No Zytrons In Range

Posted from a new iPhone. I’m so ashamed.

Ok, the iPhone is a really slick piece of technology. It also requires iTunes for all of its features to work. If you want an analogy, this is kind of like taking the precision steering of a formula one racer and installing it into a 5-ton garbage truck.

iTunes sucks.

iTunes sucks a lot.

I’ve spent the last 2 and a half hours on the phone with Apple, trying to fix this:

And this:

After a few long exercises in time-wasting* and lots of hold time, we finally managed to solve the first problem, hopefully permanently.

The second problem? Not so much… even re-installing iTunes didn’t help it. It’s just a giant steaming turd of iTunes suckage I have to click through now every goddamned time I plug in my iPhone.

And yes, I made Apple’s techs wait on the phone the whole time it took me to uninstall iTunes (4 uninstallers!), download a new copy from the web, and install it again (one installer with 2 UAC prompts!) If they’re going to release shoddy products, they’ll have to cough up the dough to keep those techs paid when I run into problems. Even trivial problems, in fact, even more so for trivial problems simply out of spite.

I bet if every iPhone user who had problems with iTunes called them up, they’d be rushing to make a new version of iTunes with the shittiness removed. Am I the only one who gets bothered by crappy software that hardly works?

Oh well. The iPhone works, finally, and it’s busy loading itself up with music from my media server.

* No, idiot Apple tech, my default Vista cookie settings are not the cause of the problem, otherwise you’d get 10,000 calls a week about this exact same issue from other Vista users! Engage your brain!

WarGames: The Dead Code

This movie sucks. Just in case you’re the kind of person who doesn’t read more than the first sentence of a review, I wanted to make sure I got that right in front. If you’re the kind of person who only reads the first paragraph of a review, I’d also like to mention that it’s rare that I actually review something relatively close to when it was actually released, so I’m hoping that I can actually warn you away from this piece of crap before you waste time and/or money on it. Please, please do not waste time and/or money on this movie.

If you really care, the review below contains spoilers.

The original WarGames, while is might not be the best movie ever made, is clever and, while it takes some liberties with the capabilities of computers, actually does a very good job of accurately portraying what computers were like in the mid-80s when it was released. I’m pretty sure that nobody involved with the making of WarGames: The Dead Code has never used, or even seen, an actual computer in their life. Yes, I’m even including the crew who did the CGI special effects. They must have done them via FedEx or something, I don’t know.

Now to be fair, while there are some portions of the film where it feels like I’m watching a high school play, I think the acting was actually fairly competent. With the exception of a single horrible song during the end credits, I think the soundtrack was competent. And the special effects crew actually did a decent job of making it all look relatively real. In fact, this movie has nearly all the ingredients in place to create a decently entertaining, or at least not terrible, B-level direct-to-video film. Until it was all sabotaged by Randall M. Badat and Rob Kerchner.

You see, Randall M. Badat and Rob Kerchner (hereafter referred to as Wingus and Dingus) wrote WarGames: The Dead Code, apparently on their vintage 1904 Underwood typewriter. They could afford their antique typewriter using royalties from the product placement, but more about that later. The problem, as I suggested above, is that Wingus and Dingus here have never actually used a computer before in their lives. They’ve also never talked to anybody who’s ever used a computer. In fact, until the last half-hour of the movie, I was beginning to doubt that they’d even seen WarGames!

The movie starts with some pointless T&A when a whole bunch of Russian prostitutes are hired by some terrorist group, which is then promptly bombed by a UAV piloted by the evil computer R.I.P.L.E.Y. (which probably stands for something but I’d have to watch the movie again to confirm that and nothing doing!)

After that, the two main characters are introduced. You can tell Dennis is a “hacker” because he is playing Stargate: Worlds. Product placement! (As Hollywood has been telling us for years, anybody interested in video games must be a computer hacker and, in fact, video games have little other purpose than masking hacking attempts. The Dead Code is no different.) To be more accurate, he’s playing what is obviously some kind of trailer or promotional video for the game, since he’s basically just randomly wailing on the keyboard to control his character, and when the character dies we’re instantly taken to a huge promotional wallpaper for the game. Get used to it; in this weird alternative universe, virtually all computers have huge promotional wallpapers for Stargate: Worlds. Product placement!

Also speaking of getting used to stupid things, virtually every computer in this movie is controlled by people spazzing out on keyboards. Having never seen a computer before, I suppose I can excuse Wingus and Dingus for not understanding the purpose of a mouse.

