2012 Election WTF

At least going back and re-selecting actually worked.

In Response To The Whole Mojang Patent Thing

So, recently, Mojang received notice of a patent lawsuit from some company nobody's ever heard of called Uniloc.  Uniloc apparently holds a vaguely worded patent on "an authentication system to prevent unauthorized access to a piece of software".

Think about that.  Think about how much software exists today that phones home in one way or another to make sure you're allowed to be running it.  Use Steam?  There you go, everything you have on Steam phones home.  It happens automatically, true, but it still happens.  Let's see the relatively unknown patent troll take on Valve, and really the entire video game industry.

This whole thing is apparently in reference to the Android version of Minecraft, which the document notifying Mojang of the lawsuit so helpfully calls "Mindcraft".

The other issue here is that this involves a software patent.  Software patents are largely evil.  They have never been used for good, except in the case of the practice of obtaining defensive patents and intentionally not enforcing them, just to prevent someone else from patenting what you've done and then suing you over it.  With regards to software, the whole system is an overglorified competition for FIRST!!!1!1!1111one.  Since software development can happen so much more quickly than anything physical that someone might use a patent to protect, there could very well be multiple teams of people working on ideas that are either identical or close enough to being identical that it doesn't matter.  It essentially becomes a huge competition, the first team to finish it, get it working, and patent it wins.  At this point, all the other teams just spent all that time and money for nothing.

For instance, Microsoft (everyone's favorite monolith of evil) holds a patent on "a system that awards points to the player for completing in-game tasks".  I've actually read the text of this patent, and in it, it quite clearly states some examples from games they didn't make that existed before they filed the patent.  This is better known as "prior art".  Prior art is usually what precludes something from being patented in the first place, as you can't claim you invented it if someone else already did it.  Microsoft should not have been awarded that patent.

Also patented (not sure by whom) is an arrow that points towards your destination in a video game.  You know, like the one used in Crazy Taxi.  That too is bullshit, and should not have been awarded.

Software patents in general should not be awarded.  Patents should only apply to physical, tangible goods.  Not digital goods.  Anything digital can in effect be turned into a number, so this is essentially allowing people to patent numbers.  Can I patent the number 8147 then please?  No.  Why?  Because that would be ridiculous.  Then the maker of any book listing prime numbers would have to pay me royalties to print that one number.

So, Uniloc, if that is your real name, you sir are a patent troll, and you need to GTFO and DIAF.

This happens periodically with physical goods too.  Remember when the PS3 was released?  Just before it was released, some relatively unknown company sued Sony for patent infringement over the vibration motors they use in their controllers.  The result was that the PS3's controller was initially released without vibration motors.  The whole thing was an incredible dick move on the relatively unknown company's part.  Maybe the patent system as a whole needs to be re-examined if it allows for this kind of action.  Even with development of physical goods, many companies like to keep what they're working on a secret until it's complete, which of course means that anyone else developing something identical or similar has absolutely no clue if anyone else is already working on it.

Really? REALLY?

So, CAINE is a student organization at the University of Virginia.  Its website is http://www.desudesudesu.org/.  It has officers, including a treasurer, whose job it is to procure funding from the university so we can have materials for meeting activities as well as expanding our collection.

A few years back, we decided that our website really needed an overhaul.  After weighing our various options we ended up buying hosting and the domain name that we use today.  The main reason was that if we weren't hosted by the university, they had no say in the content of our website and we could be sovereign.

The first thing they took issue with was how we referred to ourselves.  They claimed that saying "UVa Comics and Anime Club" implied that we were affiliated with the university, most likely in an "official endorsement" sense.  They recommended that we change it to "Comics and Anime Club at UVa".  Fine, whatever, they were happy with that, so we changed it and went on with life.

Until yesterday.

Now, apparently, that's not enough.  It's no longer crystal clear that we carry no official endorsement from UVa.  To rectify this, they sent a huge wall of text of legalese that we are to copy, verbatim, onto our "front page".  This is essentially a non-affiliation notice.

