I’m on the hunt for a few people who can read & write German, are into computer games and would be willing to undertake some not-very-difficult freelance work for me on an ongoing basis. There is payment involved, and everything can be done in a web browser, very much along the Amazon Mechanical Turk lines.

I’m after one or two people immediately, for a long-term association. If you’re interested, leave a comment or drop me an email.

I really liked the original SiN game, although a lot of my contemporaries didn’t. Now a new life has been given to the franchise, with SiN: Emergence due for release tomorrow.

However, as much as I liked the original SiN and really do want to play the new game, the stated requirements of a Steam account to ‘authorise’ the game means I won’t be playing it any time soon.

The requirement that I ‘authorise’ a game I’ve purchased over the counter of a computer game shop is one that I don’t agree with, however having dealth with Valve and Steam in the past, it’s their reluctance to protect my privacy and information they hold about me that worries me the most. My original Steam account still exists somewhere on Valve’s servers, as they refused point blank to do more than ‘disable’ my account.

So, my details are still held somewhere on their servers, and I have no way of checking, amending, updating or removing those details. And if I want to play SiN: Emergence (which is, as far as I know, not an online game), I have to re-enable my account so that Valve can authorise the game I bought over the counter in a box.

In what is clearly a victory for monster rock, Lordi have won Eurovision 2006!

Mark’s raised the idea that credit bureaus could act as Identity Providers under the concept of User-centric Identity (I’m still catching up on the reading!). My only comment to this is:

I bloody well hope they don’t.

A very quick search using your favourite search engine throws up reams of examples where such credit bureaus hold incorrect information about consumers, often to the point of holding outright lies, and not providing a mechanism whereby consumers can correct - or in many cases even check - the information held about them.

Even a recent piece in the Consumerist illustrates problems with credit bureaus and the information they hold about people, and the lack of care taken in cleaning the data and informing associated agencies of the change.

The major problem with credit bureaus being providers of identity information is that there is no benefit to them in expending the time and effort in either checking that the information held about someone is correct, or in implementing procedures to allow consumers to check and correct such information. The first is time consuming and costly, and the second is time consuming, costly and will require the implementation of identity checks, which makes it even more time consuming and costly.

Technorati Tags: Identity Management, Digital Identity

I was reading Ars Technica (as is my wont), when this phrase popped out:

Are booth babes really necessary at a trade show like E3 (which is closed to the public)? Your typical E3 attendee is a journalist or industry player, likely male, and probably a big fan video games.

Of course, despite protestations to the contrary E3 is not a trade show, and the typical attendee is not a journalist or industry player. The last E3 I attended, whislt there may have been a lot of ‘journalists’ trying to get press passes, the majority of people attending the show were most definately not journalists or industry players.

They were game fans trying to get their hands on games early.

E3 (and the UK-based shows) stopped being trade shows many years ago, and are now no more than extended marketing excerises on the part of the major game companies.

I’ve had this same general blog design since about 1998 (that’s when the base graphics and layout was designed!), so I think it’s time for a change. I’m going to fiddle with some blog themes, but if anyone wants to volunteer a new design, I’ll be more than happy to consider!

I’ve talked about the outrageous prices charged for UMD discs in the past, however a recent visit to my local HMV has made the whole issue ludicrous.

The recent release of Narnia: The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe came across multiple formats, with different packages, different sets of features an so forth. So it is now possible to buy the movie on both DVD and UMD. Looking at the displays, I was given a choice of 3 formats: Normal DVD, DVD Special Edition or UMD. Guess which was the most expensive?

The UMD. At £19.99, it was the most of expensive of the three formats offered, and provided the least value for money, as it only contained a single copy of the movie, with no extras. The Special Edition 2 DVD package contained the movie as well as (according to the marketing stickers on the front) 10 hours of extras! for £18.99.

So with UMD I get less features, less extras (well, no extras), the ability to play it only on a small screen (although it is a very good screen), and I have to pay more? I would have thought by now the movie publishing companies would have realised that poor sales of UMDs are because they offer less value than DVDs (which can be converted to play on the PSP very easily).

I’ll repeat: For £5 or £10 I’ll buy movies on UMD. For £20 - forget it, I’ll buy the cheaper DVD version.

I’ve just cancelled my Everquest 2 account. The reasons are not really relevant, but I was struck dumb by the processI had to go through to actually cancel.

I was not allowed to cancel my subscription without filling in a survey first, and then being subjected to reasons not to cancel. The point here is that you cannot cancel a subscription to Everquest 2 without filling in the survey form. If you try and leave it blank, it tells you you have not filled in any of the answers.

So I entered everything bad I could think of as answers to the survey, or chose every option offered. No, the answers weren’t accurate, but that’s my choice. But really, forcing me to answer questions before cancelling my account? I thought I was a customer…

Technorati Tags: Everquest 2, Sony, Sony Online Entertainment, MMORPG

For those who have been keeping score, I’ve now finished my contract with the University of Salford. I was originally supposed to be with the University for 3 months, but ended up staying for a year and a half. The Identity Management project is well underway at the University, and I predict good things. It was certainly interesting getting to grips with the equipment architecture and the theories behind Identity Management, especially given the high levels of resilience and reliability we built into the design.

I’ll be keeping an eye on what the University is up to, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to subscribe to the Identity Management project’s weblog RSS feed (that’s a hint Dave…)

What this also means is that I’ll be working from home for a while, taking things easy, catching up on sleep and the latest discussions in Identity, play a lot of computer games and watch a few movies - but I’m certainly open to any offers that may come my way :)

I can see this taking up a chunk of my time…