Now this is the Internet

Recently a blogger got access to a backup drive of a shared network from Infocom, which published most of the great text adventure games of the '80s. He decided to post correspondence about a proposed
Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that was abandoned.

For fans of Infocom it's an interesting article, but the most interesting part is an almost endless comments section populated with posts from old Infocom employees. The comments make a lively discussion. Michael Bywater, who is the subject of some negative correspondence, expresses fury that the blogger didn't bother to contact anyone involved to get a fuller story, and there's a lively discussion about the responsibility of journalists and bloggers and the legality of releasing this information. There are also a lot of nasty shots at Bywater, whose fury does not sit well with the blogger's fans (the nastiest comments were apparently removed by the blogger). This is mixed in with comments from other Infocomers discussing and clarifying the game, most notably a long, detailed post by Steve Meretzky. The best post is from Bywater, who after a couple of days of furious emails calms down and posts a wildly funny mock up of a text adventure and announces that he has agreed to write about the abandoned game for Wired. There are also a lot of people writing in just to say they loved Infocom games, which is less interesting (Bywater, by the way, apparently was the main writer on my favorite Infocom game Beauracracy).

Before the Internet, where could you read a corporation's internal memos and then have a lively discussion with the people who wrote those memos? It's so cool.

Clinton's 5 percent

Someone in the Times says Hillary's campaign is dead, that she only has a 5% chance of winning the nomination. This annoys me. First off, I would like to see some math here, not just some pundit tossing out a random figure. But more importantly, what is Obama's percent chance of winning? I can't find anyone throwing out a number for this. My understanding is that in terms of numbers, neither candidate is likely to win on a first ballot. So is Obama's chance of actually winning on the first ballot much higher than this mysterious 5 percent?

And if we're basing this percentage on the actions of the super delegates, well, they'll do what they do, and since they aren't required to vote for anyone in particular, there's no serious way to predict the odds of one candidate or another taking the super delegates.

i predict

When my old TV died I bought a new one that supported HDTV. That was mainly for the sake of gaming, since the new systems are designed for HDTV meaning the text on screen tends to be unreadable on anything else. But I figured I might as well also get a new DVR from Time Warner that supported HDTV. And shockingly that new box, which should represent the top technology, has inferior features to the non-HDTV DVR I had before.

So I emailed a complaint to Time Warner, reproduced below, and here is my prediction, based on past experiences with Time Warner:

They won't understand what I'm talking about. They will reply in a way that ignores every single point below, and give me detailed instructions on how to search for things even though it is obvious from my email that I have already familiarized myself with all the new features of my new DVR. They will not acknowledge that there are any real differences between the two DVRs and they will most definitely not assure me that they are working to upgrade the new DVR to contain the features of the older one (because, as I mentioned before, they won't even understand what I'm saying).

I let you know when I hear back whether I am right or whether my email miraculously gets to someone who is not a complete idiot.

Since I just bought an HDTV TV, I swapped my old DVR, the Explorer 8000, for the Explorer 8300HDC, and was shocked to discover that while I gained a few HDTV channels, I lost a number of important features.

Most notably it is no longer possible to auto-search for movies and actors. With the old DVR I could do a keyword search and choose to tell my DVR to record anything with that keyword. My new DVR will not let me search by keyword at all, only by title, and there is no way to tell it to automatically record all of anything (for example, I can't say, record everything directed by Alain Resnais nor can I say record any movie with "juno" in the title." Oddly, the search can turn up shows for which there are no upcoming episodes (perhaps it contains a list of all current TV shows) but it won't give you the option to tell it to record that show whenever it comes on even though it has the name of the show in its records!

The series record options are also more anemic. There are less options: you can no longer choose specific times & channels.

The way search is implemented is also inferior. With my old DVR, if I had the guide on a particular show and switched to the search interface it would show me all upcoming instances of that particular show, which was a very quick way to find a time to record a show that wouldn't interfere with anything else I was recording. Now it just starts the list at the top, and if you want to find that particular show you just had in the guide you have to use the text input.

