The old Videogames are Evil rant

A user saw one of the series of videos I made when Maria's GP2X (handheld Linux gaming device) arrived and posted this admonition, to which I replied:

Jlife13300
Man, I would never get that for my duaghter not even the system. I watch this video and im thinking damn I feel sorry for this girl no offense.

DavidBeoulve
Well if your take is "hooking kids on videogames" then I should let you know that they have a set time limit on their Wii which I check daily (it contains a log of how long each game was played and a total). The GP2X was allowed to be used in the car (anytime) or by permission, for example, while watching over her siblings a couple times a week, for some reason she could watch both, I never could. Trust me, I tested her.

The core of the issue is responsibility. This girl also cooks dinner sometimes (she's 9), makes breakfast 3 times a week, cleans her room and parts of the house every day, and gets solid A's in school. So... what am I to do with such a good daughter? Not give her anything? No. I'll give her a GP2X and teach her to be responsible with it, and she is.

...

I'll go on to point out here that this same girl can rattle off the differences between menial and mortal sin, makes acts of sacrifice (such as giving up anything that tastes good for a day) during holidays usually only adult Catholics fulfill (my wife says she, within reason, followed them as a child and I agree, our children learning to take discomfort in stride has only made them better people). Exactly what else should I do? Flog her?

This child has enough weight put on her, caring for her sick baby brother (or caring for him when he's not sick, but a sick baby is much worse), working hard at homeschool (all of which is graded by St. Mary's in Kansas, not her mother), walking, feeding and watering the dog, bathing her smaller siblings when her mother is busy or feels like giving her the responsibility (my wife loves making our children work, including the baby boy - he has to get into his car seat by himself).

So anyway, little rants like this get under my skin - these children face a much harder life than most American kids today (excepting those in poverty).

Rewarding them doesn't seem obligatory, but essential.

"Who killed the webmaster"

Despite what's said in the title article, I think they have it wrong. It's not "too much technology for one man to handle," nor the "underwhelming dot com bust" that has killed the webmaster, it is the absorption of webmasters into the traditional corporate structure.

In order to be a webmaster, it's assumed that person not only knows the Web and the website, but they have some control over the latter. When webmasters became gainfully employed by corporations, they never got high tier positions, and in many cases, webmastering was something given to the lowest form of life in the company. Quickly, all control over what was going on with the website was out of their hands, and they were a "webmonkey."

Today it doesn't matter what webmasters know or don't know about how to do websites well (for those few that did), because it's not for them to direct much of anything. Webmasters were never destined to become bosom buddies with the existing management class, and there - you have the death of the webmasters.

Ubisoft grows thanks to Wii and XBOX 360

"Fuelled by the launch of Wii and PlayStation 3 (in some territories), next-generation sales accounted for 63% of the third-quarter totals, compared to a figure of 18% in the previous year. This was further split into Wii sales accounting for 21% of total sales; Xbox 360 titles contributed 28% towards sales; whilst titles for the hugely popular Nintendo DS made up 9% of Ubisoft's total. The results saw the French publisher famous for brands such as Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia and Rayman achieve the position of No.1 independent publisher on Wii and No.2 on the Xbox 360, throughout North America and Europe."

[source]

PS - Oh, and the Wii is doing well as far as online connectivity and overall sales are conserned.

The Keel, the Sheer and the Rudder

I have been doing far too much reading on pre-cannon era ships...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_rig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_sail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broach_sailing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clew#Clew
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigantine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite_brig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_building

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 is great at confusing me. A two-masted, square sailed ship, from 100 to 150 tons traveling at 2mph. What?

First of all, strickly square sailed ships can't sail agains the wind, ever, unless they have oars. Secondly, that speed is abyssmal. But, as my Dungeon Master pointed out "While the metric might not make sense, we can rest assured it's balanced with the rest of the movement rates in the system."

What have I learned so far? I've learned that there is a lot of terminology I need to learn to play my next character.

Superheroes without TIghts

Someone put up an excellent slideshow that shows snips of comics that have worked at telling the real story of superheroes, usually without tights. From an ex-villian in a witness protection program trying to live with his ex-villian mind reading wife to an ex-superhero who delves into politics and has to face the harsh reality of compromise over his earlier years of truth, justice, and no mercy.

I found it here on "Slate" which states the premise of the list, among other things.

Sony has Lost It

According to Sony executive Jack Tretton, the PS3 includes too many costly pieces to have it's cost reduced (big surprise). What kills me is this:

Concerning the PS3's "New Car Price" scandal, "I think the consumers that get their hands on a PlayStation 3 clearly see the value and not only want to buy one for $599, in some instances they're willing to pay ridiculous prices to buy one on eBay," he concluded.

Uhh, what the hell? If money wasn't an issue I'd have a 52" flat Plasma screen for fun. I don't have $641.93 for a PS3 in Florida. Lots of people don't.

I live in the black section of town and I was talking to some neighborhood boys. I mentioned the Wii and they mentioned they have a PS2 and were hoping to get a PS3. The Wii, at $250, sounded expensive to them. So I told them the PS3 was $600. They looked at me like I had just told them they were HIV positive. There's no way they, or their parents, can afford that. No one on my street can, to my knowledge.

My Firstborn

Did I tell you Maria de Guadalupe gut punched me last week? Nearly doubled dad over. I'm not really sure I had it coming...

I was tickling Dulce and Alejandrita and grabbing onto them and keeping them from getting away.

So she comes into the mix to rescue them, and I grab her and we start tussling, but I'm still grabbing her sisters, as I know she won't actually leave them.

Her mother called her, or Jose Francisco fell, I forget which (I think it was the latter) and I wouldn't let her go, she told me to and I was tickling Dulce and didn't hear her, she got loose, I grabbed her upper arm and she swung around and nailed me with her opposite elbow, part accident part reflex.

I let go after that *chuckles*

Then, get this... at a public playground some pre-teen black boys were playing football. Well apparently they thought it was cool if they bumped into other kids while they did this around all the swings and slides and climbing sets.

Anyway one of them hits Maria in the right shoulder and she nails him - once again, in the gut - with her right elbow. He twirled a bit and stumbled, gave her this wide-eyed look, and ran off.

Another boy about her age decided to play tag with the girls she was with - apparently so he could shove them while tagging them.

He didn't try it on her but when a little white girl asked him to stop and he didn't, she warned him "You do that again I'm going to shove you." I asked him what his response was and she said "He didn't say anything." I asked what he did after that and she said "He didn't push them."

My Credo for Training my Judgment

From "The Painter, in Oil" written around 1920 by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

"Train your judgment. - Let us say, then, that you must train your critical judgment. How you to set about it?

In the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion . Make up your mind that when it comes to a choice between personal taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you (myself -ed) are wrong. It is when you have made up your mind to that, when you have reached the mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of mere opinion.

Another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of catholicity - one of openness to the possibility of their being many ways of being right. Don't allow yourself to take it for granted that any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. That point of view may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature, -- but it will not do for a student. Such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. It results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and narrowness of appreciation. You should try all things, and hold fast to that which is good, and even while holding fast to it, you should remember that was good and true for you is not necessarily the only good in true for some one else. You must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the same right for others. If this is not recognized, what room has originality to work in?"

Neverwinter Nights 2: Nevermind

Neverwinter Nights 2 appears to be a disaster. I'll show my concerns in three parts...

1) The frightening "Top 12 Bugs/Problems in Neverwinter Nights 2" concerning online play and persistent worlds yields such highlights as:

1. The DM Client crashes the server regularly. This makes it unplayable.
2. The server itself tends to crash "quite a lot."
   
3. There is no Linux server, nor will there ever be in all likely hood. Windows server hosting games is rare and expensive.
4. The Toolset crashes so regularly I read of several people giving up until it was patched. I gave up "The Movies" for being buggy with large films and have yet to "go back" a year later.
5. Disconnects while loading new zones: players experience this while changing zones. It's more than frustrating.
6. Connecting to new servers should be easier than this 5 step process that involves manually installing a 3rd party application and configuring ini files...
   
7. Network Use Spike: Random bandwidth killer times out players on the server.
   
8. As with NWN1, Hak Paks and server specific files are loaded after you create a character, which means you spend time doing that before the server unceremoniously dumps you.
9. Scripting commands give limited information about objects, some of which NWN1 had solved. You have to create a creature/destroy a creature to figure out the height of the ground, for example.
   
