Every time I play Dawn of War, I want to try my hand at Warhammer 40,000.

I used to attend gaming conventions with some regularity.  Went to TwinCon several years in a row, and actually made it to GenCon a couple of times.  I’d always see folks with huge tables set up…  Beautifully landscaped…  Giant armies of intricately painted miniatures everywhere…  Very impressive.

I always wanted to play…  But Warhammer 40k has never been a cheap hobby.  $50 for the rule book…  Another $20 for a codex…  Then you start buying your miniautes – $10 here, $50 there…  It’s very easy to spend entirely too much money very quickly.  And, at the time, I had no real income of my own.  It was all I could do to buy a new Rifts sourcebook once in a while.

Well, these days things are a little different…  I now have some disposable income, and they now make a relatively cheap starter kit.

So, I have acquired a Black Reach starter kit, and I’m eagerly awaiting its delivery.

It’s February 19th, and that means that Dawn of War II is available in stores.  I had originally thought that I’d be rushing out to a store to buy the game today…  Or maybe eagerly waiting for it to activate on Steam…  But playing through their multi-player beta curbed my enthusiasm.

So, instead, I’m searching around on-line to see if there’s any kind of single-player demo available…  And, so far, I haven’t found anything.

A couple sites are referring to a multi-player demo, but it looks like they’re talking about the beta that I played.  It doesn’t look like there’s anything else available…

What ever happened to demos?  Used to be that pretty much every game had a demo out…  Either on a disc that came with a magazine or something you could download.  And usually they were pretty long, too.  Gave you a good feel for the game.  These days it seems like they don’t want you to test things out…  They’d rather you just hand them your cash and trust that it’ll be worth it.  And when it isn’t?  Well, that’s too bad, because they can’t accept returns on opened merchandise…

Bah!

Slashdot | Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7

A few days’ testing of Windows 7 has already disclosed some draconian DRM, some of it unrelated to media files. A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version. With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). This may be the tip of the iceberg. Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a tactic so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons. Many users will not want to experiment with a second sound card or computer just to record from online sources, or boot up under a Linux that supports ntfs-3g just to control their files.

I’m really not sure how seriously I should take this story…  There’s no link to a full story or blog post or anything.  From the little that’s posted on Slashdot this could easily be just some random guy with a bone to pick…

But, if this is accurate, it doesn’t surprise me one bit.  The assorted media companies are pushing hard to turn computers into just another playback device – no different than a DVD player or a television screen.  They don’t want you to be able to edit, rip, or manipulate their precious content.

And Microsoft seems far too willing to go along with them.  I have to assume that there’s some kind of leverage in use here…  Maybe the media companies refused to license their code unless Microsoft did what they wanted.  Or maybe they’re sending Microsoft piles of cash for “R&D.”  I don’t pretend to know what kind of thinking goes on over at Microsoft, but I will say with certainty that Microsoft seems to be more concerned about what the media companies want than what the average consumer wants.

Personally, I’m using Vista almost purely for the 64-bit support.  My computer has 4 GB RAM, and the only way I can access all that is with a 64-bit OS.

Sure, there was Windows XP Professional 64…  But that always seemed like more of an afterthought than a real OS.  Support was always kind of iffy.  I’ve seen several customers here at the shop having headaches because they’re trying to run XP-64.  The driver support doesn’t quite seem to be there…

But with Vista, 64-bit support is almost mainstream.  Computers are shipping from the manufacturer with Vista-64 preloaded.  Hardware and software all pretty much does what it is supposed to.  Drivers are, for the most part, available.

So, for me, there was a real incentive to switch to Vista from XP.  Even with all the weird new UI changes and the performance issues and whatever else…  Vista-64 gives me access to all my RAM.

But Windows 7?  I don’t know that I’ve got a c0mpelling reason to upgrade to Win7.  I’ll probably run it at the shop, so that I can become familiar with it and know what I’m doing on client computers.  But I seriously doubt if I’ll upgrade to Win7 at home…at least if this report about DRM is true.

I’ll be very honest, I pirate software.

Generally speaking, if it is something I actually use or enjoy, I will pay for it.  I don’t have a problem paying for software.  I like to support the folks who produce useful and fun bits of software.

But I’m not going to pay $50+ for a game site-unseen.  I want to try it out, play around with it a bit, make sure I’m going to actually get my money’s worth.  And demos are becoming hard to find these days.

