Kaz's Rants and Reviews

12:15am: Crisis Core
FF7 Crisis Core is a great looking game. It's also definitely only for preexisting FF7 fans as the primary reason to play it is to fill in the storyline.

The combat isn't quite as button mashy as I had been lead to believe, but it's conceivable that you could get through it by just pressing one button repeatedly. Though you might have to put various cure spells on the next bar over and slip over and cast them periodically. The slot machine isn't quite as random as it seems.

The main thing that annoys me though is the missions. The main storyline is extremely short (I'm 17 hours in with 35% of the optional missions done, and am to the last step before you can't go back to midgar. I think that means less than 3 hours of actual storyline play left.)

The missions are there to fill in the slack, but they don't really do it all that well. There's tiny bits of storyline in the missions, and you get levels and bonus items for completing them, but mostly there's about 7-8 maps with different treasure chests scattered about and certain areas blocked off. The same 7-8 maps... for every mission...

I really want to finish the game, but I think I'm getting into a Chalain-esqe dilemma. If I go ahead and finish the main storyline, I'm going to sell the game back or give it to my brother without completing the missions... But if I keep working on the missions, I may never actually go complete the game! I've already delayed 2 weeks, not touching the game at all because all there was to work on without biting the bullet and going past the point of no return in the storyline is missions. And the missions are just so dreary.

I have discovered a way to make them go faster though. You only encounter enemies in the large rooms, I suspect something to do with the camera. If you walk very close to the walls in the big rooms, you rarely get into a random battle. This saves a couple minutes on each mission...

11:40am: Angelina Jolie is at least consistent.
I heard recently that Jolie has obtained the movie rights for Atlas Shrugged. The immediate question was one of "can one of those Hollywood types NOT butcher the whole idea of the book."

I was rather pessimistic about it. I've encountered another thing that says that it might be less an assured trainwreck, and more of a probable trainwreck.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217_pf.html

Most Hollywood types will rail on the US for not doing something about Darfur, but will then turn around and rail against the US for being in Iraq, never mind that if we bailed on Iraq it would make Darfur look like a family picnic. Jolie at least is being consistent on this issue, saying that we should take care of the humanitarian issues in Iraq too. (We were the catalyst for opening up those humanitarian issues that had been buried underground under Saddam, so we really should stick around to stabilize it.)

If she truly is a fan of Ayn Rand, hopefully she won't butcher this as bad as it would most likely be butchered under the average Hollywood socialist.

4:04pm: If you're going to specify the background, don't forget to specify the foreground!
This is one of the bigger annoyances with the web in general. Every once in awhile I set myself up on a light-on-dark color scheme, similar to my IRC colorset.

This frequently exposes some bad design decisions with some webpages out there. Even some of the big players. Take for instance, Livejournal. This screen I'm typing on is properly light on dark, but I had to set my "light" to be about a 70% instead of my normal 100% white. Even though this main editing window is properly light on dark, the rest of the entry fields have a background color set, but no foreground color. So I end up with a ghostly 70% on 100% white effect going. Readable, but not easily.

All from the fact that there's no foreground color specified in this block of CSS code.

input.text,
textarea.text,
select.select {
    margin: 0px 3px 0px 0px;
    padding: 2px 2px;
    background: #fff url(/img/input-bg.gif) repeat-x 0 -1px;
    border: 1px solid #bbb;
    border-top: 1px solid #999;
    border-left: 1px solid #999;
}

GMail also has this problem. It seems to be even worse because the main text entry area has that attribute set. Ugh! Most of the other stuff has the foreground set, but not the main text entry thingie, and oddly, the "unread" mail lines. The rest of the read mail has the foreground set.

MSN also has this problem in some of its popups. :( Yahoo's chat windows are similarly lobotomized. Does nobody test their stuff with alternate color schemes?

I know they say a light background is better for the eyes, but I find a dark background to be less blinding when working on the computer in the dark.

2:05am: Logitech Mice
I love my logitech parts. This keyboard's keys are darn near worn off of it, and it still works. 2 weeks ago I picked up another mouse because I thought my old logitech beast was giving up the ghost as the wheel stopped working.

The mouse has the entire palm area's paint worn off, along with a nice worn spot next to the wheel on the button. (I spin the wheel with the edge of my finger, so I seem to be wearing that little spot off the button itself...) The rubber pad on the right side has completely worn off, and the left side is well on its way to losing that pad.

I went and grabbed a dual-wheel wired mouse. I hate it... The software is nowhere near as good as what I get from logitech. I was just about to toss the old mouse when I looked closely and saw some fluff and dusty fuzz sticking out of the button around the wheel.

