Youtube's new user profile page

Besides generally disliking the new youtube user profile page there is this annoying bug. If you go to the comments tab of a video you are watching it tells you that you need to sign in to comment on said video, even if you are signed in. You can work around this by clicking "See all comments and video responses" on the comments tab which brings you the video's youtube page at which point you can comment. It is very frustrating.

Example Of Bug

ActiVision(less)

*Please be advised links may have language not suitable for children*
Everyone's heard the controversy over poor phrasing by the CEO of ActiVizzard and from a gamer in a gaming community, only those with a pulse and a mind that can actually think for themselves are troubled by it. In general a large majority just don't care because they love to gobble up "sequel" after "sequel" of the same dull and boring material. Call of Duty(Insert sequel title or number here) will probably keep on selling till a vast majority of mind-numbed (numb-minded?) FPSers finally crave something new and refreshing. Now don't get me wrong, I used to love CoD but now it's getting ridiculous, to inducing nausea and random spurts of rage . ActiVizzard's versions of a once enjoyable game is nothing compared to Infinity Ward's contributions to the series and yet this company OWNS them. Not to mention you have a merger of these two companies and one is dominating PC gaming (sadly) with an easily playable, cookie cutter, monotonous, and vastly populated MMORPG and yes you can hate on me for that you fanboy/girl(s). Then you have a console dominating force "exploiting" games with sequel and the ability to cover all consoles. Then you have the similar theme of reguratating themes whereas Blizzard's side typically adds something to their games and "polishes" them. In fact I enjoy Blizzard's sequels very much, they add beneficial design elements that make the game better than the previous.

So why the heavily opinionated ramble of hatred aimed at this company?

It's simple, I don't want to see Call of Duty 12, Diablo 7, Starcraft: Beyond, etc. I don't want the same game rehashed and retextured or insignificant changes. While it has been stated that Blizzard Entertainment will continue to function as normal I am fearful that they will overdo it. Even though it is still early even a year and change after the merge. Companies are a winding and turmolous system of nonsense and nonstop murder and mayhem. Sure there are no human casualties but there are plenty of company and game casualties. Hellgate London headed by a former group of Blizzard Entertainment should have been a smash. Finances took it's toll and the company went under, death by bankruptcy. Hellgate London was extremely under advertised, it was underdeveloped due to financial restraints but the game was fun, new, fresh, creative, and dare I say it...not a sequel, heaven forbid. Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, 50 Cent game, and the Riddick game (not that I care about the last two) were scraped off the boot of ActiVizzard because they didn't "have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises." Even though Ghostbusters would've netted them a huge quick slam of cash as well as Wet an action game in a Kill Bill style artistic feel. Oh well, we'll learn soon.

As a (hopefully) future game designer I would just hope that there is a small iota of people out there that will enjoy the games I hope to make as an excuse to be creative, not to make a dollar. Although a dollar would be nice just having them widely distributed or enjoyed or sold or whatever comes would make myself feel better.

/rant


R.I.P. Games created for the sole purpose of entertainment and not making a buck.
R.I.P. Flagship Studios
R.I.P. Sierra
R.I.P. New and refreshing games that aren't exploited, I mean molested, I mean stomped into the ground.

/mourn

Dreamer, out.

Leaving VPSLink Moving to Blogger and DropBox

Its been quite the bumpy ride moving from my own virtual private server to a 100% blogger hosted blog. Blogger's custom domain support is flaky at best with recommendations across the web to fix issues with it by turning it on and off over and over again. I've also moved all of my files from the files subdomain on vpslink to the free 2G I get at DropBox. So far I have had nothing but positive experiences with it.

The down side of moving off my own server is that all of the google search result listings for my old blog now error out. I also had alot of problems migrating my wordpress export file into Blogger. Each service has their own export/import file format. There are web based tools like Wordpress2Blogger that will convert a wordpress export to a blogger import file but I have had mixed results with doing this.

Now that Google is providing Java support through Google App Engine, I have little reason to continue to pay 40$/month for my own server. I look forward to playing with GAE later this year.

No LAN play for Starcraft 2

A few days ago blizzard announced that Starcraft 2 would not have LAN based multiplayer because such a feature would increase piracy. Many Starcraft fans are very upset about this news and I would like to attempt to explain why.

There a couple styles to multiplayer gaming.

Xbox Live/Halo - This style is much older than Halo but Halo is a perfect example of this. Each gamer in his or her own home on her own network connection signs onto the service. Friends find each other through the service and can game together perfectly fine. Up to 16 friends can play together (big team slayer) on Halo.

Starcraft/LAN Party - Instead of the different players playing from their own couch/desk, everyone comes together to one location be it a persons house or a larger venue.

What does battlenet2.0 mean for lan parties?

If the lan party has a internet connection everyone would connect to battle.net and join a private game. Depending on how the networking software was written each player could communicate with the game server and the server coordinated all communication between players. This is how games like World Of Warcraft work.

OR the game could designate a "Host" and all game communciation would remain within the hosts network. This way traffic wouldnt have to leave the network then come back in. This is how games like Team Fortress 2 work (for xbox360).

The second option would be better for the LAN style play because even a sufficiently large internet pipe would be stressed handling 20+ gamers communicating with battle.net servers. But the second option may not happen. Blizzard may decide allowing host to peer traffic is too hard to prevent cheating and statistics rigging.

All of this rests on the assumption that the LAN party has the internet.

Many big LAN parties are not in someones home, and it can be very difficult to get internet in whatever venue they choose to host the party in. In this scenario they cannot play Starcraft 2 at all. Even with the host to peer traffic because it requires connection to battle.net to create the game.

Why do old Starcraft fans care about LAN play so much?

Many of fans of the original Starcraft found out about the game through these LAN parties. Starcraft become something of a social phenomena where friends would get together to play a few games. For these players who broke their Starcraft teeth playing in friends basements, this decision is the most upsetting. Because Battle.net 2.0 encourages players to play at home, on their own internet connection communicating with their friends by microphone.

Has google talk been abandoned?

Today Customize Talk announced that it would be shutting its doors due to lack of updates to Google's instant messaging client Google Talk.

On August 24th 2005 Google Talk was launched. It has now been three coming up on four years since the official release and we still only have a windows client. In November 26th 2007 two years later group chat was finally added. Not much else has been added since then. There have been updates to the web based google talk clients, but none to the desktop application.

One has to ask, has the google talk desktop client been abandoned? Or have developers been pulled from it to focus on other products?

Lonely Island - Im On A Boat (Acoustic!)

By far the best song on Lonely Islands new release Incredibad is Im On A Boat. The only thing I love more than yelling and cussing about being on a boat, is a complete acoustic reenvisioning. Enjoy:



Here is the original if you have not seen it yet:

Court room puts evidence online

A Florida woman accused of killing her toddler daughter made a rare court appearance Thursday for a hearing regarding "disturbing" images of the scene where her daughter's skeletal remains were found.

Reads the CNN news article on the Casey Anthony trial. The issue at hand is the defense wishes to send photo's to experts outside the state of Florida. There is a concern that said experts could leak these disturbing photo's to the media. As a software developer the solution they came up with baffles my mind.

The parties agreed that the defense would set up a secure Web site for its experts to evaluate the photographs.

Instead of hand delivering copies of these photos to experts that have signed confidentiality agreements, they are going to be setting up a 'secure' website that contains all of these photos. They then have to communicate to the experts in some fashion how to login to said website. If the prosecutors were concerned about leaking with a sneaker net, why is no one throwing a red flag about putting this stuff up on publically accessible webserver?