The One With Aldacron

Yet another tale of DRM woe is spreading across the net. And this time, it isn’t Ubisoft.

Blizzard’s long-anticipated release of Diablo III has gone tits up, thanks to server problems. That wouldn’t really be a big deal if the game were an MMO (which it isn’t), or if it were only the multiplayer aspect of the game that were affected (which it wasn’t). But sadly, in order to play Diablo III single player, you must get server verification. No internet connection, no play. No functioning server, no play.

The long-awaited Diablo III from Blizzard Entertainment has suffered severe technical issues upon its official launch at 12:01 a.m. earlier this morning. Thousands of angry fans took their favorite forums or social media networks to complain about the inability to connect, usually due to the now-infamous Error 37, which simply states that the game’s servers are too busy and to try again later. Now, the servers aren’t busy, they’re not even up anymore.

I do recall some time ago when Blizzard first announced their planned DRM scheme that it met with quite a bit of harsh criticism around the relevant forums. This current issue is exactly what the critics were concerned about.

Seriously, Blizzard wants you to cough up $60 for a single-player game, but can’t guarantee that you can play it any time you want. Since you could potentially be a software pirate, they require server authentication every time you want to play and no server has 100% uptime. So instead of giving you a good satisfactory experience, they would rather treat you like a potential criminal in exchange for the money you give them.

I have yet to see a DRM system in a modern video game that didn’t cause problems for some of the people who actually bought the game. That’s just absolutely unacceptable from the standpoint of a consumer. But let’s never forget, the people who do pirate software are just as much to blame as the companies who take such ridiculous measures.

I haven’t bought Diablo III yet. I was considering it, despite my reservations about the server authentication for single player. Now, though, I can say I absolutely will not buy it. In fact, I’ll probably just add Blizzard to the list of game companies I’ll ignore from now on. While they continue to piss off their legitimate customers without making any sort of dent in software piracy (in the negative direction at least), I think I’ll turn most of my attention to indie developers. The games they’re putting out these days are more than worth my time and money. And they tend not to treat their customers like thieves.

Having some time ago been shaken out of the illusion that America can do no wrong, it’s not hard at all to believe this story coming out of Florida.

LeRoy Smith thought he had hit rock bottom when he found himself trolling Atlanta’s gay district, looking to exchange sex acts for a hot hit off a crack pipe. Then he wound up on a Florida farm near the small town of Hastings, being bilked blind, he says, by a man with a fifth-grade education, sweating all day for a few dirty dollars, with no way to escape from the middle-of-nowhere camp.

He did not think slavery existed in modern America. He knows better now.

The article goes on to detail the case of Smith and some others like him who have escaped. They were all homeless men in dire straits, promised a chance to make some money in a safe environment, and instead found themselves trapped on a farm picking vegetables to pay off a debt that kept growing.

…he found an overcrowded bunkhouse full of elderly, drug-addicted black men and one decrepit bathroom. Before he even arrived, the man in the driver’s seat had loaned each of the 15 recruits in the van $10 for a bite to eat, on the condition they pay him back with 100 percent interest.

At the bunkhouse, he said, the men formed three lines. One was for loans, also at 100 percent interest. One was to buy shots of Wild Irish Rose or grape “Mad Dog 20/20″ out of an ice chest. And one was to buy crack. By the end of the first night, penniless Smith already owed $50.

I’ve heard of this sort of thing before, in a different context. In the sex-trafficking world, it is not uncommon for young women to be lured away from home by the promise to make a lot of money, only to find themselves forced to work as prostitutes in order to pay off the “debt” they incurred in transportation costs and the exorbitant rent they are charged for whatever hole they’ve been given to live in.

The author of the article, Ben Montgomery, tried to talk to some of the property owners. He managed to talk to one particularly odious character named Ronald Uzzle. Dig this:

Uzzle has a long record of shoddy management. In 1993, he wrecked his van and three workers were killed. He has been the subject of several U.S. Department of Labor investigations. In 1997, Uzzle was cited for “willful violations” of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. He failed to disclose the terms of employment to workers, failed to post a sign listing workers’ rights, failed to keep employer records, failed to provide wage statements to workers and failed to ensure housing, health and safety.