Dennis then tries to talk his buddy Will into playing World of Warcraft, but Will refuses since he’s still paying off his debt from the last time. Wingus and Dingus seem to believe that you can somehow lose $2000 gambling on World of Warcraft. You can’t; but the real tragedy here is that if the dull duo had spent any time actually talking to a gamer, they’d learn that there are online multiplayer games you can gamble money on. WOW just isn’t one of them. And “Blood Fangore?” What even is that?

Instead of playing WOW, they decide to play a game on a new gambling site called “The Dead Code.” Mostly because R.I.P.L.E.Y.’s icon for the game is a poorly-drawn pixelized cartoon of a woman in camouflage that Dennis thinks is “hot.” In this game, you play a terrorist with access to a UAV full of biological and chemical weapons, and are charged with flying it over an urban area and killing as many people as possible before the authorities manage to shoot you down. Oh, the game is actually run by some stereotypical men-in-black types. If you reach level 5, you’re declared to be a terrorist and R.I.P.L.E.Y. kills you using a UAV. You heard it here first, folks: if you gamble on the Internet, you’re a terrorist!

Will is doing good at the game, but at one point he runs out of his chemical weapon (or something happens to make it go away, it was vague on that point) and is asked to choose a new biological weapon. He gets the choice of sarin or weaponized anthrax. If you pick anthrax, you are actually a world-renowned expert on biological weapons, at least according to the men-in-black. Since there are only two choices given, I’m guessing that 50% of the planet is actually world-renowned experts on biological weapons.

In the game the number of people you kill is called the “morbidity rate.” At first I thought this was a typo in the script but, no, Wingus and Dingus actually use the term “morbidity rate” consistently throughout the movie whenever they actually mean “mortality rate.” And nobody corrected it! Even the CGI guys put “morbidity rate” on the R.I.P.L.E.Y. readout! (“Morbidity rate” makes me think: “oh my God! They’re going to turn people into goths!”

Of course Dennis and Will are both declared to be terrorists by the mysterious shadow government and Dennis is captured. (Will manages to get on a flight to Toronto.) The men-in-black question Dennis for awhile in an airport parking garage, using the usual “we’re above the law” cliche used in all terrible movies, until they finally realize he’s not the one they’re looking for and they apparently just let him go.

Will meets up with his weird-looking love interest, Annie, in Toronto. They quickly realize that they’re being chased by R.I.P.L.E.Y. who apparently has unrestricted access to every surveillance camera ever built. And controls the Canadian police. And can fly an armed UAV from the middle east to Toronto in only a few minutes.

There’s a “cute” scene where they are hungry and want to order a hot dog, but neither of them knows how to say “hot dog” in French. It turns out that the hot dog vendor speaks English! Ha ha! Wingus and Dingus, that would actually have been a charming scene were it not for the fact that everybody in Toronto speaks English! You retards!

And the plot develops into a long and boring chase sequence until they meet up with, gasp, Professor Falkin! (Not the same actor, of course.) He’s been keeping tabs on the whole situation in some manner that isn’t fully explained, and came to help them shut down R.I.P.L.E.Y. for good. Did I mention that R.I.P.L.E.Y. decided to kill everybody in Philadelphia because Will’s mom works for a chemical company? That’s actually the plot of the movie; try and pretend it makes any sense.

Falkin takes the kids to an old power station outside of the city where W.O.P.R. is being used to run Toronto’s power grid, apparently. He starts up the “Joshua” program, and sets it to task attacking R.I.P.L.E.Y. The power station gets bombed by a UAV (killing Falkin, if I recall correctly; it says a lot for the crappiness of this movie that I don’t remember nor care whether a main character dies) and Will and Annie get brought to the men-in-black’s headquarters.

The end of the movie revolves around hacking into an MMO game to use the players’ computers to DoS the evil computer. The game used is Stargate: Worlds, which is coincidentally also an MGM property. Unfortunately, Wingus and Dingus prominently show Stargate: Worlds running on a Macintosh when it’s only planned to be released for Windows. Even the product placement for this movie is a fail. Of course the DoS “distraction” was enough for W.O.P.R. to take over and tell R.I.P.L.E.Y. to run the Global Thermonuclear War simulation and realize that “the only winning move is not to play,” thus saving the world. Yawn.

WarGames: The Dead Code is so bad it’s actually made me hate the original WarGames. The one and only redeeming feature is that they used the same W.O.P.R. prop. Avoid. And if you’re Randall M. Badat or Rob Kerchner, please take this opportunity to die in a fire. Thank you.

