NetWatcher's Guide to Everything

What's in a name

2006-04-12T09:02:00.000-04:00

From Mirriam Webster:

il·le·gal
Pronunciation: (")i(l)-'lE-g&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Medieval Latin; Middle French illegal, from Medieval Latin illegalis, from Latin in- + legalis legal

: not according to or authorized by law : UNLAWFUL, ILLICIT;

im·mi·grant
Pronunciation: 'i-mi-gr&nt
Function: noun
: one that immigrates : as a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence

I believe the issue to be with the first word, rather than the second.

Common Sense

2006-03-10T13:10:00.000-05:00

It's odd how sometimes it takes something so incredibly stupid that to ponder it would cause blood to shoot out of your nose to point out to yourself that you've never seen something in a certain way. To me, Common Sense has always been a immutible guide as to whether one will be able to actually survive by oneself out in the scary "real world".

I've known people with 'book sense' that were completely clueless and could actually be scammed by the whole "heads I win, tails you lose" deal. To me, common sense was the one quality that you could use in an argument, or proof, or whatever and just point to it and say "see?!". It required no definitions, no qualifiers, no quantitative states. It was the one thing that leveled the playing field.

My perception has had a severe corrective jolt.

After a particular political conversation recently, I realized that the notion of common sense is perhaps the most relativistic quality of human nature. Consider this thought experiment (or if you're brave, actually try this): Go up to a random person on the street and ask them something about civil rights. Affirmative action as applied to college applicants is usually a good test bed for raw data. You'll get as many answers saying that 'common sense dictates that's it's clearly unfair, promoting a bias that it's intended to alleviate' as you will that 'common sense dicates that it's clearly fair, promoting equal chance for entrance to college for all'.

Here's where the relativism comes in. A third party observer to these two viewpoints sees that they are contradictory. However, suppose this third party observer has clairvoyant powers, and can see all of the experiences the two people have had in their life that influence their perception of this topic. The outcome is that both of them are right.

For those keeping score, Schrodinger's Cat just slipped into a non-Euclidian hyperspace of order pi. Consequently, the cat is hungry.

So now the question is begged "What exactly is Common Sense?" How common does something have to be to be included in common sense? Is common sense something that immutable (i.e. 1+1=2 in a sufficiently described numerical system)? Or is common sense just a construct that humans have created as a psychological defense mechanism to ensure that their viewpoints are justified, and keep themselves from going completely bonkers?

Don't think about that too much or you might rip a hole in space-time.

When is an Internet Connection... Part II

2006-02-13T14:09:00.000-05:00

While I can't help but think that forcing people to send e-mail through a mandatory server is a set-up for the recent provisions in the Patriot Act, I can see the reasoning behind it. Your average every-day user doesn't know how to clean viruses off their computers. You know, the viruses that get out there and start spewing spam to every fathomable reach of the net. It may seem that to combat these users, ignorant of their roles in the global problem of spam, the easiest thing to do is simply to filter the broadcast port.

However, I am not one of those users, I know how to take care of my computer, and I don't want someone else sending my mail for me thankyouverymuch.

I called today to get my wonderful BellSouth account deactivated. I figured it'd be an easy process, and it was for the most part. There were 2 things that caught me, however.

1) I was asked the standard "Why are you leaving us" question, but with a twist. The operator asked if I was leaving due to recent policy changes (I assumed she must mean the recent addition of the filtering of port 25).

2) When I answered that yes, I was leaving due to their restrictions on accessing the internet, they offered me the same class of service at a discount.

When I picked my jaw off the floor I declined the offer. Now, for those of you outside of the "Bell Monopoly" (consider yourselves lucky) you must understand that the 'Bell never never takes a profit hit. Perhaps they're losing more business from filtering the internet than they thought they would.

Still, the philisophical problems I see from ISP's restricting access to the Internet scares me. Right now, it's port 25, under the guise of spam control. What if they wanted to block other ports, perhaps ones used for gaming? Would they offer plans to charge for opening those ports back up? There's no law currently that says they can't. What about if they don't like a particular political group? They could simply filter all traffic to a specific website. We've already seen that beginning to happen in China. Even though it's just one port, if the program is successful, and people stand for it, what will the next step be?

When is an Internet Connection Not an Internet Connection

2006-02-09T10:31:00.000-05:00

So...

I go to send an e-mail the other day, something I enjoy doing from time to time, and I realize that I can no longer send e-mail from my computer. Yay! So I dial up BellSouth tech support, and get the standard Indian-trying-to-speak-with-an-American-accent tech guy, who proceeds to tell me that I'll need to be using BellSouth's SMTP server from now on if I want to send mail. I politely inform him that the entire reason I have an SMTP server on my computer is that I don't want to use BellSouth's server, and ask him what I need to do to get port 25 unblocked.

He then tells me that Vishnu has commanded that any residential DSL customers who want the freedom of, say, e-mail, will have to upgrade to a commercial package. It's all good, though, because they can get me this great deal that only adds about $50 to my phone bill to give me access that an ISP should give me anyway.

*sigh*

RoadRunner, here I come.

