Ubisoft to Customers: Suck on it, Criminals Many of you know Ubisoft’s new draconian Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme that ships with PC copies of Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers 7. If you don’t, check this link out. And this link. The executive summary is this: if you play Assassin’s Creed II on a PC, you must be permanently connected to the internet or the game will stop working and you will lose your progress. For Settlers 7, you’ll “only” have to suffer the game stopping. Latest news indicates that this DRM will ship with the new Splinter Cell: Conviction, too. Words cannot express how pigheaded this move is. It’s a giant fuck you to customers. It’s an expression of utter contempt for the people who line your pockets with their hard earned cash. It’s Ubisoft saying “Yeah, suck it, suck it and swallow because you have no other choice, bitch!” The Problem is that DRM Does Not Work My position on DRM is well documented, but indulge me in a rant. (1) If your game is a single player game, it will not stop pirates. Company executives need to get their heads around this fact. Piracy involves two parties, and for lack of a better term I’ll call them a cracker and a downloader. Crackers will crack your game. They are smarter than your programmers, and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s an intellectual challenge to them, bragging rights to get the first cracked copy out onto the world wide web. They’ll get an advanced copy from a leak you never knew existed and BAM, days before your game is launched it will be available for download for free. Remember Spore? As for downloaders, they will not stop downloading. If Joe has $70 and has a choice between videogames and food, guess what? He’ll buy the food and download the videogame. If the crack isn’t out yet, he’ll wait until the game makes its way to bargain bins or second hand stores or he’ll borrow a copy from a friend… but no way is he spending that precious $70 on a videogame that he can get for a whole lot cheaper. Now, if you’re selling a multiplayer game and run the servers on which the game is played on, you can indeed dramatically cut down on piracy. That’s what Blizzard does with World of Warcraft, and that’s what Infinity Ward does with Modern Warfare 2. But for a single player game? Hah. Ubisoft has done something interesting in that they’ve made the online component integral to the single player experience. We’ll talk about that in a moment – more after the jump. (2) You’re making a clear statement that you don’t trust your paying customers. You’re saying that since you don’t trust them, you’re going to monitor their every move and make sure your customers do as you tell them. And that will work out great, because everyone likes being treated like an untrustworthy criminal, right? Hey, we’ll even pay for the privilege! This leads me to my next point, which is… (3) You only hurt your paying customers. Of all the stupid, pigheaded, idiotic things that draconian DRM results in, this takes the cake. Remember how I said above that crackers will crack your game? And downloaders will download your game? Right. Now imagine Joe the Pirate and John the Good Customer both get Assassin’s Creed II, except Joe the Pirate got a cracked copy and John the Good Customer gets an original. Both are playing up to the climactic ending of Assassin’s Creed II, and all of a sudden… oh, let’s say a typhoon cuts a major undersea fibre-optic cable, or your home router chokes and stops being able to route packets, or your internet connection is interrupted by any number of legitimate, plausible, and frequently occurring reasons. John the Good Customer’s copy of Assassin’s Creed II stops working as it tries to reconnect. He loses his progress and has to replay a significant portion of the ending sequence… 3 days later, when the submarine welds the busted undersea cable back together. Meanwhile his friends spoil the ending for him. “CURSES!” he screams. “I hate you, Ubisoft!” Joe the Pirate’s copy of Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t do anything. Joe continues playing, finishes the game, enjoys the ending, and goes off to spoil the ending for John. ‘That was pretty neat,’ he thinks to himself. ‘And it was all free! Haha!’ See what happened there? You, Ubisoft, shafted your paying customer and earned his well-deserved ill will. The evil pirater, on the other hand, got off scott free – something he did not deserve. Worse, John may just walk out on your games. I know I did. My PC got infected with the terrible, terrible StarForce DRM that came with one of the later Splinter Cell games, and I have not bought another PC game from Ubisoft since. Now, Ubisoft. Explain to me how this is good business. Wait! I know the answer, and I’ll tell you. But before that, my last point, which is… (4) DRM is antithetical to the progress of technology in the digital age. Computers are very, very good at copying digital information. That is, in essence, all computer hardware does: manipulate digital information. That’s what’s gotten copyright law all up in a tangle. Copyright law is crafted to give content creators, and only content creators, the right to copy, or reproduce, their own content (I am simplifying tremendously). If anyone else reproduces the content without the creator’s permission, BAM, that’s copyright infringement. That was all fine and dandy when the only content being created was books, and printing presses were large complicated machines that were not cheap to buy or operate. But now, when information is all digital and copying is not only laughably trivial but at the core of the technology that drives the modern age, well, now Copyright law’s got a problem. Enter DRM. DRM’s purpose is to make copying harder, not easier. Slower, not faster. It locks information up. It doesn’t fit. In the immortal words of Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. DRM