The last thing I've noticed in the mere HOUR I've had this is more minor, but the remote is quite inferior in design to the old one, which was the best designed remote control I have seen anywhere. So that's a shame.

So I gave up all those good features on my old DVR just so I can watch a handful of channels in HD, like ONE of my HBO channels (but not HBO on demand). I find this hugely disappointing, and hope you are planning to raise what one would have expected to be your most advanced box, since it supports HDTV, up to the level of your most basic box.

just microsoft being microsoft

A while back I was having problems with my Xbox 360 finding all disks unreadable. The first thing the tech support person had me try was clearing the memory cache. This is a simple procedure that, as far as the tech support person knows, doesn't do any harm to the 360 or change any settings; it just clears up some problems.

So how do you clear the memory cache? Do you go to settings and memory and choose the "clear cache" option? You do not, because there is no "clear cache" option. Instead, you go to settings, memory, and then press X X left bumper right bumper X X.

Seriously, Microsoft has a hidden key combination to fix memory issues with your 360. What the fuck?

is the press giving Hillary a raw deal?

My mom has virtually stopped reading and watching the news. Why? Because she says all they do is bash Hillary Clinton. And I'm wondering if she might not have a point.

Mom is pretty hostile to Obama. She considers his talk of "change" vague and meaningless, which isn't unreasonable. I'm leaning towards Obama myself (although in the New York primary I still voted for Kucinich even though he dropped out of the race, just as a statement), but it's a slight lean. I have not liked Clinton as a senator, I feel she blows with the wind and is a political opportunist and I have found her very disappointing. On the other hand, while Obama did come out against the war, once he got into the Senate he voted for every war appropriations bill and it wouldn't surprise me if, were he in the Senate at the time he also would have voted for the war; all the serious presidential hopefuls did because they thought it was politically expedient (although none of them will admit that was the reason).

So I support Obama because I know Hillary's not great, but honestly I doubt Obama is great either.

So it's probably six of one, half a dozen of the other, but it does seem that I hear more criticism of Hillary than Barack on the one news show I watch, Countdown. And I have begun to wonder if that makes any sense. Politics is politics, and logically, both sides should do bad stuff. And while Keith Olbermann did criticize Obama for suggesting Hillary's supporters would vote for him in the general election but that things would not goo the other way but not adding that Obama would still fight for whoever won, he has spent more time criticizing Hillary for attacking Obama, and has implied that Hillary's complaints about Obama are fairly baseless.

Paul Krugman, who appears to be a solid Clinton supporter judging from recent columns, says he finds the Obama camp to be more venomous.

Is he right? I don't know. My mom says yes. Certainly someone like Chris Matthews is always talking trash about Hillary, but then, Matthews is an unmitigated moron, so his bizarre comments on Hillary may well have as much to do with the fact that he's short a few marbles than that he's out to get Clinton.

The press likes a story, and it seems the story they're going for is shrill white chick going off on the charming black guy. But that's just a particular story. When Howard Dean said "yeehaw" or whatever it killed his campaign not because it was a big deal but because the press thought it was a great story and beat it into the public consciousness. As much as I dislike Clinton, I don't like the idea that she is a victim of press storytelling.

Hillary might still get the nomination, and if so I just hope the press doesn't go for the, shrill white woman versus cool straight talker story, because then we're all screwed.

you see, there are things men who care about more than sex

Ah, those passionate Englishmen. A poll indicates half of them would temporarily give up sex for a big TV. Interestingly, only a third of women said the same, although there's no way of knowing whether that means women love sex more than men or love big TVs less than men.

I'd like to see a reverse poll. Something like, would you give up your big screen TV for sex with Shakira. Or something.

how many times did the Bush administration lie about Iraq?

The answer? 935. Now all in a searchable database.

"muslims," a word that makes women faint and brave men weep

Twice in the last month I've received endlessly forwarded emails warning the world of the dangers and threats of Muslims. First was an email from the boyfriend of an acquaintance of mine who decided to contact everyone in her email address book to let them know Barack Obama is a Muslim pretending to be a Christian for political purposes. Eek! Then yesterday I got an email from an acquaintance who occasionally sends me conspiracy theory crap or cute jokes. It told me that England had dropped the Jewish Holocaust from their history courses because of pressure from Muslims who deny it ever happened.

