Polska Brain Jelly

Ubisoft, one of the premier game publishing houses has decided to jump on the intrusive idiocy that is digital rights management.

The basic gist of their plan is to require an Internet connection to not only play their games, but to save game progress and access that saved progress.

Good luck to you if your Internet connection is down or you are in an area (say, an airplane or in the sticks somewhere) where there is no Internet.

When I buy a game, I expect to be able to play it whenever and wherever I please.  Looks like I won’t be buying Ubisoft games once this is implemented, which is a shame because they make some great games.

This is sort of a follow up to my DRM thread.  Just wanted to pass along an article that just about mirrors my thoughts about firms treating their customers like present or future criminals.  Insomnia and the Internet, what a wonderful couple.

The only thing I don’t agree with the article on is showing a receipt at Costco.  Warehouse clubs like Sam’s and Costco require a membership, and in the membership agreement that is signed is the clause that states the warehouse club gets to check your receipt.  If you sign an agreement, you get to abide by that agreement.  After the article author’s refusal to comply with the membership agreement, Costco has every right to revoke his membership.  At Walmart, however, there is no such agreement so they can huff and puff all they want as consumers walk out the door with their purchased items.

The article.

It seems that what was once a trick play a team would pull out when they were way behind or way ahead has become a weekly mandatory play.  Is this some sort of NFL marketing gimmick to somehow make a game more exciting?  If it is, hate to tell them but when every team does it at least once per game, it tends to wear down the shiny coating quickly.

What really baffles my mind is how effective it seems most of the time.  I would figure that nine weeks into the season defenses would be able to read that play by now and know how to counter it.  On top of that, almost every team in the league is jumping on the bandwagon and the media can’t seem to shut up about it.

I hope the newness wears off soon and that defenses start to pick up on it quickly.  Honestly, if the running back were good enough to be a quarterback in the NFL, he would be a quarterback in the NFL.

It’s official, we’ve run out of ideas.

It’s either that or the current generation of movie makers has absolutely no imagination or creative drive whatsoever.  These are the only reasons that I can figure for the recent (and upcoming) glut of 80s era remakes coming to theaters everywhere.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s count the recent and upcoming list of 80s remakes to the big screen:

• Transformers
• Transformers 2
• GI Joe
• Halloween (technically the 70s for the first movie, but most of the series was made in the 80s)
• Friday the 13th
• The Karate Kid (the new movie is titled The Kung Fu Kid)
• The A-Team
• Red Dawn
• Short Circuit
• Poltergeist
• Fame
• Footloose
• Children of the Corn (released to television, not theaters, but same difference)
• V (see above)
• Red Sonja
• Conan
• He-Man (titled Greyskull)
• Hellraiser
• Back to School
• Romancing the Stone

And I’m sure there are several that I missed.  This doesn’t even count recent sequels to 80s film series like the Terminator films, the Indiana Jones films and the Star Trek films.  I, however, don’t mind sequels to movies series near as much.  Depending on the series, I actually encourage sequels.  Nor does this list even begin to touch on the 80s music covers that I’ve been hearing lately.  I don’t have a problem with bands doing covers of past songs, some songs are timeless and different compositions just adds to the enjoyment.  But there have been a LOT of 80s covers recently.

I don’t get it.  The 80s were okay; bad fashion, the Cold War, arcades and the Jamaican Bobsled Team were all fond memories, but I can’t think of any movies from that decade that need to be remade.  In fact, I don’t think there is anything from that decade that needs to be brought into the present.  And yet here we are filled to the brim with 80s remakes.

Whether it’s lack of creativity or the fact that those in power making these movies grew up in the 80s and want to envision their childhood with a big budget and computer generated graphics (as opposed to a back yard and sticks), I really wish the 80s had stayed in its own decade.

As much as I love my iPhone, I hate iTunes.  iTunes is the most counter-intuitive, sluggish eyesore I have on my computer.  I can’t say it’s the worst program I’ve ever used, that’s reserved for a Fox-Pro based program that I worked with back in the mid-90′s, but it comes close.  If it weren’t for the fact that my iPhone all but requires it, I wouldn’t come near that piece of crap software with a ten foot laser pole.

Yesterday I plug in the iPhone to charge and sync, and I get a pop-up saying that there is an update to iTunes (9.0).  It gives me a link that I click on and from there it gives me options to download iTunes.  I grab the x64 install and five minutes later I start the install.  Other than it taking forever to install, everything looks like it worked.  In fact, it even told me at the end the install was completed successfully.

Plug the iPhone back in so it can finish charging and I get an error message saying the Apple Mobile Device Support is too old for iTunes, uninstall both iTunes and the Apple Mobile Device Support and reinstall them.

What?  I just upgraded the stupid POS!  Fine, you picky piece of broken shit, I’ll do it your way.  I uninstall iTunes.  That goes fine.  I uninstall the Apple Mobile Device Support and it looks like everything uninstalls fine… until AMDS decides it doesn’t want to be uninstalled today.  Literally, for no explained reason, the progress bar which was at 100% starts emptying, and then the uninstaller closes.  AMDS is still in my program list.  Try it again, exact same thing.  Not wanting to prove myself the definition of insanity, I forego a third attempt.

Hit the Inter-Tubes to find out what the hell is going on.  Not really much help there other than Apple giving a specific order in which to uninstall their products on Vista (I’m running 7), but I give it a try and still same scenario.  I try a few other things that are suggested in various forums, none of which helps.

On a lark, I try the “change” option found in the program list and it brings up the option to repair or uninstall.  Choosing uninstall I get the exact same results, making me the very definition I was trying to avoid. Wanting to try something new and not wanting to chunk my entire computer out the window because of a bad program, I hit the change link again and choose repair.  After that shows finished successfully, I proceed to try and uninstall again.

Miracles do happen, because the damned thing actually uninstalled.  There was apparently something wrong with the program (corrupted when I updated iTunes or it installed incorrectly) and for some unknown reason it wouldn’t uninstall while it was broken.  Boggles the mind.  One of the reasons you uninstall a program is because it’s broken.  To not allow a program to uninstall because it’s broken is the height of idiocy.  Anyway, I reinstall iTunes, and not believing it when it says it installs successfully, I open it up and plug in my iPhone.

It works… with another popup saying I have to authorize this computer to use my iPhone on it.  The same computer that had iTunes on it before,the same computer that I’ve used my iPhone on since I got it.  The same computer that hasn’t changed except for an OS change, no hardware change (except an addition of a TV Tuner card, hardly a major hardware id change).  So now I have activated three of the five activations I have on the same computer.  This is ridiculous.  I understand that after five activations I can deactivate all my activations and start from scratch, but I can only do that once a year.  What happens if I get upgrade happy in a year and it requires me activate each time.  When I hit that wall am I just shit out of luck?  Sorry, you’ve reached or exceeded your activations, you can just piss right off of using iTunes with that iPhone of yours, you know the one you paid good money for.

Apple, along with every other DRM whore out there, can stick their activations straight up their uninstaller.