I have been a fan of the 'Total War' games since the first 'Shogun:Total War' released back in 1999. Being both interested in history and the possible alternatives, epic games covering decades and even centuries, combining both battlefield and strategic levels have appealed to me. However, as the years have progress, despite the increased sophistication and the improved graphics, I have become more and more frustrated with basic flaws in the games, despite all the different settings, that never seem to be resolved. With the advent of 'Total War: Rome II' new problems were introduced which now seem to be adding to the growing list. See my previous posting about Rome II for what I see as these tedious problems: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/total-war-rome-ii-same-old-problems.html
I am still excited by a new 'Total War' game and pre-ordered the latest 'Total War: Attila' back in November 2014. A flaw in downloading meant that until an update in March 2015, despite reporting the problem to Steam, I was unable to run it. Once it was functioning I was keen to play. The 'Barbarian Invasion' expansion (2005) to the original 'Rome Total War' (2004) featuring the late Western and Eastern Roman Empires and the migrating barbarian tribes was always a favourite of mine and so I was keen to play this updated version of that expansion for the 'Rome II' approach.
The game is certainly visually stunning. However, some of this causes problems. In 'Rome II', the different troop and building types are represented by symbolic images. This makes it easy to distinguish between them. With 'Attila' they are represented by my realistic images. This makes it difficult to tell at a glance between similar units. It is particularly a difficulty telling between the range of buildings many of which look pretty much the same. It is important to tell, because unlike with 'Rome II' each province has to have sufficient food rather than this being the case right across your empire. It also has to have a sufficient level of sanitation. This can be hard when you only control part of a province because the rest is held by an enemy, an ally or has been made desolate. Desolation is a new factor cause by barbarian tribes laying waste to a region. It can be revived by colonisation if you can spare enough money.
The key problem is that even if you have a good level of food supplies you will typically find one or more provinces starving leading to unrest. You will also find that disease caused by a lack of baths or reservoirs is far more prevalent than in 'Rome II'. Thus, as with 'Rome II' you find yourself incessantly fighting uprisings and pumping money into keeping people alive, leaving little for fighting off opponents or developing your empire. This is one problem of recent Total War games, they end up becoming 'Total Management' because unless you load up modifications provided by amateurs you will find yourself simply struggling not to lose your empire to famine or uprising, even on the Easy setting. These things did happen, but bear in mind the Byzantine Empire, what had been the Eastern Roman Empire, lasted until 1453CE, a thousand years after this game is set.
Many problems that were seen as early as 'Medieval 2 Total War' (2006) and have never been rectified. One is catapults that move around the battlefield as fast as heavy infantry and, even in thick fog or when firing into a forest or up a steep hill, are able to hit your soldiers more precisely than laser-guided weapons of today. In turn, your catapult weapons will miss the opponents despite firing repeatedly even at a static line across flat terrain with perfect visibility. Ships will always hunt you down when you move at sea, covering hundreds of miles to be in the correct place, again something even challenging with modern technology.
Another problem which has continued from 'Rome II' is in terms of towers in towns. In small towns these are typically wooden structures. The strength of them varies considerable between how they impact on AI (artificial intelligence - i.e. the one controlled by the computer) soldiers and how they impact on yours. I have lost entire units trying to knock down a single tower because of the incessant arrows which fire into them as they march up and take so long to destroy it. In contrast, an AI unit can march up to your towers receiving only 1-2 casualties and destroy it rapidly. Thus it is far easier for the computer faction to take a town than it is for you to take even the same settlement. Similarly you can only place barricades in largely ridiculous places that do little if nothing to protect your settlement, they simply hamper moving your troops around. In contrast, when the AI is in charge of the town the barricades prove to be a genuine defence. You can win, but your casualties will be far higher than for a computer driven faction taking the same place.
Armies even from factions which are not friendly will precisely co-ordinate so your defenders will face wave after wave of attackers. Even if good at fighting on the defence you are strained when the third army in a row, twice your strength comes down the same road to get you in a single turn. The AI player never makes mistakes and for some reason while you can not march past its armies and constantly seem to be just that little bit short of catching them, your opponent will always have the precise amount of movement necessary; can march right through your zone of control and in 'Attila' will often even fight you and march off and attack someone else or a different town in the same turn, all things you will be unable to do. I cannot understand how a barbarian horde, i.e. consisting of the entire population including non-combatants, can march faster and farther than a trained Roman army. A crucial difference is that, unless you are extremely lucky, your neighbouring armies do not support each other. In contrast, the AI ones are always in perfect balance and you find some armies supporting more than one offensive, something I have never been able to achieve despite very careful positioning.
The big mistake that was added to these flaws in 'Rome II' was limiting the number of armies. In 'Medieval 2 Total War' one useful function was that you could strengthen garrisons without need for a general. Now you are limited to 16 armies and if you are trying to control an empire as large as the two Roman Empires or the Sassanid you find yourself struggling to get from one end of the empire to the other with enough force, exacerbated by the blocking zone of control problems noted above. City garrisons are utterly pathetic, no matter how much you develop the buildings in a city. Rebels even revolting slaves turn up with far more experienced soldiers and crucially soldiers equipped with better weapons and more advanced armour than you can even recruit in your empire, despite them coming from that empire. Thus, some towns are lost almost on a constant basis. You have to leave armies to garrison in case an opponent by-passes you as they very often can which again means no expansion of your own empire.
Another flaw which came with 'Rome II' and continues with Attila is disappearing units. I accept there are issues about line of sight on a bumpy or forested terrain. However, even on flat plains for some reason units disappear even when walking towards you. The problem is that any soldiers you have sent marching towards them stop dead once the unit fades and do not resume their march if it reappears. Similarly missile troops and catapults stop firing at it and again simply spectate if it reappears. Yet, your opponent keeps firing incessantly and with great accuracy.
Since 'Rome II' the default setting for marching an entire army on the battlefield is that it fans out. This causes many to set off away from the enemy. Similarly trying to congregate them back when they have chased off the opponent sees them heading in random directions. The soldiers have no sense of self-preservation to turn and face an attacker or aid their fellow soldiers right next to them. Control of units has deteriorated severely since the days of 'Medieval 2 Total War'.
All of these flaws mean that you need to be able to see into the future and amass soldiers in precisely the right location to see off an opponent. You will incessantly have to be fighting for the smaller towns and villages as their defence is so feeble. At times it seems that the AI will not let you hold a particular town and even opponents with a few and poor territories are able to field vast, well-equipped armies that outstrip anything your country can produce. Now, a new element in 'Attila' is that if you start hiring mercenaries their prices rise so it even proves difficult to bring in supplementary forces quickly or put in ones suited to a local environment, especially as all your money is going into building local farms and water supplies rather than recruitment buildings.
The key problem with so many barbarian tribes is that they are incessant and it is easy to find yourself at war with fifteen to twenty factions. They are not as hard to destroy as they were back in 'Barbarian Invasion', but there are simply so many bent of destroying everything. As has long been the case, the diplomacy system is largely pointless. You struggle to find anyone to trade with you let alone ally with you. Allies simply drag you into more wars and yet rarely assist you. Trade partners often remain hostile and break off trade at random leading to a sudden drop in income. I emphasise that these problems are playing at the 'Easy' level by someone with 16 years' experience on these games.
The only improvements with 'Rome II' that are also seen in 'Attila' is with the agents. These used to be really pathetic in 'Medieval 2 Total War' and could not be kept alive. Now they stand a decent chance and I have managed to get at least one of each - Spy, Dignitary and Champion up to the top level. They add to the game and the armies. Though I note that the Merchant has not made an appearance, they lived such a short time it was simply a waste of cash.
