Odex wins appeal against PacNet
Posted by Ray @ 11:39 pmOdex has won its appeal against PacNet, who now has to cough up the details of the downloaders who obtained anime titles off Bit Torrent. Previously, the District Judge had held that because PacNet owes a duty of confidentiality to its customers, Odex had to show an “extremely strong prima facie case” of wrongdoing before it could obtain the names of the downloaders.
Justice Woo Bih Li overturned that. He was of the view that, on principle, making a disclosure pursuant to a court order could not amount to a breach of confidentiality. He also noted that the actual copyright holders of the anime titles had joined Odex as plaintiffs in this suit, and therefore the plaintiffs had a right to the names of the downloaders.
[Full judgment available here, though I’m not sure for how long.]
So we’re at this sad, sad state of affairs. On the one hand, the law is clearly correct. On the other, Odex has pretty much slapped a large number of anime fans in Singapore in the face.
The backlash from the community when Odex started this whole affair was tremendous by Singapore standards. The Odex street protest. The blog coverage. The many SingTel and StarHub customers piling invective upon hokkien invective on their internet service providers (not linked, Google it).
Now I don’t condone some of the backlash from the local anime community. Death threats to Stephen Sing? Not the right way to go.
But to Odex, I would say this. Your customers want a product. If you don’t sell it, they will get it elsewhere. If you lose out, too bad. Suing people will only drive them away from you. Do you honestly think any of the people you sent letters of demand to will ever buy an Odex product again?
What about the people who burned their VCDs, smashed their DVDs, in protest? Or the people who set up the Odex protest with anime-based toys?
Those are the guys who didn’t care about the sub-standard quality of your dubs and bought them anyway. Those are the guys who went out and bought toys, action figures, models, and painstakingly painted them and added them to their collection. Those are the guys who saved their pocket money to buy the things they were passionate about.
And those are the guys who are never spending that money on you again.
Almost lost our domain
Posted by Ray @ 1:36 pmMy apologies, we almost lost our domain ‘cos (1) the credit card I use to update it was cancelled, and (2) the e-mail address registered with GoDaddy was made defunct.
I’ve paid the necessary fees and everything is fine again =).
Cloud strife sketch
Posted by Zeng @ 3:18 am
I have stopped playing WOW
Posted by Ray @ 9:05 pm
Yeap, haven’t touched it for a month now, and even though I’ve still got a month remaining on the subscription I doubt I’ll be going back to Azeroth until Wrath of the Lich King comes out, if ever.
I realized what an incredible grind it is to experience the end-game content. It’s mind-numbingly boring. It’s so boring, in fact, that while I am mining that next piece of ore (to get that next piece of gold to get the requisite 5 thousand pieces to get my epic flying mount to do the next repetitive netherwing quests…) I am (A) watching a show on my other monitor, (B) listening to a free university lecture in podcast form, or (C) sampling a new wine I bought.
Then as I marvelled at the irony of having to amuse myself while playing a game, I met someone, so seriously, fuck that WOW shit, I have better things to do.
(Besides, PORTAL is awesome. Muhahaha)
Check this out!!
Posted by Zeng @ 12:19 am WGA STRIKE!
Posted by Ray @ 2:55 pmIt really looks like its going to happen.
The Writers Guild of America has been threatening to strike for a while now. The dispute is over online distribution of TV shows, amongst other things.
See, the current contract between writers and networks is that writers get a cut of DVD sales and TV ad revenue (amongst other things). But now some networks are pushing media to the web. Shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost have webisodes, web-only episodes, exclusively available from the parent network’s websites. These networks derive ad revenue from these webisodes, and the WGA wants a cut. Since the current contract is up, the WGA wants to renegotiate… unfortunately, networks don’t want to pay them for online content.
It may not sound like much, but it is a big deal. WGA members write all your favourite TV shows: Heroes, Lost, House, etc. These shows are written through to the end of the year, but after that, no new episodes will be written. Heroes is even considering writing an alternate episode 11, finishing the current season early.
It’s an incredibly stupid move on the networks’ part, and I hope it gets sorted out soon. It isn’t enough that we get crappy shows on all the time, now they’re going to ruin the ones we do watch as well!
…And they wonder why we hate them.
Voideck (2007) starring Bi-Beeeeee
Posted by Ray @ 11:19 pmVincent stars in this student project from NUS. Can you guess who he plays?
Muhahahahah!
Robert Jordan Dead!
