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Many of my budding artist friends appreciate their obscurity problem and want to share their work without the encumbrance of copyright. Yet they are worried about others using it for commercial purposes, the same fear that drives people like Cory Doctorow into the arms of Creative Commons licenses. This idea of somebody else, maybe a corporation making all kinds of money from uncredited use of their work seems to represent a worst-case scenario for artists – thus, if we can find ways for even these types of situations to work to their advantage, everything else is simple. Continue Reading »

Ignorant corporate executive Cory Ledesma thinks buying games used somehow cheats developers (read: his company, THQ), so he doesn’t have any problem with tying a game’s online multiplayer  mode to a one-time-use code. This is the kind of ridiculous decision one can expect from the knee-jerk fiscal entitlement mentality everybody making things seems to have these days.

Of course, this is a grave misunderstanding of the marketplace and the value of the secondary market, something often discussed on TechDirt (Penny-Arcade is somewhat more sympathetic). What people like Cory fail to understand is that making a purchase is an economic decision for the customer. There’s no “right” way to do it; just because selling new games throws some money to the game’s developers doesn’t mean you’re an unfeeling shell if you save money getting it secondhand. Certainly there is more involved in the decision than simply price, and wanting to support the game’s creators is a potential influencing factor; however, theatrics like this sure don’t do much to build love for THQ and their employees.

Here’s the kicker: online multiplayer is usually an incentive to buy a game instead of downloading the free version. By removing this benefit from the used games, Cory’s company has essentially made the two identical. Customers should ask themselves why they bother buying the used game at all when they could get the same benefits for free. Believe it or not there’s a competitive marketplace at work here, no matter how much folks like Cory whine about it.

People like this need to quit trying to blame others: It’s his company’s responsibility to encourage purchases of new retail versions. This should be elementary, but providing incentives for people to buy the game new needs to be about adding benefits, not taking them away. Lowering retail prices, including DLC, or deluxe editions all help give customers a reason to buy. Taking away core features and pretending it’s an extra is not.

Now that we have internet access and are pretty much unpacked, I’ve been slowly trying to catch up on the internet. I’ve collected RSS feeds in Google Reader to the point that I can’t get through them all on a regular day, so several weeks of backlog probably means I’m going to give up and miss out on some incredible world event or the latest IP-maximalist atrocity. Continue Reading »

My new apartment has a cable hookup in the living room, but Tess (my desktop computer) is on the other side in the office. I had a similar problem at the old place, and solved it by bridging two wireless routers. I end up being able to physically connect Tess and the 360 to the routers at either end as well as fill my house with “the why-fys.” This time around I decided to modify the solution a bit – if you’re interested in how I did this, read on; otherwise, feel free to skip to the bottom and leave comments. Continue Reading »

Rachel and I arrived in Loma Linda on Sunday having traveled around 3000 miles, averaged 46 miles per gallon, crossed ten states, and had zero fights. Pause for a moment to appreciate that. Now, this:  Thursday we emptied most of trailer by ourselves, because we’re just that incredible. Continue Reading »

We were originally planning on leaving last week, but it turns out that packing boxes of stuff into a truck is like trying to move a slinky dog by pulling on its head. Instead of moving the hindquarters, the body keeps expanding until what should have been “only a few things” fills half of your available space. Continue Reading »

In the interest of sparing you as much of the going-to-med-school angst as possible, I’ll try and keep this brief. “The Big Move” is finally, actually happening, which translates to me spending days saying goodbye to people, assembling cardboard boxes, and “scanning” documents with my digital camera to email. Continue Reading »

I made it through the first half of the year without seeing a single movie in the theater. It wasn’t a goal or anything, I just didn’t find anything compelling enough to make me spend the time and money. In the past two weeks I’ve seen as many in-theater movies, and nearly every trailer concluded by bragging about the upcoming film’s availability in “stunning” 3D. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given the trend, but I can’t shake the feeling that 3D is more of a fad than a step forward. Continue Reading »

Last week Rachel and I went with some friends to the Red Pearl, a new Chinese restaurant in Columbia. Our server, Ben, was able to immediately tell me which dishes contained peanuts – an excellent start. Even with so many peanut allergies this is a rare trait; most of the time they have to go back and ask somebody. The entire staff taking responsibility for keeping the water glasses full was another plus. These kinds of things may not seem like much but for me they delineate good restaurants and truly professional establishments. Continue Reading »

I saw this article a couple of days ago; the criticism of Hollywood’s treatment of race in the universally-panned Avatar: The Last Airbender (and throughout history) is well-done and thought-provoking. One comment the author makes in passing got me thinking in an entirely new direction: storytelling in video games. Continue Reading »