The recent revelations about "The Warden" (Blizzard’s anti-hack detection system for World of Warcraft) and Sony’s absurd DRM software (and its EULA), are making headlines everywhere. Are users being robbed of their (our) fundamental rights, or are companies simply exerting theirs? Is law really covering the topics, or are lawyers and companies merely abusing the system to build up power?

This article is very interesting. If you ever felt that Intellectual Property is being interpreted by law and the courts in ways that harm your fundamental rights, but you could never really explain why in reasonably formal terms, you’ll find plenty of arguments there. Take it with a healthy dose of salt, because it also ignores quite a few problems with its approach.

Back in 1993, when I released the popular Fire algorithm, I described the process as "finding it" or "running into it", rather than "creating it". I never created anything! The algorithm was just there, waiting for someone to see it. I just (apparently) happened to be the first person to see what it could do, and applying it. While I defended (and still do) my right to be credited for the discovery, I’d never dream of profiting from that – only from anything I would actually create or build using it; for example, a screensaver which I sold to Erbe Software for their Quick-It tool suite.

In the 21st Century, Newton would be sued by the giants whose shoulders he was standing on. And that’s morally and ethically indefensible.

I guess that sums up my stance on the issue. Which also means, I’ll probably never get rich.

Microsoft has finally published the list of XBox games that work on the 360. Kudos to the BC team, and of course my brother, who played no small part in it.

Notable absences from that list: the Madden, Splinter Cell and Project Gotham Racing series, as well as Soul Calibur II. Another funny bit, Half Life 2 is on that list despite still being in the works.

So I guess I’m not the only one who finds it less than stellar. It’s just a first contact, but it’s been a rough ride: bugs and general slowness in the IDE, bugs in standard user interface elements (I managed to crash the scrollbar in the Output window!?!?!), the whole "security push" making a good chunk of the standard library deprecated by default.

Oh well I’m sure I will find good stuff after using it for some time.

Random bits I found out:

– Changing the fonts and colors to a black background is as nightmarish as ever.

– When converting projects from 2003, check the resulting options thoroughly. It seems some defaults have changed, but the conversion doesn’t take this into account, so an option that you had on default (Yes) in 2003 may now be default (No) in 2005. "for scoping rules" comes to mind.

– Also about projects, immediately disable warning 4996. Until their Security Push crap becomes ANSI, I don’t want to hear about it. You can do it at once for all projects and configurations, so it’s not a big deal.

– "Automatic use of precompiled headers" is gone. Either you set them up specifically, or you don’t get any. A pity for small projects, but all in all, good riddance.

– Compilation times seem faster, maybe thanks to the multithreaded compilation taking advantage of HyperThreading.

– Disabling exceptions and using the STL seems like a no-no. Lots of weirdness on this topic.

– Much more strict checking for C++ details. One that stood out today is the fact that you must pass lvalues (roughly: values that can be modified) to functions that receive non-const references.

I was reading the usual complaints about lack of innovation in MMORPG games, where most are essentially clones of the EQ formula. I couldn’t help but rant a bit.

Do not make the mistake of underestimating the general public’s lack of desire for innovation. If the game is TRULY interesting to players, even with very poor marketing it WILL become successful. It will take longer, it will still only sell half as much as it could have, but it WILL. Recent examples are Katamari Damacy or the European re-release of ICO.

The fact is, most _players_ don’t care about innovation. I am loving every minute of Quake 4 even though it is nearly identical to its predecessor in gameplay terms. To them (us?), innovation in healthy doses is simply a good addition to the appeal of the game, but the game needs to be good, fun and interesting in and of itself. Oh, and too much innovation will hurt, because they won’t be able to understand WTF is the game about, and will be reluctant to pay to find out. Additionally, more innovation usually means the developer has to find out what works and what doesn’t all while developing the game, and the game’s quality usually suffers. This is why so many sequels are in fact much better, more fun and polished than the original.

In MMORPGs, the players themselves are even less interested in innovation, because while you play a game for months or years, the value of innovation is only significant during the first week or two. Along the same lines, companies can’t afford to steer too much off the known path because losses in an MMORPG can amount to 10x as much as in a single-player game.

This movie is really disturbing, and many people (myself included) have been caught off-guard by it. It was brought to my attention again because the director is in charge of the film adaptation for Castlevania.

I love horror movies even though I tend to be very critical of them. However, this is now. When I was a kid, I spent 6 months on light medication after being scared to death by trailers for several movies like Alien, Phantasm and The Fog, which were released about the same time. Although it was not quite life-threatening, it’s not an experience I wish any kid to go through.

Event Horizon evoked some of that terror, and I remember spending the couple days feeling nervous and in a state of general unrest. Quite an accomplishment I would say, and I’m still unsure exactly WHAT kind of devices this movie uses to achieve such effect.

Every now and then, a small independent movie filmed on a shoestring budget, manages to catch some attention. Primer reportedly cost $7000, and it shows: actors being also technicians, blurry focus, bad sound, you name it. But all that doesn’t matter, the movie tells an incredibly interesting story and has the perfect atmosphere. Guess what, it’s about a group of people who… do something great on a shoestring budget.

The sci-fi topics it deals with can be very hard to follow and understand at times, but don’t worry too much about precise and detailed explanations, just enjoy its twists and turns. Later on you can watch the DVD commentary or read this explanation.

Think about some of the issues they run into. Sure, Windows is bloated, the Win32 API is full of badly-formed interfaces, but… there’s also a lot of crap programmers around using it and preventing the Windows development team from cleaning up the system properly. So, what would YOU do?

– Let old & misbehaving programs crash? Many people wouldn’t upgrade to Vista.

– Leave the old stuff there? Well, this works once or twice, but after 10 years of Windows, the shit tends to accumulate in large piles. And we’re talking about an animation here, nothing important, but remember, the same thing happens with code…

– Make a "blank" or "dummy" version of the resource, so misbehaving apps look ugly but don’t crash? I suppose this is the way to go: old software still works, but developers are encouraged to behave better.

It’s interesting that the otherwise wonderful Delphi runtime uses this undocumented resource, and doesn’t even check for error conditions. Borland has done some remarkable stuff, but there’s a reason I don’t miss using their products. This reminds me of the "leap year" bug in Borland’s C libraries, which caused all sorts of trouble circa 1992.

Check this out: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml

Found this nifty article in Slashdot, it’s a very entertaining read. Don’t take it as the Holy Gospel, it is half information and half provocation, but if you let it make you think about the topic, you may be surprised how many things ring a bell in your head.

It doesn’t work on my desktop machine, nor on two other PCs I have tried. Shortly after plugging the USB cable, the iPod goes back to the regular menu like it was disconnected. Sometimes it stays connected, but the moment I try to transfer anything (even just updating a tag on a song from iTunes, or checking the drive from Explorer), it resets to the menu. However, it does work fine on my machine at work and on my laptop. All computers work fine with any other USB devices: digital cameras, PSP, and the DVD burner.

WTF?