30 minutes of tinkering later, the wheel is cleaned off and working better than when it was new, but I found a little piece of metal that makes it click into position at various points and removed it. It now has a feel much like those more modern mice where the wheels are free spinning. The mouse is better than new, short of all the cosmetic problems.

11:02am: Perfect time for a third party to emerge.
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080210/NATION/851739546/1001

19% of conservatives will vote third party this year most likely. 10% will stay home. This is the perfect time for a third party to show that they're serious. If a third party candidate pulls in enough votes that they would have changed the election if they voted for McCain, then it will do one of two things. A. it'll encourage the republicans to swing back to their roots away from this big socialist government kick they've been on to get those votes back. B. If they don't swing back enough, it'll allow people to see that the third party that gets the most votes might actually be viable and may not be throwing your vote away.

Right now, of all the third party candidates I've seen, one of the libertarian front runners, Wayne Root has the most appealing and comprehensive platform for liberty leaning republicans. He's a former republican who understands tax cuts, who understands how freeing an economy can help it function better, and seems to be an excellent and enthusiastic speaker. I certainly hope he gets the libertarian nomination, because he's said he's in this for the long term over the next 12 years, trying to accomplish B above. If he can get those 29% of conservatives, along with the normal 3-5% of the population that normally votes libertarian, and the 3-25% of the republican party that voted for Ron Paul... We might just have a real contest on our hands.

5:22pm: Trolltech purchase?
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2008/gb20080128_783831.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+index+page_top+stories

And motorola which uses their phone tech might need to find another supplier for linux software. I wasn't aware they were selling any linux based phones though? on further research, it looks like they've had linux smartphones for at least 3 years.

Maybe they should go have a nice chat with OpenMoko. Perhaps the can speed the process up.

12:56pm: Am I getting this wrong?
I think this stimulus package breaks one of my essential rules on how to make a market economy work. You can't have any situation anywhere that would make it so you would lose money by earning one additional dollar.

In this case, if you earn 74999 a year, you get a bonus check from the government. This apparently can be up to 1200 or 1500?
But if you earn 75000 a year, one dollar more, you get 0.

Bad government! No votes for you, incumbents.

However, cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of this term. Please step on this floating platform here...

(Never mind all the other things that are wrong with the stimulus package... Like the fact that it'll not do a darn thing for the economy. It's just another way of pumping aspirin into the economy to keep people from feeling pain when they really need to, and it'll lead to inflation at the same time.)

9:37am: Pranks!
Brian Sack's greatest prank ever

Hopefully it doesn't get so popular that it spoils it for the recipient. :p

3:16pm: First confirmed email address sale
The first time since I first started giving a separate email address to every company I give out my email address to, I've had a company sell my address.

www.pcworld.com.

It's not technically a sale though, it's the parent company spamming me according to their email. IDGConnect.com... In any case, the next thing to try is to use their remove link, and see if they then send even more spam to it.

5:19pm: Disgaea 3 Video
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28802.html

11:28am: NY Subway incidents.
Holiday altercation with standing up for the little guys

Two thoughts on this.

1. Someone saw someone weaker being attacked by ruffians on the subway and helped defend them. Regardless of what religion they're in, we need more people like that in the country. Good people should be encouraged to come here, regardless of where they come from. (As long as they are willing to live in our system of freedom and not oppress the freedoms of others.)

2. The people who were doing the beating up initially over being wished a happy (insert holiday here) are just wrong. I understand frustration about people getting offended over being wished a merry Christmas, but by doing this they're an equal or greater part of the problem. You don't have the right to beat someone up if you're offended. You're trampling their religious freedoms as much or more than someone getting offended by Christmas is trampling yours. The freedoms that protect your right to practice your religion are the same freedoms that protect their right to practice their religion. Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from offense, in fact it means quite the opposite. It's freedom of everyone to practice their religion even if it does offend someone.

Those freedoms are within limits of course. You can't deprive others of their freedoms, so religious beliefs that do this, permit slavery, consider women to have no rights, don't allow someone to switch faiths, etc are not valid religious practices in a free society. But as long as you're not trampling their freedoms you can do what you want, including wishing anyone and everyone a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, agnostica, winter solstice, or any other religious or non-religious holiday. Those who would force inclusiveness or those who would try and stop others from their own holiday greetings by complaining to their employers are violating that person's religious freedoms.

What kind of idiot/spoilsport do you have to be to get angry when someone states that they hope you spend some period of time in happiness? Be grateful that they care enough to say it to you.

11:21am: Environmental stories annoy me...
Stupid wired story

First, the link I clicked on to get to the story was "Wired: US can't get it's Greenhouse Act Together." This kind of irritated me, so I wanted to see what kind of misleading garbage it was. The most absurd part is that it's not the US, but the rest of the world that can't get its act together. Most of them signed the Kyoto treaty, and can't meet its goals. The US is one of the few countries in the world that actually DECREASED the greenhouse emissions, and we didn't ratify the treaty. Clearly, international treaties for such things are utterly useless even if it was a real problem.

