Cav's Place

As of yesterday, I can finally say that I’m more or less back to normal as far as the computer’s concerned. There are still a few programs left to install and some settings that I have to look over again, but I’ll get around to those when I’ll need them, which should be over the next few days. What I won’t be installing at all are the games I don’t see myself getting back to in the next few months, namely Gothic II and Neverwinter Nights, plus of course Gothic 3, which I hadn’t even started, wanting to finish the second one first, if that will ever happen. Morrowind and Battle for Wesnoth aren’t installed yet either, as right now I’m sticking to Fate of the World and Baldur’s Gate, but I don’t rule out another attempt to get back to one or both of those when I’ll either finish one or, far more likely, get stuck in both of these.
It took me quite some time to get here because I kept changing my mind about installing Windows again on the repaired HDD last week, eventually starting it but then changing my mind again and formatting the partition. That left an invalid boot entry which was actually set as the default one, so I installed EasyBCD to get rid of it, but that made me unable to boot at all. A quick repair from the installation disk fixed the problem and everything seemed normal, but on Monday, when I finally started installing it again after the work on the window was done and I could move everything back in place, I found that, probably due to the changes made by EasyBCD, it didn’t see any drives anymore if I booted off the DVD. Over an hour of trying to work it out, another repair and a cleaning and repartitioning of the disk with diskpart, which I used for the first time, later, it finally worked and by the time I went to bed that night I finally had it installed and fully updated and had also managed to add the few programs that I needed right away.
Tuesday I took it easy, only installing a couple more programs and otherwise catching up on what I hadn’t done the day before, then yesterday I triple checked that I had moved everything back to the repaired HDD, used diskpart on the backup one too and actually managed to regain access to the 19 Gb that I previously couldn’t create a partition in normally, copied everything back on it afterwards, set up the daily backup script once again and installed a few more things, including the two games I mentioned above. And today I noticed that I had missed something when I edited the backup script, somehow missing it when I tested it yesterday as well, but now that I also took care of that, I should be good to go. Now let’s see how long this HDD will last…

While I’m writing, I guess I could also mention that I started reading The Last Wish. Didn’t exactly mean to, but I just picked it up on Sunday and I’ll probably finish it later today. Despite it being essentially a collection of short stories which are at least in part inspired by well-known fairy tales, so something I’d normally stay well away from, it has great moments and is actually a pretty good read overall, so I’ll be moving on to Blood of Elves next…

The “Copyright Alert System”, otherwise known as the “six strikes” policy, is about to be launched by media companies and ISPs operating in the United States. That’s not exactly news and certainly no surprise, as the ISPs from there are more than happy to spy on their customers and take action as commanded by the media and software giants voluntarily, without the government or international bodies needing to get seriously involved and push them into it, as it may be the case elsewhere. It is interesting, however, that even they readily admit that “hardcore pirates” may easily avoid detection and either way certainly won’t be stopped by such measures, claiming that the main goal is to “educate the public”… Educate the public by spewing propaganda and then throttling or even blocking access for those with the “audacity” to seek some means of enjoyment or entertainment in these harsh times, in ways that cause no harm and no real, verifiable, loss to anyone.

As the EFF article points out, the problems with the approach are numerous and definitely worth a closer look, yet what troubles me far more is the very idea behind this campaign and the fact that it can so easily get the backing it needs. I mean, it obviously doesn’t follow the usual rules set for legal action, it’s definitely not transparent, there’s a clear conflict of interest, the details are sketchy and allow the system to be used for even more nefarious purposes, and the proper checks and balances are not and are unlikely to ever be implemented, but the bigger problem is that it’s a measure aimed at preserving a terribly outdated status quo which harms the tremendous majority of the population, including many content creators, for nothing but the financial benefit of a select few individuals.
What we should be doing is looking for ways to get past this business model and past the entire copyright system, not enforcing it even more. Of course, the final goal for the entire economic system has to be a resource-based model, at which point electronic copies will certainly have to be seen as what they actually are, namely a resource that is, for practical purposes, limitless and therefore freely available to all in any quantity desired, but until then, if we are to focus solely on the matter at hand, we can also strive for systems like my suggestion for a Content Creators’ Association, and even before that we have crowdfunding and donationware, which are existing concepts that need to be promoted and developed more, as well as law proposals which would legalize the personal, non-commercial use and sharing of content, as long as credit is given to the original authors. As first steps, for the first few years, we could even start separating what may be used, copied and shared without fear of prosecution according to what other means of earning money are available to the creators of said content, and likely also according to how much time passed since the original release.

The bottom line is that there are things to do and ways to do them, none of which have anything to do with such campaigns and the measures, coercive or otherwise, associated with them. The corporations and interest groups that support such actions are gaining momentum, but that only means that we need to find ways to push back even harder against the tide.

Got the repaired HDD yesterday, but due to some issues which I’ll describe below I only installed and checked it today, also copying everything back on it in the process. At least this time around it doesn’t have bad sectors from the very beginning, as the old one had, but with a label that says “certified repaired” on it, I’m not putting too much faith into it lasting too long. It’s not the same one I sent them of course, the serial number is different, but seeing that it’s “repaired” when the model is so known for being faulty either way really doesn’t help one’s confidence.
Didn’t install Windows on it yet, however, because there’s something to be done around the window and I took this opportunity today to move the desk and dad prepared the area and also sprayed where mold had appeared again, in the areas where I hadn’t sprayed when I last did so myself, so the computer wasn’t on for most of the day. Getting that done, along with drivers and updates, is the plan for tomorrow, but then I’ll stop, without also installing any programs, and switch back to this one to test some things, such as making sure I remember exactly what mods I had installed for games and comparing the latest version with the one I had before for some programs, to see whether I actually want to upgrade or not.

