Understanding the subprime mortgage crisis

Here is a ~45 minute radio show which aired on NPR explaining the road that led us to the subprime mortgage crisis. I found it very informative, check it out.

Listen by clicking here.

Read by clicking here.

An economist's explaination of the current financial crisis

Mike Masnick, a tech blogger/economist who's opinions I (usually) respect, has an posted two informative articles on the current economic crisis. Please go read them:

Take A Deep Breath: Some Perspective On The Financial Crisis

So How Will The Financial Crisis Impact The Wider Economy?

Will Wright on the difference between kids and adults.

Paste Magazine has an interview with Will Wright, the creative mind behind SimCity, the Sims, and Spore.

At one point in the interview they ended up talking about accessibiltiy of a game, and the way that children and adults approach a game. I thought it was really interesting:

Paste Magazine: As an entertainment product, is Spore capable of replicating the processes of science such as experimentation? Do you feel those processes are occurring when people play Spore?

Will Wright: I think they occur in almost any game that's made. If you look at any kid playing a game, what they do is they go up and they grab the controller and they start pushing buttons randomly. They observe the results. They start building a model in their head for how the buttons are mapped. Then they start trying to set high-level goals. They start building a more and more elaborate model in their head of the underlying simulation in our game. And they're doing it purely through the scientific method. They observe data. They craft and experiment and do interactions to test their experiment. They observe their results then they increase the resolution of their model. And that's pretty much exactly what the scientific method is. So I think any kid, almost inherently, knows that and recognizes it as such. If you look at adults, they're really the problem case. Adults generally don't want to touch these things until they know what the rules are. They don't want to fail. Whereas kids are totally comfortable with failure-based learning. And so the kids are the whole time experimenting and actually learning much faster as a result of inherently knowing the scientific method. Whereas adults basically want to know all the rules, they're afraid to press the wrong button, they're afraid to experiment, etc., etc.

Intersection of nerd hobbies

Did you know that the J.K. Rowling character Hermione Granger is written with a birthday on September 19th, 1979? Did you also know that September 19th is talk like a pirate day?

That's an alignment of the planets that I just cannot argue with. Ms. Granger is my new favorite character from the series.

Slashdot reports that the University of California has put out a series of videos demonstrating weaknesses in the Sequoia voting system.

Since I feel it is important that the general public understand that they should not accept insecure voting methods, I'm echoing the videos here.

(Mark 4:55 in Part 2 shows a particularly interesting bypass of tamper-proof tags.)

Part 1:

Part 2:

I <3 Mythbusters!

I love Mythbusters!

I got sold a counterfeit copy of 'The World Ends With You'

Counterfeit game!

As you can probably guess from the post title, I just bought a copy of 'The World Ends With You' on EBay. Or, I thought I did. What I really bought was a counterfeit copy of 'The World Ends With You'. Grrrrr.

In keeping with my running tradition, I'll take this post to spell out all the signs that this item is counterfeit.

The Box:

'E' for everyone?

The counterfeit box lists the rating as 'E'. The actual game has a rating of 'T'. A legitimate item wouldn't list the wrong rating on the box.

Time travel?

The counterfeit box claims a copyright of 2004. Very interesting, considering the real game was released in 2008. A legitimate item wouldn't list the wrong copyright date on the box.

One size fits all!

The counterfeit box is a one-size-fits-all game box. See that upper bracket? That's so the box can optionally hold a Gameboy Advance cartridge. A legitimate item would have a box designed to hold the product.

Also, it doesn't come out in the pictures very well, but the whole box has a grainy, printed-on-an-inkjet-printer look. Fine text on the box has blurry edges around it from the lower quality printing.

The Instruction Manual:

(sorry for the blurry pictures)

The counterfeit instruction manual takes an approach that I've not seen before. The manual contains no actual instructions, but instead contains is a scattering of screen shots from the game surrounded with text plagiarized from assorted preview sites. My favorite quote in the manual was this tidbit:

You can host or join a match with up to three other players to knock their collected pins off of the virtual table. It's a nice touch that really looks set to add a fun dynamic to what seems to be a solid single-player experience. We'll have more on The World Ends With You as the April release date draws near.

Not a phrase I ever expected to see in the game's instruction manual.

The Cartridge:

(blurry! But still 'rated' E)

There's not a lot to talk about on the cartridge, outside of the single damning bit of evidence: The real game is rated 'T', this is labeled 'E'. A legitimately manufactured cartridge wouldn't list the wrong rating on the label.

Epilogue:

I'm writing the following to the seller:

Dear Stephen Burr,

You have sold me a counterfeit copy of 'The World Ends With You'. As you probably know, selling counterfeit video games is against the EBay terms of use, and is unfair to me as a customer.

I have put together a detailed summary of how I know that this is a counterfeit on my blog. You can read more at: http://jaqenn.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-got-sold-counterfeit-copy-of-world.html

I require that you send me a full refund ($31.95) for the purchase of this item. I will then destroy it. If you wish the item to be returned to you, please include an additional $5 shipping and handling.

It is my opinion that you were unaware that this was a counterfeit item when you listed it for sale. However, your good intentions do not compel me to accept an item substantially different than you advertised. If you purchased this item on EBay, I recommend that you seek a refund from your seller. If you are within 60 days of the purchase date I believe you can have Paypal assist you in getting a refund.

Thank you for your time.

-Trevor Christman
ebay Jaqenn