Blog of Doom Personal thoughts of a total stranger.

MMORPGs = Internet Crack

Well, I've been incommunicado for a week now. Why? Runescape, or as I like to call it, Runecrack. This is a low budget (i.e. free) online Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game. I decided to give it a try to see what it was all about. The gameplay is alright at best. It isn't the greatest. The addictive part was that everyone else (almost) was another real person, also logged on to this world.

Problems? I didn't really want to talk to any of them. They were all mostly 10 to 15 year olds. I didn't really feel like striking up a conversation with them, since we didn't have that much in common. I especially hated the people who came online and immediately started begging for money from everyone. What a drag!

Anyway, I've been playing it straight for most of the week in all my spare time. When I start to do that, I notice and stop as soon as I figure out what's going on. I have an addictive personality, and I can easily get sucked in to things like online games or blogging politics gambling.

So here I am, back from the land of the online zombies. I find, now that I'm out of it, that I enjoy the face to face aspects of gaming more. Of course, I haven't tried D&D online, and if I had a better computer it would probably scream as a game....hmmm.

Feel free to welcome me back from the ranks of the missing. It's good to be back.

The Inner Circle

Have you noticed that everything involving people always seems to have an inner circle syndrome?

For example, there are people who drink coffee. Instant, drip, whatever. But, they get their coffee from the grocery store. They get Folgers or Maxwell House in the big cans and use it, and it tastes just fine. But, then there are the people who buy Starbucks coffee. They go to Starbucks, buy the bags of beans and get them ground and make their coffee. House Blend, Verona, Kenya, whatever. There are different brands of Starbuck's coffee. However, there is an even more inner circle of coffee drinkers. Those who have shunned Starbucks as common and bad tasting, and who get the rarer brands, such as Peets Coffee. They look down their noses at the poor Starbucks drinking slobs who think they're all that. Did you know that there are even people who take the fresh coffee beans and roast them by hand. This is (of course) much better than buying that off the shelf crap. Poor deluded people. Everyone knows that the best way is to roast your own.

Have some fun and look around you for other instances of the inner circle syndrome. You'll find it in any organized or unorganized group of people who get together to share a common interest. If you want, post the ones you can think of in the comments.

A new low for spammers

Ok, this is just sad. Today I get my usual raft of spam (which Apple Mail diverts to the Spam folder toot sweet, thank you very much). One of them, however, stood out from the others. It didn't have a catchy sounding or even wildly pornographic sounding subject line.

No. This one stood out because it was from the stupidest name I've seen yet. Perjuries J. Polyester. Really. That was the name. This was your standard porn email promising various unmentionable visual delights if I would just click the convenient link embedded in the email. But I couldn't. I was just sad at the name. It made me feel like the guy in the beer commercial when someone dropped the case of beers. He was in bed somewhere far away and was overcome with an unexplainable sadness. That's how I felt.

It's like they weren't even trying. I remember a time when spammers tried to put in a realistic sounding name, one generic enough that you might think you actually knew a person by that name. Now we get Purjuries J. Polyester.

What has spamming come to.

Technorati Tags: spam

The Shrinkwrapification of Patented Goods

The Shrinkwrapification of Patented Goods.:
<snip>

ACRA, an association of cartridge remanufacturers, sued Lexmark to block this anti-consumer use of patent law. EFF filed an amicus brief on their behalf before the Ninth Circuit. Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit this week ruled in favor of Lexmark, agreeing that the "single use only" restriction
contained in the "box-wrap license" on the package could create an enforceable contract between Lexmark and its customers, and that a violation of the contract could be a patent infringement.

The consequences for consumers, innovators, and competition are potentially dire. Will patent owners exploit this decision as an opportunity to impose over-reaching restrictions on formerly permitted
post-sale uses, repairs, modifications, and resale? Will consumers soon confront "single use only, not for resale" notices on more and more products? Will innovators stumble over labels announcing "modifications prohibited"?

Only time will tell.

[EFF: Deep Links]

(Via Privacy Digest.)

What will happen is easy to assess. People will ignore the restriction. How can this even be enforced? The printer cartridge division of the FBI?
Or, people will steer away from Lexmark printers (I will never buy one, for example).
Or, someone will come along with a printer that doesn't have this restriction and people will buy it instead.
Or, people who don't take the refill cost into account when they buy a printer will get burned. The next time they need to buy a printer, they'll find another brand.

It's a parasitic business model. Like a parasite that eventually kills its host and needs to find another host to survive, Lexmark will survive by preying on new customers who don't check on the cost of refill cartridges and take it into account when they buy a printer. They damn sure will the next time they buy a printer, though.

Technorati Tags: Lexmark, refill, printer

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This morning I mentioned a rant of epic proportions coming. I've decided to wait on that until this crisis is over. The main thing now is to get everyone rescued, then start asking questions.