I appreciate the effort that has gone into 'Attila' in terms of getting it looking great and historically accurate. What is infuriating is the persistence of gameplay flaws which have now been in place for a decade and seem to be worsening. In many ways, as I have noted before, Sega and Creative Assembly seem to be leaving enhancement up to the amateur developer community rather than actually resolving these themselves. They have been stubborn in not addressing flaws that mean it can be tiresome playing when hard work and clever strategy is defeated by the great advantages the AI had with its armies. What is worse is that such situations are anachronistic and it is a shame to find that your wonderful Roman legions are effectively coming up against 21st century armies.
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 April 2015
Monday, 5 January 2015
Less And Less Control Over What My Computer Does
As noted last month, I was facing the deterioration of my laptop after 3.5 years. Over the Christmas period it got worse, regularly overheating (despite cleaning out the fans) and consequently crashing. With the sales on, it seemed like an opportune time to buy a replacement. Knowing that this one is unlikely to make it far into 2018, I spent one third of the money I spent on the last one, so it will not be such a pain when I have to dump it. The trouble is, now I buy a laptop and it is on Windows 8. So much stuff is buried far deeper than in the past. I battled even to change the wallpaper on the main screen. Everything I do I seem to have to log in and re-log in and verify myself. Even to play the Mah Jong matching tile game, which is free, I now have to establish an account with Xbox. I also had to receive a code to my mobile phone, just to play a simple, free game.
What makes it worse is that it is not simply Microsoft which is asking me for verification at every turn, but because I bought a Hewlett-Packard computer, their facilities are constantly on to me to link to its provision often in contradiction to what Microsoft are peddling to me. They have no appreciation of how I work, they want to connect everything in the way they see best. This has long been my concern with computers, that these days, the systems patronise you rather than offer the facilities you need, they try to get you to fit to their approach. With Windows 8, I had to disable a score of apps that I have no desire to use and had to work to put all the stuff I like, such as Word and work packages like Excel and PowerPoint into a place where I could reach them easily without having to dig through recommendations for a New Year diet or trips to places that I could never afford. There needs to be a setting which recognises - 'this person bought a cheap computer at a sale price, thus he does not have the income to afford all this stuff we are shovelling at him'.
Back in the 2000s if I bought a computer, I bought a tool. Now what I have bought is a billboard, constantly piling me with extra things I might want to buy and locking my identity into everything. I got sick of this and so have established an entirely anonymous account unconnected to anything else. This, however, then bars me from playing the Mah Jong matching game. The trade is constantly, 'you can only have basic functions if you allow us to keep shoving advertising at you'. In the 2000s, I paid about the same amount of money and was left alone. Is such advertising necessary to fund the cost of these machines? What is tiresome is that I spend more time disabling all these facilities than I actually do working on what I want to work with. It is as if I have bought a car but on the way to work I have to go by a route chosen by someone else so that I can stop at shops along the way that I have no interest in. Just wait until the 'updates' start and I have to switch on my computer so that it can simply play with itself for 30-60 minutes apparently 'updating' something that looks identical when it has finished. Sometimes it deigns to allow me to focus on what I want, but that is never within the first hour of being on.
The other thing is Cloud storage. The hacking of such facilities is well known and yet I am constantly being pummelled to put my documents and photos into Cloud storage. Microsoft, Dropbox and Hewlett Packard have all offered me totalling around 5TB of Cloud storage. Why on Earth would I want to us that? I am not rich and having bought a laptop I see no reason to go out and also get a smartphone or a tablet. I would get one not all of them. Typing novels on a phone is a waste of time; searching for an address when on the move is something different. However, we are encouraged to see every tool as universal, rather than seeking out the best for what we want to do. Again, the companies feel they know better than us how to live our live - am I the only one for which that is dystopian? I am not a teenager and so I recognise that I might be out of step with current trends and indeed have no interest in current fashions in technology. Then again, I am not a man who would buy a car because it looks good, I buy a car which I hope will work well and is safe. Companies seem to forget that dull people like me make up the majority and many of us do not even want to try to look cool. For me a computer is a tool not a lifestyle choice. If Sony can be hacked, what hope do I have that my Cloud-stored materials will be safe? If Hollywood celebrities can end up with their photos everywhere, people could send mine around without a second thought.
Memory sticks are leaping on almost on a monthly basis. Three years ago, I got a 4GB for £29 (US$45; €37) now I can buy a 32GB memory stick for £20, Yes, you can have memory sticks stolen or you can lose them, but for work stuff, my fiction, even photos, even if I want to use them on different devices, why risk using the Cloud, when I can have them all on a tiny piece of metal affixed to my keys?
What I am seeking, perhaps foolishly, from computer and software companies, is to be treated like an adult. I want a tool that does what I want it to do. If I want extra, I can make that choice in time, I do not need to be advertised to every time I switch on. Indeed, I think they do not recognise that how in so many people it instills hostility to the very things they are promoting. I want tools on my computer that I can use without going online. There seems to be a fantasy at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard as with many companies that the internet is universal and always available. They clearly do not work in the average office let alone try to use it in a cafe. Having to incessantly connect even to use mundane products, slows the whole process up. We have long put aside the concept of the 'information superhighway' and know at best it is a B road. However, these companies seem determined to fill it up with ice cream vans seeking to sell you the latest gimmick.
Each time I buy a computer, I seem to spend a larger amount of my money on getting things I do not want and finding access to what I do want harder than ever. Perhaps in an era when utility companies charge you in advance for energy or water you are never going to use, I should not be surprised that as a consumer, despite the apparent 'choice' it is ever harder to get the right tool for me.
What makes it worse is that it is not simply Microsoft which is asking me for verification at every turn, but because I bought a Hewlett-Packard computer, their facilities are constantly on to me to link to its provision often in contradiction to what Microsoft are peddling to me. They have no appreciation of how I work, they want to connect everything in the way they see best. This has long been my concern with computers, that these days, the systems patronise you rather than offer the facilities you need, they try to get you to fit to their approach. With Windows 8, I had to disable a score of apps that I have no desire to use and had to work to put all the stuff I like, such as Word and work packages like Excel and PowerPoint into a place where I could reach them easily without having to dig through recommendations for a New Year diet or trips to places that I could never afford. There needs to be a setting which recognises - 'this person bought a cheap computer at a sale price, thus he does not have the income to afford all this stuff we are shovelling at him'.
Back in the 2000s if I bought a computer, I bought a tool. Now what I have bought is a billboard, constantly piling me with extra things I might want to buy and locking my identity into everything. I got sick of this and so have established an entirely anonymous account unconnected to anything else. This, however, then bars me from playing the Mah Jong matching game. The trade is constantly, 'you can only have basic functions if you allow us to keep shoving advertising at you'. In the 2000s, I paid about the same amount of money and was left alone. Is such advertising necessary to fund the cost of these machines? What is tiresome is that I spend more time disabling all these facilities than I actually do working on what I want to work with. It is as if I have bought a car but on the way to work I have to go by a route chosen by someone else so that I can stop at shops along the way that I have no interest in. Just wait until the 'updates' start and I have to switch on my computer so that it can simply play with itself for 30-60 minutes apparently 'updating' something that looks identical when it has finished. Sometimes it deigns to allow me to focus on what I want, but that is never within the first hour of being on.