10. The large size of modules combined with the 2 gig RAM limit severely limits the current modules. A module might take up 600mb of memory but still hit this theoretical limit.
    
11. Builders updating the module make it next to impossible for players to rejoin, as it's not as simple as downloading the latest module file and finding out what files need updating is not automatic, let alone knowing where to put them. People are trying to make jury-rigged tools to circumvent this.
12. Graphics engine bogs down nearly any PC for no good reason at all.
    

2) The game itself sucks. Atari told Obsidian to, essentially, "release it now!" and rather than say "But, it's not done" Obsidian meekly replied "okay." The ending is a single image with text on it saying the dungeon collapsed and everyone was killed, while the game starts with 5 CGI intros of the distributor, developer, Wizards of the Coast, etc. The game is so rail-roaded XP is doled out by scripts, not by in-game calculations. Even so the ending is so woefully unbalanced you have to reload constantly because every encounter rates as "impossible." Why? Because the game wasn't finished, and now it's dying so quickly it never will be.

3) I've heard that folks are pleading with players to not Uninstall Neverwinter Nights (1), because that actually works and there are Persistent Worlds still out there for it. That's nuts.

Supreme Commander Beta Review

Executive Summary:
Supreme Commander is, along with Company of Heroes and Rise of Nations, one of the best Real-Time Strategy games I have had the pleasure of playing. However, it's taxing to a $3,600 gaming rig.

Review Proper:
I found a MOD that allows me to play skirmish mode online, choosing how many and what kind of AI to go against, which is of immense value. I've played many games, one with a human ally, and here are my findings:

1. Pharra's E6700 Core Two Duo (2.66GHz) cannot handle four players with a 750 unit cap, which is a notch above the default 500 unit cap. 750*4=3,000.
   
2. There are up to 8 players in a game. 500*8=4,000. Pharra, a $3,600 computer, won't be able to max out the number of possible players in the game.
   
3. Three players at 500 unit cap appears to work fine - I'm not sure what four at 500uc would do. So while 3,000 killed, 1,500 was fine, and hopefully 2,000 will be too. I'll have to test this.
   

The AI is refreshing because most games feature: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Cheats; Supreme Commander, on the other hand, offers flavors. When playing RTS games you're really interested in changing what kind of game you're playing against the AI - are you attacking or digging in for a defense? Usually you can only control this by hand-selecting what kind of maps you play or making your own maps. Supreme Commander allows you to choose AI's that rush, build up a great economy and then rape you, or turtle in a difficult defense (and also still attacks, but not as much as the other two). This makes Supreme Commander highly enjoyable.

In my playtesting, I usually played against a Turtle AI with one ally, a Balanced AI. The Turtle is more than capable of countering everything the balanced throws at it until the Balanced AI reaches tech level 3, and then it can get hurt. However, Balanced AI never won by itself, it always needed me to help tear town Turtle AI's incredible defenses. Never in an RTS have I seen an AI turtle so well, with force fields galore, and so many AA guns even spy planes can't survive. We're talking SPAM amounts of AA guns, it's just incredible. I sent my ultimate Spiderbot monstrosity supported by waves of airpower and it was annihilated before it could tear down the shield generators, or even get in range of them. Nothing survives. Turtle AI lives up to the name.

Where Turtle AI falls short is defending it's perimeter. It usually picks two or three main bases and bulks those up like Sumo contenders, and leaves its outlying areas unguarded. It will respond via airpower when attacked, but if you just SPAM air superiority fighters, you'll counter it's counter-attack and win.

Where all the AI I've played with so far falls short is Navy. On a map where Turtle AI and me and my Balanced AI ally were separated by water, neither attacked each other except by air, and I saw no major troop landings from air transports. On ground maps, Turtle AI killed me once by overwhelming me with lame Tech 1 and Tech 2 units after it had built it's impenetrable defense - I'd wasted my resources trying to get to Tech 3 and didn't have enough forces to stop him.

In short, Supreme Commander looks brilliant, but I'm saddened that the game is so taxing. After the poorly coded Oblivion and Gothic 3, it is the only game that slows Pharra down. If the release is just as bad, than it will be the first well-coded game to do so. (If you don't believe Oblivion and Gothic 3 are coded poorly, then look at their bug fix logs and research Oblivion's development for the XBOX 360 prior to PC release, and how much money was spent optimizing for the XBOX 360, not the PC).

Multiplayer Review:
This is for those who love getting their game on against humans. Supreme Commander is all about pacing and balance. Resources cannot be depleted, the only thing that limits your growth is how fast you are gathering versus spending them. With the games revolutionary cueing system, the likes of which I have never seen done so well before, this game flows like water.

As I am, now being a father of four, mostly neutered and don't care to OwnZor other males in videogames as much, I can't speak further. I will say that the possibility remains that this game will net an intense multiplayer following. Longevity is based on MODdability, and Chris Taylor (Dungeon Siege) loves to make his games moddable.

Microsoft Lies, PS3 is dying

Part 1: Microsoft Lies
We've all read/heard that the XBOX 360 has over 10 million units sold right? Wrong. That's how many they've made and sold to resellers, not how many are actually owned by playing gamers. That number is 4.5 million, not 10, not 10.1.

"NPD Group figures put Xbox 360's US installed base at 4.5 million, with Wii at 1.1 million and PlayStation 3 finding its feet with around 690,000 US owners by the end of 2006."

Part 2: The PS3 is Dying
If you're informed, you also know that there are PS3's languishing on store shelves, unbought.

"The closest thing to a proper study into the question of Sony's stock levels is a check of the channel carried out by American Technology Research pundit PJ McNealy, who found that 28 out of 52 stores polled had units of the PS3 in stock, while none had Wii units. SCEA claims that this has more to do with good management of the supply chain for PS3 than actual demand; online speculation, of course, points to underwhelming demand for Sony's expensive console."

Broken Blu-Ray and New Car Prices? You think that could make people not want a PS3? How about Not Enough Software, something all new consoles suffer from, stacked on top of that?

HALO suit made real by inventor

Incredible work, and the guy's suits really are bullet-proof. Google the inventor's name if you want more.

SNES yellowing? Here's why....

Fascinating. Be sure to check out what's happening to the plastic.

"Thank you for contacting us. That’s an interesting question! For the Super NES, this is a normal condition and no cause for alarm. Cleaning or handling the system will have minimal impact to change or revive the original color.

The Super NES, as well as our other systems, are made with a plastic containing flame-retardant chemicals to meet safety guidelines. Over time, the plastic will age and discolor both because of these chemicals as well as from the normal heat generated from the product or exposure to light. Because of the light color of the plastic of the SNES and NES, this discoloration is more easily seen than with other darker plastics such as on the N64 and the Nintendo GameCube.

Thanks for your email!
Nintendo of America Inc.
Casey Ludwig

Nintendo’s home page: http://www.nintendo.com/
Power Line (Automated Product Info): (425) 885-7529"

PS3 Warranty: The Proof is in the Pudding

Or actually, the warranty statement:
THIS WARRANTY SHALL ALSO BE VOIDABLE BY SCEA IF (1) SCEA REASONABLY BELIEVES THAT THE PS3TM SYSTEM HAS BEEN USED IN A MANNER THAT WOULD VIOLATE THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF A SEPARATE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR SYSTEM SOFTWARE; OR (2) THE PRODUCT IS USED WITH PRODUCTS NOT SOLD OR LICENSED BY SCEA (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, NON-LICENSED GAME ENHANCEMENT DEVICES, CONTROLLERS, ADAPTORS AND POWER SUPPLY DEVICES).

So it's true. Sony really can/does void your PS3 warranty for using non-Sony brand composite cables.

Sony wants out of game market

If you still think the PS3 is cool, aside from crippled Blu-Ray and New Car prices, Sony has decided that if you use any non-Sony equipment with your PS3, the warranty is voided.

Because Sony wants YOU... to buy other people's products.
Apparently they're just tired of being in the videogame market.

Sony: "Hey, wait, if we just treat our customers like complete crap, then the only ones we'll have left will expect it, and won't be surprised when we just leave one day."
Consumer Blog: "Sony stopped all warranties on the PS3, PS2 and PSP. Like that was any different than before."
Blog comment: "But who will we call for abuse now?"

- Thanks to my friend Dove for this delightful commentary.

Armed Assault (Operation Flashpoint 2) DEMO is out!

This news is late, but you can download the DEMO now.

The original, Operation Flashpoint, was my 2nd favorite game of all time.

#1 would be Neverwinter Nights playing Persistent Worlds I DMed.

