Midianian's Blog / Tags / “rant”

DRM isn't All Bad

September 12, 2009, 11:22 AM
I actually have no problem with DRM provided that I can't tell if it's there or not. More specifically, if it:

• doesn't consume a noticeable amount of resources when running the game
• doesn't consume any resources when not running the game
• doesn't need a connection to Internet when the game doesn't
• doesn't introduce (additional) instability
• doesn't place any additional requirements to the hardware or software needed to run the game

For example, I have no problem with the DRM on consoles, as usually it's implemented within the above limits. I have no problem with Impulse, where the DRM-part takes place only during installation and updates (though a few games contain additional DRM. grrr).

Outage

May 8, 2009, 01:06 AM
Damn. Due to a security vulnerability on the server, things had been reconfigured. They did send me mail, but I didn't get the notice due to a completely unrelated problem with a couple of my many e-mail addresses. In addition, I had been playing Half Life 2 (and episodes) and Team Fortress 2, meaning I was spending very little time in Ubuntu, meaning I couldn't really even notice these things since I'm effectively disconnected from everything (I don't have an e-mail client or feed reader in Windows). All this could've happened about a week ago and I still probably wouldn't have noticed it until now. Luckily, looking at the logs it appears to have happened only one, one and a half days or so ago.

So, today I noticed that Akregator was showing the red X over my blog. This isn't unheard of, the servers are sometimes out for a couple of minutes. However, I tried accessing the page, but to my surprise it didn't give me an error. Instead, it offered me the installation page (well, the language choosing page) of the blog. I first suspected something was funny with the database. I went looking if they'd sent mail about it, found the error with the e-mail (which was completely my fault), then read the mail they had sent, and then found the error with the site (permissions). Now it's all fixed, I think.

Goddammit, Valve

April 25, 2009, 07:18 PM
It'd be so much easier to hate you if your games sucked and were ridiculously expensive. I'd been downloading the Portal demo because I wanted to play it again. It took a long time, but eventually it was downloaded. I then played through the demo.

When I reluctantly quit the game, the sneaky bastards directed me to Portal's page, where the Orange Box was also listed. On sale. 66% off. 10 €. So I broke down and bought the thing. I'll take comfort in the fact that they didn't get much money out of me, but my boycott on Valve is pretty much pointless now since I own most of their new games.

Impulse Sucks

April 20, 2009, 03:55 PM
The "Download and Archive" didn't work. Instead of archiving, it installed the game and there was no archive anywhere. So, I archived the installed game and copied it over to my desktop computer. Curiously, the archive generated this time was more than 1 GB larger than last time, yet it still complained about it being for a different OS.

I renamed the file to .7z (I noticed some 7-zip library files being installed along with Impulse) and tried opening it. It opened, and I could see the names of the files inside (including some xml files which I'd expect include the OS it's for), but the fucking thing was encrypted. I tried the obvious passwords (game's serial number, Impulse username and password), but they didn't work. So, now I've downloaded almost 10 GB of crap I can't use (my laptop sucks for gaming).

I doubt I'll be buying anything bigger through Impulse in the near future.

Impulse is Stupid

April 19, 2009, 12:22 AM
I recently installed Impulse so I could buy Braid (slightly cheaper than on Steam and no DRM). It worked just fine, though the download speeds were... larger than what they should've been on my connection. I'm guessing they compress the data, but calculate the speed based on the amount of uncompressed data received.

Then, based on the demo I'd downloaded earlier, I bought Supreme Commander Gold (original + expansion). It was, interestingly, cheaper than the expansion by itself.

Now, as I've mentioned before, I'm using (ubuntu) linux as my main OS. Now, I don't want to be stuck on Windows for the ~24 hours it takes to download the game on my connection. Even though my computer is relatively quiet, it's still noisy enough that I don't want to sleep with it (turned on). According to wine app db, Impulse is garbage through wine. These things combined mean I practically wouldn't be able to use my computer for about two days. So, my solution; use my laptop to download it. I did this with Tomb Raider Anniversary on Steam and it worked perfectly, so I didn't think there'd be trouble here. Oh, how wrong I was.

After a day or so of downloading, installing, archiving, and then copying, I got to installing it on my desktop computer. And what does Impulse do? It refuses to install saying it can't install the archive because it's from a different OS. My laptop has Vista, desktop has XP. Yeah. Platform dependent files (if there even is any, we're talking about compatibility between Windows versions here) should be somewhere around 1% of the game files.

