Demos: Magic Fingers

Yes, it's about the Spore DRM. Enjoy. I guess Eleven Names is dead. I can't really do anything halfway, so I'll still be posting things here, even if I'm the only one. The song is by a metal/thrash band called Cursed. Listen with your headphones up and a maniacal grin on your face.




What do you do when you're a gigantic multinational corporation and you've got a hugely anticipated game you've sunk tens of millions into getting pirated weeks before the release date?

If you're Electronic Arts (EA) and that game is Spore, you throw a new kind of copy-protection on the retail release.

Perhaps by now, one of your computer savvy friends has told you the gripe: If you buy Spore, the copy-protection (known as SecureRom) the disc only allows three installations. Buy it from the online store, you still only have three installations. If you use an illegal file-sharing network to acquire that same game, you have as many installations as you want.

Seem silly to you? It seems silly to a lot of people as well, who are upset, and reasonably, given that they are paying for a product that is fundamentally crippled from what they can download for free. SecureRom is also a bit of a pejorative in the PC gaming community, since the Mass Effect controversy, where the game required you to be on the internet once every 10 days so it could phone home to make sure the game isn't pirated, and that's being polite and not mentioning that installing that game (or Bioshock) might give EA administrative access to your computer. EA, however, has said that they are going to use SecureRom in the forseeable future to protect their games, which suffice to say, PUT THIS IN ITALICS concerns PUT THIS IN ITALICS me.

Let me say this explicitly: If you choose to purchase Spore, you are getting a product that may endanger your computer, and from one perspective is a $50 rental. If you don't pay for Spore, and find it online, you get an un-crippled version of the game and it is less likely you'll get viruses from the game. Whether you'll get viruses from the programs you need to run the game without a disc is another matter entirely. Most of this, though, is obvious.

What's not obvious is that EA doesn't have anywhere else to go on the issue. What are you going to tell your investors who can grow reasonably nervous about their continued involvement with an industry that takes millions of dollars in loses from piracy? That the best way to protect your multi-million dollar baby is to put less strong anti-piracy measures on the disc? You think swallowing a negative profit margin is tough, try telling an executive that the best way to curb illegal acquisition of the game is to just to throw a CD-key (easily crackable) on the retail copy.

The official stance from EA is that if you want multiple accounts, you'll need to buy multiple copies of the game. If you've forgotten your email or lost access to the password, you are out of luck, and are now out another $50. This seems draconian. In fairness, it will probably take a couple weeks of customers calling EA's customer service saying that they need more installs, and the company heads will probably get the message and remove the three install limit.

Until then, though, is the issue. If I am going to be remotely honest, my advice is to buy a copy of Spore, then download it on your favorite filesharing service. Even typing that sentence seems absurd, but if you want the game you paid for, and you want it to work on terms that are reasonable, that's one of the only honest options I can come up with. To quote a good friend of mine, you can expect other commentators to be far less merciful.

Yes, SecreRom a) frightens me that much, but also b) restricts the content on the disc that you paid for. I'm sympathetic to the gigantic corporation trying to protect its investment, but at this point, rampant piracy has already succeeded, so restricting the enthusiastic customers helps no one.

EA, sadly, is in a bind. They don't have the quazi-moral authority that a Blizzard or Valve does, and they have significantly higher operating costs and a much larger group of developers to corral. They have to take a strong anti-piracy stance, and if that means using an overzealous alaskan wolf as a drug sniffing dog, so be it.

They, however, ought to prepare for when their wolf ruins their customers baggage.

Demos: Prick For President

Sadly, by now, the Republican National Convention has come and gone, proving my point about being cautiously optimistic about the vituperative nature of the campaign. The "liberals" being compared to the Viet Cong? Thanks, Mr. President. Oh well, at least someone in the RNC postponed the first day of the convention to keep the focus on Hurricane Gustav. Sarah's Palin's speech, though, had quite a bit of partisan rancor and even more lies. Way to go, Governor.

