I Can Budget

One More Reason I Don't Like Microsoft

My hotmail account has been inactive for over a month now. I keep getting this error message any time I log in from anywhere (home computer, work computer, friends' computers, XBox 360, Messenger, etc).

That screenshot turned out to be super-tiny for some reason, though I tried to resize it. the text of the error message is "We're unable to retrieve information for this page at this time. We're sorry for the inconvenience, please try again later." [sic] Aside from being grammatically incorrect (who sees it?), the error is worthless as far as trying to figure out myself what's going on. If I click the button and try to sign in again, I end up right back here. 

I just sent my third email (in as many weeks) to Microsoft tech support about the issue. They all yielded case numbers but nothing else. Not even an automated "We got your request" email. I checked both my Inbox and my Junk Mail filter. Do you think that maybe MS doesn't want to respond to me because my secondary email address is @gmail? If I haven't gotten a response from them soon, I'm going to want to call somebody, but finding a tech support number on their site is virtually impossible. Heck, finding a way to contact customer support in general was a pain in my behind.

A Google search of my issue revealed that some customers have this with their @q.com email addresses (that's Qwest email through MSN Live) and get that error when that email account is disconnected. My account, however, is @hotmail.com, so I'm lost.

Here's to hoping I get an answer. 

More Bailout Info

The following article is a great piece of education on why the bailout is bad news for all but the elite upper-class. It also contains a fascinating video about the Constitutionality of printing $700B.

Click here to read it.

Bailout Voted Down 228-205

That was a relief to read this morning. The $700B bailout was voted down. For thoroughness' sake, that's $700,000,000,000 written out. The House slapped that down 228-205. Thanks to all the people who wrote their Congressmen about how bad the issue really is. 

Ron Paul has the following thoughts on the vote, and the market's subsequent drop.

It's likely that now the poo-flinging will begin on Capitol Hill - the gloves are off, and all shreds of bipartisanship will likely be shed. You've got the group that thinks a bailout will work, then you've got the group that knows it won't.

A full list of who voted how can be found at Campaign for Liberty. If your Senators/Congressmen are on the "aye" list, it's time to write them and let them know how you feel about your tax dollars being put towards fixing big coporations' mistakes, how you feel about the socialization of the free market, and how you feel about devaluing the dollar even father than it already is by magically printing $700B out of thin air. 

Rock Band 2 Review

It took me a while to get around to this, because, honestly, I've been very absorbed in unlocking everything in The Force Unleashed. I put some quality time in with this game over the past few days, so here we go.

The first thing that really jumped out at me regarding this game is that, graphically, it's not improved over Rock Band at all. There are a few new venues to play at, a few new costumes for your created band guy, and the default characters from the last game now have names, a la Guitar Hero. So we're down to Rock Band 1.8. 

There are no new mechanics involved with the core gameplay. With the last iteration, there were some major innovations, most notably the "band" thing, but also smaller things, like the solo buttons on the Rock Band guitar. This time around, there's not a single innovation to the way the game plays once you're actually in a song. Rock Band 1.7.

So, what is new? Well, the songs for starters. There are 80-something new songs to play with, plus, for $5, you can move over all the songs that came on the Rock Band 1 disc. It uses about 1.5GB on the 360's hard drive, but it's worth it to play with double the tunes. Add that to the downloaded content, and you have a very large setlist.

The menus have been changed and are better-organized. The one that stands out to me the most is the song-selection menu, which is very close to the Rock Band Music Store menu from the previous game. You can see Artist, Title, Ablum (with the album cover), then a difficulty ranking for all the instruments individually and the band as a whole. Very spiffy. Rock Band 1.75.

The biggest changes come about in the new Tour mode. Last year's game provided a very linear structure. Play and pass these 4 songs then move on to a new venue. This year, each venue has a list of gigs. Once you've earned enough stars, you start unlocking new gigs in various locales around the globe. It's nice because if there's a song that you just can't beat or one you just hate playing, you don't have to beat it. 