Now I went digging in the Internet, and I bumped into a little factoid. If you install a game and then archive it, you can't restore it on a different OS. However, there's another choice in the right-click-menu called "Download And Archive" which allows you to download an archive which you can install on different OSes. The packages are the same size. Why for fuck's sake can't they just download that version by default? Or if they do, why the fuck do they ditch the parts meant for other OSes upon installing the game? Why, dammit?

Launch X

March 11, 2009, 12:53 PM
You know what I hate? Shortcuts in Windows named "Launch So-and-so". They're absolutely, completely, entirely, fully, perfectly, totally, utterly, 100% redundant, they screw up the sort order, and are completely redundant.

What the fuck do they think the users expect it to do?

Skype No More

February 8, 2009, 11:14 PM
While looking for instructions on how to install Skype on Ubuntu, I came across this. On that page the most important thing for me is the Intel-favouring/AMD-discrimination thing. Then there's the fact that it's closed source and the protocol is proprietary. Plus, I don't really use Skype that much. I'll have to look into open source VoIP clients when I need one.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??!?!?!?!?!?

January 16, 2009, 03:26 PM
True Blood: What the fuck is wrong with you people?! Fangs are canines, not fucking incisors! Dammit.

Why I Hate Java

January 10, 2009, 08:53 PM
Simply because it's badly designed (or at least it's designed based on principles I'm strongly against). Many of the "solutions" aren't solutions at all, just avoidance of the problem. Java treats the programmer as stupid. Yeah, sure, some programmers are stupid, but it's your fault for hiring stupid programmers!

Really, look at UNIX. UNIX doesn't treat you like a retard. UNIX gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the leg(that's a lot of rope). And where did that get it? Not to the desktop, sure, but those aren't programmers.

Java isn't designed for programmers, it's designed for users. It's designed for people who don't know what they're doing. It's designed for people who don't care enough to read the manuals. That's scary.

People who don't know how to operate a rope and end up shooting themselves in the leg deserve to get shot in the leg. If they don't know how to operate one, they shouldn't be operating it. If you want a language that can be used by the mentally retarded, I recommend HQ9++. I guarantee 100% bugfree programs.

No, not everyone who programs in Java is like the ones it was designed for, hopefully not even most of them, but that doesn't make the language well designed. It's still a cop out.

Specific points of contention:

• int vs. Integer: This is the kind of optimization that shouldn't be in the language specs, it should in the compiler specs.
• no multiple inheritance: This is a cheap cop out. "compiler complexity", bah. Interfaces simply aren't enough to deal with this loss and lead to unintuitive solutions and/or code repetition.
• virtual machine: Another cop out. Write your specs specific enough if you worry about portability. You're going to have to package things differently for every platform anyway, so “one file for every platform” doesn't work. The platforms where it's impossible to implement the specs can use a VM, but elsewhere you can ditch most of it.
• “everything is an object”: Well, yeah everything is an object, but all I can do are classes. How about a simple function? No? Well, how about a hash-table so I can do some data-driven programming? No? I have to wrap them inside a redundant class? Things like these just decrease the signal-to-noise ratio of the language.
• pass by reference: You're not passing around objects, you're passing around pointers to objects.
• no pointers: This is related to the above. One of the things I hated most in C was someone hiding the fact that something is a pointer. Like typedef *struct whee_XXX_stuff XXX_stuff(not sure if that's correct, it's been some time since I've used C). Java does this to every object. Sure, you don't have to worry about freeing the memory (which makes it horrendously annoying in C), but you're still lying to the programmer about what they're really handling, which is never a good thing.
• no destructors: finalize ≠ destructor. I want my objects destroyed at a pre-determined point, like when exiting a function.
• everything on the heap: SLOWWWWWWW.
• reuse of keywords: The offenders being static and final. final is used to signify an object which cannot be changed, but also a class which cannot be extended (extending doesn't change the original class).
• no operator overloading, except for Sun: "Is this sum " + "operator overloading, or what?" There are also a couple of other things which are only available to Sun. BigDecimals especially could use some overloading.

There are also some issues with the standard library and the prevalent practices among Java programmers, but those aren't really problems with the language.

Don't get me wrong, I don't just hate Java. It's a love/hate relationship. I might do “Why I Love Java” some day, but I can tell you that it will be shorter.

Try to Make Up You Mind, Already!

November 3, 2008, 03:34 PM
So, you cannot be banned from game by getting banned from forums after all. Which means that EA is not boycotted anymore. Which means that I can continue drooling on Mirror's Edge. Though it'll still probably have the draconian DRM. Fuck.