#2 would be Operation Flashpoint playing on 10sq kilometer islands, getting in any vehicle, land, sea or air based, and having no "special toughness" ... bullets KILLED. And the AI couldn't tell who you were. You were just another soldier. Plus the Editor that was a snap to use made for GREAT fun. Neverwinter Nights had the whole editor thing going too.

So here's to hoping that this game lives up to the original.

Edit: Sucker's out in Europe. Here's a great review.

Supreme Commander has my Supreme Interest

Finally, a Single-Player / Skirmish Mode hands-on review/preview is up.

I'm a beta tester, and I must say that the online system Gas Powered Games has come up with sucks hairy donkey balls, complete with scrotum bumps and folds. It's just aweful. I have played exactly one game all the way through, being thwarted by connection issues (either trying TO connect, or trying to STAY connected) 70% of the time, and other players 25% of the time.

So I'm largely looking forward to the AI, once again. That part seems to be good, but I can't beta test it as beta testers must fight each other - no skirmish mode for us.

I hope Supreme Commander overcomes its flaws, none of which are gameplay, but everything to do with playing online.

PS3, XBOX 360, Wii - not a weak console showing?

Why It's a Weak Console Generation:
My good friend, Kevin in Virginia, told me that this was the weakest console launch in history. His premise was that the XBOX 360 and PS3 really offered very little that was new to gamers, just increased graphics. PSX brought us 3d games - that was new. The NES brought us something new. But even though he can see this, he thinks the Wii offers us nothing new.

But he doesn't like the Wii.

Why It's Not a Weak Console Generation:
I'd point out that new consoles are selling as history dictactes. While he has a point as to the lack of innovation of Sony and Microsoft's products (PS3 Blu-Ray, another format like UMD? At least I like the specifications but what does increased storage at slower read times really offer games?) his arguement falls flat on its face when concerning the Wii. The fucker has gained awards from pundits who usually don't play games.

But Kevin doesn't like the Wii. That's okay, my cousin, Paul, isn't rushing out to buy one, either. They're both single males who enjoy multiplayer games.

How We Can Tell Sony is Losing:
This article/blog has enough historical statistics that give us a roadmap as to what Sony will have to do to overcome the XBOX 360. The SNES overtook the Genesis' two year lead, but it took a lot of doing. If Sony can't keep up with these monthly sales figures, the PS3 is in trouble.

I'll quote liberally...

Why the PS3 is Not a Sure Thing:
"Make no mistake, even coming off a record number of sales with the PS2, Sony has a very hard road ahead of it. No company in the history of gaming has won three generations in a row. Usual paths to downfall include pride and arrogance. Nintendo at one point had over 90% market share, only to drop to just 60% the following generation and lose the lead to Sony the next at roughly 30%. The gaming industry is one of the toughest to compete in. What may seem obvious years later could have been a great idea at the time."

"There are never clear answers as to what hardware will eventually win, but one thing is universal: if you fail to sell your game console you will lose. More importantly, if you fail to sell it in the first twelve months after the launch holiday, you will lose. This is even more compounded if you are not out before your primary competition."

What Sony Has To Do to Win:
"In order to pull this off, Sony will have to sell more systems than their competitors during the next twelve months. To determine how many they will have to sell, we will look at a bit of history and make a few educated guesses."

"So, at the end of the day, Sony will likely have to sell 14+ million systems during 2007. Figuring that 5 million are likely to sell with ease during the holiday rush in 2007 (October, November and December) and one million will sell with ease at the European launch of the PS3 in March, that leaves Sony with 8 million to sell in the remaining nine months. That is approximately 900,000 units per month. Europe is historically slower to pick up new consoles at their launch price, instead preferring to wait for price reductions - thus we will estimate a bit lower for sales each month for 2007 for Europe.

The likely monthly sales differential between the territories that will allow Sony to succeed is

300,000 Japan
300,000 US
200,000 Europe"

"How soon will we be able to tell? Realistically, not until early 2008. But, we should start getting an idea shortly. If Japanese weekly sales show less than 50,000 systems sold per week consistently through the first 3 months of 2007, Sony is in trouble. If the US shows less than 200,000 systems sold per month for the first three months of 2007, Sony is in trouble. Europe is all but impossible to track externally, so we unfortunately will be unable to determine results based on Europe at this time."

Why the PS3 Price Point Could/Will Kill It:
"...Unfortunately history does not currently take into account Sony’s price point on the PS3. Will consumers be able to afford or choose to afford the high price, or will they opt instead for the Xbox360 and/or Wii. On this point history does provide a limited amount of guidance.

Back in April of 2004 Microsoft dropped the price of the Original Xbox by $50 to $150. This put them at a $30 price advantage to Sony’s $180 for the PS2. In the US, Microsoft capitalised on this by having their first month ever to beat Sony in monthly sales in the US. The following month Microsoft all but equaled Sony’s sales in the US. It wasn’t until the month after that when Sony reduced the PS2 price to $150 that they briefly took back the lead. For the rest of that year they were neck and neck on sales. All of this while it is clear that Sony was leading overall in quantity and quality of game releases on its platform and had not yet hit the saturation point.

If a $30 price difference can even the playing field between the definitive leader and a distant second place, what will a $100 price difference do? What will happen if Microsoft drops the price of the Xbox360 by an additional $50 and Sony is unable to match them?"

$50? What about a $300 versus $500 price tag, or a $250 one as the Wii enjoys (while making a profit, not taking a loss)?

Summary:
"Can Sony sell 800,000 systems a month right now?
Can Sony win with a $100+ price difference with its nearest competitor?
Will history repeat itself?"

My answer is simple and quick: No, Sony can't, no they won't, and the PS3 is already doomed. Doomed to die like the Saturn or limp on like the GameCube, I'm not sure, but it's doomed. That's my prediction.

The PS3 already has units just sitting in Worst Buys and Cities of Circuits, Targets and Wally Worlds. Read the 'net - look at the pictures. People can't just walk up to a $600 behemouth and say "Hey, I'll buy that!" anymore than a $600 el-cheapo computer.

The only real battle is exactly as Bill Gates called it -- between the XBOX 360 and the Wii.

Think this generation is disinteresting? Probably for multiplayer afficianados with computers like Kevin and my cousin, Paul. What do motion-sensative, pointer controls do for them that they absolutely must have? Well since the Wii has no MMORPGs and no online games yet -- NOTHING!

But that doesn't alter reality.

Microsoft only badmouths companies in trouble

It suddenly made sense - Microsoft congradulates Nintendo while sticking a dagger in Sony's side. Why? Public perception. If the public already sees a company is doing poorly (Sony) than sticking it to them seems more like "calling it like it is" and offering a better alternative.

But to stick at someone who is doing well (Nintendo) and being innovative would just seem trite.

Bill Gates: Still Stupid about the Future

Bill Gates is famous for saying we won't need more than 64k of RAM.

Then he said motion-sensative controllers are stupid (as of May of 2006), and now identifies Nintendo, not Sony, as their strongest competitor.

Duh, do you think people like motion-sensative controllers more than you wanted to believe?

My views on Islam

I read this article. Before continuing you should too, or this post will seem racist and you will lack context.

----

I think that most of Islam (in my ignorance of particulars of the subject I cannot say "all") can be summed up by this, something Thomas Jefferson wrote of a meeting with an ambassador of the Barbary States (concerning their attacking and enslavement or ransoming of American sailors):

"The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Islam is, and remains, a hostile religion bent on death to the infidel, which stands in direct contrast to the foundations of our nation -- which is why they really hate us. We embody religious freedom, and they embody the opposite of it.

I've read of a U.S. Justice who, when sentencing an Islamic extremist who used a bomb and tried to say he was a holy soldier, said he couldn't fathom the hate -- and surmised that it was our freedom that they despised the most.

(Concerning the U.S. in history) To me, the will that compels a man to give his life for a country that extols that the men he dies defending have the right to live contrary to everything he believes (while not harming others) -- is far greater a sacrifice than giving your life for people you know are just like you.

PS3: Unsellable?

Owning a PS3 has become a badge of shame.
It has sucker written all over it.
- Ordeith

It's (un)official - the PS3's incredible price and lack of games that the 360 doesn't have are starting to kill it. Also, see how the Wii fared by comparison.

The problem is bipartite:

1. The PS3 costs too much.
2. The PS3 offers less new stuff compared to the XBOX 360 as the Wii does, which means less incentive to buy the PS3.