The new setlist feature is very prominent in the new Tour mode also. Most of the challenges that are presented involve playing a setlist, which is just 2 or more songs played back-to-back without going back to the menu to select more songs. It provides a fun challenge, and it feels like you're actually playing a concert rather than just a one-shot gig. Some of the challenges are required in order to progress (like you need a plane to jump from America to Europe and vise versa), and they're not "choose your own songs" setlists either. There will be some songs that you just have to learn to play. Rock Band 1.8.

I have not had any time to experiment with online play, so I'll remain mum on that topic. 

Overall, it's not a bad game, but some people I think will not want to shell out $60 for what is essentially just more songs. I would have preferred that this was just made available as downloadable content that ran less than $60. Anyway, I wouldn't really call it a sequel. Rock Band 1.8 seems to be adequate. 

I've got no review on IGN to point to, so:

Score 8.5/10.0

The Force Unleashed Review

I preordered The Force Unleashed online several weeks before the game actually came out. Upon reading reviews in OXM, Game Informer, IGN, etc who all gave the game mediocre-at-best scores, I was disappointed. So much untapped potential. 

Then I played the game.

I went into the game with mixed expectations. On one hand, it's a brand new, Lucas-approved story, and it involved heavy, heavy use of the force in completely abusive ways. What could be more fun? Of course, on the other hand, I had the lukewarm reviews.

I'm pretty sure I was hooked from the moment I took control of Darth Vader and started flicking Wookies across the stage and choking them with the Force. I felt godly, which is the intention of the game. 

Game play-wise, there are few experiences on any system that compare to The Force Unleashed. The premise of the game is, of course, to go hog wild with the Force, and destroy everything, which the game does, and does well. There wasn't a level that went by that I didn't find some clever new way of killing an enemy or uncover a spiffy Force puzzle. The control scheme works well for the multitude of commands I had at my disposal, especially later in the game when The Apprentice is overflowing with Force coolness. 

The graphics, while not up to the bar set by games like Gears of War, are decent. They get the job done, nothing more, nothing less. The models for the main characters are great, as is the lip-syncing, and the cinematics will rock your face. The environments, however, tend to look drab, and the fact that you will visit most worlds twice through the course of the story makes those environs seem a bit repetitive. The draw distance is long, to understate it. When trying to bring down the Star Destroyer, you'll see the incoming TIE Fighters a full 40-60 seconds before they actually reach you. That's impressive.

The audio side of things is superb, as we've all expect from Star Wars titles. Great voice acting, great sound effects, marvelous use of John Williams' existing score, and an engaging new piece that fits right in with the Star Wars universe make this game positively delightful on the ears. 

That's not to say all is well in Force-land. My gripes are minor, but all had a tendency to be annoying at times. The menus have load screens. What?! I blame cross-generation development for this. It's likely that if this were a 360/PS3 only game that there would be no load time, but alas, we must wait to customize our skills and Lightsabers. The game has an annoying tendency of shoving The Apprentice into a black hole of sorts. Everything glitches, and you can't move. I was once smashed by a rock thrown by a Rankor, and that pushed me through a wall and into the black oblivion that exists beyond the level boundaries. The only way I've been able to fix this is to start over from the last save point. Finally, as with too many 3rd person games, the camera has a tendency to be both wonky and annoying. 

That brings us to the part that I liked most, and it is the number one reason this game receives a great score from me: the story. The game is not long - clocking in just shy of 15 hours to find everything - but the story conveyed in those 15 hours is nothing short of amazing. Beginning to end, the story unfolds at a pace that draws you into the game, not only for the joy involved in throwing Force powers in every direction, but to see what happens next. The aforementioned voice acting drives the characters and brings them to life. If fact, I daresay that the characters in this game out-act the folks on the big screen (particularly in the more recent trilogy). The acting and writing is honest and doesn't have that stilted feel from the movies. The Apprentice is also one of the most engaging characters to come along in the Star Wars universe. He is a hero/antihero without being emo and tearful (I'm looking at YOU Anakin)or coming across as fake. His story is as great as this kind of story is capable of being without absorbing a hundred ours of your time, and its tie-in to Episodes 3 and 4 is brilliant.