is like a fish out of water – it’s just not built to survive in this environment. Ubisoft Responds in the Dumbest Way Imaginable So hearing the outcry, Ubisoft defended its decision to shaft its customers. The entire transcript is available here, and I have reproduced it below to rebut it. What’s the problem this DRM is trying to address? Ubi are increasingly concerned about piracy on the PC. “It’s a huge problem – you know it, I know it, other people know it. It really is a very important issue that all serious companies need to address,” says their spokesperson. But they also believe that their online services will make PC gaming better. “The real idea is that if you offer a game that is better when you buy it, then people will actually buy it. We wouldn’t have built it if we thought that it was really going to piss off our customers.” Repeat after me: 1 less pirate does not mean 1 more sale. Assuming your DRM works, if Joe the Pirate cannot afford the game, he will do something else with his time. Or he will make a decision about how many games he can afford to play and make cuts. Also, remember how I said only paying customers get hurt, while pirates get off scott free? Yeah. That. So what’s in it for gamers? Ubi say there are three advantages to their online services. The first: you don’t need a disc. The second: that you can install the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like. And the third: the automatic uploading of savegames to Ubisoft’s servers. Bullshit. First, I only needed a disc because your previous DRM required me to put it in. There is another point here that I will get to in a bit. Second, I can already install a game I bought on as many PCs as I would like, and when I can’t, it’s because your shitty previous DRM didn’t let me do it in the first place. Third, I don’t have 7 different computers that I play 1 game on such that I will need access to a centralised saved game repository. You’ve “given” me 2 things that you took away from me in the first place, and added a third thing that doesn’t really matter. It’s like taking candy from a kid and making him pay before you’ll give it back, while saying “See? You can enjoy this awesome candy that I took from you in the first place if you pay me for it. Also you can have this empty tin can, you can keep marbles in it, it’s really cool.” Do Ubisoft understand that we don’t want to be permanently online? They’ve spotted the outcry, yes. “We know that requiring a permanent online connection is not a happy point for a lot of PC gamers, but it is necessary for the system to work. Translation: Suck it. I know you don’t like to choke, but you have to learn to suppress that gag reflex if you want to play tonight. Which PC games will require an always on internet connection? All announced Ubisoft PC games will include the online services, whether sold online, or from brick and mortar stores. That includes Splinter Cell, Silent Hunter 5, Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia and the newly announced Ghost Recon. “It’s hard for us to say, yes, from now until the day that we all die all of our games are going to include this,” says their spokesperson, “but most will.” Translation: We will shaft you with this broom, with this cactus, with this rolling pin, and anything else we find just lying around. You will like it, and you will say “please sir, can I have some more?”. You will get some more only if you pay us for the privilege. If my internet connection goes down during play, will I lose my progress? That depends on the way the systems have been implemented. The two examples we have now, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Settlers VII, show differing implementations. In Assassin’s Creed, if your connection cuts out, you’ll be taken back to the last checkpoint. “With Settlers, your game will resume exactly where you left off,” says Ubisoft’s spokesperson. Oh thank you Gods of Ubisoft, for letting me resume my single player game exactly where I left off when Typhoon FibreCutter destroyed the Asia Pacific Cable Network leaving me disconnected from your servers and unable to play your single player game. Your magnanimity knows no bounds! Note to American readers: we call ‘em typhoons over here. You know them as hurricanes. How will I know what I’ll lose? “You’ll have to wait for the reviews, and to hear what your peers are saying.” …what?!?! What happens if Ubisoft take the DRM servers offline for maintenance, or suffer a technical breakdown? In the case of a server failure their games will be taken offline, and you’ll be unable to play them. “The idea is to avoid that point as much as possible, but we have been clear from the beginning that the game does need an internet connection for you to play. So if it goes down for real for a little while, then yeah, you can’t play.

” ……What?!?!?! Are Ubisoft trying to kill PC gaming? One theory states that piracy is such a problem on PC that they’d prefer to move their customers to the Xbox or PS3. Their spokesperson disagrees. “No, we’re not trying to kill the PC market. Are we frustrated by the PC market? I think everyone is. In the end it all comes back to one single truth: piracy is a big, huge, hairy problem. It’s a market that suffered a lot because of piracy, and we’re all just trying to figure out what we think is the best way to deal with it.” Do Ubi believe this DRM is unhackable? They accept that it’s all DRM’s fate to be eventually hacked, explaining that internally, they’ve already talked of a timescale for how long their games will be protected by it. But, they believe that it’s secure enough for them. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t believe in it. The guys who designed it believe in it. Do we think that it’s the one system that God has sent onto earth that will never be cracked by anybody ever? We can’t guarantee that, but we believe in it.