Happy Chrismahanikwanzika

2005-12-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

I give fair warning....

I'm about to go off.

Nothing gives me the warm fuzzies in this wonderful holiday season more than hearing a bunch of religious people arguing about what to call this wonderful holiday season. Yes, that's right, just pull up a chair to the yule log, and enjoy the fellowship among your fellow man as they take what is, across cultures and religions, a festive time of peace on earth and turn it into a devicive mechanism for providing the age-old argument that "my religion is better than yours".

It's times like this that I truly wonder if the spirit most often refered to by the Christian arch-type of "devil" isn't roaming around trying to stir up something akin to another round of The Crusades. (Looking around at world events, I begin to see the Crusade thing being less funny "ha ha" and more funny "stab stab")

So what's all the fuss about? Apparently some ultra-sensitive Christians are getting twelve shades of upset that people (businesses usually) are wishing them Happy Holidays instead of a Merry Christmas, claiming that it's offensive to them and disrespectful to the holiday.

For the moment, I'll forgo the argument about how offensive saying Merry Christmas is to a Jewish person, or a Pagan (or a dozen other religions for that matter).

I'll focus instead on two things I've always had issues with. The first being political correctness. Most of the time, I really think political correctness is a vehical by which stupidity spreads at the speed of speech. However, usually with political correctness, it's a special interest group of few people that's trying to change the thought pattern of the many people. Call me a democratic utopian, but I have the philosophy that majority should rule in its purest form. With the Merry Christmas debacle- I think I'll call it Christmasgate (Just cause every really big scandalous issue sounds better with 'gate' attached at the end of it)- a different sort of reasoning takes place.

The screwed up philosophy goes something like this: Christians are majority. However, there are other religions to consider. These should also be taken into consideration because 1) There is a separation of church and state for a reason and 2) this country was partly founded due to religious oppression in the pilgrim's own countries. While my "majority rule" philosophy tries to win out, the fact that this country partly exists due to the desire for religious tolerance overrides those feelings.

Simply for this reason, I'd be more willing to say "Happy Holidays" to a stranger on the street, unless it was abundantly clear such a person was Christian, then I'd wish a Merry Christmas to him. Likewise, I'd say "Happy Hanukkah" to someone who was clearly Jewish, and I'd say "Blessed Solstace" to anyone who was a believer of several of the Pagan religions.

The second issue comes with the borg-like nature of Christianity. Not that I mind a religion trying to convert people. Viruses duplicate and spread, as do mind-viruses such as religions, but Christianity has had a history of taking the meme to the ultimate level. We're talking about the attitude at one point in history of "if you don't believe my religion and you don't convert, I'll kill you". I just have a fundamental issue with that type of reasoning in a religion that prides itself on forgiveness and acceptance.

The problem is, with Christmasgate, that mindset is rearing it's ugly little head again. It's almost like the whole of Christianity is saying "This is our holiday, and you'd better not mess with it!". I know that's taking it to the extreme, but this is my blog and I can make leaps of allusion if I want to so nanny-nanny-boo-boo. The problem with the "our holiday" thing is that anyone that believes that is so off-base it's not funny.

Festivals of life were common for centuries before Christ ever came into the picture. The festivals usually centered on or around what we now call the 21st or 22nd of December. This time of year is the winter solstace and is the point regarged by many Pagan religions as the time when the year renews itself. The idea being that (in the Northern Hemesphere) this day is the shortest of the year, the sun rises to it's most southern point and generally there's a sense of "the worst has passed". The fact of the matter with Christmas is that in the early days, Christians were persecuted by these Pagan believers. So, in an attempt to blend in, the early Christians designed their holidays around the Pagan's. In this fashion, they could more easily observe their holidays without standing out. Later, during the reign of the Roman Catholic Church, holidays were organized around Pagan celebrations in an attempt to more easily convert the Pagans to Christianity. There's many artifacts of both of these behaviors still around today, most notably in Christian hymnals. Many of the "old favorites" are in fact re-branded Pagan songs. Even the haunting Christmas song "O Come O Come Emanuel" was originally a Druidic song sung during the winter solstice festivals to summon the comming spring. (I find it interesting that both versions of the song attempt to invoke or summon.)

And so, I ask our Christian friends to remember that the Holiday season is not just a time of celebration for them. It isn't a time of year that's trying to be "taken" away from them (even though they've tried to take it from other religions). It's simply a time of year for people - of all religions - to come together in a time of fellowship and peace. Call it what you will, the sentiment is universal.

And to all, Happy Holidays!

Mario Kart Goodness

2005-11-22T00:33:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've actually been wowed by the mechanics of a game. Mario Kart DS is the latest game to give me the wow factor. It's not in the way the game is played (it's exactly the same as all the other Mario Karts), nor is it because of the unlockable features (again, Mario Kart standard fare). It's for the first use of the DS's WiFi connector. Now here's a good idea. Sure, we've had the PS2 and XBox online for a few years now, but there's just something about a wireless connection to a FREE service that I find quite appealing.

Here's a gaming device that's truly portable. And the best part is that wherever you have a hotspot (which are popping up all over the place lately, it seems) you have access for a pick-up game of Kart. I must say, I'm impressed.