The other thing is Cloud storage. The hacking of such facilities is well known and yet I am constantly being pummelled to put my documents and photos into Cloud storage. Microsoft, Dropbox and Hewlett Packard have all offered me totalling around 5TB of Cloud storage. Why on Earth would I want to us that? I am not rich and having bought a laptop I see no reason to go out and also get a smartphone or a tablet. I would get one not all of them. Typing novels on a phone is a waste of time; searching for an address when on the move is something different. However, we are encouraged to see every tool as universal, rather than seeking out the best for what we want to do. Again, the companies feel they know better than us how to live our live - am I the only one for which that is dystopian? I am not a teenager and so I recognise that I might be out of step with current trends and indeed have no interest in current fashions in technology. Then again, I am not a man who would buy a car because it looks good, I buy a car which I hope will work well and is safe. Companies seem to forget that dull people like me make up the majority and many of us do not even want to try to look cool. For me a computer is a tool not a lifestyle choice. If Sony can be hacked, what hope do I have that my Cloud-stored materials will be safe? If Hollywood celebrities can end up with their photos everywhere, people could send mine around without a second thought.
Memory sticks are leaping on almost on a monthly basis. Three years ago, I got a 4GB for £29 (US$45; €37) now I can buy a 32GB memory stick for £20, Yes, you can have memory sticks stolen or you can lose them, but for work stuff, my fiction, even photos, even if I want to use them on different devices, why risk using the Cloud, when I can have them all on a tiny piece of metal affixed to my keys?
What I am seeking, perhaps foolishly, from computer and software companies, is to be treated like an adult. I want a tool that does what I want it to do. If I want extra, I can make that choice in time, I do not need to be advertised to every time I switch on. Indeed, I think they do not recognise that how in so many people it instills hostility to the very things they are promoting. I want tools on my computer that I can use without going online. There seems to be a fantasy at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard as with many companies that the internet is universal and always available. They clearly do not work in the average office let alone try to use it in a cafe. Having to incessantly connect even to use mundane products, slows the whole process up. We have long put aside the concept of the 'information superhighway' and know at best it is a B road. However, these companies seem determined to fill it up with ice cream vans seeking to sell you the latest gimmick.
Each time I buy a computer, I seem to spend a larger amount of my money on getting things I do not want and finding access to what I do want harder than ever. Perhaps in an era when utility companies charge you in advance for energy or water you are never going to use, I should not be surprised that as a consumer, despite the apparent 'choice' it is ever harder to get the right tool for me.
Friday, 12 December 2014
Three Years Old And My Computer Is Dying
In the movie, 'Blade Runner' (1982), the replicants, the life-like androids have a life expectancy of only four years. The portrayed society of November 2019, like that of the Roman Empire, is worried that its slaves would become too strong and would overpower the citizens. The plots of the movie is around replicants seeking their maker to have their lives extended. It seems that we are quite a way from having androids threaten our society, though Stephen Hawking fears basic artificial intelligence will be able to do it first. However, the built-in expiry date seen in 'Blade Runner' already appears to be in place.
In the summer of 2011, I bought an Alienware laptop computer for £1400 (€ 1750; US$2240). Being a keen PC gamer, I ordered one of the highest graphic and sound quality and with a fast processor so that I could enjoy the online 'Total War' games and 'World of Warcraft' to the best standard. This summer, 2014, moving into a room I was renting in a new house one of the current tenants, a postgraduate pharmacy student asked me about my laptop and when he found out it was coming up to three years old he scoffed, asking me how I hoped to achieve anything with something 'that old'. I did not mention that my mobile phone was bought in 2005 and does not have a camera in it.
My housemate's predictions rapidly have come true. I know in terms of online games, you expect fast developments and I do not expect it to run as quickly as it would have done in 2011. I am also aware that in a house with five residents, even broadband gets stretched between all the uses. However, even offline, the computer now struggles. It is a pain to watch it labour to open Word and you have to expect it to crash at random even when simply looking at text documents. It can struggle to open a second document or move between two. Very challenging when you write as much fiction as I do. I spend a lot of time watching a spinning disk against a black or a white blank screen. Ironically I end up reading the newspaper, writing a diary (by hand with a pen) and even practicing Chinese characters, again with pen and paper. It is almost as if my laptop feels that I am too old these days to use its facilities.
The deterioration in speed over the past three years has been phenomenal; declining very rapidly this year and so naturally I worried something was wrong. I have a scheduled 'defrag' every Wednesday and a virus check every Monday evening. I run through the list of all the software I have installed and eliminate anything which does not appear to be of use. I removed every image from the laptop and put it on a 1 TB external hard drive, not that I had that many photos that it should have taxed the laptop. I have even taken it apart and cleaned the fans, concerned they may be clogged and so it was overheating. None of these things have been able to halt the slowing down and the increases in crashes. It is as if, in the way my housemate viewed it, at 3.5 years old, my laptop is elderly and no longer can even do the basic tasks it once did such as handle a Word document, let alone play the games it was bought for.
Part of the problem is that the computer only occasionally does what I ask of it. Much of the time I can switch it on and it can happily play with itself. Every day there is some download that seems to take precedence over anything I might want to do. In the middle of games, the machine will shut down and tell me it has to restart to accommodate a new update which seems to make absolutely no difference to the running of my computer bar from ruining my game. Humans now have minimal control over their computers. We are shaped by what they want to do and they make it clear our interests are a long way down the list behind the masturbation that are all these updates.
Obviously I feel that I have thrown away a lot of money on something that really was going to cost me £700 per year for the kind of service I wanted. There seems to be no point in buying anything except the cheapest computer next time round. Clearly online gaming with a PC is really only open to people who can afford £1000 per year in hardware in order to engage with it. Given that my car cost £900, it is clear that I am no longer in that social class and so will be shut our of 'Total Rome II' let alone 'Shogun 2' which taxes my machine even more because of the greater landscape graphics. Yes, before you suggest it, I have scaled down the graphic detail on these games and that is all that has allowed me to play them into mid- to late-2014, but clearly not in 2015.
I feel an idiot for believing if I spent a large sum of money it would be enough to own a machine that would remain with me for five years. Clearly you can only expect to have the performance you paid for, for two years. This adds to the ever growing pile of discarded computers and all the components that go into them. It also makes them devices which have a life expectancy far less than many electrical devices out there. If you had to replace your washing machine every two years, it would become tiresome. Even while I write this, the computer is straining to keep up the connection to the blog and is going into overdrive downloading some update that I cannot even see when I search the system.
I would be grateful if someone could direct me to a company that makes computers that do what you want them to do rather than insisting that their desires have priority. Clearly that company is not Alienware and I am angered that I was so misled by them.
In the summer of 2011, I bought an Alienware laptop computer for £1400 (€ 1750; US$2240). Being a keen PC gamer, I ordered one of the highest graphic and sound quality and with a fast processor so that I could enjoy the online 'Total War' games and 'World of Warcraft' to the best standard. This summer, 2014, moving into a room I was renting in a new house one of the current tenants, a postgraduate pharmacy student asked me about my laptop and when he found out it was coming up to three years old he scoffed, asking me how I hoped to achieve anything with something 'that old'. I did not mention that my mobile phone was bought in 2005 and does not have a camera in it.
My housemate's predictions rapidly have come true. I know in terms of online games, you expect fast developments and I do not expect it to run as quickly as it would have done in 2011. I am also aware that in a house with five residents, even broadband gets stretched between all the uses. However, even offline, the computer now struggles. It is a pain to watch it labour to open Word and you have to expect it to crash at random even when simply looking at text documents. It can struggle to open a second document or move between two. Very challenging when you write as much fiction as I do. I spend a lot of time watching a spinning disk against a black or a white blank screen. Ironically I end up reading the newspaper, writing a diary (by hand with a pen) and even practicing Chinese characters, again with pen and paper. It is almost as if my laptop feels that I am too old these days to use its facilities.