The site in question.

Much more importantly, the episode of ALF in question.

I’ve owned Dark Messiah of Might and Magic for awhile, buying it from a GoGamer.com 72 hour sale for dirt cheap. It’s definitely reinforced my recent decision to always prefer the Xbox 360 version over the PC version.

Why? Well, I started installing Dark Messiah about a half-hour ago, and while I’m typing this it’s still installing:

• Put in the DVD. If I had the Xbox 360 version of this game, I’d actually be done by now. But since this is a PC, there’s an installer involved.
• It asks me which various pieces of shit software I want to install along with it; I know the actual answer is “probably none,” but since I don’t know what exactly “PlayLinc” is, and whether it’s required by the game or not, I make the stupid decision to install it anyway.
• Now there’s about 15 solid minutes of just copying files from the DVD to my HD. It’s funny, because I happen to know the Xbox 360 port of this game is identical to the PC version. My PC, hardware-wise, is actually superior to the Xbox 360 in every possible way– it’s faster, both CPU and GPU, it has more disk space, it even has a faster DVD drive. Yet the Xbox 360 version spends approximately 15 seconds installing, maybe 30 if Live has to patch it.
• The main installer, even though it’s not all the way finished, starts up the PlayLinc installer. Neither of these installers actually tell me what he hell PlayLinc is, or why I would want it. But, oh well, I made my bed and I might as well lie in it. I hit go. Because I’m dumb.
• PlayLinc’s installer triggers a really, really nasty “this program is doing something very bad and you should not let it” dialog from Vista. Basically, it’s trying to install a low-level driver for some reason, with no security certificate. (That means that, for all Vista knows, this driver was developed specifically as a rootkit or a virus.) I deny permission. But wait, why did I see this dialog at all? (Well, to be fair, Dark Messiah’s software requirements say “XP only,” probably specifically because they knew they wouldn’t be able to sneak their crapware driver past Vista.) What does the driver do? I dunno; at no point did PlayLinc even tell me what it did, much less the driver it attempts to sneak past me.
• Now Steam becomes aware of the game, and asks me to enter a long and complicated serial key. It’s 25 characters long, and printed in a font that makes it impossible to tell whether characters are I or 1. (They’re I. I found this through trial and error, of course, meaning I had to type this code in twice.) Xbox games don’t have serial keys; you put the disk in, you play. You want multiplayer? It just works, no serial key at all. You want Xbox Live to give you patches? No serial key needed.
• We’re about a half-hour into the process now, and just before the point where I started typing this rant. Steam gave me this lovely dialog:
  

  It’s looked like that for the 5 minutes it took me to decide to type this post, the time it took me to type all the previous bulletpoints, the time it took me to take a screenshot of the dialog and uploaded it into WordPress. It still looks like that. The progress bar hasn’t moved one single percent! Of course, it is doing something– it’s totally pegged one of my CPU cores to 100% and it’s thrashing my drive like crazy. Since the first installer knew I had Steam already, why isn’t the game already installed “into” Steam? Whatever that even means.

So it’s now been 45 minutes and change, and I’m still not playing Dark Messiah. I’m not even looking at the first cinematic. If I had the Xbox 360 version instead of the PC version, I’d be on level 5 by now. If this were Portal instead of Dark Messiah, I’d be done playing by now!

PC games need to be installed, even though the Xbox 360′s inferior hardware can play the exact same games with no installation.

PC games need serial keys entered to play online and patch themselves, even though Xbox 360 games with online play require no serial keys.

PC games that rely on Steam suck ass, because Steam sucks ass. Xbox Live has no such ass-sucking problem.

PC games frequently install hacks and nasty crap onto my PC. Things like seedy and unnecessary device drivers, or low-level hacks like PunkBuster. Ask yourself why any video game requires Administrative permissions to run. Xbox 360 does not have these problems, I don’t worry at all that playing a particular Xbox game will make my 360 software unstable or slow it down.

When are PC gamers going to get sick of this bullshit and demand higher quality products? There’s no technical reason the PC can’t do every single thing the Xbox 360 is doing, PC game developers just don’t care. At all.

I’ve now had plenty of time to finish this post, add links, edit it, format it, preview it several times. And that Steam progress bar hasn’t advanced a single pixel.

Update: Since Steam is still installing (15 minutes after publishing this post originally) I actually looked up PlayLinc on Wikipedia:

Playlinc was a game browsing and messaging platform that enabled multi-player game play, voice chat and game management. Playlinc is no longer in existence.