By now you've heard that Republican presidential candidate and long time U.S. Senator John McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his Vice President. It's not exactly an intellectual masterstroke to say the decision was made to appeal to many different segments of the US population. I'm starting to feel that McCain's choice of 44 year old mother of five Governor Palin represents a political Rorsarch test, with some liberal Democrats saying it's a desperation play for some of the bitter ex-Hillary people in the voting booths, some conservative outlets saying it's a maverick picking another maverick, traditional outlets saying it's a play for the disenfranchised Romney or Huckabee voters who are threatening to "sit out" the election.

Thus, the questions: Who, exactly, does this attract, and with who in mind, was it made?

From the traditional standards of electoral scorekeeping, the pick doesn't make sense. Alaska doesn't have enough electoral votes worth mentioning, and neither does the northwest. I was unaware that social conservatives were ever not going to vote for McCain, but at least according to Politico, the traditional Republican voters became tremendously more excited and more likely to play ball with the former reformer. We'll see if that holds.

I'll hazard a guess that Governor Palin was chosen based on being an obscure politician with fairly impeccable conservative credentials, in addition to having significant, if small scale organizational and legislative experience. All that, in addition to being a woman.

Also (but not paradoxically), you probably can take Senator McCain at his word here when he says that one of the reasons he chose her was to shake things up in Washington. Her experience as Governor of Alaska is, at best, two years total, having defeated the Republican incumbent. She's been a dynamic individual in Alaskan politics, pushing through the Alaskan Gasline Inducement Act after a couple years of inaction, tapping a Canadian corporation to do so. Before 2004, Senator McCain used to be a maverick, so perhaps he sees a little bit of himself in Governor Palin, a woman who is very comfortable with her views (pro-gun, against abortion except only in the case of the death of the mother) and isn't afraid to accept the consequences and drawbacks of her position.

According to members of my family in Alaska, Governor Palin is a tenacious, skilled politician who listens, connects well and radiates warmth, so it will be interesting to see when she gets dispatched here (and also in Michigan and Ohio) how she fares amongst the populous.

I'm not particularly concerned about her age, any more than I'm concerned about Senator Obama's, though that question appears to appeal to a lot more people. This general election has been significantly less dirty than the past two and I'd like to see that continue. I've heard significant policy disagreements and not personal attacks. Even the slimy ex-Swift Boat people have only written a book about Obama, and it's not even a part of McCain's campaign.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the next couple months that they won't be filled with the same vituperative sloganeering that characterized the 2004 or 2000 elections, and with the choices that both Senators running for President have made, it looks to be an interesting race. By the time this column goes to print, the Republican National Convention will have already happened, and I look forward to the goings on in and around it.

Demos: And I Begin the Longest Year Ever

A couple things: 

First: Yes, I'm still doing this in the new year.

Second: I was asked to submit a column of advice for freshmen. This is what I wrote.

Third: I don't know when Tom, Zach or Jack is going to update.

Fourth: I still have big plans regarding guest columnists.

Fifth: The title is a Distance song that has always intrigued me since I heard it. I like the way it rolls off the tongue, and the weight that goes with the phrase. You know what's coming, but you don't know how or from where.

My advice for freshmen is fairly simple: the best way to figure out what to do is to make mistakes. So, get them all out of the way quickly.

I suggest the following:
+Start drinking Tuesday night so that you go to your Wednesday 8 a.m. class with a brutal hangover as soon as possible, without even the glimmer of Friday to look forward to. Why? So you know how terrible it is and how little you want that feeling in the future.

+The very next night, buy three cans of Red Bull and mix it with Ritalin. If you don't die, you'll learn the important lessons of a) not taking everything you read in this paper seriously and b) doing your work ahead of schedule.

+Take the money you'd spend on a fake ID ($150 in my neck of the woods) and cover at any local bar and put the bills slowly in the toilet over the course of 10 minutes while weeping softly. Congratulations, you've just gotten the feeling of getting that fake ID confiscated by the police and kicked out of the bar without having anything on your record or spending a night in holding.

+Get drunk the night before a test and fail it. (In this case, the sooner, the better.) You've just learned not to do that again.