Posted by Ray @ 10:26 pmThe author of the Wheel of Time series has finally bit the bullet.
I’ve mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the first 6 (yes, shuddup, SIX) Wheel of Time books were the best things I’d ever read. They were engaging, lucid and paced with exquisitely torturous precision - anyone who has hit the final hundred pages of any of those books at 4AM at night will know what I am talking about.
On the other hand, his later books… well, sucked. Gone was the pacing, replaced by a meandering dialogue of 50 different things, 30 of them describing angsty dominatrix women in various states of angsty domineering.
So my anticipation for the final book of the series is not as high as it would have been, my disappointment not as deep. At this point all I want is some closure. And the man has to go and bite the bullet!
The good news is, the last book is likely to be cobbled together from the author’s detailed notes. Hopefully the person who brings the story together can restore some of the insane page-turnability that was the hallmark of the earlier books.
Hopefully.
RIP, Robert Jordan.
Tokyo Game Show
Posted by Zeng @ 2:12 amI’ll be heading to Tokyo for the TGS convention, *beams*
My company was good enough to give me and my brother the businesse day tickets for the convention.
so…..I guess that means MGS 4 demo all for myself!! FTW!
Don’t worry guys I’ll take lots of pictures of the game girls and post it up here when I come back :3
Miss Teen Stupidverse
Posted by Ray @ 4:37 pmQn: Why can’t Americans find America on a map?
Ans: We don’t have enough maps. Also, we must help Iraq and South Africa!
I’d still hit her it, though.
Ratatouille FTW
Posted by Ray @ 12:04 amGo and watch it!
What’s incredulous is the 6 “rotten” reviews on rottentomatoes. For shame.
It may not be as good as some of pixar’s earlier works, but it is so far above everything else on cinemas that it doesn’t matter. Shame on crappy old Singaporean cinemas for taking so long to bring it here and instead show shit like Rush Hour 3.
Anti-piracy in games: Why?
Posted by Ray @ 10:09 amI wonder what anti-piracy companies tell their investors and customers in order to convince them to fund/continue to use their product. We all know that SecuROM, Safedisc and StarFuck StarForce don’t actually reduce the incidence of piracy at all (go to torrentspy and see for yourself!).
Even if it does, any savvy game developer would weigh the pros (number of pirates stopped) and cons (price of implementing an anti-piracy measure) and surely they would reach the conclusion that the cost isn’t worth it?
It’s not like games make incredible sales. A game that sells 50,000 copies can be considered a hit; most games sell far less. If you, as a developer, are already hard pressed to break even on the game… why pay an anti-piracy company more for an anti-piracy measure that will be cracked within hours of the game’s release to retail?
Because believe you me, it will be cracked. Most within hours, some within days, a few really tenacious ones within weeks.
And the anti-piracy companies have got to know that.
2K Games and BioShock
The reason I’m pondering the existence of anti-piracy measures is, of course, the saga that is currently screwing over PC BioShock customers. In a nutshell, the BioShock installer only lets you install the game twice. If you want to install it more times, you actually have to uninstall the game first. That is, you go to your control panel and click “uninstall”. Otherwise it doesn’t count.
“Big deal,” you say. “Normal users should be doing that anyway; why are so many people whinging over this measure? It’s nothing more than a minor inconvenience!”
But see, it most definitely is a big deal.
It is a big deal just from principle. If I buy a game, I should be allowed to install it multiple times on multiple PCs that I own. After all, I bought it. If I cannot do so, then you must tell me that I cannot do so, so I can consider whether or not I want to continue with the purchase of the game.
It is a big deal because of the viscissitudes of PC use. How many times does your windows installation crash? How often does your hard disk fail, your RAM go bad, or any number of system-disabling disasters occur? A lot! It is a fact of a PC gamer’s life. Some of us play games over extended periods of time; weeks or months, because we simply do not have the time to invest. In that period, what are the chances that something prevents you from properly uninstalling the game, thus forcing you to take some potentially expensive measures just to play again?
Even if the above only happens to say, 1% of your consumers, is that not 1% too many?
It is a big deal because of practicality. The practical reality is, everybody who wants to pirate this game will pirate it - guaranteed. Anti-piracy measures depend on one simple fact: that those measures be actually present on the game disc. The only people who will have anti-piracy measures on their game disc, are the people who bought legitimate copies of the game. Pirates would be using a cracked version. Therefore the only people who will be affected by these measures… are the people who bought the game! Pirates will never be affected by these measures, and therefore it doesn’t work at all to stop piracy.
