June 2006 Archives

Today my brother and I attended our first day of Origins 2006.  We first played a round of the miniatures game "Injurius Games - Keep What You Kill".  Between the two of us (and the kindness of another player), we got a full squad of soldiers.  Here's a bit of video from that event:

Although the convention officially began Wednesday, there wasn't much going on then that I was interested in.  It also appears that this is true for others as well, since (as you can see from this video of Exhibit Hall C where the miniatures gaming takes place) there weren't very many games setup yet or many tables full:

Still, though it wasn't that busy yet, you can see that people are having quite a good time with the games that are underway.  There's a lot of interesting-looking terrain and table setups in place, and I'm more than a little curious to see what tomorrow's activities will bring.  You can be sure there will be some video here tomorrow.

In the evening, we played a very well-attended Rogue Judges event, "Car Wars Rogue Arena".  Here is a little bit of video from that:

I've also taken some still photos that I'll be sharing later.

I watched the Harrison Ford vehicle "Firewall" recently.  In general, I think Harrison Ford does a good job of choosing roles that suit his appearance, acting style, and presence.  Firewall is no exception.  He plays the part of a computer security expert whose family is taken hostage in exchange for him helping a group of crooks steal millions of dollars.  Ford plays the part similarly to his role in "The Fugitive" and does it convincingly.

On the whole, this a decent and entertaining film.  Where the film falls down, however, is in its depiction of technical information.  For example, even though Ford's character has been suspected of doing something highly illegal, he's still able to login to the bank's computer systems from a remote terminal at an airport.  In the real world, that account would have been locked down within seconds of the suspicion.

Even ignoring that, his "clever" solution for capturing account numbers off a computer screen is insanely stupid.  It's claimed that by removing the scanning element from his home fax machine and connecting it to his daughter's iPod, he can create a device that will scan account numbers off a computer screen and store them as digital image files.  Yeah, right.  First, the scanner element alone will only create an image in conjunction with the right interface hardware, which an iPod doesn't have.  Second, even if the iPod had that hardware, it doesn't have scanner software built into it to interpret the signals coming from the fax machine's scanner.  This means Harrison Ford's character would have had to design in mere hours a custom hardware and software setup to enable the capture and storage of lots of bank account numbers.  Not gonna happen.  If he had that kind of skill, he wouldn't be working in computer security - he'd be out there designing and building electronic hardware.

The first X-Men movie was decent.  I had a hard time believing that Hollywood could pull off a convincing X-Men movie, but I was wrong.  They did.  The second movie was less interesting.  This, the third installment, is slightly better than the second movie but less interesting than the first.

The basic gist of the plot of "X-Men: The Last Stand" is that the tension between normal humans and mutants have grown considerably.  The humans have discovered a mutant whose only power is that he reverses the mutations of other mutants.  Using his DNA, the humans are able to create a "cure" for the genetic problems that cause mutants to have their unusual abilities.  While humans openly claim that this "cure" will be entirely voluntary, some have secretly created weapons that will fire darts with the cure in them.  When Magneto learns this, he decides that it's time for the mutants to begin their war against "homo sapiens" (normal humans).  He enlists the aid of all the mutants he can to his cause.  Their first goal is to find the boy who is the source of the "cure" and eliminate him so that he is no longer a threat to them.

Along the way, we learn that Jean Grey isn't dead.  However, she's apparently losing her mind.  She gives in to her "dark side" and joins Magneto in his quest to rid the world of normal humans.  Since she's by far the strongest mutant on Earth, she becomes his most valuable ally.

Not long ago, I read reviews of another animated film that complained about the fact that Hollywood actors' voices were used "as is" as the voices of the animated characters.  The writer said that there are many good voice actors out there who aren't getting work because Hollywood has decided that it's somehow better to have "real actors" voicing animated characters than to have voice actors like Billy West doing it.  At the time, I didn't think much of it.  Now I understand.  I've seen "Cars", the latest from Pixar.

Today, the makers of the Grand Theft Auto video game reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  This is a travesty.  This entire issue should NEVER have reached the FTC, and the members of Congress who pushed the FTC to get involved (most notably Hillary Clinton) should be ashamed of themselves.  Their complaints about this game show their ignorance and fear of technology and media.

The controversy over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas centered on the fact that there was "adult" themed content in the game.  This content was NOT accessible to purchasers of the game as distributed by the manufacturer.  A player could only access this content if he or she made changes to the game so that it would run sections of code the manufacturer had blocked out to keep the game's rating more appropriate for teenagers.

For those of you who don't see why I find Hillary's objections so offensive, let me give you an analogy.  Let us imagine that I own a beach house that I rent out to strangers 6 months a year.  In that beach house, I have a closet that I keep certain personal possessions in (e.g., toiletries, cleaning solutions, medications, etc.) since I'm there half the year.  When I'm not there, that closet is kept locked and renters are given an agreement to sign which says they're not to go in that closet.

One of my renters has a teenage kid who figures out how to pick the lock on that closet.  Inside, he finds something that interests him.  He writes an article on his blog that tells his friends about the beach house and how to pick the lock on the storage closet.  One of his buddies visits the house, picks the lock, and takes a whole bottle of my blood pressure medicine, believing it to be something that will get him high.  He dies.

In this hypothetical example, I took reasonable precautions to protect that child.  I locked the medications away in a closet.  I made it a condition of rental that no one opens that closet.  Getting into the closet required a person to learn to pick a lock, something most people can't do.  After the person picked the lock, they'd have to dig through some sealed boxes to even find the blood pressure medication.  I think most of us could agree that the precautions I took are quite reasonable.  Yes, I could have removed the medication from the house entirely.  And I'm sure that after hearing of the death of someone's child, I would have wished I had.  But the bottom line here is that if people had respected my rental agreement and not bypassed the protection measures I had in place for their safety, the child wouldn't have died.  Period.

In the "real" example of the game, purchasers of the software were given a product that was designed to work a particular way.  Out of the box, that software did not provide access to the sexual content Hillary found so objectionable.  It was, like the medication in my hypothetical example above, locked away and hidden from people.  The software's license agreement probably contained language indicating that it was illegal to modify it, or at the very least that the manufacturer wasn't liable if the user modified that software.  If someone got to this sexual content, they got there because they violated the license agreement and took specific actions to modify the software to make the content available. 

In retrospect, the manufacturer of GTA:SA probably wishes they had deleted the content from the game before shipping it.  But from a purely business perspective, that would have required programming changes, added costs, and delayed the release of the game into the market.  Game customers are generally not that forgiving of delays, so it might have hurt their sales.  Their decision to lock off that content was a practical and reasonable one.  It really isn't their fault people modified their game to access content they had intentionally hidden away.

As someone who saw this hidden content, I can tell you that it was clear that the manufacturer did not intend for customers to play it.  It was buggy code and not as polished as other aspects of the game, giving a clear indication that the developers abandoned the idea of including this kind of content earlier on in the process.  If they had really intended for people to find and play it, they'd have cleaned it up and tested it more.

Personally, I think Hillary needs to keep her nose out of video games.