Oh, and for completeness, I've included my friend code over under my profile. See you on the track.

Games You Love to Hate

2005-10-10T11:01:00.000-04:00

I did a very stupid thing last night. I picked up a game, one of the very select few, that I had put down over a year ago due to being sooooo frustrated with it. The thing about this game was that I had such high hopes for it. Myst IV was supposed to be the best Myst game up to that point. Of course, Myst being one of my 2 favorite franchises (the other being the Final Fantasy saga), I really reaaaally wanted to like this game.

Picking it up again, I remembered why I put it down. As I wrote somewhere else here (check the archives, I'm too lazy to actually post the link), the control on this game is the worst I've ever seen. The controls are sluggish, and everything seems to be happening about 3/4 of a second behind me.

Quite frustrating.

However, it is a Myst game, and I MUST finish it. Luckilly, I'm down to the final puzzle now, so it will all be over soon.

I began this sadomasochistic journey after finishing Myst V: End of Ages. I have to give credit to Cyan, they've been through quite a lot the past couple of months. From nearly shutting down to rising back enough to hire almost everybody back, their perserverence in the face of adversity is admirable.

I just wish there had been more to Myst V. Not necessarily more puzzles, although that wouldn't have hurt, just more substance to the experience. For some reason, this game seemed flatter than the previous installments. The story more linear, not having the illusion of freedom of choice which you get when playing the other titles. Trying to play slowly, I was able to complete the game in just under 7 hours with no outside help.

I also was disappointed in the ending (fair spoiler warning here). I had expcted something that would really have major consequences with the D'ni directly, such as the loss of the ability to write Ages (i.e. the End of Ages). As it was, Myst V tied up the Uru story arc rather nicely, but was pretty much just an "episode" in the life of the family Atrus.

Overall, though, the game play was one of the best the series had to offer. There were several settings the fans have been asking for for years, and although the traditional "end of game paradox" was rather transparent, the options and the temptation in the ending scenario are hard to turn away from. Especially with the possibility of a return to where it all began, Myst island.

I certainly hope we seem more from Cyan (I think we will, they just make too many quality games to disappear). I'm looking forward to the next series they stun the world with.

The World has lost its frickin mind.

2005-09-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

In the aftermath of recent events, I'm drawn time and again to the period in our nation's history just after the 9/11 attacks. I see similarities between the two; a great national emergency, far-reaching economic impact, a nation rallying together to take care of its own. Oh yah, and large portion of the population completely losing it.

After the 9/11 attacks, we were scared. In that fear, we lost sight of what was truly important to us as a country, namely freedom and personal privacy. I think the passing of the Patriot Act, the Orwellian manifesto that threatened those basic principals on which our country was founded, was proof of that. All of a sudden, overnight, terrorists were on every street corner, with weaponized everything waiting to eat your children, make long distance calls on your phones, and use your toothbrush. The mass psychological effect: everyone went just a little kookoo.

Now, in a world plagued by already high gas prices; energy crisis looming on a very mutable horizon, people have begun again to believe the second coming is upon us. Depending on the media outlet you choose to feed from, Katrina has knocked out 5%, 10%, 25%, or 40% of the US's gas production. Already, my spin-o-meter is beginning to spring to life. Amid fears that gas was going to reach $100 a gallon anyway, people armed with this new information began applying their high school economics principles and figured out that supply would be low, demand would be high, and gas would soon be attainable only by signing over family members or immortal souls. Of course, this really wasn't helped by gas station managers in certain metropolitan areas hiking the price per gallon up to the 5 and 6 dollar range.

Now here is the really interesting part....While supply would be limited for a time, there really is not too much of a shortage. But, humans are strange beasts, so after processing this impending shortage that was settling itself in the american psyche (fueled by media intervention), the citizens in droves took to the gas stations with reckless abandon. People who would not normally fill up were suddenly buying gallons upon gallons of gas.

The end result was, of course, a gas shortage.

But the irrational exuberence doesn't end there...During my trip to the grocery store (I was there personally to buy a few days of food, my normal fare every few days), what do I witness but people buying milk, bread, canned goods...stocking up. While I can only hope this was a unified showing of support for the people disrupted by the hurricane and that these supplies would somehow find their way to distribution points, their purchase intended for an unprecedented aid of suffering people in a time of great national need, reality kicked me square in the face and I realized these people were stocking up as if we were about to have a hurricane.

Basically, everyone has lost it once more. I'm not sure if a culture, now rooted in a misplaced fear of terrorism, is to blame for the massive paranoia now infecting our society. Perhaps it's the immediate nature of information exchange; the ability to see everything, not only as it happens, but again and again and again on the news and internet. Either way, people need to wake up. "Don't Panic" and get a grip.