” I acknowledge that piracy is a big problem. Thing is, you’re not addressing it. You know it, and I know it. You even admit that this DRM will eventually be cracked. How does this help stop piracy? It doesn’t. It’s not helping. This market that has suffered a lot from piracy will suffer even more because pirates will get off scott free. How many times must this happen before you see it? And speaking of DRMs you believe in… well, look at Ubisoft’s track record. Remember that Rainbow Six game that came with a shitty disc based DRM? Remember how it was available for purchase online, but customers who bought it online didn’t get a disc and thus could not play the game? Remember Ubisoft’s solution? Yup, Ubisoft told customers to download the crack. The contempt you must have for your customers. Does this mean that Ubi are dissatisfied with other online rights management platforms like Steam? There’s a hint of that, although Ubi are keen to praise Valve’s online platform. “We think what Steam has done is amazingly valid, but aren’t Steam games cracked amazingly fast? It’s not a question of dissatisfaction, it’s a question of ‘we’ve got another idea, another way of implementing it, and we’re going for it’.” Steam does not treat its customers like criminals. It tries to make the buying and playing experience pleasant, or at the least, doesn’t try so hard to make it unpleasant. You, on the other hand, are treating us like criminals. Oh and Steam has an offline mode. What happens when it becomes economically inefficient to run the servers for these games? Will Ubisoft take the servers down? And will that mean we can’t play the games we bought? The first point Ubi makes is that they intend for the servers to stay up. “Say in 5 years someone who bought Assassin’s Creed 2 wants to go back and play it, the hope is, the plan is that we’ll be on Assassin’s Creed, I dunno, 3, 4, 5, and the servers will still be there to serve those new games,” explains their spokesperson. “They’ll also be able to serve the old games.” But Ubisoft have the ability to patch the DRM out of their games. “If for some reason, and this is not in the plan, but if for some reason all of the servers someday go away, then we can release a patch so that the game can be played in single-player without an online connection. But that’s if all of the servers are gone.” At last! The first thing Ubisoft spokesman said that makes sense. They can patch the DRM out of their games, so that when their servers go offline, people can still play their purchased games. It’s a neat solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place. Bravo! …wait, if Ubi can patch it out, can’t crackers patch it out too? Nevermind. It’s a good starting point! Maybe it won’t be so bad after all, I’m sure the next question will not completely squash the embryo of hope… Will Ubi make a firm commitment to removing the DRM if the servers are to be taken offline? We’ll paste the straight transcript here: 

PCG: What I think a lot of us would really like is a firm commitment that you understand our worries that the servers are going to go down and suddenly we’ve just got some trash data on our hard drives that we’ve paid for.

 Ubisoft: The system is made by guys who love PC games. They play PC games, they are your friends.

 PCG: So you can commit to saying that those systems will be patched out? 

Ubisoft: That’s the plan. 

PCG: It’s the plan, or it’s definitely going to happen? 

Ubisoft: That’s written into the goal of the overall plan of the thing. But we don’t plan on shutting down the servers, we really don’t.” Translation: Uh, we can make the DRM not as shitty, but we’re not saying we will do it, but uh, really, we won’t need to, trust us it’ll be awesome DRM, WeLoveYouGuysHugsAndKisses! Yup, hope squashed. So Why The Hell Are They Doing It? It doesn’t help piracy. It forces people to connect to play, and some people will legitimately not want to connect to play. Like when I’m out with my laptop and want to play but there’s open WIFI nearby. So why in blue blazes is this a smart decision for Ubisoft? Why are they doing things this way? My unoriginal theory is this: Ubisoft is trying to kill the second hand games market for its games. It’s been discussed before in the context of digital downloads and Steam. Hell, it’s been discussed before in the context of game creators “expressing their concern” over how more people play their games than buy it. See, for e.g.: this article, and this article. The second hand market is lucrative stuff, and Ubisoft wants a piece of that pie. I can just imagine some exec’s thought process beginning with “Damn this second hand market, I should be making money every time the games my slaves made exchanges hands! Never mind the doctrine of first sale, what does the Supreme Court know.” How does Ubisoft plan to do it? Make the games CD-less. Make the games require an online connection, nay, make the online component integral to the gameplay experience, based on whatever thin excuse you can concoct. Require an online account. Essentially, make it such that if anyone wants to play your game, they have to get it from you and you alone, and they have to pay for the privilege. That means I can’t loan my friend my copy; presumably that means I can’t even gift my friend my copy. A one-to-one relationship with Ubisoft is the only way you’re getting to play their games. This is a one-two for Ubisoft, because they’ll probably save on real life shelf space as well, though I’m not really sure how the numbers would work out. Of course I can’t verify that this is the reason why Ubisoft decided to implement their arse-backwards DRM scheme. I’m willing to put good money on it being a significant factor, though. And, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make some extra money – games cost a bomb to make, and developers go bust all the time even after releasing awesome games (Looking Glass, Double Fine Productions). But come on, Ubisoft. Have the decency to not insult our intelligence, and wipe those crocodile tears about the terrible damage piracy is doing to your bottom line away. Piracy is not your problem, and fighting it like this will just hurt you. I suspect, as Tycho does, that this DRM will ultimately go away. Maybe it will, like DRM and the music industry. Let’s all hope so, because Ubisoft makes some damn good games, and I really, really want to play them. That is all. The Four Stages of TOTO Thermaltake Level 10 Tips Behold! This is one of only two Thermaltake Level 10 cases imported into Singapore through Corbell… …and it’s mine, all mine! The Thermaltake Level 10 is a premium computer case designed in collaboration between Thermaltake and BMW Group DesignworksUSA. Yes, BMW, as in the German car manufacturer. Now, I’ve not seen many reviews of this case out there, but seeing as how you’d want to know everything you can about this case before you plonk down a whopping SGD$945/- for one (ordered direct through Corbell, you’ll have to go there in person), I figured I’d put up a few tips about buying and building a system around the Level 10. 