Irene's Weblog

Those bastards at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have decided I can’t be a hurricane anymore because I caused too much damage last year. How dare they? And, they’re replacing me with Irma? Irma? Really? My name is so much better than Irma. Bastards!

The name Irene is being retired from the catalog of Atlantic storm names because of the billions of dollars in damage and nearly 50 deaths that resulted from Hurricane Irene last year.

Hurricane Irene came ashore in August, 2011 as a Category 1 storm and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved up the East Coast, flooding already swollen rivers, damaging homes, roads and businesses and forcing the evacuation of some two million people.

Nearly 50 people were killed in the Caribbean and in ten US states. Days after the storm, experts said damage wrought by Hurricane Irene for everything from washed-out roads to canceled flights would top $12 billion.

Nearly 50 people were killed. How do “nearly killed” people count? You’re supposed to only count the actual dead people, not the ones that made it. And only 50? Come on. That’s not destructive enough to be forced into retirement.

According to the National Hurricane Center, it is usually Category 5 storm names that are retired “social and economic impacts can also be factored into the decision.”

Oh, so I’m being retired because of political correctness then? Nice. Sometimes I hate this country.

I’ve never had a desire to play online games. I like to play my games by myself. I’m not an MMO or MMORPG player. In the 1990s, I didn’t like MUDs, MUSHEs, or MOOs. I just like playing by myself. However, there is a vast community of people around the world who love playing online. In the past few years, companies have attempted to control how players can play online, going so far as to make single player games connect to the internet just to play the game. I’ve written numerous times (see my Video Games section) about my dislike of this behavior. Yesterday, I read many comments for and against GFWL on reddit. Here’s one person’s summary of their experience. After reading it, you’ll understand why so many people just don’t want this behavior from a company. They just want to play their games.

Warning: long and ranty below.

Oh boy, where to start…

My first experience with GFWL was with Batman: Arkham Asylum. I purchased and installed it through Steam. I fire up the game only to be greeted with a GFWL pop-over demanding that I sign in with an XBox Live account. On my PC. What the fuck.

I now know there is a way to sign in without creating an account, but damned if I could work out how at the time. So I signed on with my existing Live account. It then informed me that there were updates for Live and if I did not install them, I would be signed out.

So to play my entirely single-player game, I was forced to update a multiplayer service. Ok, whatever. It downloads, quits, and… the install fails. I spend about an hour rebooting, un-installing and re-installing trying to get the damn thing to work.

Eventually, I discovered that there was a serious incompatibility between Games for Windows Live and Windows XP. You know, the operating system made by the same fucking company. The only way to resolve it was to manually track down, download and install a specific OS patch not mentioned at any point by GFWL itself.

So finally, I have GFWL working. Except I don’t. There was another patch. Another cycle of reboots. Then there was a patch for Batman itself. Through all this, my choice was basically between “install everything we tell you to” and “don’t play the game at all because fuck you.”

Oh, I also had to type in a CD key to activate Batman. You know. The game I bought on fucking Steam.

But oh well, it’s all good; I got it sorted eventually. Then I got gifted Fallout 3; another GFWL game.

This one was a bit different; I actually had a choice to not sign in. So, I naturally told GFWL where to go stick itself and played without signing in. What I didn’t realise was that the DLC that had been legally paid for would be inaccessible unless I signed in. Not that it mentioned this anywhere. By the time I realised this, I’d played quite a ways through the main campaign.

Well, I was pissed at having to jump through more hoops, but I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to play that extra content, so whatever. So I signed in. And lost every last save game.

Well, I didn’t really lose them; more that because GFWL encrypts saved games for some completely inscrutable reason, the not-logged-in and logged-in save games were not compatible. So I had to start all over again from scratch.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I think it was around half way through the campaign again that Live got an update and I was forced to install that. Because, you know, single player games.

Then I upgraded to Windows 7. Oh boy, that was a mistake. Because guess what, your save games aren’t encrypted based on your Live ID, no, that would make too much sense.