Obviously, neither of these things is true, as anyone who has the sense to check Snopes.com before sending out crazy emails would have known. Snopes, which looks into the truth or falsity of every rumor you can find on the internet, handled Barack's Muslim connections here and England's holocaust policy here.

The one of England is, I suspect, a typical example of a game I believe is called telephone where each person tells the next person what they were told, resulting in a story that completely changes by the time it gets to the last person. One school in England didn't teach at least one Holocaust class because of fears of anti-semitic comments from Muslim students, and emailers embellished the story. One interesting fact noted in Snopes is that while the email I got says "the UK" in its reference to England, there is an alternate email that says this is happening in the University of Kansas, which shows how emailers will edit and "clarify" stories before sending them on.

The Obama email looks to be more of a purposeful attempt to smear Obama, created probably by some hate group like the KKK. The email is full of bolded phrases like "parents divorced, atheist, he is a muslim, radical teachings, catholic school" (among the crazy fundamentalist right "catholic school" is almost as bad as "Muslim"). The Obama email is more disturbing because it is basically saying, be scared of Obama because he is a Muslim. That sort of direct, unabashed religious hatred is scary.

But what is scariest is that it is so easy for people to believe this. Neither of the people who sent me these things are drooling idiots. They are well-spoken, seemingly educated people. Yet they unskeptically accepted transparently nonsensical emails as a truth so important that it should be immediately emailed to all of their friends and acquaintances. And the most foolish of those acquaintances have probably all sent out the same emails to their friends and acquaintances. And all these stupid, stupid people are helping to perpetuate the concept that Muslims are essentially what Communists were though of as in the 1950s, a dangerous group of fanatics trying everything in their power to destroy our world through lies and manipulation for their own evil ends.

And all this, essentially because a small handful of Muslims belonging to an extremist organization in the Middle East killed a few hundred people by running a plane into a building, apparently thus giving permission for everyone to believe all Muslims throughout the world are dangerous, evil fanatics.

I have sometimes thought about what happens as oppressed groups get higher standing. Blacks, Hispanics, gays, while all still oppressed, have achieved greater acceptance throughout the years, and optimists would look at this and say, eventually we will end prejudice. But the hatred of Muslims proves otherwise; as some groups are accepted, new groups are nominated to take their place. Muslims, enjoy the bottom, because people are going to keep you there for quite a while.

TV news summed up

I recommend going to this petition against "big media." You can sign the petition or not, but watch the little video on this page, because it's brilliant.

it's simple: right wingers are insane

Fox News airs bizarre claim that Hillary ordered hit on cats

Frank Rich speaketh: Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?

This pretty much sums up my thinking about Hillary, although of course Frank Rich always says it better than I think it.

screw you, fanboys

Recently I came across a pretty aggravating thread trashing me for my review of Bioshock. It was remarkable both because it was a collection of furious diatribes against me in spite of my generally glowing review and because it was full of nonsense, include a statement that I just took over the column from a guy who has never written it.

It annoyed me enough that I decided to register for the forum so I could reply to that thread, but it seems new members have to be okayed by a moderator who has apparently gone AWOL, since it's been a couple of weeks and I'm still not able to post. So just for the record I'm putting my reply here. I'd been meaning to blog at some point in more detail about the problems with Bioshock's story anyway; it drives me crazy how critics keep acclaiming the game's storytelling, which is really quite weak.

Some fanboy also recently graffitied my wikipedia entry; probably someone mad that I didn't declare Halo 3 the greatest game in the history of the universe.

Here's the reply I was going to post to quartertothree [WARNING: BIOSHOCK SPOILERS BELOW].

Just came across this thread. It’s fine that you disagree with me, I disagree with critics all the time. Although I don’t usually rant and rave about people who positively review something I like because I disagree with a couple of points. (The last thing I felt like ranting about was the San Francisco movie critic who said “Click!” was almost perfect; that’s just insane.) But there are a lot of things said about me in this thread that simply are untrue, so I wanted to respond.