My real bitty-bites of advice are as follows. Most of these are details in a college life. The major ideas (go to class, don't accept drinks from strangers at parties, do work in advance, explore Meadville) the school, teachers and random upperclassmen will tell you. You don't need me to reinforce that. So, in an effort to be useful, I solicited advice from carefully chosen members of the community who had different experiences than I did. Their suggestions are marked with an asterisk, because it's easier than acquiring the ability to use their full names here.

1) Make silly mistakes. Often. (You won't be able to avoid the big mistakes.)

2) Don't take yourself too seriously.

3) Listen more often you speak.

*4) Get to know upperclassmen.

5) Participate in campus life.

6) Take chances.

7) The Pittsburgh Bagel Company is worth getting up before 9 a.m. and walking down the hill for.

8) Buy tooth whitening gum. Lots of it.

9) Get a flash drive.

*10) Talk to your friends when you're in an academic or emotional rut.

11) Your raid group will understand if you have a paper due the next day. Your professor will not understand the reverse.

*12) There is no shame in recognizing your limits, academic, alcoholic or otherwise.

13) Give the benefit of the doubt.

*14) It's not worth a piece of your soul. In other words, remember to have fun, too.

15) Overloading on coursework and activities does not make you special or awesome.

16) If it's not on campus, start it.

17) Go to at least one fraternity or sorority event and use that experience, along with conversations from people involved with those groups to make a decision on whether it's for you.

*18) Julian's is a fantastic restaurant for almost any occasion.

*19) College is a small place, so word gets around about Saturday night by Sunday morning.

*20) Have an idea of the person you want to be when you graduate, and try to act accordingly.

*21) Building secretaries can be more helpful than you realize. Get to know them.

Finally, hardest of all, and perhaps most important: Get uncomfortable. One learns nothing staying in their bubble. I certainly learned quite a bit by being dead wrong and on this crucial point, I am willing to universalize my experience. To steal a line from Fugazi: Do it. Now. Do it. You have four years, and it's already ticking away. Welcome to college. Start leaving your mark.

Demos: Disgrace Is the Color of Red

Behind the scenes, there's been some significant discussion about what we're doing with elevennames, if none of us post and are overworked. I gave up on posting, angrily, a while back, and return now, for no other reason than it settles my mind and gives my mind something else to focus on than my papers.

There's news in the world, but I presume that you might like to know Nine Inch Nails released their new (non-instrumental) disc, the Slip for free, and you can download it, with a registration, here. More whenever we get around to it.

Eleven Names is dead! Long live Eleven Names!

Between Facebook’s new chat application (which you can’t opt out of) and the power outage on campus Thursday, a lightbulb turned on in my head. The big social question of our lives is how not how can we be more accessible, but how can we protect the few points in our lives where we are not accessible?

Consider, briefly, that airlines are thinking about allowing cell phone calls on flights. Can you imagine a multi-hour flight next to a businessperson or vapid human who needs to be speaking and in communication, and you can’t get away from it for another two hours? Or if it’s more than one person?

When the power went out during my Philosophy class (we were watching a movie), I exhaled. Suddenly, the reality of being in a basement in Montgomery, and having the comfort in seeing people’s faces in less detail, shrouded in shadows sunk in. There was a comfort in not having the lights on, and feeling just that much cooler, temperature wise.

For a couple moments, it felt like being in Plato’s cave. As the Germs might say, what we do is secret, and it was that remoteness and isolation, if only for 30 minutes, tops, made my day. (I suspect the classes in Alden were significantly less pleased.) Because the power was off, suddenly, the ability for people to contact me just got axed. I don’t think I brought my cell phone with me, so for those couple moments, I, truly, was unavailable. You couldn’t call, email, Facebook poke, IM (instant message), or text me and expect a response.

For that moment in our lives, nearly everything with a microchip was of no avail to me.

We (as a society) are quite attached to our electronics. This isn’t to say it’s bad, or wrong, but it’s happening. We vote with each new phone we purchase, with the video-feature, with every use of the mobile web feature, with every qwerty keyboard installed on that phone. With every new instant chat widget in an email client, social networking scheme and every single twitter update, we condone and support this hyper-connected behavior.