The deterioration in speed over the past three years has been phenomenal; declining very rapidly this year and so naturally I worried something was wrong. I have a scheduled 'defrag' every Wednesday and a virus check every Monday evening. I run through the list of all the software I have installed and eliminate anything which does not appear to be of use. I removed every image from the laptop and put it on a 1 TB external hard drive, not that I had that many photos that it should have taxed the laptop. I have even taken it apart and cleaned the fans, concerned they may be clogged and so it was overheating. None of these things have been able to halt the slowing down and the increases in crashes. It is as if, in the way my housemate viewed it, at 3.5 years old, my laptop is elderly and no longer can even do the basic tasks it once did such as handle a Word document, let alone play the games it was bought for.
Part of the problem is that the computer only occasionally does what I ask of it. Much of the time I can switch it on and it can happily play with itself. Every day there is some download that seems to take precedence over anything I might want to do. In the middle of games, the machine will shut down and tell me it has to restart to accommodate a new update which seems to make absolutely no difference to the running of my computer bar from ruining my game. Humans now have minimal control over their computers. We are shaped by what they want to do and they make it clear our interests are a long way down the list behind the masturbation that are all these updates.
Obviously I feel that I have thrown away a lot of money on something that really was going to cost me £700 per year for the kind of service I wanted. There seems to be no point in buying anything except the cheapest computer next time round. Clearly online gaming with a PC is really only open to people who can afford £1000 per year in hardware in order to engage with it. Given that my car cost £900, it is clear that I am no longer in that social class and so will be shut our of 'Total Rome II' let alone 'Shogun 2' which taxes my machine even more because of the greater landscape graphics. Yes, before you suggest it, I have scaled down the graphic detail on these games and that is all that has allowed me to play them into mid- to late-2014, but clearly not in 2015.
I feel an idiot for believing if I spent a large sum of money it would be enough to own a machine that would remain with me for five years. Clearly you can only expect to have the performance you paid for, for two years. This adds to the ever growing pile of discarded computers and all the components that go into them. It also makes them devices which have a life expectancy far less than many electrical devices out there. If you had to replace your washing machine every two years, it would become tiresome. Even while I write this, the computer is straining to keep up the connection to the blog and is going into overdrive downloading some update that I cannot even see when I search the system.
I would be grateful if someone could direct me to a company that makes computers that do what you want them to do rather than insisting that their desires have priority. Clearly that company is not Alienware and I am angered that I was so misled by them.
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Reviving Old Computer Games
As regular readers of this blog will know, as I have aged, my dominant hobby has become playing computer games. These are PC games rather than those on gaming consoles though I occasionally access the Playstation 2 of the 10-year old who lives in my house, mainly as that system was blessed with a range of games with an interesting medieval Japanese setting and even a game modelled on my favourite James Bond movie 'From Russia With Love'. I have not really been a player of online games, though I keep up a subscription to 'World of Warcraft' due to the unpleasant behaviour of so many players on there I only drop in occasionally. As I have noted recently even buying games delivered on DVD-ROM often compels you to log into an online facility, often the Steam system in order to play them. The key challenge is the erratic nature of internet access. We had to complain to the telecoms ombudsman in order to break our contract with BT because for large portions of every day even at 05.00 let alone during the peak evening times there was no internet connection available. I now spend most weekday evenings away from home and these are the times when I need entertainment and playing a computer game can provide that. However, again the internet provision can be erratic especially in hotels even if you can get the login and password to work.
The problem with some new PC games is how bugged they can be or there is laziness in the design. A strong example is 'Stronghold 3' which was long anticipated and yet has completely disappointed fans of the series. It seems to lack what many of the earlier versions had and the woman in my house has ignored it and dug out the older versions. Things are rushed out without sufficient game testing, which seems ironic as there are queues of people waiting to do that. I guess it is poor planning and low budgets. Ultimately, however, the damage to reputation of a game which is so flawed can wreck a company as Troika Games found out. The major flaws in 'Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines' (2004) meant it was the last game the company produced. The story was excellent and one of the only genuinely frightening computer games I have played, but if it breaks down every five minutes you soon abandon it. Even when the system works gameplay can be weak and not engaging. PC gamers are very discerning in this regard and will walk away from a game that fails to be stimulating.
Given these challenges, I come back to old games which you can simply run off a disk. Recently I have been playing 'Deus Ex: Invisible War' (2003). I tried to load up 'Alias' (2004) but was told it was not compatible with the version of Windows that I run on my laptop. Despite some challenges like this, I do not seem alone in playing old PC games. I was pleased when Steam re-released 'Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' with all the bugs corrected so that you no longer have to download 23 patches in order to play it. Regular commentator on this blog, Yammerhant, mentioned not only playing 'Portal 2' (2011) but also 'Half Life 2' (2004) both made available via Steam. These trends have gone further. I was checking on eBay and Amazon recently for new PC games to try out. The woman in my house is a big fan of city-building games but these come along rarely and the very low quality of 'Stronghold 3' has made this part of the gaming market pretty sparse. What I noticed was how many old PC games have been re-released.
Examples of PC games updated for systems such as XP and Windows 7 include the 'Broken Sword Complete' a re-release of the tetralogy of Broken Sword games released between 1996 (!) and 2006. These are 'point and click' mystery adventures with what look like simple graphics but with engaging stories of uncovering conspiracies and precious items around the world very much the forerunner of 'The Da Vinci Code' (novel 2003; movie 2006) style. I have the original disks of these four games and only got into the first one, perhaps it is time to return to them. 'The Runaway Trilogy' is a similar style of game with more comic-style graphics and interesting produced from a Spanish company. These games were produced between 2001 and 2009. 'Commandos Complete' brings together the five Commandos games. These were a squad real time war mission games released between 1998 and 2006. I bought the first three but even in 2008 my PC was too new to run them, so I may be tempted to buy these updated versions. The list of updated and repackaged classics of PC gaming goes on. I highly recommend 'Deus Ex Complete Edition' bringing together 'Deus Ex' (2001) one of the most interesting and provoking PC games ever and its sequel 'Deus Ex: Invisible War' at a time when the prequel, 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' (2011) is also out. Others include 'Thief: The Complete Collection' (three games) and 'Hitman: Ultimate Contract' (four games), you can buy these latter three as a bundle from Amazon. Maybe the trend dates back to when 'Another World' was re-released in a 15th anniversary edition in 2007.
Whilst this trend is great for those of us who missed out on some of the best games of the past decade, I do wonder what it signals in terms of PC gaming. Back in 2008 it was noticeable that this area began to occupy less space in branches of 'Game' and the focus of PC games is generally now on fantasy role-play games and Total-War imitators. I do worry that falling back on past glories suggests that ideas have run out. I see a new 'Tomb Raider' title is set for release this year, though I can find no details of what this will feature. This may suggest that yet another rehash of something from the past. One thing is clear from the trend that the focus of PC gamers is not necessarily on having the latest graphics and in fact they will buy games produced 12+ years ago. What connects these re-releases is the quality of the plotting, the sustained engagement that I believe appeals far more to PC gamers than it does to console gamers. I wonder where all the talent of the 'golden age' probably 1996-2007 has gone? Maybe this cohort of game designers is pouring all its efforts into designing free online games or has got a job developing new monsters for some cave system on 'World of Warcraft'. I do not know enough about the industry to know the answer. However, as a gamer looking for new, exciting material I wonder if I have reached the end of the road and I have to go back to material from the past.
