Moving once again

I doubt there is anyone left subscribing, but just in case, I am moving once again. Now torwards my own hosted wordpress blog. You can now find my ramblings at http://tamgo.gxs3.com 

Tell Me Again Why People Use This Crap

I simply cannot understand it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I know all of the explanations. I have been in the role of the preacher who spreads these explanations to some of my friends. Yet in reality I am still baffled by it myself. What am I talking about? Why do people still use Windows? Before you send me hate email/comments, hear me out.

A very close friend of mine had an issue. He needed to use a web application which provided a service necessary to get some work related tasks done. It simply was not working. Despite his hardest efforts, he could not turn that around. Although he is a very smart and capable person, he does not posses technical knowledge on this particular area of expertise. Like so many other people confronted with issues utilizing their PC’s, I completely understood and offered to diagnose the problem.

His lovely web app, needed to install an Active X control in order to work. It doesn’t offer any alternative. I personally don’t like to install these things, except the really necessary ones, like the ones from Microsoft. Yet I don’t know why they don’t come out of the box to begin with, but that’s another story. He insisted that he trusted the source and he needed the info on this web app, so I installed the control and proceeded to reload the page.

Then a lovely error message stated that the application only runs in Internet Explorer 6.0 (he was running 7.0). Ay-ay-ay! Their own crap doesn’t support their previous crap. Let’s step back for a moment. One thing is to make your own, non-standard-complaint crap. But to make your new non-standard-compliant crap which is not compatible with your last non-standard-compliant crap? Are you really trying to give us a great big collective headache? Was that one too many ‘crap’s? Great, I Google instructions on how to downgrade the browser.

This  took me to the Microsoft support site, which forced me to installed the lovely Windows Genuine Advantage (and other updates). I have read all the horrors this introduces, but again, my friend was in a pinch and I was  here to help him. I installed, and restarted the machine. According to WGA I had a valid and legal license, no problems there. I sighed in relief, confirmed the install of the rest of the updates and restarted the machine.

When the machine booted up again, half of it’s functionality had been disabled. I could not access my network, or the internet. I could not access the system hardware configuration. So much for being confirmed BY THE SOURCE that I have a valid license. The owner was basically locked out of the machine and OS he paid with HIS MONEY for his use. I tried to troubleshoot the problem, but without the assistance of my Google to look up any occurrences of similar issues, I had little options.

Luckily there was not a lot of important data on the machine. After a while he finds his Windows install disk (again, paid for with a valid license). I format the drive to get rid of all that gunk and reinstall Windows. After about an hour, I have a clean machine, which is running a bit smoother (simply because it still has no apps and a lot less DLL’s to load) and is ready to go. I load up the site again, reinstall the Active X control and give it a whirl. Instead of seeing results, I get another error message. This time, he wants me to install Service Pack 2. Now this is one of the old disks which doesn’t even have SP1.

I go to the Windows Update site, select all the updates and direct it to download and install. Keep in mind this is a fresh, untampered with machine. After the process was completed, at least half of the updates weren’t installed!  Log files, explanatory error messages, troubleshooting options? Ha! In your dreams! I had to iterate over the process 3 times in order to get everything installed. After the fourth reboot, finally SP2 appears as an option in Windows Update. Downloading and installing SP2 alone consumed more than an hour. Not to mention a period of about 10-20 minutes where the SP2 installer simply became unresponsive. I had no idea if it had crashed or hit a snag. I didn’t kill the process in fear that it would render the machine useless… again.

We haven’t had the time to go back to the site and see it’s next complaint, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised other issues have to be resolved before being able to utilize the service.

Do you know when was the last time I encountered a problem like this utilizing applications and operating systems that are built on open standards? NEVER! It doesn’t happen! There is no obscurity, and therefore, all the processes necessary to get the service you require to work is much smoother. Since it is widely known how the protocols work, everyone can support it, regardless of what your OS or client application is.

If I could leave one message to the 10 people that take 5 minutes of their day to read this it would be this: The alternatives to Windows are better! Really! Stop being afraid! You will thank me if you at least try to make the switch. I have been happy ever since. The sad thing is that I have a very very very small, yet loyal fan base with one or two strays every once in a while. 8 of the 10 readers are already using an alternative. I already know this for a fact. If I could only convince the ninth guy to switch, then maybe… just maybe I would have accomplished something worthwhile with my day.

I Finally Got It

I have recently had a very unbalanced life. All work, no play. The “All work” part has been formed in a very large part by a great deal of technical research. Although this is beneficial, since it will increase my skill set, this still reeks of an unbalanced life.

More than once, I have the same advice handed over to technical readers. Especially we the oh so lucky nerds in the computer science and related fields of knowledge. Alternate reading technical books with fantasy, science fiction or any other type of creative works. Technical books tend to put in a specific frame of mind. They box you into a specific way of thinking. While their knowledge is necessary, exposure to that influence alone will create a very square person. Fiction works help develop your creativity. Making your mind soar, it helps develop the skills of creation and “out of the box” thinking. While this is not as documented as the former, in my field it is just as important.

