01.31.06
Posted in Social Media at 12:18 pm by
Apparently while Sony was screwing its CD customers over with its buggy and hole opening Digital Rights Management (DRM) there was a software called Starforce that did the same to game buyers.
Starforce is installed with a slew of major titles and is supposed to keep gamers from copying the games they purchased. However, due to some incredibly evil programming, the damage wrecked on a PC is shocking:
under Windows XP, if packets are lost during the reading or writing of a disk, XP interprets this as an error and steps the IDE speed down. Eventually it will revert to 16bit compatibility mode rendering a CD/DVD writer virtually unusable. In some circumstances certain drives cannot cope with this mode and it results in physical hardware failure (Most commonly in multiformat CD/DVD writer drives). A sure sign of this step down occurring is that the burn speeds will get slower and slower (no matter what speed you select to burn at). Starforce, on a regular basis, triggers this silent step down. Until it reaches the latter stages most people do not even realise it is happening.
Moreover, the Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges. Thus, any virus or trojan can get OS privileges and totally control your system. Since Windows 2000, the Windows line security and stability got enhanced by separating those privileges, but with the Starforce drivers, the old system holes and instabilities are back and any program (or virus) can reach the core of your system by using the Starforce drivers as a backdoor.
The call to boycott Starforce has an official site. Of course the company behind Starforce claims that those experiencing problems are beginning level hackers and the company takes no responsibility:
And our technical support received zero feedback from people who had to totally rebuild their computers because of StarForce drivers. According to our research those of users that do run into compatibility problems are beginner-level-hackers that try to go around our protection system.
I’ve got a theory about the kind of developer who creates this kind of software but I’d like to hear other’s ideas – what kind of person do you think creates this kind of stuff?
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Posted in Social Media at 12:07 pm by
1UP has a very interesting article on the past and present of game digital delivery. Whereas the music and movie industries are still trying to suss out a position in the digital space the game industry is moving ahead full force. Recent outlets like Valve’s Steam (for direct-download PC titles) and Xbox360 Live’s Arcade (direct-to-console purchases) are changing game distribution (two developments which make me wonder if the people behind things like Manifesto Games and Infinium Labs have missed the boat).
What really warmed this old gamer’s heart, however, was this news:
After Geometry Wars, the most successful Arcade titles are classic games such as Gauntlet and Joust, and Peter Moore confirmed in his CES 2006 speech that Capcom would make the original Street Fighter II arcade game available on XBL Arcade.
That last is an interesting example not just for its proof that older titles can drive digital sales — something Nintendo should be relieved to hear as it prepares digital delivery system of its own 20-year catalogue via the Revolution…
By seperating game distribution from having to compete for physical shelf space old games, indie games, and episodic games are all able to exist and flourish on their own merits. The dismissal of packaging is freeing all kinds of niche products and small developers to develop product.
Does anyone here have the Xbox 360? How do you like it? Have you bought anything off the arcade yet?
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Posted in Social Media at 11:47 am by
I use Wikipedia on nearly a daily basis; I find the info there rich, in-depth, and incredibly timely. There are issues with having entries that anyone can edit. Apparently some of those issues have to do with petty name calling by Congressional represenatives. The incredibly childish antics come to us by way of CNet:
The latest episode appeared last week in the form of a report that aides to Rep. Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, deleted references to his broken term-limits pledge and massive campaign war chest on Wikipedia.
Then the trusty editors at Wikipedia got together and compiled a list of over 1,000 edits made by Internet addresses allocated to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The IP address subsequently was blocked and unblocked.
An extensive analysis reveals how juvenile official Washington secretly is, behind the mind-numbingly serious talk of public policy.
One edit listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for “douche.” Another said of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma) that: “Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag.”
Those are the kinds of upstanding people that we’ve elected to congress (while I secretly find joy in thinking senators are sitting around and making edits against their ideological foes, my guess is that these are disgruntled staffers making the call here… I would expect most representatives would sadly be lost when placed in front of a Wiki). Douche-bags. 
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Posted in Social Media at 11:40 am by
CNet has a DRM Issue Primer for anyone who wants to come quickly up to speed. The usual arguments are bandied about and both sides seem to be talking past each other. The pro-DRM people trot out the tired line that they ‘believe that creative people should be compensated for their work’. Is there anyone who doesn’t think talented people should be able to make a living at what they do? Do they really think those concerned with allowing corporations broad control over things like fair use means that we’re anti-artist?
And of course, there’s the talking point I like to trumpet, here made by legal studies professor Dan Hunter:
To Hunter, the real cost of DRM schemes is that they keep content out of the hands of future generations. “DRM locks up content that would otherwise be reused.” While it’s correct to think that those who create content “should get a return on investment, the trouble with (DRM) is that it doesn’t work and never will because it cuts off reuse that happens naturally.”
He compares the current approach to DRM to a hypothetical example involving a book written in 1576. Since the book doesn’t have DRM and is under fair use, Hunter can go to the University of Pennsylvania’s library and read it. “If that same book had DRM, I wouldn’t be able to read it now. The person who created the content and the technology protecting it are dead. The standards would be unrecognizable” and therefore the content would be lost, he says. “Content owners should make money, but they need to come up with a way that allows reuse in 20 to 30 years.”