Many, many reviewers are unhappy with what is one of the coolest moments in gaming history. That would be brining down the Star Destroyer. No, it's not easy. Yes, you might die a couple of times. Yes, there are waves of TIE Fighters that shoot you while you are trying to bring down said Star Destroyer. Yes, it will take some time. Do any of these things dull the experience? Absolutely not. It's easily one of the harder parts of the game, but with a little patience, you will bring down that ship, and you will feel really cool for having done it.

In short, disregard the reviews from other outlets. It seems to me that they let a comparatively minor list of gripes affect the score a bit too much. Yes, it's got flaws, but on the whole, the game is really a can't-miss title that is just a ton of fun and has one of the best original Star Wars storylines/characters around.

My full review, including numerical scores (because that's official and cool) can be found over at IGN.

It's Friday!!!!

That's all I had to say.

Supernatural Returns Tonight

Well, it's my favorite time of the year. The best damn show on television has its season premiere tonight. Anyone who knows even a little about me knows that I have a borderline obsessive love for Supernatural. I finally got to see the season 3 finale a couple of weeks ago on DVD, and it takes the place of the season 1 finale as the best single episode of that show ever. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it. It still gives me a little shiver.

Anyway, tonight, 9/8c on CW. I don't actually have cable (sad panda) but I'm going to see if I can pick up some sort of picture through the static. If not, here's to hoping CW posts the full episodes online.

Can't. Freaking. Wait.

Supernatural for the win!

Want Ad

So.... it appears as though I am going to be needing a new room mate come the end of October. Nothing guaranteed yet, but it's on it's way (I have a feeling).

Anybody up?

Remembering 9/11

"It's hard to put it into words... and maybe one doesn't need to." -Peter Jennings

Behind on the Times - The Amazon Spore Debacle

It seems that everybody has already posted this. Both The Knight Shift and Consumerist already have articles. But, what the hey, I'm going to throw my two cents in there as well. Check this screenshot from Amazon.

What is wrong with this image? Namely, Spore, the new game from EA and SimCity creator Will Wright, is the number 1 selling game on Amazon, BUUUUUT it's got a 1 star rating. As of the time of this writing, 1,812 customer have reviewed the game (the data from the section I screenshotted just now seems to be a bit behind), and 1,676 of those are 1 star ratings. For those of you without a calculator, that's 92.5%. This screenshot is a bit more current.

Holy righteous fury, Batman!

I've spent a good chunk of time today reading the customer reviews of this game, and the reason for the 1 star reviews is really pretty evident: DRM.

What's the big deal about the DRM, you may ask. Let's break it down. DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is a tool put in place by the computer industry a long time ago. Think CD keys of days gone by. It's evolved since then. In its latest iteration of Office, Microsoft makes users call in or connect to a network to verify their copy of office with a very long product key, which leads to a very long registration key. The idea is to keep people from pirating the software.

Like Mass Effect and Bioshock before it, Spore comes with a thrid-party software called SecuROM, which is the piece of software that manages the DRM restrictions. EA's been using this software for a while now.

• Bioshock - EA used SecuROM to limit the number of installs of Bioshock to 3 per CD Key. If you uninstalled Bioshock, the use was reset, so if you had it installed on three computers and removed it from one, that use would be reset giving you an additional activation.
• Mass Effect - EA changed it's policy with Mass Effect. Instead of the 3 install bit, EA decided that they would make the software connect to the network to verify itself every 10 days. This caused problems in that anybody without internet couldn't continue to use it after the initial install. After a bevy of complaints, EA changed to policy back to 3 activations, but with a catch. Uninstalling from a computer no longer reset the use for that computer.

