Category: ‘Writings’

This Week On TechDirt Sept 22 – Oct. 7

October 7, 2011 Posted by zachary

Starting this week, I am going to be doing weekly summaries of what I wrote for TechDirt during the week. It will be a lot easier to keep up with it all. So without much ado here we go:

Microsoft Convinces Yet Another Company to Cough Up ‘Protection’ Money

MIcrosoft managed to get Casio to sign up for a cross licensing deal for their patents. They managed to do so by threatening Casio with patent infringement over some 235 patents they claim Linux infringes. We still don’t know what those patents are but they must be convincing.

Conan O’Brien Has The Inside Scoop On More Netflix Changes

Just a funny video in which the Conan O’Brien rips a new on in Netfilx’s apology for raising prices.

Bethesda Turns Down Quake Fight Over Scrolls Name; Takes Guaranteed Loss By Going To Court

Notch tried to settle this whole trademark dispute with a game of Quake, but Bethesda didn’t want anything to do with it. Now it is going to court. It doesn’t matter if Bethesda wins or loses this case as they have already lost in the eyes of the gaming public.

Gaming Company Sees Massive User & Revenue Growth Because Of Piracy

Unity’s Asian branch has seen tremendous growth over the past year or so basically because of a bunch of Asian game companies pirating their software. They aren’t mad, because revenue is up 258.7%

No Rest For The Productive And Successful; Nintendo Sued Again Over The Wii Remote

Yeah. Nintendo is sued once again for patent infringement. This time from a company called UltimatePointer. They claim to make a product much like the Wii Remote, but it is still in “testing.” Funnily, this patent was filed for the same month Nintendo revealed the Wii to the world.

EA Sues EA Over The EA Trademark

Energy Armor has a logo very similar to the Electronic Arts logo and Electronic Arts is not happy. It doesn’t help matters much that Energy Armor’s product is sports gear, which Electronic Arts has a hand in.

Nintendo Thrilled To Have Game Copy Devices Found Illegal In France

Nintendo got flash carts and other mod chips banned in France. Not a big surprise. What is really frustrating is that Nintendo continues to ignore the greater truth that these chips open up its consoles as customers want. Nintendo would rather fight to keep their consoles locked down.

So that’s it for the week (and some before it). Enjoy. There is plenty more to come.

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Categories: Game Philosophy, Technology, Writings

The Gopher and the Mole: A Modern Fable

April 13, 2011 Posted by zachary

The Gopher and the Mole

The Gopher and The Mole

There once was a gopher and a mole who lived in a hole in the ground. It was a nice hole, provided them the comforts of food and shelter. A pleasant little hole that any burrowing animal would have loved to live in.

One day, the gopher looked around and decided that he was not satisfied with the size of the hole he lived in and began to dig a larger hole. Eventually the mole saw what the gopher was up to and decided that he wanted to increase the size of the hole as well.

Unfortunately, the mole did not agree with the gopher on exactly how they should be digging their hole. After all, they shared the hole and whatever decision one made the other had to live with as well. This disagreement caused much turmoil within the hole and both kept digging and digging.

Many years later, the gopher and the mole were looking at the much larger and deeper hole they had dug. Neither, was satisfied with the work of the other. Nor did they agree with the other on what course of action they should take. So they kept on digging. (more…)

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Categories: Politics and Law, Writings

Hyperlink, an Eulogy

March 2, 2011 Posted by zachary

I wrote this little poem at work today. In the way of back story, I spent a good chunk of the last year working on some improvements to the custom CMS system to make it easier for larger websites to enter url hyperlinks into pages. Some sites were so large that the editor we used would crash when trying to load all the pages in their site. This past week, I was told that all efforts I put into this project have gone to waste and I had to revert all my changes. Since I poured my heart and soul into developing this, I felt I would put some heart and soul into burying it as well.

So here it is,

Hyperlink, an Eulogy

What life had seen to be so sweet
was tossed and torn upon its feet.
With hope and love it held on strong,
but fear and pain it suffered long.

With heavy heart we watched it lay
its face and heart fade to gray.
We look upon the plug of life
and ready to pull with much strife.

It gasps and sprawls with heavy breath,
as it succumbs to torturous death.
We turn away from the grief and pain,
that crashes and pours like heavy rain.

Its memory and life from memory fade,
as work carries on by the spade.
Whatever came from this work and toil,
will never see life and enjoy the spoil.

UPDATE: The Project Manager who oversaw this project read this poem this morning. I had put it in the update notes of the task so it took her a day to see it. She came over to my desk and told me I was nuts. I am glad she liked it.

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