Spacehamster’s Blog

Firstly, big kudos to Bethesda Software for not implementing an EA-style DRM scheme for their latest release. Nevertheless, software piracy is still a major concern for many major gaming companies, and understandably so.

Many gamers have stated if they reduce the costs of games then they would consider buying. I’m not sure that this argument holds water with me, because it misses one very important fact - that humans (particularly gamers), are a self-centered greedy bunch and will continue to pirate stuff because it’s free. Piracy is prevalent for the same reason the stockmarket crashed - because some (if not most) people are greedy.

So what’s one possible approach then? My preferred approach would be similar to Apple iTunes. The iTunes software allows 5 activations. You use up an activation whenever you install your account on another PC, or upgrade your OS or hardware. Sounds like EA, right? But there’s one big difference - when you use up all 5 activations, you’re allowed to reset your activations and start all over again. What a great idea!

iTunes has been around for a very long time. So why didn’t EA implement a similar scheme? It’s funny how people are screaming about how bad DRM is, but no one ever brings up iTunes as an example. Probably because iTunes implements DRM in such a sensible non-intrusive way that doesn’t punish the consumer.

Perhaps EA should think about that before releasing their next game. And call Steve Jobs.

I was really looking forward to the PC port of Mass Effect. I played this game on a friend’s XBox360, and remarked at the time that this game was meant for the PC. So I was disappointed to discover that EA had implemented a strict Copy-protection scheme for the PC game. According to the Wikipedia entry -

In addition, only three activations will be allowed per CD key[80]. Reinstalling Windows or upgrading certain parts of a computer the game is installed on will use up an additional activation. Bioware employees have repeatedly stated that they do not have any information on what parts can be upgraded without triggering a new activation. [81]

As far as I’m aware, it hasn’t been made clear by either EA or Bioware under what circumstances an activation is required. Is it on re-installing the game? Or when Windows is re-installed (which is patently ridiculous)? And gamers have to regularly upgrade their videocards and soundcards for the best gaming experience. I was forced to re-install my Windows installation from a Norton Ghost image only just last week.

EA and Bioware have the right to protect their property from software piracy. But I do feel that the activation scheme unfairly punishes people who legally purchase the game.
UPDATE: Kotaku have reported that Bioware and EA have changed the schema to a once-only online activation, although the 3-times only limit still applies.

I’ve understood the concept of Ajax, but never been able to successfully implement it til’ now. Previous implementations seemed to have used an awful lot of overtly complex Javascript to do some useful things.

I’ve never had all that much respect for Microsoft’s Business division, but there’s no doubting just how good .NET is when you want to implement simple websites quickly. That being the case, I was rather interested in Microsoft’s implementation of Ajax using its Ajax Control Toolkit. These Training videos are a good guide to what the Toolkit can do.

Pretty neat, eh?

As always, I have to be judicious in where I apply these concepts. It’s not as though I need to implement Ajax-enabled controls in all the websites I’ll ever develop. But it will be useful for event-driven form-based webpages where I don’t want the page to refresh everytime the user clicks the submit button.

Its been a little over a year since Vista was released. I must admit, the feedback from the new OS hasn’t been totally negative. It seems adequate as an Development platform - .NET developers don’t seem to have too many problems with it. The real complaints seem to come from Tech-savvy users and a smattering of avid PC Gamers. I haven’t dared upgrade to Vista myself yet, purely because I’m not sure what the impact will be. I use my WinXP to watch a lot of DVD’s and play games. Neither which I’m sure Vista can do properly yet.

So this petition doesn’t bode well.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.

For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.

There’s a good and bad side to this. The bad side is that there still opposition to Vista, which worries me a little. The good side is that WinXP must’ve been a lot better developed and designed OS than Mac and Linux supporters believe in order for a petition to be produced in the first place. Go figure.

The big downside to a Free Market Economy is the rise of a single company that can monopolise and dominate everyone else. Some obvious examples are Microsoft in the US, and Telstra in Australia. One other example that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is, surprisngly enough, Google.

This recent article highlights the problem: Google has changed its Search algorithms so that some searched-for websites have a reduced page ranking. So they turn up less often in Google searches, resulting in reduced revenue. Considering that many websites rely heavily on AdSense and Google for their revenue, this is a serious development for web-based businesses.

Swarms of bloggers and webmasters of major sites like Washingtonpost.com, Forbes.com, Engadget.com and SFGate.com noticed a downgrading in their PageRank, Google’s measure of a web page’s value.

A site’s PageRank impacts not only its ranking in Google search results but also the price it can charge advertisers. A drop in ranking can have serious financial consequences, especially for smaller operators.

The search giant, through its dominant search engine and AdWords/AdSense network, is relied on by millions of websites not only for traffic referrals but for monetisation as well.