The second thing I happened upon was...

The United States, the world's largest producer of such gases,

From what I understand, as of sometime earlier this year, the US is no longer the world's largest producer of such gases. China is now the world's leading producer of such gases in the air. (So much so, that in the INCREASE in CO2 alone over the next 12 years over what they're putting out now, they're going to put as much into the air as 3 billion ford expeditions would driven a normal amount every year.)

Really, the whole concept is flawed anyway. It's rather irritating that we have Bush now stupidly following along with the nonsense. People are blowing this up to such absurd proportions, multiplying any potential impact that the scientists state by 10-100 times in order to make it something large enough to affect anything negatively. The absolute most absurd part is that the hottest year on record in the past 100 or so is still 1934, and we're still cooler than we were in the 90's right now. We're not getting any sort of solid and unwavering warming trend in the recent history contrary to the predictions of the climate change alarmists.

We're actually warmer than we were in the 1970's, but that was back when the scientists had a 'consensus' that we were approaching a new ice age and that global cooling was going to kill us all.

7:54pm: Cedega...
Eve Online has teamed up with Cedega to provide Linux and OSX support for their game. For those that don't know, Cedega is a variant of WINE that you have to subscribe to for $5 per month. In exchange, you get the program and updates for future games support.

You also get to vote on what games will be supported next. This creates a catch-22 that is the crux of my problem.

I have two desktop systems now. One, puny little Sempron64 system with a really high end video card that runs Windows. This is almost entirely for playing games.

One Athlon64x2 system with a crappy video card that runs Linux. Serious work goes on here rather than games.

In order to turn my secondary desktop running windows into a secondary desktop running Linux, I need to know I can still use my games. Final Fantasy 11, Sherlock, GalCiv2, Eve Online, Mr. Robot, Starscape, and a handful of other puzzlers. Now would be a good time to explore it, since Eve Online now joins Sherlock as things known to work fine in linux. (Supporting most of Stardock and most of Moonpod games would go a long way to me getting Cedega.)

The reason to do this would be two. Get my linux desktop running faster with 3d interfaces and such. Second, to save money on keeping my windows desktop updated. Without games, I don't need to keep its video up to date, or its processor more than 3-4 steps behind the times. That would free up the money to pay for Cedega.

If I do it with some of my stuff still running in Windows, it would be detrimental to my pocketbook. I'd have to keep both systems up to date on their video cards, and I can't really share the cards between linux and windows because I buy different brands for the two OSes. (ATI for Windows, because ATI's dualscreen is better in windows and horribly buggy in linux. Nvidia for Linux because Nvidia's dualscreen is better in Linux and horribly buggy in windows.) (Man do I ever miss Matrox cards. :( )

Cedega, give us the ability to pledge to subscribe for certain gamesets, and/or the ability to pledge money towards a specific game's support!

12:31pm: Poor, poor OpenMoko
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/live-coverage-of-googles-android-gphone-mobile-os-announcement/

It looks like Google has swooped in and stole their thunder a bit, along with getting support from a carrier and several phone component manufacturers, all while OpenMoko has the hardware, but not the software to compete.

12:49pm: Apple, bleh.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/27/apple-refusing-to-accept-cash-for-iphone-limits-em-to-two-per/

I'm a bit tired of all the nonsense surrounding the Iphone. They're being horribly restrictive and anti-consumer with the thing. My views on the product can be done by clipping a bit out of the article, and taking it out of context.

More specifically, spokeswoman Natalie Kerris stated that the company is "requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers," so don't even bother [...] lookin' to grab an iPhone from Apple.

6:07pm: Democrats take credit for baseball wins...
Is there anything positive they won't take credit for?

http://www.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_7193956

That might be the Republican's problems back in the day though. It's hard to take credit for getting the heck out of the way and letting the system work without your interference. Modern republicans get in the way as much as democrats do though. ;)

To be honest though, it's largely demographic. Baseball teams are put places because they have large population centers. Large population centers overwhelmingly go democrat. (Discussion of why can be left for another topic.) Because of this, most baseball teams are in democrat controlled areas. I summed this up against the governor chart, and came up with 13 republican and 17 democrat-or-similarly-thinking-people (like eastern canadians and people in washington DC.) This goes to 8 Republican and 22 democrat held teams if you accept Ritter's assertion that Ahnold isn't really a republican.

It is an amusing quip as long as you understand the reasons behind it.

12:46pm: Common sense dead in the UK too.
With all the nonsense RIAA has pulled, you might think that Common Sense is dead when it comes to copyright laws in America.