In 1998, Uzzle called the sheriff’s office when one of his workers attacked another with a machete, splitting his head open. After the worker served prison time, Uzzle hired him again. In January 2003, the man stabbed another worker to death with a knife. A few years later, two former employees signed onto a lawsuit accusing Uzzle’s son and an accomplice of attacking them.

Looking at all of his run-ins with the law, I can’t help but ask how in the hell this scumbag has been allowed to stay in business for so long. Of course, he denies all of the allegations against him, but wouldn’t let the reporter on to the farm to see for himself.

America is sick from top to bottom (and this article highlights the very bottom). Our society is so imbalanced, so disjointed, it’s a wonder it manages to move along at all. At the top, we’ve got extremely wealthy people continuing to rake in and hoard more wealth. At the bottom, we’ve got the homeless and starving, some of whom are being exploited like the men in this article. And in between are a wide range of troubles and worries, such as massive health care bills and foreclosed homes, most of which are ignored by a large portion of the population as long as they aren’t affected directly. Is this really what freedom looks like?

In their never-ending attempts to stop piracy, so many media companies are making the digital world a frustrating place to be. Yesterday I clicked on a YouTube video embedded in a blog — a movie preview. Sorry, the uploader has not made this video available in my area. That’s happened perhaps a dozen times over the past few days, with music videos and TV clips, among other things. Then there’s the mess of ‘Digital Rights Management’. What a misnomer that is. It should be called ‘Digital Rights Revocation’, because it certainly does not protect the rights of the consumer. See my post about Microsoft’s DRM Hell from a few years back for an example of how that can go bad.

The biggest offenders in my book are the large video game publishers. And Ubisoft is perhaps the worst offender of all. The DRM they use has been in the media more than once. It’s sadly not a rare occurrence for legitimate players, i.e. those who have actually paid for a game, to be locked out of their games because of a glitch in the DRM, or because of draconian restrictions. A few minutes ago, I very nearly purchased an Ubisoft product that would likely have ended up pissing me off.

The Might & Magic game franchise has been around for a while. But I’ve never played any of them. This weekend on Steam, Heroes of Might and Magic VI was on sale for 50% off. I thought I’d finally give it a spin. But I noticed in the game page that it uses a third-party DRM system. Steam already has DRM built-in and I’ve never had any trouble with their system. So I was a bit reluctant to buy a game that used a different system. I decided to check the forums first. And am I glad I did.

It seems that a glitch in the DRM is causing legitimate product keys to be rejected as invalid and a number of people who purchased the game this weekend have been unable to play. There are several posts about it in the Steam forums. And I feel their pain. There are too many companies who continue to treat their legitimate customers like criminals. Given Ubisoft’s track record with this sort of nonsense, I can tell you that it’s incentive enough for me never to buy another one of their products again. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Meanwhile, I think I’m going to increase my collection of games from Good Old Games, where the games are DRM-free. Interestingly enough, Heroes of Might and Magic V, which is sold *with* DRM elsewhere, is free of it at GoG.

Well, it’s time to dust off the old ‘Moron of the Week’ award. I have a very good reason for doing so. His name is John King. No, not that one.

Mr. King has made it his mission to Save White People. His most recent initiative toward that end is Taking on the Klan with a Tan. At first, I thought he was talking about dowsing Klan members with self tan lotion. OK, not really. He may as well have just come out and said “Taking on Racist Niggers”. Trying, and failing, to be funny about it doesn’t make it any less crude. And despite his claims to the contrary, racist he is. If his “Klan with a Tan” screed doesn’t convince you, maybe the picture posted over at Jesus’ General will. And if that’s not enough, take a look at this, which is apparently his creed.

We believe that the White people of the world has every moral right to persist upon planet Earth, simply because it is part of Creation.  To establish our self-determination, it is our goal to bring about the creation of our own exclusive country, which for now, we shall call the White Republic.

Gee, there’s nothing at all racist about wanting to create a country exclusively for Whites.

