Creativity

Microsoft’s About-Face on DRM

by

Remember how Microsoft’s DRM/Once-a-day Internet connection on XBox had everyone angry?  Well, they’re taking it out.

Of course removing it changes some features:

  • Physically purchased games won’t “follow” the player to other machines (digital content will of course).  You’ll need to take the disk with you.
  • Game sharing with family members is gone.

That tells me one important thing – Microsoft really figured people were going to go for this or accept it, it’s integrated enough into their plans and technology.  I think they were actually surprised (and it seems this will be removed at first login, so they really were planning on this going through).

This is good overall.  Microsoft listened.  I’m hoping that will steer the Xbox towards a better evolution toward the seemingly inevitable living room media machine.

– Steven

 

Political ePublishing: A Frontier To Consider

by

We talk about publishing here a lot at Muse Hack. That’s because a lot of us are writers professional or otherwise. Also its because in an age of technology that has made self-publishing easy, there’s a lot to talk about.

Oh and some of us want to sell books. Hint.

But when we talk about self-publishing and its implications we usually talk quality, or technology, or market saturation. We don’t talk politics a lot because its not usually a subject that comes up.

It probably should have.

Before his son’s trial, the father of George Zimmerman has released an ebook on the case. Frankly it’s sounding like it’s filled with dog whistles about racism in the black community and kinda missing the point.  I don’t think this is going to help his son and may look exploitative.

Before I go on let me note that:

1) I consider Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin to be suspicious to say the least, but that’s what a trial is for.

2) I hate the show trial mentality.

3) Our political pundit culture hasn’t helped.

This is one of the last things I imagined coming out of the Zimmerman case. I figured after the trial there’d be the usual round of books by people capitalizing on it. I also realize I was foolish in this day and age for thinking of that.

Read more