1. This case is big The Level 10 comes in a huge box that weighs 25kg. I first mistook it for an office fax/photocopying machine. A smart person will pay Corbell to deliver it to you. I, however, am not a very smart person, and so I struggled to get it in the cab. Take note that if you take a cab, it will not fit into the newer, smaller ones. Get an old-style Comfort cab (the boxy ones) and it’ll take up the entire back seat. Of course you’ll be fine in a Maxicab too. The case itself weighs in at 21.5kg empty and is a bit bigger than some full tower solutions out there, at about 66cm tall, 60cm long and 32cm wide. Make sure you have space, not just to put the case, but to show it off too. Weirdly enough, though… 2. Not everything can fit inside it You have some hard limits to the sizes of your CPU cooler, video card, and power supply: CPU Cooler: cannot exceed 150mm height. This will be a fatal flaw for some enthusiasts out there. Top tier CPU cooling solutions for the LGA1366 socket, including the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme, the Prolimatech Megahalems and Scythe Mugen2 will not fit in this case if we obey this limit. I’m not about to find out if you can force one of these babies in. The Scythe Zipang2 will fit, but you may want to consider getting an alternate cooling solution like the liquid cooled Corsair H50, which is what I will have running inside my Level 10. Video card: cannot exceed 310mm length. This may be a fatal flaw if you absolutely must run the new ATI 5970 cards. I don’t know if its true for all of the cards out there, but the ASUS 5970 is 317mm long. You can get around this if you’re willing to substitute the intake fan (about 25mm thick) on the Level 10 with something thinner. Or you could wait for nVidia’s Fermi to come out. Power supply: cannot exceed 210mm length. I didn’t know that power supplies got this big, but it wasn’t an issue for me. The size of the case also leads me to my next tip, which is… 3. Buy extension wires The Level 10 has a modular design; the motherboard, CPU, video cards and RAM sit in one big module, and the power supply, 5.25″ bays and 3.5″ bays are all in separate modules. Any wiring has to “weave” through the main vertical stand to get from point A to point B. While this makes for a very neat wire management solution in the modules, it does mean your standard-issue cables are not likely to fit. Depending on your motherboard configuration, you may need extension wires for practically everything. I myself needed to get longer SATA cables to connect my BD-ROM drive to the motherboard, and my front panel audio connectors still can’t reach the proper pins on the motherboard. I can confirm, though, that the Seasonic MI2D does have power cables long enough for all your needs, including PCIe cables that can reach the 2nd ATI 5850 further from the power supply. My advice is to buy the case and the components first, and set aside a nice afternoon to back-and-forth between your home and Sim Lim Square to get everything sorted out nicely. 4. This build is not a solo affair You’re going to need someone’s help to build this PC. You need someone to help thread wires through the main vertical stand, carry the 21.5kg case around, hold the power supply cage up while you screw it back to the main vertical stand, and so on. It’s not a solo build. …and that’s it for my tips! I’ll leave you with a shot of the innards while it runs: New Strip for a New Year First strip of the new year is up, and all of it is true. At least the person who spewed such hateful nonsense was a taxi driver, and not, say one of the leaders of a country or an ordained minister… … actually, I’m not sure how that makes things any better. I’d call them bigots but for the irony. Onwards 2010! A True Story, Word for Word Crunchpad Killed in disagreement with Singapore Start-up The Crunchpad, a touch screen tablet device developed jointly by Michael Arrington (at Techcrunch, a pretty well known tech blog) and Singapore start-up company Fusion Garage, is dead. This is pretty bumming news, because the Crunchpad looked to be one sexy piece of computer hardware. I mean, look at it. It looks like something Apple would design, and a Mac tablet is something Mac fans have been having wet dreams about for forever: A blog post on Techcrunch details Michael Arrington’s side of the story (I recommend reading it, if only for the drama-entertainment value). According to the post, the beginning of the end was when Fusion Garage’s founder, Chandraseka Rathakrishnan, sent Arrington an e-mail just 2 days before the product was supposed to launch. This e-mail apparently said that, upon pressure from its shareholders, Fusion Garage decided to move forward to produce the Crunchpad… without Techcrunch’s involvement. I’ve always thought of the Crunchpad as a joint job from the start – the Straits Times even had a hands-on preview on it, saying that it was a result of a team-up between Fusion Garage and “famed American technology blog Techcrunch” – and Arrington is pissed. “We jointly own the CrunchPad product intellectual property, and we solely own the CrunchPad trademark. So it’s legally impossible for them to simply build and sell the device without our agreement,” he writes. Everything has now apparently gone straight to hell, with nobody answering Arrington’s phone calls and e-mails, and it looks like the Crunchpad is well and truly dead. Meanwhile, Arrington writes that he’s probably going to sue Fusion Garage, and possibly Chandraseka and his shareholders as individuals. I’m kind of sad that a local start-up is getting such bad press, and