It is a big deal because it defies common sense. Imagine you are in a family of 5; Mom, Dad and 3 kids. Dad buys BioShock for his teenage kids, and wants to play himself. Dad is pretty well off and has a computer for everybody in the house (believe me this is not uncommon, my house has 4 computers for a family of 4). Can Dad buy just one copy of BioShock? Common sense says yes! It is only for his family’s use, after all. But 2K games, BioShock’s developers, say NO.
It is a big deal because it pushes users towards piracy. Do you think Dad will buy a new copy of BioShock, or do you think Dad will download a cracked version and never buy from 2K games again? Maybe he is so rich he doesn’t give a damn. But most of our dads aren’t.
It is a big deal because of the poor way developer/publishers continue to treat their customers, who are their lifeblood. The official response on the 2K games forum, from someone named “Elizabeth”, is this:
hey guys,
first, let me say this. you DO NOT NEED TO USE THE INTERNET EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THIS GAME. it is only the first time.
second, you can uninstall and reinstall this game, and if, by chance, you have 2 computers you want to simultaneously play this game on, you also can do that.
if by some chance you are reinstalling this game without uninstalling it first, a lot, there is a chance you may have to call securom and get a key, or deactivate some older installations.
but if you upgrade your hardware next week, you’ll still be able to play the game. if you revamp your system and need to reinstall bioshock, just uninstall it before you go through the overhaul, and then do your reinstall.
calling it “hardware fingerprinting” is a bit alarmist. we do not transmit any of your data to any companies.
really, the only people who will be concerned about any of these security measures are those who are rapidly putting bioshock on many pcs… if you use the game as you normally do, you won’t notice this at all (emphasis added).
Note how the company just defined what amounts to “normal use”! According to 2K games, if I install my game on more than two computers, or if I reinstall without properly uninstalling the game, I am not using the game normally. Who are they to tell me how to play my game? If I want to play it on three different computers with the save files synced on a central server somewhere why can’t I? If I want to buy it so that my family members can all play from the same purchase why can’t I?
And most importantly, if I can’t… why didn’t you tell me so?
Why anti-piracy?
Forgive me if I am still a little bit confused as to why these anti-piracy companies are still around. It’s like DRM, except it makes even less sense - and that’s saying a lot. Even DRM vendors clued in a long time ago that limited-play and limited-copy restrictions were simply not going to fly.
How are they getting the money to continue to think up asinine schemes that get broken within days? Do their shareholders not know that the latest SecuROM protocols have already been cracked? Why do they keep funding it? Do their customers not know that the protocols are ineffective against piracy? Why do they keep buying it?
Even if you are a big publisher with lots of money, surely you realize that the price of putting these shoddy pieces of shitware in your products is not worth the amount of flak you get from your own customers, the gamers! Why not save that tiny bit of money, give it back to your shareholders and save us all the heartache? The piracy problem is going to be there forever, believe you me. You will not suffer any losses, gamers will be happy, and your shareholders will be happy; it’s win-win-win!
Mayhaps I am too naive; no matter. I will end by saying this: stop being so damn terrified of piracy, and worry about getting a good product out first. If you have nothing worth buying, then you have nothing worth protecting. And if you do get a good product out, believe you me: it will be bought, and you will make money.
Superbad.
Posted by Zeng @ 2:27 amRatatouille is FINALLY coming out on big screen in Singapore,to think that we get Pirates of the carribean 3,Shrek 3 and many more visually astounding hollywood banging movies out even earlier than the official openings in US.
You’ll probably think they do the same for a masterpiece from Pixar, but for all the local animators and CG artist here waiting for it a few months back… yeap we only get to see it shown this week.
Wait, are we still promoting animation in this island? This is …Superbad. *search the local papers for more garbage*
SuperBad trailer…
Now this is something I’m looking forward to. :)
Let’s see how long we’re gonna wait for this superbad ass movie to come to our shores.
Rambo 4 trailer is out too.
And I think we can all shut our mouths about Stallone getting too old to party. yeahhh more blood!
I (heart) Charley
Posted by Ray @ 12:51 amThis is one of the most… um… beautiful youtube clips I have ever seen.
Meet Charley.
He’s spastic.
He’s a cat.
If you don’t love him and want to laugh and cry at the same time when you watch this video, you are inhuman. Please kill yourself and clean the gene pool.