Futility is Futile

2005-08-05T00:22:00.000-04:00

Stupidity is something that never ceases to amaze me. I mean, really, it's quite a bit stronger than intelligence. I tend to thing of it as the "even number" of the universe. Think of it like this: even numbers have this annoying way of taking over everything. Case in point, odd + odd = even; even + even = even; odd + even = odd. So far, that's 2/3 even. Not looking good for the odd numbers. Taking it a step further, odd * odd = odd; even * odd = even; even * even = even. Again, 2/3 even. So, mathematical operations in general are stacked to prefer even numbers, roughly at a 2/3 ratio. A theory would be that given an expression F(x), the computational result of that expression will be even roughly 2/3 times.

I think the same thing applies to stupidity. Take the smartest thing ever said, then add something stupid to it. I mean, you don't even have to add anything outrageously stupid, something just minorly stupid added to it and the whole thing is ruined into a stupid statement. We get something like this: smart + stupid = stupid; stupid + stupid = stupid; smart + smart = smart. I believe this shows that the universe actually is predetermined to favor stupid things, in a way quite similar to our even / odd experiment.

Actually, this little mind exercise is the only thing that keeps me halfway sane when dealing with the public in general. I've come to expect that roughly 2/3 of the people I meet in my lifetime will show a tendency to the stupid. Since I deal with quite a few customer bases in work, and come in contact with quite a few people over the internet, that also means I'll be in touch with quite a few smart people. Thank-you statistics for saving the day and bringing hope to those of us who think way too much.

So what has brought on this rant on stupidity and the need to divulge the secret of why there's so much stupidity in the world? Today, I received this message as a work order. I got it exactly as I show it here from 1st level support. I have not modified spelling (such as it is), grammar (if it even exists), or anything else. As background, troubleshooting my employer's e-mail systems is a facet of my job:

Hello i was wondering that when i send some emails it is just transferred and the other party doesn't not recieve them but others are delievered and I was wondering why that was happening?

WTF!?

No, really WTF???

I can't make this stuff up. I think it was worse when I was working for a school district, and would get work requests like this simply for the fact that the thought kept going through my mind that the people sending these requests were teaching our children. Yah, there's a comforting thought.

I say, I say it's a joke, boy.

2005-04-22T09:19:00.000-04:00

I'm not exactly sure how to even approach this latest confirmation of stereotypes for South Carolina. As a resident (how much longer to remain that way seems to be up the air right now), I feel the pangs of having to "prove" myself as being an intelligent individual when dealing with people from other areas of the country / world. It's a pretty well established fact that when you tell someone from other parts of the country that you're from SC, they automatically deduct about 20 IQ points from whatever they initially thought you had from your first impression.

That said, Rep. John Graham Altman absolutely in no way expresses any viewpoint of mine. Rather ironic, considering that by definition his title implies that he voices the will of his constituants. It was bad enough that he made a complete ass of himself to the state, but then to turn around and claim to be speaking for all of SC and trying to make all of us look bad on on national news was just too much. I really can't believe that someone this idiotic and arrogant ever actually won an election. I also can't believe that as a politician he can't see that he's really flubbed up and needs to backpedal to gain public favor again.

Alas, it's people like this that make up our law-making body, and hence South Carolina continually seems to be about 50 - 75 years behind...well...the rest of evolution, it seems. It's exactly this same blissful ignorance which vaules poultry above humans, that also seeks to basically make reading a map illegal. So....the question is begged, why aren't lawmakers following the advice of the 'enlightened' Rep. Altman and "do their homework" so as not to draft bills that are "created with an abundance of ignorance"?

I think I may have insight into that, from Rep. Altman:

"I never know what I'm going to say until I say it, so I am kind of interested in hearing what I think."

I really think I need to find a new state to live in....

Misplaced Legislation

2005-04-07T00:20:00.000-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me how absolutly idiotic government can be. I sometimes wonder what our forefathers would say if they could travel to our era and see such amazingly dangerous legislation like the Patriot Act. It should not surprise me that such "disposable legislation" would show up in my own state's House, but somehow bill H.3777 surprises me.

It's not that trespassing on private land gets me, far from it. Trespassing is a topic near and dear to my heart as I've been dealing with it ever since I moved into my house. My back yard borders a very popular commercial area, and my neighborhood becomes the pedestrian's choice for coming and going from the restaurants, malls, theatres, and bars.

The issue that surprises me is that the bill in question goes to such great lengths to discriminate against Geocaching specifically. Everything the bill mentions already has a law governing the particular conduct. There are laws governing trespassing on private property. There's laws governing leaving unwanted items in public places (commonly referred to as littering). There's even laws governing access to arecheological sites.

So then, why the push to create a seperate set of rules for a particular group? I thought those days were over. I guess I'm wrong.

Perception and Reality

2005-03-02T01:05:00.000-05:00

I'm always amazed at the fact that there are people in the world who really don't care what they do to people, as long as it makes them look good. I had the misfortune of working for one of those people in my last job. Basically, the entire incident broke down to his bad style of management getting him in trouble, and needing someone he thought wouldn't fight back to lay the blame on. And, for a time, he was successful.

The end result being my removal from my job, and a return to the job I was doing when I first joined the company some years before. Not quite the direction I was planning for my career. Needless to say, there were / are / will be hard feelings there. However, the universe is a closed system, and energies that are expended in one way will be returned to their owner in kind.