I’d love to hear their side of the story (Fusion Garage’s website is currently down). Arrington is… well, not someone I’d usually agree and/or side with, but it does look like he and Techcrunch got shafted up the rear. I guess I’ll have to keep on waiting for Apple to release that mythological tablet. Hammer. Of. JUSTICE! (designmartus, via BoingBoing) (I’m aware that comments are totally wonky right now, looking into it!) Tuberculosis Tuberculosis strikes! We’ve been unable to update because the irritating disease hit me just as the new layout got done, and simultaneously, Zeng’s computer went kaput (but who cares about his crummy computer!). The kind of TB I have is apparently not in my lungs, it’s in the lining between my lungs and my chest, or what is known as the pleural cavity. According to the doctor this means it’s not contagious. The TB had been sitting in my pleural cavity for a while, discharging fluid (or letting it build up, I’m not entirely clear about this point), and eventually enough formed in my pleural cavity that I got a stabbing pain whenever I did anything physical involving the chest (like, say, breathing). Yes, it was time to go see a doctor. This may seem obvious, but it is crucial that you have a good, regular GP. The first GP I went to was a doddering fool who didn’t even bother to listen for diminished breathing sounds, forgot my answers to his questions and told me “Oh, sometimes when you cough you can pull a muscle in your chest”. The second GP bothered to listen, thought something was amiss and sent me up for a chest x-ray. The x-ray bugged the hell out of the radiologist: And I was forced to go to A&E. So I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a good, decent, competent GP. At this point nobody knew what was actually wrong. Worse, every test thrown at me by the hospital was negative. Blood test, blood cultures, all nothing. They poked into the fluid-filled area and drained some of the juice (it looked like thick urine, a very disturbing liquid to have drain out of your chest) and tried to grow the crap in it – nothing. In the end, I had to go for surgery to do a biopsy of the infected tissue and clean and drain my right pleural cavity. Going under general anesthesia is an interesting experience – I fought it just long enough to inform the doctors how weird it felt (it most probably came out as an unintelligible mumble), and then my vision closed in on me and I knew no more. During the surgery they cut a bit of the infected tissue out, flash froze it, threw it under a microscope and peered at it, after which the pathologist declared it was most likely TB. Then they stuck a 20cm-long flexible tube inside my chest to make sure the area stayed drained for a bit, stitched me mostly back up and let me wake up. That chest tube stayed connected to a gentle suction device for a couple days, and after I stopped leaking, all 20cm of that tube was pulled out of my chest. To help the doctor close the wound left behind the surgeon had left stitches ready to be tightened, drawstring-style, as soon as the tube was out. Both of these procedures were carried out while I looked on. It was not fun. To give you an idea how not fun it was, I asked the doctor if it would feel like when the nurse pulled the Foley catheter out of me (follow the link, don’t be lazy). His answer was a hesitant “Um, something like that”. Yeah. The TB diagnosis will not be confirmed for another 2 months – TB is a very slow growing bacteria. Meanwhile I am on TB medications, which currently consists of 8 pills and 2 capsules: That’s one dose up there! Luckily it’s only once a day. Apparently the course lasts for 6 months, and gets reduced a bit of the way through – TB is a very hard to kill bacteria. So hopefully crisis averted – Wikipedia says TB has a 2/3 mortality rate if untreated (I am really NEVER going to that useless GP again, ever). On the downside, I’m not allowed to have any alcohol for 6 months because the drugs are apparently so hard on the liver that straining it more might give me hepatitis. Now I’m just recovering at home, and as soon as doing stuff doesn’t hurt anymore, we’ll try to get some content up. New Layout Hi all, long time no see. As you can see we’ve finally got around to updating the place. Things will be touch and go as we migrate everything over to WordPress proper (previously the comic strips were on their own database, now everything is integrated). We’ve got a bunch of new content ready to go up and everything, and as soon as the kinks get worked out we’ll get the comic updated! If there is anything with the site that does not work properly, leave a comment here with a description of the problem. Update @13/8 3.04AM: I’m knackered, work shall continue later today. Vote For The MILF! There are times when OMGWTFBBQ doesn’t even begin to describe the situation. Check out the site: http://www.voteforthemilf.com/. A simple redirect – an easy enough gag to set up – to www.johnmccain.com/palin.htm. And that’s what it would remain, except… The first time you visit, it will redirect you to www.johnmccain.com and then to www.johnmccain.com/palin.htm. Subsequent visits redirect you to www.johnmccain.com. And therein lies the problem: either someone has hacked johnmccain.com, or the campaign has deliberately set up their site to link MILF to Palin. Apparently the McCain campaign actually owns the domain VoteForTheMILF.com. We’ll see how this one plays out, but for now, all I can say is: FAIL. Via. Odex wins appeal against PacNet Odex has won its appeal against PacNet, who now has to cough up the details of the downloaders who obtained anime titles off Bit Torrent. Previously, the District Judge had held that because PacNet owes a duty of confidentiality to its customers, Odex had to show an “extremely strong prima facie case” of wrongdoing before it could obtain the names of the downloaders. Justice Woo Bih Li overturned that. He was of the view that, on principle, making a disclosure pursuant to a court order could not amount to a breach of confidentiality. He also noted that the actual copyright holders of the anime titles had joined Odex as plaintiffs in this suit, and therefore the plaintiffs had a right to the names of the downloaders. [Full judgment available here, though I’m not sure for how long.] So we’re at this sad, sad state of affairs. On the one