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I’m not the kind of guy who falls for those super-obvious identity theft scams. I live online, I work in IT and I don’t really like sports. I’m pretty careful when it comes plugging my credit card into the internet.
But last month, when I was stuck for rail tickets in Europe, I thought I’d slipped up. Turns out, it was just a “security feature.” Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE: Now available in the iGoogle Theme Directory.
I created an iGoogle theme based on the the Mac OS X colour scheme. This was just a quick project so that my own iGoogle page would look more like the rest of my computer, but I thought others might want it as well. Read the rest of this entry »
This Sunday’s post is late, and short. But if you missed my post earlier this week, A Response to College Christian, you should check it out and join in on the ongoing commentary.
Mario Kart Wii dropped rather quietly a few weeks ago, in the shadow of GTA 4. I hadn’t been hearing much about it, positive or negative, so I wasn’t clamoring to grab a copy. When I finally got around to giving it a go this weekend, the experience was underwhelming. Really? It’s been 5 years since Double Dash and this is all you’ve got for me?
So it’s been just over a week since TorrentFreak announced that Demonoid was back from the dead. A lot of us former users have probably received the announcement email by now. At first, there was a lot of concern that it might be a trap. And why not? When I first heard the news, I was certainly skeptical. The mysterious reemergence of one of the world’s most embattled torrent trackers, under a new admin? Seems a little too good to be true…
But after spending some time looking into it, I’m not worried any more. And here’s why you don’t need to be, either… Read the rest of this entry »
Update: People are still arriving here through Google, this post is now a bit out of date. Demonoid IS back, and it’s most likely legit. Read more about why I think so by clicking this link.
As I was leaving the office today, a coworker called me to say that he’d received an email about everyone’s favourite torrent tracker coming back online. I reported on Demonoid when it went down initially. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t have much of a sweet-tooth, so it took until this afternoon for me to crack open this Easter’s Kinder Surprise Egg. The prizes in those things are always a little bit what-the-fuck, but none of them can hold a candle to the sublime weirdness of VALVO-SAN, the great wise man of the east.
The description that came with Valvo-San says it best, so I encourage you to read it for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
The Guitar Hero story that was making the rounds last week was certainly funny, but it’s also a good jumping-off point to talk about that perpetually exciting topic, intellectual property law.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the story, the gist of it is that Gibson is suing Activision (who publishes Guitar Hero) for infringing on a patent that supposedly protects “simulating a musical performance.“
The fact that a patent like this was ever even granted is ridiculous. What’s next, a patent for “a method of operating muscles in such a way that air is taken into the lungs and oxygenates the blood“? Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not a graphic designer. In fact, I don’t have an aesthetically talented bone in my body. This being said, I really don’t like Arial. Yes, Arial. You know, the font that you see pretty much everywhere - the only one besides Times New Roman anyone ever considers using. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, if we’re being honest, it’s actually his campaign staff that’s following me on Twitter. It’s a smart move though, adding back any followers. It’s interesting just how much a role the internet is playing in the American elections this time around.
LATEST UPDATE (April 2008): People are still arriving here through Google, but this news is out of date. Demonoid is currently up and available, even for Canadian users. For more information about Demonoid’s return and why I think it’s safe, read this post.
UPDATE: Demonoid is, of course, back online for everybody except Canadian users. If you live in Canada, use www.proxy.org for now. I’ll write about my thoughts on the matter later.
Currently (September 25, 7:36pm) Demonoid is still down.
UPDATE:
It is now the morning of September 26 (7:52am) and I checked two major National dailies (the Globe and Mail and the National Post). Neither report anything on Demonoid, making it increasingly unlikely that the downtime has been caused by legal action. While the general public may not be interested in such a story, it doesn’t make sense that the CRIA wouldn’t be claiming victory.
Here’s what’s going on:
- The site is down, but pings still return. This could mean that the site has been firewalled by the ISP, OR it could be temporary network issues.
- TorrentFreak posted a story claiming that the CRIA pressured Demonoid’s Canadian ISP to firewall the site… However, their source is listed as Nu.dl. When I used a translator to read this page, it didn’t quote any confirming sources.
- The Circuit Box has this to say about the CRIA: “Just for the record, the CRIA (despite the name) does NOT represent Canadian artists and the Canadian music industry. It is an AMERICAN association based in Canada to represent the RIAA here.” However, http://www.cria.ca/about.php lists the CRIA as indeed representing Canadian recording artists, and claims to have been formed in 1964 (since before file sharing became a “problem”).
