{"id":575,"date":"2010-10-11T20:12:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T19:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=575"},"modified":"2010-10-11T20:12:56","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T19:12:56","slug":"idiots-abound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=575","title":{"rendered":"Idiots abound"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in town the other day, and picked up Command & Conquer 4 in Game. Complete impulse buy – saw it and had fond memories of the older Command & Conquer games. Turns out this isn’t really a Command & Conquer game at all in terms of the mechanics. There’s no base building, no harvesting of Tiberium, no way to build a complimentary attack and defence set of units. That’s not my gripe though – I could have checked reviews<\/a> and found that out, and also discovered it was a rather poor game in any style.<\/p>\n

Here’s my gripe – to play this crappy game at all, you have to be online. Not if you want to play online, but even if you want to play the solo game. This kind of DRM is seriously shoddy – no playing the game on a flight or on a train, no playing it with a spotty wi-fi connection. Here’s the fun bit though – the game was released on the 19th of March 2010 according to Amazon. A quick look online shows that there were torrents of the game available from the 20th of March 2010. The pirate version doesn’t need you to be online at all times.<\/p>\n

So, as someone buying a legit copy of the game, I have to ensure that I have an uninterrupted internet connection. If I download a pirate copy of the game, I can play it when I like.<\/p>\n

The answer to piracy is not <\/strong>to make it harder to be a legitimate customer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was in town the other day, and picked up Command & Conquer 4 in Game. Complete impulse buy – saw it and had fond memories of the older Command & Conquer games. Turns out this isn’t really a Command & Conquer game at all in terms of the mechanics. There’s no base building, no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[57],"tags":[438,127,439],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-command-and-conquer-4","tag-drm","tag-ea"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAkBY-9h","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":275,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=275","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":0},"title":"DRM music brought online shouldn’t be expected to last forever","author":"MattWPBS","date":"August 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The RIAA's lawyer responding to the suggestion that users should be allowed to strip DRM from tracks if the server has been taken down. \"We reject the view,\" he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, \"that copyright owners and their licensees are required\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=129"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1177,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=1177","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":1},"title":"You can keep your zombie apocalypse films…","author":"MattWPBS","date":"March 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll stick to Cold War nuclear apocalypse ones. We're talking about something which came very close to happening at times (either through accident or brinksmanship), and which would have been more devastating than the vast majority of hypothetical hordes of shambling undead. Here's a few of my favourites after the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Videos"","block_context":{"text":"Videos","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=344"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattwpbs.com\/wpinst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/00.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattwpbs.com\/wpinst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/00.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattwpbs.com\/wpinst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/00.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattwpbs.com\/wpinst\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/00.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":176,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=176","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":2},"title":"Balance is a media myth","author":"MattWPBS","date":"July 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Absolutely spot on piece in the Irish Times by John Gibbons. There's no more need to give credence to someone who denies global warming or MMR without evidence, than to someone who denies the moon landings or Elvis's death. Commentators thus feel free to \u201cpick a result from anywhere you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=43"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":281,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=281","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":3},"title":"Daily links: 7th August 2009","author":"MattWPBS","date":"August 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Round up of short links from the last day. Glenn Feron - The Art Of Retouching - portfolio of before and after shots from his retouching. Or, as it appears you could call it - make-the-tits-biggering. Via this post at PhotoshopDisasters, which has an amazing example that appears to have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=141"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=21","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":4},"title":"Fibre optic to the home finally on the way?","author":"MattWPBS","date":"March 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It looks like we might finally start to see Fibre To The\u00a0 Home (FTTH) in the UK, looking at reports here. BT have got their way, and OFCOM will not regulate the wholesale price they charge competitors for access to their network. Depending on how the retail pricing turns out,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"FTTH\"","block_context":{"text":"FTTH","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?tag=ftth"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":307,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=307","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":5},"title":"Daily links: 13th August","author":"MattWPBS","date":"August 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Round up of some links. Red Remover - game where you need to get rid of the red and keep the green. Knightfall - from Armor Games. This one involves clicking linked blocks of three or more of the\u00a0 same colour to remove them, and trying to make your way\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=141"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}