Now, I look back at the former manager of mine, and in the time that I've been away from that job, he's been demoted (ironically to a level equivalent to my old position), and has been trapped underneath the house of cards he's been building around himself. Of course, now he has no one to pin the gross incompetence on, so he's looking worse and worse to the higher ups.

If he's intelligent, he'll learn from the experience, and perhaps he'll be a bit more understanding should he ever be in that position again. My own experience, however, tells me he just won't get it. After all, it's the rest of the world that's screwed up, not him.

Ignorance must truly be bliss.

Caribbean Blue

2004-12-01T13:44:00.000-05:00

After doing it 4 times, I have come to the conclusion that nothing relaxes someone more than a nice cruise through the Caribbean...especially the Eastern Caribbean. I've seen many of the islands there, and have found that each one is different, unique, and offers something special to visitors that go there.

On this last trip, a long 10 day cruise, I visited St. Martin, Barbados and Martinique. St. Martin was very nice. The people were friendly; the island is so small that everyone there knows everyone else. It had a very casual, laid-back, relaxed feel to it. Despite the fact that from most places on the island you can see Saba, a very intimidating looking volcano south of St. Martin.

Barbados was a complete washout - it apparently had been raining non-stop for a few weeks before we arrived. The northern roads were completely washed out, and all of our tours were cancelled. I did go ashore, however, and can now say I have at least been to Barbados.

Our last stop before heading home was the picturesque, and wholly unique island of Martinique. This island, like St. Lucia, stands out in my mind. The people were the most friendly of any I've found in the Caribbean. These people go out of their way to do nice things for each other, regardless if they know each other or not. About half-way through the tour of the island, I realized why.

Now to say that there are no gentle slopes on Martinique would be the worlds greatest understatement. I really couldn't find a "slope" that didn't angle at about 85 degree's straight down. I'm assuming this is because the island is 100% volcanic, and is composed of layers of volcanic ash sandwiched between volcanic rock. Not a terribly stable setup. Anyway, taking a tour of the island, in a full size tour bus over two-lane roads up these impossibly steep mountain slopes gives one an amazing perspective on life... mostly because you know that with one wrong move of the bus driver, yours will be ending soon.

On this tour, I noticed immediately the steep mountain sides, and just as the thought "I wonder if there is a problem with landslides here" passed through my mind, we came up to the Advanced Landslide Alert Station. I didn't freak quite yet, however I did make a red starred mental note. Also, I bared in mind that our ultimate destination on this trip was St. Pierre, the city that Mt. Pelee destroyed at the turn of the twentieth century.

While in St. Pierre, we stopped at a very old Catholic church. Behind the church was a very old graveyard, and futher, behind that was one of the island's trademark cliffs. Being an avid geocacher, I noted the graveyard as a possible site for a virtual cache. It began raining, so I decided to observe from the inside of the bus. As I watched, I noticed a waterfall coming from the cliff behind the cemetery. The word 'picturesque' came to mind until I realized that the waterfall had become very muddy. I thought about it a few more moments then realized that the waterfall had not been their prior to the rain. It was about that time I noticed the muddy sludge coming down the road toward the bus from the direction of the cemetery.

We left shortly thereafter.

I really never have seen an island that was so intent on killing off its inhabitants. It really is quite interesting; from landslides, flash floods, to volcanos, earthquakes and the abundance of cliffs, the island itself really goes out of its way to harm people. Thinking about it on the return trip to the ship, I realized that it was probably these challenges that the island provided that was the catalyst for such a willing, helpful, society. Something along the lines of 'if we're going to survive here, we'll have to get along'.

Now, if more people would realize that.

Llama Llama Duck!

2004-11-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I'm attracted to odd, weird things. It probably has something to do with being repeatedly dropped on my head as an infant (though my mother denies this ever happening). Anyway, I'm destined to always laugh at things that some people don't find funny.

Of course, there are those like myself that are the reason these memes get started, spread, and infiltrate our culture. It really makes me wonder if there is such a thing as a mind virus. Of course if there is, then religion would be one of the most virulent in existance.

Good Game Design

2004-10-27T14:37:00.000-04:00

I've just finished playing through Ubi's new addition to Myst - lore. I have to say, the game has some really nice eye-candy, and the musical score is really great. Then comes the conditional: like most video games being published recently, it doesn't look like there was much planning on how the player would react in the situations presented in the game. The design falls short of engaging the player to the point of seemless immersion.

Case-in-point: A player needs to have the motivation to continue on a line of thought (especially in a game with a design as open as Revelation's). Sure, I explored Spire and Haven, but with only going through about half of each of those ages, I had already figured out what had happend, most of the motivation behind what happened, and how the brothers had escaped. Basically, I got half way through the Age, realized what was going on, knew I could always return to Tomahna (the starting point), and had no motiviation to continue to explore the Age.

Unfortunately, the game logic won't progress the story until you've completed those Ages. Some would argue that is motivation enough, however for true immersion, you have to act the way you would in the "real world". In the real world, I would have done what I did initially, and leave the Age in a hurry, rushing to Serinia to rescue Yeesha.