hand, the law is clearly correct. On the other, Odex has pretty much slapped a large number of anime fans in Singapore in the face. The backlash from the community when Odex started this whole affair was tremendous by Singapore standards. The Odex street protest. The blog coverage. The many SingTel and StarHub customers piling invective upon hokkien invective on their internet service providers (not linked, Google it). Now I don’t condone some of the backlash from the local anime community. Death threats to Stephen Sing? Not the right way to go. But to Odex, I would say this. Your customers want a product. If you don’t sell it, they will get it elsewhere. If you lose out, too bad. Suing people will only drive them away from you. Do you honestly think any of the people you sent letters of demand to will ever buy an Odex product again? What about the people who burned their VCDs, smashed their DVDs, in protest? Or the people who set up the Odex protest with anime-based toys? Those are the guys who didn’t care about the sub-standard quality of your dubs and bought them anyway. Those are the guys who went out and bought toys, action figures, models, and painstakingly painted them and added them to their collection. Those are the guys who saved their pocket money to buy the things they were passionate about. And those are the guys who are never spending that money on you again. Almost lost our domain My apologies, we almost lost our domain ‘cos (1) the credit card I use to update it was cancelled, and (2) the e-mail address registered with GoDaddy was made defunct. I’ve paid the necessary fees and everything is fine again =). Cloud strife sketch Just a sketch of cloud strife , more towards advert children costume. Happy holidays! Top 10 Girls in Tech I have stopped playing WOW Yeap, haven’t touched it for a month now, and even though I’ve still got a month remaining on the subscription I doubt I’ll be going back to Azeroth until Wrath of the Lich King comes out, if ever. I realized what an incredible grind it is to experience the end-game content. It’s mind-numbingly boring. It’s so boring, in fact, that while I am mining that next piece of ore (to get that next piece of gold to get the requisite 5 thousand pieces to get my epic flying mount to do the next repetitive netherwing quests…) I am (A) watching a show on my other monitor, (B) listening to a free university lecture in podcast form, or (C) sampling a new wine I bought. Then as I marvelled at the irony of having to amuse myself while playing a game, I met someone, so seriously, fuck that WOW shit, I have better things to do. (Besides, PORTAL is awesome. Muhahaha) Check this out!! RESPECT. WGA STRIKE! It really looks like its going to happen. The Writers Guild of America has been threatening to strike for a while now. The dispute is over online distribution of TV shows, amongst other things. See, the current contract between writers and networks is that writers get a cut of DVD sales and TV ad revenue (amongst other things). But now some networks are pushing media to the web. Shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost have webisodes, web-only episodes, exclusively available from the parent network’s websites. These networks derive ad revenue from these webisodes, and the WGA wants a cut. Since the current contract is up, the WGA wants to renegotiate… unfortunately, networks don’t want to pay them for online content. It may not sound like much, but it is a big deal. WGA members write all your favourite TV shows: Heroes, Lost, House, etc. These shows are written through to the end of the year, but after that, no new episodes will be written. Heroes is even considering writing an alternate episode 11, finishing the current season early. It’s an incredibly stupid move on the networks’ part, and I hope it gets sorted out soon. It isn’t enough that we get crappy shows on all the time, now they’re going to ruin the ones we do watch as well! …And they wonder why we hate them. Voideck (2007) starring Bi-Beeeeee Vincent stars in this student project from NUS. Can you guess who he plays? Muhahahahah! Robert Jordan Dead! The author of the Wheel of Time series has finally bit the bullet. I’ve mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the first 6 (yes, shuddup, SIX) Wheel of Time books were the best things I’d ever read. They were engaging, lucid and paced with exquisitely torturous precision - anyone who has hit the final hundred pages of any of those books at 4AM at night will know what I am talking about. On the other hand, his later books… well, sucked. Gone was the pacing, replaced by a meandering dialogue of 50 different things, 30 of them describing angsty dominatrix women in various states of angsty domineering. So my anticipation for the final book of the series is not as high as it would have been, my disappointment not as deep. At this point all I want is some closure. And the man has to go and bite the bullet! The good news is, the last book is likely to be cobbled together from the author’s detailed notes. Hopefully the person who brings the story together can restore some of the insane page-turnability that was the hallmark of the earlier books. Hopefully. RIP, Robert Jordan. Tokyo Game Show I’ll be heading to Tokyo for the TGS convention, *beams* My company was good enough to give me and my brother the businesse day tickets for the convention. so…..I guess that means MGS 4 demo all for myself!! FTW! Don’t worry guys I’ll take lots of pictures of the game girls and post it up here when I come back :3 Miss Teen Stupidverse Qn: Why can’t Americans find America on a map? Ans: We don’t have enough maps. Also, we must help Iraq and South Africa! I’d still hit her it, though. Ratatouille FTW Go and watch it! What’s incredulous is the 6 “rotten” reviews on rottentomatoes. For shame. It may not be as good as some of pixar’s earlier works, but it is so far above everything else on cinemas that it doesn’t matter. Shame on crappy old Singaporean cinemas for taking so long to bring it here and instead show shit like Rush Hour 3. Anti-piracy in games: Why? I wonder what anti-piracy companies tell their investors and customers in order to convince them to fund/continue to use their product. We all know that SecuROM, Safedisc and StarFuck StarForce don’t actually reduce the incidence of piracy at all (go to