So I was just given the most amazing analogy of Bush's Iraq War policy versus Obama's Iraq War policy... We all know that Bush and the military supported and pushed for a surge that actually worked while Obama was diametrically opposed to the surge and won't confess that he was wrong. (And has, in fact, gone so far to say that EVERYONE was shocked that it worked... No, Obama, only you were. Even real-time strategy gamers realize that if you need to finish a fight, you send in more troops. But I abstain...) But even still, Obama has said that the troops are coming home according to his initial withdraw plan, which "obviously" means that his approach to the problem worked, even though it's the surge that allowed the adjustment in the timetable to allow our soldiers to come home earlier. (It allowed them to come home, dare I say, with our honor intact... They're coming home after we've WON.) But let's break it down, shall we?

America is taking a bath in a tub full of water. (It goes without saying that the tub is full of water, but... Just shut up, okay?) The intention of the bath is to wash our hair. So there we are, sitting in the tub, all wet, before the actual washing occurs, when Obama says, "We want get out and dry off! If we don't wash our hair, we can get out right now!" Bush, on the other hand, says, "We want to get out and dry off, too, but we're here to wash our hair, so we'll just have to wash our hair faster!" And so America plunges beneath the glassy surface of the bath water and Obama is infuriated. After a few moments, though, America sits up and climbs out of the water and starts drying off. Bush says, "Look! We've washed our hair and we're drying off earlier than we estimated!" Obama, unable to live with the fact he was wrong, says, "Look! We're out and drying off when I said we would be... My plan was right all along!"

Is that not, essentially, what Obama is trying to say? Absolutely pathetic. Just 'fess up that you were wrong, Obama... Seriously. I mean, I'm trying to give you a campaign tip here. Just admit you were wrong and stop trying to take credit for something you had absolutely no control over and you might gain a little more respect with those of us who supported winning the war. But... That's a tip from a conservative Republican, so I doubt anyone will treat it as good advice. Oh well... Just trying to be helpful!

(By the way, I just want to say that the hair-washing analogy was invented by my mom and brother... But I couldn't help but post it because it's just so awesome. I believe they came up with it on the spot during Tom Brokaw's interview with Joe Biden this morning.)

Meet the Wikipedia Spore article. It's kinda useful... Describes what the game's like and stuff.

Meet the DRM section of the Spore article in its present state:

Spore will be using a modified version of digital rights management (DRM) software SecuROM as copy prevention, which will require authentication upon installation and when online access is used. This system was announced after the originally planned system met opposition from the public, as it would have required authentication every ten days.^[75] It was also announced that Spore will be playable without a disc after installation.^[76]

EA Customer Support, however, states that EA can be contacted by the user and have, on a case-by-case criteria, their activation count for Spore reset when the activation limit is depleted.^[77]

Makes absolutely no mention of the three-installation limit. Why? "Irrelevant sources", of course.

Meet the DRM section of the Spore article just yesterday:

Spore will be using a modified version of digital rights management (DRM) software SecuROM as copy prevention, which will require authentication upon installation and when online access is used. This system was announced after the originally planned system met opposition from the public, as it would have required authentication every ten days.^[74] It was also announced that Spore will be playable without a disc after installation.^[75] A disadvantage of this DRM software is that it does not allow one user to login to his/her Spore profile on another user's copy of the game, and that it has a limit of three installations. The installation limit is triggered each time a user changes certain pieces of hardware, reformats the computer, or installs/upgrades a new operating system.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, when a user uninstalls Spore, the installation count is not reset.^[76]

EA Customer Support, however, states that EA can be contacted by the user and have, on a case-by-case criteria, their activation count for Spore reset when the activation limit is depleted.^[77]

Will you look at that. Someone had mentioned the three-installation limit and had, in fact, given a source. Here's where the source goes, by the way. A blog article describing some well-known and repeatable steps that beak Mass Effect, which, I might add, is precisely the same DRM scheme that Spore has and everyone knows this. But, no... The entire mention of the draconian copy protection has been eradicated from Spore's Wikipedia article because someone got a bee up his butt and removed it because the source was "irrelevant". If you read it in its present state, you get the impression that EA removed the DRM entirely and that it's so good, in fact, that you can play without the disc in the drive! I would put the text back in the article myself, but the article is "semi-protected" now and you know there's going to be a bunch of Wikipedia elite watching the thing and making sure everything's "sourced properly". There's no point... They'll just change it back, and if you keep changing it, you'll either get banned or have the entire thing full-protected.

This is what I absolutely cannot stand about Wikipedia. Everyone knows that EA has DRM and everyone who owns the game or browses the forums knows exactly how problematic the thing is, and everyone gets to hear about everyone's problems. Thing is, forums aren't "relevant sources" to Wikipedia, which I can understand, but they adhere to that so blindly that they can't accept it even as a "here, you can check out this link to see what I'm talking about". No, it's, "if there's no editor for the article, you can't use it as a source, and if you don't have a source, we're removing your text." Even if everyone who has the game ALREADY KNOWS that what they're saying is perfectly true... The Wikipedia Elite is just going to erase it and let the people who DON'T know what's going on think that nothing IS going on.

EA is trying to keep this quiet, so there's not going to be many people besides blogs and forums who discuss this subject... Plus, I really doubt that anyone who fits the criteria of a "relevant source" is ever going to care about it. Even the top gaming news sites are just glorfied blogs that could be considered "irrelevant" if someone REALLY wanted to. Self-published sources? "Not acceptable." Kotaku, Destructoid, Penny-Arcade... All self-published sources and just about the cream of the crop for who might actually care to let people know about DRM anyway. Any other publication probably gets advertisement money from EA and doesn't want to lose them as a source of income, so they're not going to go out on a limb and tell everyone not to buy Spore because of the DRM.

This is why I don't use Wikipedia. At first, I thought it would be acceptable to use it as an overview for, say, video games and TV shows. (I already know that using Wikipedia for political insight is like looking into the core of a nuclear reactor... Unbiased? What a laugh.) Turns out that even things that fans of the game and shows already know won't be mentioned unless some news source somewhere decided to cover it, too. To me, the DRM scheme for Spore is something that isn't covered anywhere by "relevant sources", but it's covered by blogs and forums EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK. To me, it's something that everyone knows and nobody can take issue with... Nobody can go "hey, I don't believe that...prove it to me". All they have to do is install it themselves to see what everyone means... It's one of those "common truth" things. There's just... No other way to look at the issue. There IS DRM and it DOES limit installs to 3... But since a "relevant" source doesn't talk about it, Wikipedia won't treat it as truth and won't let it on the article. (Thus propagating EA's grand conspiracy to tell everyone that everything's alright and that there's nothing to worry about.)

Ugh.