Ah, so the random crap I just installed on my computer apparently is “no longer in existence.” Oh how I wish that were true.

Update 2: It’s now 4 hours later. Steam never finished after two hours, so I gave up on it and uninstalled the whole shebang with the intention of starting the entire install over again. In the process, though, I learned that once I plugged the serial key into Steam it is actually capable of downloading the game from its own servers, apparently. So I got the download started, and now it’s at 70%. Whee.

A recent “live chat” with an Earthlink customer service representative. Proving that if you ever see anything that looks like dry-loop DSL in Washington State, you’re dreaming and should go back to bed.

Chat Information: Thank you for choosing our secure EarthLink Sales chat. All agents are currently assisting other customers. Thank you for your patience. You are number ’1′ of ’1′ customers in line. Your estimated wait is ’0′ minutes and ’30′ seconds.
Chat Information: Hello and welcome to EarthLink’s secure live Sales chat. You are chatting with Kelly K..
Kelly K.: Thank you for using EarthLink’s live Sales chat. How can I help you today?
James Schend: Hi, I currently have Verizon and I want to drop my landline phone service and get dry-loop DSL, is that a service you offer?
Kelly K.: Great, I can help you with that.
Kelly K.: Let me see what is the best service available for you.
Kelly K.: To do a check for service I will need your full name, phone number and complete physical address at that location.
James Schend: My name is James Schend
James Schend: Phone is ___-___-____
James Schend: And address is __________
Kelly K.: Thank you.
Kelly K.: One moment while I get that information for you.
Kelly K.: Thank you for your patience.
Kelly K.: I see that you are serviceable for our High Speed DSL service.
Kelly K.: Our Freestanding (Dry Loop) DSL Internet is not available at that location yet.
James Schend: Ugh, that’s no better than Verizon. Is there any way to be notified when it’s available, or request it?
James Schend: I’d rather not give Comcast any money, but I’m sick of being ripped-off for a local phone I never use.
Kelly K.: I am afraid no. Well you can keep your phone service to the minimum so that our Highspeed DSL Internet can run.
James Schend: What would that cost per month?
Kelly K.: This is a best effort technology with speeds up to 1.5mb on the download and up to 128kb on the upload.
Kelly K.: Right now I can save you $99 by waiving the fee for equipment and activation. You then get the first 3 months of your contract for only $12.95/ mo. and the remaining 9 months are just $39.95 each.
Kelly K.: I can get this started for you right now, if you would like.
James Schend: I’d rather have 3 mbit, is that available?
James Schend: That’s what I currently have through Verizon.
Kelly K.: Sure.
Kelly K.: This is a best effort technology with speeds up to 3.0mb on the download and up to 384kb on the upload.
Kelly K.: Right now I can save you $99 by waiving the fee for equipment and activation. You then get the first 3 months of your contract for only $19.95/ mo. and the remaining 9 months are just $39.95 each.
Kelly K.: Would you like me to get this order started for you?
James Schend: What kind of phone service comes with that? You said the bare minimum, but I still ahve to pay all the phone taxes
Kelly K.: Well we do not provide phone service.
James Schend: You just said it would be minimum phone service to qualify for DSL
Kelly K.: I am just telling you that you can keep your existing phone service to the minimum cost so that you can use our Highspeed DSL Internet.
James Schend: That’s no different than what I have now, except I have to pay 2 bills every month
James Schend: Instead of one
Kelly K.: Well that’s right but EarthLink DSL service is rated the best service by PC Magazine as well as JD Power. With all of the additional features that we offer with our Internet service that is hard to get with other companies , along with our Award Winning Technical and Customer support
James Schend: I don’t care about any of that, I just want internet service at a decent price with NO local phone and NO cable TV.
James Schend: I don’t know why it’s so damned hard to get that.
James Schend: I’m knowledgeable enough on computers that I guarantee that I’ll never call your tech support or download your software.
James Schend: I just need service.
Kelly K.: I understand your concern but our Freestanding (Dry Loop) DSL Internet is not available at that location yet.
James Schend: It’s 2008. When will it be? When I’m long dead?
James Schend: Sorry, I’m just so frustrated that I’m chained to this goddamned useless phone.
Kelly K.: I understand your frustration.
James Schend: Well, thanks anyway for your help. But paying more and having two bills instead of one isn’t an improvement.

