The Ziggurat of Doom

Okay. Wrong question.

Holidays are a good excuse to donate to charities and causes, which help us affluent white folk feel like we’re zomgactivists while sipping overpriced lattes and complaining about politics / poor service / lousy sex / etc. The internet makes this easy (both the donating and the complaining) and provides a plethora of wells in which to vomit disposable income. I think of it as part of the new years hangover recovery process.

Absent other ideas, it’s hard to feel bad about supporting wikipedia / wikimedia foundation, IMO.

This is about as preachy / disgustingly self-righteous as I get for the year (not counting spaces v. tabs debates … I wonder if there’s some way I can donate toward making everyone use tabs for indentation), so feel free to condemn / ignore.

What.

The.

Fuck.

This (Cable Surfing Commando) might be an ongoing series, as I continue to explore cable TV (we only had poor people TV when I was a kid). More likely I’ll forget about this idea within the week…

Since rationalism already means rationalism, what do you call a prejudiced attitude toward the rational?

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This is a slightly refined version of a tangent-rant from my anime blog.

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The ACLU has been sounding the alarm about a unique kind of constitutional erosion recently. It’s been the opinion of the US supreme court for a long time now (since the 17-somethings) that the 4th amendment does not apply at the US border, because the US has the right to know what’s coming into and going out of the country.

The interesting news is that the Border Patrol has begun redefining the US border to be a 100-mile strip of land from the border inland. Thus, the Border Patrol has taken it upon themselves to, for example, set up checkpoints on highways in California, where people who have been nowhere near the US border are being stopped and asked about their citizenship.

Technically, according to the ACLU, the Patrol is not allowed to use these as legal enforcement stops, for example to look for drugs in your car without a warrant. The actuality of whether they are doing this or not is much less clear.

There’s some pretty scary statistics involved here, such as the claim that “…fully TWO-THIRDS of the United States’ population lives within this Constitution-free or Constitution-lite Zone” and “Nine of the top 10 largest metropolitan areas as determined by the 2000 census, fall within the Constitution-free Zone. (The only exception is #9, Dallas-Fort Worth. )”

While i think that the ACLU may be a bit alarmist here, there’s no question that this is some funny business.

Rambling under the cut.

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Okay, Nintendo. Let’s have a little chat.

The Wii’s not a bad system. Sure, it renders only in legacy 480p at best, is rife with lame gimmicky minigame collections, has a shortage of quality titles deeply and disturbingly reminiscent of the Game Cube, and has no next-gen media features. But hey, it’s cheap, you won’t find Metroid Prime 3 on any other consoles, and it can be quite a bit of fun at parties. And you can get a bunch of classic console games on it like Super Metroid, DKC2, and Super Mario World. And that’s good times.

But let’s talk online.

Now, I’m not necessarily asking for an Xbox Live scale system here. Sure, you want to keep it casual. You don’t want or need the Gamerscore point-whoring, or the reputation system, or even the leaderboards. Fine.

But in the name of Mario and his seven apostles, this “Friends Code” bullshit needs to burn and die. If I want to play against someone in, to choose a totally random example of a game that I might conceivable want to play against someone in, Smash Bros. Brawl, I need to give them a totally arbitrary 12 digit number. And they have to give me theirs. And if we want to play another, different game, like (to choose another totally random example, the upcoming Mario Kart game), we have to exchange another set of different arbitrary 12 digit numbers.

And if I play against someone online, and they seem like a good guy and I want to play them again in the future, well, too bad, because there’s no friends list. Not that I can tell if they’re worth adding to this nonexistent but desperately-needed feature, because there’s no way to chat.

What the hell, Nintendo? Fucking fix it, because as much fun as Brawl is, I’ll just wait for Super Turbo HD to get my online fighter fix. Xbox Live isn’t perfect, but at least it’s functional.

Says Rudy Giuliani

I am so incredibly furious about this that I cannot even come up with a decent response.

In light of the VT attacks, this is relevant again.

So now that parody equals copyright infringement–that’s right, parody–YouTube has officially sunk even lower. However, the live version (see link) is hilarious.

It looks like we missed this when it first went around, so here’s A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.

Executive Executive Summary
—————————

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

Yea. I’m sticking to XP for as long as possible.

So, I went and saw Mel Gibson’s new movie, Apocalypto, because I had a friend who really wanted to see it. “I heard it’s really violent,” he said.

Short, non-spoilery review: Stab yourself in the eye with a pitchfork. Not only will it be more fun than Apocalypto, it’ll be LESS gory!

Long review after the cut.

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Neverwinter Nights 2 patch 1.03 is available, and has a very long list of patch notes.

This is shit that should have been done before release. But at least it’s here.

Dear Sony: C’mere. I gotta axe you a question.

You’ve r00ted our b0×0rz. Your batteries explode. You’re using dubious legal tactics to shut down grey market importers, keeping people who want to buy your games from getting them.

And now there are reports that the total number of actual PS3s available today is between 150,000 and 200,000. And with one exception, your launch titles either suck unreservedly, or are already out and look and play better on existing consoles.

My question: What wacky, hilarious stunt are you going to come up with next? Also, when you die horribly, can I have your stuff?

Dear Nintendo: Keep on truckin’.

Radley Balko at Reason: Hit & Run speaks with my voice in the matter of the recent election and libertarianism.

Of course, expecting the Democrats to decrease the amount of irritating overgovernance in this country is pretty much like expecting water to run uphill. But given the GOP’s decade-past flip-flop on regulatory interference, let me have my tiny dream that at least one of the parties is willing to actually respect the Bill of Rights.

Though I’ll settle for one that doesn’t outright ignore vast swaths of the Constitution.

Okay. I don’t take back the nice things I said about NWN2, but after playing it for some hours, I need to warn people about it.

When I first started thinking “this UI is kind of clumsy”, I figured I’d get used to it and it’d all be good.

No. It’s a really remarkably terrible UI. Until/unless it’s fixed, I recommend this game only with caution, and only because there aren’t really a lot of single-player RPGs for the PC.

Also, the AI for your companions seems to consist of a very small shell script reading “fire all of my spells at the first sign of trouble, then charge gleefully into melee with whatever I happen to be armed with at the time”. This, at least, I trust the mod community to fix.

Ah, well. At least I have FF12.

Hong Kong grey-market importer of video gaming gear Lik-Sang is closing following a judgement against them in British court.

Sony sued, because Lik-Sang was importing and reselling Japanese PSPs. In light of the precedent-setting judgement by England’s High Court, Lik-Sang has evidently decided to close up shop while they’re still in a position to do refunds, rather than dealing with the now inevitable wave of company-crushing lawsuits.

In related news: Fuck Sony, and their bullshit.

Some people will bitch over any damn thing.

Also hilarious: The comments.

I’m just going to say this once, then I’ll go back to blogging about how wacky Japan is, or some TV show, or whatever.

Is there anything that is not clear about this sentence?

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

I didn’t think so. Literacy is your friend.

Okay, so everyone knows Diebold voting machines suck ass, right? We’ve proved that their code is buggy, their encryption laughable, and their machinery itself subject to tampering.

Every time I think these clowns have hit rock-bottom, they just keep giving me more and more things to laugh at. Would you believe that the key which they lock votes up with, the one item that protects the physical security of this machine, is the same key used in hotel mini-bars, office desk drawers, and jukeboxes? As the blog says “It’s a standard part, and like most standard parts it’s easily purchased on the Internet.”

And the saddest thing: None of the flaws so far have convinced anyone to change a single thing about the machines. This last bit may generate a some notice, but likely the only change asked would be to the lock and key, not the overall broken design…