It's really that simple. Unbelievable as it may seem, this is an early indicator that the almighty PS3 is losing the console war, as we've seen before with the Dreamcast (great system) and the Saturn. The PSP has also become 2nd dog.

What remains to be seen is how the PS3, and Sony, can fair with the PS3 never gaining top or 2nd spot, ever.

My Children - Dulce and Jose Francisco

My children continue to be a great joy; I never get tired of having kids in my lap or next to me. One night before Christmas I had talked with Dulce, my 7yo, about the fact that there were no monsters in the dark in her room. My 4yo, Alejandrita (alay-hon-dree-tah), chimed in saying "Dulce, the only tings in our room are da tings in our room." and she proceeded to list every item in the room, so Dulce said she knew everything that was in the room. I said "So, if you know everything that is in the room, you know what's not in the room, like Clyde the Monster." which gave the little and oldest (9yo) girl a chuckle. Dulce whimpered as she went to bed, crying softly, feeling ashamed, so as usual I went to give her a kiss and a hug in the dark room before I left, and I bumped my elbow on her wooden bunk bed frame as I came to her. It didn't make me yelp, just an annoyance to me but she immediately halted her crying, spoke up and said "Are you okay?"

I told her "Dulce, here you are crying because you feel bad that you're scared and your sisters aren't, and I bump myself and you ask me if I'm okay?" So instead of seeing her off, I stayed with her until she fell asleep as a reward.

My son, Jose Francisco, on the other hand, gets his rewards for exhibiting his Mayan and Spaniard ancestry, or his Latin blood. Every time he falls but gets up without a fuss, even if he now has a rosy bump on his head, my wife, my daughters, all know to clap for him and encourage him.

He likes to give me "Klingon head butts" as I call them. One day I was playing with him and he dropped a soldier, so we both went to pick it up and hit our heads. I'd moved quickly so it actually stung, but I laughed because that's what I do when Jose or I hurt ourselves, and so he laughed and wanted to do it again. So we did, and we did it again, and again, each time I'd deliver a bit harder of a thump, or try to change what part of my skull hit his, and finally dad had enough and I rubbed my head and shook my hand at him "that's enough".

He gave me this odd smirk when I did that. Then Dulce (my "princess," my sensitive daughter) came into the room and, being a sadistic Papa, I called her over for a kiss. She quickly took the opportunity and moved her head close to mine, right in front of Jose Francisco, who smiled and lobbed his head forward and *smack* Dulce exclaimed "OW!" which she does for any amount of pain, and Jose and I laughed, and I hugged Dulce and apologized. She chuckled too after she was in my arms.

Jose Francisco still likes to do the head-butting routine every once in a while and for a time I was completely confounded by it - why was it fun? I was never like that as a child. Pain was endured but not sought out. I got back on horses but I didn't like the fall. Then I realized: the same reason he gave me that smirk when I quit - any challenge to Jose Francisco, any test he can try to overcome, is desirable to him. When I rubbed my head and shook my hand at him, it was a signal he'd withstood the test.

Mom from Mexico, when I asked her about it, having not told her of my own conclusions, said that all of her seven sons did that -- it's something Latin baby boys do, sometimes when they're older too. Proving their worth, she said, is in their blood.

I'd imagine boys from any good stock are much the same.

Wiiiiiiiiiii - Zelda Twilight Princess

Okay so Christmas was great, as usual. My children are wonderful.

The Wii isn't the biggest item, but it's certainly racked up some time (which I can track thanks to the Wii's play-session by play-session accounting of time spent on every game every day, with a grand total).

Maria de Guadalupe got Zelda: Twilight Princess last week. Since I had the week before Christmas off, I wanted to have a chance to play it too. Honestly she loves the game more than I do, and that is because everything is new to her. Much of Zelda: Twilight Princess reminds me of Ocarina of Time. True, there are great new puzzles, far better graphics (from the N64 editions of Zelda, and Wind Waker, which didn't jive with this artist, strangely), but...

But the music horrendous. I have not heard one sample that doesn't sound either bad, involves a 10 second loop (or less, no joke), or like a 10 year old MIDI. I'm sorry, but MIDI technology isn't - that's a leap into anachronism.

Similarly, many of the sound effects are grating. You only hear your sword through the Wii Remote, whose speaker is better designed as an attention-getter, or to echo the sound from the game as in WiiSports, where you'll hear the Tennis Racket hit from your TV speakers and the Wiimote. The horse whinnies every time you spur her, every fucking time, and it's the same sample played either at a higher or lower octave.

Some of the puzzles are timed, which I hate with a passion - let me take time figuring them out, not running the same gauntlet 10 times trying not to fall into lava or reach the door after it's closed - again.

Lastly, Hyrule Field was a HUGE dissappointment after Shadow of the Colossus. I wanted something inspiring, something with huge chasms and grand vistas. Nope. None of that. The game fairly faithfully calls up the terrain layout of the N64 Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and two console generations later, it's just not much to look at or do but race around one Epona (your horse) and run over bad guys for fun.

All that said, I am still playing it, and as my friend Kevin likes to point out, I often complain most about the games I like, because the ones I don't like I complain once and then never pick them up again.

Long live All American Computers, or rather, Kyle Felstein

All American Computers is gone, and with it, my warranty, but hopefully not Kyle's house, the owner of AAC.

My hat is off to the man who had a great company, a great product, great customer service, and knowledge so deep you couldn't shove a spear all the way through it.

I hope he does better in the future, and that his wife supports him.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

Wii Want to Play

My WiiSports outing and playing Zelda: Twilight Princess
My lovely Latina says I'm an open book. WiiSports, perhaps because I always have my children to play with, has been incredible for me. Yesterday my daughters let me borrow their Wii so Papa could take it to some friends' house. They had two computers, a PS2, (I brought my PS2 games as well) and the Wii.

We (myself, Christian & Jay) got onto WiiSports Bowling and Christian's teenage sister, Jossie, dominated us. All the guys had played bowling before, but the newb schooled us. She had the most spastic moves that ended up in strikes. Really it was because somehow she was curving the ball, but it only started to curve at the last possible second, right before drilling the pins. How she did that she didn't know, and we couldn't replicate it. A grudge match didn't help, because she still won 2nd place out of 4.

We then played some Tennis and Baseball. Jay figured out that the time to strike a ball was about two seconds, after which I was able to use my sense of timing (I remember beating teenagers on the Atari 2600 playing "Target" when I was 6 years old) which hasn't played into my success in videogames in, oh, 15 years (mattered, but not game-busting importance), suddenly I was the only one batting balls into the field or netting 3 home runs.

Then Christian fired up his copy of Zelda, even though he doesn't have his own Wii yet, and Jossie and Jay quickly went to the computers and played World of Warcraft and I tried to stay awake, but literally fell asleep (I'd tried to camp with them the night before for Christian's Wii but the store managers told us at 2AM that there were no Wiis - I've had friends who work at Best Buy/Worst Buy, I know they sell to their staff and pretend not to, so my guess is the tip was correct, they just didn't know the Wiis were "already accounted for").

Zelda is, of course, immaculate. The attention to detail in this game is incredible. Yes, it's got some small start areas and small areas with limited mobility like Fable. Yes, Oblivion's Radiant AI kills Zelda's NPCs. But when you see the cute pregnant girl holding her belly and breathing differently after a walk, you think "My God, that's actually what my wife did when she was pregnant." The game flowed beautifully and shined. I can see why it gets great reviews - it's not all nostalgia.

We disliked that you have to shake the Nunchuck left and right to do a swing attack, when we all wanted to wave the Wiimote around, but whatever. It was not a party game; Zelda is the Wii game for folks who have no friends living with them, and see their friends on weekends. Unlike the Nintendo President Iwata said, it's not a game folks will stick around and watch either. I would, if I wasn't so tired at the time, but I'm abnormal.

When we started playing Tennis again, Jay, who almost got a college scholarship playing Tennis, but wanted to leave Puerto Rico for the U.S. instead, couldn't believe he couldn't beat me. Everyone wanted to play me, and after five games my right arm started to give out. I got a break and played two more and then it was time to go home.

At home I played against my 9yo daughter, Maria, who enjoys competition with me. She's my tiger - we play wrestle, play fight (she knows about hooking out eyeballs) whereas my 2nd daughter, Dulce Maria (Sweet Maria), is a tender sensitive girl who yelps at any mild pain. Every child is different, and you can guess which one cuddles dad when he's sick, so they all have their strengths. Anyway...

