For Amusement Only: a fantastic article on The Verge

On Fridays I generally write some sort of post about gaming. But nothing I wrote this week could’ve held a candle to this amazing article over on The Verge. The article is called: For Amusement Only: the life and death of the American arcade. It’s lengthy, but it is a fantastic read. And for the average American attention span, there is an 8 minute video (embedded above, though not very reliable – go to The Verge and watch it) that is part of the article. A fantastic look back at the arcade industry, and a few theories as to why it’s so hard to find a good arcade these days. Enjoy the article.

This just isn't going to work, Disney…

Wreck It Ralph (Four-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD + Digital Copy). On sale at Amazon (as of the time of writing this article) for $39.99. Normally? $50.

Disney, and other big film studios, need to listen up. This is not how you get people to start using your digital releases. You packed in a digital copy? Cool! Oh, I can stream it from any Ultraviolet compatible service, like Vudu? Great! Wait, you’re charging me how much extra!?

The battle has been “if I own the film, shouldn’t I own the CONTENT, and not the format?” People don’t want to take part in Wal-Mart’s disc-to-digital program because they feel they shouldn’t have to pay for something they already own. There has been and still is reluctance in the move to Blu-Ray because you’re re-buying everything. Moving from VHS to DVD was easy – there were many obvious benefits, and the prices came down quickly. But if I buy a movie for $15-$20, I expect to see that little sticker that says “Free digital copy included!” But something is happening with this insanely over priced Wreck It Ralph release.

This box includes the Blu-Ray 3D and the Blu-Ray versions of the movie… which for some reason aren’t on the same disc. Then a generic DVD, and a digital copy. Note that the digital copies generally do not include any bonus content that will be found on the disc versions, and, that much like your movie theater experience, your discs will be loaded with trailers and BD-Live content advertising other Disney properties before, during, and after your movie watching experience. Exactly what the hell am I paying fifty dollars for? If you want to make 3D catch on, if you want to see digital distribution take off so that you can save money with more limited physical releases in the future… the way to do it is not by gouging the consumer – it’s by making those things perks for buying current-generation packages.

3D comes back every few years, this latest round really seemed like it was going to be the one to work, but it still hasn’t stuck. Film studios love the idea, because it affords them an additional level of anti-piracy. But 3D still hasn’t taken off. So why are you charging me $10-12.50 for a disc of your stupid blurry movie? Especially for a CGI film – it’s not like it took additional cameras and advance capturing technology – it’s a render!

I’m sorry, Disney. I had high hopes for Wreck It Ralph, and for the future of Disney – I thought they might be starting to get it. But their exclusive Disney digital format is a pain (just go with Ultraviolet, like everyone else, please?), and the unbalanced pricing structure is just absurd. It’s just not going to work out like this. I hope you see your problems and change, down the road, Disney.

Zillow App for Windows Phone makes house hunting easy!

If you’ve never used Zillow, you’re missing out. I absolutely love this app. If you know the website, that’s fine and dandy, but the app is a hundred times better. Have you ever stood outside of a house with a for sale sign and wondered… “how much?” Or even thought to yourself, “I would like to know more, but I’ll never remember to look this up later!” Zillow is the solution. Pop open the app, let it detect your location via GPS, and viola! Information for buying and renting all around you pops right up. And that’s when you realize Rochester, NY has more million dollar homes than Seattle, WA and you’re living in the wrong part of the country because you’ll never own a million dollar home. At least, if you’re me.

I’ve been a big fan of the Zillow app for a while, on any platform, but of course, if you’ve got Windows Phone 7, you should give it a download! Zillow is free on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Exchange error 421.4.4.2, unable to connect, Attempted to failover… Fixed!

Users complain that they can’t send email. You dig through your exchange queues and logs, and you stumble across this:
451 4.4.0 primary target IP address responded with “421.4.4.2 unable to connect.” Attempted failover to alternate host, but that did not succeed. Either there are no alternate hosts, or delivery failed to all alternate hosts.

The root cause of this is that something, be it a hardware or software firewall, or antivirus product, something is blocking outbound traffic on port 25.

You ready for me to read your mind? In our particular case, and in at least 3 other cases I have confirmed with other IT persons, we had installed antivirus software from McAfee on our Exchange server. McAfee has a feature which watches for Mass Mailing worms – this is great on your desktop! But not so great on your Exchange server, as all of your SMTP outbound mail needs to leave on port 25. McAfee’s software does this by watching for outbound traffic on Port 25. Although I don’t know what the exact threshold is, eventually it decides there is too much traffic, assumes your computer may be infected, closes the port on your computer (in this case, our Server), and mail stops flowing. Here is my solution for the McAfee software:

All you need to do to fix this is open up McAfee from the System Tray, then find the Access Protection Properties, they look like the menu pictured above. Then choose Antivirus Standard Protection on the left, and uncheck Prevent Mass Mailing Worms from sending mail on the right. I would uncheck both the BLOCK and REPORT options, otherwise you can expect some pretty large log files.

I first encountered this and posted a solution on TechNet in October, but thought it was worth revisiting as it was a heck of a process to narrow down! At least one user there has confirmed it to be the solution for them.