PirateFodder?

I have to admit that even after owning a DS for a couple of years now, I don't own one of those flash cartridges. They seem pretty convenient, Kors has shown me a whole bunch of weird looking games that I would never even have heard of if he hadn't downloaded it and showed it to me, plus, it's so much cheaper than buying games (new games usually retail at about AU$69.95), you get to play games that aren't going to be released in Australia (or released 6 months behind the release date in other countries ~_~), not to mention the other funky things you can do with it, e.g. Merc uses his DS as a music player. So why don't I get one? Mostly it's the principle of it. I'm a software engineering student. If people are just going to pirate software, then where am I going to be once I graduate, and companies decide that they need to downsize to cover the losses they're making from people who aren't buying their products? Plus, I see it as support of their product.

I also have to admit, that I had Auto hack my PSP so that I could play games I don't own. Well, it wasn't the entire reason, but now that he has done it, I can. I feel a little like a hypocrite, because of what I just said about pirating DS games, and have mostly stopped playing Harvest Moon on my PSP, and gone back to playing Crisis Core, which I do actually own a legit copy of. Despite the games that are out there for PSP, I wanted it more for the development side, and also so that I could listen to music and watch movies. Here's where I think I'm stepping into a grey area. The PSP has movies you can buy on UMDs to watch for PSP. The downside is, the spinning disk causes a lot of noise which gets in the way of you watching your movie (it's starting to get a little annoying for Crisis Core, but at least I know something is happening while the screen is blank). I also happen to love movies quite a lot, and own a lot of DVDs. So in a way, I own a copy of the movie, so would it be wrong for me to download it for my PSP, or even make a rip of the DVD for my PSP? I think there's some law out there about not ripping DVDs, but there is also a provision that lets you burn games for "back up" purposes - though I think in most cases, people store their "back ups" at friend's houses for "safety reasons". *cough, cough*

I came across this post on Slashdot, "What Modern Games Are DRM-Free?" which talks about whether Digital Rights Management (DRM) affects your game purchases. I haven't bought a copy of Spore yet (and from what Graham has been saying, I'm not sure that I want one now), but apparently it has some built-in thing where you have to register to be able to play your game, but you are only allowed to register three times before you have to talk to customer service (and I'm sure we all know what a pain it is talking to customer service for anything). In the first 8 days of its release, EA reported that 1% of its customers had already tried to register the game more than three times. There's more stuff in the Slashdot post if you want to read it.

Anyway, I think I've mentioned before how Zoltan talks about how DRM only affects the people that don't pirate, as the DRM has been removed in pirated copies. The bad thing is, DRM can be annoying - like that stupid, "You wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a movie" ad that is at the start of every DVD, or the warnings that you can't skip past saying, "This is intended for private use only, and copying it is bad". It was so awesome when Blizzard released a patch that made it so you didn't require a CD to play Warcraft III. It's such a pain in the ass looking around for a CD to play a game.

On a sort of related point, I think things should be try before you buy. It's like with clothes, you can look at how they look sitting on a rack in a store, but it's not until you try it on for yourself that you see whether it really suits you. It kinda sucks that you can't get demo games for hand helds (although there was a guitar hero demo for the DS), and demos for PC games are slowly being replaced by trailers instead. My decision to buy World of Warcraft was based on seeing how Cousin Andrew was playing it, not buy watching some flashy movie (note: there is a trial version of WoW), and the same for Guild Wars - I got a trial version from Goaty and started playing it and found I liked it (although still... OMG, you cannot jump!). The same goes for movies now, I prefer not to judge a movie by its trailer, but by the reviews that it gets or its plot (or in some cases the cast - I know, I'm a terrible person). They usually just cram the best bits into a 30 second ad, and if they're the only good bits in the movie, then it really isn't worth paying $14 to sit through an hour and a half movie only to wait for 30 seconds of entertainment.

I've never really based a purchase decision on whether something has DRM content or not, but if it's going to be retarded as to stop you from playing, then that is pretty bad. I own a legit copy of Diablo II, but it's so old that the CD-key has worn off, and I have no proof of purchase for the game. The sucky thing is, I can't prove that I bought it, so they have no reason to give me a new CD-key, and the only way I'll be able to play a game that I own is if I download a CD-key generator or something. Or I could buy another copy.

Pirating isn't good, but neither is punishing the people who don't pirate. :(

And the Award For Best Girlfriend in the World Goes to...

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me
Don't cha, don't cha
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me
Don't cha, don't cha
-Pussycat Dolls, Don't cha

Occasionally at work, I see a parent give their child something they want, then kindly smile at their child, and I think, "Aww, that's so nice, what a good parent." Then not long afterwards, the kid will ask for a lolly or something, and the parent will bark at them something along the lines of, "I'm not made of money, if you want something, go and get a job and buy it yourself!" and the kid will start to cry and I'll look at the parent in horror. It makes me wonder what goes on when they're not in the public eye.