Maria couldn't beat me at tennis anymore. She'd beaten me twice, but now I was impossible. Far from disheartened, she just wanted to know what she should do to learn to beat me again, so I told her to play the computer more often than her sisters, and to make a new Mii to start her score over because the computer (seeing her score), was owning her little sisters when they played together against the AI.

I can say that the Wii is the most fun I have had with a game console since my Nintendo Entertainment System. Remember when you'd get together with your friends and play NES games all evening? All day was a bit much for my outdoorsy self but all evening was fair game.

I bought an XBOX in Christmas of 2004 and got four controllers and as many four-player non-sports games as I could, since most of my friends aren't into football, soccer, etcetera. That left us with Gauntlet clones like the Dungeons & Dragons romp. After the initial party bash, there was no other. When my friends came over they were more interested in computer games.

Since my kids have gotten their Wii, plenty of friends of mine have come by more than once to play it again, all in a two week period, not two year.

The gamepad is dead. Finally. Nintendo brought it into the world, and it's taking it out as well.

PS3: The Unready; Wii: the Impressive; XBOX 360: the Entrenched

My comments are in green. The source articles are linked below - I strongly recommend reading each fully, as Mr. Bramwell is articulate and insightful.

Part one: the PS3
Part two: the Wii and the XBOX 360
By Tom Bramwell, deputy editor of Eurogamer.net.

From Part One...
"What I've discovered since I've had both consoles [Wii, PS3], though, is quite interesting. In a nutshell, Sony's new PlayStation isn't finished, and Nintendo's Wii isn't just a fascinating prospect - it's already impressive."

The write-up of the PS3 tells me much of what I expect: The PS3 is unready, unfinished and slap-shodded together (that's shoeing horses in a poor manner). From its menu system to its online abilities to the games available and the SixAxis controller.

From Part Two...
"...Sony's biggest problem at the moment is that it's lost the PR battle so comprehensively it can seldom open its mouth to do anything other than change foot."

Based on Sony's failure to match any release estimate, and a host full of other things they've said that haven't panned out. This made me laugh.

"Nintendo's is the "better" of the two launches in virtually every respect, with Sony's an unfinished symphony, but both companies' successes in the next five years will be determined by factors inconceivable in November 2006."

This speaks the truth. Not only does the Wii's success balance on 3rd party support, timing and innovation of the games delivered matter equally. If 3rd party developers do nothing but repackage old games and deliver them up with Wiimote & Nunchuck controls, it might float the Wii but it won't be realizing its potential. Making games that, like those on the dual-screened NDS, are created from the ground up to utilize the controls is what will make the Wii what it was meant to be. Failure to deliver either of these options in a timely fashion could stunt the Wii's growth, never to recover.

While some miracle might help Sony, I'd place no bets and not stock with that.

"Huge industry figures like EA's Larry Probst consistently pour praise and a demand to keep faith on the PS3, whilst complimenting the Wii's imaginative approach and saluting Microsoft's endeavors - but this is more than just hedging bets, it's a long-view that incorporates a lot of difficult variables."

Larry Probst, like many EA reps, is an out-right liar. Expect EA's real truth to be hidden behind their actions. EA has bought a development company and made it their Wii development branch. The amount of games they release for the PS3 and Wii is what will really indicate their beliefs - which could boil down to "I hope we don't lose much money" or be as grandiose as "Lets cash in before other people jump on the bandwagon." My bets are EA's a dollar gripping Scrooge.

That said, lack of EA support has spelled death for consoles in the past (Dreamcast), so the fact that they are developing for the Wii and PS3 is good news.

"How will the expensive PS3 do in the southern regions of Europe where PS2's low price has endeared it, but even the Core System model of the Xbox 360 has struggled? Will Nintendo's fashionable new manifesto for gaming translate to genuine third-party growth and shared commercial success, or will this be another Nintendo console that - for all its progressive tendencies - lives or dies by the games that come out of Kyoto? And will Microsoft's advertising blitzkrieg and successive exclusive winters prove as significant as the Redmond giant imagines?

None of these questions can be answered yet. But in this writer's estimation, what we can say now is that while some things may have changed, most things are still the same. Microsoft is as loud and imposing as ever. Nintendo is convincingly in control of and capable of expanding its own business, but not necessarily anyone else's. And although Sony has been weakened by its own hubris, it's still impossible to write off the PS3 until we've seen what it really has to offer."

The Wii has already succeeded at its purpose: to bring about a small videogame revolution. Gone are the days of archaic gamepads and with it, ignoring the casual gamer. Whether Microsoft slams Nintendo with it's own answer to N's big innovation in 5 years remains to be seen, but I'd find likely.

The PS3, on the other hand, seems set up to fail. I only hope that Blu-Ray wins over HD, not because I want either, but because the former is the better standard overall.

"In other words, the events of the last few weeks may have huge consequences, but it won't be until the next few months have passed that the picture will become in any way clear."

As far as "who wins" or "who makes money" this is true.

Wii vs. PS3: From the Voice of Reality Hurts

This is just a stellar article that shows non-avid gamer (being gamer and non-gamer) reactions to one writer's Wii and PS3:

• Page 1
• Page 2

Essentially he affirms my feelings (I'm more thinking than feeling so those are hard for me to put to words) that I've had playing the PS3 at Worst Buy (Best Buy) and my daughters' Wii at home.

The PS3 is truly cool, but substantially the same. It just doesn't offer much. So my dirt-bike can break apart into a thousand pieces, the drive chain and spokes and engine... that's neat. The SixAxis control scheme is far too sensative (which means using the thumbstick was better, and I tried doggedly for 15 minutes to like SixAxis).

On the other hand, pick up a Wiimote and take a swing at a tennis ball and you're there.

Wii got it right on the fun & price departments. There's just not much else to say, but marvel at these gamers and non-gamers coming into contact with both of his consoles at the same time.

Wii - I gots me one!

Actually my kids have one now. Here's how it all happened, and here's what I think of the Wii.

As I wrote, "Using the WiiMotes really is as much fun as the online videos make it out to be. I'm a cynical die-hard gamer who has gamed since the Atari 2600 and I can tell you this little machine is like a whole new world to me. I love Golf. Golf! Why? Because every motion I make, heck even the stance I hold my arms at helps me to play the game better. "

One thing I will say is as soon as a Wii Golf game comes out, that is nothing but Golf and pays attention to how you hold your WiiMote in every regard, I'm buying it. And I hate Golf (in real life). Golf on WiiSports is great, but is out-shined by Bowling and Tennis, which are just great party games and truly enjoyable.

I managed to score TWO Wiis in my marathon waiting-in-line event, one for my good friend Billy and his two children.

Nintendo's not dumb (for once)

[source article] The Wii is on track to sell all 4 MILLION units by December 31st of 2006, which is great news, but what gave me pause was how Reggie says they are handling the GameBoy Advance (GBA).

Microsoft brilliantly ceased production of XBOXes to try to "force" consumers onto the XBOX 360, ignoring the fact that new consoles don't make developers much money during their first year, and that the old systems continue to make money.

Sony, while still producing the PS2, doesn't talk about it much.

Nintendo, on the other hand, recognizes that the GBA still nets sales and makes money and has new games coming out for it. They're still pushing it.

That's paying attention to the bottom line, not market share. That's making money where it's to be made, not worrying about who newspapers say came in first place. That's smart.

This Guy is Stupid: What Wii Really Means

I read the three pages of this articulate, well cited article.

Quick Summary:
The tone of the article is a dismissive one. It attempts to show why the Wii's control scheme isn't really revolutionary (because, so far, we're really seeing the "same old games" with a new control scheme, forgetting the fact that the "same old" boxing game on a gamepad with buttons feels vastly different than the game with a Wiimote and Nunchuck) because evolutionary controls don't mean developers will make evolutionary games.

Well, duh. I don't expect 2001: A Space Odyssey from the new games, but I would prefer the new controllers to playing Fist Person Shooters with my thumbs.

Programmers should make New Games for Ancient Consoles?
Lastly, he says that the greatest asset the Wii has is its ability to play old gaming systems - such as the NES, Sega Genesis, and Turbo Grafix 16. Why? Because programmers could, in his mind, make games for little money and they would still sell because "These computers enthralled millions of people, people who were not merely biding their time waiting for better technology."

While that's true, given that the Wii has far less graphical fidelity than the XBOX 360 or PS3, it is not also true that flat, 2d graphics are more engaging to gamers than 3d ones. That was, after all, why games started moving in that direction in the first place.

