A few months back I bought the Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. I know I'm a little behind the times, but I didn't have time to play Oblivion when it first came out. I've always been a huge Elder Scrolls fan, and I was having a lot of fun catching up.
When I first bought the game, I had a Windows machine laying around to play it on. Sadly, the machine developed some problems and had to be cannibalized.
Everything I'd read made it seem like I should be good getting it running in Ubuntu under Wine.
A few frustrating hours later, I learned that the newer Game of the Year (GOTY) editions of Oblivion, like the one I had purchased, used a version of SecuROM not yet supported by Wine.
This really angers me for two reasons. Firstly, SecuROM is evil borderline-malware, and I'm disappointed that Bethesda (a company I -- used to? -- like) decided to use it at all to begin with.
Secondly, the non-GOTY editions that already exist don't use this type of DRM. Since, to the best of my knowledge, no difference exists between gameplay in the GOTY and regular versions of Oblivion, it seems to me this new DRM actually weakens the security of the game. If you're a pirate, you get to pick one of two DRM systems to break in order to redistribute the game -- before, you were just locked into the one.
The new DRM hurts people like me who actually bought the game (no surprise), but I would argue it actually helps software pirates at the same time.
It's ridiculous.
Since Linux isn't officially supported by Bethesda, I don't really have an argument to bring to the company. But it really sucks that buying a newer version of the game has severely limited my ability to play it.
Can we get a law or something that requires DRM-ed products to be clearly labeled with the DRM they ship with? I'm tired of being caught by surprise with this junk.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Living With Bad Systems
When a system is first created, it's easy to find criticism. People new to the system see its behavior constantly colliding with their expectations, and it's a goldmine of ideas for making the system more intuitive and easier to use.
After a system has been around for a while, though, people start to get used to its little problems and quirks, and I think it gets harder to find good criticism about the larger scale issues.
People are so good at learning to live with inconveniences that after a certain point they don't complain about the barn-sized flaws in a system's design or behavior. Things like poor performance, unnecessary redundancies, poor integration with external systems -- after a while, people don't complain because That's Just The Way Things Work (tm).
To illustrate my point a little, follow me on a magical journey to an imaginary men's room. Can you feel the imaginary tile and smell the imaginary urinal cakes? Good. Now, look over towards the imaginary sinks.
Many public restrooms these days use motion detectors to turn the sinks on and off. You probably know what I'm talking about -- a small black sensor sits right under the faucet, and when someone's hands appear in front of it, it turns the water on. Similar setups are usually on the soap and paper towel dispensers.
The motion detectors are far from perfect, and most of the time you have to work a bit to get the water or soap or paper towels to come out. So, in order to wash and dry your hands, you sometimes spend a good two minutes trying to convince some machine, some harsh mechanical eye, that you do, in fact, exist. You stand in front of the motion detector, waving your hands around foolishly, doing little dances, saying, "I'm here! I'm real!"
And you know what? Sometimes you fail. You fail to convince a machine that you're real, and no water or soap or paper towels come out. It's downright Orwellian.
So if these machines routinely and blatantly deny your very existence, and they are completely accepted and commonplace, how many other egregious behaviors in systems across the world must be going unreported at this very moment?
If you take a step back and look at your system's design from afar, can you spot any gaping problems that everyone is just used to dealing with?
After a system has been around for a while, though, people start to get used to its little problems and quirks, and I think it gets harder to find good criticism about the larger scale issues.
People are so good at learning to live with inconveniences that after a certain point they don't complain about the barn-sized flaws in a system's design or behavior. Things like poor performance, unnecessary redundancies, poor integration with external systems -- after a while, people don't complain because That's Just The Way Things Work (tm).
To illustrate my point a little, follow me on a magical journey to an imaginary men's room. Can you feel the imaginary tile and smell the imaginary urinal cakes? Good. Now, look over towards the imaginary sinks.
Many public restrooms these days use motion detectors to turn the sinks on and off. You probably know what I'm talking about -- a small black sensor sits right under the faucet, and when someone's hands appear in front of it, it turns the water on. Similar setups are usually on the soap and paper towel dispensers.
The motion detectors are far from perfect, and most of the time you have to work a bit to get the water or soap or paper towels to come out. So, in order to wash and dry your hands, you sometimes spend a good two minutes trying to convince some machine, some harsh mechanical eye, that you do, in fact, exist. You stand in front of the motion detector, waving your hands around foolishly, doing little dances, saying, "I'm here! I'm real!"
And you know what? Sometimes you fail. You fail to convince a machine that you're real, and no water or soap or paper towels come out. It's downright Orwellian.
So if these machines routinely and blatantly deny your very existence, and they are completely accepted and commonplace, how many other egregious behaviors in systems across the world must be going unreported at this very moment?
If you take a step back and look at your system's design from afar, can you spot any gaping problems that everyone is just used to dealing with?
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