And here is where everybody is caught up. Let's look at the arguments presented in the various reviews found on Amazon.

There is no notification of any 3rd party software being installed on the system.

That is a pretty serious claim, but, from everything I've been able to gather, it's totally correct. There is no mention on the box or in the EULA that makes any mention of any third-party software. This just reeks of shady. Yes, yes, there were press releases about DRM being included with Spore, but not everybody, especially in the caual gamer market that this game appeals to, reads those things. Hell, I love video games, and I didn't read any of those. If there is third party software being installed on a customer's computer, EA should go out of their way to make sure that customer knows about it. To do otherwise is just asking to be sued.

Three installs? What?!

The most common comment I could find related this to a $50 rental. Remember that when the game is purchased, it comes with exactly 3 activations. If you run out of activations, you have to call EA, and they will give you another one at their discretion. So, you might get one, you might not. More on this in a minute.

Technical issues with the SecuROM software.

Many, many people write reviews that cite problems either with Spore or with previous games that use the SecuROM software. These issues include the software being a resource hog, greatly impacting the performance of the computer, straight on through to full-on system failures. Add to that the 3 installs bit, and you have a recipe for a $50 coaster.

So what?

So, the 1st and 3rd points are fairly straight forward. It's the 3 install thing that most people seem to be arguing about. Most people who support the DRM software accuse the detractors of being pirates for needing to install it more than 3 times. Take the following cases as examples of times that more than 3 installs would be necessary:

1. You have 3 computers (one for you, one for your spouse, and one for your kids). You install Spore on all 3. Your spouse's laptop dies, so you buy her a new one. You try to install Spore and receive a message telling you that you've exceeded your maximum number of activations for your CD key. This leaves you with a game that you purchased legally that you are not allowed to use on your laptop. You call EA and hope whoever answers the phone is having a good enough day to allow you to claim an extra activation.
2. You have 1 computer, which you install Spore on. Your hard drive crashes. You replace it and install Spore again. That's 2 activations down. Let's say your processor goes bad, so you replace that. SecuROM no longer recognizes your system, because the hardware configuration (which is stored on EA's activation servers) has changed. You must activate it again, losing your 3rd and last activation. If anything else happens to the computer (included a SecuROM-caused system failure), you are SOL.

Like I said before, this DRM solution was put into place to prevent people from pirating the software. Yet, there were pirated copies of this game loaded onto every torrent site known to man up to 4 days prior to the realease of the game in the US. The pirates stripped the SecuROM software out of said pirated copies, so the pirates are using the game for free AND they don't have to worry about the limitations imposed by the SecuROM software. This begs the question "how is this helping to prevent piracy again?"

What this IS doing, and rather successfully I might say, is alienating people that would have ordinarily purchased the game. Why spend $50 on the game that has all these limitations when you can go get the game for free without any limitations? It all boils down to this: video game publishers, and the computer industry in general, need to stop treating their customers like criminals. If your customers feel like criminals, they will probably act like criminals too. And this kind of blatant disrespect of people will create exactly this kind of situation. Individuals who rise up and say "No more", much like the folks at Amazon are doing right now. True, it's the best selling game right now, but with all the folks saying they are going to send the game back in for a refund, it will probably be the most returned game pretty soon too. EA stands to lose A LOT of money from this unless it meets the demand of its customers and does something about this DRM fiasco. 

Maybe they can take a page from the book of Stardock, a company that also makes computer games, but they don't use any form of DRM. And, somehow, they still turn a profit. Could it be because they don't treat their customers like criminals? Maybe EA should look into that.

