Comments for Talkjack's Weblog (Homepage: http://talkjack.wordpress.com)

Comment on The Great British light bulb ban by Cosmin

Cosmin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:52:06 +0000

Comment on The Great British light bulb ban by Cosmin

Cosmin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:51:22 +0000

From what I see the new CFL, LED bulbs or economical bulbs in generally have advantages and disadvantages. It may be just a method to create profit from economical light bulbs but we can’t know for sure. Personally I don’t like so much the CFL’s rather than the incandescent bulb. The new plasma lamps or bulbs are very interesting.

Comment on Memory Foam mattress problems and solutions by Rock the Kaz Bar

Rock the Kaz Bar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:41:18 +0000

I love my memory foam mattress so does my wife. Say no more!!

Comment on DRM Info: Sacred 2, No Thank You! by talkjack

talkjack — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:44:40 +0000

No problem – I pay my taxes. Anyway, profit = zero in the case of this blog.

More serious for bloggers is the lack of control WordPress hosted blogs have, and how the people who host scraped (stolen) content elsewhere and make money from showing ads are not prepared to act unless you give them sufficient personal data for them to theoretically commit an identity theft if they were so inclined. Not that I am suggesting they would – I think they care more about being sued themselves.

I stopped blogging here because I did not like the attitude of the MS tech guy I dealt with when I reported they were publishing stolen copies of my work which an anonymous blog scraper was hosting on the MS free hosting site. I now blog under my own domain name and have better control of what happens to these auto generated scraped blogs. Some clever code puts messages into the feed so that anyone can see who the thief is.

Not all companies were as unhelpful as MS. Google took action when I demonstrated that the culprit was making cash out of showing Google ads. The likes of Quebecblogue were very disappointing, and their lack of interest seemed IMHO suspiciously like the hosting site was either complicit or did not care. Hope they like the comments my code returns to quebecblogue when they scrape from my new blog feed.

Comment on DRM Info: Sacred 2, No Thank You! by scullyutteple

scullyutteple — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:52:23 +0000

Very Recently, there has been a great deal of inquiries by the
American FTC against blogs and website promoters
for not stating their advertising profits, or potential
relationships with advertising agencies.

What are your ideas about how this could potentially impact
the blog world?

Comment on Stalker Clear Sky spoilt by DRM by Mark

Mark — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:24:31 +0000

the US version has it as well. I did not realize it (why can’t OUR elected representatives have them clearly put the DRM scheme on the box???) and installed it.

Fortunately for me, Windows 7 pops up with a “incompatible driver has been disabled” message – thanks Microsoft!!!

Comment on The risks of renewing your car tax disc online by Kreed Kafer

Kreed Kafer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:46:07 +0000

Although I renewed my tax disc online several weeks before my current one expired, after nearly 2 months, I have still not recieved the disc and after several weeks of liasing with the DVLC where they claimed it was not their problem, I have now been summoned, as although I didn’t drive my car and had to pay for taxi’s to and from work, my car still had to be left on the open road as I live in a rural area with terrace houses (no driveways). All in all with the lost months of tax disc duty (they say I cannot reclaim), £1000 so far in taxi fares (£25 daily), forthcoming fines and possible penalty points it has been very costly using the online route. THE DVLC have said I should count myself lucky as they agreed not to crush my car (at least yet) and they have been so rude, threatening and unsympathetic. Everyone I have spoken to said the DVLC make no mistakes and even said I could get a criminal record when I go to court which is not true.

Comment on DRM Info: Sacred 2, No Thank You! by talkjack

talkjack — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:48:37 +0000

Sorry to hear about your DRM nightmare with Securom and Sacred 2. Have you tried contacting Securom tech support and asking for help? It would be interesting to find out if they are helpful or unsympathetic now the publisher game has ceased trading.

I feel that Securom themselves have an obligation to issue you with a patch to remove their DRM from the game under these circumstances. The way customers have been treated beggars belief, and does not inspire any trust or good faith between gamers like us and the game publishers.

Comment on DRM Info: Sacred 2, No Thank You! by Kirii

Kirii — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:07:15 +0000

Being one of the ’small niche’ that was eagerly awaiting a new action rpg I actually paid money for this game. And I severely regret it!

I have had to contact Securom no less than 5 times in order to get my number of activations raised. I often format my pc, even more since W7 went rc, and once my activations started running out I was no longer able to play my game. Let me repeat that, I WAS NO LONGER ALLOWED TO PLAY THE GAME I PAID FOR!

I am a gluten. I have since purchase the expansion Ice & Blood. The expansion is actually MORE strict with number of activations, plus if you change the compatibility settings of the sacred2.exe your securom registration is RESET! In a matter of days I was out of activations due to troubleshooting compatibility in Windows 7. It never fully worked and I had to install the game in Vista. But , of course I am out of registrations and have yet to be able to play my game for 2 days.

I am now searching for a crack for my purchased game JUST SO I CAN PLAY IT!

ps. The developer of Sacred 2 has since gone under. They went bankrupt and quickly finished the expansion before they were kicked out of their offices.

It would be interesting to go back to last year and release Sacred 2 without a drm…

Comment on Memory Foam mattress problems and solutions by talkjack

talkjack — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:47:12 +0000

Yuck! Which brand was it?

Shame the manufacturers chose not to be sympathetic and helpful. Wonder if it is a design fault rather than a manufacturing fault?