3 Notes

Questions about the Xbox One’s DRM

I’m really confused about this stuff.

“Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile,” Microsoft’s Major Nelson posted on his site.

So you can play your games on another system, but you must use your account. This is good news for households with multiple systems, or people who like to game with their friends. It also means you can’t “loan” a game to a friend anymore, as you’d have to give them access to your entire account. That’s not an appealing option for people who play often; giving up your entire account so a friend can borrow Tomb Raider isn’t the best solution to this problem.

So consider a sample scenario: my wife and I have two Xbox Ones, and we each have our own profile (because we each have our own save games, our own settings, our own gamer score, our own friends list, etc). I buy Forza 5 and install it on the living room Xbox One. I can play it on there, and my wife can too because the game is locked to that console.

I can also play Forza 5 on the office Xbox One, even though it’s not the console it was originally used with, because I am still signed in as me and I am allowed to play Forza. But I believe my wife cannot, because the content isn’t licensed to the console or to the account in use.

This is exactly how existing Xbox DRM for digital titles works — it’s licensed for all users on the console it’s bought on, and on all consoles for the profile it’s bought with. What’s new about Xbox One is that this also applies to disc releases. Previously, of course, the game would work in any console you put the disc in — the presence of the physical disc was the DRM, in effect.

If the upstairs console will allow my wife to play Forza 5 (perhaps because my account is installed on it but inactive?), how is that any different to the scenario Harrison outlines where I visit a friend’s house? He explicitly states that in that scenario the game only works under my account, not my friend’s. So I don’t see any way in which my wife can play Forza 5 on our office Xbox. This is a regression compared to the Xbox 360; she can play Forza 4 on either Xbox we own, simply by carrying the disc to the system of her choice.

This also affects families with kids who have more than one Xbox One in each of their bedrooms. They won’t be able to move games between consoles. And yet Microsoft are peddling the line that this isn’t substantially different from how the Xbox 360 works. Either Microsoft is lying, or I’m missing something.

3 Notes

Spotted in the Pacific Rim trailer: ‘WILDCARD, BITCHES!’

Spotted in the Pacific Rim trailer: ‘WILDCARD, BITCHES!’

5 Notes

The Hawkeye Initiative: Ruby Underboob and Brosie the Riveter

Outstanding story about a prank involving a gaming company CEO and a stereotypical-underdressed-comicbook-female-character poster.

23 Notes

An awesome picture. But, via this Reddit post, an even more awesome joke: “our Castle is in another princess.”

An awesome picture. But, via this Reddit post, an even more awesome joke: “our Castle is in another princess.”

11 Notes

Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown

Amazing.

Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no reason to be angry. After all, the famous writer had a new book coming out. But that was the problem. A new book meant an inevitable attack on the rich novelist by the wealthy wordsmith’s fiercest foes. The critics.

Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world’s top renowned authors they had made fun of him. They had mocked bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels & Demons and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol.

The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.

Don’t walk, run — run and read the whole thing.

6 Notes

Lovely colour footage of London in 1927, shot by Claude Frisse-Greene, the son of William Friese-Greene who was a pioneer of early colour film techniques. There’s something about old colour film that brings home how different a country the past is in a way that black and white cannot.

432 Notes

stuffparty:

whitewhine:

I wish whoever submitted this one didn’t pre-black-out that last name so we could all know the identity of on of the shittiest assholes around

Maybe her great-great-grandfather slaughtered native Americans at Wonded Knee.

So, is 5th May Canada Day or something?

stuffparty:

whitewhine:

I wish whoever submitted this one didn’t pre-black-out that last name so we could all know the identity of on of the shittiest assholes around

Maybe her great-great-grandfather slaughtered native Americans at Wonded Knee.

So, is 5th May Canada Day or something?

42 Notes

atsirhc:

what a sick burn.

I love the substance of this and I love that “apply water to burned area” meme.

atsirhc:

what a sick burn.

I love the substance of this and I love that “apply water to burned area” meme.

8 Notes

I saw this none-more-hipster pic ages ago, then tried to find it again recently and couldn’t. It just appeared in this Buzzfeed post so I’m putting it here for my own future reference.

I can’t find a definitive source, sadly, which means I can’t verify it’s not a posed shot. Oldest public source I could find was this imgurl via reddit, which then links to this comment from someone who claims to be the first person to put it on Reddit and that he took it from a friend’s Facebook. I suspect it probably is posed. It’s too ludicrous to be genuine, surely? There doesn’t appear to be any power source going to the turntable, for example.

I saw this none-more-hipster pic ages ago, then tried to find it again recently and couldn’t. It just appeared in this Buzzfeed post so I’m putting it here for my own future reference.

I can’t find a definitive source, sadly, which means I can’t verify it’s not a posed shot. Oldest public source I could find was this imgurl via reddit, which then links to this comment from someone who claims to be the first person to put it on Reddit and that he took it from a friend’s Facebook. I suspect it probably is posed. It’s too ludicrous to be genuine, surely? There doesn’t appear to be any power source going to the turntable, for example.

6 Notes

27 Middle-Class Problems

I’m not a fan of Buzzfeed’s throw-semi-plagiarised-crap-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks shotgun blogging, but this one really works.

19 Notes

Michael Wolf takes stunning photographs of dense high-rise housing in Hong Kong. They are all of this style — symmetric, oppressive compositions of seemingly endless buildings and walls and windows, with nary a glimpse of sky or land, hypnotic in the sheer mass of humanity they represent. There’s more at Architecture Of Density.

Michael Wolf takes stunning photographs of dense high-rise housing in Hong Kong. They are all of this style — symmetric, oppressive compositions of seemingly endless buildings and walls and windows, with nary a glimpse of sky or land, hypnotic in the sheer mass of humanity they represent. There’s more at Architecture Of Density.

4 Notes

Steampunk weapons useless against fists

Brilliant.

2 Notes

In the matter of BSkyB vs HP Enterprise Services...

In the case of BSkyB vs HP Enterprise Services (2010), a contractual wrangling over a failed IT rollout, it become important to consider the professional qualifications of the staff HP had assigned to the contract. One of them, Joe Galloway, the managing director of the division of HP that had done the work, claimed to have an MBA. This degree, however, came from a “degree mill” i.e. a place that sells degrees to anyone who will pay for one:

In his first witness statement at paragraph 8, Joe Galloway stated that “I hold an MBA from Concordia College, St. Johns (1995 to 1996)”. … In fact, Concordia College is a website which provides on-line degrees for anyone who makes an application and pays the required fee.

One of the prosecution lawyers then proceeded to demonstrate just how shady Concordia College was in this marvellous manner:

This was effectively and amusingly demonstrated by an application which was made on the website for an MBA degree for a dog “Lulu” belonging to Mark Howard QC. Without any difficulty the dog was able to obtain a degree certificate and transcripts which were in identical form to those later produced by Joe Galloway but with marks which, in fact, were better than those given to him. In addition, a recommendation letter was provided to Mr Galloway and the dog by a person who purported to be President and Vice-Chancellor of Concordia College and University…

If you like this, the Wikipedia page list of animals with fraudulent diplomas is definitely for you.

47 Notes

As you may know, Tumblr’s very own Rachel came to stay with Danielle and I last week, and we had a great time showing her our humble little corner of Wales and England. It’s always great fun to have out-of-towners (or even, as in this case, out-of-countriers) visit because you get to do the tourist things you might not otherwise think to do in your own town. Naturally I carried my cameras around and shot (I think) a few good pictures. These are my favourites. You can see a few more on flickr, if you like these ones.

14 Notes

Sundog.

Sundog.

Likes