Only problem: our "front page" is the forum index.  I imagine they'd want it immediately visible to visitors of the site, which means placing it near the top.  This would push our actual forum content down the page just far enough to confuse new visitors, who don't generally expect a forum to have 5 miles of legalese at the top of the page.  A new visitor is going to take one look at all that legalese, go "ok, whatever", and then look for whatever they actually wanted on the site and effectively ignore it.  So basically, this legalese is for the sole purpose of UVa stroking its giant cock.  Not on my face, thanks.  I'll keep my site clean of such things.

The funny thing is that part of the notice states that they "have no control over" us.  Which is exactly why we have our site hosted by someone other than them in the first place.  So if they have no control over us, then why are they suddenly allowed to dictate content that should appear on our website?

The answer: they're not.  At least, not on my watch.  Good luck, UVa, I'm not putting your jerkoff legalese on my site.  I did, however, change the reference so it says "Comics and Anime Club in Charlottesville".  Let's see Charlottesville send us a notice next.  I'm waiting.  Then I'll take a shit on it and send it back.  In a country that's as extremely litigous as ours is, SOMEONE has to stand up for common sense.

April Fools' Day ja naIKA

So there was going to be an April Fools' Day thing on the CAINE forums.  There really was.  I've been avoiding doing the things that make the site unusable for a day, like in previous years where everything filtered to desu or bacon, or the year I added the Unicode right-to-left marker to all posts to flip them around.

I was going to stick something hilarious up there, but a few days before, our host (the very possibly mis-named Dreamhost) fucked with permissions for everything and I can't edit anything to do anything.  That's why the banner for the Evangelion movie that we watched last Thursday is still up there instead of the one promoting the Escaflowne movie we're doing later this month.  Because I can't edit anything anymore.

We did manage to get in contact with the one of us who actually owns the site and has direct access to everything, and he said he fixed it, but it still isn't working.  I'm trying to communicate that to him, but... yeah.

So basically you'll just have to imagine that there was something incredibly funny on the site all day today.

SOPA and PROTECT IP: Why I fear for the future of the Internet

Pretty much anyone who gets around on the internet has heard of these two bills by now.  These bills, created for the purpose of preventing copyright infringement on the internet, basically set up the framework to allow our government to control what sites we can and can't visit, effectively turning America into China.

Never mind that there's already a system in place for dealing with infringement of copyrights on the internet.  It's called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.  Under that act, any corporate entity who finds one of its copyrights being infringed on the internet simply has to send a takedown notice to the site with the infringement.  That notice has to include the page holding the content and an assertion that the company does indeed own the copyright in question.  If it's ignored or contested, legal action is the next step.

Unfortunately, rights holders, and specifically the American entertainment industry, don't see this as enough.  You see, there's this thing called 'other nations', and they are sovereign, meaning they have different laws than us and aren't subject to our laws.  Generally speaking, a website is subject to the laws of the nation in which that site is hosted, and not subject to the laws of any other nation.

Basically, what it boils down to is one simple thing.  Right now, sites aren't responsible for user-posted content.  This means that if a popular content-hosting site, let's say YouTube, has a user who uploads something that infringes on a copyright, they're not liable for that.  All the copyright holder has to do is send them a notice (or use their Content ID thing), and they'll take down the infringing content.

Now, issues with claims verification aside, the system works as-is.  But the American entertainment industry doesn't think that's enough.  They want sites to be liable for user-posted content.  This presents a very real threat to anyone who hosts a community with forums, no matter how small.  In fact, I'd wager the smaller communities are at a greater risk because copyright holders know they have less resources to fight back.  All it takes is one user posting an infringing link, and bam, your entire site is gone.  I wouldn't put it past the entertainment industry to pose as regular users on sites, post infringing links, and get those sites taken down, either.

