blog.radsy.com

I finally caved to the pressure and installed World of Warcraft from a demo CD. I’ve got 14 days to decide if I want to pour money into this game. Well, it’s not looking good, Blizzard.

Firstly, I’m admittedly a city boy but I’m still pretty sure wild boars don’t roam around carrying 2 copper pieces and a battered shield. So why do they drop them when you kill one? I don’t remember foxes dropping iPods when I used to go shooting in northern NSW.

Along the same lines – if a monster is carrying a +5 magical hammer of head-smiting, why do they attack you with a pointed stick and bad breath? Surely they’d attack you with the damn hammer. Oh, they don’t have the skill for hammers? Well, I personally don’t have any skills or training in whacking people in the neck with a broadsword, but I bet I could have a good aussie go at it if they were doing the same to me and my only other option was a bit off a tree.

Now of course I’m not a paying subscriber yet, but trying to log on to an oceanic server last night I was placed 206th in a queue. Presumably many of those people were paying subscribers. Call me stupid, but if I’ve paid sixty-odd bucks for a game, then a monthly subscription fee, I sure as hell don’t want to be stuck in a 200-person queue to be able to log on and play. EvE doesn’t have queues, Blizzard. For that matter, EvE doesn’t have separate realms either – everyone is in the same realm. Sort it out.

No, I understand there is a need to train new players on easy monsters, but there certainly is a fertility boom for wolves, boars etc around cities. There’s hundreds of them, thirty seconds’ trot from the pub. And these aren’t your typical slavering, starving, hunting-in-packs, sweet-jesus-get-it-off-me wild animals, no. These ones just kinda wander around in circles, apparently without any need for food, shelter or entertainment. They do get a bit narky when you inexpertly lob an arrow in their general direction, but of course the others around just keep plodding around in circles waiting for their turn to drop 2 copper pieces and a bit of wolf jerky. I mean, seriously. A troll cave? Are the trolls sitting around the campfire swapping tall stories, learning a trade, making little troll babies? No, they’re standing still. Just… standing. “Oh, someone shot me! Grr! You will die soon! Come on Bruce! Bruce? Stop staring at the wall Bruce, someone just shot me! Bruce?”

So, it didn’t start well. It had better get WAY less stupid.

Here’s something I don’t know there’s a standard for. Say you’re describing to somebody how to enter a command on their computer and you want them, as part of that, to hold down the Ctrl key and press another key, say, “m”. How do you write it?
^m?
ctrl m?
[ctrl-m]?
To you or me it might be obvious in context, but say you’re describing a vi command:
.,$s/^m^v//g
Does the person type the caret ^ or does that signify holding CTRL?
Is there a standard? This irritates me.

Inglorious circumstances, certainly. But what a pleasure to watch the world’s greatest footballer in his final international match.
Zidane’s had his punishment. If it turns out to have been racial vilification in the verbal exchange, we can only hope that FIFA kick Materazzi’s slimy ass out of international football. Mind you, he fits right in with the rest of the dishonourable, win-at-any-cost divers in the Italian team.
What happened to Joga Bonito?

Oh please… beat the Brazilians… PLEASE! AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!!!
*edit* doh
*edit after the Italy match* double doh

Cath got me Ben Harper’s new CD the other day. I wish I could tell you how good it was, but the problem is: I haven’t played it yet. The CD comes with built-in digital rights management which essentially stops you ripping it to iTunes.
Of course, it’s laughably easy to circumvent and I’m currently in the process of importing it. The labels just don’t seem to get that the world is moving on from Sony Discman’s – if I buy a CD and I can’t rip it to my iPod for my personal use, I’m not happy and feel ripped off.
Did EMI really think that people weren’t going to figure out how to get around it? In my case it was embarassingly easy – just hold down the shift key for 10 secs or so when I stuck the CD in, to prevent the auto-CD run from loading (without my permission I add) some software that prevents iTunes seeing the tracks. I was offered the option to install some custom player app (“to listen to this CD some files on your computer need ot be updated”) but anyone who’s been around the net for a while would immediately click “bugger off” when confronted with a prompt like that to avoid another piece of spyware being installed.
So as far as EMI are concerned, you can use their crappy player on a PC, or use a proper CD player.
From what I read, Ben Harper is as pissed at this as anyone else. You should be Ben, it’s disgraceful and encourages piracy. If I’d known about the DRM before Cath bought the CD for me, I might have been tempted not to buy it but to download it in an iPod-friendly format.
Wake up industry record execs. With the push to recognise the legality of format-shifting with legislation in Australia, we can only hope that this sort of fascist DRM will be illegal before long.