Yes, just because Washington State is home to Microsoft, Amazon and Nintendo of America doesn’t mean we get any reprieve from the lousy state of Internet provider monopolies in this country. God-forbid I go my life without a useless and annoying land-line telephone, Verizon’s doing me a favor by offering me shitty service!

(P.S. Yes, I realize I was pretty rude to the sales person there. Oh well.)

(Make sure you un-mute it to get the whole experience.)

For the un-Flashed, this is a video game currently featured on the John McCain homepage called Pork Invaders.

It’s a pretty faithful clone of Space Invaders, with the following exceptions:

• The iconic invader spaceships are replaced by little pigs. Which is actually more like pre-pork than pork. Or maybe it’s pork chops shaped to look like little pigs, that would add a much-appreciated nuance to the game world. Oh, by the way, there are three levels of pigs, just like the three levels of invaders in the original, and they’re worth different point amounts like in the original, but in this game they all look identical.
• The red UFO has changed into a barrel. Of pork. A “pork barrel,” as it were.
• Shooting pigs and pig-derived meats will earn (or save, presumably) tax dollars. The pork barrels are still worth ??? points. Unlike the original, your points are measured in millions now. (It says so right on the game screen.)
• The bullet fired by your tank is turned into the word “veto.” You can still only fire one bullet/veto, at a time, though.
• Your tank isn’t actually a tank, but instead is a generic-looking McCain logo. When it explodes, it looks identical to the explosion in the original Space Invaders game which is really jarring and weird.
• At the end of each round, you’re presented with a cool factoid about how much John McCain hates pork.

I don’t even know what to think about this. It’s so retro, it could possibly be cool. But is it retro because McCain’s website is run by some hipster 20-year-old with an ironic t-shirt, or is it retro because McCain called somebody into his office and said something like, “those kids like playing the Space Invaders, don’t they? Why don’t we make a Space Invaders game for them?” Sadly, I think the latter is more likely.

The concept of the game aside, though, the execution is pretty lazy. Why are do all three invaders look identical? Is the McCain logo really the best thing they could find to represent a tank? And how come they didn’t bother to change the explosion when it got hit into something more appropriate? If you made this game, or know the person who made this game, put me in contact with them, because I have a lot of issues.

Oh well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the McCain campaign turns Frogger into.

An animatronic dog in a spacesuit playing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Otherside”:

(Courtesy of ProgramBlue.com, via Fark)

As a sequel to “Zune – Wha!?“, Here’s another gem from the Zune team:

Error when connecting/disconnecting USB headset

Two bugs for this post:

1) I was watching a movie on Zune (MP4 format, if that matters) when I plugged in my USB headset to make a Skype call. Despite my computer’s default audio being re-routed to the USB headset, Zune continued to play over the speakers. Every other application on my computer will change its audio output to the headset except Zune, so this is extremely annoying.

Workaround: Quit Zune, restart it, then play the same movie and skip to the same point at which you plugged in the headset.

2) After doing the workaround above, I finished my Skype call and then unplugged my USB headset. Zune then stopped my movie playback with the error “To listen, connect speakers or headphones to your computer.” Two points here:
a) This error message is insultingly moronic. No shit, you need headphones or speakers to hear things? I’m so glad I have Zune to tell me these things! (Must have been written by the same guy who wrote this error message: http://blakeyrat.com/2008/05/10/zune-wha/ )
b) It also was a blatant lie; there *are* speakers hooked up to my computer. Zune was just too stupid to switch audio output to them, like every other application I’ve used ever does.

So if you plug in, or unplug, a USB headset while watching a movie on Zune, you have to restart Zune.

Can someone on the Zune team please look up the phrase “plug and play” in the dictionary? There’s no excuse for this shoddy coding in the year 2008, I think pretty much everyone is aware of the existence of USB sound devices by this point, right?

Thanks.

PS, despite my griping about bugs, I really do like the new features in the new version– now that Zune buffers MP4 files read from network disks, I have absolutely no reason left to use iTunes. And that’s nice, considering how bloated and ugly iTunes is.

Quickies.

• Re: A critical reading of the news: “FAA Criticized In Report on Airline Parts”. Commenter Nick Schwellenbach, from the Project for Government Oversight, has yet to get back to me and explain why it matters that an aircraft parts employee measured a length of wire using a piece of paper.
• Re: Is this the dumbest product ever?: Eneplug. The dumbest product ever is still coming the “begging of May” according to its official product page.
• Re: New Line Cinema DVD FAIL. New Line never responded to my email. Losers.