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I grew up in a pretty damn good period for video games, catching the dawn of the golden home video game age – the return of the Atari under the 2600 Jr moniker and the dawn of the 8-bit era. I stayed with consoles until I caught the dawn of the FPS on the PC. And thus began the fate of the PC gamer – the never ending cycle not of keeping up with the Joneses, but of continual hardware replacements to stay one step ahead of the graphics and processing arms race so that games run at a passable rate.

And man, that was a money suck. A fun one, but damned if it didn’t get expensive. So, as I grew into a poor twentysomething the console gaming fell by the wayside. Eventually, I moved back to consoles because a couple hundred bucks on a new console every five or six years is a lot easier to manage than a couple hundred bucks every year on a new video card.

And it looks like I got out right around the perfect time, because as PC game manufacturers have taken the normal methods of DRM – disc must be present, users must type in a special code during installation – to the illogical extreme.

In an effort to fight “piracy.” videogame publishers have adopted techniques that started with the game periodically checking into a remote server while playing to requiring a constant Internet connection *. And while that might not seem to bad on the surface, as just about everyone who wants broadband internet has it now, that means you can’t play when the internet is down. Or when you’re traveling. Or, worse, when the company you legally purchased your video game from decides that keeping that server – the one the game has to check in to – online is just too much money.

And publishers will eventually turn those servers off. All servers eventually get turned off. Or moved. This little fact of internet life means that a legally purchased game has an expiration date, after which it cannot be played again. However, the pirated version of game that came with a crack to route around the DRM scheme? That illegal version of the game will work forever.

What’s worse is, publishers typically don’t tell potential buyers that the game has an unplanned obsolescence date. I mean, why would they? Of course, as a potential video game buyer, this makes purchasing any video game either risky or research intensive. Buyers must either: read reviews, meet minimum standards and research a publisher’s DRM scheme or throw down $60 and take a gamble on a publisher treating the customers with at least some measure of respect.

The entire ordeal is so goddamn frustrating that I’ve got half a mind to chart out which publishers should be avoided and the respective titles, tossing the entire mess up on a website.

But I’ll probably just read a book instead.

*And we’re not just talking about multiplayer games. Major publishers are slapping this kind of DRM on single player games with no other online aspects.

What a day. Here’s a rundown.

Apple Announced iBooks2 and iBooks Author

The news came, as expected from early rumors, Apple was going to revamp their eBooks to support more interactive elements. The software is nice, feeling a lot like a robust Keynote that outputs Epub files. I haven’t had time to dig through the output code yet to see just how good it is (I have serious misgivings about code produced by WYSIWYG editors after seeing work done by Front Page and Dreamweaver). However, before jumping head long into pumping out books via iBooks Author, there’s some sneaky BS hidden in the EULA.

Perhaps people really did learn from the Human CentiPad episode of South Park?

Perry Out, Endorses Newt. Newt Attempted to Endorse The Wrong Open. Iowa Flipflops

Perry, after a lifetime of swearing he has never quit, well, quit. On his way out, he endorsed Gingrich. Almost at the same time, news leaked that Gingrich essentially asked his second wife to have an open marriage, admitting that he was sleeping with his now third-wife. And, 8 districts in Iowa’s votes showed up, switching the winner from Romney to Santorum. Fantastic.

Who Needs SOPA?

Remember on Wednesday when everyone really expressed their concern with the government attempting to enact Hollywood-written legislation which would allow for easy censoring of the internet? Well, the DOJ proved they don’t even need that just the very next day by taking down cyberlocker site MegaUpload, indicting 7 and arresting 4 individuals all the way in New Zealand.

So…if Hollywood needs new legislation because they can’t get rogue sites, I think reality showed that either they currently have those powers or they’ve got enough pull with the DOJ and DHS (by way of ICE) to carry out broadscale censorship without new laws.

At least Archer comes back tonight…

The idea is fairly simple, the patent has gotten so far away from its roots that it is now doing the exact opposite of what it was originally intended for – hindering business.

Source: http://frugaldad.com

I’m a fairly ardent media collector. My living room is walled by shelves which, from left to right, hold books, DVDs and CDs, each of which number in the hundreds of units.