This guy desperately wants you to believe he isn’t a racist. He tries very hard to make the distinction between racial pride and racism. After all, he only wants to defend all of us poor, helpless, underprivileged whites from the hatred and racism of those violent blacks who, lest we forget, make up 80% of America’s prison population (a point he can’t seem to stop from repeating). Ah, the noble quest of defending one’s race. Remember, the current state of racial affairs in America is wholly the fault of the blacks and has nothing to do with the few hundred years of history that led us here. Don’t let that lame-stream media fool ya!

For the clueless (like John King), that previous paragraph was satirical. What white people need to be saved from is not the “Klan with a Tan”, but morons like John King. People like him are a part of the problem, not the solution.

Congratulations, Mr. King, for being the 11th party to receive my Moron of the Week award! Right now, I truly cannot think of anyone more deserving.

…is how easy it goes to your head. Or makes you a jerk.

Recently making the rounds in the indie game development community is an article by Shay Pierce, former employee of OMGPOP, the company you may or may not have heard of that raked in quite a bit of cash from its iPhone game that you’ve surely heard of called Draw Something. OMGPOP was recently bought up by Zynga, the game company that made its name, and fortune, with Facebook games like Farmville and Words with Friends. The $210 million deal surely made some at OMGPOP rather wealthy. Pierce, however, was the only employee who chose not to continue employment under the new masters. In his article, he explains why.

Because the company’s values are completely opposed to my own values, professionally and creatively. Because I believe that developers are at the front lines of game development and deserve to be treated well, and I didn’t trust Zynga to do so. All this was still true — except that their complete unwillingness to negotiate with me only confirmed my concerns.

What he wanted to negotiate was whether or not he would be able to continue selling and maintaining an indie title he had developed himself. Ultimately, when he made his decision, he decided that it was in his best interests to be self-employed and continue doing what he loves. He even made it clear in the article that he harbored no bad feelings toward OMGPOP.

I’m not bitter. I have zero complaints about anyone at Omgpop and I congratulate them for their success. Zynga had the right to ignore my attempts to negotiate; I had the right to walk away. This has all been legal and amicable.

However, it appears that things aren’t as amicable as he believed them to be. Because now, OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter has felt the urge to tweet disparaging remarks about Pierce.

I don’t know either of these two men, but it’s quite obvious which one is a waste of oxygen. And it isn’t Pierce.

Who knows what Porter’s motive was. Maybe the praise Pierce has been getting in the comments on his article and around the indie gamedev scene struck a jealous nerve. Maybe he was eager to impress his new overlords by leaping to their defense. Maybe he’s just a natural-born ass. Whatever the reason, he has just confirmed for me that OMGPOP is a company I will never consider supporting. Looks like he’ll fit in quite nicely at Zynga, given the reputation they have among indies.

I have frequently expressed on this blog how I’m baffled by the workings of the conservative mind. The self-proclaimed members of the Tea Party are the most puzzling of the lot.

As the Supreme Court hears arguments concerning the health care reform bill, both supporters and opponents of the law can be found outside the courthouse. One of those protesting the bill is Keli Carender, a “32-year-old activist from Seattle who was an early Tea Party organizer.”

“If we know how inefficient and inept the government is, why would you want it to make this decision for you?” she said, holding a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and wearing pink-rimmed sunglasses.

Note what she’s carrying. For any Teabaggers who happen to read this blog, let me explain something. “Obamacare” is in no way treading on you. It is, in fact, preventing you from being tread on. You see, the insurance companies have been treading all over you for years and years. They are profit-driven to the point that they will go out of their way to drop coverage for people who need expensive treatments (failure to disclose previous conditions) or, if they can’t do that, to find a way to avoid paying for it (see “experimental” treatment). They deny coverage to those who would cost them money and “purge” businesses who who are likely to become less profitable. The consumer has no recourse when they fall victim to one of these profit-driven schemes. If that isn’t treading all over people, then I don’t know what is.

Obamacare aims to make sure these sort of reprehensible practices are no longer possible. It also aims to make insurance premiums affordable by creating a competitive market. But in order for this to work, everybody has to buy into it. If you already have insurance, it’s going to get better in several ways. If you don’t have insurance because you were dropped or can’t afford it, you will now likely be able to get something that fits your budget.

