Microsoft’s Zune media players continue to lag behind Apple’s popular iPods so they’re looking to gain an advantage wherever they can. One possible boost is a recent deal with NBC to license shows for use on the Zune after NBC yanked them from Apple’s iTunes offerings after a dispute over pricing and DRM. Microsoft seems eager to do whatever it takes to make NBC happy including developing software that would check for and block any illegitimate NBC shows found on your Zune. Here’s a snippet from the New York Times Blog:

Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.

He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

Oddly enough there appears to be some debate at Microsoft about whether or not this Copyright Cop software will actually ever see the light of day on the Zune:

In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, refers to this post, and the blog discussion it prompted. He writes:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

It’s worth noting that Mr. Perrette told me that Microsoft committed to explore filtering; he didn’t say it committed to implementing those filters.

Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: “I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.” Later he added, “We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”

Either way it’s certainly a good reason to think twice about whether or not you want to purchase a Zune especially given the fate that befell users of the defunct MSN Music service. 

This one is a classic. I had to share:

Apparently the folks at Electronic Arts want me to become a software pirate. You may recall that I refused to purchase the PC release of Bioshock because the SecuROM DRM it contained would actually disable some perfectly legitimate troubleshooting software on my PC out of fear that I might use it to crack the game. It also limited you to 10 installs before you had to “reactivate” the game over the Internet and, as someone who restages his PC often, that was too much of an intrusion.

Now word comes down that the critically acclaimed RPG Mass Effect will also make use of SecuROM with a limit of 3 installs and a requirement that it phone home every 10 days to reactivate itself. Apparently the same will also be true of Spore:

BioWare technical producer Derek French lit up the Mass Effect forums this past week announcing that both their game and (on page 2) fellow Electronic Arts title Spore come with SecuROM, a DRM system that requires activation the first time you play the game and then a re-check every ten days, with the first check on the fifth day.

French explained that there is no external program installed and the check will be run through MassEffect.exe (or Spore.exe, presumably), the data transfered will be the CD key and a “unique machine identifier of some type” and that he has been told, “there will be clear labeling on the package.”

This is very disappointing news as it guarantees that I won’t even consider purchasing Mass Effect now and it makes my purchase of Spore debatable as well. If I do end up being weak willed enough to buy Spore I can guarantee you that I will be hunting down the crack for it. There’s been a fair amount of talk among developers that piracy is killing the market for games on the PC, but these draconian DRM schemes aren’t helping the situation at all as it pretty much ensures that legitimate customers will either end up turning to pirated copies to get away from the restrictive DRM or just refuse to purchase the game. Given the fact that Spore will contacting servers on a regular basis to download user created content there’s even less of a need for SecuROM as opposed to just using the game’s CD Key.

What’s going to end up killing the PC game market in the long run is treating your customers like criminals, but it appears that’s a trend that isn’t going away anytime soon.

The folks at Eurogamer are reporting that a patch for the PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV should be hitting the net today:

Speaking to Eurogamer, a Sony source explained that the patch would help by “reducing the loads on the servers at GameSpy and hopefully the completely random hangs that some users have seen”.

I’ve not had the chance to play the game for the past couple of days anyway so this is perfect timing for me. With any luck the patch will be available by the time I get home and I can check to see if it clears up the issue. No word yet on a patch for the Xbox 360 version.

On a related note: GTA IV is, as expected, earning Rockstar a shit load of money taking in some $500 million in its first week on store shelves.

Update: According to the guys at PS3 Fanboy the patch is out and working as advertised.  It clocks in at 18MB and bumps the version number to 1.01.

The new service pack brings a handful of new security related features, a whole host of bug fixes, and a purported speed boost as well. As always it’s probably a good idea to install it if you’re running Windows XP on your machine. Microsoft has also re-released Windows Vista SP1 which was pulled after some compatibility issues. Both are available through Windows Update.

For a month every year Muslims are supposed to fast (i.e. not eat any food) during daylight hours - this is known as Ramadan. Most cope with this fine (and if you’re ill you can eat food). But one guy from my home town, despite feeling rather tired, decided to drive. And fell asleep. Alas, he hit a lamp-post and later died in hospital.

Bradford Coroners Court was told Maurice Gent, 59, was fasting for the Muslim festival of Ramadan and was “feeling tired” at the time of the collision.

The court heard how Mr Gent, of Waterside, Bingley, was taken to Airedale General Hospital where he told Accident & Emergency staff he thought he had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Mr Gent, a civil servant, had complained of stomach pains in the ambulance. He was stable on arrival at hospital, but his condition started to deteriorate and he died of multiple organ failure on October 5, 2007 - six days after the collision.