However, as bandwidth has dropped to near-zero cost*, I have taken to streaming music. At first, streaming was just a means to listen to my music while at work. Then, streaming became a quick and easy means of new music discovery, where good albums would be either enjoyed until saturation or purchased if they were really good.

Eventually, streaming came home with me.

Now I pay for and use rdio and Pandora on both my work and home computers. I stream Pandora on my alarm clock and Boxee. Last.fm scrobbles the hell out of my 360. And I can’t even imagine downloading a podcast thanks to apps like NPR and Stitcher.

I’ve even worked myself into a new music discovery routine Tuesday through Thursday. rdio has a convenient New Release browsing option that rearranges itself based on popularity of new albums. I normally browse through on Tuesday and find albums of interest on the first four or so pages. I listen from back to front, as the most popular albums will be discovered and pushed to the front page by the end of the week.

But, today marked a change there. The new Snow Patrol album, which my girlfriend enjoyed, was available for streaming (and launched in the #1 slot on rdio) on Tuesday, was no long available for streaming on Wednesday.

Mind you, I know there are a lot of forces at play when it comes to copyright law and streaming licenses, but the whole “stream today, gone tomorrow” scenario smacks of a money grab. It’s not any different than windowing in the film or book industries – that is a means to erect an artificial barrier in an attempt to get the most money out of people possible.

And in the 21st Century where media converts on convenience over price, that’s just a douche move.

We already won the DRM war with music. How about the music industry not cripple the best alternative to piracy by playing games with streaming availability?

*except for mobile phone providers, who prefer to lower demand through fear of overage costs, rather than providing a compelling and rich bandwidth experience that would require, you know, building a realistic infrastructure.

Photo by Graham Biggs

After years of talk, the New York Times finally released details regarding their new pay wall yesterday. Despite receiving mixed reviews, I am failing to see how anyone could see the new Times plan as anything but a bad idea.

First, a little background. The New York Times has attempted a paywall before – and it failed miserably. So have other newspapers, and with the exception of publications that exist in specialized verticals (financials), no paywall has ever really survived. One noted paywall, the Long Island daily Newsday actually saw a mere 35 paying subscribers in its three month trial.

Granted, the new Times Paywall is less a wall and more a Byzantine collection of rules and exceptions that say if and when you can read a Times article.

Everyone gets 20 free articles a month. Links from social media sources and blogs and some search engines will be able to read the article regardless of how many other articles have been read. And readers will always have access to the front page of the site, front page of the sections and some of all the blogs and most of some of them.

Walls have it easy. The Times is putting a crap shoot and a curb between you and the content you want to read.

What’s worse is that there are so many loopholes that anyone with a passing interest in reading any article on the Times website really can. Which leaves paying for access to the website really as more of a punishment for being a less savvy internet user than something that bestows real value.

Of course, in its pricing scheme the all but admits that the website is a free bonus. How so? Well, there’s no way to buy access just to the website. You have to either pay $15 for a four week subscription to the website and the smartphone app, $20 for access to the website and the iPad app, or $35 for access to the web, smartphone and iPad app. The math behind that is crazy, but thankfully Wired already did it.

If A + B = $15 and A + C = $20 and A + B + C = $35, what does A equal?

That answer is 0.

Yes, the New York Times is saying that access to their website is essentially a giveaway value add, but you can’t have that value unless you’re a paying customer. At least not all the time. Well, you can have access when they feel like it.

Of course, nobody is saying that the Times website is worthless, least of all the advertisers. Numbers I’m seeing is that the site took in $300 million last year from ad impressions alone. But, the new pricing and access scheme concocted by the wizards at the Times feels oddly punitive especially when we consider the competitive landscape of publishing news online.

The issue facing the New York Times seems to be multifaceted, and the new paywall will do little to solve it. In fact, if the Times earns back the $40 million paywall investment within the next two years, I will be shocked.

