I play Halo 2 off and on with Phil and some others, and while fun in small groups, it gets quickly annoying when playing with random people online who invariably are 15 year old annoying idiots.  These guys (and yes, they're almost all guys) typically play several hours a day, yet hang out on the training ground levels where they get to play against us casual gamers.  Invariably they beat us, after which they scream stupid comments.  An example:  after beating Phil and I at one team game, they saw that Phil's screen name is "D3LTAF0RC3", so one proceeded to scream out, "DeltaForce?!  Well I am OMEGAForce!" in this high-pitched voice.

Anyway, Bungie, the company behind Halo, has begun really cracking down on banning these idiots who are making us other players - who they rely on for the bread-and-butter casual purchases - not want to play anymore.  Last month they were asked "What exactly is cheating, and what isn't?" to which they posted this funny response:

Any and all mods, hacks, and artificially modified game profiles used on Live (which potentially includes playing on System Link while connected - the whole "Live Aware" thing) will be treated the same way - as cheats. We don't support the devices or software used to make these hacks, and so we have no obligation to supporting their use. They are and have been used for cheating, and since there's no way for us to tell if they're being used for innocent or nefarious purposes, we are nuking ALL instances and banning them from matchmaking. SO DON'T USE THEM. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Not to be confused with regular game saves, where you've made a custom game type using Halo 2's built-in interface. Those are fine and we can easily tell the difference.

"Boosting" - manipulating your way up the leaderboards with the help of other players or techniques = banned. It IS cheating. Those doing it know it is cheating, and more to the point, it is purposeless. You are not proving you're better than other players, in fact, you're showing that you simply don't have the skill or ability to compete. Which makes you suckaz. It's also very easy for us to detect, so don't do it or you're banned. And you may be banned today anyway for a prior history of Boosting. This is a temporary 7 day suspension to give you one last chance to quit it so don't bother whining to me about it. I DON'T CARE. YOU CHEATED. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS. And if your "little brother" did it, take it up with him, not us. Oh dear, my Caps Lock is acting up to day. MONKEYS!!!! After the seven day suspension ends, you can try playing properly. Do it again and there will be more permanent penalties. Don't like it? Call a "waaaaah-mbulance."

Other forms of cheating, betrayals, constant quitting when losing, hiding bombs, will also be treated as cheating and continue to be dealt with using the feedback system and YOU WILL BE BANNED TOO.

Being an idiot online? Cursing continually? Making threats? Being a racist jackass? BANNED. Oh and a word to screamers – BANNED. Anyone who so much as looks at ME funny on Live? BANNED. Synonym for a group of musicians? BAND. Things are going to get a lot tighter around here. We have more tools and better awareness, and all you have to do to avoid being BANNED is QUIT BEING AN IDIOT. You're not funny. You're not clever. You're a boring loser and people hate you.

Look, most of you know what cheating is, so quit asking stupid questions about it, or acting indignant because there is a bug in the game that you felt obliged to exploit. YOU ARE CHEATING. We don't even owe you this explanation. The only reason we bother is so that we can go back and say look, we told you this was cheating and you're BANNED so shut up. And I hope you get boils. And I hope the boils are full of acid-spewing spiders that burst out and hump your face.

It really reminds me of when Phil and I ran a BBS in High School, where I would ban anyone who would post any comment slightly disparaging against us or our system.  Then they would have their friends send Phil a whiny message about how their friend was banned without a warning, etc.  Whatever.  It was our system, our time, our phone line, our cost, and if they didn't like it, we didn't want them there.

I don't recall where I came across this online comic strip, but it's oh-so-weird and pretty funny, too.  Alien Loves Predator which oddly doesn't involve an Alien loving a Predator but rather two of them as apartment-sharing roomates in New York City.

MoveOn.org has a new commercial debuting that parodies the new Star Wars in comparison with what's going on in the Senate right now.  It's pretty funny.  From their site:

This week, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opens in theaters nation-wide.  And weirdly enough, the plot of what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest films in movie history revolves around a scheming senator who, seduced by visions of absolute power, transforms a democratic republic into an empire.