Likewise, I’m not going to buy a game all over again because I lost a CD-key or scratched a disc.

And I’m not going to swap discs every time I want to play a different game.

All of which means that I routinely pirate software.

I’ll download a game and try it out for a couple days if there isn’t a demo available.  And far too often these days I’ll wind up un-installing it after playing for just an hour or two, glad that I didn’t waste my money.

Or I’ll download a no-CD crack that allows me to play a game that I’ve legitimately purchased without having to put the disc in the drive.

Or I’ll download a game that I’ve purchased and have the media/license/whatever to…  But, for whatever reason, doesn’t work.

All of that counts as piracy.  And, if this story is accurate, all of that will become far more difficult for me to do in Win7.

Valentine’s Day wasn’t really what I’d normally aim for in my Holiday festivities…

I don’t like people in general.  Normally my idea of a good time involves as few other human beings as possible.  And this year, for Valentine’s Day, we had four additional human beings in the house.

Christopher’s girlfriend, Linay, came over to visit.  He hasn’t seen her in weeks (because he had to focus on his grades) so I can’t really begrudge him that…  And it was Valentine’s Day, so I can certainly understand wanting to be with your significant other…

But she is an additional human being, which means I can’t really be myself when she’s around.  I can’t wander around the house in my underwear…  I have to smile and act sociable and all that good stuff.  The kind of stuff I have to do all day long at work.

We also had Mike, and his girlfriend Sylvia, and their kid Jake over for dinner.  I haven’t seen Mike in very literally years…  And I really don’t know Sylvia at all…  And I’m not a fan of little kids…  So that was a whole pile of uncomfortable right there.

Actually though…  Despite the whiny-ness of my post so far, it was pretty fun.

Everyone was relatively well-behaved.  The inappropriate behavior I was expecting from Mike and Christopher never really materialized.

Christopher got a little rowdy during dinner, but what do you expect?  He’s a teenager with a girlfriend and a big-brother to impress.

Mike looked amazing.  Last time I saw him he looked like me – more or less round.  He’s lost some weight, and gained some height, and looks a lot better than he used to.  He isn’t so pale and stressed-looking.

It was very reassuring to see him around Sylvia and Jake…  He looked really happy, really seemed to have found his niche.  It gave me hope that this might be the time he finally gets his life straightened out.

I was absolutely exhausted by the time everyone left…  And there is still plenty of cleaning up to do…  And I absolutely treasured my alone-time yesterday…  But I’d honestly consider doing it again.  Not for a couple weeks/months mind you – I need to recover a bit first.  But I could actually enjoy having them all over for St. Patrick’s day or Thanksgiving or a Birthday or something.

Anyway…  I’ve got the day off today.  And I intend to avoid people as much as possible.  I’m going to sit down in my basement and play video games all day long.  I know plenty of people would think that sounds absolutely horrible…  Like a complete waste of a good day off…  But when you’re as misanthropic and introverted as I am, and have to deal with people as much as I do at work, a bit of solitude sounds like heaven.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

I was stumbling through the web last week, and came across a mention of Prophecy: The Monster Movie.  Some random blogger had it on his list of favorite monster movies…  And the description he provided sounded terrific…  So, I threw it into our Netflix queue, and last night we watched it.

Prophecy: The Monster Movie is just plain fun. 

Basically, you’ve got a nice couple from the city who get sent up to Maine by the EPA.  They want to investigate a logging company that’s trying to expand into some Native American lands.  It turns out that the logging company has been dumping methyl mercury into the water, which has created a gigantic mutant bear with a taste for human flesh.

It was filmed back in 1978, so it looks a bit dated…

The special effects are a bit dated.  There’s no shiny CG or anything like that.  The monster is obviously some guy in a rubber suit.  The violence and gore are pretty tame by today’s standards…  But somehow that makes things somewhat more believable.  There’s an early fight between a guy with a chainsaw and a guy with an axe…and it was very tense even without any bloodshed or special effects.

The wardrobe is obviously dated…  As is some of the language…  And the plot is shot full of gaping holes…  But it just adds to the over-all charm of the movie.

Prophecy:  The Monster Movie really isn’t terribly horrific these days, and I have a hard time believing that it was ever genuinely horrific.  But they obviously had a good feel for stagecraft…  There’s some good suspense that doesn’t materialize in a solid scare.  And then there are some scares that appear out of no-where.  Some good mis-direction. 

The end result was thoroughly enjoyable.