So, Facebook has gone to its new and improved layout. Mandatory changeover for everyone, of course. It's honestly a step back in terms of aesthetics and ease of use. Though I admit, it's vast increase in resource usage and advertisement placement strikes a mix of fear and awe.
Basically, Facebook no longer is lightweight enough to be a part of my scatterbrained computing. I always have several tabs open in different web browsers, music playing, writing, bit-torrenting, downloads, games, my Vista Sidebar, weather updates, instant messaging, Google Earth, notepad.exe, a calculator, a music editor, and sometimes more humming along.
It's mostly all an excuse to pull away from another networking site. I like my sites clean and to the point. Xanga, Myspace, and now Facebook have all fallen into that bulletpoint engineering style. They take a look at similar products and take all of the features and slap it into their design. Tabbed browsing, apps, status updates, moods, comment walls, embedded music, photo albums. It's just another list. A long boring list of features that all the social networking sites steal from each other until you have this homogeneous mess.
I don't want in, honestly. I'll just hide over here with my blog, minimize my foot print in Facebook and try to find some solutions for my writing, photo albums, and everything else tied into FB.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Spore
I've been playing Spore off and on for some time now. It's a simple game, insulting so sometimes, but it's mostly fun and exciting to see procedural concepts in action. The online portion of the game, a massive sharing site, is still single player but introduces the creations of thousands of other players into your game. Neat!
The game certainly lacks polish in some areas, but the entire package has enough mediocrity to make it good. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being forgotten bargain games, 5 being games that are interesting enough to warrant at least one play through, 10 being a game so incredible and godly it will be considered a touchstone of its genre for generations to come), I give Spore a 7.
The first five points from the interesting first playthrough with decent stability, graphics, design, etc. The next two points are a personal tilt. Spore has pros, cons, but not enough substance (too much free creation and the lack of a story or long-term goals) to keep me interested for long.
A tangent: The publisher of Spore, Electronic Arts, includes SecuROM software with almost all of its new games to curb piracy and to potentially reap more profits. Basically, SecuROM hides on a computer and monitors any activity that could compromise the security on EA's software. Users often complain of SecuROM disabling their CD burning hardware and software and of SecuROM refusing to recognize their PC after periodic software, firmware, and hardware upgrades. To top it off, Spore's SecuROM allows only three installs before requiring its end user to call technical support.
Surely this, along with Spore's online aspect, should prevent piracy. It's not the case, and in closer inspection, I don't think that was EA's intent. Requiring online activation and giving only three installs basically cripples the used game market. I can't sell my copy of the game without involving EA if I've hit the three install limit. EA basically wants all users to pay them directly for access.
There's been some fallout over EA's use of SecuROM over at GameFAQs and on Spore's Amazon page.
EA made the wrong move with SecuROM. They hurt legitimate users with their ethically gray piece of software, while pirates walk away with full and unlimited access to the game.
Great job EA! /sarcasm
The game certainly lacks polish in some areas, but the entire package has enough mediocrity to make it good. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being forgotten bargain games, 5 being games that are interesting enough to warrant at least one play through, 10 being a game so incredible and godly it will be considered a touchstone of its genre for generations to come), I give Spore a 7.
The first five points from the interesting first playthrough with decent stability, graphics, design, etc. The next two points are a personal tilt. Spore has pros, cons, but not enough substance (too much free creation and the lack of a story or long-term goals) to keep me interested for long.
A tangent: The publisher of Spore, Electronic Arts, includes SecuROM software with almost all of its new games to curb piracy and to potentially reap more profits. Basically, SecuROM hides on a computer and monitors any activity that could compromise the security on EA's software. Users often complain of SecuROM disabling their CD burning hardware and software and of SecuROM refusing to recognize their PC after periodic software, firmware, and hardware upgrades. To top it off, Spore's SecuROM allows only three installs before requiring its end user to call technical support.
Surely this, along with Spore's online aspect, should prevent piracy. It's not the case, and in closer inspection, I don't think that was EA's intent. Requiring online activation and giving only three installs basically cripples the used game market. I can't sell my copy of the game without involving EA if I've hit the three install limit. EA basically wants all users to pay them directly for access.
There's been some fallout over EA's use of SecuROM over at GameFAQs and on Spore's Amazon page.
EA made the wrong move with SecuROM. They hurt legitimate users with their ethically gray piece of software, while pirates walk away with full and unlimited access to the game.
Great job EA! /sarcasm
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