Well, it's not just here that has nonsensical laws with regard to copyrights.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm

Frankly though, given the likely choice of music of people working at a shop like this, I don't consider it any sort of competitive advantage for them to be playing the music. It probably drives customers away. ;)

Next they're going to make it so nobody can listen to their own music at work though. The ultimate result of which is that their music simply won't be heard, and their artists won't get any chance to embed themselves in the minds of listeners in yet another location. They're not doing their clients any favors by knocking them out of venue after venue and reducing their chance to get a foothold.

12:37pm: Nuanced political views under-represented in decision polls
I've been tossed at two of these "Make your mind up on the candidates" polls recently. I've found them both rather lacking. The most recent is USA Today's thingie.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm

The shortcomings of this one are many. Such as the fact that you can only select one answer. It starts on Question 1 for me. This is a question about history, but some of the answers apply to future choices. None of the answers match my views. Some of them have multiple correct answers, but only lets you give candidates credit for one. All in all, a horrible and misguiding way of picking a candidate.

( commenting on the questions... )

1:20am: Disgaea, again!
If you're someone who wants to play Disgaea, and didn't heed my last message on the subject, They've remade Disgaea for PSP, with added features like playing a "what if Etna accidentally killed Laharl instead of waking him up"

Here's the preorder site for this incarnation.

http://www.rosenqueen.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=175&DC=E14NS

2:47pm: High speed viewing
I don't have time to watch or listen to much stuff anymore. On MythTV and on my PS3 I use a technique that speeds up the content, while adjusting the sound pitch to keep it from sounding chipmunky. I was recently watching an episode of mythbusters at 150%, and accidentally kicked it back to normal speed. It seemed like everything was going in slow motion. I boosted it up to 200% and was still able to keep up.

I have other things that I'd like to speed up in this way. MP3 podcasts, MPEG videos, Realaudio streams, etc. I was wondering, does anyone have any programs other than MythTV that does this kind of acceleration with mp3's and Realaudio files?

4:50pm: Surface Math
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/06/playstation.nintendo

Why do I get the feeling that this guy has never taken calculus or applied it in a physics context? It seems he just went on an appeal to those who never learned math past the surface.

Ignoring the fact that the target audience is completely different for the moment, if you look at what he's talking about, the acceleration of sales is higher for PS3 than Wii even though the velocity of sales for the PS3 is currently lower. He's right that the PS3 cannot overtake the Wii while its velocity is lower than that of the Wii, but he's ignoring that if the acceleration remains higher the velocity will eventually be higher as well. Thus, of the terms that he mocked, the closest to being accurate is that relative to the PS3, the Wii is slowing down. It'll still take awhile to overtake the wii either in position or velocity.

Sometime I'll have to write the formulas out and solve for exactly how long it will take for the PS3 to overtake at the current acceleration values. I suspect the number would be in the 5-6 years range. So realistically Sony still needs to get some solid titles out in order to make this a realistic goal and start pushing that acceleration value up. I suspect it may not really get substantial accel until the casual games really start coming out for the PS3. That will be 1-2 years from now at the earliest. Casual games, after all, are the driver of high volume console sales as shown by where the bulk of the sales for the PS1, PS2, and Wii came from.

9:22am: Moratorium on internet taxes expiring
In November of this month it the limitation on internet taxes expires...

It looks like they're trying to renew it though.

( text of the bill )

12:50pm: Horrendously busy
I've been so busy I've missed about 3-4 chinese recalls! ;)

But I'd rather talk about something else right now.

Meiers thinks consoles are ready for more in-depth strategy games

Sid Meier is releasing Civilization for consoles (including the PS3.) I can't wait. I'd really prefer more Stardock games for the PS3, but I'll take a regular Civ game as a consolation (haha) prize.

11:37am: Mainstream 13 years behind the curve.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_33/b4046064.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

They're talking about an interconnected web of 3d environments as if it were a new thing. In reality, the idea has been around for ages and there was even a working standard for doing this all the way back in 1994. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

Granted, it kind of died out and faded never gaining mainstream popularity.

Part of the problem is that VRML browsers sucked compared to the games of the time. Doom and Descent were both popular, and vrml had no physics to speak of nor any real easy navigation.

1:09pm: A bit odd.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200707/20070730/article_325330.htm

This says that the voltages can reach 380v inside the case of a computer, but really, in a modern computer only the inside of the PSU would ever have anything over 12v. Did he take the case off his power supply too?

The only exception I can see would be if he has one of those cases where there's a cable running from the external power port and the power supply (Like my Antec Aria and Antec 2u20 cases, though they both have electrical tape covering the posts in the connector) and then it wouldn't be more than 220v in china. 220v can kill you though...

The other alternative is that they're using substandard computer parts in china where the power supply innards are exposed.