Myst, by default, must approach things from a logical perspective. The series has lent itself to inviting the player to ponder why a particular machine is where it is, what purpose a puzzle serves. Usually these lines of thought are instrumental in solving the puzzles. For the most part Revelation follows those rules, but there's several places where it diverges. Most notably in Spire: How exactly did Sirrus place those conductors with such precision? And where did he get the metal to construct his machines? Presumably he'd been working on them long before he had contact with his father. In Haven, why is there a locked door to nowhere? (The argument can be made that Achenar had gone positively bonkers, but I really don't buy that.) The most frustrating things come when the answer to a puzzle involves "just playing around with the controls" until things work (that was actually how the strategy guide described solving one of Spire's puzzles). There should always be a logical means to figure out what needs to be done.

I also found the controls to be frustrating, both with the physical mouse control as well as the choice for "warp points" (not to be confused with "zip points"). The mouse has a type of accelorator on it, which make timing pinpoint moves (a must for some puzzles in the game) near impossible. Add onto that the distance between walking points, and mazes in Serinia's Stone Forest and Haven's jungle, and you have a real mess trying to figure out exactly where you are.

This isn't to say the game is a bad game, far from that, it just means that more detail needed to be placed on how the player's reactions to the environment would interact with the game's logic. And there lies the secret to good game design: construct a method to guide the player so that the player doesn't even realize they're being guided. This takes a lot of stress of the player, and makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

A Grand Marketing Strategy

2004-05-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

I've always loved video games. Pac-Man, Frogger, Space Invaders, Mario, Sonic; Nintendo, Atari, Pong, Sega, Playstation: these are things I spent my childhood with. Wonderful classics like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy which all have spawned very marketable and popular brands. And my fixation has never been strictly to platforms. The PC has brought many hours of enjoyment from games like King's Quest and Myst to the completely mindless violence of Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake.

It occurred to me that we've reached a time where the real classics, the true roots of modern video games, have never been played or seen by the latest generation of video gamers. Zelda came out nearly 20 years ago, the Atari 2600 is teetering on the edge of being 25 years old. Apparently video game companies have also noticed this little factoid and are trying to rectify the situation. A new trend has started where video game companies are releasing old games as new. The most blatant example would be Nintendo's resurrection of the Mario empire. Over the past two years, they have successfully remarketed every Super Mario game, successfully I might add, on the Game Boy Advance.

Now what came as a surprise to me was that I own the originals of all these games. I also own the remakes of these games when they were published on the Super Nintendo as "Super Mario All-Stars". Yet, I still bought these latest remakes. I still own all my systems, all the games are in perfect working order, but I still bought these games that I already had. I don't travel that much, and the ages of the games range from 10-20 years old. I've played all of them enough that I could probably reproduce the maps given a pointy stick and a little bit of sand. It's not like there's anything new in them. It's not like I can't play them whenever I want, but for some reason, I end up buying them, and then playing them all over again.

It's not just limited to Mario, either. I have a couple of copies of "Zelda: A Link to the Past" which was released on the Game Boy Advance. I also have the Zelda Collector's Edition Game Cube compilation of just about ever Zelda game ever made. Recently, I bought the Sonic Mega Collection, which takes all the Sonic games I have for my Genesis, and places them ever so nicely on the Game Cube. Again, they're straight ports.

Don't get me wrong, all this nostalgia is great and everything, but it would be nice to get some new games with the classic feel. The last we heard of Mario, he'd traded in his block stomping days for an eco-friendly water cannon...either that or he was off partying with mini-games. The best "classic" style game released recently (the only one I can find, in fact) is Metroid: Zero Mission. It's a straight platform shooter that relies strictly on skill and good old-fashioned finger work to get through. I may come off as some sort of curmudgeon, but a game can have all the 3-D whiz-bang stuff in the world, and still come off as a completely horrendous experience if the game play is bad, or if the underlying idea is flawed.

Therein lies the problem of video game design: create something that remains true to the skill of playing, and mix it with the latest in technology. Games that do this are very rare. In fact, the last one that I can think of that was actually very successful with doing just that was Metroid: Prime. It was really a true 3-D version of Metroid. It remained faithful to the game design that was set out for the games, and still managed to bring in the best of a 3-D environment without really sacrificing anything.

I'm sure that when it's repackaged as a Dodecahedratron-2000 game in 20 years, I'll buy it.

And you thought Teletubbies was bad!

2004-04-20T14:48:00.000-04:00

Being a hard working member of the work force, I usually get to be blissfully unaware of the amazing drivel that is daytime television. I'm sure that some network executive out there thought long and hard before okaying a show that explores the deep metephysics behind exactly who is the father of a 3-year old kid whose mother has slept with every other man who are guests on every other talk show airing that morning. I can't accept the possibility that American minds have so deteriorated that this type of show is actually entertaining.

I have to wonder, though, if this is in fact the case, where did the society start breaking down. In the olden days, books were popular, to the point that epic classic novels were written to inspire and spark the imaginiations of those that read them. The generation resulting from that constant stimulation of the mind created arguably some of the quickest techological advances the world has seen, almost as if a second renassance had occured. Now, from the mental stimulus of Melville, Dickens, and Shelly, society has Ricky Lake to keep us company in the weekday mornings.

