My oldest daughter and I have been waiting for SPORE to come out for a loooong time. Well, it finally did.

All I can say is: What an incredible dissappointment.

The DRM is awful. Electronic Arts apparently thinks that a multi-gamer family should buy multiple copies of the same game so everyone can play.

The license allows you to install the game on up to 3 computers, but you may have only one account.

That’s right… ONE ACCOUNT.

So what that we bought the Creature Creator and it allowed for multiple accounts. How nice for SPORE to be able to use up all those nifty creatures we all created.

And, since I let my daughter sign in first so she could play, the SPORE account I created with the Creature Creator is completely useless now - except to EA.

The thing that sucks the most is that to install SPORE you have to uninstall the Creature Creator. I guess I could live with only being able to play the game with one account, but now I’m out the 10 bucks I spent on the full version of the Creature Creator. Not only do I have to play on my daughter’s account, I can’t continue to build creatures in the Creator on my account.

It’ll be a cold day in hell before we buy another game from EA. From what I hear, the only people who got a game worth playing were the ones who downloaded the pirate version from a torrent.

What a shame.

You know, sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

I’ve often told my wife that the big media comPAINies won’t be happy until we have to pay for every little bit of content we access.  Be it T.V., music, movies, web pages, or simply bandwidth in general.  The large media corporations will make the claim that they are entitled to a “royalty” because it is “their” content that drives the overall intellectual property market.

But, and most sinister, is the potential for these companies to use their power to overhaul the way in which broadband internet content is distributed by creating a “tiered” range of internet service packages that absolutely kill the free and even exchange of public information in the way that the internet currently services the world.  (Except places like China, where they lock it up like a medieval virgin in a chastity belt - for the people.)

I’m sure to some it all sounds like a tin-foil-hat kind of conspiracy… and, generally, I would agree.  But, we’ve all seen how viciously the RIAA and MPAA eats their own customers.  Would it really surprise anyone if they pulled a stunt like this?

Certainly not me.

It’s time for at least the people of the United States - hopefully the European Union and anyone else who lives in a country where it is possible to be heard by your government - to stand up and demand free and equal access to the Internet.    Bandwidth For The People!

For their web sites, their blogs, their music, photos, videos, whatever…  Available to all they see fit to make it available to.  The internet has become an important vessel through which many people express their feelings and beliefs.  The creative variety of these musings should be considered protected free speech.  No restrictions on its availability via bandwidth-throttling or tiered services that restrict the number of sites one can visit should ever be allowed.

Cable companies are required to have “public-access” channels.  Of course, the original spirit of that rule has since been watered down by certain coporate lawyers…  but, the internet gives us the ability for public access to media that far surpasses the intent of that original public access T.V. channel.  And it scares the crap out of Big Media.

Be heard now or be silenced.

"And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;"
Revelation 18:22

Wired Wiki has a nice little how-to for converting HD-DVD to Blu-Ray format.  Might be something worth looking into if you’re one of the less-than-visionary people who thought Blu-Ray was going to crap out and HD-DVD would be king.

I think Blu-Ray won out over HD-DVD ’cause the name is just soooo much cooler.  JM2C.

For my children…

A reading of The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Clarke Moore.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!