- Neither the CRIA, nor any Canadian media so far have reported anything about Demonoid. (Compare this to the almost immediate claim-of-responsibility from BREIN last time this happened in the Netherlands).
- Operators in the Demonoid IRC channel on P2P-NET deny that they have any information about the downtime. The MOTD reads “SITE IS TEMP OFFLINE” and it’s being bombarded with users asking why. The Circuit Box has posted a transcript of a chat between the TorrentFreak author and a Demonoid staff member, in which the Demonoid staffer claims that the TorrentFreak source was unreliable and denies that the site has been threatened with legal action.
- The sole administrator of Demonoid appears to be someone named Deimos, who ha s yet to appear to make any sort of official statement either in the IRC channel or in response to news articles.
- One previous reader claimed that his friend who works for the US Department of Defense told him that the Israeli government hacked Demonoid. Just thought I’d mention it.
EDIT:
From Casey: “Deimos is not only the sole Administraotr, he is also the owner/creator/overlall god of Demonoid.com.”
Last I tried, (September 24, 12:46pm), I couldn’t access Demonoid.
I get the classic “couldn’t establish a connection” error page.
But when I ping demonoid.com, I don’t seem to have any problems.
I was having problems last night, and I just noticed this morning that the only torrents I have that are getting activity are on other trackers. Has Demonoid fallen prey to a malicious attack, or are they just having plain-old server troubles?
Anyone have info?
UPDATE:
anonymous1: “The CRIAA shut it down”
- This is unconfirmed, but interesting nonetheless.
anonymous2: “the AIPAC and the israeli government hacked their site and shut demonoid down.”
- This doesn’t make any sense… Why would the Israeli government be angry at one of many file sharing websites, especially one that focuses on North American media?
I thought I was done for the day, but I just caught a news story that forced me to don my cape and goggles once again. Jack Thompson, career video game violence alarmist, is in the media spotlight once again. This time, responding to the Virginia Tech tragedy.
In the actual video clip, there are two things that strike me as bizarre. First, Thompson pronounces “ad infinitum” as “odd infinitum.” Second, he repeatedly says that school shooters “train” on violent video games. While I’m more than ready to concede that school shooters, (indeed, probably a lot of violent people), play violent video games, the idea that they can train using these games is ridiculous. Having played a lot of violent video games, and being quite good at many of them, I can tell you that they did not help at all when I shot a rifle at a firing range for the first time.I think that the “violent video game debate” is over-hyped and misunderstood. There’s a bit of straw-man arguing occuring. Your run-of-the-mill adult gamer supports rating systems and restricted sales. When a game is rated “M,” it should only be sold to Mature individuals. When Grand Theft Auto gets into the hands of a 12 year old, it’s not Rockstar’s fault — it’s the fault of the retailers, and more so, of the parents.Additionally, your run-of-the-mill adult gamer openly admits that violent people, often enough, play violent video games.
The fact that violent people play violent video games is about as shocking as the fact that violent people also watch violent movies, or read violent comic books. But we should always remember: correlation does not prove causation. Need I bring up the infamous pirates vs. global warming graph?
Violent video games are not the root cause of school shootings, or even of violence generally. In fact, they probably aren’t even an auxiliary cause. What they may be is a symptom. Not everyone with a mole has cancer, and not everyone with a cough has bronchitis. I feel very confident in predicting that were violent video games ultimately banned, (however that might happen), school shootings would not stop.
These people weren’t seduced by the violent world of video games, they had issues beforehand. In fact, as Kotaku reports (citing an FBI study on school shootings), psychological assessments of the shooters reveal that they were more interested in the images of violence, not the gameplay. i.e., as far as video games go, they were more interested in seeing an image of murder than in actively committing the act of murder. Without video games, these people would have just watched more violent movies, read more violent books, and fantasized more violent fantasies. To single out video games would be unfair.
Most school shooters played violent video games, which makes the games an easy target. If we just got rid of the games, all this nasty school shooting business would stop, right? But most school shooters were also mercilessly bullied, teased and ostracized. Most school shooters had extreme depression or untreated schizophrenia. The underlying social problems are the ones that we need to address, not the existence of violent video games.
Oh, and America, this is a question for you: Why is it so goddamned easy to buy a gun down there?
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