This is what we are becoming. At almost every point in my day, I am accessible. If I am not checking my multiple email accounts, updating blogs or chatting over IM I can also pick up my phone. I mention this to say I’m a part of it too. Do you want this lifestyle? Are we aware, that as a generation, we are making the decision to become connected and accessible at almost every point in our days and lives?

The answer is no. And, I presume, because I don’t see a discussion about it, that’s the problem. That’s what struck me and made me so angry about Facebook’s chat feature. There isn’t now, a way to simply update Facebook without being accessible.

I see a presumption that there that more accessibility is better and desired, and that’s what annoys me. It’s not true, and I think we’re losing something.

Quite what it is, I can’t put my finger on it, but I know, that as I have my IM client engaged, two email accounts open and my phone by my side, I won’t be anywhere close.

Demos: Mexico 4 Life

Again, a little something stop the bleeding of no posts here. We've got a good theme week coming up, Zach, Catherine and I are just real busy at the moment.

I have recently been reading the accusation that Senator Barack Obama has been throwing down the proverbial gauntlet in his stump speeches since Senator Hillary Clinton has put into circulation her 3 a.m. phone call ad, suggesting that Clinton has the experience on the first day she takes office to answer the dreaded early morning impending doom call that Obama doesn't.

Obama, then, has responded on his stump speeches by questioning Clinton's experience. This, I understand, is proof positive of his "taking the attack to Hillary", as the New York Times said on the sixth of March. For some readers, this counts as dirty politics.

I disagree.

I have seen dirty politics, and this is not it. Obama is asking for the evidence to Clinton's conclusion that she has the experience necessary to lead the country, which, when pushed, appears to be her eight years in the White House as her husband's de facto chief of staff, and her seven years on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That's a reasonable, if pointed question. By comparison, Obama has been on the same committee for two years, and the Republican nominee Senator John McCain has been on the committee since roughly the fall of man.

If you want real dirty politics, then I have a story to tell you. This story starts in South Carolina during the Republican primary in 2000 and stars Senator McCain and then Gov. George W. Bush during their campaign for the Republican nomination. Senator McCain has a lead and has won Iowa and New Hampshire. Anonymous polls begin in neighborhoods where McCain was strong, with a loaded question to the effect of "Would your opinion of Senator McCain change if you knew that he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" (It's important to note at this point that the McCain family had adopted a girl from Bangledesh, which lent a bit of anecdotal evidence to the whisper campaign used to discredit him morally.) Not surprisingly, McCain's numbers dropped in the polls; Bush took South Carolina; leaving McCain shaking and unable to regain the advantage.

Reports from multiple sources including the National Review, the New York Times (years later, of course...) and other reputable outlets could only confirm innuendos, but prevailing wisdom awards the credit to Karl Rove, operating as Bush's chief political strategist.

That's dirty politics. Dirty politics is suggesting that your white opponent had a child with a black woman in a conservative state without putting your own name on the smear. Dirty politics is firing anyone in the Justice Department who isn't a "loyal Bushie". Dirty politics is outing a deep cover CIA agent to get back at her husband for criticizing your basis for starting a war.

Asking for evidence to a debatable conclusion doesn't even come close.

Demos: No, ALL!

This is in response to a column that gave me the impression that the author said that political engagement didn't matter. I disagreed. Some important changes were made, but not to the original thesis. Perhaps the new version is a smidge faster, and maybe hit the proverbial notes more accurately. I don't think anything is lost in the translation, though. In fact, I like the printed version a little better.

I am not too proud to admit that part of this was inspired by Beth, with whom I disagree on a couple issues relating to Obama. Since much of the internet is about pointless feuds, I'd like to note that this doesn't mean I hate her, but simply disagree with her on a fairly important social issue that (hopefully) affects both of us.

Oh, and if you understand why, specifically, the non sequitur title is there, (and not simply as a reference to a praticular band) you win three hundred internet points.

My peers ask why vote and why bother with civic engagement, and it's a good question. Why bother with civic engagement at all when for the last couple decades, youth turnout has been at all time low (recently that has been changing) and voter apathy (why bother with presidents when the differences between candidates are shallow and they're all sponsored by special interests that profit on the status quo…) is fairly high?

