This post goes beyond even my usual amount of geekiness.

“Show Us The Code” is pushing for Steve Ballmer to show the open source world exactly what part of Microsoft’s source code is being used in Linux:

Your repeated claims that Linux violates Microsoft’s intellectual property has come to the attention of the Linux community. Not only that, but it’s been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can’t provide.

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

So far, the support seems to be gathering steam. Let’s hope this one doesn’t fizzle out like previous movements.

For those old enough to remember it, Wing Commander was one of the most revered PC gaming franchise ever. It was a “space combat simulation” (which is an oxymoron on itself, since there are no combat in space yet to be simulated) game which rich and deep storylines. In its last few years, the game was taken to CD-ROM and started filling up with full motion video up to the brim. To the point where gameplay and even some of the story telling eventually suffered.

Electronic Arts acquired Origin, the original maker of the series, somewhere in between. The creator of the game left the company a couple of years after. Since then the franchise has been shelved in vague memories of PC gamers everywhere.

Well, EA resurrected the franchise with this utter piece of crap. So the new generation gamers will know nothing of the greatness that was Wing Commander, but remember this game that shouldn’t even garner $20 at Walmart. Thanks Electronic Arts!

(GASP!) What has EA done to Wing Commander! (via Joystiq)

This is a really old ad from MacAddict way back when (btw, the magazine was recently renamed as well). Time is quite unkind…

The Original Apple Vs. PC Guy Ad

This will raise an interesting “war” of sorts on very different competing platforms. Youtube is all about ease of use and wide-spread adoption, while Joost is pushing the technology envelope to deliver HD-quality content over P2P. If Viacom’s experiment pays off, it could easily spurn more companies to pull their support for Youtube and migrate. We’ll see… we’ll see…

Viacom to Sign Deal with Joost (via Techcrunch)

Not long after my last post.. literally seconds, I saw this cute little news item:

Hackers discover HD DVD and Blu-ray “processing key” — all HD titles now exposed

Enjoy!

A bit after my last massive, wall-of-text post about Vista content protection, Wired’s Monkey Bites blog had a few things to say about it as well:

Vista Month: Welcome To The DRM?

It’s a good, short & concise post that pretty much summarizes all the ideas behind Vista’s new content protection scheme without going into too much details. Although the post itself is relative old news by now (not to say that my post isn’t), the comments following the post is most entertaining.

There are quite a few people who swear they’ll never use Vista. Which will most likely be challenged when they purchase their next machine which will inevitably ship with Vista preinstalled. A few said they would rather switch to Linux, and even fewer said they will switch to MacOS. Completely understandable, since you can get Linux distributions for free, and you would have to pay for a new machine to get MacOS.

The number of people who are willing to defend Microsoft on this point is also surprising. While a few valid counter arguments has been made, including that most of these security features are turned on/off depending on the policy of the content provider; the fact remains that the studio has absolute, revocable control over what we paid for.

As history has shown us, it’s really hard to disable or extend pre-existing devices of any sort. For example, add-on drives to enable extra functions in consoles has never really panned out (even XBox 360’s HD-DVD drive is nothing more…

OMG.. I have no idea how I missed this post. Mainstream publications should publish more of the bizarre & useless gadgets (or malfunctioning demos) that happens at these events. I’m tired of the same ol’ oh-my-god-can-you-see-how-big-that-screen-is. Anyway, here’s the very belated w00tables:

CES 2007: The Wootable Awards

A few weeks ago, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection was published by a software researcher from New Zealand. The paper went into deep discussion on what was, up to that point, completely uncovered topic related to the underlying Windows Vista code to comply with protected content playbacks for next-gen formats (Blu-ray and HD-DVD). Subsequent conversations about this topic flared up across the web, on Security Now! podcast as well as other various TWIT network related podcasts.

Part of me didn’t believe that even Microsoft would go as far as implementing a content protection system that would come at a such detriment to the consumer. So I waited for weeks to see if Microsoft had any sort of public statement and rebuttal against it. Microsoft did eventually comment on the content protection behind Vista, and really couldn’t say much more other than admitting, and putting a good spin on what has been done.

Short blurb about AACS
To understand Windows Vista content protection, we have to first understand the difference between DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Our good ol’ DVD format was made during the adolescence of the digital content era. At the time the movie studios were promised that this complex encryption algorithm would never be cracked. As it turns out, CSS (the method of encryption used on DVD) wasn’t as impervious as we thought. If I recall correctly, the key to decrypting CSS was discovered in one of the software that plays back DVD…

This is just too funny to ignore:
Piracy worked for us, Romania president tells Gates

Although this response could be universally applied to all software, it is hilariously funny that the president of Romania would say this right in front of Bill Gates… and basically thank him for the one issue he hates the most.