uva gamers spring festival

I didn't go for the entire thing, mainly because I don't have the money for the parking garage at Newcomb Hall or a parking permit for any of the parking lots near it, so I had to wait until after 5 PM when the permit lots become free.

When I got there I was pleased to see Rock Band 2 set up.  Talked with friends a bit, played a song or two on bass (with a shitty RB strat...  sigh) and then the drummer left.  I would spend the next hour and a half to two hours on drums.  When my right arm was about to fall off, I switched to guitar (using a GH3 Les Paul thankfully) and after I got accustomed to the atrocious lag on the HDTV we were playing on (for whatever reason it wasn't calibrated) I started doing well.

If it weren't for the fact that we had the unlock all songs cheat on since the save on that 360 didn't have everything unlocked, I could have gotten two achievements.  I played the Beastie Boys' So What'cha Want on bass, which has the stupidest bass part ever.  Even on Expert, it's all green.  That's it.  I could have gotten the achievement for gold-starring a song (if it wasn't already unlocked, didn't check) and since I upstrummed it and hit all the notes, the Flawless Groove achievement.

Oh well.  I guess I'll care about that a little more when I actually have a 360 and my own profile to unlock achievements on.

The stupid part about it was that for whatever reason none of the DLC was working.  Every time we chose a DLC song it booted us back out to the character select screen.  We attributed it to the lack of an internet connection, but if that's really the case, that fucking sucks.  It already sucks that some XBLA games like I Made A Game With Zombies In It! require you to be connected to the internet to play, but DLC?  That completely ruins convention and festival use possibilities.  Or fuck, if you're traveling with your 360 and want to play, you have to hope there's unsecured wireless nearby.  That's completely retarded and while I hope the next generation of consoles fixes it, in my mind I know it'll actually be worse.  For some fucktarded reason companies are getting really paranoid about how people use the stuff they've legally paid for, and it's getting to the point where Fair Use no longer exists.  A generation or two from now, we'll only be able to play our games when they decide we should.

The sad thing is, nobody in a position of power seems to care about Fair Use.  Anyone who complains about tightening copyright restrictions is immediately labelled a pirate.  This shit is fucking ridiculous, and it's got to fucking stop.  There are completely legitimate reasons for private citizens to use copyrighted material.  If companies would just read Fair Use doctrine instead of pretending it doesn't exist, they'd realize that 90% of what they're clamping down on (WMG vs. GH/RB players on YouTube, for instance) is Fair Use.