Ramadan is actually getting earlier each year and this means that daylight hours will be getting longer, so it’ll be interesting to see if more accidents happen as a result of people fasting who really shouldn’t.

I guess the standards for what constitutes a newscast are slipping these days:

The Federal Communications Commission has ruled as such in the cases of Fox’s “TMZ” and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “The 700 Club,” declaring Friday that each show meets the test for “a bona fide newscast” and therefore would not trigger political equal-time requirements.

Those requirements hold that “if a licensee allows a legally qualified candidate for public office to use a broadcast station, it must afford equal opportunities to other such candidates for that office,” according to FCC regs.

Congress defined “bona fide newscast” as one that holds “genuine news value” and is not intended to boost or aid any particular political candidate.

I’ve seen episodes of both shows and it seems pretty clear to me that the last thing they might be are “bone fide” newscasts. In TMZ‘s defense I suppose it’s only fair to grant the the status seeing as Entertainment Tonight also qualifies and I don’t really see that as much of a newscast either, but to say that the 700 Club doesn’t boost or aid any particular political candidate is laughable.

I do find it interesting that I’m nearly as appalled with TMZ as I am with the 700 Club in terms of the content. It’s hard to say which one was more vapid and potentially harmful to brain cells. I don’t recommend large doses of either over long periods of time.

The chi of Portland: High weirdness in Nirvana | Kansas.com

PORTLAND, Ore. - Acupuncture is not just for people. It’s also for cities - if the city is Portland.

Adam Kuby has stuck a 23-foot needle into the ground down by the Willamette River and hopes to plant more, choosing locations where he figures the city’s “chi,” or vital energy, needs some help.

Unusual? You bet. Unusual for Portland? Not really.

Because the city apparently has a lot of weirdos in it. The rest of the article goes on to describe some of the quirky events and people to be found in Portland, but honestly most of it doesn’t sound too strange. The guy trying to do acupuncture should win a nutcase prize of some sort.

Among the latest additions to the panoply of Portland’s oddities are Adam Kuby’s giant needles. An artist who arrived from New York four years ago, Kuby says the acupuncture project is an attempt to get people to see the city in a holistic way.

“It is a visual way of expressing what a lot of people already know,” said Kuby. The city is “one organism, one body, one very complex, independent system.”

Other than this nutball, the city’s weirdness actually is very appealing to me as I’ve long been attracted to people and places that aren’t afraid to be seen as different. I don’t know that I’d attempt what the article describes as “Zoo Bombing” at my age, but I might go watch people participating in it. If nothing else it might be a fun place to visit.

Well that didn’t take long. One really strong weekend barely over with and Marvel Studios is already announcing a sequel to Iron Man according to the folks at /Film:

Hot off the $100 million opening of Iron Man (nice job Steve!), the ever powerful Marvel Studios opened its war chest up today, revealing the company’s in-house feature roll out through 2011. Here’s what it looks like…

2010

April 30th: Iron Man 2

June 4th: Thor (directed by Matthew Vaughn)

2011

May 6th: The First Avenger: Captain America

July (day N/A): The Avengers

So, two Avengers films in 2011, eh? Unprecedented. DC’s Justice League is bummed. In addition to the line-up above, Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man is still in the planning stages at the studio, and obviously June brings us The Incredible Hulk, followed by Punisher: War Zone in December.

Let’s hope the rest of them are half as good as Iron Man turned out to be.

Here’s one more reason not to be excited about the fourth installment in the Terminator movie series. They’re aiming to make it a kid friendly PG-13:

As production starts today on “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins,” the next installment in the action franchise, producers at the Halcyon Co. say they aim to deliver a PG-13 movie to Warner Bros. for release on May 22, 2009.

The “Terminator” series is one of the highest-grossing R-rated franchises of all time, with the first three films having grossed more than $1.03 billion worldwide. But Halcyon producers thought it was time to broaden the upcoming fourth film’s audience base, and they believe the PG-13 won’t compromise the series’ gritty vision.

“The ratings have changed,” said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Victor Kubicek, a broker-turned-writer-producer. “The PG-13 has increased in intensity.”

It appears the success of Live Free or Die Hard last summer was enough to convince the folks who bought the rights to the Terminator series that moving from R to PG-13 would be a good idea. I’m already leery of a fourth Terminator film due to abysmal third installment and the rather wobbly (so far) TV series and it doesn’t help that they hired the guy who wrote the third movie to also write the fourth one. Toning it down for a younger audience may just be a deal breaker for me.