And since I mentioned testing newer versions, I’ve been doing that for my antivirus. I was quite sure that I wanted to stick to the 2011 version, but took the opportunity to try the latest one and convinced myself that my original idea was right. It has a couple of interesting new features, but also, as I knew, changed others in ways that I really can’t deal with… And it’s still not stable, despite having been released back in June. A module didn’t make any exceptions to granting access on boot, so you couldn’t run chkdsk on the system partition, and Tuesday they released an update to finally fix that, as well as several other issues, but in the process basically made computers running it unusable unless on-access scanning was disabled.
I did notice that as soon as I rebooted after that update the computer got much slower and there were some weird HDD access patterns, but tried to just deal with it… Until I tried to open the file with my story and I got a blue screen, which obviously made me just about shit myself. A reboot in safe mode with command prompt worked, chkdsk, which then I could at least run, didn’t find anything wrong with the drive, but trying to boot normally just resulted in another blue screen, and then an attempt at a regular safe mode resulted in another automatic reboot. Back in safe mode with command prompt, I took it step by step, disabled and re-enabled the driver listed on the second blue screen, then finally managed to boot normally and do what I still had to do that night, though the system was extremely slow.
Actually left it like that when I went to bed, but woke up after barely three hours and noticed the HDD LED back to the same pattern, and by then I was quite sure I knew it was because of the antivirus, despite what the blue screen had said, so I went to their forums, saw that some people were saying that disabling on-access scanning fixes it for now and did just that. Then I waited for a patch to fix the patch, which they had announced yesterday morning, in the only forum post that actually said something about the problem and didn’t just ask everyone reporting it to run various diagnostics and send them the results, as being at most 24 hours away, so that was why I didn’t put in the new HDD as soon as I got it, wanting to improve my odds of being able to boot again. However, this morning I just said fuck it, if it’s disabled it should work well enough, and did it anyway, because the announced fix only came later, ending up being installed after I turned the computer back on in the evening.

Otherwise, I think this issue gave me the idea for the next post to file under Society, though I can’t say whether I’ll be able to actually write it this weekend or it’ll have to wait for next week, after everything will be back in its place. Still, I absolutely need another couple of posts filed under Society by the end of the year if I’m to manage to stick to that rule for as long as I said I will and not end up needing to drop it even earlier, so you might say that this helped in some way, and at least nothing got damaged in the process, or at least I didn’t notice anything get damaged, so it can be said that all’s well that ends well… Though I sure wish they’d release new versions when they’re actually stable for once, because they seem to release them earlier every year, getting from a September or perhaps even October release date back when I first started using it, in 2004, to June now, but the most nagging issues are still only fixed around November, and unfortunately the patches meant to fix said issues also quite often tend to introduce even worse bugs at first, before new patches released in a haste fix those as well. As you can see, this year was no different.

But enough about that. Now I have to catch up on what I couldn’t do today, tomorrow I have my work cut out for me, after that I’ll see how the weekend plays out and on Monday I gather the last part of the work on the window will be done, so I’ll be getting everything out and moving the desk again, and then probably once again going to check on something I got curious about this week, just like I did today while dad was spraying, considering how badly those vapors messed me up last time.

Oh, that’s a “round” post number, isn’t it? Fitting for one dealing with computer issues.

Finally managed to finish reading Tongues of Serpents today, after letting it sit on my desk for a good month and a half after I started it, and put up a tiny one-paragraph review as well, so at least that should count as doing something. I now see that a seventh book was also released, but the paperback edition is only scheduled to appear next April, so I have time to get mildly excited about it again, after some sections of this sixth book somewhat dampened any slight enthusiasm I might have had.

Otherwise, earlier this week I went to a hypermarket that I hadn’t been to in nearly a year and was quite surprised to find Fate of the World: Tipping Point there, for just 37.90 RON, which is about €8.40 or $10.80. Now I see that the price for it starts at 35 RON on on-line shops, but being so cheap you’d have to pick it up from somewhere if you didn’t want them to add the shipping too, and either way I never even looked for it before. I was certainly curious about it ever since the original version was released, but never thought that something like this would ever be sold here, yet it would appear that an importer thought otherwise and it’s therefore relatively easy to find.
Anyway, even though I said I won’t be doing much of anything while I’m still on this old HDD, I did install and start playing it, only to confirm what all the reviewers were saying, namely that it’s next to impossible to complete anything other than the tutorial. This version includes some additional options and scenarios, but I’m not particularly keen on diving straight into those or on trying the new “easy mode” just to say I got past something, if I’ll manage it even then, so I kept trying, and obviously failing, to beat the original game’s second scenario. Of course, saving the environment is rather easy, but it can’t be done in any nice or ethical way and this game proves that wonderfully, the problem being that, save from a few covert options which have risks of their own, including triggering a loss condition if word gets out that you’re behind them too many times, you’re not offered the means to enforce the measures required to meet those environmental victory conditions. People will refuse to do what’s right on their own and will fight back if somebody tries to pressure or trick them into it, so you’re expected to constantly deal with that annoying reality without having any of the the coercive options required to break this resistance available to you.

But I have some more things to do this evening and tomorrow I’m planning to go out again, so I’d better stop here. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to say that I got that HDD replaced by the time I’ll write the next personal post, so I sure hope it’ll happen before the end of next week, because I’ve been on this old one for quite long enough already…

The subtitle is “A Novel of Temeraire” and it does indeed feel almost like a side-story, being restricted in scope, quite removed from the overall plot and at times appearing to lack in content, the author seeming to struggle for inspiration in a few moments. But at least the dragons are still interesting and the amount of human filth was reduced thanks to their very limited contact with others through a large part of the story, so anyone who liked the series so far certainly shouldn’t shy away from this book either.

Rating: 3/5