If there are going to be more re-releases, I would love to see 'Dungeon Keeper 2' (1999) re-released simply because it was so refreshing and subversive, as long as they crack the annoying bug: I had completed 19 levels out of 20 but then found it simply looped back and gave me level 19 to do once again. Another, perhaps by Steam, but, if possible, on DVD-ROM should be 'Vampire - The Masquerade: Redemption' (2000) which I have written enthusiastically before. Even 'Hidden and Dangerous' (1999) which I felt was better than the similarly-themed 'Commandos' despite being riddled by infuriating bugs which I hope they would correct. Better still I would like to see energetic releases of engaging, well-functioning games which are well plotted and with interesting characters. If anyone is short of ideas I can provide a whole list of suggestions as I am sure thousands of other keen PC gamers can do.
The problem with some new PC games is how bugged they can be or there is laziness in the design. A strong example is 'Stronghold 3' which was long anticipated and yet has completely disappointed fans of the series. It seems to lack what many of the earlier versions had and the woman in my house has ignored it and dug out the older versions. Things are rushed out without sufficient game testing, which seems ironic as there are queues of people waiting to do that. I guess it is poor planning and low budgets. Ultimately, however, the damage to reputation of a game which is so flawed can wreck a company as Troika Games found out. The major flaws in 'Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines' (2004) meant it was the last game the company produced. The story was excellent and one of the only genuinely frightening computer games I have played, but if it breaks down every five minutes you soon abandon it. Even when the system works gameplay can be weak and not engaging. PC gamers are very discerning in this regard and will walk away from a game that fails to be stimulating.
Given these challenges, I come back to old games which you can simply run off a disk. Recently I have been playing 'Deus Ex: Invisible War' (2003). I tried to load up 'Alias' (2004) but was told it was not compatible with the version of Windows that I run on my laptop. Despite some challenges like this, I do not seem alone in playing old PC games. I was pleased when Steam re-released 'Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines' with all the bugs corrected so that you no longer have to download 23 patches in order to play it. Regular commentator on this blog, Yammerhant, mentioned not only playing 'Portal 2' (2011) but also 'Half Life 2' (2004) both made available via Steam. These trends have gone further. I was checking on eBay and Amazon recently for new PC games to try out. The woman in my house is a big fan of city-building games but these come along rarely and the very low quality of 'Stronghold 3' has made this part of the gaming market pretty sparse. What I noticed was how many old PC games have been re-released.
Examples of PC games updated for systems such as XP and Windows 7 include the 'Broken Sword Complete' a re-release of the tetralogy of Broken Sword games released between 1996 (!) and 2006. These are 'point and click' mystery adventures with what look like simple graphics but with engaging stories of uncovering conspiracies and precious items around the world very much the forerunner of 'The Da Vinci Code' (novel 2003; movie 2006) style. I have the original disks of these four games and only got into the first one, perhaps it is time to return to them. 'The Runaway Trilogy' is a similar style of game with more comic-style graphics and interesting produced from a Spanish company. These games were produced between 2001 and 2009. 'Commandos Complete' brings together the five Commandos games. These were a squad real time war mission games released between 1998 and 2006. I bought the first three but even in 2008 my PC was too new to run them, so I may be tempted to buy these updated versions. The list of updated and repackaged classics of PC gaming goes on. I highly recommend 'Deus Ex Complete Edition' bringing together 'Deus Ex' (2001) one of the most interesting and provoking PC games ever and its sequel 'Deus Ex: Invisible War' at a time when the prequel, 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' (2011) is also out. Others include 'Thief: The Complete Collection' (three games) and 'Hitman: Ultimate Contract' (four games), you can buy these latter three as a bundle from Amazon. Maybe the trend dates back to when 'Another World' was re-released in a 15th anniversary edition in 2007.
Whilst this trend is great for those of us who missed out on some of the best games of the past decade, I do wonder what it signals in terms of PC gaming. Back in 2008 it was noticeable that this area began to occupy less space in branches of 'Game' and the focus of PC games is generally now on fantasy role-play games and Total-War imitators. I do worry that falling back on past glories suggests that ideas have run out. I see a new 'Tomb Raider' title is set for release this year, though I can find no details of what this will feature. This may suggest that yet another rehash of something from the past. One thing is clear from the trend that the focus of PC gamers is not necessarily on having the latest graphics and in fact they will buy games produced 12+ years ago. What connects these re-releases is the quality of the plotting, the sustained engagement that I believe appeals far more to PC gamers than it does to console gamers. I wonder where all the talent of the 'golden age' probably 1996-2007 has gone? Maybe this cohort of game designers is pouring all its efforts into designing free online games or has got a job developing new monsters for some cave system on 'World of Warcraft'. I do not know enough about the industry to know the answer. However, as a gamer looking for new, exciting material I wonder if I have reached the end of the road and I have to go back to material from the past.
If there are going to be more re-releases, I would love to see 'Dungeon Keeper 2' (1999) re-released simply because it was so refreshing and subversive, as long as they crack the annoying bug: I had completed 19 levels out of 20 but then found it simply looped back and gave me level 19 to do once again. Another, perhaps by Steam, but, if possible, on DVD-ROM should be 'Vampire - The Masquerade: Redemption' (2000) which I have written enthusiastically before. Even 'Hidden and Dangerous' (1999) which I felt was better than the similarly-themed 'Commandos' despite being riddled by infuriating bugs which I hope they would correct. Better still I would like to see energetic releases of engaging, well-functioning games which are well plotted and with interesting characters. If anyone is short of ideas I can provide a whole list of suggestions as I am sure thousands of other keen PC gamers can do.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Password Pressure
How many passwords do you have to remember? I have lost track of the ones I need not only to get into work systems but simply to shop online. Often I need one to access my account on the company website and then a subsequent one to actually pay for the system and then that is often backed up by a third verification from the company providing the card I am buying with. It is probably alright to remember the ones you use regularly, though I am no longer in the situation to buy CDs and DVDs with the frequency I might once have used. The greater difficulty is with those that I might visit only once per year, for example, to order vacuum cleaner bags or to apply for a job with a particular company. You need a password for almost every job application and yet there is little chance even if it is a company you really want to work for, that a suitable vacancy will only come up once every three months, perhaps only once in a year.
Of course, many systems now have ‘do you want to be reminded of your password?’ and for me that has almost become the default setting, hoping that I have remembered which email account I locked this particular company’s website too. Given that I applied for 80 jobs last year with about 70 companies, trying to remember so many different accounts was a real labour. What can be particularly frustrating is that ‘to increase security’ you can find that the reminder or more often these days the option to choose to reset the password only turns up an hour or two later. Thus, your window of opportunity for buying the item or filling in a lengthy job application has passed by the time you can get in.
One thing that irritates me is being told to alter my password just because a certain period of time has passed. The worst situation for this was in a job in the early 2000s where you had to change your password every month and were not allowed to repeat a password until you had used nine others. Trying to come up with things that you could remember was a really trick. Ultimately you end up writing them down or putting them in a file on your computer, so all of this fuss about security is compromised. My current job insists on a change every 3 months. I had the same password for my Hotmail email account from 1999-2010 and it was never hacked, yet this was felt by MSN to be too long a time without change and I was told to change it to one with greater ‘strength’. Having done this, a few weeks later, my account proceeded to be hacked for the first time. My password for my ‘World of Warcraft’ account now has 13 characters in it as the one 9 characters long proved too easy to break for hackers. YouTube insisted that I change the password I use to access that just recently. However, it kept rejecting my suggestions as too ‘weak’ and it was a battle to come up with a password and numbers that satisfied it and I can say that a month on I have forgotten what it was.