First off, I played BioShock all the way through, down to the very sweet final cut scene where you grow old and all the little girls love you. I saved almost all the little sisters and only killed one just to see what it was like, but restarted from a save point after that so I wouldn’t sully my good guy status (I like playing good guys in games, it’s just a preference).

I don’t know why, since I repeatedly talked about how great the game was, you would assume I hadn’t played it. Why would I not play a brilliant game? Is it really impossible to believe someone could play the same game as you and disagree with your take on it?

Second, Seth Schiesel never wrote the game theory column, except for a couple of columns when the Times was auditioning new game columnists. I have been writing the column for years and years. Seth writes articles on gaming but not, for the Times, reviews (with one or two exceptions). But I imagine it’s more fun for some of you to read Seth’s articles because, since they are reporting rather than reviewing, they don’t say anything critical about a game that could upset you.

What I write are reviews, in spite of what one poster said. This poster also mentioned my review of Daikatana, which is odd since I never reviewed Daikatana for the Times, although I did briefly pan it for some long-forgotten publication that I’m sure he never read.

The reason I write about more than one game in a review is because that’s what the Times wants from me (it started when they changed the column from weekly to biweekly and decided they didn’t want to lessen the number of games reviewed). Rather than trying to find two thematically similar games, I try to find the games I feel most deserve attention and then write a transition between them. People have complained about this before, but I have actually grown to like the approach. Anyway, there are already so many good games I don’t have space for that I would hate to leave out any more than I already have to.

Now as for the Art Deco thing, people seem to be making the assumption that I believe all the buildings should have been rebuilt to reflect modern architecture. Yes, that would be a stupid point, but it’s certainly not one I was making. Keep in mind that Art Deco doesn’t just mean the shell of the buildings. It means all the furnishings, fixtures, posters and ads on the walls. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that it’s odd that a society would stay that aesthetically static for so long; it would suggest that there is not a single creative person trying out new ideas. But it was a pretty brief comment so I don’t know why there’s such a focus on it. I love Art Deco, it’s my favorite architectural style and I think it’s a tragedy that when it went out of fashion many of those buildings were destroyed because people considered them tacky. But I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that it is highly unusual for a city to be so creatively stagnant.

I did not, as a couple of people pointed out, write the article’s headline, and I was surprised that was what the editors focused on, but I am okay with their choice. Since my main concern was telling people what a great game BioShock was, I did not spend much time on the faults with the story, but here’s something I wrote to someone who emailed me when the game came out:

----------------------------------------------------
Because of a lack of space I didn't get to critique the narrative structure of BioShock as much as I would have liked. I actually find the seemingly universal ecstasy over the story puzzling. The game starts strong, but once it gets started it really just relies on that momentum. Half-Life had an interesting twist (discovering the army was trying to kill you) and the intriguing ongoing mystery of the guy in the suit. Max Payne started off with a cool opener, but it also had cool dream sequences to keep up that sense that this was a game that was really trying. I don’t feel BioShock made the same effort to keep the story moving. BioShock has a completely expected twist and a wandering plot; a big chunk of the game is simply killing people for some guy; that's not a story that moves forward, that's a story that wanders off into the alley and does some shit and then wanders back into the main plot.

BioShock is like Myst; the only real story is the back story. I don't say that's terrible, but I really don't think it's an especially brilliant approach either. To me it seems like the praise for the story has more to do with how poorly most action games tell stories than it does with the quality of BioShock's own narrative.

I was also disappointed when someone told me that even if you kill all the Little Sisters, they still save you at that point in the game where you are lead to safety by them. To me, that seems lazy; if I play the game as a bad guy, I expect the story to change as a result. I don’t just want a different final cut scene. (If the guy who told me that is wrong, and the little girls don’t save you if you kill them all, then I apologize for this criticism.)

Fortunately it’s easy to find critics that will give every popular game a rating of 100, so it should be pretty easy to avoid nasty people like me who dare to offer minor criticisms of a game in their rave review of it.

