Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Friday Jan 13, 2006

Filed under: Rants 17 comments

An advantage of having my domain is that whenever I sign up for a web site that requires registration, I use the site name in my sign-up email address. If I sign up for espn, I’ll give them [email protected]^*. (I get the email no matter what I use for the beginning of the address) This means if they misuse my address or are careless with it in such a way that I start getting spam, I can tell who did it.

Six days ago I signed up for Gamespot. I only did this because there was a file they had that I wanted to download, and I couldn’t get it anywhere else.

This morning I got the following email:

`Greetings! My name is Joseph Ngoho I am sorry for the unusual approach but I have acquired your email address (gamespot@shamusy0ung.com) as a person who is actively involved or is `looking for an online `Business `Opportunity. If this is the case I would be grateful if you would allow me to send you details of an `opportunity that I am currently involved in at the moment. I did not want to send you any details until I had mailed you to seek your `permission first,as experience has taught me that not all leads that we acquire are genuine`Business `Opportunity Seekers, If this is the case for you then please ignore this email as you have already been excluded from future mailing from me. If however It would be ok to send you details of my `Opportunity then please send an email to "[email protected]" with "MORE_INFO" in the subject line and your Name in the text body, without this I cannot send you any further information I am afraid. So why not give it a try?... it's`FREE anyway!... Just give me a chance to show you how our program works. You can cancel your membership anytime you want. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for your time and your cooperation, God Bless You and your Family Yours sincerely, Joseph Ngoho mailto: [email protected] To no longer receive any important information from us, just reply â€˜NOT INTERESTED'to [email protected].

Nothing like a business proposition that begins with subverting your anti-spam with bad punctuation, opens with an obvious lie, insults your intelligence, and ends with insincere closing. I also note that he uses three different email addresses here, all of which are different from the actual return address of the email. I love how the email for suckers is seperate from the email for “unsubscribers”. I betting the latter leads right to the bit bucket.

So it took Gamespot no time at all to sell my email. It might have been sold the same day I signed up. And they didn’t just sell it to some game or computer hardware company, but sold it to some sleazy filthy scammer. It has gotten to the point where we expect legit sites to send us “updates” in the mail when they have new banner ads they want us to see, but simply selling user emails to operations like this? That is low. Really low.

You know I have a winning online marketing strategy for you: sell me the home address of these idiots. I’d pay good money to know where I could find them. I’ll bet unsubscribing is easier in person. With a baseball bat. And then tell me where I can find these whores at Gamespot.

Punks.

^* I replaced the letter “o” in my address in this post with a zero, to defeat spiders. I mention this just to avoid confusion.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Playstation 3

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 11, 2006

Filed under: Game Reviews 5 comments

 Maddening NFL 2006Previous Post

Next PostSystem Shock 

At a time when you can get a half-decent PC for $300 comes the news that the Playstation 3 may cost around $500.

I find it interesting that this rumor appeared after Christmas, and after the XBox 360 recall. I suspect the brains at Sony were watching very carefully how things played out for the XBox. They watched, they saw the mistake, decided the XBox was weak, and it was safe to aim the price point a bit high. This would be true if XBox was the only threat to sales, but it isn’t.

As long as I can remember, PC’s have cost at least double what you might spend on a new console. Now PC’s are cheaper all of a sudden? This is a major shift. Make no mistake: the PS3 has lots of impressive technology for that (still-rumored) $500, but that is still a very tough price. This is a big-boy toy here. Not many parents are going to slap down that much for what is, a its heart, a toy. Not when you can get a machine that will play (last year’s) games, surf the net, do word processing, email and all the other stuff a PC can do, all for a little cheaper. The PS3 is going to be the plaything of bachelors and rich kids if this turns out to be true.

Me? My bachelor days are over. I have three kids and a Gamecube.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 10, 2006

Filed under: Movies 14 comments

 Cowboy BebopPrevious Post

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I’m going to break the very first rule of Dream Cast and propose a recently completed movie. Sue me.

HHGTTG was a lackluster movie. The writing was the worst, but the casting didn’t excite me, either. Let’s re-cast the movie. I bet we can do way better. Let’s stipulate that Arthur and Trillian need to be brits, but the other characters – who are all from outer space – need not have Brittish accents. Let’s also stipulate that we have to replace the whole cast. This would be too lame to keep some actors from the movie, even if some of them were good choices.

