Author: Christopher Burg

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

We have a dead woman in Iowa named Mollie Tibbetts. Her killer turned out being from Mexico. Although new information shows that the killer may have been in the country legally, the story originally reported was that he was in the country illegally. Needless to say, the original story was politically exploited.

Predictably the Republicans were using Tibbetts’ murder to crusade against illegal immigration. In their worldview either legal immigrants and people born here never kill people here or being killed by a legal immigrant or somebody who was born here is better than being killed by something who crossed the imaginary line that they call a border without first receiving the king’s permission.

The Democrats also swooped down on Tibbetts’ corpse to bitch about the difficulties faced by illegal immigrants. Apparently Tibbetts’ killer wouldn’t have killed her if he had enjoyed the same opportunities and privileges as legal immigrants and people who were born here.

I was happy for people in both political camps that a murdered woman played so well into their political agendas. Sadly, if the killer does turn out to have been in the country legally, this murder will no longer serve anybody’s political agenda. That would be truly unfortunate. There’s nothing worse than a murder that can’t be exploited for political gain.

How Quickly People Forget

There has always been a cat and mouse game between game developers and pirates. Over the years developers have tried various tricks to prevent people from pirating their games. My earliest experience with piracy prevention the original MechWarrior. When you first loaded the game it presented you with a prompt that required entering information based on what was prompted. That information was found in the game manual. Of course this method was a pain in the ass if you either lost the manual or bought the game used without the manual because you didn’t realize that you needed it in order to play the game. Therein lies the problem with piracy prevention mechanisms, they always inconvenience paying customers.

Piracy prevention mechanisms continued to evolved after MechWarrior. Not too long ago computer games started including what amounted to literal kill switches. These mechanisms were referred to as Digital Rights Management (DRM). The name was idiotic since rights should need to be managed but it sounded friendlier than Developer Kill Switch so the marketing teams went with it. As you might expect, these kill switches didn’t sit well with a lot of games. However, time heals all wounds and now many games are unaware that their games include a kill switch.

Enter GOG. GOG is my favorite game distributor because, unlike Steam, it provides titles without DRM. And it has decided to make modern gamers aware of the fact that they don’t own many of their games, they merely rent them:

The landscape has changed since 2008, and today many people don’t realize what DRM even means. And still the DRM issue in games remains – you’re never sure when and why you can be blocked from accessing them. And it’s not only games that are affected, but your favourite books, music, movies and apps as well.

To help understand what DRM means, how it influences your games and other digital media, and what benefits come with DRM-free approach, we’re launching the FCK DRM initiative. The goal is to educate people and ignite a discussion about DRM. To learn more visit https://fckdrm.com, and share your opinions and stories about DRM and how it affects you.

This is the kind of marketing I like. GOG is telling gamers why its service is superior by pointing out the very real flaws that exist in many of their competitors’ services. It’s also important for everybody to understand exactly what DRM is, especially since it can render a legitimate copy of a game unplayable. DRM mechanisms usually involve a phone home system where the game contacts a DRM server to get authorization to load. If that server cease to exist, say if the developer goes out of business or decides that maintaining the server is costlier than an old game warrants, then legitimate copies of the game can no longer be played.

All the Conveniences of Vegas

What do you do if you’re a Catholic who hasn’t been to confession in a while but need to get your sins absolved before the Pope’s scheduled visit? You head over to the drive-through confessional:

Now, with Pope Francis scheduled to visit Ireland this weekend, a different kind of massive structure has been built to welcome him: a drive-through confessional close to the same park, where Francis will celebrate Mass this weekend.

And here I thought that the religious conveniences of Vegas stopped at drive-through wedding chapels!

Fighting the Important Battles

When an organization is named People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) you might make the mistaken of assuming that it is an organization that focuses on fighting animals abusers, not how fictional animals are portrayed on a bag of snacks:

(AP) — After more than a century behind bars, the beasts on boxes of animal crackers are roaming free.

Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, has redesigned the packaging of its Barnum’s Animals crackers in response to pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA, which has been protesting the use of animals in circuses for more than 30 years, wrote a letter to Mondelez in the spring of 2016 calling for a redesign.

Far be it for me to tell others what battle are or aren’t important but the fictional conditions of fictional animals that represent what you’re about to bite the head off of (because all normal people start by biting the head off of animal crackers) seems pretty insignificant to me.

Airport Law Enforcers Arrest Actual Criminals

Readers, I have a rare story for you today. Airport Law enforcers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport actually arrested honest to gods criminals:

A federal air marshal “flashed a gun in flight,” prompting police to remove him from the plane upon arrival at the Twin Cities airport and handcuff him on the tarmac along with a fellow marshal, authorities said Tuesday.

It would be nice if this was the beginning of a trend where local law enforcers make the lives of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel as miserable as they make the lives of air travelers. Sadly, I doubt this is the case.

As for the air marshals, they were likely verifying the hair color of a passenger who was caught staring at a noisy child in a cold and penetrating manner during a previous flight.

