to be interesting. I am just opting to use my free speech to not post what has been posted, by now, thousands of times. Also, I don't need Google taking down, my still brand new, blog.

Just to geek out a little about this subject. It was interesting using Digg during the event. I would even go as far to say that Digg suffered the Digg Effect! I posted an article, and it did not appear to be on the site at all and I actually had to go to my history to find it. It was in-fact there. Also, many of the stories I dugg did not appear on my profile until many hours after I dugg them. I sincerely hope that Digg releases some technical information about the event. Another observation was, that even on a fast computer, navigating a page with 900 comments is not very fun (or fast).

Ironically, in the end this might prove helpful for Digg. They are now going to receive wide media coverage because of this digital riot. As long as they are not sued out of existence, I think things will be better in the end for the site as a whole.

I'm just glad to see that now every article on the front page (Digg article) is not about the same topic.

:D

Kevin's Response to Digg Taking Down Story

This was really hard to find so I thought I would post it here:

Hi all, just wanted to post about this...
Almost every week we receive cease and desist letters from attorneys. With 6-7,000 new stories being submitted every day, we are bound to link to illegal content from time to time. So we get these notices. It happens.

Today we were notified about a story that linked to intellectual property that is protected under the DMCA. We contacted our attorneys, and they gave us their advice: remove the stories. If we don't, we can be held liable for damages, and by damages I mean enough to shut us down.

This is difficult. We are a small company with handful of employees, and we don't have the resources to fight a battle. I don't want risk a lawsuit that could end up with digg being shut down, so we removed the stories.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the DMCA and any DRM'ed media (including HD-DVD). I'll talk about this in detail on the diggnation episode airing May 12th.

-kevinrose

This was barried on this article.

The whole situation at Digg right now is crazy. Basically, there is no way that the number is going to be lost now. The interesting part will be the lawsuits that follow. While some people think that Digg's actions were not justified, they did consult legal advice and the user response was strong to say the least.

Software: Joost goes live, gets unlimited invites

Following a limited trial run, Joost today announced that it had officially launched its self-titled Internet TV service. While still in late beta, the peer-to-peer TV network is now said to be in full business and is said to have high-profile ads already lined up to appear this month, including segments from Coca-Cola and...

Apparently I have unlimited invites for Joost now, although it still only lists that I have two, and I just installed the latest version. This was definitely exciting enough news for me to post right away!





read more | digg story

UPDATE: Just kidding, apparently Joost has not opened up the system yet as I almost mentioned earlier by saying I still only had two invites. I'll be sure to post on this topic again shortly to clarify the confusion.

One Week Ago

It was now one week ago that I started my Blog. Amazing, I actually have kept it up for a solid week. Who would have thought my attention span would last this long. ;) This will be my 15th published post. I have a few that I have been working on that are not published yet. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I know I don't really have anyone reading my blog yet, but that really doesn't bother me. My blog is still really new and I am trying to find my place on the internet. I have published websites before, but they have always been for a specific organization that I was involved in. This is my first time really putting something out there that revolved around myself.

I guess one of the main things I plan on posting about (and I already have posted several entries about) is technology. Now, that really doesn't narrow down the topic much, does it. Specifically, I'll probably be posting about my interests which range from listening to podcasts to beta testing new software. Also, if I ever get back into it with my classes or just as a hobby, I'll probably be posting a little about computer programming. Maybe I'll eventually even post some code that I have written. I know I typically search the internet for examples on how things are implemented before I experiment on my own. I also have some code that, a long time ago, I developed in PHP that I would like to publish. I currently can write in PHP, Java, C, and C++ although I have written in VB once.

Other things I would like to post about would have to be old projects that I have worked on. I have modified a computer case, built an arcade, and wired the basement of my parent's house for Ethernet. (This is the point where I should mention that Cassie helped me with all of these projects. If I didn't she would probably remind me that she did.) I am sure there are other projects I will be doing in the future that I will post about too.

I also have been a photographer (by hobby) for a few years and would like to post some of my old pictures and definitely take some new ones that I could put up. This is probably a dream though because of the amount of time it would take. Even though summer is here, I have summer classes and I will still be busy.

I also know I will be posting some about just random personal things that come up that I feel so inclined to write about. Also, I'll be sure to talk about Cassie some (especially her blog). I know that this Friday night (May 4) I'll be posting about the Spiderman 3 movie after I get back from watching it. I can't wait for that!

One week down. I guess I'll give another update after a month. I'll put that in my Outlook tasks right now.