Happy Birthday Google

So, yesterday was the 10th birthday of Google, the company that has indisputably had the biggest impact on the way we use the Internet. What started out as a simple search engine (an by simple, I mean the one that everybody flocked to because it was head and shoulders above the competition) to a search engine plus a slew of nifty online applications, desktop applications, and now a web browser (which is awesome, I might add). Plus, they are heavily involved with the movement to open source cell phones where anybody can make applications for cell phones and we, as consumers, are not stuck using the provider's default (and oftentimes idiotic) applications. Perhaps best of all is the fact that almost all of their services are completely free. I'm down with that.

Social Musings

I've been wanting to write about this for quite some time now, and I think I'm finally going to start. There's a book out there called The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. It might be one of the best books I've ever read (as I mentioned in a previous post). Actually, there shouldn't be a "might" in that previous statement. The premise of the book is some ancient secret that is getting people on a college campus killed. But, far more importantly, the book is a meditation on friendship, what it means, why it's there, and what becomes of it. It's powerful stuff.

There's one paragraph that has always stood out in my mind. It was one of those things that I read on my first run through, and I had to put the book aside and just think about it. these guys have some powerful insights into this friendship business, and I'd like to share that particular paragraph here. 

"Hope, Paul said to me once, which whispered from Pandora's box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion. That, I think, is the only explanation for what happened to my father and me, just as it happened to Taft and Curry, the same way it will happen to the four of us here in Dod, inseparable as we may seem. It's a law of motion, a fact of physics that Charlie could name, no different from the stages of white dwarfs and red giants. Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years."

For those of you that pay attention, you'll find my own, inadequate attempt at spouting the same philosophy in this post. But think about that for a second. Look past the names of the characters that make no sense if you haven't read the book, and think about what the authors are saying here.

For those of you (most of you) who have not read this book, the focus of the book is four friends who attend college. They think they are inseparable, but through the course of the book, the ties that bind them as friends erode until they are almost gone. It's painful at times to read.

I am a person who values my friends above all else in my life. My friends are my family, and I like to think that I'll have my friends forever. This philosophy, then, was very hard for me to stomach, this preposterous idea that the friends I had at the time would not be the friends I have now, that the friends I have now are not going to be the friends I have in the future. That thought scares me very, very much.

Yet, looking back on previous friendships, its easy to see the truth in this. I think about all the friends I used to have and have since lost touch with. I think about the friends I used to have whose interests have diverged from my own, and we stopped hanging out because there was no more common ground. And the thought of it saddens me, but it is the grim reality of life.

Does this mean that, perhaps, we are creatures MEANT for solitude? Sure, we all crave friendship, companionship, people to like us and be around us, but does that necessarily deny the idea that we are meant for isolation? Think about the people in your past that you have lost touch with. What about the people you know now? Do you think You'll know them forever?

Think, for a moment, about the way friendships evolve over the course of one's life. We start out in the younger years having hordes of friends (for the most part, little kids tend to get along with most everybody), and we spend as much time with them as our parents will allow. We sleep over at their houses; we have enormous birthday parties. As we grow older, our true friends thin out. Sure, we know lots of people, but how many of them do we hang out with. In actuality, probably fewer than we did when we were younger. Other things start becoming important: school, work, girl/boyfriends, and we slowly start losing the time we once had for actually hanging out with our friends. Fast forward a few more years, and we are all working adults with families or are working hard to get there. Our friends are people we see once in a while, email every couple of weeks, get together for a BBQ on occasion. We slowly move away from hanging out with friends to being more involved with work and/or family... our friends slowly fading into the background until they barely occupy our thoughts.

But doesn't the idea of "family" preclude the idea that we are always moving further away from people. Perhaps. Can't argue with the fact that marriage is (ideally) a lifelong bond of love between two people. But consider for a moment the steadily rising failure rate of marriages. Are we, speaking on a societal level, losing the capacity for true love? Have we, as a society, moved so far away from our center, been pushed so close to oblivion, that we are forgetting what is at the core of us, as humans?

None of these are questions that I would presume to answer, as it's impossible to know. I am, however, interested to hear what anybody who's reading this has to say about it. Feel free to comment/email me. Are we lonely in proportion to our years?