Wisdom by Homer ... not the Greek

"Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try" -- Homer Simpson in "Burns' Heir" (1F16)

Back to the Future: Firefox's Download Manager

Another unwanted, unrequested change in Firefox, was the change of the download manager in Firefox 20. All of a sudden, the downloads immediately stops if the internet connection stops, and of course cannot be resumed properly after the connection has been restored .. thanks for nothing. To get back the old UI and behaviour, change the configuration in Firefox (about:config):

• browser.download.useToolkitUI = true

Restart Firefox afterwards and you're good to go.

And of course I am still unhappy about the UI changes and the frequency of the updates, but that's another story.

Interview with Richard Branson

Richard Branson - Chairman of the Virgin Group:

I particularly liked the statement by Branson, that they offer more than the people expect them to do. That's the way to distinguish oneself from the competition.

System Shock 2: No Respawn

"Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"

Perhaps my favourite quote from a computer game.

Just bought System Shock (from 1999!) on Steam. Time to remember some settings which makes the game more enjoyable to me. For all settings check the(?) System Shock page.

• Monster Spawning:
  If you've killed everything in a given area, and you wait around long enough, you'll notice that more monsters are spawned to keep you busy. To minimize respawning, use the configuration variable:
  
• no_spawn
System Shock 2's ecologies look at how many monsters are in a given area. If a defined minimum number of monsters are present, there is a chance that a new monster will spawn. The variable:
• lower_spawn_min n
reduces the defined minimum monster count on all ecologies by n.

• raise_spawn_rand n
lowers the chance of a monster randomly spawning by changing the random chance from 1/i to 1/(i+n).
• Gun degradation
  The config variable:
  • gun_degrade_rate
  is a multiplier for the rate at which your weapons degrade. For example, to completely eliminate weapon degradation & breakage, set the value to 0. To tone it down, set it somewhere between 1 and 0.

Gender neutral names now and then

Now:

• Jordan
• Dakota
• Payton

 Then:

• Chris
• Pat
• Tracy

Disable Auto-Eject Behavior

To disable the auto eject behavior of disk drive (when clicking on the drive in the Windows explorer), you can disable the built-in CD burning settings in Windows by adding/modifying the following registry entry:

• [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoCDBurning"=dword:00000001 

To take effect, you have to log off and then log in again.

Reaper of Souls

I didn't like Diablo III very much, but Blizzard is still the king of making the best render videos for computer games.

Karliene

Just love her songs!

Even more Firefox Shenanigans

Finally being able to upgrade to the latest Firefox version, since some genius finally upgraded Firefox 3 Theme for Firefox 4+. But oh my, new user "enhancements". When opening a new tab, some sort of suggestions page (where to go next) pop up. To remove this "feature", go the Firefox configuration (about:config) and then change the setting:

• browser.newtab.url to about:blank

Put Out The Fire

One of my favourite Queen songs .. with animation!

No News

"Just because it happened, doesn't mean it's news." -- The Wire (Season 5, Episode 10)

I couldn't choose

Step by Step

Probably my favourite tv show of all times. Yes, definitely better than Game of Thrones. Plus good music!

The Rains of Castamere

The TV event of the year .. for sure!

The second video has some serious spoilers .. so don't watch unless you have seen the ninth episode (of the third) season already!

Haka

Je Veux

Du Hast

Redhead Uprising

Pure entertainment!

Let’s go kill them!

"Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let’s go kill them!" -- Tyrion Lannister

There's a beast in every man

Can't wait 'til it starts ...

Digital Copy -- Not Acceptable

Before Christmas, I bought the Prometheus blu-ray disk with came with a digital copy. In January tried to download the so-called digital copy. The download itself was easy and fast to my computer (Windows Vista). The 1.4 GByte large WMV file downloaded in less than 10 minutes. But -- brave new world -- the provided serial code in the box as required (by the Windows Media player) didn't work. After writing an email to the Fox customer support (and answering some questions about the bar-code on the backside of the case, I got an a replacement serial number and everything worked fine, even without downloading the WMV for a second time. But .. what makes the digital copy worthless (immediately and in the long run) are the following several issues:

• The immediate disadvantage is that it lacks any subtitles. As a non-native speaker I like to watch the movie at least for the first time with subtitles for better understanding. No subtitles are definitely not acceptable.
• It is restricted to one audio language only. For me this not an issue, but for others this might be.
• Only the movie is part of the digital, nothing more. Regardless of what the features on the original medium are.
• The last one really is the one restriction, that makes it non-usable for me. The Copy is for use on one non-mobile device (e.g. a computer) and one mobile device only. Which means, the copy is not transferable at all. Once I got a new computer I lose that digital copy, since I cannot transfer it at all to the new computer.

As Wikipedia quoted one source put it in the Digital Copy article), digital copy is an "attempt by the industry to sugar coat DRM". And what makes it worth, the industry always implicates that with "Digital Rights Management", it's always the industries rights, not the consumer rights. If it were truly the consumer's digital rights, then at least two points would be addressed properly:

• the customer would be able to upgrade the product (like it it's possible with software) for a reduced fee. Not being charged the full cost again, e.g. when buying a new copy of the same movie when upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray, or from Blu-ray to the next technology (that's coming up for sure?!
• the files/content would be transferable. You could move the file to another computer/device, and deactivate the use from the old one

Not technically possible you say? Then I challenge you to make it work! You're able to put up new encryption modes for Blu-Rays every few moths, develop new protection every other year .. so why it's only possible to make new restrictions possible, instead of enablements for the paying customers??

To Watch For .. in 2013

Films to watch in 2013 .. or not?! We'll see ..

• Star Trek into Darkness -- 17. May 2013
• Pacific Rim -- 13. Jul. 2013
• Ender's Game -- 01. Nov. 2013
• 47 Ronin -- 25. Dec. 2013
• ..

Iron Baby

Eureka!

Dumb ways to die!

!

Watch for the end