The Personal Agenda that makes the whole article Wrong:
The last page really highlights that the author has a personal agenda: He loves old games. He loves nostalgia, and he would like to live in a world where programmers made new games for the 20+ year old Nintendo Entertainment System, and people bought played those games.

Given this, as accurate as he is about the notion that revolutionary controllers does not mean that revolutionary games will come out (it just makes it more likely, to a lesser extent as the onset of 3d gaming revolutionized games), the whole article is really a large, intelligent bend at an agenda the author has, and that's sad.

When good minds wrap themselves up in their feelings and then layer themselves in so much self-serving information as to believe themselves, when a few doses of the reality of how the world works tears it all down.

The Reality of the Author's Dream:
Wal-Mart has a great many "legacy style" game consoles in a controller that you can buy and put on your TV. Amazingly, my kids actually played these, but not very much. So while he's not entirely off his mark (folks can write simple games and people will play them) he's in the wrong market:

People who want games that simple will buy a $15 or $20 gamepad with a built-in console and a few games (that you can never add more to) and be happy, or put it on a shelf. People who buy a $250 or $400 or $600 console do NOT want these kinds of games, by in large, and their family members, having experienced what the Wii has to offer, probably won't care for the old push-button fests either, albeit the normal puzzle games may still apply.

Jose Francisco - the Luchador?

[General pictures, but not of Jose Francisco wrestling]

Jose Francisco loves to wrestle. It's not something I taught him, I think he just enjoys the feeling of grappling someone to the ground and getting on top of them. He has various ways he accomplishes this with his sisters. With the 4 year old Alejandrita, he likes to take one of her dolls and throw it on the floor. When she bends over to pick it up, he grabs her back and pushes her down and they start to wrestle. She's giggling the whole time.

With my 7yo, Dulce, he goes for her legs, which makes her get on her knees, and then he grabs her hair (which normally he never does), which gets her on her hands and knees, if not her side, and then he climbs on her.

Now Dulce is my sensative, skinny cuddle bunny, but I was still surprised when I heard her call me for help and found Jose Francisco had grappled one leg around one of her arms and the opposing arm around her leg, and she told me "I can't get Jose off of me..."

He's 19 months old. So I told her to tell him to get off without sounding like she was playing, which she did, and then I said commandingly "Jose! Escuchan tu hermana!" which means "listen to your sister" and he got off. Since then she's got safe words and thinks it's fun. Fun, for Dulce, is always knowing there's a way out.

Fun, for Jose Francisco, is proving that there isn't.

Outdoors he also likes to grab a fistfull of dirt and put it down their backs. I asked my 9yo, Maria, how he learned to pull open the back of their color and stuff dirt down their shirts, and she paused a while, and said "I taught him." The other thing he does is quickly points at Maria, who points at him, when my little girls look for whodunnit. Of course they know the truth — they were both in on it.

Wii Cannot Decide

Well I admit to being confused. I am a gamer and gaming things interest me. As much as I hate to admit it, I like how the Wii plays on video. But I'd also like to upgrade my old computer and make it a more capable gaming device to multiplay with my 9yo daughter.

Maria/Lupe, my eldest, wants a Wii. She says so because it's a casual game system that features controls you move around (not buttons you press - as much), supports four players (a magic number at our house) and doesn't cost a fortune (initially).

I told her that my friend Kevin advised I upgrade my old gaming rig (now my wife's PC, and Maria's multiplayer gaming platform) and she said "I don't mean to be rude, but Kevin thinks everyone enjoys what he does."

Actually he doesn't, but she's right that his advice is colored by that. I concede to his point: a PC can do loads of things. However, every time I come home and my baby boy feels left out, or my 2nd and 3rd daughter, I feel like a jerk every time I think about spending a few hundred dollars on something exactly one in four children can enjoy.

On the other hand, I hate consoles for their cyclical games and high-upkeep costs, and as a gamer things like graphics matter to me, not just visually but spacially. Now that I have experienced Operation Flashpoint and (more famous) Morrowind and Oblivion, I want more of these open games. Can the Wii's hardware deliver? If it's a toy for my kids (like their two GBA's) will it matter?

Wii are, as of yet, undecided. All that I know is a PS3 is just too expensive for too little gain.

Nolan Bushnell's smart commentary on the PS3, Wii, and Gamers

Nolan Bushnell, Atari's founder, founder of Chuck E Cheese, both of which I despise in their current incarnations... is a "good idea" man. Like any idea man, he seems to move quickly after an idea's time has passed.

Here's the full interview.

I found his commentary on his new restaurant franchise "uWink" interesting, but y'all might be more enticed to read his thoughts on the PS3, the XBOX 360, the Wii, Sony's past successes, and Atari as it stands today.

I colored the parts that are most profound red.

---

Q: (About his restaurant chain that combines touchpad screens at every table with social games and ordering food, he touches on core history of videogames)

"I saw a very large and untapped market, which is the entrepreneur’s dream. There was no real venue for social games. Games got violent in the mid 1980s… that lost women. Then they got long-form and complex. That lost the casual gamer.

There’s always been this desire to play games. What you really want when you’re out and about is a social [experience] using games... [snip]"

Q: (About his thoughts on the game industry)

"I’m very curious and interested in the Nintendo Wii. I think it may expand the market beyond the hardcore [18- to 24-year old]. Xbox Live is interesting because it potentially becomes the platform for the living room."

Q: (About his thoughts on Atari)

"[Atari] really isn’t a part of today’s gaming world in any meaningful way. They lost the cachet of being a leading technology company in the games space."

Q: (His thoughts about the PlayStation 3)

"I think Sony shot themselves in the foot… there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live… a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don’t buy hardware, they buy software."

Q: (About the success of the PS2 and the PSX)

"It wasn’t anything brilliant that [Sony] did. With the PS and PS2 it was timing. They had the right pricing at the right time [and were] almost the accidental winner. It would not surprise me if a year from now they’ll be struggling to sell 1 million units. [Factoring in the PS3’s price], I think in the U.S. the number of early adopters you have is actually around 300,000."

---

(Source RedHerring.com)

Gaming hasn't just lost women (and found them again in games like "The Sims"), it's losing actual gamers who grow up - like me.

"Casual gamer" is such a maligned term because all American males seem to want to think that, at their core, they're really a manly man waiting to bust out of an unmanly body. Saying "Casual" is akin to saying "not serious" or "loser." Everyone loves a winner in America.

But somewhere, someone is going to find out that casual games, that is to say, games that don't require my twenty four years of experience to handle, is a lucrative area. We see it pop up with things like Tetris, sandbox games (Railroad Tycoon series, Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Sim City, etcetera) and -- perhaps -- the Wii.

The Wii is severely underpowered , so much so that I doubt "hardcore gamers" need apply. But "no loss" there as hardcore folks will probably own an XBOX 360 (if they don't already). The Wii could still be something else they pick up at its price-point, something Bushnell cited the inverse of with the PS3. But I have serious reservations as to its ability to satiate the hardcore gamer who, when he comes home, finds a videogame to play and sits down. I doubt the Wii will have enough titles to handle the load; from what I have seen, Red Steel will bomb and only the new Zelda game can hold down a hardcore gamer. No matter -- that's not what it's designed for.

Like Bushnell, I think Nintendo has struck upon an idea that is centered around "untapped consumers."

Bushnell thinks uWink will tap some hidden consumer group, folks who want food and fun in a more adult setting; that's great, but I think the Wii stands a better shot (link to a Japanese family trying out baseball).

Of course, no console or restaurant can withstand the might of the Personal Computer, but once again - that's hardcore.

So will the Wii be, as early Atari was, a stepping stone to get the rest of the population into games? There will always be more casual gamers, I think, and there are folks who just aren't us, which is to say, they will never be hardcore gamers. Whether or not I ever get one, my main hope is that the Wii's control scheme puts an end to the decades-old handheld gamepad (which is really a mini-version of an arcade desk with a stick and buttons that we suddenly found we liked to hold rather than place on the floor [source]), that twenty years from now, all games I play will involve motion, not my touch-typing skills or... thumbs.

Let's face it, we use our thumbs to grab things. They are not meant to be dexterous.

My points? I'm forcing myself to have those lately:

1. Sony is stupid. The PS3 will fail.
2. The Wii has the potential to rid me of my hated enemy: the thumbstick!
3. There's a real market for unmanly men and women who play games sometimes but not all the time.
4. Nolan Bushnell is fairly smart, and has insightful comments on these subjects:
1. How we lost women gamers
2. How we lost casual gamers
3. Sony isn't as smart as they think they are
5. Having a great family means you're not as compelled to log in those hardcore hours into games.