I wish I had something better, something that sounded more academic or something that sounded more debonair, but here it is. Why should you bother? Because you've seen what happens when people didn't care. W. If you're enrolled here and fairly liberal, then you know what it's like during your formative years to be shut out of the political process, attacked and called a traitor to your country, all for voicing your opinion. To stave off the inevitable: I make no statements for when Clinton was in office, since I wasn't old enough to render a complex enough judgment for this column.

As for the idea of "keeping your political ideas to yourself", I'd like to respond with "Well, that actually ties into why bother with civic engagement." Let me speak, as I often do, about videogames. As I have previously mentioned, the "debate" on videogames is couched in a framework of "They're the worst things to happen to kids since rap music, don't you agree? You don't? Well, you're wrong, and destroying the innocence of American youth." Why is this? Because this side is the only one speaking up and voting for "the issue". And yes, it also has something to do with the fact that they donate lavishly to the reelection campaigns of Congresspeople. For the most part, there has not been until incredibly recently a coordinated attempt to form another perspective on videogames in the media. Opponents of videogames speak up, so they have the floor, and set the tone of the discussion. To appropriate a Modern Life is War lyric, if no one is speaking to you, speak up.

So, if you want to change the discussion (whether it's videogames or something else entirely), you're going to have to get your metaphorical hands dirty. You're going to have to speak in public about how you feel and you're going to have to take the plunge of expressing yourself about something publicly, or you can keep silently writhing and hope that magically, things will change.

I'm trying to say this without a bunch of rah-rah-rah garbage but, if you want change, you're going to have to raise your voice. I don't want this to end like a Disney teen drama, so I'll leave it like this: We have a mounting national debt (both foreign and domestic), a housing crisis that is squeezing people out of their homes, a war that will cost us over $2 trillion all told, and an international image in tatters.

You're still asking why you should care?

Demos: Don't Push Us When We're Hot

Discussions of breaking the theme aside, here's the draft I sent over to the newspaper to be published. Sometimes, the demos deserve to be outshown by their full studio release sibling, and I think this column is a great example of that. Fear not, I've got something for the theme week, but this will tide you over until I'm happy with the quality and quantity of my output.

There is a discussion among music industry pundits as to what, exactly, to do with the games "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero". After you get through the usual "Why don't they just play real guitars?" question (Answer: It differs from person to person, but in a lot of cases because it's fun faster.) and the suits thumbing their noses (Hello Velvet Rope!), what emerges most often is the word "market".

Market is an important choice of word. It shows what gamers are thought of. It dehumanizes the subjects and dismisses the idea of a shared community, experience or anything else except for age or geographical location. I'll return to this later. But, they see an "emerging market" for music in gamers. This "emerging market" is the enthusiastic "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" players who will buy new songs, sold as downloadable content. Why are we an emerging market? Because the record industry didn't pay attention to gamers before (even with the huge success of SingStar abroad), and now that downloadable content and "Guitar Hero" took off in numbers that raised some eyebrows, suddenly, gamers (and I include myself) courted.

This means, first and foremost, there's going to be a lot more garbage released on "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band", as any band who is smart enough will insist that part of their contract mandate that the label work with MTV or Harmonix to get their material on the games will, with the right push from the label (read: burlap sacks filled with money), get their focus tested single in. (See also: The upcoming Aerosmith edition of "Guitar Hero".) But, it also means that Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Beatles songs (what the industry might reasonable call high profile content) will become available to play.

The music industry sees the energy and willingness to spend money in the gaming world as something worth tapping into, and worth trying to profit off of. (They are not wrong, gamers are an reliable market which generates revenue consistently and in a physical retail environment. For an industry losing its core demographics left and right, this is an especially tempting pie.)

The interaction between the players in "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" and the feeling of "yes, I'm nailing this song" are what sells copies, and makes believers out of gamers. This is at odds with the current state of the music industry. There's enough economics people in the music industry, which is common knowledge, but not enough believers.

