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If you bought Corel’s WinDVD, update now, or you won’t be allowed to play future high-definition movies you purchase. The encryption keys packed in with WinDVD were discovered by the public, and were thus blacklisted. This is not a mincing of words. As Corel puts it:

Please be aware that failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD DVD and BD playback being disabled.

Expect many such update necessities in the future, as the encryption keys of more and more software products are discovered. As you are no doubt aware, the playing of purchased high-def movies is strictly illegal on computers that aren’t running the latest versions of Windows, and on any hardware that hasn’t been pre-approved.

These key revocations are necessary in order to stop the unauthorized playing of legally purchased high-def movies, as well as to stop the flow of pirated movies. As you are fully aware, this kind of encryption is so effective that it has yet to stop a single high-def film from appearing on filesharing networks.

One of the things I enjoy doing is going from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article, reading up on random things. Today, I was on the entry for Wolfenstein 3D, a game that pioneered first person shooters in the gaming world. It’s also from the bronze age by gaming industry standards, having been released back in 1992.

The article included a link to Id’s official site on the game. Id was the developer of the game, the guys who made it. They are an extremely successful company, most recently having licensed their impressive Doom 3 engine to the hotly anticipated video game, Quake Wars.

Wolfenstein, is as I indicated, an old game. An old, old, game. Since that time, game play and graphics have improved by leaps and bounds. Kids now make games like Wolfenstein from scratch as an afternoon computer class project. So it came to my surprise then to see that Id wanted to charge $15 to download the game.

Now for anyone that understands gaming dynamics, this seems completely… silly. On Valve’s STEAM service, you can buy Prey for about the same price. Or the original Call of Duty. Or X3. Or a whole sleuth of other games that are exponentially superior in every respect to this piece of history.

This literally has no sale value, other than it’s status as the grand daddy of shooters. To add insult to injury, this game is easily available on abandonware sites. Other publishers (ie. Rockstar) recognize the lack of sale value of their first releases, and thus give them away for free on their website. They use it as a promotional tool for their newer games. While I wouldn’t expect any other publisher to necessarily follow suit, $15 is incredibly overpriced. $2 works. $15? A complete waste. What the hell is Id thinking?

Bob Clark, the director of “A Christmas Story” (one of my favourite movies), passed away Wednesday after his car was hit head on by a drunk driver. His son, at his side inside the vehicle, was also killed.

More here.

I could write about it, but really – just watch it:

Bill O’Reilly Interviewing on Iranian British Capture Situation.

And people consider FOX News an actual news source? What kind of news organization allows even their “opinion” shows to lack such human decency? O’Reilly completely forgoes any rational discussion offered by the guest, instead twisting her words and lashing out direct insults.

This kind of behaviour is absolutely inexcusable.

Either Steve Jobs is a master tactician, or this is the best instance of being at the right place, at the right time, for Apple.

The Apple/EMI deal announced today stipulates that there’ll be new tracks available in the iTunes catalog with no DRM, and twice the bitrate. How anyone would even consider purchasing music encoded at 128kbps had always baffled me. Not everything is glowing, however – that lack of DRM will come at a 30% price increase per track.

Now the consumer rights activists would argue that the removal of DRM should not equate in a price rise. If anything, it reduces the cost by removing the infrastructure necessary to support the DRM platform. To satisfy them, Apple has doubled the bitrate of the songs – inherently increasing their value at virtually no cost. That said, that price hike is only for the single tracks. The cost of an album on iTunes will not change.

EMI wins by getting increased royalty payments. Furthermore, by keeping the cheaper DRMed music in the iTunes catalog, people won’t be turned off by the higher price point of the DRM-less music. They can just go for the restrictive cheaper alternative.

Apple wins because they’re shedding the recent momentum in Europe against the lock-in between the iTunes and the iPod due to their DRM platform. Both Apple and EMI will face little opposition from consumer rights activists for having raised the price, because of Apple’s choice to double the bitrate.

The music listener wins because the music they get is not only at much better quality, but they can now make it work everywhere they want to.

The only ones that might risk getting hurt are proponents of DRM technologies. If EMI becomes succesful on iTunes, it might undermine the case for the use of DRM. Nevertheless, it doesn’t affect the legitimacy of laws surrounding legislative protection of DRM. Those that promote WIPO treaty ratification in Canada won’t lose from this announcement.

This is a positive all around.