- David

I love my PureXS!

I haven't been well motivated to post because I have my computer (see below) and we're in the middle of Election season. But I'm happy and doing well.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS Arrival Photographs

It's here!

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PEEEUUUUURRRRE EEEEX EEEESSSS

Maria (my lovely lady) just called and told me something has arrived. Baxworld's shipping information still doesn't show it but who cares! I'm on my way home for lunch. So sad we'll be so soon to part. I probably won't open it so I can open it with my cousin Paul tonight.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

Urban Dead

The dead rise to consume the living?

Okay, this is my kind of MMO - quick, easy, appealing, and I have yet to meet the mighty grind beast. It's web-based, which is to say it's story-driven, which is to say "it's mostly just text."

Once you die as a human, you come back as a zombie (duh). As a zombie, you have to gain separate XP to learn to make sounds, and once you can, you can use a new language (well, heavily based on English). It's fascinating, Captain. There's a Lexicon of words as well.

Maria's 19" Widescreen LCD arrives!

I'll post pictures tonight. It's a tad bright, so I turned the brightness down to 5/100 instead of the default 100/100 and that seemed to work. It is not a $400 Dell LCD but for the price ($200) it's large, crystal clear and great. I can see that a Graphic Designer would hate this LCD because it just can't do what the more expensive LCD's can with color but then - it's not an expensive LCD!

Good buy. More on that later.

PureXS arrives in ORLANDO, Florida

See the tracking information page.

Yes, it's true! My PureXS is in Orlando, FL. I doubt it will arrive at my place today, which is sad.

Ironically, my PureXS will be closer to my friend Chris Brown, in Kissimmee, who is South of me and farther away from its origin (Indiana) than I am. Maybe the plane flew over Alachua County or the City of Gainesville before landing there... it MUST have come by plane to have such a wierd route.

THE BIG E-MAIL
I sent the guys this e-mail.

FRIDAY before SATURDAY'S LAN PARTY
Since my cousin Paul is stuck at home guarding the house and tending the aging dog, Yogi, with his folks gone, I plan on taking my system over to his place and messing around there, getting stuff installed, going "Wow" and making "whooping" noises. I'll get to bed at a responsible time for Saturday, but I'm going to ask him if I can sleep over.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS to arrive in Atlanta tomorrow...

Shipping update (see my Google Page for complete info) Oh well. I suppose 10:30PM versus 9:37PM today is about the same to me as "ETA ATLANTA 0712/14" which I would guess is 7:12AM tomorrow? I have no idea. I can't imagine them guessing the minutes like that but there you go. Hopefully it will be here tomorrow evening.

Mmmm mmm can't wait. Sitting here doping around with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Glee. Yay. Bleh.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

BEST OF ALL, NO MULTIPLAYER

Concerning what a few friends have told me about OBLIVION: The Elder Scrolls IV, I found on www.GamersGoneBad.com a rant I made about multiplayer gaming that speaks true still. The topic then was Galactic Civilizations II, but it might as well be any well-made single-player experience...

"For years, I have thought that any game that could, should be multiplayer. It all started back with the original ZELDA on the old Nintendo. I recall thinking "If I could edit this game and create my own overworld and underworlds and watch my friends play, I'd never stop playing this game." I then thought "And if we could play together, each criss-crossing whatever screens we happen to be on independantly across the world, or working together in the same area, that would be cooler than is imaginable."

That was, what? 1987-1988? Nearly 20 years later - I have news. Playing with your friends is fun, but unlike when we were kids, and games were so simple an affair that all you needed was a second controller and a friend to invite over, we now have to pay $50 per game. Most of your friends probably don't own the same games, and even if they do, both of you wanting to play the same game at the same time is like errant asteroids finding planet Earth.

This is why Internet match-making is what it is, and let me tell you - "...those you encounter online, almost as a rule, are complete and utter cockmongers ." I've been in the 5th ranked guild out of 16,000 North American Guilds in Guild Wars. I was the Captain of the Monk team, 3rd in teir. I've been ranked 20th in Dawn of War's "2v2 players" list, fighting alongside my cousin Paul. I have proven that PC gamers who've been around since Castle Wolfenstein can, instantly, do as well as the 90th percentile in Halo 2 using a Lik-Sang keyboard/mouse adapter (all it took was learning where the gun drops were), and again in the PC port of Splinter Cell: the one where you only have versus mode.

The only place you can go from the top -- is down. And quite often, getting there is a struggle more than an adrenaline rush -- after over 10 years of competative gaming, I really don't give a flying fuck anymore. There's always a new game and ever-younger than you pricks who think that, somehow, dominating other people online is akin to kicking other cave-men in the jaw and breeding with the women while they lie there and bleed. It's a primordal attitude that reveals itself eventually for what it is.

No one plays together as a team. Axe ZELDA with your friends, and you are left with ZELDA, the Editor. "

PureXS Shipping Update 1

"2148/13" my PureXS is arriving in Atlanta sooner than 10:30PM? The time changed.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS is SHIPPING

The copy/paste won't fit here so check my Google Page on my PureXS shipping!

My Computer Ships Today, to arrive Friday!

David with AAC called me (called my house first and got my 6yo) at work and said the shipping price comes to a whopping $100.89 (ouch - that's over half the cost of Maria's new 19" widescreen LCD) and will arrive no later than Friday at 5pm.

So now all I have to do is... WAIT MORE.

Ooh and Kyle just called me and is going to sign my PureXS with his scrawl and printed name! Oboy! He says the guy who is going to take it is due any minute so he has to sign it and box it up right now. Fun fun!

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

"All Circuits are Busy Now" - I can't reach AAC

I can't reach All American Computers by phone. I get the message "All Circuits are Busy Now" in a woman's nasal tone from the phone company. The call never actually gets to them. If they've got major phone problems up there in Indiana they might not be able to reach me, either. Curse the phone conglomorates!

I am going insane. They need me to give them Maria's credit card information so they can charge me shipping so they can ship the PureXS so it can arrive in time for Saturday the 16th, when my big, bad LAN Party is, so the guys and I can have fun so I don't have to call them all and say "Sorry no party" after four weeks of planning. Aaaah!

I'm okay, I'm okay.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

Maria and I buy a 19" widescreen LCD

Check out the Google Page I made about our Acer widescreen 19" LCD.

I called All American Computers

The LAN Party is a Go
The bottom line is good: My PC will be with me in time for the LAN Party on Saturday, September 16th!

Kyle says if the LIAN LI side-panel doesn't arrive by Tuesday he'll ship the case with the default panel and ship the clear side-panel later.

The RAM issue hasn't been resolved, it's still running at 677MHz, however, a BIOS revision will probably fix that later, and as he put it "The motherboard is built to have RAM at this speed. When folks overclock their RAM they can actually mess up their timings and slow their system down. I don't think that would happen here but the point is the benefit is negligible and probably not worth waiting for (with an update down the road)."

So I'm a stickler and I want that 800MHz - at the very least I want to try it out and see my 3dMark 2006 scores to check for what difference it makes - but I'm content to do that on my own and not let it hold up my system any longer.

One More Weekend with Mrs. Chop-Fest
I guess I have one more weekend with Clara, my 4yo gaming rig, humdrumming around, trying to find games made between 2001-2003 that I might actually like to play. I'm so sick of low-frame rates.

I tried Star Wars: Empire at War, which is actually a fun little RTS due to its "conquer the galaxy" mode where you collect planets, have them build stuff and send those fleets places to invade other planets. Super keen. As an RTS it's very bland, standard "overwhelm the enemy" and "watch out for air power" when on the ground, instead of space. Anyway, it was running all right on Clara, until I had a lot of planets pumping out stuff, and then just the UNIVERSE map was slow, never mind once I got big fleets of ships going, even with a unit cap. Talk about stupid! So I stopped playing it.

Future Gaming
I got Call of Juarez but I can't play it on Clara - so I'll have to wait for my PureXS, and when I get that I'm pretty sure all I'll be doing is playing Oblivion, so I'm not sure why I got it. It looked Western.

I also want to try out X3, Rise of Legends, F.E.A.R. multiplayer and... a bunch of other stuff.