	Hugh Grant as Arthur Dent. Martin Freeman was a perfect choice, but Hugh isn’t bad for the part, either. He’s made a career out of playing Perpetually Dumbfounded Englishmen and that’s what the role calls for. Sure, he’s too good-looking and a bit old for the part now, but I think he could still pull it off.
	Johnny Depp as Ford Prefect. Ford is supposed to be a writer and a party animal. Sort of a young outer-space Hunter S. Thompson. Depp could pull off the quirky and eccentric Ford easily.
	Howard Stern as Zaphod Beeblebrox. A perfect match. Look at him! He is Zaphod Beeblebrox! Just give him a second head in CGI and let him ad-lib all his dialog. He wouldn’t even need to read the books, the script, or know what the hell the story is about.
	Steven Wright as the voice of Marvin. Just imagine Steven’s voice doing Marvin’s dialog. It’s funny already.
	Ian McKellen as Slartibartfast. We’ve seen him play Gandalf, so I doubt playing Slartibartfast is much of a stretch from there. The fact that Sir Ian McKellen is a serious Shakespearian-style actor would only reinforce the absurdity of Slartbartfast’s character and speech.
	Kate Ashfield as Trillian. Kate has made 34 appearances in her career, but the only thing she’s done that I’ve seen is Liz in the outstanding Shaun of the Dead. Trillian is an odd character to nail down. She’s grounded enough to have something as dull as an astrophysics degree and acts as one of the most level-headed and sensible characters in the books, yet she runs off with Zaphod, the biggest party animal in a billion worlds. This means that amongst all of the outer-space wierdness we find ourselves with an all-too-familiar situation: why is this intelligent and capable woman hanging out with this self-destructive loser? Kate Ashfield tackled a character a lot like this when she played Liz, and I think it would work here as well.

Think I’m screwing it all up again? Leave a comment.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Cowboy BebopPrevious Post

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Do you want fries with that?

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 9, 2006

Filed under: Nerd Culture 1 comments

 Tale of PantsPrevious Post

Next PostProbabalistic Systems 

So, some goofballs decided to build a computer that was submerged in 8 gallons of cooking oil. The idea is that the large volume of non-conductive liquid can absorb a lot of heat and eliminate the need for fans. Amazingly, it works. The computer is totally silent.

Although: Imagine what a hassle it will be if you need to do any upgrades. Want to put a network card (doesn’t look like you have one in there) into this machine? Enjoy reaching into oil up to your elbows. Also, this sucker is going to be heavy. I hope you don’t need to move it anytime soon.

However, this is just proof-of-concept. I bet with the right case you could achive the same effect using a fraction of the oil used here. I don’t know how much liquid you need to be able to absorb the heat, but I’m thinking 8 gallons is overkill. How little could you get away with? Cases are built to be more or less open inside to allow airflow. With this design, it might be sensible to try to eliminate all the empty space (fill it in with something airtight) to reduce the need for so much oil.

With all thoat oil inside, tipping is a real danger. Also, it looks like the power supply can’t be submerged.

How do people think of stuff like this?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Tale of PantsPrevious Post

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Cowboy Bebop

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 9, 2006

Filed under: Movies 9 comments

 Final Fantasy XPrevious Post

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Let’s do another Dream Cast. If Cowboy Bebop were made into a live-action movie, who would play the main characters? I suggest:

Nick Stahl as the fearless, lanky, pointy-nosed Spike Spigel. Spike isn’t fearless because he thinks he’s indestructable, he’s fearless because he doesn’t seem to care what happens to him. Stahl could both look and act the part, assuming he’s up for the stunts and martial arts.

Ron Glass as the wise, strong, and patient Jet. Jet is tricky because he’s older, yet muscular. Check out some of the scenes from Firefly where Book and Jamie are lifting weights. Ron glass is ripped for a guy his age. He looks and sounds the part. I’d love to see him do it.

AnnaSophia Robb as the clever and curious Radical Edward. (Who is a girl) AnnaSophia starred in Because of Win-Dixie as well as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and she’s brilliant. She’d have to do the part soon, though: she’ll be too old in a couple of years.