torrentspy and see for yourself!). Even if it does, any savvy game developer would weigh the pros (number of pirates stopped) and cons (price of implementing an anti-piracy measure) and surely they would reach the conclusion that the cost isn’t worth it? It’s not like games make incredible sales. A game that sells 50,000 copies can be considered a hit; most games sell far less. If you, as a developer, are already hard pressed to break even on the game… why pay an anti-piracy company more for an anti-piracy measure that will be cracked within hours of the game’s release to retail? Because believe you me, it will be cracked. Most within hours, some within days, a few really tenacious ones within weeks. And the anti-piracy companies have got to know that. 2K Games and BioShock The reason I’m pondering the existence of anti-piracy measures is, of course, the saga that is currently screwing over PC BioShock customers. In a nutshell, the BioShock installer only lets you install the game twice. If you want to install it more times, you actually have to uninstall the game first. That is, you go to your control panel and click “uninstall”. Otherwise it doesn’t count. “Big deal,” you say. “Normal users should be doing that anyway; why are so many people whinging over this measure? It’s nothing more than a minor inconvenience!” But see, it most definitely is a big deal. It is a big deal just from principle. If I buy a game, I should be allowed to install it multiple times on multiple PCs that I own. After all, I bought it. If I cannot do so, then you must tell me that I cannot do so, so I can consider whether or not I want to continue with the purchase of the game. It is a big deal because of the viscissitudes of PC use. How many times does your windows installation crash? How often does your hard disk fail, your RAM go bad, or any number of system-disabling disasters occur? A lot! It is a fact of a PC gamer’s life. Some of us play games over extended periods of time; weeks or months, because we simply do not have the time to invest. In that period, what are the chances that something prevents you from properly uninstalling the game, thus forcing you to take some potentially expensive measures just to play again? Even if the above only happens to say, 1% of your consumers, is that not 1% too many? It is a big deal because of practicality. The practical reality is, everybody who wants to pirate this game will pirate it - guaranteed. Anti-piracy measures depend on one simple fact: that those measures be actually present on the game disc. The only people who will have anti-piracy measures on their game disc, are the people who bought legitimate copies of the game. Pirates would be using a cracked version. Therefore the only people who will be affected by these measures… are the people who bought the game! Pirates will never be affected by these measures, and therefore it doesn’t work at all to stop piracy. It is a big deal because it defies common sense. Imagine you are in a family of 5; Mom, Dad and 3 kids. Dad buys BioShock for his teenage kids, and wants to play himself. Dad is pretty well off and has a computer for everybody in the house (believe me this is not uncommon, my house has 4 computers for a family of 4). Can Dad buy just one copy of BioShock? Common sense says yes! It is only for his family’s use, after all. But 2K games, BioShock’s developers, say NO. It is a big deal because it pushes users towards piracy. Do you think Dad will buy a new copy of BioShock, or do you think Dad will download a cracked version and never buy from 2K games again? Maybe he is so rich he doesn’t give a damn. But most of our dads aren’t. It is a big deal because of the poor way developer/publishers continue to treat their customers, who are their lifeblood. The official response on the 2K games forum, from someone named “Elizabeth”, is this: hey guys, first, let me say this. you DO NOT NEED TO USE THE INTERNET EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THIS GAME. it is only the first time. second, you can uninstall and reinstall this game, and if, by chance, you have 2 computers you want to simultaneously play this game on, you also can do that. if by some chance you are reinstalling this game without uninstalling it first, a lot, there is a chance you may have to call securom and get a key, or deactivate some older installations. but if you upgrade your hardware next week, you’ll still be able to play the game. if you revamp your system and need to reinstall bioshock, just uninstall it before you go through the overhaul, and then do your reinstall. calling it “hardware fingerprinting” is a bit alarmist. we do not transmit any of your data to any companies. really, the only people who will be concerned about any of these security measures are those who are rapidly putting bioshock on many pcs… if you use the game as you normally do, you won’t notice this at all (emphasis added). Note how the company just defined what amounts to “normal use”! According to 2K games, if I install my game on more than two computers, or if I reinstall without properly uninstalling the game, I am not using the game normally. Who are they to tell me how to play my game? If I want to play it on three different computers with the save files synced on a central server somewhere why can’t I? If I want to buy it so that my family members can all play from the same purchase why can’t I? And most importantly, if I can’t… why didn’t you tell me so? Why anti-piracy? Forgive me if I am still a little bit confused as to why these anti-piracy companies are still around. It’s like DRM, except it makes even less sense - and that’s saying a lot. Even DRM vendors clued in a long time ago that limited-play and limited-copy restrictions were simply not going to fly. How are they getting the money to continue to think up asinine schemes that get broken within days? Do their shareholders not know that the latest SecuROM protocols have already been cracked? Why do they keep funding it? Do their customers not know that the protocols are ineffective against piracy? Why do they keep buying it? Even if you are a big publisher with lots of money, surely you realize that the price of putting these shoddy pieces of shitware in your products is not worth the amount of flak you get from your own customers, the gamers! Why not save that tiny bit of