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Whoopsie
Remember Ubisoft’s amazing new DRM scheme? The one that would stop all those nefarious “pirates” by forcing legitimate purchasers of Ubisoft games to be constantly online? Yeah, well, it got cracked. Mere hours after the release, at that. I know it’s a bit of a potshot, but I just couldn’t resist. It didn’t take a…
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Missing the Point
It looks like a few suits over at Penguin publishing decided to “connect with this whole internet thingy” by turning their eBooks into applications. Because what’s missing when you read a book is a little self-contained social network / entertainment platform. This is the kind of mistake that stems directly from the mistaken idea that…
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Conventional Foolery
Ever since Ubisoft decided that forcing users to constantly “phone home” over the internet was a great way to stop unauthorized sharing of their games, the tired old DRM debate has been experiencing yet another flareup. I was rather disappointed with the treatment the issue got by a few of the webcomics I follow: While…
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Silly Joss, Networks are for Talentless Hacks
I finished watching Dollhouse this weekend, further convincing me that somebody like Joss Whedon is perfectly positioned to lead his contemporaries into the wonderful world of 21st century business models, a la Trent Reznor in music. Careful, spoilers inside. With an army of rabidly loyal fans at his command and a good number of people…
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Firefly, A Test of Love
Rachel and I were originally planning on going away for our holiday break, but mournfully decided to simply save the money and take a vacation to our apartment. In some strange bifurcation of the cosmos, I managed to convince Rachel to watch Firefly with me. The first few episodes took a valiant effort on her…
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Thinking About the Cultural Shift
This article by Mike Masnick is a bit of a long read, but it goes along with some things I’ve said far less eloquently. Yes, the internet, corporations, and globalization make for bigger hits (think Oprah joins twitter), but at the same time it enables powerful subcommunities (Oink.me.uk, game modders). It’s fascinating, especially because as many of us have seen…
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Life is an MMO
More accurately, “at this point in my life it often feels like I am trapped in a MMO.” I’ve gotten the the point where I’m past all of the early levels, so no more easy battles. At the same time, I’m not yet at the high levels, where you get to experience all of the…
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Music, Evolved
I have been talking about the evolution of content distribution in my last couple of posts, and I’ve pulled together some thoughts about how this has affected the music industry specifically. Robert Heinlein said it best in his 1939 novel, Life-Line: “There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea…
Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.