Let’s look at the issue. First, the New York Times is not merely competing on a city or regional level. Hell, they’re not even competing on a national level. They are an international publication and they know this, as the equally vaunted and lauded paywall took effect today in Canada with the rest of world schedule to start on the 28th of this month.

Second, the New York Times is not just competing with other newspapers. News is coming from more and more spaces – all of the newspapers of the world, plus all of the television websites, the vertical websites, blogs, and the recently emerging trend of real time, unedited broadcasts from reporters on location via social networks.

Put these two together and you begin to get the picture of the modern media landscape, people have an abundance of news sources to pull from. The sea of a million periodicals allows a rapid comparing and contrasting of news that puts emphasis on loyalty to story rather than loyalty to brand.

In order to succeed online, the Times needs to stop thinking about coping with the new system while punishing those who play by the old rules and instead move to the golden rule of selling: make people want to give you money.

I know, it sounds simple. But if it were, every product would be a must have. However, since I’ve already come this far, here are just a few suggestions for how to turn the experience behind the paywall into something actually worth paying for.

First, get rid of the freaking ads. I know, newspapers have never been about selling copies and have always survived by amassing an audience and then selling that audience’s attention to advertisers. But, seriously, if I’m paying to be there, I don’t want my experience muddied up by ads.

Second, embrace your subscribers by allowing them to be heard. This is not just an argument for comments, or for restricting commenting to merely paying subscribers. This is an argument for a second commenting system that is restricted to paying customers. Reward these users by not having them mix with the aggressive and argumentative landscape of the public comments system. Allow commenters to interact with each other. And the kicker? Require your staff to participate in the premium comments.

Third, provide access. I don’t mean the current model of access which is determined on a device-by-device basis. That’s a bastardization of infinite supply. I mean real access. Access to reporters. Access to notes on an article and background information. Access to photos that were taken but not used. These are unique items that are often of scarce supply and provide a real value to readers and differentiate the Times website from the millions of others out there.

What’s more, these don’t have to all be included in one plan, they could be rolled out a la carte and at multiple levels. Level one gets you an advertising free Times experience. Level two removes adds and access to the gated community. Level three allows for communication with reporters and peels back the curtain on the story. Hell, level 15 could involve a monthly beer with the editor.

Put bluntly, the Times is selling the wrong thing. They’re trying to get people to pay for infinite and largely fungible content instead of paying for scarce commodities like access and privilege. And that is a damn foolish way to blow $40 million.

Check out my cool new twitter page!

Earlier today I outed a Twitter spammer but publishing his phone number. Said spammer took offense to this and reported my account as violating the Twitter ToS. At approximately 5:32, Twitter responded to his request and suspended my account.

I have lodged an appeal to have my account. According to the Twitter ToS:

• Privacy: You may not publish or post other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.

Where my appeal hinges is on a rather novel technicality – the information I published was neither private nor confidential. The information was actively advertised by the spammer and was accessible by anyone with the means to copy, paste and click.

Click to Embiggen

Click to Embiggen

Even still, I’m only giving the chances of Twitter reinstating my account at around 50/50. If they don’t give it back, I’m not going to fight it. Instead, I’ll probably migrate to a new social network. As my boy Chaz from Swingers astutely proclaimed, “This place is dead anyway.”

Oh, and if you absolutely have to know what I’m doing right now, I’m watching How I Met Your Mother and wondering what the countdown means.

Would he look more scary, or less, with a turbin?

Here’s a quick crash course in “How to be just a bit nerdier” or “Why the government can’t put Wikileaks back in the box.”

I used to frequently use the phrase “DNS is magic” when working tech support. It’s not. It’s really like visiting a library.

What is DNS?

DNS stands for Domain Name System and it’s what translates a website name, bradleyrobb.net or google.com, into the IP address of a server. It’s part gopher and part translator, which basically makes it the white pages of the internet.

A quick “how it works”

When you type my web address, www.bradleyrobb.net, into your browser your browser queries a series of servers by reading my address in reverse order. First it asks for the .net sites, then for the bradleyrobb sites within the .net sphere, and finally for the www location within the bradleyrobb sphere.