So, no. The Affordable Care Act isn’t treading on anyone. It’s protecting everyone. Of course, the argument against is that because it’s mandatory to buy in, it is taking away the freedom to choose whether you want health insurance. It seems, as best as I can tell, that the ones crying the loudest about this already have health insurance. Nothing’s going to change for them. What about those now who have no health insurance at all because the premiums are too expensive or because the Death Panels at the insurance companies won’t let them? There’s a price to pay for the benefits you get from living in a functioning society (like, for example, taxes). Right now, we aren’t paying that price to the full extent. This law takes us part of the way there for tremendous gain.

Of course, this lady being a Teabagger, there’s more to be said.

Ms. Carender said she received health insurance through her job, but that if the bill was allowed to stand, she said she would drop the policy in protest.

OK. So if the law survives the Supreme Court, she’s going to drop the insurance she already has (despite that it’s likely going to get better for her if she keeps it) in protest, thereby putting her health at risk. Her reason for doing so?

“I am not going to trade my health for my freedom,” she said

Um…

George Zimmerman’s account of the Trayvon Martin killing (yes, I’m going there again) is sure to be picked up by his supporters as evidence that he was defending himself. Given that some of the account has been corroborated by witnesses, some of it seems to be true. So we can say that Zimmerman was, indeed, standing his ground. Right?

Not so fast. This New York Times article mentions something the Martin family are emphasizing.

The most relevant fact in Trayvon’s death, they said, is that Mr. Zimmerman chose to pursue Trayvon, who was unarmed and walking home, despite a police dispatcher’s advice to stay in his car.

Let’s not forget the account of Martin’s girlfriend.

He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man…I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run.

Trayvon said, ‘What, are you following me for,’ and the man said, ‘What are you doing here.’ Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again and he didn’t answer the phone.

Or, from the same article, what Martin told the police dispatcher.

These assholes always get away.

What it boils down to here is that Zimmerman instigated this incident. Martin saw he was being followed and confronted the person following him. Is that not the definition of standing your ground? If it had been Martin with the gun, would he not have been justified, according to this particularly nasty Florida law, in shooting Zimmerman?

As I mentioned in my last post, I just don’t see how a pursuer can use self-defense as an excuse for killing the pursued. Even if Zimmerman really did turn around and start back toward his car, that isn’t necessarily enough to diffuse any threat Martin may have perceived. The fact remains that George Zimmerman overreacted to an unarmed black teenager walking down the street, ignored the police dispatcher’s advice not to follow him, and, as a result, Trayvon Martin is dead.

I’m not saying that Zimmerman should be locked up for murder. The facts of the case, as they come out in court, may well be enough to cause reasonable doubt. What I am saying is that Zimmerman should not be let off without even a trial on the basis of a misguided law, when the circumstances suggest it may have actually been Martin who was acting in self-defense. Let a jury hear this case and decide Zimmerman’s fate. Only then can justice be served.

When I first read of the incident in Florida involving the shooting of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, I was strongly tempted to crawl out of my hole and write a blog post. The fact that Zimmerman was not even being investigated by the police had my blood boiling. I was ready to draw comparisons to the incidents of times past, when white men were able to kill blacks without fear of repercussion. I was going to rant about how the failure of the police to arrest Zimmerman was unbelievably stupid. That was before I learned that Zimmerman isn’t white. Or about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law”.

Regarding the former, just because Zimmerman is (half-?)Hispanic doesn’t mean race was not involved. In the 911 tapes, it is easy to draw the conclusion that Zimmerman’s attitude regarding Martin was fueled by racism. But that’s jumping to conclusions. It could also have been because he was high on thoughts of himself as some sort of gung-ho vigilante, in which case Martin would have been in trouble no matter his race. The Council of Conservative Citizens accuses the media of lying, which I suppose fits one of the many right-wing narratives about liberal media bias and liberal conspiracies.