Passwords are supposed to be about security but generally they seem more effective at locking out the actual user than those attacking the account. Software can try millions of words even those in Japanese that I tend to use, in seconds and yet I can end up spending hours trying to get into my account and often abandon the attempt. It has never been so hard to buy something than in the 21st century. Most of what I have access to is of no interest to any criminal. I certainly have no belief that a hacker would alter my job application in order to reduce my ‘O’ levels. I suppose they could put their address in place of mine, and, assuming that I got an interview, go in my place, but even then, to get the job they would have to manufacture fake qualification certificates. If they are that skilled then they would not be going for the kind of jobs I am going for, currently not even at the level of middle management. I guess they could divert a DVD I have bought or buy lots of things on my cards, but I do not have the wealth that would make it really worth the effort. I guess this is the same for most people and yet we are subjected to a password regime which would suggest we all have access to state secrets. The last company laptop I was issued needed thumbprint verification to switch it on. No-one seemed to spot the irony when I asked whether we had ones equipped with the same facilities as those red boxes issued to ministers which measure skin temperature to check that the thumb has not been simply cut off the legitimate user.
It is not only ever changing passwords of sufficient strength that cause problem but the username or login name that goes with it that adds an extra dimension. Every company has a different protocol and I battle to remember whether they wanted my surname and initials, one initial, two initials, together or spaced with full stops; perhaps this one wanted my entire name or was it the email account or was it some other form of designation that they assigned me? Of course, often you can ask, if you know which email account you used, have the username reminder sent, naturally with the ‘security’ delay. Sometimes this is not possible and you reach the bind into which I have found myself slipping. Apparently not being known by the company I try to set up a new account and then are told that there is already an account in that name but they cannot tell me the password to it. This is one reason for having more than one email account as I am then compelled to start up a new account in a different email name all for one application to a job which at best I have a 3 in 8 chance of getting.
Sometimes systems are even more frustrating especially when combined with rapid ‘timing out’. I have commented before that job application sites are the worse for this. The extreme case was the one which timed me out between me deciding on a username and entering a password. Trying to re-access the system I was told there was already an account in this name and yet, of course, they could not send me the password to access it as one had not been designated. I abandoned online applying and rang them to be told that many people suffered this problem with their system. I felt it was futile to suggest they have it amended. In another case a company was charging me for virus protection I had not ordered. The bill sent me directions how to unsubscribe from the service, but going to the site it told me, as I already knew, that I had no account with the company, thus it was impossible to unsubscribe for the service which I was paying for! Trying to contact the company was almost impossible if you had no account as you had to log-in in order to send them a customer email and I was very fortunate to find a technical service email address on a discussion board that I used to get in through the ‘back door’ to reach customer services.
Doing business online loses much of its appeal when it is such a labour to access what you need to get into. The obsession with security especially for services you only use once a year or even less, is a real irritation. Every site seems to assume that they are the only people you deal with. I wish we had the ‘single sign-in’ approach adopted by universities which allows students, once they have signed into the university system to access a whole raft of e-books and online journals without having to sign in again to each one individually as used to be the case in the early 2000s. Bank accounts are the systems which do need greatest security, but interestingly they have moved away from passwords towards the devices which generate one-off code numbers. I know ‘World of Warcraft’ have introduced these too, but maybe it is time for Amazon and eBay to follow likewise. Of course, then we will have a desk full of these devices and we will leave the vital one we need at home.
The whole issue of passwords stems from the fact that no-one ever envisaged the internet to be such a crime-ridden place as it has proven to be or that so many people would put effort into peddling so much junk across systems. The internet is the distillation of the worst in human behaviour and despite constant efforts to portray it as something worthwhile it is like opening a library in the most run-down part of a city that had a vast proportion of criminals waiting to leap on anyone going to that library. Despite all the efforts over passwords and their strength, it appears that this is more of benefit to the ‘job’s worth’ attitudes of those people (very numerous these days) who like to make a fuss about regulations simply to give themselves an iota of importance, rather than providing any genuine security. For the average user like myself, trying to recall a string of passwords (even if you try to keep to a familiar few) and precisely what username you selected or were given many months ago, these concerns are increasingly making doing anything on the internet slower than telephoning in an order and, on occasion, actually physically going to the shop or office.
Of course, many systems now have ‘do you want to be reminded of your password?’ and for me that has almost become the default setting, hoping that I have remembered which email account I locked this particular company’s website too. Given that I applied for 80 jobs last year with about 70 companies, trying to remember so many different accounts was a real labour. What can be particularly frustrating is that ‘to increase security’ you can find that the reminder or more often these days the option to choose to reset the password only turns up an hour or two later. Thus, your window of opportunity for buying the item or filling in a lengthy job application has passed by the time you can get in.
One thing that irritates me is being told to alter my password just because a certain period of time has passed. The worst situation for this was in a job in the early 2000s where you had to change your password every month and were not allowed to repeat a password until you had used nine others. Trying to come up with things that you could remember was a really trick. Ultimately you end up writing them down or putting them in a file on your computer, so all of this fuss about security is compromised. My current job insists on a change every 3 months. I had the same password for my Hotmail email account from 1999-2010 and it was never hacked, yet this was felt by MSN to be too long a time without change and I was told to change it to one with greater ‘strength’. Having done this, a few weeks later, my account proceeded to be hacked for the first time. My password for my ‘World of Warcraft’ account now has 13 characters in it as the one 9 characters long proved too easy to break for hackers. YouTube insisted that I change the password I use to access that just recently. However, it kept rejecting my suggestions as too ‘weak’ and it was a battle to come up with a password and numbers that satisfied it and I can say that a month on I have forgotten what it was.
Passwords are supposed to be about security but generally they seem more effective at locking out the actual user than those attacking the account. Software can try millions of words even those in Japanese that I tend to use, in seconds and yet I can end up spending hours trying to get into my account and often abandon the attempt. It has never been so hard to buy something than in the 21st century. Most of what I have access to is of no interest to any criminal. I certainly have no belief that a hacker would alter my job application in order to reduce my ‘O’ levels. I suppose they could put their address in place of mine, and, assuming that I got an interview, go in my place, but even then, to get the job they would have to manufacture fake qualification certificates. If they are that skilled then they would not be going for the kind of jobs I am going for, currently not even at the level of middle management. I guess they could divert a DVD I have bought or buy lots of things on my cards, but I do not have the wealth that would make it really worth the effort. I guess this is the same for most people and yet we are subjected to a password regime which would suggest we all have access to state secrets. The last company laptop I was issued needed thumbprint verification to switch it on. No-one seemed to spot the irony when I asked whether we had ones equipped with the same facilities as those red boxes issued to ministers which measure skin temperature to check that the thumb has not been simply cut off the legitimate user.
It is not only ever changing passwords of sufficient strength that cause problem but the username or login name that goes with it that adds an extra dimension. Every company has a different protocol and I battle to remember whether they wanted my surname and initials, one initial, two initials, together or spaced with full stops; perhaps this one wanted my entire name or was it the email account or was it some other form of designation that they assigned me? Of course, often you can ask, if you know which email account you used, have the username reminder sent, naturally with the ‘security’ delay. Sometimes this is not possible and you reach the bind into which I have found myself slipping. Apparently not being known by the company I try to set up a new account and then are told that there is already an account in that name but they cannot tell me the password to it. This is one reason for having more than one email account as I am then compelled to start up a new account in a different email name all for one application to a job which at best I have a 3 in 8 chance of getting.
Sometimes systems are even more frustrating especially when combined with rapid ‘timing out’. I have commented before that job application sites are the worse for this. The extreme case was the one which timed me out between me deciding on a username and entering a password. Trying to re-access the system I was told there was already an account in this name and yet, of course, they could not send me the password to access it as one had not been designated. I abandoned online applying and rang them to be told that many people suffered this problem with their system. I felt it was futile to suggest they have it amended. In another case a company was charging me for virus protection I had not ordered. The bill sent me directions how to unsubscribe from the service, but going to the site it told me, as I already knew, that I had no account with the company, thus it was impossible to unsubscribe for the service which I was paying for! Trying to contact the company was almost impossible if you had no account as you had to log-in in order to send them a customer email and I was very fortunate to find a technical service email address on a discussion board that I used to get in through the ‘back door’ to reach customer services.
