Senate Bill S.978 will shut down video games and streams

The Bill in its full text: here

Techdirt's interpretation of the bill: here

s.978, a bill that is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate, would make it a crime to stream or upload copyrighted works onto sites such as YouTube. The intention of the bill is to prevent works such as TV shows and movies from being uploaded illegally, but with the current broad wording, would cause a tremendous amount of unintended harm.

Minecraft 1.6.4

Minecraft 1.6.4 is the current version of Minecraft as of now. With Minecraft 1.6 came over 100 bug fixes, the addition of hatches, tall grass, dead shrubs in deserts, the elimination of glitched minecart boosting, and the addition of the playable Nether in multiplayer and many other things. Along with the intentional changes, however, came many unintentional bugs. Notch and Mojang attempted to rectify the situation with multiple patches in one day (1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.6.3 and 1.6.4). Unfortunately the patches did not solve everything and several bugs such as: spawning in midair, having partially damaged items break after one use if they had previously been dropped, severe lag in multiplayer, and lighting problems persisted.

Due to the enormity of the bugs Notch will be working on them on Saturday, which he definitely does not have to do, and he should be commended for this. As the game is still in Beta, and being improved for the eventual release in November, bugs can still be expected and should be prepared for. I would advise everyone to make routine backups of the .minecraft folder, before updating. By having a backed up copy of .minecraft, you can revert to the previous version if the newest release is overly bugged. By backing up my files, I was able to, for instance, recover my record from my jukebox, which due to a bug in 1.6 was deleted. I simply deleted 1.6.4, returned to 1.5 with the backed up save, and updated to 1.6.4 again with the intact record.

Minecraft is a great game, but it can be jittery, especially around update times. Though Minecraft can lure you into false sense of security with it being stable most of the time, remember it is still in Beta. Be sure to backup frequently, so that your hours of work and fun are not ruined.

Terraria

I have just begun to check out the game known as Terraria. Though the game has many similarities to Minecraft, the game has its own charm and character. The game is more of an RPG, with a large assortment of monsters, NPCs and loads of craftable items. Though the game is in 2D, as opposed to Minecraft’s 3D, the game is fairly entertaining. I would suggest that anyone who plays the game should go into the game with an open mind, and give the game some time to work it’s magic on you

Minecraft Demo Out

If you haven't tried the awesomeness that is Minecraft yet, you no longer have a valid excuse. PCGamer.com now has a demo of the game available for download. Minecraft is in my opinion one of the greatest games made up to this point in history, as it offers a totally unique, creative experience.

Here is the download link: Minecraft Demo

If you end up buying the game after playing the demo, send me an email and we can play Survival multiplayer sometime. If you happen to join a server and see zartonis ingame, that is of course me.

Minecraft: My World 1 home base tour

This is my home base from my first world in minecraft. Though I constantly add on to it, I decided to post this tour which shows my obsidian fortress atop a mountain. In the video I visit my newly installed hydroponic farm, storage room, living room, and incinerator. To end the video I climb up to the top of my base, which features a lava lighthouse and is built to the absolute maximum build height, and ride my minecart track down to a mob trap and look up at my base.