They’re encrypted based on your OS install. Meaning if you install a new OS on the same hardware, the encryption key changes. Which means I lost all my saved games.

Again.

For the second time.

At which point, I stopped playing Fallout 3 because fuck that shit.

A little while ago, my old machine died and I built a new one. New install. Naturally, all of my saved games carried over just fine except for anything infected with GFWL. I went to open up Batman at one point to just give it a spin, forgetting it was GFWL until I was slapped in the face with “there are updates to LIVE; if you do not update you cannot play you filthy, dirty pirate scum.”

So I just didn’t play.

A more recent experience was with a friend of mine who bought Fable III on PC. I remember getting an exasperated message from her begging for help on how to get rid of this “Live” crap that was messing up her game. She just wanted it gone so she could play. In the end, I told her she couldn’t and she vowed to never touch another game that was infected with GFWL.

And the other day, my brother got Arkham City Imposters only to find that not only was it a rubbish port, but the GFWL matchmaking (you know, pretty much the only supposedly useful part of the package) just didn’t work.

GFWL is the reason I have never played Batman: Arkham City, Bulletstorm or RF: Guerrilla. I 100% refuse to play any game that requires it on any platform. PC gamers hate GFWL because it is a heinous piece of garbage which exists only to make life more painful.

It is important to remember, those who pirate the games never have to put up with this kind of bullshit. They install the game, maybe copy over a crack, and then play the game. It should be far more difficult than that for a pirate. A legitimate customer should have it the easiest. Buy the game. Install the game. Play the game. Unfortunately, companies want legitimate customers to jump through hoops, increase the risk of heart attacks, scream a lot, and generally be so angered that they never buy another product from the game company again.

Please feel free to read all of the comments on reddit. It’s interesting and informative, no matter which side you take.

Sex offenders in the United States are slowly losing their rights. First, they were banned from Facebook, now, in New York State, they’ve been banned from online gaming because there might be children playing those same games.

Many games contain an audio or text component that allows players to communicate with one another.

Mr. Schneiderman warned that those methods of communication could allow sexual predators “to establish contacts with children they would never be able to establish” in parks or playgrounds.

Before you think this is a great idea, think of all the people online. How many of them have bizarre usernames or sexually suggestive usernames? Use the name, “ilikeballs” and you’re now losing your account and could end up being arrested because you’re a sexual predator. After you’ve completed your jail time, your life will forever be restricted until the point that we will have towns made up of just people like you that we need to keep away from the rest of society.

Among the companies that agreed to close accounts linked to sex offenders were Microsoft, which runs the Xbox Live gaming network, and Sony, which runs the PlayStation Network. Other companies that closed accounts included Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers, Disney Interactive Media Group, Blizzard Entertainment and Apple, Mr. Schneiderman said.

Given the fact that nearly all video games now have an online component and a user cannot even player in single player mode without connecting to these companies’ servers, New York State is, essentially, telling sex offenders that they can’t play video games. Many of these companies are also pushing to eliminate physical media. If you want to play a game, you access a server and play. You don’t actually own a game or have access to play it offline.

The agreement was the latest effort by law enforcement authorities to prohibit sex offenders from gaining access to chat rooms or social media sites. Aides to Mr. Schneiderman said New York’s was the first such ban on using online video games.

Why doesn’t law enforcement just cut to the chase, ban sex offenders from the internet and force them to live in communities made up of only other sex offenders? They struggle to get jobs. Many cannot enter college to make something of themselves. They can’t live in certain neighborhoods. Their personal information is publically available on the internet and people are free to harass them while the police look the other way. Now, if they can manage to find a place to live and keep a job, they can’t even play video games to relax.

If the judicial system has released them, they have paid for their crimes and have been deemed to not be a harm or threat to the community. Punishing someone past their original sentence is a violation of human rights. Law enforcement, however, has decided to not follow what the courts have decided and are slowly eroding any rights a sex offender has remaining.

