That’s right, we split this one into two to avoid going over 2 hours. This part 2 is 45 minutes of Jeff and I discussing Cloud Computing, how far has it come and how far does it have to go before it’s viable as an everyday tool for the average user.
Stay tuned next week for the Writerly Cast when we discuss plagiarism and the line between stealing and taking inspiration from someone else’s work.
Alright, Jeff and I were trying something new, we were trying to be on topic and keep the cast under 45 minutes. We failed, miserably, horribly, terribly failed. This was an epic fail if ever I’ve seen one (and I’ve seen more than one). In fact we ran so long we had to cut our main discussion. Anyway, look for a discussion on whether Googles cloud based apps are going to make choice of OS a moot point. Here’s what we did cover.
There you have it, another fine episode. Look for us next week, maybe we won’t double our target time.
So I was thinking. What would people think of really short (like 5 or 10 minute) casts a couple times a week with just some news and a little commentary. Most likely this would just be me riffing (unless Jeff wants in). Maybe just rant casts. Something like that. Any thoughts?
No no no, not the band. I’m talking about the newest licensed MMO’s to hit the shelves. Namely Age of Conan (AoC) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR). These two games have been highly anticipated. Age of Conan came out a couple of months ago and made a big, but short, splash. Warhammer just came out and has a lot of potential to make a lasting splash. (more…)
OK, EA isn’t stupid. They’re taking some steps to loosen up the DRM of Spore. The first thing they’re addressing is install limit, it’s being increased to 5. By itself that’s useless really, but that’s not all their doing. They’re taking steps to allow deauthorization without calling EA tech support. So that helps that issue and will make it acceptable to many people (probably not Jeff though :P). They other issue they’re taking care of is the number of accounts. Instead of the previous one per copy of the game they’re upping it to 5, one for each install. This should be more than enough for most families so I’d say that one is a win. Still, is this enough?
Well I think the changes are enough for those people in the general populous who weren’t buying the game, but it won’t be enough for the geeks who are already taking a stand against the game. They’re not going to change their minds for anything short of dropping the DRM. The thing is, it may already be too late to fix the good will they lost. (more…)
Alright, here it is, over a week after we recorded it. I’m really sorry but I fell into a depression the last part of last week and I was busy the first part. I’m maybe hopefully starting to pull out of it and maybe we’ll get a show up this week. Anyway, here’s what we cover.
The Spore portion of the show is a bit heated. Take a listen and as always feel free to tell us what you think. Of course if you’re wrong we’ll be more than willing to explain why ; )
So, the latest rumor on the interwebtubes is that Google will be purchasing Valve. For those of you who don’t know, Valve is the game design company behind the Half Life series of games. Now Valve did mention recently that they would be interested in talking acquisition. Does this rumor make any sense? Is there any reason for Google to do it? What could this mean for Half Life? Did John McCain invent the Blackberry? Is Jimmy Hoffa buried in Larry Page’s backyard?
Does this rumor even make any sense? I mean what could Google want with a game company? Especially a 3D first person shooter (FPS) game company. Googles traditional roles in the industry have been about information and advertising. This would be the first time they got into a strictly for profit software venture. I mean advertising is for profit, but that’s not what I mean. This would be the first time Google would straight up charge for their product. Unless of course they go free, which with a license like Half Life, sorry, it just isn’t happening. I mean I can see a 2D webbased game company being bought by Google to release totally free ad supported games. But with an FPS game, there’s too much overhead for that. So why?
I actually changed my mind, I’ll just use the article break tag and leave the RSS feeds as is. I didn’t like how short the summaries ended up being. So the main page should be cleaned up but RSS feeds should remain unchanged.
So it’s no big secret that Spore released on Sunday (a strange day for a video game release, it’s usually Tuesdays) to great controversy. I’m for the most part not going to address the DRM, it is more draconian than I initially thought and will certainly keep people from buying it, there are no small number of comments on the Amazon page for the game.
DRM
Jeff is writing an article about the DRM. Jeff and agree for the most part, the DRM is crappy. We don’t agree on what should have been done and while it’s a deal breaker for Jeff it’s not for me. However, to be fair, I should say that I wasn’t fully aware of the DRM limitations when I bought the game. I would have made the same decision either way. Anyway, I disagree with Jeff on what they should have done with Spore. I think the creature creator is all the demo they need and they just need to drop some of the more draconian issues in the DRM. The one benefit of the DRM is no disk required to play. You could actually play on up to 3 systems. But many people would rather play from the DVD than be limited on number of installs and have the game check in every time an update comes out. In the end it’s not much of a benefit, especially since beyond the 3 you have to call EA to install, that includes reinstalls. That particular piece of the DRM definitely needs to go. Despite all the outrage Spore is selling like mad. So let’s get to a proper review of the gameplay shall we?
Well, this is something of an odd ball episode. This is the first episode (out of the 94 episodes we’ve done between vol 1 and 2) that Jeff isn’t in. Jeff took a mental health day, he’s trying to ween himself off politics. So Rick Cartwright joins me. Rick has been a friend of ours for quite a while and he’s guested on at least one prior episode of Max Geek (back in our trying to do live shows stage). Rick was originally set to join us as the moderate conservative view for our political discussion (which he does at the end). We got kind of carried away with what was supposed to be 15 or 20 minutes of tech talk, well at least half the show ended up being about tech.
There is another milestone, this is the first to be continued Max Geek. Rick and I just ran out of time and we were just getting started on politics. Next week sometime Rick and I will do a mini Max Geek Political cast to wrap things up. Without further ado I bring you the Max Geek 25 show notes.
So, stay tuned next week, we should have a regular episode and a mini episode on politics with me and Rick.
