spore drm makes us cranky
As many of you know, I wear the crankypants whenever discussing either piracy or drm (or, usually, both in the same conversation). As much as I sympathize with content creators of all kinds-- music, art, software, books-- I really hate being treated like a thief when I do the right thing and pay for the works I want. Spore has infuriated so many people with the 3-computer limits that Amazon removed reviews and re-set the star counter. Here's Gamasutra's story on EA's response to criticism: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20218

consider mind blown
I tend to get deep but not wide in many areas of my life, especially work. So it was a real treat to meet up with friends last night and have my mind blown by what's going on in the bigger world of gaming, toys, robots, articifial life, the law and more. There's a growing recognition that we will inevitably create sentient artificial life forms, with the caveat "briefly." It's intriguing to consider how we will handle this. Ethical questions abound. And of course Star Trek entered the conversation (see episode The Measure of a Man).