Each search gets smaller. But, like Porter in Payback, you go high enough and eventually you to get to one number – the afore mentioned IP address. Everything that happens beyond that is a communication between your computer and my server.

Here’s where things get fun

Since I own the bradleyrobb.net sphere, I control everything beneath it. Sure, right now you’re on the www subdomain, but that is just one of an infinite number of potential subdomains. And on those infinite subdomains I could put anything I want to put there, as long as I know the IP address of what I want to point you to.

They don’t even need to be on my server. They don’t even need to be…my website.

Since the company which was hosting the wikileaks.org domain name decided (conviently) that the name wikileaks.org could no longer be hosted on their system, Wikileaks has been scrambling to come up with new domain names, their primary .org is down, but a mirrored site (wikileaks.ch who’s .ch is controlled by servers in Switzerland) is still up.

But know you what else is up? wikileaks.bradleyrobb.net

It took me less than 3 minutes to create my own wikileaks subdomain. It wouldn’t take you any longer.

That’s the problem with digital information – it can be replicated infinitely with almost zero effort. Various governments can keep going after wikileaks by pressuring the domain name registrars (the people who maintain the DNS records) and the hosting companies (way to bow down Amazon), but the information can just as easily be replicated elsewhere.

It’s a reactive game, and those…those always end badly. Just ask the RIAA. Just ask Lars Ulrich. Striking Napster from the face of the Earth really stopped piracy, didn’t it?

See for yourself

If you own your own domain name, even if you’re a web novice, here’s how easy it is to setup a subdomain to wikileaks:

Open your DNS editing tool.

Create a new A record.

Name the record anything you want.

In the value field, put the IP address: 213.251.145.96

It’ll take a few minutes for your DNS settings to propagate through your server, but that’s the magic part.

Let me say, I applaud your desire to curtail the horrid child prostitution industry. I think your intentions are at least modestly noble. However, I am dismayed by you current tactics, which seems to overlook thousands of years of military understanding and the full history of the internet.

You see, your recent letter demanding to have online classifieds site CraigsList remove their Adult Services section will do far more harm than good in the attempt to realize the above stated desires.

Let’s take a look at the situation, shall we?

• Currently, the Adult Services section of CraigsList serves as a single location where a number of prostitution-related crimes are negotiated.
• The operators of CraigsList are known, and even if they are not as cooperative as would be liked, they can be reached and reasoned with. There is an open means of communication.
• The Police are able to understand and operate within the confines of the CraigsList environment both to monitor activities and set up sting operations.

The current situation, while not ideal, is a rather understandable one. It’s familiar. We know who and where the players are. We are able to plan accordingly. Kind of looks like the Cold War, which is good because we actually won that.

What does removing the Adult Services section do to the above picture?

• Single Location?

Gone. Welcome to the world of asymmetric and mobile enemies. Removing CraigsList’s Adult Services section will instantly create a vacuum which, in the short term, might lower the rates of prostitution-related crimes. However, as we’ve seen time and time again on the internet, the removal of a centralized service leads to rapidly innovating and dispersed target. Take a look at the state of copyright infringement post-Napster. The RIAA’s single, predictable location for music filesharing has morphed into an entity that cannot be pinned down and adapts to stay one technological step ahead of those who would stop it.

• Known Operators?

Gone. If you think the operators of CraigsList have been less-than-wholly helpful, wait until you’ve trying to hunt down the owners of anonymous prostitution websites. In fact, why don’t you talk to the FBI crimes against children task forces. I bet they can regale you with tales of just how hard it is to track down some of these more-savvy pedophiles.

Right now, you can pick up the phone and call Craig.

• Trained Police?

Gone…mostly. The tactics and training will have to be modified, turning police into into hunters capable of scouring the internet at large, finding, understanding, adapting, and documenting tactics on the fly. Even if the initial crop of sites and services that pop up operate exactly like CraigsList, the number of replacements will require more police to patrol them.

Removing CraigsList’s Adult Services section takes the familiar, symmetric war and replaces it with an asymmetric, agile, iterative battle. The known is replaced with the unknown. Resources are stretched thinner. Those engaging in prostitution-related crimes get better at their tasks. Innovation occurs in the exact place where you don’t want it. In the end, removing CraigsList’s Adult Services section won’t decrease prostitution-related crimes. If history has taught us anything, killing the Adult Services section will increase prostitution.

