Rain and Garbage!

Frankly, I have nothing against some cloud cover. In fact I absolutely love it. It's the constant rain I can't stand, that and the garbage floating in the streets now. No, it's not a pretty sight. A month ago, I could overhear conversations in the trains about Mumbai being flooded and how that could never happen here. Heh, look who's quiet now!

The way the Municipal Corporation handles the whole thing is quite systematic (should we be grateful?):
1. Remove muck from stormwater drain and place on road.
2. Let rain water spread muck evenly over road.
3. Wait for summertime.
4. Spend crores of money on scraping muck off road and piling it on the pavement.
5. Wait one month for it to rain in Mumbai.
6. Push muck back in drain.

It's brilliant. Even I admit it, it is a perfect loop. There is absolutely no flaw, no danger of running out of muck because they can always create the muck if they don't have any left after it dries on the road. The only real problem is when the road is the muck. Well, I thought it was a real problem, until I saw how the Corporation handled it. They just pushed the whole road (actually, what was left of it after the Telecom and Water departments got it) into the drain. Sheer Genius! (Yes, that is a capital 'G'.)

By now, I am tempted to capitalise the 'M' in muck and I probably shall if I refer to it any later than here. Then it would be Muck, like Godzilla see, and that's a good analogy because both are Terrors of Crowded Cities.
In any case, the kind of people I hate most are those who take all their garbage and dump it on the pavement. And then to make it worse, they'll try dumping it all in one spot, presumably to attempt to create some garbage sculpture of Mt. Everest (to scale), and this leads to half of the garbage flowing out on the streets. This ,naturally, is very convenient for pedestrians, who enjoy trying to dodge human faeces, dog faeces, cow faeces, and the lower slopes of the garbage mountains. In fact, these obstacles make very sombre-looking people act very lively, which is never uninteresting.

And then of course, there's the mandatory girls-without-umbrellas incident, which must have happened to a helluva lot of people; that is, if you believe the Life Insurance ads on TV. Sometimes I laugh myself senseless at the stupidity of it all. I think I'll go do that now.

College Culturals & Job

In 2 days, our college cultural event for the year starts (each department, and each sub-organisation inside MCC has a separate one too). 3 days it be. Frankly, it's the first college-held culturals I've gone for this year, having missed everything else due to one reason or the other so I am really looking forward to enjoying this one to make up for all the missed chances.

Anyway, I'm still half-heartedly looking for a job because I could use an alternative source of income, my allowance barely covering all my expenses.
One easy way of making money seems to be to do what Tech Support staff generally do.
Format a drive and then charge Rs. 200 for that. Easily done. Now, anyone need their computer fixed?

qRO having trouble.

I've been playing Ragnarok Online for the past one year and a few months and most of that on the private server qRO (short for Quality/Quebec Ragnarok Online). It all started with some changes to the server, followed by char db corruption, followed by a DDoS attack, followed by some more corruption, followed by even more char db corruption, and then came the big hit, one of the best admins was fired for "trying to take over the server. "

I'd like to see the server live and pass through this phase easy but... it seems unlikely and in any case, I lost most of my items in a bit of corruption or loss of security my id.

What this means to me is that I now have a free 3-4 hours a day to do stuff which I used to spend on RO. I am still working on map development for RO, and some mods. I'd like to see which server would like this and go to one which has an atmosphere which is conducive to development.

What is really sad is to see the big change in the people who play this server over the months. People who seemed to be nice and friendly in the beginning seem almost removed from the community and many of them have actually exacerbated this problem.
Even if qRO recovers it would seem that the heart has been torn out of it, with some of the nicest members of the community leaving (for other servers, or just leaving the game itself).

Protect? LIES!!! [SafeDisc and all such]

It all started way back in 1985 with Macrovision's video cassette protection which did not interfere with the picture itself but which confused the recording machine so that VCR-to-VCR copies were not possible.

Then when computers came out software developers started devising ways to protect their software from being copied. That didn't work too well, with various cracker groups destroying copy-protection on the software. But, still, there were those who would buy and install original software, and most companies could still make a lot of money.

However, just a couple of years ago, the developers of copy-protect software hit upon a brilliant idea,

" Why not make the software block CD access of CD-Burners? " [SafeDisc reportedly does this. The software protected by SD won't install while Nero or other burning tools are present on the system]

From there it was a small step to,

" Why not install device drivers on the customer's computer to ensure they can't do anything very well as long as this software is installed? In fact, let's make it so that we don't even tell them about it."

Say hello to Starforce, the next generation in I-will-screw-your-computer utilities.
Not only will it install itself without informing you (either in the EULA or separately) but it won't uninstall either. Games "infected" by this also have their demos "infected".

Significantly, no-cd cracks for the games using StarForce are all over the Internet and Starforce seems to have achieved little piracy-wise. The people who are really being punished are those who buy the game. Interestingly, after being e-mailed about this, Starforce replied with a removal-tool.

That tool is mirrored here .

To get a list of games infected by Starforce goto:
http://www.glop.org/starforce/

Scanning through Gameburnworld's pages too yields a couple of programs that could be used to disinfect your system.

NOTE: These tools may not be able to undo any damage already done.

Sadly, it seems that this copy-protection seems to be interfering with some people's ability to play the game that had the protection. Some of these people have returned the game, others have reformatted (thereby removing burning software, etc... that SF or whatever doesn't like) and many many more have simply opted for a warez version that doesn't do this. How paradoxical, the protection causes a spread of warez versions!

How interesting.

There finally came a day when the wise man awoke. On that day, the gods did tremble and the mortals did laugh, for the wise man had a beard of rice, and the rice was rotten. And when the wise man heard the laughter, he exploded in a fit of rage, and the sky did rain rotten rice upon the people, and they did fear, for the wise man was not just any wise man now, he was the wise rice man. And then the rice man did rise and proclaim unto the people, "Thou shalt not eat my rice anymore, nor shalt though ever eat any rice anymore." and the people did tremble for this was a horrible curse.

Then, there came upon the scene a little boy, and the little boy did not fear because it is a fact that children do not fear, they only wonder. And the little boy was hungry and was far too young to know that the rice was rotten. And the little boy did eat the rice of the rice man's beard and he did relish it though it had a funny taste but taste has never mattered to a hungry child. Now the wise rice man was angry and so he was no longer wise, because no person is ever wise and angry at the same time and the wise man was not an exception to this even though his beard was made of rice.

And now that the rice man was angry he forgot his limits and he forgot his failings and he did try to catch the little boy and that was perhaps not so wise. But he had forgotten that no wise man had ever caught a little boy, and he had forgotten that he had once said that no little boy would ever be caught by a rice man, and so when he leapt at the little boy the little boy jumped away, and he dodged and he jumped and he leaped and the wise man did fail.

Now the people remembered what the wise man had said once when he was still a wise man and not simply a rice man, and they called it to his attention. "Remember your vow", they cried, "Remember your vow or be termed a liar!", and then the wise man, who was now a rice man, did remember his vow, and now HE did fear, for he remembered the vow that he had taken. The rice man cried out in anguish but the people did not stir, the rice man cried for mercy but the people did not move, the rice man exploded and the people did rejoice.

A long time passed and the people did wander the land and did spread and multiply and did expand in width and the day came when they realised that the rice man had said many wise things before his rice had become rotten and they did build a monument to his "Words of Wisdom".