Failing to Cover Your Ass

One of Trump’s cronies, Michael Cohen, has plead guilty to charges against him. In a move that should surprise nobody, after pleading guilty Cohen decided to snitch on his former client:

US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty in a New York court to violating campaign finance laws.

He said he had done so at the direction of “the candidate”, for the “principal purpose of influencing [the] election”.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you only conspire with individuals who, after your goals are achieved, will commit suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head… with a shotgun… twice.

Going the Way of Cable

Cable companies have been feeling pressure from Internet streaming services. Every day more people appear to be waking up to the fact that paying money to watch a bit of interesting content between commercials isn’t a great proposition. The glory days of ad-free subscription streaming services may be coming to and end though. Last week Netflix began experimenting with display ads to customers:

Now Netflix users might start to see ads for other shows during those countdown seconds, as the streaming giant has said it is testing out recommendations.

“We are testing whether surfacing recommendations between episodes helps members discover stories they will enjoy faster,” it said in a statement given to the website Cord Cutters.

Following in Netflix’s footsteps is Twitch, which announced that it will soon be stripping paying subscribers of their ad-free experience:

As we have continued to add value to Twitch Prime, we have also re-evaluated some of the existing Twitch Prime benefits. As a result, universal ad-free viewing will no longer be part of Twitch Prime for new members, starting on September 14.

Twitch Prime members with monthly subscriptions will continue to get ad-free viewing until October 15. If you already have an annual subscription, or if you upgrade to an annual subscription before September 14, you will continue with ad-free viewing until your next renewal date.

I’m always amused by how marketing departments try to spin the fact that their customers will be paying the same amount and receiving less. Netflix’s department has the easier task because at the moment the ads are house ads, not for third-party products. But if the company’s subscribers don’t revolt over this those house ads will begin to feature “favored partners” and if subscribers don’t revolt after that, anybody with some money in hand will be able to buy ads.

Twitch Prime’s marketing department had to justify its company’s actions by claiming that its move is good for streamers, err, creators (goddamn I love marketing speak) and then pointing out that all of the other benefits will remain as they were… until they’re eventually stripped or watered down as well.

The only solace to the cablefication of Internet streaming services is that a competitor will likely arise that will provide content without ads to paying customers, at least long enough to steal a bunch of disgruntled Netflix and Twitch customers. Then, of course, the cycle will begin anew.

Soon Everything May Not Cause Cancer

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

That label seems to appear on everything. While it is meant to warn consumers about potential cancer-causing chemicals in their products, it’s really a testament of the foolishness of democracy. That label was the result of Proposition 65, which was a voter initiative that appeared on the California ballot and was voted into law by California voters.

Fortunately, some sanity may be returning to labeling. After a judge decided that coffee should include a Proposition 65 warning label, some people have finally decided that the warning label may be getting applied a bit too liberally:

After a judge ruled in March that coffee should be served with jolting labels that alert drinkers to a cancer risk, the state of California seems to have woken up to the concern that its pervasive health warnings may have gone too far.

“There’s a danger to overwarning—it’s important to warn about real health risks,” Sam Delson told The New York Times.

Delson is the deputy director for external and legislative affairs for California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The office proposed a regulation shortly after a March ruling that would unequivocally declare that any cancer-linked components of roasted and brewed coffee “pose no significant risk of cancer.” Today, August 16, the proposed regulation is getting a public hearing in Sacramento.

If the regulation is adopted, it’s expected to nullify the warning on Californians’ sacred morning brews. It’s also expected to water-down the controversial law known as Proposition 65 that led to the warning—and scores of others.

Warning labels become pointless if they are applied to things to which the warning doesn’t apply. The Proposition 65 warning label has been misapplied so frequently that it has becoming the common butt of jokes. Nobody with an iota of common sense takes the warning label seriously.

Even if Proposition 65 is watered down, it should remain a testament to the stupidity of people in large numbers.

Getting Close to the Action

Body cameras have proven to be a bust as far as holding law enforcers accountable. However, they have provided law enforcers with a wonderful tool that provides prosecutors additional evidence when they record a regular person doing something illegal and unexplained malfunctions when they would have recorded a law enforcer doing something illegal. With that kind of success it’s not surprise that law enforcers want to get even closer to the action:

MAPLE PLAIN, Minn. (KMSP) – Instead of equipping officers with body cameras, the West Hennepin Public Safety Department is mounting cameras on its officers’ guns.

The department announced the rollout of the new technology Thursday. With no buttons to press, the camera automatically starts recording as soon as the gun leaves the holster.

“And it will not turn off while you and I are talking until it is put back into a holster,” said Gary Kroells of the West Hennepin Public Safety Department.

The camera automatically starts recording when the gun leaves the holster, which means it will conveniently miss everything that lead up to the shooting. And the law enforcers can cheer and high-five each other as they watch the close up take of the back of the handcuffed dude’s skull explode in amazing high-definition! Win-win!