The chilling thing is, as I hinted at, that all it takes for any of this to happen is a mere accusation.  You don't get your due process, your opportunity to defend, or anything.  To the government, the entertainment industry is infallible.  You see, entertainment industry, there's this thing called the Constitution of the United States of America.  One of its amendments states that all American citizens have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers.  Setting up a system like this that bypasses that is, well, unconstitutional.

Sadly, these unconstitutional bills will probably pass.  Why is that?  The entertainment industry has money, and that's what drives our government.  Whoever has the most money gets their way.  It's sad, but true.  Also, another reason they will probably pass is because of the general public's ignorance towards all things technology and internet-related.  A third reason is the fact that neither of these bills have been front headline material or even made the evening news, so the general public for the most part doesn't know about them.

I'm worried for a number of reasons that can be derived from the past wall of text.  One, because I am the administrator of a community where any one of the links already posted could theoretically be considered infringing, since we revolve around comics and animation and frequently indulge in fan-translated manga and anime.  Two, because unlike anyone in our government, I actually understand the internet and every word I hear about these bills tells me nothing more than that they are bad for the internet.

The entertainment industry has struggled to come to terms with what the internet lets people do, and has made all kinds of bad decisions while failing miserably at adapting to modern society.  I believe they would try to pin anyone who dissents on the subject of preventing piracy to be a pirate themselves.  Unfortunately for them, it's not their intended result that we dissent against, it's the method they're using to obtain that intended result.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" --Thomas Jefferson

Edits/addenda:

Apparently I forgot to mention that one of the scariest parts of this is that the people in Congress who ultimately make the decision have readily and openly stated on the record that they know nothing about computers or the internet.  They don't understand the implications of this bill, and they're only hearing one side of the issue: the lobbyists' side.  They're not hearing the public outcry against it.

Also, here's a rather comprehensive video by TotalBiscuit on the subject.  He says some things in better ways than I do, and since he's actually speaking rather than typing, he can convey the proper level of emotion to go with his words.

The video that led me to TotalBiscuit's is this episode of Far Lands or Bust.  Kurt discusses the issue for most of the episode and makes a few points that TotalBiscuit doesn't.  They both slip up and name Activision as a supporter when in fact it's EA, though.  Just FYI.

I personally will boycott any company that supports either of these bills.

I could have sworn they disabled this...

In Windows XP Service Pack 2, I could have sworn they disabled the at command.  Having it enabled allows any random user on your computer to escalate themselves to the user SYSTEM, which has absolutely full control over everything and can do things Administrators can't.

I was dicking around and decided to try to escalate to SYSTEM for the lulz.  Imagine my surprise as I went into the command prompt and typed the following:
at \\XT-8147 21:29 /interactive cmd.exe

And then a few seconds later, a command prompt pops up with SYSTEM's priveleges.

I'm running Windows XP Service Pack 3.  It was installed immediately after SP2 was installed, immediately after a virgin install of SP1 from a CD.  Due to Microsoft's infinite wisdom, you have to do it that way (probably not if you get the standalone installer, but it's not like they make that easy to find).  At any rate, I've disabled it now.

The average user might not see the point, or even the necessity, but regardless, if you're still running Windows XP, it's an important thing to have disabled, and disabling it is simple if you have Administrator privileges:

1. In the Control Panel, go into Administrative Tools, and open Services.
2. Scroll down, select Task Scheduler, and double click it.
3. In the dialog that comes up, change Startup type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button.
4. Once that's done, click OK, then close the services window.

There are videos on YouTube showing off this exploit.  You should heed any rational computer expert's advice and never run this command ever except to show people and then reboot to revert back to your regular account (or, you can use it responsibly to go in and disable the vulnerability).  It's more applicable if you're using Windows XP in an environment where you have a restricted account, like possibly at work.  Just for kicks, I tried the same command in my VM of Windows 7, and it specifically gave me an error message saying it wouldn't run it due to a security problem.

Edit: By the way, the "penis" reaction was me trying to click the edit link and missing. lol

What were the chances of this happening anyway?

I just encountered a really weird bug while soloing Landing Bay.