Ubisoft hates customerspirates. I mean really hates pirates. They hate pirates so much that they are willing to assume that all of their customers are also pirates in order to protect their intellectual property. Ubisoft, in its infinite pirate-hating wisdom, concocted a digital rights management scheme that required anyone who purchased their new PC games to be constantly connected to the internet in order to play, even for single-player only games.
Ubisoft said it was pirate-proof. They were wrong. The DRM was cracked in under 24 hours. That’s not the funny part.
The funny part is that the DRM servers that Ubisoft’s customers need to call in order to play their games have been down all day. If you bought into their fuck-the-customer DRM, you can’t play the single-player game that you paid $60 for, but the folks who stole the game, who didn’t pay one red cent, can.
The moral of the story is: don’t buy Ubisoft games.
March 2nd, 2010 at 17:33 by Eseell in Guns and Politics
Just got this alert from AZCDL. It looks like things are going our way this season.
On Friday, March 5th at 10 AM, the Senate Appropriations Committee will debate and vote on SB 1108. The sponsor of SB 1108, Committee Chairman Senator Russell Pearce, has proposed a “strike everything” amendment that replaces SB 1108, in its entirety, with the intended language from SB 1102 (Constitutional Carry).
SB 1102, which was headed for a Senate floor vote, was derailed last week after the attachment of the Cheuvront amendment during the Senate Committee of the Whole (COW), creating a Class 4 Felony for private sellers of firearms who fail to verify a buyer’s citizenship when the sale is conducted at a gun show: http://www.azcdl.org/html/news.html#CheuvrontAmendment .
Now that we have a second bite at the apple, it’s critical we remind the Senate Appropriations Committee members to support the amended SB 1108. A letter has been prepared and is waiting for you at our Action Center: http://capwiz.com/azcdl/issues/alert/?alertid=14750316 .
We have more good news. Representative Frank Antenori (http://azcdl.capwiz.com/bio/id/51325), who sponsored the House version of Constitutional Carry (HB 2347), has been appointed to replace Senator Jonathon Paton who vacated his seat to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Antenori is expected to be present when SB 1108 moves to the Senate floor for debate and vote.
Meanwhile, Senator Antenori’s House version of Constitutional Carry, HB 2347, passed out of the MAPS Committee on February 3, 2010 and is awaiting a review by the House Rules Committee before heading to a floor debate in the House COW.
In other news, we are expecting SB 1168, the Senate version of the firearms preemption bill, to be scheduled for a Senate COW debate, hopefully this week. When the calendar is posted, we will let you know via an Alert.
Stay tuned! When critical legislation moves, we will notify you via these Alerts.
If you want to get legislative news as it happens, follow AzCDL on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AzCDL_Alerts .
AzCDL “tweets” from the Capitol with committee votes and breaking news as it happens.
These alerts are a project of the Arizona Citizens Defense League (AzCDL), an all volunteer, non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization. Renew your membership today! http://www.azcdl.org/html/join_us_.html .
JUSTICE KENNEDY: Without repeating that and just so I understand your position, how could some member of the Court write the — this opinion to say that this right is not fundamental, but that Heller was correct?
MR. FELDMAN: I — the Court would just say that what Heller held was if you look at the meanings that the words in the Second Amendment had, the common meaning — as the Court said in the Heller opinion -the common meanings that the word had in 1791, it imposed limitation on the State. It took a preexisting right that had not been — was not codified in the Constitution, and it said, this self-defense right we need in the Constitution in order — in order to protect the militia against being disarmed by the Federal Government.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That sounds an awful lot to me like the argument we heard in Heller on the losing side.
Today I played as the Zerg on the Desert Oasis map. There are some surprising changes to the Zerg from the original StarCraft. For example, Zerg players no longer build Creep Colonies to expand the creep field. Now Queen units (which are the only Zerg unit not bred from larva) spawn Creep Tumors, which spread the creep field. The old defensive structures which used to be an evolution of Creep Colonies are now built on their own. Queens also have the ability to temporarily speed up a Hatchery’s production of larvae and to heal Zerg units and structures. The Guardian unit has been replaced by the Brood Lord, which behaves similarly but has the added feature of using Broodlings as ammunition. Any target attacked by the Brood Lord takes a large amount of initial damage as well as secondary damage from the Broodling units that spawn from the attack.
The beginning
A close-up of the hatchery and larva
Spawning a new hatchery
Overlord close-up
Overlords can morph into beholders. No, wait, overseers.
Overseers are detectors and can spawn changelings, which can mimic enemy units for espionage purposes.
A pack of zerglings.