Google has long been the Media-darling of the internet, so it hasn’t received as much attention as Microsoft. But it does have the potential to become an even bigger monopoly than Microsoft when it comes to the future of the web.

I ran into another ridiculously annoying but extremely minor feature of .NET. It isn’t a bug, rather an omission. Ever tried inserting dates into an SQL Server table? It won’t accept the format ‘dd/mm/yyyy’, but will accept the format ‘yyyy-mm-dd’. Except there’s no format for ‘yyyy-mm-dd’.

So if you want to insert a date in SQL from ASP.NET, you need to use either of two methods -

DateTime dt = new DateTime();
System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo("en-AU", true);
if (txtDOB.Text.ToString() != "")
{
dt = DateTime.Parse(txtDOB.Text.ToString(), culture, DateTimeStyles.NoCurrentDateDefault);
}
string txtDate = dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");
return txtDate;

Fortunately a colleague who’d been looking at the problem longer than I had found a better solution -
DateTime dte = Convert.ToDateTime(dob);
string dateText = dte.ToString("yyyyMMdd");

BTW, you can’t convert a string directly into a date format (eg. Format(”yyyyMMdd”). You have to convert the string into a date and then into the format you want. Ridiculous. I wonder what other “odd features” I’ll find in DOTNET. This is the problem with programming languages from big corporations. When one Division doesn’t talk to another, this is the result.

About 9 months ago our Department had a meeting to determine which technology platform we were going to use for future development projects. We’d been focusing on Java and JSP. Until one of our co-workers demonstrated Visual Studio 2003 and the new .NET components. Needless to say, after years of JSP and Classic ASP, everyone was pretty impressed. Instead of laboriously hand-coding a textbox for fifteen minutes, you can drag-and-drop a textbox control in a second. What’s not to like?

As a result, we’ve started quietly developing new projects in the .NET platform. After two months, I’ve got to admit I’m pretty impressed by what I’ve seen thus far. I would estimate that 75% of the activities you previously had to manually code in ASP Classic can be done using web controls. For instance, database-based transactions were a nightmare to code in ASP Classic. In ASP.NET 2.0 you only need the SQLDataSource control. Another pain was customising the appearance of multiple webpages, which is easily done using Master Pages.

The only disadvantage I can see thus far is the fact that it’s proprietary software, and therefore costly to implement. But it’s a necessary tradeoff when you consider the shortened development time. Unless you’ve got a bias against Microsoft, I’d definitely recommend .NET for web-based development. IMHO, it’s the only decent thing Microsoft have successfully produced over the past 5 years.

I hope owners of the Linksys WMP54GX card find this post helpful. Linksys build pretty good hardware, but their software and support are absolutely dire. There hasn’t been a driver update for the WMP54GX since 2005, which is pretty slack. Users have also reported compatibility problems with Service Pack 2. My solution to this issue was to only use the Linksys drivers, and not the dodgy software. The solution seems to work thus far.

Hope this helps others too.

In more positive news, the Computer game developer Blizzard has announced their next game - Starcraft 2! Hardcore RTS fans have been waiting 10 years for Blizzard to finally announce a sequel to this much-loved game. Dissapointingly, apart from the graphics there doesn’t seem to be much attempt at updating the gameplay, like they did with Warcraft 3. The real attraction (for me) is the single-player campaign storyline. Is Jim Raynor still around? What happened to Kerrigan? Who are the Xel-Naga? Looking forward to this game!

One of my cousins from Malaysia (Li Yi) visited Tasmania with a few of her friends. They stayed in a Villa Townhouse, and travelled around the entire state. It was lovely having them around. My only regret is that they can’t visit more often. But like our family, they too have commitments at home.

I’ve been playing Tiberium Wars since it was released. I don’t have a particuarly high opinion of EA, mostly due to how badly they treat their developers. That dislike was borne out by the extremely poor ‘Collectors Edition’ packaging for this game. $100AUS for a bonus DVD which only contained a few videos? A pathetic ripoff. Fortunately, the developers have done a great job with the game itself. It isn’t the classic that C&C was, but it’s visually appealing with enjoyable gameplay. The Single-Player campaign is strong. As usual with C&C, the Nod Campaign is more intriguing and exciting than the straightlaced GDI campaign. My only crticism is I wish they’d added an Risk-style World map as well as the campaign, as in BFME2. Apart from that, I’d give it 7.5/10.

Doctor Who is back on the air in the UK. From all reports, it looks like they’ve done a great job…again. The new companion (Freema Agyeman) is attracting plenty of positive attention. But the big question is - just what does Russell. T. Davies have planned for the third season? We’ve had a Dalek invasion, a fantastic Dalek/Cyberman showdown. Just how is he going to top that? Time will tell…