July 3, 2009, 11:59 am by Arah
Eve Online, one of the biggies in online MMO gaming, has just banned Ricdic (AKA Richard), one of the CEOs of the game’s in-game Ebank from the game. And not entirely for why one would think.
Yes, it’s true, he embezzled some 200 billion odd Intersteller Kredits from the bank. But that wasn’t why he was banned.
No, Ricdic was banned for selling the in-game money to other players for real money, in this case about AU$6,300 (he is an Australian tech worker). It comes to about five grand in US dollars. But the amount isn’t all that important. It was the selling of in-game money for real money which breached Eve Online’s terms of service, forcing them to give him the boot.
So why’d he do it? For fame and profit? Nope. Nothing so easy to hate him for. He did it to cover some of his son’s medical expenses.
Right then.
There are just so many things wrong with this picture that it’s really hard to make heads or tales of this scandal. Proof once again that the world is rarely black and white, no matter how old your monitor is.
July 3, 2009, 11:47 am by Arah
Faithful InsanIT.net readers may have noticed that there haven’t been any new blogs in over a week. Sorry about that. I really meant to do better, but I’ve been working a lot of overtime and simple things like email and web comics fell to the wayside. Blogging went right out. Sorry.
The good news is I just finished the project and hopefully will not be needing to put in overtime anymore. And I even have a three day weekend. I might almost be sane for my 4th of July blog entry. 
The bad news is that I really am quite mentally wiped at the moment, so until I’m back up to speed, blogs may not be quite as interesting as usual. Sorry.
June 24, 2009, 6:20 am by Arah
Microsoft has released a beta of it’s newest bastard child: Microsoft Security Essentials. Those of you who were unimpressed with Microsoft OneCare will be equally unglad to know that Microsoft Security Essentials is basically just the antivirus part of OneCare. Why? The world may never know. Especially when Grisoft gives you AVG Free and Avast gives you their own free antivirus, just to name a few.
Why Microsoft would release their own antivirus for Windows is understandable. Not having antivirus these days is a b ig gaping security hole.
But why Microsoft would need to strip down OneCare into a smaller package and rename that Microsoft Security Essentials? It seems rather silly. It’d have made more sense to just have OneCare Basic and OneCare Professional or Premium or some such. Or better yet, simply divide it all and let you pick and choose the OneCare features you want.
But that’s not the Microsoft way.
No.
So if you really really want it, you can go trial the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials if you like.
And if you don’t trust Microsoft with anything security related, for whatever many reasons you may have, there are always other free fish in the sea.
June 21, 2009, 9:30 am by Arah
Yes, it’s that time of year again. It’s Father’s Day. Tell your dad you love him.
In honor of Father’s Day, I’ll be bringing you some good tech news for a change. Google Streetview actually did something useful.
Yes, that’s right. According to The Groninger Courant newspaper, one of Google’s Streetview camera cars captured a mugging in progress while snapping pics of Groningen … last September. And did nothing. In March the victim found the photo on Streetview and contacted the police. Because the photos were blurred the police had to contact Google for unblurred copies. Which Google obligingly sent to the police. And now, thanks to Google’s Streetview (sort of) the muggers are identified. (And hopefully arrested.)
See? It’s good news. Kind of…
Happy Father’s Day!
June 19, 2009, 6:30 am by Arah
It seems like only yesterday (okay, so it was the day before) that I wrote a blog about Windows 7 not having “downgrade” rights to Win XP nearly long enough for IT departments to actually evaluate Windows 7 safely. The news of this was from a fairly reliable source as these things go: Gartner.
But maybe, just maybe, Microsoft really isn’t that stupid after all.
Over at Vulture Central is news of assurance from Microsoft that the time limit to “downgrade” to XP is not 6 months, but 18 months!
Stranger though, is one caveat: That Windows XP “downgrade” rights get lost sooner if there’s a service pack for Windows 7. It’s a strange clause, leaving an even stranger quandry. Do we then hope for Microsoft to be very slow in developing the first Windows 7 service pack, knowing full well that security holes (like this one, known since January) exist in Windows 7? Or do we hope for a quick fix to the no doubt countless problems still in Windows 7 (When is an operating system ever bug free?) and with the big patch known as a service pack, lose downgrade rights to Windows XP? Decisions, decisions…
What is an IT department to hope for?
(Well, other than Microsoft simply giving 18 months of Win XP downgrade rights without the service pack clause, obviously.)