In the mean time, I have the Soundtrack to Oblivion (awards), and I listen to that almost daily at work. I dream not of Oblivion, but of Draco, Shila and the lands of the Ancient Dragon, not dissimilar in setting and genre.

Hearing my Baby Humm...
I had a very odd sensation while on the phone with Kyle. He asked me to listen and then he said "I'm turning on your (PureXS)." I heard the switch and then her jump to life, all fans ablaze. One immediately died down a bit, and the other waited longer - X1900's in Crossfire, only one will immediately slow down, the other waits for Windows to post back to it. I heard her quiet way down once Windows was at the login prompt.

It struck that cord in me, not nearly as sharply, as when I've seen my children in ultrasounds, or heard them thumping and felt them moving about. It was oddly surreal, and I was kind of disappointed in myself for feeling that way - but there it is. Granted, my children made me cry with joy when hearing them - this did not. But I did feel the pangs. It struck the same cord.

Wierd, huh? He was just trying to demonstrate the minor differences between the X1950's and the X1900's (in Crossfire, both X1950's slow down immediately, whoopdiedoo).

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

I kind of WANT MY COMPUTER

I have no more pictures to lavish upon my Internet Shrine to my future PureXS, and now I'm worried that I will have to cancel the Sept. 16th Saturday LAN Party.

Kyle at All American Computers is still working on the RAM issue and waiting for the side-panel from LIAN LI, the case manufacturer. I'll call him after lunch today.

Why World of Warcraft is Successful

Rob Pardo's keynote speech gives all the management details that shows how they thought up and executed WoW's production. Great read.

David Dies, Keeps on Working

I... unlive! Election Day Tuesday I was up from 5AM until 2:30AM Wednesday, at work from 6am to 2am. I got 4.5 hours of sleep and I'm back in at work at 8:30am.

The image is some random guy dressed up, not me. I don't wear glasses and have a 'stach and beard growing. Well, what suffices for manly hair growth on my nubile face.

I called Kyle at AAC and everything is coming together. He's a bit pissed because a case didn't arrive for another customer he's working on (a computer for Microsoft) but was pleasant with me. He's also tired because he was up late as well. Running your own business has got to take a lot out of you.

Poor Maria Alejandra tried to wait up for me but feel asleep at 1am. My poor lovely, loving little Mexican girl. She's so devoted, so loyal.

David's PureXS - Photograph!

What's to say? It looks freaking awesome! (click to enlarge)
Side panel and Seagate Barracuda 320GB's are the last parts Kyle & company are waiting for.

See it on my Google Page

Benchmarks comparison with AMD versus Conroe in Crossfire

These two benchmarks from GotFrag disturb me:

Billy's Core 2 Duo "Conroe" E6700 with a 975XBX motherboard, 2GB OCZ DDR2 RAM and a single X1900 XTX ATI videocard gets better frame rates than the E6800 listed here on ultra high quality. True, his max FPS was less, and his average was 53, not 57 (but then, he wasn't doing the exact same things) but his minimum was 38! Not 18!

I took one look at this and I thought "This is because of Nvidia gayness." and I was right. Nvidia Videocards are behind this travesty of justice, this misuse of CPU powerhouses.

Bah! I spit in their general direction.

Deadwood: Suckage

I saw the last episode of Season 3 (series got canned by HBO), and it totally fucking sucked, pardon my French.

"It told us so much about each of the characters."

It contradicted everything that the characters have established. I'm not appealing for a bloodbath, but some preservation of the characters that we have all seen develop through the seasons, even if it was Bullock's use of his badge to thwart Hearst in some way. To see them all buckle tells us that it was all just an act. That they were nothing more than the "bullies" that Bullock lamented about to Hearst. What was this? The author's way of telling us he had us all fooled?

And more generally, when an author foretells of something within a story, and uses lots of devices to build to it, but then doesn't follow through with it, it's very reasonable for an audience to be unsatisfied. The author seems to have indulged a bit too much here for the audience's liking. The conclusion he deprived us of was the hook that kept us coming back, and we feel cheated."

This sums my feelings up. Seth didn't act like Seth, nor Al act like Al, and on down the line. Even Cy seems oddly out of character, although he's been erratic since he nearly died at the ending of the 2nd season.

Fucking stupid, I say, for all the reasons listed above. Limber dick cocksuckers, as the great Ellsworth said. It continues...

"To those people here that mistook people standing down to Hearst as being anticlimactic, what's happened here is that Deadwood has shown itself to be strong by showing itself to be united. "

Bullock loses the election. Ellsworth leaves town. Who knows what will happen to Charlie since Bullock loses. The Doc is dying. What's so united about this? Their futures are all left hanging. We have no idea of what happens next.

I don't even think it's historically accurate. Bullock was the sherrif of the town from it's inception. There is no mention of his defeat so shortly after being appointed sherrif. History places him as the sherrif there for quite a while and that he restored "Law and Order" in the town.

"It's about priority, and learning to adapt. And we see that in everyone's decisions, right down to Charlie accepting the tea instead of coffee. Hearst's departure is worth a fucking lot to everyone in the camp. And Hearst has seen how unpleasant it is for him to be there, the poor put-upon delusional cocksucker. It's win-fucking-win. Everyone's standing up to Hearst, saying "we know you have the power to destroy us but we aren't gonna suck your ass pretending we like you." But they misunderestimate him as much as he misunderestimated them when he showed up in the town. He'll still be a presence, but again, the camp will adapt."

And what exactly is attractive about a story where everyone gives into corrupt power and and conforms? They aren't standing up, to Hearst whatsoever. If you think that Charlie's and Seth's little speaches to Hearst were not pretending, you lend too much weight to hollow words.

Basically, the characters acted contrary not only to their established character:

1. The impulsive, righteous Sheriff not only did nothing, but he didn't even object to an innocent whore being murdered in place of another, as demanded by the Big Bad Guy Hearst.
   
2. The conniving bad guy allied with the good guys bends over for the Big Bad Guy Hearst and kills one of his own whores to placate him - and not even the right one. Supposedly, that was something nice he did - but I object. Even Al didn't think it was "fair."
   
3. Alma sells her claim to Big Bad Guy Hearst because he had her sweet, noble old husband murdered. Nevermind Ellsworth would be thumping and thrashing in his grave at this.
   
4. We had nearly every character in town gunning for Big Bad Guy Hearst and they fucking have him just stroll away with armed Pinkertons. He got all he wanted and everyone in town proved they were wussies, that everything the series had established was a lie.
   

My PureXS from All American Computers

See my Google Page / Shrine on this PC, complete with pictures, a link to every blog post, and thoughts.

• CPU:
  INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6700 2.66GHZ 4MB CACHE
• MOTHERBOARD:
  INTEL D975XBX 1066FSB CF CORE 2 MB
• RAM:
  OCZ 800MHZ DDR2 2X1024MB GOLD XTC DIMMS
• CASE:
  LIAN LI PC-V1000 B BLACK ALUMINUM CASE
  CLEAR SIDE PANEL
• FANS:
  120MM RED LED CASE FAN (TWO)
• POWER SUPPLY:
  620 WATT ENERMAX LIBERTY POWER SUPPLY
• VIDEOCARDS:
  ATI 512MB X1900 XT PCI-E CROSSFIRE CARD
  ATI 512MB X1900 XT PCI-E CARD
• HARD DRIVES (RAID 0):
  SEAGATE 320 GIG 7200 RPM SERIAL ATA HD
  SEAGATE 320 GIG 7200 RPM SERIAL ATA HD
• DVD/CD DRIVE:
  NEC ND-3550AGBP DVD+/-RW DUAL LAYER BK
• OPERATING SYSTEM:
  MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION
• SOUNDCARD:
  CREATIVE X-FI XTREME MUSIC EDITION
• SPEAKERS:
  1X-530 Logitech 5.1 Speaker set
  
• WARRANTY & SUPPORT:
  SYSTEM / 1 YEAR PART-3 YEAR LABOR WARR.

Mmmmmm... E6700 with Crossfire...
I should have this next week.

I have a lot of friends who want to see this rig (7 of them). An old high-school buddy invited me to Kissimmee to see it! I can remember when his Silicon Graphics (SGI) Indigo 2 was incredible - saw bump-mapping in hardware on a then $20,000 SGI workstation, 8 copies of non-multithreaded Unix DOOM ran on it. Now even my old gaming rig outperforms it for video (but not rendering, I think).

I digress. That is normal.

Paul (cousin), Billy (the Pitbull), Brandon, Dennis, Chris (Kissimmee), Jock & Christian!