Duncan’s Digital Life

Nu Metro, one of the major cinema companies here in South Africa, and Microsoft held a PGR3 competition.  In order to qualify, you had to purchase a movie ticket and set a lap time on one of the PGR3 tracks in an Aston Martin DB9.  The top 32 qualifiers would then race in a split screen knock-out type tournament in one of the cinemas, on the big screen.  I ended up qualifying 11th, and went along to the final today.

It was awesome!!!  They used a really nice projector (looked like 1080p) and everything was set up very well.  The sound was excellent, and the picture was superb.  Several people who qualified had obviously not played much before, and only got a good laptime on the qualy track by doing tons of laps.  There were some really good players though.  It ended up with myself and another guy in the final, who was definitly the best player there (besides me, but I’m not going to toot my own horn…. toot.).  We had a good close race in the final but I managed to stay ahead of him.

I won another Xbox 360.  I’m really chuffed, because I was very nervous when the whole thing started.  I must congratulate Gerhard (my opponent in the final) for a great race.  Also, thanks to Nu-Metro and Cinevation for coming up with this awesome competition.  I really enjoyed it, and hope there will be more like it in the future.

I’ve been noticing a quiet, but nevertheless, very apparent shift in the industry away from that scourge known as Digital Rights Management. I’ve always been stongly against it, as I’ve posted many times in the past, and it’s extremely pleasing to see big players in the digital world also voicing similar opinions. You can now purchase non-DRM protected MP3s from some online music stores, HD-DVDs are currently all region free, Bill Gates himself said that DRM is rubbish, and you should rather rip your own CDs than buy them MP3s with DRM, etc etc.

The fact of the matter is that DRM hurts the honest consumer more than anyone else. Pirates who want to crack something will do it, eventually. Honest consumers who purchase a song from iTunes and are then restricted horribly to only playing it on a certain device, in a certain way, and sometimes only for a certain time just plain sucks. Putting these ridiculous kinds of usage limits on music when I can go and buy the CD and rip it myself DRM free is dumb. I wager that removing DRM entirely will benefit the market, so long as costs are also kept in check. There will always be pirates, just like there will always be thieves, but stop punishing the legitamate users, please!!! All this does is force people like myself, who for example, did purchase a High Definition copy of Terminator 2 only to find I was locked out of it by the draconian limitations placed on the content by the owners, to look for “other” less restrictive means of obtaining content.

Down with DRM. Get rid of it for good!!! It can only be a good thing!!

I am upset about the lack of customer service here in South Africa when it comes to replacing damaged game disks. Below is a letter I wrote to NAG Magazine (New Age Gaming), which probably the best gaming magazine in South Africa, and rates pretty highly worldwide. This should appear in the January issue:

I have a serious issue with the disk replacement policy, or lack thereof, exhibited at every South African Gaming retailer I’ve seen. The fact that I can’t return a damaged disk and receive a replacement is an outrage . I am more than willing to pay a small handling fee of R50 or so, but making me buy a new copy of a game I bought for more than R500 is ridiculous. The reason for this sad state of affairs may not be the fault of the retailer, but rather the distributor; I don’t know, but something must be done.

I purchased Project Gotham Racing 3 for XBOX 360 a few months ago, and REALLY enjoyed this game. Because I am very careful of scratches etc, I made sure I ALWAYS returned the disk to its case after use. However, this careful practise of clicking the disk into the case over and over again caused a small crack in the disk starting at the centre hub, eventually spreading into the data area of the disk, rendering it unusable. I had to purchase another copy in order to keep playing this game. I know of several people with similar stories. Sometimes, the disk is damaged due to negligence, which is why I am happy to pay a small replacement fee, to ensure people do look after their disks in a reasonable way.

Thinking about this lead me to thinking about DRM (Digital Rights Management), which basically is protection of intellectual property by using various methods of copy and usage protection? The studios (in the case of a movie) or the publishers (in the case of a game) insist that you do not own the digital information contained on a DVD or game disk you purchased, but merely have a license to use it as they see fit. That same argument surely cuts both ways, in that if I purchase a game or a movie on a fragile plastic disk, and the disk breaks or is damaged, my license to use or view the content is still valid. I didn’t pay R500 or more for a stupid little piece of plastic and a small booklet. I paid for the game or movie, or the “license” to view or play it.

I’ll be honest; I haven’t always paid for every game I’ve played in my life. Since I got my Xbox 360, (and what a great system it is!), I have become 100% legit, and will not even consider modding my console to play unoriginal games. I’m definitely not condoning piracy, but my issues mentioned above cause me (and millions like me) to rethink this decision. How does this help the gaming industry at all, if thousands of newly reformed ex-pirates decide paying twice for a game is insane, and simply go back to their old ways?

I trust somebody in the gaming industry will read these thoughts and remedy this situation. I know a friend of mine in the USA damaged one of his game disks and EB Games replaced the disk for him at no charge. I don’t know if this is something they do for all their customers or if he was just lucky, but I do know that here in South Africa, he would have gone home a very bleak boy. Surely, as long as I can give them a damaged original disk, case and booklet etc, that is proof enough that I do have a valid claim to a replacement?

Duncan Rae

Xbox Live GamerTag: DuncThePunk

After using iTunes and my iPod for a while now, I thought I should revise my initial opinions about it. 

It’s not too bad, I suppose.  Once I got my head around being forced to keep two copies of all my music, and got the album are sorted out, I’m quite happy.  The multiple copies thing is ok, since I don’t put all my music on my iPod, therefore I only need to keep what I actually want to have available in iTunes. 

So anyway, I’m admitting I may have been just a tiny bit wrong with my earlier comments.

I’ve been using Vista since Beta 2, and I’m a little embarressed that I only found this AWESOME new feature today.  The Reliability Monitor keeps track of how reliable your machine has been over time, and notes when any software was changed or installed, and if the installation was successful or not.  The day you build your PC, you get a reliability rating of 10, and this comes down with each app or Windows crash you experience, and goes up for each “incident free day”.  Very cool!  (I think I found it before, but didn’t realise exactly what it did, since it was the day I built my machine, therefore, no data!) 

I’m really excited for LongHorn server, because this is an awesome tool to show server reliability or uptime to management types who like to see pretty pictures representing system stability.