Blackmoor Vituperative

I love Star Wars (not “Episode 4″ or “A New Hope” — despite what you have been told, that nonsense came later, after Star Wars was a commercial success). I have loved Star Wars since I was a kid. This guy points out some of the problems with the sequels.

How Lucas Ruined Star Wars, and How to Save It

But really, this guy has a way, really the only way, to save Star Wars. Sadly, it’s both unethical and impossible.

So many interesting things are happening. My new classes start on June 1: CCJS 105, Introduction to Criminology, and CMSC 230 Computer Science II. After I finish these two classes, the rest will all be upper-level (300 and 400). I am currently 36 credits away from my Computer Science degree. I have been debating whether to get a minor in Criminology, but that would add six credits to what I still need. I am not certain that it is worth it.

I had a great job interview today, with a small marketing company that helps nonprofit organizations (and, less often, for-profit organizations) organize fund-raising events. They say that I am one of the “lead candidates”; I have a second interview scheduled for next week. I have high hopes for this. Working for a small business, helping make the world a little bit better, and still working in IT is pretty much the trifecta of what I would like to do for a living.

In other news, I picked up all five (yes, five — I was surprised there are this many) Return Of The Living Dead movies on Ebay for $21 including shipping. Not a bad deal! I think that is how I will be spending my Memorial Day weekend. I have seen the first one (which is great), and I think I have seen the third one, but the rest are unknown to me.

And I am still coughing, but much less frequently, and less forcefully, then I was.

In case you missed the Lost series finale, here it is:

As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called “Douglas” to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness!

With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled?

Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

Cory Doctorow, one of a handful of People Who Have A Clue, reports on the recent abomination handed to the USA by the FCC on behalf of the media robber barons and the Digital Rights Mafia:

The FCC has given Hollywood permission to activate the “Selective Output Control” technologies in your set-top box. These are hidden flags that allow the MPAA to deactivate parts of your home theater depending on what you’re watching. And it sucks. As Dan Gillmor notes, “Fans of old TV science fiction will remember the Outer Limits. Given Hollywood’s victory today at the FCC — they’ll be able to reach over the lines and disable functions on your TV — the intro to the show takes on modern relevance.”

The FCC says that they’re doing this because they believe that if they do so, the MPAA will start releasing first-run movies (the ones that are still in theaters) for TV. They say that Hollywood won’t make these movies available unless they get Selectable Output Control because SOC will stop piracy.

This is ridiculous.

First, it’s ridiculous because this can’t ever stop piracy or get first-run movies into your living room. Even with SOC, the studios are not going to release high-value movies that are still in theatrical distribution for viewing in your house, where you could set up a tripod and high-quality camera (along with ideal lighting) in order to make your own camcordered copy and put it online.

Now, the FCC could have solved this by saying that only movies that are in their first theatrical release run can have SOC turned on, but they didn’t, because they knew that the MPAA was lying through its teeth about using SOC to enable the “new business model” of showing you first run movies in your home.

Second, it’s ridiculous because it’s possible in the first place. The FCC (and the candy-ass consumer electronics companies) allowed for Selectable Output Control to be inserted into your devices even though they claimed all along that they would never allow it to be used. Read your Chekhov, people: the gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off in act three. Allowing the MPAA to get SOC in your set-top box but “never planning on using it” is like buying a freezer full of chocolate ice-cream and never planning on eating it.

If the CE companies and FCC wanted to prevent SOC from being used, the best way of doing that would be to not include it in devices in the first place.

Finally, this is ridiculous because of what it’s really for: ensuring that Hollywood gets control of all the features in your home’s devices and computers. Here’s how that works:

• SOC only works with DRM-crippled outputs, like those locked with HDCP, DTLA, etc.
• Now that some content will have SOC on it, every manufacturer will race to add SOC (and hence HDCP and DTLA and so on) to their devices
• The committees that run DTLA and HDCP and other DRM cartels are absolutely in thrall to the MPAA. When I’ve attended DRM committee meetings, I’ve watched the MPAA reps tie the consumer electronics guys in knots, playing them off against each other, bullying them, dirty tricking them
• Putting DTLA or HDCP in your devices isn’t simple: in order to do so, you have to comply with an enormous about of restrictions that the MPAA dreams up and crams into the license agreements (much of these agreements are secret, and not available for regulators or consumer to inspect)
• Ergo: now that the FCC has allowed SOC in devices, all devices will have SOC, and since SOC comes with DRM, and since the studios control DRM licensing, and since they shove all kinds of restrictive crap into DRM licenses, the FCC has essentially just guaranteed that the future of all media will be controlled by Hollywood, to our eternal torment and detriment

Now here’s the really scary part:

I’m not just talking about TVs and set-top boxes here. This stuff is targetted squarely at operating system vendors. Both Apple and Microsoft have enthusiastically signed onto adding DRM to their OSes in order to comply with HDCP, DTLA and other “device-based” DRMs.