The same zerglings, burrowed.
A close-up of the zerg Queen unit. Queens can spawn creep tumors which create creep. Zerg players no longer build creep colonies.
Zerg Queen with Creep Tumor (center left)
Each creep tumor can spawn one new creep tumor within a short range. Creep fields can be expanded in this way.
Spore Crawlers and Sunken Crawlers are the zerg defensive structures. In SC2 they no longer generate creep.
On the other hand, Spore and Sunken Crawlers can now unburrow themselves and move around. They can only attack while burrowed.
Overlords have the ability to generate creep while hovering.
Here, an Overlord generates a small patch of creep while a Queen plants a Creep Tumor to start a new creep field.
A close-up of the SC2 Ultralisks. They are very large and very powerful units. I like them much more than the Brood War versions.
An Overlord provides transport and creep for a Drone to build a Nydus Network node just outside of my opponent’s scanner range.
An Ultralisk wreaks havoc on some Terran structures.
The Zerg Tech Tree. Tech Trees for all the races are available in game.
A Nydus Network structure can spawn Nydus Worms on any creep. Nydus Worms generate their own creep to keep themselves and nearby structures alive. I was able to transport 30 units at once through the Nydus Network.
This is the new Infestor unit. It behaves a bit like the old Defiler. It can siphon life from a unit into its energy pool and slow enemy ground units.
The Infestor and the Roach units can move while burrowed.
Zerglings can morph into Banelings, which are suicide units. They behave like a ground version of SC1′s Scourge unit (which has so far not made an appearance in SC2)
I played a match as the Terrans against an AI opponent to get a feel for the new Terran units. Here are some screenshots from that match. Click to embiggen.
And they’re off!
Placing a vespene gas refinery.
An SCV building a barracks.
An SCV building a barracks.
An SCV has built itself into a corner.
The SCV escapes with the help of a sinking supply depot. Supply depots continue to produce supplies while underground.
A field of sunken supply depots.
Nuclear Launch Detected!
Boom!
Some foliage blocks line of sight.
Some bunkers. You can also see the new control group interface in this shot.
Terran Scanners can detect enemy units beyond your line of sight. In this shot some enemies are crossing into scanner range which is marked by the ring of red triangles.
An SCV repairing a burning bunker. Terran buildings burn much faster in SC2.
A lone enemy unit at the edge of detection range.
The post-match build order comparison. It shows the first 15 minutes of the match.
SC2 took several hours to download, so I only got one match in tonight before bed. I played as the Protoss against another Protoss player on the Desert Oasis map. First, the game is very much StarCraft. If you were worried that Blizzard was going to go mucking around with a perfectly good thing, you needn’t (yet, it is just the first day of closed beta). The classic Protoss units that I fielded felt just like the old ones, and the new units each felt like they each had a purpose and their own place on the battlefield. I’m a fan of the new top-tier unit for the Protoss, the Mothership. Aside from kicking serious ass with its disruptor pulses, the Mothership cloaks all nearby friendly units, including your buildings. Want to hide an entire base or army from prying eyes? Park a Mothership over it.
Some new elements of the UI are pretty nice. Your ‘control groups’ are displayed at the top of the unit pane and can be selected with a click. Each group lists the group number and the strength of the group (in number of units). Although not strictly necessary for someone like me, who has long since developed standards for control group assignment over decades of strategy gaming, it’s definitely a handy feature to have, especially for keeping track of group strength in the middle of battle. I now realize that I forgot to check out how many units can be selected in a single group. SC1 had a group limit of 12 units, but I do not know the (current) limit for SC2. I will find out and report it later.
Another nice feature is the improved end-of-match report. There is a new screen on this report which shows each player’s build order. This will be a great tool for helping to improve one’s game when matched against significantly better opponents, to be able to see in detail when they build their resource gatherers, when they expand and build their armies, etc. A good build order is key to victory in multiplayer matches, and a poor one can easily cost a player the game.
The graphics are also quite good. I will, however, admit that I am a sucker for the way Blizzard’s art style can make even low-poly models look beautiful. The movies and screenshots that were available before this beta really do not do this game justice.
Of course, playing the game only highlights how utterly terrible I am (and always have been) at multiplayer strategy games. This Penny Arcade comic about Warcraft III (NSFW for language) sums up my experience with online strategy games. My opponent disconnected in the middle of the match, but I took a look at his forces and he would have stomped me quite soundly if he had stayed. Hopefully over the beta period I’ll be able to improve my skill. It also looks like I’m going to have to install FRAPS because printscreen does nothing in SC2 as far as I can tell.