The law, as it stands, falls on anyone on the sexual offender list. This includes drunken people who just had to pee out in public. The law, and the article, does not make it clear if the 3500 sex offenders are a mixed bag of “had sex with my underage girlfriend,” “peed in the woods and got caught,” and “likes to have sex with little children,” or if those 3500 are truly just pedophiles.

If you have served your time and the justice system has let you go, then you are entitled to all the rights of a citizen. This includes free association with your peers. The only thing this law does is create a criminal underclass that should never exist in the first place and further ostracize an entire class of people. Apparently, it was easier to ban people than to just disable voice and chat features.

Image source.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Censored.

Cyd Zeigler, the co-founder of outsports.com, has called for Nebraska’s assistant football coach, Ron Brown, to be fired. Over the past week, many have weighed in on the subject without looking at it objectively. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether or not Brown has violate the University of Nebraska’s nondiscrimination policy. Zeigler contends that he has.

For over 20 years University of Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown has used his position in the university to preach his discriminatory, anti-gay brand of Christianity. His latest crusade to fight for discrimination against the LGBT community finally warrants his termination from the school’s football program.

The university has a clear, inclusive nondiscrimination policy designed to “foster a climate of inclusion and mutual respect”:

To this end, it is the policy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln not to discriminate based upon age, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, gender, sex, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, veteran’s status marital status, religion and political affiliation.

On March 6 Brown traveled to Omaha to argue against a bill that would protect gay people from discrimination. In his arguments, Brown suggested it is God’s will to discriminate against gay people, even saying those who voted to protect gay people bill would be held to “great accountability” by God.

Most importantly, he has linked these discriminatory views to his coaching job. When testifying before the Omaha City Council, some of the first words out of his mouth conveyed that he is a football coach at the University of Nebraska. Chancellor Harvey Perlman has publicly wagged his finger at Brown for making that connection, but that “reprimand” doesn’t undo the truth beneath the words: Brown brings his discrimination into his work at the university, and he uses his job to spread his anti-gay beliefs.

While Brown is allowed to argue for or against any bill he wants, he is not allowed to use his position as a football coach to do so.

Brown has said his purpose in coaching football at Nebraska is to “bring honor and glory to God.” From a 1997 interview: “I realize football enables me to do the two, in my opinion, most important things in my life, and that is one, to know Christ more intimately and number two, is to make him known. And that’s why I’m here in Nebraska, that’s why I’m a part of football.”

To Know Christ and To Make Him Known is the registered, trademarked motto for The Navigators. Having spent time in The Navigators, particularly at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I not only knew this mantra, but the automatic high level of respect my classmates in The Navigators gave Brown. They gave him the highest respect possible, not because he earned it, but because he was a coach with the Huskers and a Christian.

Over the last week I’ve watched over two hours of Ron Brown speaking via YouTube videos. In many of them, Brown is seen on the field just after a Nebraska football game. He looks into the camera and uses his position as a coach to preach the gospel and promote FreedMen Nebraska, his organization dedicated to “making the God connection in every realm.” In almost all his videos he connects his religious doctrine to his job in football at the University of Nebraska.

If Coach Brown rented the football field or basketball arena as anyone else, then I do not see a problem with him using the rented space for preaching. If he then connects his FreedMen Nebraska organization and gospel preaching to his job, then he is violating UNL’s nondiscrimination policy.

Brown also says that he would welcome a gay athlete, but his words and actions say otherwise.

Brown might claim that he would welcome a gay athlete. But the paradox of his message is revealed when asked how a gay athlete in the locker room should be treated.

“I think Christians should love a homosexual teammate just like they would any other teammate,” Brown said. “Let me tell you what else is in that locker room. There are thieves, liars, people who lust, people addicted to pornography, even some players who are alcoholics. There are all kinds of sinners in that locker room.”

