Ubisoft found Pirating the Pirates.

Have you ever bought a game, and then not managed to get it working on your machine? Have you ever had to resort to downloading a 'no-cd' crack to get it to run? I know I have, and I know that the games industry considers me a massive pirate due to buying their software, then running it in a way they don't like.

Which makes this thread over on the Ubisoft forums all the more entertaining. When faced with a version of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 that wasn't working on lots of machines, ubisoft did exactly what you would have done. They went and got a no-cd crack off the internet and released it as an official patch.

Here's the crackers code in the patch (apparently the name tag gives it away):

I'm not condoning piracy, even when you're pirating the pirates, but what I do like here, is that I'm sure everyone here has "pirated" in the black and white eyes of Ubisoft. But you know what you did wasn't wrong. You know you're not a pirate just because you didn't want to put your disk in your machine to get your game to work.

And today, by stealing that code, Ubisoft have acknowledged that piracy, at least when it concerns them, does indeed have shades of grey.

All respect goes to neilthecellist for revealing the story and Oby for bringing it to my attention.

If you feel like it, DIGG THIS HERE

UPDATE 4:34 AM: I've some more info on what the crack actually was for. According to MD_Sennet:

The Reloaded crack was required so the Direct-2-Drive customers could apply the new 1.03 patch, since the vanilla version of the patch UBI has on their website will not work on the D2D installations of Vegas2.

2nd UPDATE: Monday; July 21, 2008, Arstechnica has a good editorial about all this.

MyLifeMyID.org is going to be amazing.

MyLifeMyID has just launched. It's going to be a footbullet of immense calibre. A while back leaked documents showed the government plans to "coerce" people into signing up for the database state by various methods. Once method was to go after the young first. Assuming they are the most stupid and gulliable.

As such Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is fronting a down with the Yoof have your say forum on the subject of ID cards. It's going to get messy.

Current topics at the time of writing are:

Shop Assistants using the need to show ID to bully people
How can you stop civil servants peeking?
This website's Modeators are biast (sic)
Why are my new posts "moved" but actually deleted?
Looking forward to a simpler ID system
What age should people have an ID card?
Official ID Card Video
Don't want, Won't have
Why centralised?
New eyeballs

Make your voice heard people!

The Register has more.

Crackergate: Any old excuse for Lee and Herring

Crackergate AKA "it's a God Damn Cracker!" is spreading like wild fire (short version - man keeps, rather than eats bread), and whilst I'm currently on blogging sabbatical all this thought about communion and what happens to that bread has bewitched me. In particular, the idea that he literally abducted Jesus is wonderfully moreish.

And it reminded me of this wonderful Sunday Morning TV show sketch from the Legendary Lee and Herring. A sketch I love so much that I couldn't help break my self imposed rule and post it. Enjoy.

Skeptobot is on a break, I need to write a Thesis - see you September

So almost getting on TV and getting all over the web thanks to my (unfinished) Oyster card shenanigans has built up a sizeable increase in readers. But I've got to destroy all that hard work by focusing on my thesis for the next 60 days or so.

Sorry.

I'm not saying that there won't be any updates between now and then, but they will be few and far between and I would rather be upfront about that. Don't worry I wont be abandoning the site, as the URL suggests, I'm actually in the process of making it a proper site and everything.

The blog will relaunch sometime in September (all going to plan) and if you wish to be informed of when it does, pop me an email on skeptobotURI(at)GELLERyahoo.co.uk (remove the fraud).

The blog has never taken up much time, but with the thesis hanging over me, and the internet sitting in front of me it feels to much like this:

And the next thing you know you've spent two hours researching how Scientology brought down TV's Doctor and plagiarist Raj Persaud. Seriously, IP laws, Plagerism, Scientology and Bad Science. All in one story. It was like giving a cat catnip.

See you in 60 days!