money, give it back to your shareholders and save us all the heartache? The piracy problem is going to be there forever, believe you me. You will not suffer any losses, gamers will be happy, and your shareholders will be happy; it’s win-win-win! Mayhaps I am too naive; no matter. I will end by saying this: stop being so damn terrified of piracy, and worry about getting a good product out first. If you have nothing worth buying, then you have nothing worth protecting. And if you do get a good product out, believe you me: it will be bought, and you will make money. Superbad. Ratatouille is FINALLY coming out on big screen in Singapore,to think that we get Pirates of the carribean 3,Shrek 3 and many more visually astounding hollywood banging movies out even earlier than the official openings in US. You’ll probably think they do the same for a masterpiece from Pixar, but for all the local animators and CG artist here waiting for it a few months back… yeap we only get to see it shown this week. Wait, are we still promoting animation in this island? This is …Superbad. *search the local papers for more garbage* SuperBad trailer… Now this is something I’m looking forward to. :) Let’s see how long we’re gonna wait for this superbad ass movie to come to our shores. Rambo 4 trailer is out too. And I think we can all shut our mouths about Stallone getting too old to party. yeahhh more blood! I (heart) Charley This is one of the most… um… beautiful youtube clips I have ever seen. Meet Charley. He’s spastic. He’s a cat. If you don’t love him and want to laugh and cry at the same time when you watch this video, you are inhuman. Please kill yourself and clean the gene pool. BitTorrent goes closed-source, nobody surprised Back in December last year there were rumblings that BitTorrent was acquiring the uTorrent project. And why not? After all, uTorrent was more succesful than the mainline client ever was. It eventually turned out that the purchase was true, and copyfighters everywhere despaired, for of course Bram Cohen, like his predecessor Shawn Fanning, had by that time sold out to the MPAA. Now they’re turning the project closed-source. That’s right, the version 6 protocol will be closed source, thereby destroying one of the very reasons why the protocol was succesful in the first place - the ability for any developer, anywhere, to make a better product. So the several million users of uTorrent are going to use an “improved” feature set (I use that word with some doubt), and the several other million users of Azureus, BitComet et al are going to use another. Who wants to bet that part of the v. 6 protocol will include some lame-ass oppressive DRM scheme? Didn’t think so. Read the official response and weep. Sure, you can buy a licence to the protocol. But d’you really think the next big thing is going to come from someone who is pedantic enough to purchase a licence? Bleah. I has a camera phone So I can share these pictures of silly things with all of yous. The first dumb photo we have is the new BK fish burger! Yeap, its on promotion because it’s new. Now is the time to try this awesome burger at the cheap cheap price of $3.35 per! … or is it? What an amazing discount! I volunteered to give the counter staff the 5 cents but they declined. Man, you’d think after their earlier shenanigans they’d have learnt something. * * * Next we have a delicious menu item from the basement of Liang court. I don’t remember the name of the place in question but it’s the udon store just outside meidi ya supermarket. I know it’s kind of blurry, so I tried to put a bigger photo below. However the Nokia 6300’s camera does not have auto-zoom, so I’m pretty much stuck with what I can get. Here’s a close up of the udon: That’s right, cold bukkake udon. Yum. Wonder if they have warm bukkake udon. Incidentally, I had a cute reaction from a female friend who got shown this. Once shown she gasped and made a big-mouth :O face. The conversation then proceeded… S (friend of mine): Do you know what bukkake means? E (she, trying desperately to appear sweet and innocent): Ummm.. no! S: Then why did you react like that? E: *speechless* Adorable =P. * * * And now for the piece de resistance: If you don’t get it immediately, read the names out loud one by one. Samsung Employee Dance Ah, the crazy Koreans are at it again! Check it out: [link] It just gets more and more amazing as you watch. Things learnt while watching Transformers 1) Say hello to subliminal advertising and product placement. HP, eBay, Nokia, Mountain Dew and General Motors have paid a lot of money to Paramount. As if it’s not going to make enough money as it is. 2) Male government code-breaker/analysts are dorks. Female government code-breaker/analysts are hot Australian blondes. 3) If there is a sensible way of doing things, and a ZOMG I WILL DO IT CUZ I CAN AND IT LOOKS SO COOLZ SERIOUSLY DOODZ way of doing things, expect the latter to win out. See: Bumblebee, mouths on Transformers. 4) If there is a sensible way of doing things, and a ZOMG I WILL DO IT CUZ I CAN AND IT LOOKS SO STOOPID way of doing things, expect the latter to win out. See: pissing Bumblebee, Megatron. 5) A Michael Bay movie is pretty much a Michael Bay movie - over-dramatized slow-motion, moving camera shots and sunset walks galore. Yeesh. 6) A Michael Bay movie is pretty much a Michael Bay movie - crazy over-the-top action, over-dramatized slow-motion robot combat and big explosions galore. Woot! 7) Megan Fox. Megan Fox. Megan Fox. Did I mention Megan Fox? 8) Despite being able to transform into anything, Autobots can’t fly. 9) If a giant transforming robot cop car demands to know if your eBay user name is LadiesMan217, take note. The correct answer is no. 10) Giant robots turn me on. Go watch this movie. Work is a biatch I seriously have not even had time to check Squarebrain for comments, let alone write any content for it. Now that I’ve got a free second to spare, I just popped by to say: we’re not dead! I’m just trying to survive the harsh reality of waking up at 7.40am every single day. Ugh. We’re trying to rope in some peeps to contribute so Squarebrain doesn’t stutter and die. Zeng has flown off to Japan for some conference thingamajig - way to go! In the meantime we’re just trying to seek some sort of equilibrium here. I bet we lost most of our readership during the lull. Grrrrr.