~~Kirsten Dunst as the irresponsible, trashy, gambling-addict Faye. A young Sharon Stone would be even better, but I think Dunst could pull it off without us needing to resort to time-travel or cloning.~~

Heather points out that Angelina Jolie is a much better choice if you want trashy. She’s too old, but doesn’t look too old. She’s better than Dunst, anyway.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Final Fantasy XPrevious Post

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9 comments

Avoiding Conflict

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 9, 2006

Filed under: Tabletop Games 24 comments

 Name GamePrevious Post

Next PostFour-Sided 

A major struggle we have out our D&D campaigns is the issue of avoiding conflict. If players are correctly playing their characters, then they should not allow themselves to get sidetracked by random fights. As in, “We need to save the princess, so we don’t have time to screw around with this ettin. Just use some magic to slow it down and we can run away. ” But this isn’t a very satisfying way to play. It feels lame running away all the time, and combat is supposed to be a big part of the game.

So what do you do? Play your character or have fun? This isn’t a great choice to have to make. I can aleviate this by forcing them into combat, but then it just feels like they are on rails, and battles feel contrived. We have had several sessions with no combat, and I can feel the players getting itchy for a fight. But then a chance for combat comes along and they route around it, because even though they want to fight, their characters are more or less sensible guys who are focused on the job at hand. The only time they fight is when they encounter a challenge that blocks their main goals, and even then they usually try to negotiate or reason before resorting to bloodshed.

This is a flaw in the nature of the game itself, really, and I’ve never found the right balance of forced combat and player choice that still keeps the action lively.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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Maddening NFL 2006

By Shamus Posted Sunday Jan 8, 2006

Filed under: Game Reviews 8 comments

 Madden 2006: Football 101Previous Post

Next PostPlaystation 3 

An ongoing problem in the Madden NFL series is the terrible A.I. EA Sports has done a fantastic job of building a game that looks and sounds like real football, but it doesn’t play like real football at all. Sometimes this is amusing, and sometimes it really takes the fun out of the game. Here are a few of the ways in which I’ve seen the game freak out or go wrong:

Crowd cheering is based on how far you run, not on how well you are doing

This one is amusing. Get the ball and take off in the wrong direction. Once you get going, the crowd notices you are running very far very fast and begins to cheer, despite the fact that you are going the wrong way. I love when your fans stand up and cheer you for doing something very, very stupid.

A.I. is senseless when rating trades.

This isn’t too bad. I’ts just an obvious exploit that I can’t believe has survived through the various iterations of the game. Can’t someone take a few hours and fix this?

What you do is trade a lower-rated team for their superior draft pick. For example, if you are rated #1, you can go to the worst team in the league, and they will trade you their first-round pick for your first-round pick. Their first-round pick should be one of the best, and you likely have the worst first-round pick. This is not a complex or obscure issue, and it’s been around for years.

Another trick: Find a player with great stats who is nearing retirement. Then sign them to a ridiculous contract that overpays them, and assumes they are going to be at the top of their game for years. Then trade this player for a solid draft pick with comparable pay.

The A.I. seems to rate this player based on how much you pay him, not based on how many useful years he has left. The upshot is that you get a young stud and they get a broken old man. Eventually they cut him and take a cap hit. That’s bad enough, but you can keep doing this and drive a team to ruin.

A.I. is the same for all teams.

Once you get ahead of the A.I., it makes the same oddball choices no matter who you are playing. Look for them to punt sideways, out-of-bounds on 4th down, because they fear giving up big yardage on the punt return. I’m talking about goofy 10-yard sideways punts. Really strange. I might understand if a few teams reacted this way, but they all do. It really drives home the point that the only thing that varies from team to team is the players: the coaching strategy is almost uniform.

The A.I. is also fond of off-side kicks, which happen way too often (and with far too much success) in this game.

I can’t remember the last time the A.I. surprised me with an unexpected decision.

The running game is lackluster.

Madden 2006 is built around showy long bombs, and the running game just doesn’t feel right. You either run for a loss or a touchdown. You can’t build an offsensive drive around 3 and 4 yard runs. After playing the game for a while, I can sort of see how it is meant to go: You throw a lot, go long, and every five plays or so you throw a running play in there to keep the A.I. guessing. For some teams this makes sense, but for smashmouth teams like Pittsburgh or Jacksonville this doesn’t look right at all.

None of these issues ruin the game. The thing that bothers me is that they have been obvious issues for years, and they continue to release new versions of the game with the same flaws. Disappointing.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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