A 15 year project has now created truly synthetic life. That being a 1 million base pair chromosome that can self replicate and which the scientists understand the purpose of each set of DNA information, what it produces, etc.

Not only that but the genetic code includes a watermark which includes direction on how to decode the watermark into English from the base pair sequences, 46 names of people responsible for the genetic code and project, a website address for the organism, and quotations.

This changes the game.

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I want to emphasize: The amount of physical data we receive often exceeds our cognitive abilities to track and organize it.

I have mountains of paper, receipts, rental statements, insurance invoices and payments for both car and home, taxes, property taxes, financial aid documents for my graduate program, software serial numbers, and the list goes on.  It is quite impossible for me to memorize any of this information in a way that is useful, and even file folder organization does not provide a way to organize the information to make finding any one document a simple matter.  A conversion to digital records provides a layer of abstraction that creates a useful way of managing the data.

Digital conversion abstracts my documents into searchable text that can be indexed, searched, and retrieved in an almost limitless number of ways.  A database has no need to have a memory, it can simply query vast numbers of records at a speed which to human perception is instantaneous.  However, this data is fragile.  My vital records are reduced to magnetically stored 1’s and 0’s.  These are not any less fragile than the physical documents, but there is the implication that redundant co-location of this data is necessary so that the information is not lost.  Such a loss would be near devastating if physical records are destroyed.  Previously, if paperwork had become lost, there was some chance of finding it had been misplaced.  Disruption of digital data can mean real total loss of that documentation.

Now examine other parts of life and the many layers of abstraction.  I have a bank account.  There is money in that account, but if I were to ask to see the physical currency backing the amounts in my accounts I would simply be greeted by a number on a screen that was generated from a database.  The majority of that money has come from checks from my property management company, I have records of these checks but the currency they represent is also existent entirely as points in a database.  One misplaced decimal and I can grow by orders of magnitude or have my financial ability crushed.  We are assured that there are rigorous safeguards and audits of data to insure that mistakes do not occur.  In the majority of cases these safeguards and trails of digital records work brilliantly, but errors do occur.  Even one error in a million is a high rate when you consider the billions of transactions that occur daily.

We must begin to ask what the reality of our work, income, accounts, and information is based upon.  We are physical being who increasingly interact with each other through abstractions in data.  To what degree do we know that our digital interactions are with other people?  To what extent are we cruel to data in ways that we would never impose on flesh and blood? 

This is not an exit.

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You know… It might be terrifying but it happens to be wild enough to be true.  We respond to points and rewards.  Some people really are working to give us points and rewards for things that are good for us, society, and the planet.  Most are just trying to make a few dollars.  The thing is, this really matters, because behavior can be shaped by series of inconsequential events into very different modes of not just behavior but thinking.

The video may run a bit longer than your attention span, but it is well worth it.

Found at Fox @ Fury via StumbleUpon

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The solutions was found here – and the post on that site includes screenshots if you need them.  However, here is the text of the fix which should suffice for the majority of people:

This is a fix for slow Zune marketplace on Win 7, I have tested this on my Win 7 64 bit. Marketplace works fine on my Vista 32 bit and xp 32 bit. You can try this for your Vista 64 bit too. You can find users reporting on this forum http://forums.zune.net/2/8/526815/ShowPost.aspx

The Fix
Turn off Automatically detect LAN settings in your IE.
Steps

1. Open IE
2. Click on Tools–> Internet Options
3. Click on “Connections” Tab
4. Click button “Lan Settings”
5. Un-Check ” Automatically detect settings” (this is/was set by default in my Win 7 installation)
6. Restart IE and Zune (if you had it open)

I found an article for slow saving of documents in SharePoint from Windows 7 client and this was the fix and thought these were related.

 

So go forth, and have a blazing fast marketplace, just the way it ought to be!

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While reading through some of the debates, I came across an article that covers very little of that first rather complex sentence but goes very deep into the topics of copyright, intellectual property, micro transactions, and how they do or do not apply in the real world; especially the internet.

Raph Koster’s: "Are microtransactions actually the future?"

I won’t attempt to summarize his views here.  Let it just be said that this is one of the longest and most informative pieces I have seen on the topic. 

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So, there you have my name in the letters Rhett found.  The website linked above has the image I pulled the letters from and also has a link to the map with all the markers for the letters and numbers that were found.  So before you call “Shopped!” check out the real locations and get an eye full of what man and nature can make that resemble our language.

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If you know me, you know I’m not a big fan of Apple.  The reasons go from “Apple != Games” to the fact that they enjoy trying to foist software on you through iTunes updates.  However, I do think the MacBook Pro and related products are pretty solid.  Another however… I despise the MacBook Air.

More than that, I despise vanity electronics.

By that, I don’t mean MP3 players, Portable media devices (although those get rather close to my list), and things that generally serve a purpose.  What I hate are electronics that forcefully degrade usability and utility to “be cool.”  If you need attention so much that you buy mostly useless hunks of plastic to drag around I recommend hookers, they have more features, are cheaper than, and some even look better on your arm than the Air.