Surely this can't just have happened overnight, and surely this type of thing has to have it's roots in something picked up in childhood. Watching daytime TV this morning, I think I may have found the reason that people's attention spans have shrunk to microscopic sizes. Move over Barney, say goodbye to the Teletubbies, the UK has unleashed a new horror to young children's minds: Say hello to Boobah!. Really, if you haven't seen this show, I suggest you do, simply for the shock value. I know I found myself asking what crack these people were on when making this show. Besides resembling a very bad acid trip, the show really doesn't have any redeeming qualities. The show's creator insists that the show promotes mathematical concepts, geometry, language skills, as well as problem solving skills. Quit a feat for a show that features no words, and a very trippy monotonous musical "score" if you can call it that.

Actually, I first found the flash on Ebaums's World without knowing that there was actually a show that TV execs spent money on. In fact they spent money on 104 episodes of this show. I really need to find out how to get money like that. If this show can get funding, then I should be able to get money to do anything I want. I know....a new show featuring a camera aimed at a yard. As the grass grows, your child will be exposed to predictive skills "What do you think will happen to the grass over time?". Language skills: if your child already knows "green", you can introduce the word "verdant". Mathematical skills: Without words, your child will see one blade of grass growing right next to another, that's addition! Problem Solving: What will the grass need to grow? Imagination: What if the grass was actually poision ivy? . I mean it worked for Boobah.

What they seem to be missing is that it's actually the parent's involvement with the child that sparks learning.

Life, The Universe and Jelly Doughnuts

2004-04-16T10:19:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking lately, a very dangerous endeavor indeed, about several of my old theories from days gone by: ie. college. I had this crazy idea back then that perhaps the civilizations of the ancient world weren't quite as isolated as modern archaeologists think. Several things lead me to this conclusion: most prominently, the idea of dragons. There are oriental dragons, Celtic dragons, winged serpents of the central Americas, and various other dragons spattered across the tales of ancient history. Probably not all that spectacular, looked at from the perspective of today's world of instant global communication. But back when the most glamorous mode of transport was one's own legs, the fact that idea could spread globally is a bit impressive.

More impressive still is the idea that in all of the various cultures, the dragon/winged serpent represented almost a deity like control over creational chaos. Celtic legends tell of their part in the formation of the world, as do Oriental mythos. Even Native Americans acknowledge the winged serpent's role in celestial events. So the natural question is: how did these separate cultures, who supposedly had no contact with each other, come up with the same fanciful creature that has the same basic role cross-cultures?

As a mathematician, I can't believe it's just chance. And I can't think that modern archaeologists, looking at things thousands of years old, can't get the story right. No slight against them, it's just that their frame of reference is several centuries out of date for the things they're studying. It would be like an alien race coming to earth in the distant future and trying to figure out why records show that humans killed each other for little green slips of starched fiber with other dead human's faces on them. Some of their scientists would contend that in the late 20th century, a mythical ethereal system designed to send only two pieces of information, a '1' and a '0', existed that connected everyone in the civilization to everyone else. The rest of their scientists would say that no evidence of this obviously absurd "interworking network" exists though many fictional period pieces making reference to it survived through time, and they would be puzzled as to why humans apparently spent so much time sitting in front of a plastic box with a glass shield on it. Let's face it, if electricity ever fails, all of the information in the world can be sitting on computers, but there would be no way to access it.

So exactly why couldn't the civilizations of the past have had contact with each other just like they do today? What if the infrastructure that connected them just hasn't survived? We know there were many advanced ideas in the greatLibrary at Alexandria, which unfortunately were lost some 1600 years ago. Some 'new' geometric and mathematical formulas and proofs that are just being rediscovered now were thought to be held in thelibrary. What other information in that library has been lost that could shed light on this puzzle?

When looking at things, the interpreter's point of view will skew any reliable analysis.

Yvan eht nioj.

2004-04-05T19:10:00.000-04:00

Advertisements. They're everywhere. I can see purpose for them in specific places: magazines, certain TV channels. But I fail to see the reason for their placement in things that really don't need the added revenue generated by adverts. One such place is in movie theaters when they're placed on the big screen before the previews. Now previews are another rant all to themselves, but really, with the amount made for the film companies in ticket sales alone, especially for blockbuster movies (where the concentration of corporate ads are) I really don't see where they're hurting for money.

Now some will argue, rightfully so, that the movie companies aren't making much (if anything) off these advertisements, but that the money does go to the theater that's showing the movie. I guess it's to offset lighting / heating / air conditioning costs. It's been my experience that there are other ways to offset those costs without resorting to showing ads to a captive audience. Let's take a look at the common modern theatre:

Usually, these days, you have to have at least a dozen or so individual screens that begin showing even the crappiest of movies at noon pretty much everyday. Now that's just not good business sense; here you have the expense of lighting and heating 12 very large rooms everyday beginning at noon and usually lasting until 1 or 2 in the morning. For ease of argument, let's say 12 hours. Now, your average person on Monday through Friday works until 5pm, meaning, they probably won't be able to see a movie until 6 or 7. Unless it's summer, kids are in school usually until 3 or 4 in the afternoon meaning, the vast majority of them won't be seeing movies until 5 or 6. So, if the theater opens at noon, that's 5 hours of operation (heating / electricity / salaries) for the one or two tickets that they sell during that time. Those 5 or so hours can't possibly be profitable.

