It keeps surprising me how far the software, games, music and movie industry is willing to go in a battle they can never hope to win. While each new copy protection appears to be hacked within a matter of days, the only thing these kind of unasked copy-protecting schemes are achieving is seriously annoying or even causing damage to customers buying the legal version.

The whole Sony rootkit debacle is a good example of this, but now also the anti-software copying software made by the company StarForce is causing controversy. The company is now even threathening to sue the weblog BoingBoing for publicing criticism about this software.

For me all this controversy is reason enough to first check this list before buying a game. Better be safe than sorry and perhaps this way the entertainment industry learns that it is not smart to annoy just those consumers who ARE actually buying legal copies.

Very funny site with animations showing the way films should have ended. My personal favourites are the alternative endings for Lord of the Rings and Star Wars Episode IV.

(Via Flabber)

Very funny to see that every copy protection ever invented is bound to be hacked very soon. Now a very ingenious coder has opened up all versions of the PlayStation Portable firmware for homebrew applications, including the 2.6 firmware I am running on my PSP. Maybe I now should give homebrew a try.

Read further here for more information.

Funny quiz to find out if you are nuts about film.

(Via Flabber)

A great collection of links to crazy Japanese gameshow videos can be found at this page.

(Via Boing Boing)

Like Christmas songs in western stores, apparently they play New Year's Songs in Hong Kong Department stores. The Chinese songs are much funnier though...

(Via Boing Boing)

At this website you can see how big your online ego is. I am quite satisfacted with my score.

(Via Flabber)