Doing business online loses much of its appeal when it is such a labour to access what you need to get into. The obsession with security especially for services you only use once a year or even less, is a real irritation. Every site seems to assume that they are the only people you deal with. I wish we had the ‘single sign-in’ approach adopted by universities which allows students, once they have signed into the university system to access a whole raft of e-books and online journals without having to sign in again to each one individually as used to be the case in the early 2000s. Bank accounts are the systems which do need greatest security, but interestingly they have moved away from passwords towards the devices which generate one-off code numbers. I know ‘World of Warcraft’ have introduced these too, but maybe it is time for Amazon and eBay to follow likewise. Of course, then we will have a desk full of these devices and we will leave the vital one we need at home.
The whole issue of passwords stems from the fact that no-one ever envisaged the internet to be such a crime-ridden place as it has proven to be or that so many people would put effort into peddling so much junk across systems. The internet is the distillation of the worst in human behaviour and despite constant efforts to portray it as something worthwhile it is like opening a library in the most run-down part of a city that had a vast proportion of criminals waiting to leap on anyone going to that library. Despite all the efforts over passwords and their strength, it appears that this is more of benefit to the ‘job’s worth’ attitudes of those people (very numerous these days) who like to make a fuss about regulations simply to give themselves an iota of importance, rather than providing any genuine security. For the average user like myself, trying to recall a string of passwords (even if you try to keep to a familiar few) and precisely what username you selected or were given many months ago, these concerns are increasingly making doing anything on the internet slower than telephoning in an order and, on occasion, actually physically going to the shop or office.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Hotmail: Let Me Be
Back in 2007: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2007/07/computer-let-me-be.html and 2008: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/02/computer-let-me-be-2.html I commented on how patronised and infuriated I was by the computer systems I use. Rather than allowing me to get on with what I want to do, I was always being prompted to do it the way the computer felt was right. In many cases it got it wrong for the UK context, for example, breaking up the word 'fora' into 'for a' and trying to put 'Yours truly' at the end of a letter. The other thing that infuriated me was the number of downloads the system and the software wanted to do for no apparent gain, so slowing up my work and my use of the computer for games. The sense that the company knows better than the user has not gone away. They keep chiding you whether within your computer, e.g. 'clean up icons you are not using' - why? or that you should be using the latest software even if you are quite happy with the current stuff. It is often stated that people only use about 10% of a software package anyway, so what is the point of introducing additional features that no-one will use, and not only that but constantly insisting that you engage with them. I know they want to appear dynamic and to keep you interested. However, this even begins to bore teenagers always seeking the latest thing, let alone the rest of us, certainly people like me still driving a car which is 15 years old.
The latest software to infuriate me is Hotmail. I have had the same Hotmail account since 1999 and have used the same password throughout. In those 11 years no-one has hacked into my email and abused it. There is nothing particular of value or interest in there anyway. However, apparently, my one word password has proven insufficient and last week Hotmail insisted that I change it to something involving more capital letters and numbers. It would not let me progress to my email account until I had. The trouble is, having typed in the same password for over a decade I now find it difficult not to do so and so I keep on being told that the wrong password has been entered too many times. I am then compelled to try and guess what letters and punctuation are shown in a squiggly picture and enter that too in order to access my own email. Many capital and lower case letters look pretty similar especially when distorted and as for full stops (periods in the USA) and commas, they look very much like each other when twisted around. Consequently I now battle to access the account that I had been using successfully for 11 years. Has it increased security? Only in the sense that it is now harder for the legitimate user to gain access to it. Is that a gain for me? No. However, as always, the provider believe they know so much better than the user and insist that I play to their rules rather than what I want, which, in fact was safe enough.
An additional gripe once I am in my Hotmail account is how they now handle attachments. This is vital for me at the moment as I apply for jobs. I long gave up on trying to attach images to any of my emails because you had to set up some complex piece of software which I tried more than once without success. However, up to now, receiving documents was no problem. That is until a few months back when suddenly they all had to go through the new WordWebApp. This allows me to see my document without being able to save it to my own computer so I am unable to do anything with it. I can go further and install another piece of software that I do not want, Silverlight. I tried this with no success, I cannot understand why. However, I am dubious of the added benefits of documents downloading faster and text looking clearer with it. I have had no problem with either of these issues with the old system. There is an alternative which is I can 'Edit in Browser' which then tries to open the document in the so-called SkyDrive. It then says that is not possible so suggests that I open it in Word, which is what I have been trying to do all along. However, given that I, like thousands of people, am running Word 2003 on Windows 2003, it stops and says I need to buy the 2010 package, not even the 2007 one. The company before last I worked for had not even moved to Windows 2007 by the time I was made redundant in mid 2009. Being unemployed I certainly cannot go out and buy new software packages, I just want to continue with what I have got. However, now any documents sent to me by email are useless. Unsurprisingly, after 11 years with Hotmail I am looking for an email system that actually works for me.
This attitude that we must constantly be upgrading was very well satirised in the children's movie 'Robots' (2005). It is set in a robot populated world with a late 1950s styling. In it the evil Ratchet has ruledthat those robots who could not afford upgrades, termed 'rusties' were to consigned to being incinerated. Fortunately there is a robot uprising and the former leading robot inventor, BigWeld is brought out of retirement to ensure that those struggling along with older equipment are not excluded. Of course, in this world there is no such uprising. Instead people like me struggling to find work are yet further excluded from even simply using our email systems to apply for it. The digital divide always finds new ways to manifest itself, driven very sharply by the insatiable desire of software companies and other providers to constantly get us to upgrade.
The latest software to infuriate me is Hotmail. I have had the same Hotmail account since 1999 and have used the same password throughout. In those 11 years no-one has hacked into my email and abused it. There is nothing particular of value or interest in there anyway. However, apparently, my one word password has proven insufficient and last week Hotmail insisted that I change it to something involving more capital letters and numbers. It would not let me progress to my email account until I had. The trouble is, having typed in the same password for over a decade I now find it difficult not to do so and so I keep on being told that the wrong password has been entered too many times. I am then compelled to try and guess what letters and punctuation are shown in a squiggly picture and enter that too in order to access my own email. Many capital and lower case letters look pretty similar especially when distorted and as for full stops (periods in the USA) and commas, they look very much like each other when twisted around. Consequently I now battle to access the account that I had been using successfully for 11 years. Has it increased security? Only in the sense that it is now harder for the legitimate user to gain access to it. Is that a gain for me? No. However, as always, the provider believe they know so much better than the user and insist that I play to their rules rather than what I want, which, in fact was safe enough.
An additional gripe once I am in my Hotmail account is how they now handle attachments. This is vital for me at the moment as I apply for jobs. I long gave up on trying to attach images to any of my emails because you had to set up some complex piece of software which I tried more than once without success. However, up to now, receiving documents was no problem. That is until a few months back when suddenly they all had to go through the new WordWebApp. This allows me to see my document without being able to save it to my own computer so I am unable to do anything with it. I can go further and install another piece of software that I do not want, Silverlight. I tried this with no success, I cannot understand why. However, I am dubious of the added benefits of documents downloading faster and text looking clearer with it. I have had no problem with either of these issues with the old system. There is an alternative which is I can 'Edit in Browser' which then tries to open the document in the so-called SkyDrive. It then says that is not possible so suggests that I open it in Word, which is what I have been trying to do all along. However, given that I, like thousands of people, am running Word 2003 on Windows 2003, it stops and says I need to buy the 2010 package, not even the 2007 one. The company before last I worked for had not even moved to Windows 2007 by the time I was made redundant in mid 2009. Being unemployed I certainly cannot go out and buy new software packages, I just want to continue with what I have got. However, now any documents sent to me by email are useless. Unsurprisingly, after 11 years with Hotmail I am looking for an email system that actually works for me.