So often the argument, as the article does, devolves into pirate verses anti-pirate when DRM encompasses so many issues – what does ‘ownership’ of a digital file entitle you to do with it? Is copying for different device formats reasonable if you own those different devices and wish to enjoy your media on all of them? What happens to second-hand industries when media files never fade away? When parents begin giving their children copies of their personal digital archives? Is there such a thing as a secondary market (second-hand shop) for digital media? If I buy a digital track but then decide I don’t like it can I return it for a refund? If I play a song out loud but those nearby capture it with uber cool cell-phone/iPod/blackberry/watch recorders have I aided a crime?
Piracy is still a big deal. But these issues, and more, need to be dealt with going forward. It’s time for the next round of higher level discussion.
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Posted in miscellaneous at 10:53 am by
During a rather wretched bout of insomnia last night I had the opportunity to finally check out Dofus, a tactical MMORPG that’s available for free. The first thing you may notice about the game is the beautiful artwork. Descriptions on the official site refer to the world as an ‘interactive cartoon’ as its dead on. It also has been garnering some fairly impressive reviews. It seems to have a rich turn based system (think early fantasy) with customizable professions, skillsets, and appearances.
If anybody wants to link up and do some adventuring I’m SpartacusVox on the Rushu english server. There’s not too much that my level 3 Cra’s Range (think archer) can do yet but I’d love to help. Let’s find the dofus!
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01.30.06
Posted in Social Media at 8:55 am by
For those of you with a commute, like me, you may have to come up with novel means of entertainment during those transient times. Check out Learn Out Louds free selection of mp3s for download. The selection isn’t huge but there is enough variety for everyone to try something. There’s also AudioBooksForFree (the site is an eyesore – no idea what the content is like). Finally, if you’re willing to pay for media there is Unabridgedbooks.com.
All the sites also support DRM-Free MP3s – no rootkits here!
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Posted in Social Media at 8:39 am by
O’Reilly Hacks has posted an interesting how-to for presenting PowerPoint slides in Second Life. I’ve long known that you could export individual slides in picture format but I had no idea how simple it is to hook this up to some simple scripting.
I’ve let my Second Life account idle for awhile; I didn’t have the time to delve in and learn the coding language and there’s only so much aimless shopping one can do. This is a simple enough project that I might just jump in try.
So many people seem gun-ho on seeing a virtual metaverse form but they aren’t asking if it adds any value. The question that this raises, however, is what is the worth of a power point preso in 3D? Other than being just a different medium, what does being able to present in avatar form add to a presentation? Anything?
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Posted in Social Media at 8:31 am by
From the DigitalMusicNews blog comes a heads-up on new High Definition (HD) radio. In addition to uber clarity there are lots of neat little tricks broadcasters can do with a digital stream that they’ve never tried with analog. For example, HD compression allows multicasting, also called HD2. The idea is that you may be listening to your favorite rock channel but perhaps you dislike the currently playing song – so you just pop over to the companion broadcast for something in the same vein but different track.
The question is whether fancier terrestrial radio still has a place with dash mounted iPods and satellite niche broadcasting. What do you listen to in the car? Is it whatever’s on or do you tailor your listening to suit you?
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Posted in Social Media at 8:24 am by
I’ve enjoyed the wonderfully quirky quips from RocketBoom for less than a year now. Its a video blog done up in a news style format. The production is definately DIY:
http://pdberger.com/images/rocketboom_studio.jpg
As if being a pioneering video blog wasn’t enough Rocketboom is now going to be auctioning off advertising time on Ebay. The show is currently estimated to be seen by 100,000 + people – experts place the value of a slot at around $8000 (maybe the host can afford a fancier map in the background?).
What’s more all advertisers have to surrender creative control to the RocketBoom crew. It could very well be the case that if the ads are created to seamlessly blend with content more people may stick around to watch them. We’ll also see if the host’s appearance on an episode of CSI will boost those eBay auction prices.
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01.28.06
Posted in Social Media at 12:31 am by
Time and time again when Congress has extended Copyright over works they have done so claiming that ‘it protects the creative types’. Teresa, over on the Making Light Blog absolutely rips that theory a new one:
Consider, then, the duration of copyrights. They’ve gone from 28 years renewable to 56, then 28 renewable to 95, to life of the author plus 70. Given the range of human lifespans and the extreme rarity of prepubescent authors, you can pretty much figure that by the time a 95-year copyright runs out, the author will be dead and gone, and any offspring will have reached their majority. You can’t exactly draw a line, but somewhere in there, copyright stops being about directly rewarding an author for his work. What’s left is an intangible time-travelling value: the hope of being read.
This is why it pains me to hear respectable minor authors going on about how the extension of copyright to life of the author plus 70 years is a victory for the little guy. It isn’t, unless by “little guy” you mean the heirs of the author’s ex-spouse’s step-grandchildren by her third marriage. The real push behind the last round of copyright extensions came from the big entertainment combines. They’re bitterly opposed to the idea that cash-cow properties like Winnie the Pooh might ever go out of copyright.
Hollywood’s real attitude toward copyright is that it’s one more useful tool for gaining control of intellectual property.
For anyone interested in reading more about Hollywood’s misuse of intellectual property and the intersection with government, check out the story of Disney and its quest to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain.
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