If the theater owners would just not open until 5 or 6 in the evenings, they would be able to cut costs, and deliver a movie to more people, including the few people that would have been in the theater from noon till 5.

Well, they make the money up in concessions. Do they ever. The thing is, I don't buy movie concessions because they're so expensive. If they would just lower the price a little bit, they'd sell more of the products, and make more of a profit. They'd actually get people like me buying the popcorn and the soda as well as the people that are buying the stuff now. It would result in an overall increase in profit, and would make for a better movie experience for the customer: everybody wins.

That said, I want to send a big shout out to Mamma Celeste's Pizza's. "Ooo so fresh!" (Go buy one now.)

(Really, and tell them NetWatcher sent you.)
(I need that commission this month.)

2004-04-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

A quick update to make things feel a little more "like home."

In other news, I really have never seen the point of April Fool's day. I mean, I'm sure there's some religious absolution for the existence of a day where one can commit a rather common, yet bad sin (lying) and completely rid oneself of the guild simply by shouting a few magic words (April Fools!) within a given time frame. Confessionals should not be near as crowded today as they are during the rest of the year. While this is viewing religious ramifications of the holiday from a purely human standpoint, I do rest in the knowledge that God, whomever, whatever, or whenever that may be does indeed celebrate this peculiar holiday...after all, I can find several instances of a higher being's "April Fools". I just have to turn on my TV and watch any news channel.

(NetWatcher's fair and balanced opinion. I report, you decide.)

2004-03-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

The FDA really has me wondering these days. I mean, we don't hear anything out of them - well virtually nothing - for years, and then all of a sudden, they're banning everything. They just got through with ephedra, and now they're zeroing in on a substance called "andro".

Let's take a look at ephedra. They're claiming that it is posing a "significant health risk" to a certain group of people that use it. This amazing statement is backed up, very scientifically, by evidence of several hundred deaths over the past decade or so. At least, that's what the scientists studying this substance say. The latest high profile death being of a baseball player who collapsed and died on the practice field. An autopsy showed that he had been taking ephedrine based products and that the stress on his heart had contributed to his death.

Now I'm not one to deny the government their right to protect their citizens - that's the whole reason I pay taxes - but, come on, let's take a look at the research that went into this. Supposedly, this ban is being brought about because of a significant health risk (including high blood pressure, cardiac arrest, stroke) that this line of products is supposed to contain. Of all the people that have taken it over the past decades alone (the product has actually been used in parts of China and Asia for thousands of years) the research only points to a few hundred people who died as a direct result of using these products. If this is such a significant health risk, with the multi-billion dollar industry that's arisen just from pushing ephedra products, shouldn't there be a higher mortality rate? Of the millions of people and the billions of doses taken over the past 10 years or so, if there really was a health risk, shouldn't we be seeing mass deaths in the 10,000's or greater? Not to go into a whole different rant, but doesn't tobacco related products kill more than a hundred people per year, much less a decade?

To thoroughly examine the issue, though, it would be remiss for me not to mention that in most of the documented deaths "caused" by these ephedra products, the shear amount present in the victim's system would be enough to kill just about anything. Of course, used properly, I've seen ephedra products do exactly what they're supposed to without any ill side effects. However, in this day and age of typical American philosophy and the recent fitness craze, if one works, then 10 will work ten times better. People uneducated about what ephedra actually does to the human body assume that if they're losing weight taking what the directions tell them to, then if they take more surely it will work faster and better.

Instead of banning a supplement that actually works the way it's supposed to, why not do what we do with alcohol and tobacco products: place a warning on the container, place an age limit on who can buy the products. There's too many products on the market now promising unattainable results, the modern day version of snake oil, to ban a product that actually works and has worked for a couple of millennia. Why ban something that really isn't dangerous when used properly? You know, taken in mass quantities, humans can overdose on water, too, resulting in a very painful, messy death. Better not let the FDA find out, they'll ban that next! (Oh, and watch out for salt, too. That can definitely kill you if you take a few pounds of it. oh, and eggs, they're really bad for you this week, I think.... oh! and be really careful of red meat.... and food high in carbs... and food low in carbs (got to make sure you get energy for yourself)... and lowfat food, all those bad substitutes...and food high in fat, that'll give ya a heart attack....and ....)

2004-03-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

I really haven't lived very long on this blue-green orb, floating at ungodly speeds through the universe, however I have noticed things that just need pointing out. That's what this blog is all about, pointing out the things that just need to be showcased. You know the types of things; they usually become topics explored bluntly in South Park or Simpsons episodes. So, while I can guarantee you won't agree with everything I say, I invite you to come and view the opinions of one of the inhabitants of this small speck in the scheme of everything.