Watch the commercial by clicking the picture above or here.

Got back from a late-night early screening of Star Wars: Episode III a little bit ago.  I'll write more later, but for now, suffice it to say - see it.  SO much better than Episode I or II.

You know you want one.

Misty gave birth to my neice, Mirabelle Zander Soldwisch, yesterday around 4:30 am.  Mira is 8 ounces and 20 inches in length (height?).

She's very cute, making these little "eh eh eh" noises while sleeping.

Yesterday, the new Dave Matthews Band CD, "Stand Up", came out, so I picked it up at Best Buy.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's as good as the CDs of the past, but that's actually an aside to this entry.

I rarely use my CD player anymore - in fact, I typically buy a CD, rip it into iTunes to play on my PC and go on the iPod (which is wired into my car), and then store the CD in a box with others in case I ever need to use it again for some reason or other.  I've thought about just purchasing albums directly from Apple off of iTunes, but I don't like the thought of it being locked away from other future formats that a CD can be ripped to.

So I get the DMB CD, put it in the computer, and it asks me to approve a DRM (digital rights management) license, which I do.  I then try to rip the CD into iTunes, but the music keeps skipping when it's played through the iTunes program off the CD or ripped to MP3.

It turns out that the CD is locked against used in any way on a PC other than listening to the music as DRM-protected WMA (Windows Media) files.  And the iPod and iTunes don't recognize WMA, which essentially cuts off their usage.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of the music companies wanting to protect their rights in the use of their music, but any method that cuts off usage with the worlds most popular MP3 player is ridiculous, especially given what I found out next.

Being unable to put the music on to my iPod and iTunes left the CD pretty much unusable for my purposes, so I sent an email to their support group.  A little later I got the following response (which I am posting in full in case someone with the same problem happens upon this blog posting via a Google search (skip the italic text below if you don't care about the specific response):

Thank you for contacting us, Jason. We appreciate your purchase of the Dave Matthews Band CD and are happy to assist you.

Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod: 

If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.

If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.

Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.

Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.

Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license.

Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD.  Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.

Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.

Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above.  http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Thank you.

Rob, SunnComm Tech Support

So, essentially, they're saying that if I burn a CD from Windows Media Player (which pretty much every Windows XP machine has on it for free), it bypasses the DRM anyway, making the music accessible in any way.  What's more, I had trouble getting the Media Player instructions to work right, so I just burned an audio CD using the WMA files in Roxio Easy CD Creator, and then turned around and imported that newly-burned CD into iTunes, and it worked fine.

What really gets me is that they make it so difficult to use the music in a legitimate device, but then make it so the same protection that is supposedly in place to protect their rights can be bypassed by a simple CD burning.  What is the point?

Music companies - if you're going to insist on DRM to protect your investment, at least find a way to make it work on all music players.  Heck, you could probably even work out a deal with Apple to allow free download of their protected version of the album for iPod users.  But do something, otherwise you give us a reason beyond even the "free music" aspect to go look for the album online through less legitimate sources.

Bonnie's blog once again provides a link to a funny Star Wars-related site, this time Grocery Store Wars.

My favorite is Chewbroccoli!

Saw Hitchhiker's Guide this past weekend with Kim.  Several changes from the book, but I was fine with that as I thought the book was good but not great.  Funny movie, though, if you'll let yourself just go for the ride.

Click the above image to see the dolphin sing-along.

There was an art show in LA last week called "i am 8 bit" featuring tons of pop art, mainly centered around old video games.  You can see many examples of the art at IGN and FORT90 by clicking their respective names.  Some very cool stuff.

The official site for the show is at http://www.iam8bit.net/

My favorite piece, all of those cartoon villains of my youth hanging out.

Donkey Kong and Mario, sharing a drink after a hard day's work.

A cool Mario painting.

Dig Dug!

IGN Coverage

FORT90 Coverage

i am 8 bit Official Site