In the real world, the media made a mistake. And given that the victim was black, a very bad mistake. One of the consequences is that it will now forever be used by conservative idiots as an example of why the media is liberal, biased, and (as some believe) hates whites. But also, the waters have now been muddied. Public opinion will now be biased toward the belief that this was racially motivated, no matter what anyone else says. I have no idea what his motivation was, but I find either case (racism or an inflated sense of authority) to be equally plausible. Regardless, the media’s collective failure to verify Zimmerman’s race before running with the story was unbelievably stupid.

The media’s intentions are secondary, though, to the real issue. A young man’s life was taken. There is nothing in this world more serious than death. Now we know that Zimmerman was not arrested because of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Essentially, Florida citizens have the right, when threatened with violence, to shoot first and ask questions later in an act of self-defense.

So here’s what I don’t get: when person A is actively pursuing person B, at what point does person A become the one who has the right of self-defense? The 911 tapes show that Zimmerman was following Martin because he looked suspicious, even after having been instructed by the 911 operator not to do so. Does that not automatically make Zimmerman the aggressor in this case? The fact that Zimmerman is not being arrested for murder is, to me, unbelievably stupid. And the so-called “Stand Your Ground” law? Unbelievably stupid.

Thankfully, the Justice Department and the FBI are now on the case. At least some sort of investigation is being carried out. The next thing to look at is that ridiculous law. While we’re at it, let’s take a look at all laws passed by majorities of Republican lawmakers. These days, they all seem to be unbelievably stupid.

A month ago, I wrote a post about Rick Santorum’s inability to understand the concept of “imposing morality” on others. I have no doubt it’s something that is a fundamental flaw in his capacity to reason. In other words, he’s never going to “get it.” But I still shake my head in disgust when I see him repeat the same nonsense to an adoring, obviously brainless, crowd.

The latest Santorum news making the rounds is that a few protesters were tazed, cuffed and dragged away from a Santorum campaign event. There’s a lot to focus on in this incident. For example, Santorum’s disparaging remarks regarding the protesters.

You realize that there is a group in society that is being left behind. There’s a group, about one in three Americans don’t graduate from high school, and almost all of them, over three quarters of them, will end up in poverty at some point in time in this country. We’ve got to provide an opportunity for them, instead of standing here unemployed yelling at somebody, to go out and get a job and work for a living!

This while members of the audience were shouting for the protesters to “get a job.” Yes, that demonstrates another fundamental flaw of the conservative mind, but not the one I want to focus on. My focus is here:

Now I gotta tell you. I don’t agree with these people but I respect their opportunity to be able to have a different point of view and I don’t think they’re a hater or a bigot because they disagree with me.

Santorum is implying here that those who disagree with him actually do consider him a hater or a bigot because of his disagreement with them. He, and countless other social conservatives, repeatedly demonstrates a serious inability to understand the difference between having a “point of view” and being bigoted, intolerant, discriminatory, and a host of other negative words. No one says Santorum is a hater because they disagree with him, but because he promotes hate in his rhetoric. No one says Santorum is a bigot because they disagree with him, but because he supports and defends government policies that would deny certain rights to certain groups of people.

Is it possible for people like Santorum to understand the difference? My experience tells me no. This theme is, and has long been, evident as a thread running through a variety of conservative “points of view”. You can see it in their opinions regarding the unemployed, illegal immigrants, atheists, homosexuals, liberals, and any other group they aim their sights at. Call them out for their contemptuous, hateful or intolerant rhetoric and you are labeled intolerant.

In the conservative mind, their opinions are to be respected no matter how they are perceived, and the rest of the world is free to disagree as long as they do so quietly. The idea that no opinion is sacred, that every opinion is open to criticism and ridicule, is simply too alien to contemplate. Santorum is a poster child of this immature mentality. But in his case, I think it works against him. It plays well with the nutjob base, but as long as he keeps spewing such nonsense, I find it highly unlikely he will ever be elected to the White House.

In my last post, I talked about Edward Dillard, the man who was attacked by members of Newt Gingrich’s security detail in Florida. Now, Dillard is stepping up to the plate and suing Gingrich and the members of his security team. I often complain that America is an overly litigious society, but in this case I definitely see a lawsuit as being warranted. Actually, I would prefer to see criminal charges brought about for assault & battery in addition to the lawsuit. This sort of reckless behavior should be severely punished every time it rears its ugly head.