Rubénerd Blog :)

CNET News.com is reporting in an article with another one of their unambiguous URLs that six studios are dissatisfied with the way the Motion Picture Association of America has been going after copyright infringement, so their plan is to call their efforts content protection instead of anti-piracy.

I’ve got an even better term to describe their intentionally misleading activities that will save them horizontal screen real estate on their website: irrelevant.

The succinct intelligence episode!

This could very well be the greatest episode of the Rubenerd Show of all time. Even though Into Your Head has a spiffy new layout, it just can’t compete with the quality and intelligent discourse of this episode.

Download MP3 to listen 1.7MiB

You can also view previous episodes, subscribe via iTunes or another client, stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

In Australia and New Zealand we have something which most of the world does not, though in this case it’s not something to be proud of. Our internet service providers have this fabulous system that serve their customers needs first: bandwidth shaping.

For those lucky enough not to have to put up with this system, bandwidth shaping is a system that restricts how much data you can download (and in some cases upload) per month. And it doesn’t come cheap; for a measly 40GB per month here in Adelaide my sister and I pay just over AU$100. Comparing this to our home connection in Singapore where (according to our router) we download hundreds of gigabytes of data a month for less than SG$80, it’s rather pathetic.

ASIDE: It also doesn’t exactly make a technical person such as myself who has lived overseas and has experienced proper internet want to return to Australia to start a tech related business. Australia is a beautiful place with really good food and an enviable lifestyle, but if I can’t get internet I can rely on, it’s just not a viable option :(

Anyway in anticipation of going back to Singapore over the holidays, my sister and I have been celebrating by burning through a months worth of quota in less than a week. We’ll be out of the country during most of our next 40GB allocated month, so we figure we’ll take advantage of it. We’re both very wild people you see.

I’ve been torrenting all the disc images for the latest beta versions of FreeBSD, Slackware and NetBSD; I’ve been compiling huge ports such as GNOME 2.22 from source; I’ve been downloading the H264 video versions of Cranky Geeks, I’ve been listening to the high quality versions of internet radio… the list just goes on and on!

This graphic was just so terrible I had to include it!

We must be doing something right, because we just got this email from Internode (our ISP). Sorry guys, but we paid a ridiculous sum of money for 40 gigabytes, and by golly we’re gonna download 40 gigabytes!

Dear Internode customer,

This is an automated message [...] We have sent this message in order to assist you to manage your account usage. Your current downloads for the account [...] have exceeded 70% of your download allowance this month. At the time this message was generated, you had downloaded 29630 Mb. Your monthly download allowance is currently 40000 Mb.

No excess usage fees are incurred on this plan; however your download rate will be reduced if you exceed 100% of your download quota before your next rollover date. You do not need to take any action, however if you exceed 90% of your monthly quota we’ll send you another email as a reminder. Once you’ve used 100% of your quota, we will apply ’shaping’ which will reduce the speed of your service until your next rollover date. After 3,000 Mbytes of shaped traffic, additional access constraints may be applied. You have the option of:

• reducing your downloads (eg by disabling peer to peer filesharing or other high download services); or
• purchasing additional data blocks for an instant quota upgrade; or
• upgrading to a plan with a higher monthly quota (though this only takes effect at your next rollover date)

Thank you for using Internode!

I’ll be elaborating more on what I mean by this on the Rubenerd Show, stay tuned. Get it? Stay tuned? It’s an internet radio show? A podcast? Stay… tuned? Hey, I thought it was funny.

For some reason, I’ve always found it harder than most people to suspend disbelief in stories, games and the like. If I read, hear or see something that’s impossible, stupid or unreasonable… it frustrates the hell out of me.

Suspension of disbelief refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief

Case in point, I was browsing a game website to see if anyone had more information about Knetwalk when I saw a screenshot from one of those now infamous Dead or Alive games:

I ask you this right now: why on Earth is she wearing a denim bra, with pockets sewn on it? It makes absolutely… no… friggen… sense! I’ve heard from so many girls about how uncomfortable these contraptions are, so why would you make one out of denim? And put pockets on it? What could you put in those pockets? A mobile phone? An Objective-C Pocket Reference book? I think not!

The suspension of disbelief that I’m apparently supposed to have with this game (ridiculously over-the-top buff men and tiny adolescent girls fighting on equal terms in ridiculous locations with gravity defying moves and super human injury sustaining abilities) is tenuous and irreconcilable enough in my mind as it is even without this blatant pandering to obsessive game players!

And here’s another example from the same game: why would someone in supposedly frigid weather be wearing a heavy, wooly jacket… with a miniskirt? What’s next, are we to believe in summer she walks down a boardwalk in a t-shirt and snow pants? Snow pants!?

It’s cold, good thing I’m rugged up all over!

This makes absolutely… no… sense! Rarely is the question asked: when did computer games become so ridiculous? And I’m absolutely positive there are far more examples than this!

And while we’re talking about O’Reilly Pocket Reference books; don’t get me wrong I think they’re the greatest thing to happen to the computer reference book world and I can claim to own no less than 14 such tomes; but since when is a book which measures 18 by 11 centimetres pocket sized?

A Pocket Reference?

The Rubenerd Blog, always presenting important facts and issues relevant to consumer technology and computer software.