Brown likens homosexuals to other sinners. He’ll accept them, providing they become his kind of Christian and give up their “sin” of homosexuality. This is not building a “climate of inclusion and mutual support.”

Pat Tetrault runs the LGBTQA resource center at the University of Nebraska. While speaking for herself and not for the university, she said it’s impossible to believe Brown’s views on anti-gay discrimination don’t affect his job with student athletes:

“When you have a nondiscrimination policy, and you make your views that a certain segment of the population should be singled out for discrimination, it really is hard to not believe it doesn’t impact the students and the staff who may not believe the same way he does.”

Tetrault has a point that has been proven elsewhere.

In 2002 he was a candidate for the head coaching position at Stanford University. After Brown’s religious views on gay people came to light, Stanford terminated his candidacy.

Zeigler goes on to point out that Ron Brown has also expressed his belief that the separation of church and state should be eliminated.

“If the ACLU in Nebraska seeks to slowly suppress the gospel message right out of where our kids spend most of their day, a school … is that any less of a sin than what may have happened at Penn State?”

Given Ron Brown’s stance on this and his liberal use of intermixing his position and his faith, there can be no doubt that he is flagrantly violating the University of Nebraska’s nondiscrimination policy. He is, arguably, abusing his position as a Nebraska football coach to further his own religious agenda.

Promotional videos for his explicitly Christian proselytizing organization, FreedMen Nebraska, use Cornhusker imagery with abandon or are outright filmed in Memorial Stadium.

In all honestly, it is genuinely doubtful that Brown sees what he is doing as any sort of violation. He is simply following Christ and spreading the good word. He doesn’t see what he’s doing is actually a violation of the law because it’s what he “believes.”  What Brown also doesn’t realize is that his attitude and beliefs could be detrimental to the Husker football program.

Possible recruits will, one way or another, hear about Coach Brown and could pick another school to attend. The individual could be a highly touted recruit, but, because of Brown’s beliefs, chooses to go elsewhere. This individual doesn’t even have to be gay. They could just have no tolerance for such outdated views.

Brown explicitly denies the need to draw a line between his personal beliefs and his position at the University.

Brown has responded [mp3], but, as you listen to him, it’s clear that he doesn’t understand that he’s done anything wrong.

Ron Brown’s views are, to many, proselytizing.  He should not be allowed to continue to be employed by a public, taxpayer funded university with a clear non-discrimination policy if he continues to use those ties to the University of Nebraska in doing so. Brown has every right to speak about his views and voice them, but he cannot do it as an employee of a public university.

Image from Husker Locker.

In the past week, I’ve refrained from posting any new articles on my blog. It turns out that there was some nasty malicious code that was somehow inserted into the blog. It took me nearly 15 hours to clean it all out and ensure that the site was safe to visit. Until it was safe, I didn’t want anyone coming and suffering the consequences. If you’re interested in what happened and what I did, keep reading, otherwise, you can be assured that it’s safe to surf the blog once again.

Several people notified me that the blog was infected with a malicious code. My first reaction, since I didn’t know what I was looking for, was to do a google search for “malicious code wordpress.” It was here that I discovered what was going on. The website dconstructing.com had a detailed entry as to what the problem might be. I read the article carefully, noting what I should be looking for. Sure enough, several hundred of my .php files were infected.

Every single one of them had the eval(base64_decode command that tells php to decode a string of numbers and letters as if it were php code. The key thing here is that this can be good and bad. WordPress doesn’t do this with its php code, so I was sure it was bad. Very bad.

• I manually cleaned out every single .php file.

• I deleted any user that hasn’t made a post to my blog.

• I changed my password.

• I learned how to reset all my keys.

• I checked everything again.

• I signed up for Comodo’s SiteInspector. This program will scan up to three pages per day to check and see if there is any malicious code on your site.

My blog is more secure now, hopefully preventing another occurrence.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused folks and I’ll continue to monitor the site very closely.