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Ryan Cashman, shows you that with ingenuity and patience you can make art.

The equipment?   A green keychain LED and a Canon digital Rebel.

That’s right, one camera, an LED, and some free time.  The composition is also original.  Better yet, material like this video is no longer unique!  With prices constantly dropping on equipment that can deliver professional results, the door to being able to create amazing art of any kind is no longer restricted to industry pros.

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Lets start with Spore. I obviously just wrote a fairly harsh bit on the subject of this game.  Well after a little bit of very angry customer feedback – 40 pages in one thread, 10-15 in another – Maxis responded that they were going to work on some patches to accommodate the demands.  You can read about the player victory here.

It doesn’t help some of the lackluster game play, but it goes a long way to help restore the brand from the tarnish it was starting to build up.  No matter what though, they listened and took action.  This is actually some of what the policy of pirating I was speaking of is aimed to accomplish.  Check that a promise has been delivered before you buy.  If it has been, them immediately buy the game, they have earned those dollars by being honest.

Another game that had some problems was, The Witcher.  Overall this was a great game that brought swordplay down to a more user friendly level (sometimes) and told an interesting story.  It was; however, plagued with technical bugs and English content that left someone to wonder what the talk of really great immersive story was all about.

They have just released an entirely new version of the game, The Witcher: Enhanced.  They used a great deal of the profit from initial sales to go back an polish everything they could in the game, and rewrite all of the English in the game to be closer to the original.  Unfortunately I have not been able to play the new enhanced version…

The enhanced version is currently only a new boxed version of the game, but that will change tomorrow.  They released the new game version on September 16th, the patch that will update the game for all previous owners becomes available the 19th.  It is good to see a company going to such great lengths to correct a product that was released in a rather damaged state, and also add more content.  in fact, there are two new sets of missions that add to the storyline being thrown in to this patch.  Once again, a rather angry and vocal customer base helped to get a product not only fixed, but this time significantly added to.

It also shows that some developers are willing to go that extra mile when they break a promise.

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Here is a thread on the forums about the problem.

So, why is this a lesson in piracy?

Because this is only one of many problems.

Game developers crossed the line of consumer trust a long time ago. In fact, they have been busy plundering our homes and raping our women for quite some time, but we knew their were some shining knights out there somewhere to be trusted. One of these trusted companies was Maxis, the maker of Spore.

Most people are currently blaming EA, the parent company, for this fiasco. I don’t, I blame Maxis and EA and every other developer who has taken the same road. they had an all-star developer cast and were allowed 12 years to develop the game. If you have forgotten, Maxis is also SimCity, The Sims, and many other IPs. They are no small fish. However, we (I included) generally think of them as a small fish that was eaten by big bad EA. So I bought the game (pre-ordered is a better word) and shelled out my dollars to support Maxis.

I played through all the stages of Spore in one day. It was cool, it may even be worth the price tag. However, this is not a game that feels anywhere close to a decade of development. What it feels like is a collection of cool editors for creatures and building and a sandbox environment to play with those toys.

The game starts out feeling like it builds in complexity, and you want to invest your feelings in the growth of your creation. But quickly it becomes a fairly disconnected sequence of mini-games that bring the instruction “wash, rinse, repeat,” to mind. Then jumping to space brings to bear a very complex world that you don’t care at all about, and which mostly pulls you out of any immersive activities you want to attempt in it. So what I am left with are some cool building block sets, and a great deal of gameplay I could pass on. This problem is what I feel really teaches us a lesson.

Currently the only way to properly demo a game is to pirate a copy of it. This is how deeply our trust has been broken. We are also tired of insane DRM and authentication procedures to play a game we legally own. What makes us much more angry is that the pirated copy works better, runs faster, and often crashes less often than the commercial release. We are restricted from sharing a game with our own family in a meaningful way.

This is a reversal of how things should be (and in most ways used to be). If you pirated a game in the past you worried about it working and no support if it broke. Registering your game was easy, or not even required for legal purchases. A game demo took you through the first few levels of the real game, not an engineered playroom that shows off all the best features but never comes close to reality in the actual game. Developers would also sometimes throw out a number of small additions or freebies over time to those who did register to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

I have frequently – and will now always – pirated a game just to see if it is playable. To check that the fun factor actually resembles what the developers have touted. If it passes these tests, I do, in fact, buy the game. I have played through the entire story of a game I have pirated only to go back and buy the game. I have become a consumer you have to “win” dollars from. And Spore makes that breaking point clear.

Many of us followed the game for years. We were told how awesome every part was. How it would engage us on many levels. That the systems for going from cell to space were richly developed. And what I have found is that while the game is fun for a couple of days, the hype was not backed up by any substance.

Speak with your dollar! Pirate, pirate, pirate! And only pay a developer once their content has proved to be passable. Force developers to earn our trust again.

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