But you can’t put that on a campaign ad, can you?

Click to Embiggen

The first screen cap is the test version of the new Google Image results. It feels very much like Bing – with numerous results displayed on the page and the page working on the new infinite scroll that’s becoming popular. Gone are the pieces of visible metadata attached to each image.

Click to Embiggen

Or are they? Google has moved the metadata into a lightbox, which clears up the results a bit. Not shown in the image is just how responsive the page is. The metadata boxes pop up quickly and disappear without a fuss, not something I can say for Bing.

Click to Embiggen

And Google didn’t stop with merely recreating the Image search results, they finally moved into the modern era and got rid of the top frame in exchange for a lightbox and right-side frame. I’m not too terribly thrilled with this, as the old frame merely moved the fold while the new lightbox tactic obscures content. The upshot of the lightbox is that clicking off-image immediately brings the user to the results page.

All in all, a pretty neat set of improvements.

And the problem with fake band names is that once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. You start assigning genres, idiosyncrasies, member names, album art. If you know your music history – this is exactly how Def Leppard started.

Sometime over the past year, I started tweeting the band names I’d find in CAPTCHA codes at Mixx.com. And I wasn’t alone. The volume of CAPTCHA bands started to increase with new discoveries found daily. At Twitter events, I’d end up talking about CAPTCHA bands with other users – Brad Carr, Dean Browell, and Carrie Fleck being the three other local CAPTCHA band spotters.

Yesterday morning I received a DM and Facebook message from, good guy and friend of the blog, Dean Browell. He was taking the CAPTCHA band mini-meme to the next level – a Facebook Fan Page.

The idea is just as simple as the Twitter action we’d been doing for the better part of a year now, albeit in a bit longer form and benefiting from multimedia. I quickly roped Justin into the group, swallowed my rather strong dislike for Facebook, and jumped in.

So far, we’ve managed to get six CAPTCHA bands up, and I’ll include one of them below. If you’re into that whole Facebook thing, and you’d like to Fan the page, here’s a link. It’s still early, but there’s some quality stuff up there.

The Govs
Prison State

Orange County in the late seventies was known more for it’s love of disco and The Eagles than it was of the proto-punk movements developing in Detroit, London, Manchester, and New York City. But when Steve Greer’s disco-glitter band, The Lovelights, signed with Columbia Records, the teenage Lester Greer had enough.

Adopting the stage name “Butch” and teaming up with two fellow teenage ne’erdowells, the younger Greer brother launched what is arguably the first SoCal proto-punk band – The Govs. With much of the band lacking anything close to musical talent, and having spent most of their lives in the well-to-do Los Angeles suburb, the trio overcompensated with profanity and aggression.

The band’s first album, “Screw California”, was twelve adaptations of the Richard Berry classic “Louie Louie” with alternate lyrics and a tempo that clocked each track in a mere ninety seconds. But the messages, deriding the recently ended Vietnam War, the disastrous Nixon presidency, and a perceived Orwellian police state in which “the government collud[ed] with corporate interests to enslave the masses” resonated with the students of Laguna Beach High School.

The lo-fidelity honesty of the first album was quickly lost as parents of band members fronted the money for a true demo, the better known “Prison State.” Under the tutelage of a Benny Stills, a failed musician in his own right, Greer and his cohorts were put through the paces in a real studio, instructed in the use of their musical instruments, and given a basic understanding of song writing.

The experience is believed to have been detrimental to the outcome of not only the album but also the band. Produced to within an inch of its life, the Govs’ second album was derided as derivative, meritless, lacking in real world experience, and nearly causing the death of punk before the burgeoning genre was truly alive.

Several record labels professed an interest in Prison State, and it received a rather wide release. The band, however, broke up shortly after completion and thus never toured in support of the record. The impact of Prison State was far greater than any involved could have predicted, and is seen as a major influence on modern day acts such as Green Day and Nickleback.