Technology, Software, Brews, and Opinions

If you haven’t heard yet, the folks at Mojang AB (the makers of Minecraft), are now being brought under suit by Uniloc USA, Inc.

The funny part is, it’s not for the PC desktop version, it’s the Android Minecraft PE.  For something that the particular edition doesn’t do!

In particular, section 12 is where the “infringement” is laid out.

12. Mojang is directly infringing one or more claims of the ’067 patent in this judicial district and elsewhere in Texas, including at least claim 107, without the consent or authorization of Uniloc, by or through making, using, offering for sale, selling and/or importing Android based applications for use on cellular phones and/or tablet devices that require communication with a server to perform a license check to prevent the unauthorized use of said application, including,but not limited to, Mindcraft.

The Android edition has no communication with an authorative server.  The possible “license check” is done via the Google Play Market, so Mojang is definitely not at fault here.

Plus, “Mindcraft” != “Minecraft”.  Just saying.

A new style from the Sierra Nevada and the New Clairvaux Abbey, the Ovila Belgian-style Golden.

Ovila – Golden

From the label:

This abbey ale is a collaboration between Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and the monks, at the Abbey of New Clairvaux.

Belgian inspired golden ales are noted for their devilish personalities, but there is nothing mischievous about this complex ale. It is brilliant golden and layered with notes of summery apple and pear and pepperv spice from the use of a traditional Belgian yeast strain.

A portion of proceeds from this ale goes toward the restoration of the historic Santa Maria de Ovila chapter house on the grounds of the Abbey of New Clairvaux. This medieval building stood for nearly eight centuries in Spain. William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery 1931 and planned use the stones for a castle even grander than his famous San Simeon. Although Hearst’s, plans crumbled. these historic stones will rise again in a California Cistercian abbey.

This was an interesting find in the store.  The bottle comes with a paper label seal over it, stating that the contents are under a high pressure.  And when uncorking it, I could see the reason for the warning, as the cork came out smooth and easy, with little need for force.

Ovila – Golden Seal

Taste wise, my first reaction was a disapproval.  Do not sip this beer.  It goes down much smoother, with a better flavor when not held in the mouth.  The many notes they used in this brew are appropriately balanced, but too long on the tongue, and it’ll go downhill very quickly.

The look is very light, as per the picture, and initial pouring is very heady, due to the carbonation they put into it (again, hence the warning seal).

After all is said and done, an 8.5% ABV, and quite appropriate for Summer.  A good brew all together.

This is a long time coming, as this particular brew is no longer available on the shelf.  However, the Ovila Saisonwas a great way to end the Spring.

Ovila – Saison

From the label:

A collaboration between Sierra Nevada Brewing Co and the monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux, Ovila Abbey Saison brings the centuries-old monastery brewing tradition to America

Ovila Abbey Saison is complex and contemplative-but also refreshingly dry and drinkable. With earthy and spicy aromas, this rustic Saison has note of green grass and a faint citrus tang. The body is light and layered with fruit and spice accents and a dry, peppery finish.

A portion of the proceeds from this ale go toward the restoration of the historic Santa Maria de Oliva chapter house on the grounds of the Abbey of New Clairvaux. This medieval building stood for nearly eight centuries in Spain. William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery in 1931 and planned to use the stones for a castle even grander than his famous San Simeon. Although Hearst’s plan crumbled, these historic stones will rise again in a California Cistercian abbey.

My first tasting of this brew was a bit hasty.  The citrus brews are rarely ever my personal choice, but this one grew on me quickly.  If this ever comes back, I will be investing, and storing for the long-term, as this is a better choice for the Summer months than the Spring, in my opinion, with a 7% ABV.

I admit it, I bought the Collectors Edition of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR to most) when it came out.  I played for the first three months, then everything fell apart; it was yet another MMO.  Something to possibly eat into the great behemoth that World of Warcraft is.

Yesterday, I got wind, via MMO-Champion, that Electronic Arts (EA) was converting SWTOR to a free-to-play limited-trial model, another item similar to WoW (level 15 max), and enticing previous players with a 7-day window to play without having to re-up their subscription.  Tonight, I’m going to see if they’ve made changes and added things that should have been around since the launch.

Yeah.  Nothing’s changed.  At least, from my perspective, at a level 41 Smuggler/Gunslinger, with a level 2 in Legacy.

I find that the new Legacy reward system is lacking for lower level players, as Legacy is a leveling system all on its own.  Mechanics are still the same for combat, companions are still the same for trade skills…

Now you can color your armor to match.  Ooo.  Ahh.

Oh, and plus I’m being forced from my native server of Fa’athra to Drooga’s Pleasure Barge.  Where my character names are being taken by someone else.  As my server is now very VERY lightly populated, I find this odd, as we were a full server when the game launched.  But, as it happens, that’s the way it’s going.

So yeah, just going to pass on this, and realize I bought the CE version, and enjoyed it for a while.

Out of the 4th of July celebrations (including the 15 second “oops” in San Diego), CERN (our universe’s version of the Black Mesa Research Facility) believes they may have found the Higgs Boson!

And then there’s another term that’s floating around for that particular quark characteristic: “God Particle”.  Follow that up with the amazing amount of religious … individuals, claiming that the possible discovery (science is all about test-test-test to prove something exists or is a fact) is a clear sign that their deity exists.  I won’t say which group, as most groups claim the other group is wrong (in most things, even what the skin color was of the guy that was nailed to a tree), and all of them are stating similar “arguments”.

