Vicious Tendencies

I’ve been speaking to SecuROM DRM using companies through my wallet for quite some time, but this guy has hit the nail on the head in exactly how I feel about the whole debacle.

I respect the fact that developers spend a lot of money and put a lot of time into creating great games. I am completely willing to put up my $50 for a new title. I am not willing to be treated to third party software installs on my computer, EULAs that effectively eliminate any rights I may have to use that software or dictate how I may do so after I’ve paid my money or in short, be treated like a criminal while the individuals who do pirate your software enjoy a better user experience.

Ben goes on to quote an EA rep from their forum, which pretty much sums up why EA is the devil

Be nice in your forums. The below quote is a perfect example of not being nice. It shows only that you would willingly take away a paying user’s ability to play a game based on words they would say.

Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly reccommend people play nice and act mature.

All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.

Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)

I’m glad that smiley is in there or this slap in my face would sting a lot more. In short, don’t punish us for buying your software.

This really is a good read, and I highly recommend any gamer chooses to speak out about the way we’re treated.

An open letter to Electronic Arts - because voting with my wallet isn’t enough.

2000 Jetta GLS 2.0
Fully loaded
98k miles

The Randsinrepose blog has a GREAT post about how the nerdular mind works. Rather than try to reiterate everything that has been perfected, I’ll just link!

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

keyboard

It’s unlikely that this project is a nerd’s day job because his opinion regarding his job is, “Been there, done that”. We’ll explore the consequences of this seemingly short attention span in a bit, but for now this project is the other big thing your nerd is building and I’ve no idea what is, but you should.

At some point, you, the nerd’s companion, were the project. You were showered with the fire hose of attention because you were the bright and shiny new development in your nerd’s life. There is also a chance that you’re lucky and you are currently your nerd’s project. Congrats. Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention. This handbook might help.

Regarding gender: for this piece, my prototypical nerd is a he as a convenience. There are plenty of she nerds out there for which these observations equally apply.

RandsInRepose