Tuesday, January 7, 2003

DeCSS Author Acquitted -- 1:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Jon Johansen, author of the DeCSS DVD unencrypter, was acquitted of all charges in Norway. The court ruled that there's nothing illegal about playing DVDs that you yourself have purchased. What a novel concept. Here's a snip:

The court ruled there was "no evidence" that either Johansen or others had used the decryption code (called DeCSS) for illegal purposes. Johansen therefore couldn't be convicted on such grounds, nor for acting as an accessory to other alleged illegal activity, wrote judge Irene Sogn in the court's ruling.

Nor, wrote Sogn, was there any evidence that Johansen intended to contribute to illegal copying.

The court determined that it is not illegal to use the DeCSS code to watch DVD films obtained by legal means.

It's nice to see the entertainment industry getting some well-deserved kicks in the teeth. Only they would try to send you to jail for using something you bought. I saw this link on a number of sites.

The Master comments: My biggest complaint with the Entertainment industry is not the fact that they make money; I am offended by their methodology. I am tired to death of albums with 1 good song, and 9 fillers that I absolutely hate. I am tired of having to shell out hundreds of dollors to purchase DVD-playing software, when I should be able to get that for a nominal fee. The RIAA does not deserve control of any form over my viewing or listening habits. And I am tired of being called a thief by the movie industry and the FBI every time I play a movie I own. And I bloody well own enough of them.

Oh, and when are the music companies finally going to lower their CD prices like they were supposed to do years ago after they got busted for price fixing?

New GameBoy Advance -- 12:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Nintendo revealed their new GameBoy Advance which features a lighted screen and rechargeable batteries. I'm not sure why I want one of these, but for some reason I do. Thanks Slashdot via Planet GameCube.

The Master comments: Subliminal messages in the news broadcast?

Monday, January 6, 2003

Welcome to The Haus Mk III! -- 1:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Welcome to the new layout of The Haus! As you will notice from the icons at the bottom, our new layout will validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict and legitimate CSS. This means that those of you with very old browsers (e.g. Netscape 4.x) are going to see a mess. This site has been tested on Netscape 6 and 7, Opera 6.11, Konqueror 3, Mozilla 1.x, and IE5 and 6 in Windows. If you look at the code, you will notice that there are no table tags to be seen! Yep, the layout is all done with pure CSS positioning.

We will now begin the process of converting all our pages over to the new layout. I've already done the commentary page, the gamer dictionary, the reviews page, and one of my reviews so you can see how other pages will look. The rest will take a bit of time, so please bear with us. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to email me. Enjoy!

Almost There . . . -- 11:34 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Master and I have been working feverishly to get our new layout and design online. I've squashed what I believe to be the last of the bugs. Stay tuned . . .

No Old News

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