Higgs Boson is a theorized characteristic particle, that exists in what is called the Higgs field, and gives other particles mass.  The problem with figuring this all out, and observing the particle, is that the Higgs mechanism (both the particle and the field) exists for the tiniest fraction of a second.  We’re talking billionths of a second or more.  So CERN runs the Anti-Mass Spectrometer LHC, all day, every day, in hopes to glimpse that brief instant.

Today I watched a MokaFive demo.  Its like a VM, but with separate-able profiles, similar to AppV.  It leverages the local hardware for the VM, uses incremental updating for version changes, and has some nice policy features.

[Devil's Advocate=1]

The “trial” is useless.  It’s operated by the MokaFive team, using their environment, which means you don’t get to join a MokaFive VM to an ActiveDirectory domain, and you can’t get AppV installed at that point.  Their Windows 7 image is the trial (see 30-day) edition, so there are more problems with just that hurdle.

The suggestion of using the Adobe Creative Suite is useless, as the great and mighty Adobe states that any time you put a CS product in a virtualized environment, support is then void as this violates the license.

On a different scale, the Autodesk products CAN be used in a VM, however we have learned from that mistake, and a local installation results in a smoother utilization of the software.

Good ideas, some centralized management, but you’re still running a local VM on a local machine.  Unless you use a USB drive deployment for the VMs, there is very limited mobility (“cloud”) in this product.

MokaFive is basically VMware Player/Fusion with a shimmy and a shake.

[Devil's Advocate=0]

Autodesk, the owners of AutoCAD, Revit, and 3DS Max (plus a lot more than I can list here), offer a particular licensing contract with higher education facilities.  The Master Suite (for Education).

Essentially, it’s got the whole works that you could possibly ever play with, sans a couple packages that not many people use, geared heavily towards CAD, 3D modeling, and animation.  It has just about one of everything, in the general usage, utility sense.

Normally, we get this huge folder of disks, between 40-48 of them.

This year?

It's so small!

Yep.  A USB drive.  64gb, with everything.  Somehow, they managed to fit (with compression) 120gb of data.  Solid metal housing, it’s got a nice heft to it, and has a hole drilled into it for a lanyard.

Admins beware though!  Creating deployments may not work directly off the drive!  You may need to copy the data to a local disk, uncompressed, to create your network deployments!

If you’re just now getting here, you’ve probably been in the trenches like myself.  To the right, you’ll find my BattleTag™ ID, which is currently being used for Diablo 3 (hence the D3 logo).

I find that this is odd, however.  Why did they create BattleTags for D3, when they had the groundwork, and most of the job done, in StarCraft 2?  Why not just integrate what they did in SC2 into D3?  It’s roughly the same system, but apparently more enhanced, and gives the option to change your ID later (in case something goes awry).

My only guess would be that the SC2 system is, in its current form, very specific to the platform, and a rewrite would have to happen, and that the RealID™ system is too intrusive (you have to give people the name of your account, which is your email, which makes everything less safe unless you have an authenticator).

You can still access your RealID friends in D3, so that’s not broken.  But any friends in the SC2 system that are not RealID, you’re outa luck.

This morning, my workplace got a sudden change that was supposed to have happened 12 hours later than it did: The Great Google Migration.

That’s right, all of the IT people and a few others across the campus are now using Google Mail as their email standard. Well, of course with a custom domain, but it’s still the same, right? Save for the restrictions in account control, like your display name, pictures, web history…

But so far, everything is fairly smooth. Mobile devices can connect to the Google accounts, Google Drive can be enabled (the bump up for Google Docs), and most email pointers work right now (the new domain name isn’t ready yet, so you can send, but receiving is broken).

Plus I got to push out Google Chrome to all our IT areas using ConfigMgr (SCCM). I used nearly $3k to get SCCM 2007 training last week, and I’m already putting that training to good use!

There are a number of things that a member of IT should adhere to, and I will openly state that I am slightly guilty of this particular rant today: Providing clear documentation on changes to a system.

This site, the server it is on, was reverted today due to a problem from a third-third party support team.  1&1 is my current host, but the Plesk Panel (made by the Parallels company, the same folks who do the virtualization alternative geared to the Mac OS) had a problem.

Specifically, Plesk has the ability to install software directly on the system, automatically with the variables you feed it (username, password, directory, subdomain, etc…), and bring it up with the database table ready to use.  On-demand/JIT installs.  Useful, similar to Fantastico/Softalicous, but baked directly into the control panel.  That was broken, reporting that there was no command line interpreter, which is apparently a common issue that the solution will not be divulged to the public.

1&1 had to go to the Parallels support team to have this resolved.  Oh, and they did resolve it.  Apparently, I should have my main site PHP handler set to using FastCGI instead of the Apache module.  How does that make sense?  Really, it doesn’t, as most bash commands are common between different *nix OS’s, and if it’s trying to initiate a command via PHP, it should be able to, no matter the handler (see phpShell, a web based bash command tool).

Now, the problem was resolved.  All good, yes?  Nope.

The Parallels person deleted the MySQL database for this site, the main site.  Somehow in all their tests and fixes, they installed WordPress five or more (5+) times.  And in cleaning some previous instances, deleted the database.

That brings me to my point.  If you are going to work on a client’s system, website, or other gadgetry, and it’s not in front of them where they can see what you’re doing, tell them.  Verbally, or in writing.  In some of my own website projects, I’ve added into the core configuration document (the one that most new admins will take a look at to get a clue of what’s going on) what configuration changes I’ve made, warnings about potential breakage if code is changed, and some tips on extending the code.

It’s just good practice.