In the PC world, compliance with DTLA and HDCP rules isn’t just about what features the OS can have, but what features the video cards, hard-drives, network interfaces, motherboards and drivers can have.

So the FCC has just handed the keys to specify drivers and components for general purpose PCs to the thrashing dinosaurs of Hollywood. Because even your cheapo netbook or homebuilt Linux box relies on components that are manufactured for the gigantic mainstream PC and laptop markets.

Now that the mainstream component market has a new de-facto regulator at the MPAA, watch for all of those components to come with restrictions built in.

The Obama White House has done some good, but its administrative branch is stuffed with Hollywood lawyers who are Democratic Party stalwarts. The FCC has some great tech people on this, but the commissioners’ staffers who wrote this memo are either the most credulous yokels that ever met an MPAA lobbyist, or they’re in the pockets of Big Content.

(from FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future, Boing Boing)

I can’t watch a subtitled movie while eating sushi. I can’t eat sushi without looking at it.

I am (or was) watching The Ghost Of Mae Nak, a Thai horror movie. I haven’t seen many Thai movies. This one is not terrible, but I really do not like the sound of the Thai language. To my American ears, they sound like Martians. “Ack ack ack ack ack. Ack ack ack. Ack ack!” It does not help that the two main characters are named Nak and Mak. I am not kidding.

It’s 21:00. My cat is asleep on the couch, and my sweetheart is asleep in the bedroom. I would be in there, but I am working on a web project for a pet store. Still, there are much worse ways to spend a Sunday evening.

We saw the movie Kick-Ass today. It was not a perfect movie, but I enjoyed it. I prefer to think it takes place in a universe much closer to the one where Peter Parker lives than the one where I live. It would be a little too sad to think it takes place in my world. I mean, either Hit Girl is a sociopath or she’s been so mentally traumatized by her father that she may as well be. Think Dexter, but a whole lot more enthusiastically blood-thirsty (and acrobatic).

Kick-Ass reminded me of another semi-realistic superhero movie we saw recently. We didn’t see this one at a movie theatre: I bought it for two dollars at the thrift store. I’d never heard of it, and it piqued my interest. The movie is called Special. Check it out. Put it in your Netflix queue. It’s a low budget indie movie, but it’s worth watching. Be warned: the DVD cover slobber makes it sound like a comedy. The phrase “laugh out loud funny” is used prominently. This is not a comedy. There are no jokes. I would go so far as to say that not a single “laugh out loud funny” thing happens in the entire movie. It is not a comedy, and in my opinion, it was not intended to be.

According to Fandango, Kristen Stewart may replace Angelina Jolie as the token hot female assassin in ‘Wanted 2′, since Jolie passed on it.

First off, Angelina Jolie’s character died, messily. So how was that even an option? Did her character have a twin?

Second, Kristen Stewart makes Hayden Christensen look like a good actor by comparison. She is not a good actress, and she’s not particularly attractive.

Wanted does not need a sequel. It was a fun movie, it had closure, it’s done.

I love the Godzilla universe. It’s a place where a boardroom full of old men in suits can watch footage of a space station being destroyed by large rocks, and then have one of them comment, “We can only speculate that it was some sort of [...dramatic pause...] huge monster.”

Because in the Godzilla universe, a huge monster is a reasonable guess if you have no idea what actually happened.

I am watching You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley and Luke Wilson. This is pretty funny. I kind of wish we had a family business. It might give us a sense of belonging, of being a part of something. I am glad that it’s not the Polish mob, though.

This week, 50,000 new lawsuits have been filed against downloaders. It’s only going to get worse.”

“The history of copyright and intellectual property rights goes back to the 1700s. The free distribution of copyright works has never been impeded like it is today.”

“Surveillance methods being used are in the same league as those used by the NSA, CIA, MI5, MI6 and China. A real and genuine underground of revolt is brewing.

(from What’s inside your home is yours, except computer files, ZDNet)