What remains to be seen is how the people making "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" will respond to the tempting offers of money to stuff their high profile game with sub-par material. "Guitar Hero 3" (the latest iteration) had small, but unforgivable problems with button response time, which is crucial in a timed response game. On the other hand, it had a more varied and deeper track list, which made "Guitar Hero 3" unbearable to play, knowing that when I hit the notes correctly, and on time, the game would not register it, making a "plunk" noise and taking me out of the experience.

That edition of "Guitar Hero" has since sold over a couple million copies, which is a success for any game. The problem is, players who bought the game got frustrated with the controls, and have since stopped playing that edition. As the music industry loses goodwill left and right, it's important to note that the "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" franchises have had some crossover success. Let us hope the success is not Pyrrhic.

Introducing: Demos

Eleven Names and my campus' newspaper occupy a strange place in my head. Both are repositories for my coalesced thoughts on a given issue, and frequently, they overlap. I could publish something on Eleven Names before it goes to the newspaper, but when it was originally written for the newspaper, it feels a little bit like cheating.

In fact, I wrote something that was originally written for the school paper, but I published it here when I realized that it would be a month or so before it was published in the school. That gave me an idea that I sat on for a couple issues. The editors tend to screw up the column when they don't check what they're putting on the page, which made me think, I'll take my own mistakes so long as I can do the final spell check. My columns will be be great!

So, I'll publish my first drafts here, a couple hours after they appear in the campus' paper to be digested. I hope this is a fairly stable new feature, where you all will get the demo version, what I sent to the paper for them to supposedly improve, and in fact, foul up with not catching the notes on the edits they were making.

Enjoy!

I wrote in recently about videogames and about the ease that journalists can dismiss them. But now I’d like to focus on why, with a couple reasons stolen outright from Wired’s Clive Thompson.

Why don’t videogames have the same kind of in depth discussion associated with them that recordings or movies do? First and foremost, I would imagine is because they simply aren’t good material for a daily feature or column. Just speaking about the time invested in (or expected from) a video game, the sweet spot being anywhere between 20 and 40 hours, depending on the kind of game, there’s no way that columnists could play a third as many videogames a year as they write columns or articles and expect to maintain a readership. They wouldn’t be saying anything useful. To make a quick comparison: If my college’s DJs had to sit through 3 10 hour CDs a week, they’d give up.

That is one of the primary reasons why videogames as a medium and form of communication do not get attention or care from newspaper media, the investment of time is too great as compared to other forms of communication and entertainment. In other words: Videogames take too long to digest for effective daily or weekly publishing material.

There’s also the monetary cost. Keeping up with the latest videogames is expensive, since the technology shifts every so often (PCs and consoles), in addition, the games themselves usually cost between $50 and $60 before tax. Unless, of course, you’re still playing last generation systems, in which case, it just isn’t newsworthy enough for further explanation in a paper or professional magazine.

Right now, video games occupy the same position that the “God-forsaken rock and roll noise” and “that awful rap garbage” did years ago, as the corrupter of children. How were those art forms absolved of their blame for being the worst thing to happen to morality since Original Sin? It was only through exposure to the music and an in depth discussion of the themes contained in the words that the form was acknowledged as legitimate and not as some kind of artless, puerile endeavor.

Pioneering political and social artists Public Enemy and NWA were bitter pills to swallow for Tipper Gore and Co., this is true, but almost two decades worth of distance from the outbreak of hip-hop music from racial boundaries, most serious critics acknowledge, at the very least, that those artists were writing about what they knew. (For that matter, “Fear of a Black Planet” was inducted into the Library of Congress in 2004 alongside the Beach Boys and Dizzie Gillespie.)

The easy comparisons end there. Because video games today combine text, audio and an interactive portion with a controller or mouse and keyboard, games are judged in terms of a seamless interactive experience, which must be intimidating to players who don’t understand the vernacular.

With Grand Theft Auto IV coming out this year, gamers of all stripes can expect a storm of faux-controversy and hours of babbling from ignorant commentators who don’t know the vocabulary, but have no trouble proclaiming it as another murder simulator, peddled underhandedly to mentally unstable, titillated, teenage boys with predilections for school shootings.

Hopefully, you’ll know better.