I thank the couple of people who pointed out themselves some of the things I have just pointed out. I salute your thoughtful consideration.

what some say in 1200 words, others say in 7

I spent about 1200 words talking about how I thought Halo 3 was just Halo 2 in better graphics. But in the user review section of metacritic, someone beautifully summed up everything I had to say in only 7 words:

A very fancy patch for Halo 2.

oh goodie

Exciting news: there will soon be even less places you can get away from people blabbing on their cell phones. I can't wait.

the Bush plan to end democracy

I saw Naomi Wolf on the Colbert report talking about her new book, which is apparently an expansion of the article she wrote describing the ten steps governments use to close down an open society, all of which have been done by the Bush administration. It's scary stuff, to see how step by step the administration is threatening a democracy that has lasted over 200 years. At the same time, I'm not ready to flee to Canada quite yet, because my recollection is this is pretty much what was going on in the 1960s. Dissent was called unpatriotic, the FBI was setting up and entrapping these organizations, the threat of communism was used as an excuse to do pretty much anything and the country was divided between people who believed the hippies were going to have a revolution and take over the country and the people who believed we were one step away from martial law.

Somehow we survived last time, so I'm hoping we're going to survive again. The founders of this country thought things through pretty well, and did their best to design a country that could not be subjugated by a despot. And while in the short term the government will sometimes be very close to a terrifying dictatorship, over the long term things always seem to stay at a certain balance. Yes, the system could finally break down, but at the same time the Bush administration is pretty weak right now, and as much as they would love to turn this country into a fascist state, I think the time they were most able to do that has passed. Of course, I could be wrong. It is perhaps best to take seriously the possibility that I am wrong, and fight the government at every turn, until we get these evil, evil people out of office. Which will hopefully be quite soon.

Of course, if a Republican somehow manages to win the presidency next year, fleeing to Canada becomes the best possible option.

Larry Craig, victim and victimizer

Ben Stein is right when he says Larry Craig was screwed over by overzealous police and the GOP, but I have trouble feeling sorry for him. There are two ways to look at this. Either he is a gay guy who represents the party of screw-the-gay-guys, in which case he brought this on himself through hypocrisy, or he really is a straight guy who just happened to do some things that looks suspicious to a cop, in which case he is one of these Republicans whose anti-gay agenda is responsible for things like cops sitting in restrooms all day waiting to arrest guys for tapping the floor and sticking their hand under the stall wall. If you're a gay guy voting to screw your own or a straight guy encouraging bigotry, I think you deserve what you get.

Dick Cheney predicting the disaster in Iraq

Here's an interesting video. Dick Cheney in 1994 talking about how disastrous it would be to invade Iran. No context for this clip is supplied; my guess is he is defending Bush Sr.'s Decision not to take out Saddam at the time. So, Was he lying when He said it would be a mistake to invade Iraq or when he said it was a good idea? Either answer proves him to be a liar and a fool.

damn integrity

I admit it, I wish I got to go on junkets. Alas, I always work for periodicals who insist that taking expensive gifts from the companies you cover is a conflict of interest. Hey, I'd be perfectly willing to take a free trip to India and then totally trash a game. Alas, it is not to be. I twice had to turn down free trips to England for Tomb Raider games, although I don't seem to have been offered near as many junkets as some people.

I'd like to work for a magazine that just doesn't care about this stuff. Not to review games though; I think you'd get more perks as an entertainment critic. So if anyone is looking for a writer who would take an all-expense trip to Hawaii to plug a new TV series and then talk about how much the series sucks, give me a call.

Kansas: all the callousness without all the Broadway shows

Kansas Shoppers Step Over Dying Woman

why must the Democrats always blink first?

If the Dems don't take the next election, it will because they
don't have the guts to just fight it out. Generally I think it's rather admirable that the Democrats aren't willing to shred the government the way the Republicans will do, but right now I think they should just go bulldog stubborn and say, we were voted in by anti-war and anti-corruption voters, let's give the people what they want. And if the government screeches to a halt as Bush vetoes bill after bill, well fine. But instead the Democrats seem to want to make sure there is no reason to believe they are anything but wimpy, ineffective, pseudo Republicans.

No guts, no glory.