Come on, you can do better…

After seeing that Team Fortress 2 had an update I was excited. What could they have possibly added? Engineer update? Demoman update? My heart was pounding as I right clicked on “Team Fortress 2″ in Steam, and hit “View Update News”. What was it? Something remotely exciting? No, not exactly. More like anger inducing.

“Added Bill’s Hat for players who pre-purchase Left 4 Dead 2“. I have not pre-purchased Left 4 Dead 2. I haven’t even played the original Left 4 Dead (which entails an entirely other story). Yet, those of us who purchase Team Fortress 2 are left out. I had very hope that they release Bill’s Hat for all players after Left 4 Dead 2 is release, or… well, we won’t get into that now.

Why all the Love for Steam?

It’s pretty well known that I have a dislike for Steam. I dislike it for many reasons, but I mostly dislike it because of the DRM, the technical problems (of which I discussed in the linked blog post), and… the users. The people who’ll defend Steam to their death. Why, I have to ask. Why defend a for-profit company that wants to take away the rights to use the product you bought? It boggles the mind.

Whenever I tell people my opinion on Steam, they’re always like “Steam works great, and if it doesn’t work it’s because it’s your fault. You can play your games offline using offline mode. Why do you need or want phyisical copies of your games? You think you’re going to resell them after your done with them!? That’s illegal! That’s hurting the game compaines!” Of course I went a tad over the top with it, but that’s basically what they say.

1. Steam can be, and IS, buggy at times. Don’t deny it. A lot of problems can be rectified with that “ClientRegistry.blob” file, but some of them can’t.

2. Yeah, sometimes I can play them. Sometimes I can’t. And can I play them without an Internet connection for weeks at a time? Or even a few days? Thought, not. So it’s not a true “Offline mode”.

3. I like having physical copies. It shows that I actually own the game. It shows that I actually have a thing that I can touch, and a manual that I can read.

4. I’m sorry, but I believe that I have the right to transfer ownership of a game that I do not wish to play anymore. That’s a big reason why I hate Steam. Lack of the ability to change ownership of a game.

I hate it when people happily give away their rights to major corporations, but I hate it even more when other people expect ME to give away those rights too.

I hate the new Firefox icon.

I recently decided to install and use the Firefox 3.5 release candidates. Now, I won’t go into great detail to describe it, but it’s faster, more standards compliant and advertises the tab bar by default (with a ‘new tab’ button). But, the one thing that caught my eye was the new icon (as shown in Figure 1)

Figure 1: Firefox's new icon

What was wrong with the old one(s)? The new one seems too shiny. Thankfully I can overwrite the icon and replace it with the identifiable classic.

I’ve Never Hated Microsoft as Much as I do Now.

After I read on Slashdot (Direct link to article), I’ve never hated Microsoft more as much I do now. This rant isn’t about open source vs closed source. Or Windows vs. UNIX(like) operating systems. This is about the dishonesty of corporations against the American people. I just hope that none of you purchase (or pirate, or use in any way) Windows 7. Heck, I hope most of you are thinking about finally migrating to another OS. Be it that that OS is OS X, BeOS, FreeBSD, OS/2. It can be anything, as long as it isn’t Microsoft (MS-DOS, Windows 9.x/Windows NT).

Online games these days

I really hate that most servers in online games (eg: Counter-Strike) require you to download the stupid soundclips. And when you disallow it , you can’t connect to most servers. Why oh why can’t the server admins just run a stock config? And of course the stupid “sprays”. They have to spray stupid images that well I’m not comfertable with when playing a damn game.

Mozilla: SELL OUT HACKS

I am nothing short of OUTRAGED by reading this.

Thankfully Opera still supports even Windows 95.

Update: Why is Mozilla removing “support” for Windows 2000 & XP SP2 or older? Is it for some new fangled feature that can’t be done on 2000 or even XP SP2, but needs SP3, which basically is nothing but a couple of bug fixes? I expect this from Microsoft, not Mozilla. They should no longer try to act like they’re “superior” to Microsoft if they’re basically pulling the same stunts as them.

I don’t know what damn world they live in, but not every one can (eg: Money) or want’s to upgrade to the latest and greatest. And I’ve personally felt that Mozilla has gone down hill since Firefox 2. Not everyone stays on top forever (look at Mosaic, Netscape, and even IE for examples).

See yah NVIDIA.

That 8800 I got in August started warming up in December, and today is running even hotter, near 100c. The manufacter refuses to answer any communications, so I’ve decided to go ATI, even though I’ve heard horror stories about their drivers.

April 1st: Make it stop. Please!

I always dread April 1st every year. Especially on Slashdot, where Microsoft asked for bailout money, the Pirate Bay got aqquired by media giant, Warner Bros., and Slashdot themselves introduced “Achievements”, this year. In years previous they had one GREAT GOOD JOKE, instead of tons of lame ones. OMG Ponies!, anyone?

And, yes, the “Achievements” seem to be real. Hopefully it was just a big one day joke, but I doubt that.

The Sims 3… no DRM?

I was actually surprised to read this. EA doing something.. good? Dropping the DRM that has plauged their games for years past? Hopefully this is a good sign, and if The Sims 3 sells well, maybe EA’ll drop the DRM with their other titles. And, of course, maybe other publishers will drop the DRM? The CD-key is a logical copy protection measure. It doesn’t restrict what you can do with your copy of the software. It lets you install it whenever you want. However many times you want. Just as an example, I was installing Windows for Workgroups 3.11 the other day,  it came to where you entered your serial number, and I was wondering what would happen when XP is as old as WfW 3.11. Would there be a patch to disable the activation? Would they just laugh say “Your loss, why don’t you upgrade to Windows Twelve”? I don’t know, but I feel it’ll be all bad.

For the last time, BitTorrent is not illegal!

After hearing about the PirateBay trial, a person I know asked me if “BitTorrent was legal” and that he heard that “BitTorrent was used to download illegal stuff”. I actually hear about that a lot, from people I know, to random people on internet forums, and to the RIAA/MPAA spewing out untrue information for the un-informed masses. My usual response to that question is: “BitTorrent is not ‘illegal’. It’s perfectly legal, in fact. Some of the files you can download via it are not legal, but most are.”

You can just as easily download an illeal file off of it as you can a legal file. You can download Windows Vista (though I’d wonder why someone would)off of it as easily as you can download a Linux distro. Actually most Linux distro’s recommend that you use BitTorrent, as it doesn’t use the server bandwidth.