My thoughts on copy protection range from "it's not needed" to "waste of my time." I don't understand why electronic content providers feel the need to add copy protection to their products. There hasn't been a copy protection process developed that hasn't been cracked, hacked or broken. 

I can remember back in the old Commodore 64 days there were to copy protection processes that stood out:

1) Bad sectors on disks. This one was a classic. Vendors would purposely damage the floppy disk that held their software. Their program would do a check to see if the disk was damaged before it let you run it. Guess what? Hackers either stripped out the check or told people where to nick their disks.

I love posts like this. It gives me a chance to talk about a couple of things I love:

1) Saving money.

2) Vacation.

We've always made a big deal of taking family vacations. In the last ten years I think we've only missed one year. That week of time together, crossing the US, makes for great bonding.

With the increases in gas prices, though, the summer vacation is taking a back seat in quiet time. The new thing is called a Staycation. A staycation is a vacation where you stay home during your normal summer vacation time. 

This post is mostly for me. I listen to various radio stations during the day, so I wanted one place to capture everything. 

KMOX is St. Louis' largest radio station. At night you can hear them across the country.

971.Talk is a small St. Louis radio station, but they have the number one afternoon show ... Dave Glover.  

I'm one of the minority of TV viewers that actually expect a network to commit to a series for more than one year. For the life of me I can't understand why the network doesn't accept 10 million viewers for a show when they know what will replace it will pull in less.

Anyway, Jericho was a great TV show about a city dealing with life after a nuclear attack on the United States. It was Lostesque in that they used flashbacks from time to time, and they kept questions popping up always. It was different than Lost in that they always answered questions.

Jericho had decent ratings, but CBS decided to cancel it instead of renewing it. Of course, they did the whole mid-season hiatus and changed day and times.

We finally got a Wii a few months back and it's been quit an experience. As I've related before, my best gaming days are behind me. I do enjoy playing games on the PC, but I haven't owned a console since the Sega Genesis. This is the main reason I wanted to buy a Wii. It looked easy and fun. 

The wife surprised the family with a Wii back in March. We got the basic Wii system and we bought an extra wiimote and a nunchuk.

It took all of ten minutes to setup, which is amazing considering the non-standard wireless network we run at home. Everything worked out of the box and we were off playing.

HP is running an internet scavenger hunt where you can win $1000. The scavenger hunt includes 30 photos that assemble into a collage. It's pretty easy to play and for those who are imaginative, it should be a good challenge. 

Someone went ti Europe and used their hp camera to take pictures. The model used was the HP M527 digital camera, which looks like it takes great pictures. In fact, this post has an example of the results of the photo, which is a piece of the puzzle. 

I've been a DirecTV customer for over five years. Prior to joining DIrecTV, I was a cable subscriber and I wasn't too happy. The local cable company was the only choice, so they treated their customers poorly. All that changed with DirecTV. 

Their service is top notch, and any technical issues that have come up were addressed. Outages are almost unheard of. Sure, we experience rain or snow static maybe four times a year, but it is almost always a short term thing.

DirecTV's programming is huge in breadth. We subscribe to all the channels you can get and there is never a time we can go without finding something. 

I still play some of the more popular first person shooters. I played Half Life 2 and Doom 3 when they were released. Sure, it takes me weeks to get through them, but they are very enjoyable.

Recently, I came across a site that records the speed records for videogames. Almost everything is included, first person shooters are featured. It's a great site that not only links to videos of the record breaking performances, but to information on how people did it.

The Half Life 2 speed record is 1 hour and 42 minutes. The enjoyment was a little less, because the player found work arounds so he didn't have to fight much. Things like walking in mid air, super jumps, etc. allowed him to avoid many of the major battles.

Mortal Kombat was the first arcade game I couldn't really master. I loved playing it, but I could never get done the move combinations to really get good at it. Until that point, I could pretty easily master any arcade game.

Mortal Kombat was unique for many reasons, but the coolest reason was the ability to end your fighting round by embarassing your opponent. You could do this one of three ways:

Fatality: This move allows you to kill your opponent in a very violent way.

Animality: This move turns you into an animal that kills your opponent.

One of our guilty pleasures on TV is The OC. The show revolves around a group of people from Orange County, California. We started watching during the first season, kept watching the second season, but really lost interest in the third season. Our viewing habit seems to be what most people did. 

The fourth season of The OC is on and it's better than ever. They've dropped the heavy topics and gone more with a light, breezy type of thing. It works.

Unfortunatley, they've lost their audience. It's a shame since it looks like it'll be canceled.