Doctacosa

Lots of stupid ideas have come out of the gaming universe over the years. Here’s another one.

It’s been known for a while that some companies like Ubisoft have added a “feature” in their PC releases that makes the game “phone home”. If your Internet connection gets cut for any reason, even for an instant, your game quits without even saving. The goal of this thing, of course, is to limit game piracy by making use that all players have a valid license. The dumb fact is that this applies to single player mode too, which means you can’t play when you don’t have a link to the web. This, and previous anti-piracy measures that go completely overboard, make me boycott Ubisoft’s games on the PC. There are plenty of other companies making games that I do want to play while they respect me as a paying customer.

Even dumber, in my opinion, comes from a major mobile gaming company that I won’t name here. I purchased and installed one of their big titles on my cellphone to play on the go. However, again as an anti-piracy measure, the game phones home once every few days. That means that it connects to a server of the company to ensure that my installed copy is a valid one. If it can’t establish a connection, it’ll force itself to quit. The problem is, I don’t have a data plan as it’s too expensive for what it’s worth. As such, unless I remember the launch the game at home every few days (where I’ve got a Wi-Fi connection), the game becomes unplayable. This is incredibly backwards as I’ve got that game to play it on the go only, NOT when I’m at home! Furthermore, I’ll often try to play it in the city’s subway system, where even a data plan wouldn’t help me. By trying to preserve their sales, the company is only hurting itself as I’ll think twice in the future about making another purchase.

#gaming

– Doctacosa

In Canada, we decided to move over to the metric system in the seventies, before I was born. This includes units for distances, weights, temperatures and most other measurements. That’s a good thing, as the units make a lot more sense (decimal system!) and are widely used by almost all other countries in the world.

We’re still using the imperial system in some places, sometimes by force of habit (cooking temperatures), and often because of the big noisy neighbor (the United States) still running on the old system. That can be annoying at times, but we all manage without much trouble, and I’m confident that the old units will gradually be phased out in most domains.

Can we, however, finally agree to use the same units when comparing similar items? I was doing some grocery shopping yesterday, and comparing the prices on carrots was silly: the small bag was identified as the 340 g pack, while the large one was at 2 lb. One metric, and imperial, and that’s for the same brand! The same went with potatoes, as some bags were marked as 5 lb while others were 5 kg. I wish we could go past this nonsense and standardize on metric already.

We’re in 2012, this shouldn’t even need to be said anymore.

#metric #musings

– Doctacosa

This is something that keeps bugging me.

When you live alone, and work on a standard day schedule from Monday to Friday, how are you supposed to get your deliveries?

Pretty much everytime I’m set to receive a shipment at home, mostly when I order something online, I’m at work. UPS will leave a notice that they were at the door and I didn’t answer, while Purolator will call me once their truck gets back to their depot with my box. Both the UPS and Purolator support staff, on the phone, seem surprised that there isn’t anyone home to receive a package. Why would that be so unusual?!

Many people live by themselves, and are away to work during the day. Couples nowadays tend to go to work on similar schedules too, leaving the home empty. We’re no longer in the pattern of 50 years ago, with an housewife being present to take care of cleaning/cooking/whatever and possibly receive deliveries! If I’m the unusual case, as the couriers seem to think, how do others deal with this?

Shipping at work is not an option, as my employer doesn’t allow that. My parents tend to be at home during the day, but they’re a bit too far away to make this convenient. My friends follow a schedule similar to my own, so they aren’t available either. So, what gives?

#musings

– Doctacosa

I spoke up against this before, but it’s worth repeating again as the current trend doesn’t go in the right direction.

I dislike sites that integrate Facebook so tightly that I can’t do much without being logged in to that platform. I have a Facebook account. I don’t use much, and I don’t want to use it on other sites. The risk of loss of privacy is too great. If a website, media or company is offering a special promotion for Facebook users, or allows commenting on articles using Facebook only, then I won’t participate. When I register on a given community, I make a conscious action to associate my identity with them, for better or for worse. I want to commit to what I do, not leave a throwaway comment never to look back.

On another note, still related, I hate how Facebook doesn’t have a “dislike” option to match it’s “like” option. I can understand how they might be aiming to preserve a positive vibe to everything, but life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, you feel strongly about an issue and would like to disagree with it, but there’s no option to do so as you’re facing only a “like” button. YouTube’s strategy on this is more interesting: allow people to rate videos “up” or “down”, then show the relative score. Installing a browser plugin to have a magical “dislike” button appearing everywhere is NOT the answer, as it’s not visible to everyone.

Some news sites have been removing their own, custom commenting scripts to only keep Facebook comments. As a result, not only do you lose the ability to downrate comments (the “dislike” option), you also lose the ability to order the comments as “oldest first”, “latest first”, or “most active”. I especially like that last one as it quickly highlights the general opinion on a given topic. Why existing systems would be replaced by the more simple Facebook integration, with a global loss of functionality, is beyond me.

Besides, what happens if Facebook shuts down, or another social network becomes much more popular? Rip the integration apart and start anew, losing all existing comments in the process? It’s a shame when news outlets lose their archive, both articles and comments, as the latter can give great insights on how an issue was perceived at some period in time.

#internet #facebook

– Doctacosa

For us people who have been around for a decade or more, what do you think about the way that the Internet evolved?

10 years ago, it was “don't tell your real name to anyone!”. In 2010, you give away your Facebook account with name and pictures.

10 years ago, people went “don't say where you live!”. In 2010, you use FourSquare to always give your exact position.

10 years ago, dial-up AOL users were yelling “me too”. In 2010, almost everyone has a high-speed connection.

10 years ago, everyone wanted to create some sort of site on Geocities. In 2010, you tweet about your personal life.

10 years ago, you chatted on ICQ. In 2010, you send texts and/or use Facebook chat.

10 years ago, you browsed the web on your computer. In 2010, you use your phone and/or tablet and/or game console.

I'm not looking to point out positive or negative changes. I only find it all fascinating. :–)

– Doctacosa