Interesting Stuff

It appears that Sony and First 4 Internet have attempted (rather poorly) to defend themselves over the rootkit issue. That doesn’t change the fact that this stuff isn’t mentioned in the EULA and is still nearly impossible to remove. I’m going to be quite surprised if this doesn’t turn into some kind of class-action lawsuit. It’s absolutely despicable.

So, with the Fellowship application hanging over my head, I’ve got ridiculous amounts of work, and I’m barely sleeping. So guess what I do? That’s right. I install Bridge Base Online through WINE. It’s amazing! I have to get more time, a regular partner (perhaps Carl and I could play some more, even though he’s in Cambridge for a year…), and play. In the meantime, I kibitzed what are apparently some of the world’s greatest players, including Jeff Hand who became the World Master of the World Bridge Federation about the time I was born. In particular, I saw one incredible deal:

East opened 2 Clubs, showing not necessarily clubs, but a damn good hand (I play 22+ HCP or the first 9 tricks, but this person apparently plays it a little lighter). South overcalled 3 Clubs to show a weak hand with long clubs and interfere with the partnership that had the majority of the points. East cuebid 4 Clubs to show a club void, support for any other suit, and game-going values. North, seeing a 12-card fit and a side suit to run, jumped to grand slam. West justifiably doubled, since North/South could have at most 16-ish points between them. A spade lead would have set the contract, but West lead a heart (which makes more sense than a spade from West’s perspective), and the contract was cold. Declarer ruffed the opening lead, drew trump, cashed the ace of diamonds and ruffed a low diamond. When the King fell, declarer could run the minor suits to take all 13 tricks. It was really incredible to see this come up randomly and then watch 4 world-class players handle it.

Right. Back to my essays… :-P

By the way, Paris is still burning…

First, the news:

The big story at the moment is that Sony installs rootkits on computers when you use their DRM’ed CDs. This was first discovered here but was confirmed here. This has really been all over the internet. The basic idea is that rootkits are small programs that are designed to hide their own presence and the presence of other programs from everyone else on a machine. They are mainly used by crackers to keep people from noticing that they have malicious software controlling their computers. Sony, however, seems to think it needs to hide their DRM software in a similar way. Moreover, when you try to remove this, it messes up the drivers for your CD-ROM. It also makes it easier for actual crackers to hide their software. Truly nasty stuff coming from such a public company.

We also have our usual scandals going on in the US (“Scooter” Libby is pleading Not Guilty), Canada (the Liberal Party has apparently been having a financial scandal involving kickbacks to certain companies, and almost everyone except Prime Minister Paul Martin seems to be involved), and the UK (David Blunkett resigned again over poor business practices, and his unpopularity is again rubbing off onto Tony Blair).

Now for me:

Again, boo NSF Fellowship essays! the plan is to just work through this weekend on them. However, once they’re finished, I have to study for the CS GRE and figure out the bus/subway system again (is anyone going to Cal State – L.A. on November 12? Can I get a ride?). I’m also now 3 weeks behind on my Algorithms grading, and it would be nice to get caught up on that before the end of the semester. Argh! Too much stuff! I have to make next semester easier. In the meantime, I fear you won’t hear from me again for at least a week…

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination amid conservative attacks, Bush has nominated Samual Alito to be Justice O’Conner’s replacement on the Supreme Court. He appears to be about as conservative as Scalia. One very interesting point that this article brings up is that the conservatives have continually requested the due process of confirmation followed by an up-or-down vote to confirm justices, yet that is exactly what they avoided with Miers. We shall see how this plays out.

As Special Prosecutor Patcrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation draws to a close, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been charged with a number of crimes, including obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI, and lying under oath in front of a grand jury. Karl Rove, however, has not yet been charged, and it is unclear if he ever will be. Unfortunately, most of the details that Fitzgerald uncovered are not yet (ever?) available to the public.

First off, I could really go for a cold placenta sandwich right now.

