Many of you don't know, but I do alot of video editing in my spare time. It is a hobby of mine. I may become a professional video editor if I decide to. Anyway, for one Geography lesson a few weeks ago, we were asked to make a Powerpoint presentation, and then a movie to sum it up. Of course, the movie was only meant to be made in Windows Movie Maker and as a slideshow (which is all everyone did). However, I took it up a notch and didn't use Windows Movie Maker. I came out and surprised everyone with this instead:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v386/hiney89/?action=view¤t=GlobalWarmingMovie.flv

This is also my first video project that is appropriate for many people to view.

EDIT: Please do not post in the comments section debates about the issues of Global Warming and whether it's fact or fiction. I only want feedback on the video and whether it gets the point across well.

Piracy and games are no stranger to each other. Every form of media has it's share of piracy. Pirating for games on the PC have been going on for a long time. Arguably, it has become easier to distribute pirated copies of games with much more capable technology. Game publishers have been tackling piracy for a long time. It used to be in the form of a serial number of which you would enter when installing the game, and would never have to worry about again.

But now there is much more than the simple serial number. Anti-piracy has evolved into what is known as "Digital Rights Management" or DRM for short. Basically, this means that publishers are pulling out all the stops to prevent pirating. This puts increasingly restricting access to games for legit buyers and is effectively preventing them from being able to enjoy a game at it's fullest. Recently, games have required internet access to install or even play the game such as Bioshock or Unreal Tournament 3.

This has obvious drawbacks. If your not connected to the internet, you can't play the game. If you still run on a dial-up connection, you will have to use it everytime you need to play the game. Of course, should the online servers for the game be offline, then you also cannot play. This was experienced by many at the launch of Bioshock when the 2K servers were down due to technical issues.

Needing an internet connection to play a game at any time is annoying itself. But EA has devised a downright devious scheme to prevent piracy. Planned on Being introduced in Mass Effect PC, the games require that you enter an initial activation code, and then every ten days onwards. The game server will automatically check your serial number every five days. If you don't enter an activation code within ten days, then you can't play the game until you do so.

This is bound to become the biggest anti-piracy nuisance ever devised. It's a bit like watching a movie, only ever half hour you have to enter a 16 digit long pin number. Could you imagine reaching the final part of Mass Effect's main story, deciding to call it a night, waking up next morning only to find out that you need to re-enter that stupidly long string of numbers of letters, and then finding out the EA servers are down.

What EA seem to forget is, that pirates are pirates. No matter what you do, people will always find ways to pirate games. EA is only punishing us legit buyers. In a time when PC gaming is suffering a slow death, EA are certainly not trying to help the situation. The information regarding this issue was original brought upon the Mass Effect, Bioware community forums here.

Here are some other sources:

http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18614 (Command and Conquer Modding Site)

http://kotaku.com/387846/mass-effect-copy-protection-an-opportunity-to-use-the-adjective-draconian

http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/comments/ea_to_use_securom_drm_on_mass_effect_and_spore/ (Phone activation discussed here appears to be false)

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/07/mass-effect-wins-award-worst-pc

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/07/1523242&from=rss

If this gets the "Go ahead", then I'm sure there will be a huge drop in EA games sales.

I bet you haven't.

Despite the fact they have released four albums, two EP's and one LP as early as 1995, opened up for well known acts such as System of a Down and Blink-182, toured with Killswitch Engage and even scheduled to appear at music festivals this year including Rock AM, newly formed Mayhem Festival and on the main stage of Download Festival, they are the absolute least popular signed band that I know, with most of their fame being in the UK.

It's hard for me to understand why this is. Usually an unpopular band deserves to be unpopular - their music just isn't that good. But this isn't the case with 36 crazyfists. Sure, the band is more to the screamy side, but that should please angst teens anyway.

This is an example of how much a great night you can have with 36 crazyfists. *CURSE WARNING*

Original music video here.

In a recent entry titled Oh Lord, What Hell Hath I Wrought? Alex Navarro shares with us on a site called Passive Aggressive Notes an angry and amusingly sarcastic e-mail that was sent to him from a game-maker for Cooking Mama 2. Shortly after, it unexpectedly reached the offices of Joystiq and was featured in a news article. Alex said that "A. I grossly underestimated the size of PAN's audience, and B. people seem to be rather hypersensitive toward anything involving perceived conflicts between the media side and the publishing side of the biz these days. Why? I can't imagine".

Read and enjoy.

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