I’m also getting a bit tired of the mad rush to make everything PG-13. This is particularly true of the horror genre where it seems it’s either a decidedly non-scary PG-13 or an over-the-top torture-porn rated R. The original Terminator was as much a horror movie as a sci-fi movie and the sequel did a good job of fitting into the same mold. Part of the reason the third movie failed for me was that it wasn’t particularly scary. Considering how non-scary most of the PG-13 horror flicks of late have been it’s hard to see how the drop in rating on the next Terminator will improve things at all.

Man asks court to change his name to ‘In God We Trust’ - Charlotte Observer

ZION, Ill.—Steve Kreuscher wants a judge to allow him to legally change his name. He wants to be known as “In God We Trust.”

Kreuscher (CROY’-shir) says the new name would symbolize the help God gave him through tough times.

The 57-year-old man also told the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald he’s worried that atheists may succeed in removing the phrase “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency.

‘Nuff said.

Those of you who are drooling for a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV and debating over which console to buy because all you have is a PC may take some heart in this Softpedia news item:

… [W]e have a German website presenting the Grand Theft Auto IV PC version DVD case, together with a price and, what matters most for all of us: the release date. According to the website, the PC version of Rockstar’s title will be made available starting the 30th of November this year. What should normally be a further proof that the date is correct (or, at least, that a PC version is in the works) is the fact that pre-order is available. It remains to see how and if Rockstar responds to this… let’s call it “leak”. They probably won’t be too happy, since the official announcement still has to be made.

So, assuming this date is correct or at least in the general ballpark, if you can hold out ‘till November then you may not need to purchase a console to get your fix after all. Maybe by then they’ll have smushed the rather annoying freezing bugs as well.

So about six hours of game time in I had just finished the mission where you deal with the problem of Vlad (if you’ve played it then you know where I was) when the game suddenly locked up during the cut scene at the end of the mission. Oh, I thought to myself, this must be the much-discussed lockup bug. So I rebooted the console and tried to launch the game. It went through the load up screens and then tried to load the last save point at which point it just sat there strobing the loading text at me for far longer than usual. When the music ended and it sat there in silence still strobing the text I figured it wasn’t going to load and rebooted the console again. Since then I’ve deleted all the save files I had, the profile, and the installation files and yet it does the same thing every time. Goes through the load screens and sits there strobing the text STARTING A NEW GAME at me endlessly. Considering that I never saw the “starting” text the first time I loaded the game the fact that I was seeing it at all wasn’t a good sign.

Now this is disturbing because my issue doesn’t sound like what other folks have been having. They all report that they get to the first cut scene and then it locks up. I’m not even making it that far. When I check the files on the hard drive I can see that the game has managed to make a profile, but not a save file so I know it’s locking up pretty early in the process. The consensus seems to be that the problem is related to the Internet connectivity and that’s one thing I haven’t tried turning off yet so we’ll see if that fixes it. I’ve not gotten a chance to try it yet today as we got up and took Melvin, the official SEB cat, to the vets then went out for lunch and an early showing of Iron Man (Super Short Review: Go see it. It’s good.) and when we got home the TV was occupied.

It’s a little bizarre to have the game work fine for two days straight and then lock up and refuse to run after that. Still I’ll try disabling the internet connectivity next and see what happens. Either way I’m not too worried about it as they’ll eventually get a patch together for it at some point. It is rather annoying though.

Update: Turning off the Internet connection got the game working again just fine. I’m back to where I was before it locked up on me the first time. So it appears it’s related to the networking in some fashion. I expect they’ll have a patch for it in short order.

No Child Left Behind reading program is failing - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON—The $6-billion reading program at the center of President Bush’s signature education law has failed to make a difference in how well children understand what they read, according to a study by the program’s own champion, the Department of Education.

Reading First was designed to help boost student performance in low-income elementary schools, but failed to improve reading comprehension, says the study from the Institute of Education Sciences, part of the Department of Education.

There was no difference in comprehension scores between students who participated in Reading First and those who did not, the study found.

Your tax dollars at work in the hands of an incompetent Bush Administration where political lackies are put in positions of power instead of people who actually know what they’re doing.

I don’t know exactly what motivated me to write this, but I’ve always been interested in group behavior, and I was at this party recently and ...

You’re at a party, and the lights are flashing, the music is pumping, and people talking, laughing, clapping, dancing, and then a rumor starts: somewhere, out of sight, someone might have puked. Like a wave it moves through the crowd, touching everyone as they consider, “Oh no, I may be next”, and they swallow nervously, not wanting it to be true, but with that tentative swallow, they know the truth: they could indeed.

Read the rest of the post on SmugBaldy.com