It seems that watching parents gives you some insight into the types of characteristics good and bad parents have (I'm not saying the person described above is a bad parent, I know how hard it is to control children - that's why parenting books are so abundant, after all!), and I was wondering if the same would apply to being a girlfriend. Since MrMan5.5 and I got together, I've started paying more attention to the people around me who are in a couple, and trying to pinpoint what it is that makes the girl a good or bad girlfriend. To be honest, I think I've had an easy job because we have so much in common, and all I really had to do was do what I was already doing, except now I could do it with someone else. Even this post "Sex, Mario and Videogames" (which goes with what Dante has been saying for ages) says:

Games and girlfriends generally don’t mix. If you happen to be a girlfriend that loves games then we love you… really, we totally love you. But unfortunately you’re not part of the majority. Despite the increased prominence of the female gamer in recent years as the industry’s evolved from the depths of geekdom to be culturally chic, it’s still very much a sausage-fest out there and not particularly conducive to the horizontal mamba. Something about thunderous explosions, ear-piercing bullet-fire and oafish men screaming ‘get behind cover’ just doesn’t seem to get the ladies in the mood. Being an alien-slaughtering muscle bound-interstellar hero just doesn’t cut the mustard next to chopping wood in the backyard, sans shirt. Go figure…

(Although personally I'd go for falling into a lake with a white shirt on.)

So really, I'm just capitalising on my female gamer status and have managed to snag a guy who happens to like the same silly movies I do (Austin Powers, Rat Race, The Guru, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, etc), can eat copious amounts of pizza and occasionally joins me in my quest to defend some ancients - none of those activities are something I wouldn't normally do in my own time anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm putting as much effort into this relationship as I should be. They say that communication is important in a relationship, but I fail at that completely. I dragged him into Aldi once to look for some German gummy bears, and he was talking to me about something but I wasn't listening because I had been distracted by apple pie and choc fudge brownie cookies. I think it's a bad habit I've picked up from work, where I tune out enough so that I'm not really listening to the mundane things that people say to me, but am listening enough that I can make the appropriate responses.

(Oh, side rant. A customer at work today asked for some "twenty centses". WTF?! "Cents" is already plural! Not just that, but she gave me $5, and asked me to give her: $2, $1 and $1 worth of 20c coins. When I pointed out that it was only $4, she said she wanted 2 x $2, 2 x $1 and $1 worth of 20c coins. I told her that was $7 and suggested she take $2, 2 x $1 and 5 x 20c.)

Also, I've noticed that a lot of girls get dressed up for their boyfriends, but really, my method for choosing something to wear consists of whatever I can get out of the pile of clothes on top of my dresser that doesn't cause everything else to tumble down, but be enough to keep me warm for the rest of the day. When Nina and Charlotte asked why I don't wear make-up, I put it this way: I can either get up earlier and do my make-up, hair, etc., or I can sleep later the night before and get a couple of DotA games in. I choose DotA.

Another thing girlfriends seem to do is accompany their boyfriends to stuff. I don't really go with him to anything. He comes to a couple of my lectures, and to some parties that I've been invited to, but I don't really do anything with him that I wasn't already going to do anyway - like QCN's birthday dinner, or anime.

However, I don't think I'm a total failure on the girlfriend scale. I'm awesome at confusing him, making him angry, making him spend money, taking up his time, talking to him about boring stuff, making him watch girly movies, making him drive me around, dragging him around to look for clothes, and setting stupid rules for him. Taking all of those things into account, someone please give me a medal, because I'm clearly the most awesome girlfriend in the world.

Tasukete Kudasai

A couple of months ago, Super Chris recommended a book to me written by an ex-hacker, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security (he doesn't just recommend hentai!). I found the sequel, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers in the Ballieu library, and read that. The stories weren't all your typical Hollywood hacker stories - geeks sitting at a computer (although some were). One of the stories that interested me the most was one that didn't feature hacking in the traditional sense, but was more about social engineering.

One guy was hired to do a penetration test on a company. Basically, the company hires him to try and see how much information he can access as someone outside the company to try and expose security holes. One of the first things he did, was befriend a woman working in the company, and start talking to her. He pretended to be someone trying to get a job with the company, adding a little touch of desperation, and asked her for some information on the structure of the company.

Then he watched some people coming and going from the building for a while, and noticed a guy who people called "Chuckie" who seemed to know the people on security at the door. After Chuckie had left, he waited a bit, then approached one of the security guards and told a story about how Chuckie owed him some money, and said that he'd lend him something for his date tonight. Not only does he convince the security guard to let him in, but the guard ends up giving him $20 for his "date"!

So now that he's in, he talks to a receptionist, and claims to be a tech guy. He asks for her help with something. He says that one of the things social engineers take advantage of most is a person's innate desire to be helpful. So the receptionist ends up giving him access to her computer despite the fact that he still hasn't given her any ID or anything, and he installs a keylogger onto her system and also starts doing a dump of the files onto a USB.

He ends up wandering around, and with the help of more employees, gains access to various parts of the building that are meant to be off-limits, and also gets info without resorting to hacking in the traditional sense.

I'm interesting in computer forensics, but I'm wondering if maybe that's not the best area I could be in. I have a background in computing and psychology, so maybe I could be some sort of security consultant who talks to people about different ways people can break into their system? Another one of the stories in the book was about some hackers trying to break into a company. After trying for a long time, they were starting to wonder if it was possible to penetrate the security. Just before they were about to give up, one of the employees decides to open one of the ports into the company to host a server of some sort, and the hackers were able to gain access through that. To me, that just seems like a pretty stupid thing to do. Common sense should tell you that it's bad for security - although... I guess if you don't care all that much about the company you're working for, then you don't really care about its security.