Having said that, you should all know about a guy named Jack Thompson. He’s been saying for years that video games promote violence in children. He calls many games “murder simulators” and appears to be trying to get stricter regulation of the industry. He has attacked the Grand Theft Auto series as well as Bully and Manhunt for promoting violence. He has even claimed that since The Sims 2 has an unofficial patch which makes characters appear naked, it should be banned for nudity and pedophilia. This alarmist rhetoric has brought him to the limelight, and many television shows have interviewed him. However, by and large, he was ignored.

Recently, however, things have begun to change. He recently wrote an open letter called A Modest Proposal, in which he said he would donate $10,000 to charity if a video game company created a game in which a man whose family was killed by gamers gets his revenge by killing the video game industry. It just so happened that such a mod of Grand Theft Auto was created a week earlier, in which you play as Jack Thompson going on just such a rampage. In response to this, however, Thompson claimed that his proposal was satire, and he had no intentions of supporting such a game or donating money to charity. However, the makers of gaming webcomic Penny Arcade donated $10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association Foundation on Thompson’s behalf. Thompson seems to have responded to this by attempting to get the Seatle Police Department to arrest the Penny Arcade people, and to have responded to other gestures of goodwill with a flurry of hollow lawsuit threats (he’s a lawyer). Moreover, the National Institute on Media and the Family, a fellow anti-video games organization has distanced themselves from him. In response, Thompson has admonished them for not going as far as he appears to be going.

The thing that gets me is that the man is clearly nuts, yet the mainstream media seems to regard him as fairly rational (for instance, he was on CNN today). He is supposedly a lawyer, but I have not yet seen him pen any well-composed writing (this is regardless of content; he can’t seem to make eloquent sentences, let alone valid arguments), despite reading his Proposal, his responses to the NIoMatF, Penny Arcade, VG Cats, and the SPD.

The truth is that the vast majority of gamers do not turn out to be psychotic killers, but instead normal people. The vast majority of video games are nowhere close to the “murder simulators” he raves about (Katamari Damacy, Sim City, Animal Crossing, and Tetris leap to mind, not to mention games with violence that could not be construed as realistic, such as any RPG, any roguelike game, Smash Brothers, any Mario game, etc). The vast majority of the responsibility to keep “Mature”-rated video games out of the hands of children lies with their parents, rather than any two-bit lawyer trying to impose his will on Florida.

I hope the people will wake up and come to their senses soon, before men like this acquire even more control over the policies in this country.

I know I should have posted this several days ago. I’m not really on the ball right now, so you’ll have to make do.

eBay/PayPal bought Verisign! I suspect that this will be a good thing – if you’re going to have a company that specializes in e-commerce (and does it well), you might as well have it specialize in web security too. Let’s hope that few of the Verisign policies change because of this…Edit: Perhaps PayPal isn’t as great as I thought it was.

On an unrelated note, Kyrgyzstan has given the US the go-ahead to use their bases for even more aid and bombing runs into Afghanistan. You may recall that around the time that school started, the Uzbekistani parliament unanimously voted to kick the US off its air bases, and the US has been looking for another place to launch missions from. The planes will have to fly through Tajikistani airspace, but that shouldn’t really be a problem. I’m not quite sure why Kyrgyzstan did this, except possibly that they needed the money. However, I’ve never really thought of the country as being particularly poor. Any insights?

Google “(your name) needs”

Alan needs a DLL guru
Alan needs updating
Alan needs a good run in midfield so he can gain experience against good players
Alan needs to explain why China buying 10000000 barrels of oil on the open market affects the price of oil
Careful and sensitive time with Alan needs to occur, and Amanda’s support could be invaluable
Alan needs to ditch the corny pictures
Alan needs to find a new vocalist before anything else

I for one found this rather amusing.

Stanford has narrowly beaten both Carnegie Mellon teams to win the DARPA Grand Challenge. Nifty!

There was an incredibly huge earthquake in the Pakistan/India area. Thousands are already dead.