I updated my Linux kernel yesterday. It was an automatic update that went smoothly. Though, when I rebooted, all of a sudden, X wouldn't work and nvidia.ko wouldn't load. I guess that wasn't smoothly. No worries. I quickly recompiled my nvidia driver for Linux... and I got an error. Funny error saying that it couldn't load nvidia.ko. I tried again and made sure to point to my kernel source files which were needed to recompile the nvidia driver. I even looked online for help. And then it dawned on me; I did update my kernel, but I did not update my kernel source files. So when it was recompiling, it was using the old source files. I quickly updated my source files, and a minute later, X was working just fine again.

In other news, Joost now has Newsradio. I am pleased. At first, they only listed one episode. I did a search and found a whole bunch more. I saved them as a Newsradio channel. Joost is still in beta, but they have been making progress. Be sure to click on Channel Catalog to browse their channels and don't be afraid to do a search for what you want to see. Oh, there's also an Adult Swim channel with Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Metalocalypse. Comedy Central, VH1, and the Cartoon Network jumping aboard will more than double Joost's popularity I think.

As usual, if anybody wants a Joost invite, email me.  ¶ 12:31 AM

  There's something new in the Media section. It's called Razorblade Superstar Documentary. Razorblade Superstar is my friend Tommy's band. I put a little clip of a documentary together. Of course, there isn't a documentary about them yet. Click on Media and check it out. Togare makes an appearance at the end.

Togare lived at Tippy Hedren's Shambala Preserve until he passed way in the late 1980's.  ¶ 12:02 PM

  I watched The Omen. No, not the good one. I watched the remake. There is zero reason to ever watch The Omen remake. Even if you are in the movie, there's still no reason. It's flat with no tension, no art direction, nothing. At times, some scenes are just shot for shot like the original. What they should have done is taken the budget, cut it in half, and spent that half digitally restoring the original, maybe even release a HD version.

Speaking of the Devil's Work, I should have a video ready to share in the next few days. I could say a lot about it, but I don't want to give anything away. Technically, it's been the hardest to make with all the problems I had re-encoding the source material for editing. I'll give you a hint about the source material. It's about a guy named Howard and his pet, Togare.  ¶ 1:30 AM

  "If all else fails, go with B from now on. B is the new C," - Professor William Turner  ¶ 1:05 PM

  I beat the game Bully a couple of months ago. Tonight, I felt like playing it again. So, I put it in and ran around, enjoying the Endless Summer. Then the school bell rang, and I had to go to Art Class. Before, I had cleared Art I to IV. Tonight, I finally passed Art V. Either my gaming skills are getting better, or I forget how to do it the wrong way.  ¶ 2:58 AM

  Disneyland in China?

Forget pirating DVDs and software. China has pirated Disneyland. What's really odd is that if you factor in plane tickets and hotel with admission, it's actually slightly cheaper than Disney's Disneyland.  ¶ 1:37 AM

  Neat, KMPlayer/Xine can play Google videos just fine. Yes, I prefer Google videos over YouTube. Why? Well, you can download most Google videos and 99% of the time, they're higher quality than YouTube. I recently upgraded my Mandriva to the spring 2007 release. I'm enjoying it.  ¶ 3:38 AM

  Digg is down. It may be down for a long time or five minutes. Digg had one of those days that everybody kind of knew would happen. There was this hd-dvd encryption code that was leaked by some people trying to get people from decrypting hd-dvds. The story was posted on Digg. Digg talked to their lawyers and decided to pull the stories with the code in it. Well, the Digg community cried Freedom of Speech and reposted the code in thousands of stories. Thousands.

Jay, of Digg, posted this on the Digg Blog:

Hey all,

I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being cracked.

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Digg’s Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.

Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information - and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down.

Thanks for your understanding,

Jay

The story submissions continued anyway. Eventually, Kevin posted this on the blog:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

I'm not sure posting the hd-dvd code counts as Freedom of Speech. Why? Well, would it be Freedom of Speech if I posted a bank vault combination? Maybe that's an unfair comparison. I honestly don't think you should encrypt media anyway. All it does is make it harder for the average user to enjoy something he paid money for. If you read back through my blog, you'll find dozens of posts about my trouble with getting DVDs that I bought to work in Linux. And as the internets and tubes continue to prove to us on a daily basis is that any and all encryption will be cracked and pirates will pirate.

Like I said, I don't think you should encrypt media. But I also don't think people should have put Digg at risk of being shut down. Digg is one of my favorite sites. What people should have done is found legitimate stories to submit that are debates on whether an encryption code is Freedom of Speech or stories about the hassles with encrypted media. Instead, they rallied, some calling it a revolt, and created fake stories just to get the code on the front page of Digg... and second page... and third...  ¶ 1:08 AM