Update: Mass Effect and Spore to drop every 10 day reauthentication, retain rest of DRM
[09 May 2008|05:43pm]
An update to the previous post: both Mass Effect and Spore are dropping the worst part of the DRM, no longer will you have to reauthenticate every 10 days.
In theory you will now be able to play offline (after authenticating during the install), however the remaining onerous terms of the DRM will still be there with their potential to severely harm your ability to play the game you bought and paid for.
While I am glad to see they at least realize that a huge uproar might impact sales, it doesn't solve the other fundamental problems in treating their customers like criminals.
Mass Effect and Spore to treat customers as criminals, include onerous DRM
[07 May 2008|07:50pm]
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Apparently Mass Effect and Spore are going to include DRM that's even worse than the one Bioshock had. It's like they don't want us to send them any money. ( Let us compare the 'legal' version with the pirated copy under the cut... ) It's a damn shame really. Both of these highly anticipated games would have been bought sight unseen by me, and now I'm wondering if I really want to buy them at all. EA? You just threw away two guaranteed sales, I hope you're happy.
Looks like they did it the slow but sure way, by computing all the permutations and then building a decision tree. "It took an average of 50 computers nearly two decades to sift through the 500 billion billion possible draughts positions to come up with the solution."
There are a lot of crappy student films out there, but every so often you come across a gem. This is one of them. Described as "A stop-motion assrace done by 4 students at Seven Hills High School," it's a great send up of racing games like Burnout 3.
What expectation of privacy do you have when police must look for the lock to know its there?
[05 Jun 2007|02:19pm]
There are some interesting opinions being generated on the collision between the 4th amendment, third party consent and the ability of police in the US to search computers without even knowing if it was password protected.
A summary:
The 4th amendment is supposed to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures. Barring a legally valid reason (e.g. one that would get them a warrant), police need permission to start going through your things. If someone else has access to your items (e.g. a shared storage room) then they can legally give police permission to search them.
A complicating factor is when access is protected by a lock. There is, in the eyes of the owner of the items (and US law), a higher expectation of privacy for things protected with a lock. If you don't have the key, you don't have legal access, and thus can't legally give permission to the police to search it.
What if the protected item in question is not physical, but virtual? Like say, data on a computer? And what if the lock (and keys) are also virtual? A recent 10th Circuit ruled that it does indeed fall under the legally recognized higher expectation of privacy.
The above is still relatively straightforward. What's controversial is if it's protected, but police have to explicitly look for the lock? That is to say, can police get permission from someone with legal physical access to your item, to search the protected virtual portion? The 10th Circuit ruling states that yes, they can, if the police reasonably believe the third party has authority to do so. They aren't even legally required to ask the third party if it's password protected. And even if it later discovered that it was indeed protected, the evidence is still valid as long as police met this standard.
Critics of this decision say it allows the police using it to do a "dangerous" end run around the intent of the 4th amendment, bypassing the extra protections granted under law to items protected with a lock.
Vitamin D deficiency: The largest contributing factor to serious cancers?
[28 Apr 2007|03:01pm]
The largest contributing factor to cancer in western societies might just be vitamin D deficiency. The Full article here.
"Cancers and other dis-orders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations."
"What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly."
"A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error."
"Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine — of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin."
"Canadians have drawn the short straw on the world's latitude lottery: From October to March, sunlight is too feeble for vitamin D production. During this time, our bodies draw down stores built by summer sunshine, and whatever is acquired from supplements or diet." "But the amounts from food are minuscule compared to what is needed for cancer prevention and what humans naturally can make in their skin."
US Farm bill: Helps big agribusiness at the expense of poor, the environment, non-US farmers?
[24 Apr 2007|01:06pm]
The NY Times has an interesting article (registration required) that puts forth the notions that the US farm bill promotes obesity inversely proportional to wealth, encourages environmentally unfriendly farming practices, and forces farmers off their land in countries like Mexico through dumping of subsidized overproduction on global markets.
Want to make sure your expensive electronics don't get lost? Pack them with a gun.
[23 Sep 2006|10:32am]
Problem: It's becoming increasingly likely that you'll have to check expensive electronics, as opposed to (relatively securely) carrying them with you on flights. Checked luggage, as you know, is prone to going missing. Especially if it contains something obviously expensive. Observation #1: When checking guns, there are special rules and tracking procedures used to make sure that they do not get lost. Observation #2: Starter pistols are classified as firearms, and require no license to own in the states. Solution: Throw a starter pistol into the case with your electronics, and declare your firearm. Your equipment is far less likely to go wandering. Schneier's post cites one person who has been doing this since 2001, and has yet to lose any equipment.
An ingenious solution to an increasingly irrationally regulated method of travel.
Partly to spread a pretty picture, and partly to test out flickr blogging, I've posted the latest APOD cropped and resized to make it suitable for a desktop wallpaper. NASA photos aren't under copyright, so feel free to resize/redistribute it.
After having spent some time with the demo (enough to complete the main story line, the occupied system side mission and a number of other missions), I like it. It does enough things right to be enjoyable for anyone who liked Freelancer and other games of the genre. All the usual candidates have the demo available for download, but I had the best luck with Filefront.
It's not a straight clone of Freelancer, it does somethings better and others worse, but the base game elements are similar enough that most seem to be calling it Freelancer redux, and I can't disagree.
As I'm a fan of this genre, and good games in this genre are increasingly rare, I encourage you to give the demo a try. If you like it, buy it. It'd be nice to see this become the front runner for a resurgence in this genre. It should be especially worth buying if it ends up being budget priced.
Apparently games such as Maple Story have such penetration among the kids in Korea that not playing, or lagging behind in levels, can lead to ostracization. This leads to the "logical" solution of moms powerleveling their kids' characters, so that they can keep up with their peers and still have time for schoolwork.
Of course, this can lead to problems, as "a mother who did a game for her kid [got into] big trouble with her husband for [becoming fully engrossed] in [the] game."
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