Vista’s strong, new antipiracy protections

Mmm.
This is hopeless. I’d like to think that people will boycott the whole damn thing but they won’t, they never do. Corporations dictating law to protect corporations is nothing new but the flagrant smell of it is getting too much to bear.

It’s a 2 second analytical leap to go from “Protecting your video all the way to the output device” to telling you that you can only watch it one time. Not Pause it. Can’t skip the damned commercials. Mustn’t see nudity. Must see graphic violence. Must make a donation to the NRA before being allowed to see the finale.

Ye gods.

They talk about security as if it’s for the users benefit and the sad thing is, people buy into it. The only thing Vista wants to secure is the bottom line for its investors and partnerships. But then, why shouldn’t they? That’s what capitalism is all about.

Photography Forum

Tuesday 0105hrs

For those who are members, the photography forum will soon be moving over to Vanilla and starting a-fresh. I’m looking out for some way of translating the posts from SMF to Vanilla but it doesn’t look hopeful, so it’s quite probably “clean sheet” time, with the old forum’s posts preseved somewhere in XML format for reference.

More updates when I have time to configure and style Vanilla, but it shouldn’t be too far off.

(If you’re wondering what Vanilla is, check it out at [the Vannila Homepage](http://getvanilla.com) )

Upgraded! (yes, honest)

Monday 1531hrs

For the observant, a few changes will already be apparent. Some things are broken and missing. Some things look a little different.

That’s because I’m now running WP1.5 and it was a lot less painful than I’d envisaged. Also the change was so fast I didn’t have to have my site wearing the so-generic-it’s-painful default Kubrick skin. Hurrah!

Please please please contact me immediately if you see anything amiss so I can get on to fixing it as soon as possible.

About time

Thursday 1724hrs

Today I took the first tentative steps towards the impending upgrade to WP 1.5 and all that goes with it. Database backup and some other bits and bobs, mainly trying to get the code in order so nothing is too broken for too long.

The biggest headache is the database, the old one includes all my gallery information along with the WP stuff and upgrading posesses great potential to nuke the lot. Plus I’m also in two minds as to whether they should be extracted into two databases anyway, they probably should be but that causes complications elsewhere because the code I’m dealing with is the first code I ever wrote. And it’s pretty bad.

If anything expodes violently, just hang in there and it’ll get fixed in due course.

I throw this out to you: Something Rotten in Denmark

I throw it out to all the people who keep maintaining that crazy-ass laws and new legislations will keep us safe from the armies of terrorists lurking in the shadows, waiting to steal our daughters and blow up our trains.

I support Greenpeace and what they do and stand for. Does that now get me on a government watch-list? I’m no more likely to blow something up than Ghandi (And lets face it, doing that from beyond the grave would draw applause, not criticism…) and yet, under current “legal” practice I’m probably guilty by association now.

I’ve not yet been made a “Victim of Terrorism”, I don’t think blowing things up is a good, justifiable or nice thing to do, but with the rampant lack of perspective and vision displayed by the electorate means pretty soon there won’t be freedoms left to defend.

Before responding, check what category this post is in. You know how it goes.

Matchbox Carchase

Monday 1554hrs

Genius manifests itself in many forms.

This is one of them.

Introducing the Matchbox Carchase

Continual Revision

Thursday 1613hrs

As minor typos, small bugs and other annoyances are posted in regarding the AMM, I’m fixing them and quietly updating the downloadable files.

Can I just say to people please if you run into a problem, download and install the zipfile from the Sozu website in the software section before panicking :)

The filename won’t have changed, the website won’t have changed but the contents of the zipfile ARE being updated.

Why not go for version numbers you might ask ? I’m not keen on letting bugs build up until we’ve got enough to warrant a “new version”, I’d much rather find it and fix it as soon as it’s reported.


Supporting Amazon Media Manager 1.5

Rice Unravelled

Wednesday 2018hrs

Extra Extra! Rice genome unravelled say the BBC. I wonder if in 40 years time they’ll discover that the billion-odd people eating the stuff will all be doomed to die young from bowel cancer or suchlike?

I just don’t trust it. I’ve looked at sourcecode and thought “Hey, now I can hack in X,Y,Z” and not always, but almost always it’s never that simple and side-effect free. And computer code is many orders of magnitude simpler than biology.