Agave victoriae-reginae, from Gloria’s cactus and succulent collection.
Author: Don
“Buy the software …
… but install the crack.”
The purpose of digital rights management is to punish the legitimate user. Shamus and Steven recently noted the use of DRM to enhance your gaming experience. DRM is also a traditional element of music software. Here’s a classic from five years ago: Waves Native Gold Bundle 3.2 featuring PACE Interlok. It’s noteworthy that PACE merely crashed your computer and forced you to reauthorize the software, repeatedly. Sony’s innovations compromise the security of your computer.
Update: from the comments on Shamus’ post:
It is a sorry state of affairs when people trust some anonymous cracker more than they do a legitimate publisher.
New poll
New poll
By a vote of seven to four, readers here declared Dolores Umbridge to be more evil than Bellatrix Lestrange. (Readers of my other weblog declared Umbridge to be the more loathsome, eleven to zero.)
There’s a new poll up in the sidebar now: which is more evil, Microsoft or Sony?
New poll
By a vote of eleven to zero, readers here declared Dolores Umbridge to be more loathsome than Bellatrix Lestrange. I have a new poll up in the sidebar now: which is more evil, Microsoft or Sony?
123/365
Tradescantia.
Man of 400 voices
Sometime in the near future I hope to post some thoughts on Mononoke and Oh! Edo Rocket. Until then, here’s Mel Blanc with David Letterman:
(Via Cartoon Brew.)
122/365
Douglas and Broadway.
121/365
Bidens bipinnata.
Karakuri plus
We’ve had pocket calculators, televisions, helicopters and worse so far in the 1840’s Japan of Oh! Edo Rocket, so why not a giant wooden mecha?
120/365
Inside the cathedral.
Surviving the weekend
• I may be one of the stranger people around (though I think I’m perfectly normal, myself), but I’m not the silliest.
• There is an inverse proportion between the depth of an induhvidual’s political insights and his loquacity. There is similarly an inverse proportion between the distance from his mouth to my ear and the volume at which he proclaims his thoughts.
• There are few, if any, pictures of Narutards among those I took this weekend. There are also very few FMA characters. This was deliberate. There aren’t any Wolfwoods either, though I didn’t originally plan to omit them. However, those blasted crosses kept getting in my way when I framed shots, and I got irritated. Hint to cosplayers: pick characters who don’t carry cumbersome props.
• There were a number of SOS-dan girls, but no Kyon that I saw. There was only one representative from Ouran, and not Haruhi, either. Most of the solar system Sailor Senshi were represented; only Mercury and Pluto were missing. What most surprised me was the number of girls with Chobits ears.
• The music CDs were tucked away in an awkward spot next to the yaoi doujinshi. I’ll freely admit that by some standards I am mildly eccentric, but yaoi fangirls are downright weird and a bit creepy.
* I managed not to spend much money, but I did pick up a few CDs. The soundtrack to Utena is, um, interesting. Much of it is standard film score fare — some orchestral stuff and chamber music, some pop and rock, a bit of new-agey drivel, synths, etc. — a bit better than average but not particularly memorable. But the second half is something else. It’s been compared to the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing with Megadeth, and that’s a fair description.
I also found the soundtrack to Jubei-Chan I, which I’ve been looking for. The score isn’t outstanding, but there are a few pieces I like, and most of them are included, e.g., the full-length version of Bantaro’s theme. There is also this:
• “Raw” format, in which the image as caught by the sensor of a digital camera is initially recorded before being converted to jpeg, is wonderful. The “SafeSync” I ordered so I can use my old strobes with my new camera still hasn’t arrived, and I had to make do with the on-camera flash. It wasn’t up to the job, and most of the jpegs were woefully underexposed. However, I saved most of the images in both jpeg and “nef” formats (“nef” is Nikon’s version of raw), and I was able to salvage every one of the raw images, even when the jpegs were hopeless.
119/365
People stranger than me
… well, maybe not stranger, but definitely sillier.
Here are the rest of the pictures from the anime festival this weekend.
Number of the plushie beast
According to my camera, this is picture #666. Make of it what you will.
I’ve finished formatting all the pictures possibly worth posting. There are 139 of them, though I probably will cull a few. With a little luck, I should get the pages of thumbnails assembled on Wednesday. Then I’ll finally have time to read, watch and write again. Next project: Princess Tutu.
Update: Here they are.
Update 2: Here’s a calendar using my AFW pictures. (25 megabytes.)
118/365
My old twin-lens reflex, still in good working order. I believe this was the first of the Mamiyaflexes with interchangeable lenses, dating from about 1960. The lenses on the camera are 135mm, a mild telephoto length; the set leaning against the camera is 80mm, which is roughly equivalent to 50mm on a 35mm camera. The camera focuses with a bellows that extends surprisingly far, making macro work possible with a “paramender,” a gizmo that raises the camera so that the taking lens is in the position of the focusing lens when you’re ready to snap the picture.
Back in the days of film, 35mm was amazingly flexible and fast, but if image quality was paramount, medium format was what you wanted (or large format, if you were an obsessive type (and yes, I’ve done 4×5 as well)). 120 negatives are huge. They can record far more information than puny 35mm frames, and they are much easier to print. A medium-format black-and-white negative developed in PMK is as much fun as you can have in the darkroom.
Unfortunately, medium format was an order of magnitude more expensive than 35mm. There was no way I could ever afford a new Hasselblad. However, old but useable twin-lens reflexes were available for quite reasonable prices if you looked around a bit.
These old cameras can do excellent work, but their operation is totally manual. You have to set both the aperture and the shutter speed yourself. Consequently, the first accessory you need is a good light meter. The item on the right is a Gossen Luna Pro incident light meter. Used, it cost nearly as much as the camera did, and it was worth it.