It might not have been the best decision, but instead of going with a fiction book, I decided to take up an MMO. While not as stimulating as the former, it definitely will help stimulate my long abandoned creative juices, and offer enough interactivity to keep me active and motivated. While I will not specify the game, let me just say it is NOT Warcrack. Although this can be said about most MMO’s, Warcark is simply too time consuming, too addictive, and too absorbing.

I went with a game which I had a little previous experience with, making my transition into it a bit easier. I invited a couple of my friends which have played it in the past, but have now abandoned it. Only one has showed up till now. The game, like many others, forces you to look for allies in order to complete cooperative quests and missions. While you can attempt to do them yourself, or utilize AI driven helpers “henchmen” (as they are called in the game), most of the time this just isn’t good enough.

For those of you that have not had the pleasure of playing an MMO, I really, really recommend you try it out. If only to experience a very important cultural phenomenon of this decade, if not century. The game boasts a huge number of players. These players are not only interacting with the environment presented to them in the game, but also amongst themselves. These players are all simultaneously attempting to complete quests and missions, scouting good players to have them join their guilds, buying and selling goods, negotiating prices, trying to upgrade their armor and weapons, playing against each other. Any sociologist would have a field day analyzing all of this interaction. I am pretty sure a couple already have.

I quickly found myself in a very inhospitable environment. A bunch of people trying to sell me stuff I didn’t want or need. I was asking for help with a couple of missions, and the little help I was offered came with a price tag (in game currency) attached to it. I had little resources at my disposal, therefore there was little I could do. Sound familiar? All of a sudden this seemed like the “real” world, all over again. Thoughts of The Matrix popped in my head. I quietly grinned and tried to make the best of it with the resources I had at my disposal. I had already set out to make this the best experience possible, and I wasn’t about to quit now.

I had managed to gather a little bit of money from the small entry level ventures I was able to successfully accomplish. I was offering a small amount of money in exchange for help in the completion of a quest. As you can imagine, most of the people in that area simply ignored me. One particular fellow walked up to me astonished that I was offering money for help. I simply responded saying that was the only way I saw that I could get help. He laughed and offered me his free services. When we set off on the quest that I had to complete I realized this was an experienced player who had already maxed out the potential of his character. When we set off in the quest, he quickly and easily dispatched any enemies that popped up in front of us. There was little for me to do, but to pick up the money and loot left behind by the enemies.

After completing a couple of pending missions he promptly invited me to become a member of his guild. I was honored and quickly accepted. This guy was my hero. He was a master at the game, he selflessly helped me get through some hard parts of it, and now he was inviting me to form part of his group! I mean, how bigger than that does it get in the context. I was happy. I was playing. Probably a bit more than the conservative couple of hours a week I proposed myself to do so. As I mentioned before, these games are highly involving and addictive. If you let yourself get immersed in the fantasy world it projects, you can dedicate a couple of hours to it without even realizing it. In any case, I have corrected this, and I am back to regular more healthy dosages of the game.

One day I was hanging out with a couple of guys in the guild, doing some missions. We talk about a lot of stuff, related to the context of the game, but also mundane matters as well. My personal super hero and another one of the members were talking about how happy they were that they had gotten through their final exams and the school year was finally over. I froze in my tracks. After a couple of seconds I snapped out of it, and asked them “what grade are you in?”. They happily responded “10th grade”. They whipped back the same question at me. A bit ashamed I let them know I was an “old man”. This did not change my relationship with any of the guys in the guild. I still highly respect then, and love to play with them.

What this did do for me was make me think about the social implications of this type of game. You are represented and perceived by others by you in game character. When you start a campaign, you create a character. This character has a profession, a sex, a color of clothes, and particular physical characteristics that you specify. This gives you your own custom image in the game. Yet it is simply made to distinguish you from players which are nearby. The truth is that these are all false. Since from the get go everyone knows this is just a digital representation of the person behind the keyboard and mouse, no assumptions are made based on their appearance. Do you have any idea how big this is? Say goodbye to any discrimination based on color, sex or race. People are judged by how good they are at the game, what items you have available, what strategic support you can offer. Not by their characteristics. We’ve been trying to do that in our own society for at least the last 300 hundred years and have yet to be successful. Yet thanks to this online interaction, it has happened as a side effect no less.

I didn’t know that my partner in crime was simply a 15 year old child. I still have no idea what’s his race, color of his skin, or if he has any the ability to speak any tongues other than English.This has not changed in any way how I perceive him. He is still the leader of the group, and I still gladly follow him in the game. Yet in our world, the couple of laps around the sun that I have as an advantage would have probably given me seniority over the group. Irrelevant of the fact of weather I actually deserved or not. I am not even going to go into other discriminatory implications.

This, in part, explains the massive popularity of these games. It provides you a world where a man is quite literally “Not judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character”. How many times have we been discriminated in our lifetimes? How many times have we been considered to be less adequate for some task just because we didn’t fit into “the profile”?. Even if you, my dear reader, fit into the 18 to 34 young, thin, white, healthy, English-speaking male (arguably the demographic which less suffers the injustices of prejudice), I am pretty sure this is still an alluring world. Even for you.

Sadly, I came to this realization a bit late. There are already 4+ million people playing Warcrack, which is by far the most popular MMO today. There are countless others in other games and franchises. This will sound like old news to most of you. Yet it was a marvelous moment of realization for me.