Skip to content

Battle.net error code BLZBNTBNA00000640 (1201)

Whoops! Hmm, something went wrong with a security certificate.

Whoops!
Recently Conor has been playing WoW and we came across an issue where the battle.net client displays this error rather than the latest Blizzard news.

I think it's safe to assume that Blizzard used an embedded web browser control for this section of the application, and most if not all of the recommended steps they provide (restarting battle.net, reinstalling, etc.) aren't going to fix the underlying problem, which has to do with SSL certificate validation going on in the requested page. What did actually fix this under OSX, was deleting the certificate in question from the OSX keychain. Read the rest of this for the how to. Continue reading "Battle.net error code BLZBNTBNA00000640 (1201)"

Heathers

For some time now I've felt like an honorary citizen of Ireland, having married a girl from Dublin and been blessed with two children upon which my wife and I have bestowed the most Irish of names. I've visited the country numerous times over the last 15 years and find myself becoming more intrigued with its history, culture and music with each visit. I've witnessed first hand Ireland's rapid evolution under the influence of unprecedented economic growth and the tidal wave of change brought by the European union. Any such metamorphosis brings with it changes that are both good and bad. The skies of Ireland's major cities have in recent years become thick with giant construction cranes, and its citizens have seen real estate prices hit astronomical highs. Ireland's youth no longer are confronted with the economic necessity of emigration, and expatriates have begun to return home in increasing numbers. The country now faces ironic and unforeseen challenges in the wake of its stunning reversal of fortune.


Continue reading "Heathers"

EA's Spore DRM fiasco

EA's big fall PC gaming release is the long awaited "Spore" from Maxis, beloved studio responsible for all things Sim. Spore has been in some form of development since 2000, and finally hit stores on Sept. 7th, 2008, accompanied by predictions of the title living up to its hype and transcending it from EA brass.

I took a look at the Amazon user ratings for the game, and was shocked to see that it has been absolutely shellacked -- currently 2300+ reviews and only 1.5 stars. The primary reason for the low ratings? Customer outrage over EA's employment of the Sony SecuROM copy protection system, that allows someone purchasing the game, to activate it 3 times. As was pointed out in an amazon review:

Then there's the DRM. Let me just clarify what people are saying by adding, it not only counts installations, but changes to your hardware ! Upgrade a system component (memory, CPU, vid card) and you are out an installation....Basically I just paid $50 for a coaster.


When will companies learn that treating their customers like thieves is never a good business practice?

Continue reading "EA's Spore DRM fiasco"

West Texas UFO sightings, Cloverfield promotion?

Only days before the virally marketed JJ Abrams film Cloverfield is due to open, does anyone else find it suspicious that a major news outlet like ABC news would be drumming up a UFO sighting story, based solely on a handful of "eyewitness" testimony? Seriously -- this is 2008? You mean to tell me that not a single person had a digitial camera, video or even a run of the mill cell phone on em? Precedence for this goes back at least 80 years, to the infamous War of the Worlds RKO radio show. What would it take to get such a rumor going? A few people in cahoots, and a gullible local news affiliate? What could possibly explain this making it to the national news?
Defined tags for this entry: , ,

The Movie-Gurus.com archive.

Update 3/2009

Movie Gurus is back up for now. http://www.movie-gurus.com/


*Update*
Since i wrote this, my hosting account ran out of juice and took to thrashing and locking up on a regular basis due to the number of mysql processes it required and the amount of buffer memory being used. I run this site on a coop server under UML and we have been talking for two years now about moving to a new server with a different virtualization solution, probably OpenVZ. I currently don't want to invest the time and effort I'll need to rebuild and reconfigure the server (no more Gentoo this time, as I don't have the personal bandwidth to stay up with the maintenance and don't use Gentoo at work).

I spoke with David of MG and we agreed to resurrect MG officially, since he still owns the domain and gets a fair amount of traffic to the review urls, which redirect to his community site Movieloons.com. I'm hopeful we'll get there soon, but for reasons I'll keep to myself, there can be no movement on this project until David sorts an issue with his hosting company.



Movie-Gurus.com went down for the count when the hosting company wiped the site. As we'd lost around a months worth of reviews, I didn't feel like resurrecting it at the time and starting fresh. Then I started thinking about the 1500+ reviews in the database, and all the time and effort that went into the site, so I decided to see if I could resurrect it from backups. I quietly put it back up, and left a little message at the forum run by the MG originator, but that generated no interest, so I left it up and largely forgot about it. Only one little problem there --- search bots found it, and what did they want? They wanted pictures! Mostly pictures of actresses! So I suppose that MG lives again, even if for now it's only as a shadow of its former self, visited by people who are only interested in a small picture. You can find the site for now at Site taken down.
Defined tags for this entry: , ,