This attitude that we must constantly be upgrading was very well satirised in the children's movie 'Robots' (2005). It is set in a robot populated world with a late 1950s styling. In it the evil Ratchet has ruledthat those robots who could not afford upgrades, termed 'rusties' were to consigned to being incinerated. Fortunately there is a robot uprising and the former leading robot inventor, BigWeld is brought out of retirement to ensure that those struggling along with older equipment are not excluded. Of course, in this world there is no such uprising. Instead people like me struggling to find work are yet further excluded from even simply using our email systems to apply for it. The digital divide always finds new ways to manifest itself, driven very sharply by the insatiable desire of software companies and other providers to constantly get us to upgrade.
Friday, 28 May 2010
The Intrusive Wireless Dongle from O2
As with the posting I wrote about ONN vacuum cleaners a while back, this one is the result of me having a difficult time with a particular electronic item. As I have noted here, earlier this year I was living in a hotel. It had wireless facilities but being a rambling place made up from linking together two hotels which themselves had started life as Victorian houses, it was often difficult to pick up the wireless connection. Not wishing to spend my evenings simply surfing through reality shows, cookery programmes and soap operas, I got hold of an O2 dongle which the woman in my house had bought. This allowed me to tap into the 02 wireless cloud over the town I was staying in. The connection was not always brilliant but it worked and allowed me at times to connect to the hotel's wireless system too. Of course, installing the O2 system disabled the built-in wireless system that came with the laptop when it was given to me by my boss. When the hotel upgraded its wireless provision, I think going from G+ to at least N if not N+, I tried to go back to the original wireless connection from the computer, to save me money. The O2 charges are not great, £15 for 1 month's connection and in fact my usage was so low compared to what they deemed normal usage for a month that it usually lasted me two months. Anyway, removing the dongle and the software was not enough. The laptop seemed to have given up on trying to connect to any wireless service and kept defaulting back to O2. There is a way of doing it, but even bringing in people far more knowledgeable than myself we were unable to get it to return to the original set-up. In the end I had to re-install the O2 connection and continue to use it.
Having lost my job, I had to return the laptop and tried again to restore the laptop to its previous settings so it could access my work's wireless network without using the dongle. I failed. I was able to strip out all the visible signs that I had used the O2 dongle but not get the setting back. Fortunately the ICT staff at my work said they were going to 're-face' the laptop for another user. I trust that they can get it back in a decent state, because I left with my dongle. I should have been wary of using it again. However, with everything being moved around in my house I fell back on it as an easy way to get internet connection for the computer that had been moved away from being wired into the BT Home Hub and was now dependent, for the first time, on a wireless connection. This time it was even worse. After one day of the dongle set-up working it decided it was not going to connect again. Getting a wireless card fitted in the computer (which for some reason had never had one installed) meant that I should be able to access the home system, but of course the O2 set-up was not going to budge. We stripped out the software and went through all guidance on re-installing the card's seeking of a wireless connection. A woman who has uninstalled wireless connections from a number of laptops was brought in and spent over two hours battling with the system.
In the end the only solution was a system restore back to March 2010. Of course, this now means I am sitting here getting all the updates to my software covering over two months. So, if you are thinking of buying an O2 wireless dongle, please bear in mind that you may be locking yourself into a system that is incredibly difficult to remove if you choose to use a different set-up. Other wireless dongles may also be as invasive as the O2 one, but that is the only one I can talk about from personal experience.
Having lost my job, I had to return the laptop and tried again to restore the laptop to its previous settings so it could access my work's wireless network without using the dongle. I failed. I was able to strip out all the visible signs that I had used the O2 dongle but not get the setting back. Fortunately the ICT staff at my work said they were going to 're-face' the laptop for another user. I trust that they can get it back in a decent state, because I left with my dongle. I should have been wary of using it again. However, with everything being moved around in my house I fell back on it as an easy way to get internet connection for the computer that had been moved away from being wired into the BT Home Hub and was now dependent, for the first time, on a wireless connection. This time it was even worse. After one day of the dongle set-up working it decided it was not going to connect again. Getting a wireless card fitted in the computer (which for some reason had never had one installed) meant that I should be able to access the home system, but of course the O2 set-up was not going to budge. We stripped out the software and went through all guidance on re-installing the card's seeking of a wireless connection. A woman who has uninstalled wireless connections from a number of laptops was brought in and spent over two hours battling with the system.
In the end the only solution was a system restore back to March 2010. Of course, this now means I am sitting here getting all the updates to my software covering over two months. So, if you are thinking of buying an O2 wireless dongle, please bear in mind that you may be locking yourself into a system that is incredibly difficult to remove if you choose to use a different set-up. Other wireless dongles may also be as invasive as the O2 one, but that is the only one I can talk about from personal experience.
Monday, 23 November 2009
The Super Information Highway Choked with Weeds
When people wrote science fiction in the past even when they began digging into the cyberpunk dystopias in the 1980s they did no address one of the major downsides to the area in which technology has leapt forward in the past thirty years, i.e. internet communication. Even in the movie 'Blade Runner' (1982), Rick Deckard who is dealing with rogue replicants running around the city does not switch on his computer and have to wait thirty minutes while it installs all the different updates without there actually being any apparent change in how his computer runs. He does not open his email account to find the important messages dumped in Junk and the whole of his inbox filled with stuff advertising drugs to keep his penis erect or ways he can liberate millions in funds in some far away country or even ten advertising emails from the last company he shopped from. When he searches for data he is not sent off to a different search engine which takes only one of his terms and then lists things he can buy rather than the information he wants.
This kind of thing is the reality of using computers and communication devices today. I answer my telephone and I find five times out of six that it is not even a human trying to sell me something, it is simply a recorded message; my text inbox on my mobile phone is filled with messages advertising things. I know I do not know lots of people and in fact my friends tend to write postcards to me, we are that archaic, but stuff I do not want is now sent to me far more often than anything I am interested in. The closest I have seen to all of this in a science fiction novel was the subliminal advertising in 'The Merchants' War' by Frederik Pohl (1984) in which people are bombarded with advertising that they are not even aware of constantly.
I play 'World of Warcraft' and I guess that makes me vulnerable. People want to break into accounts on the game so that they can benefit their own game characters by asset stripping your character and also because game items and game money sell for real money on auction sites. Thus, people use spyware to try to identify my login and password and sometimes they are successful. If something is recording your key strokes then it does not matter how complex the password is they will read it. I have just started a new job and was told my password must not use any words that appear in any dictionaries anywhere in the World. How can I know that? I cite the case of the Commodore computer company who found the title of their machine the Vic and that of their Pet were rude words in France and Germany respectively; the same happened to the pop group Roxette who had to perform as The Rockers in South-East Asia. How do I know that my made up password is not some legitimate word in Thai or Samoan or something? In addition, how am I supposed to remember it? One company I worked for made you change your password every month and you could not repeat a word until 10 months had gone by. Trying to remember the password for that account as opposed to all the company websites I have to log on to in order to buy a train ticket or a book or simply check my bank account means you end up with files of lists of different passwords.
Of course, all this security is necessary as we are under constant attack. My World of Warcraft account was hacked and I could not access it for two weeks. This also seemed to open the gateway for a lot of mal(l)ware (I assume it is 'mall' as in the US shopping centres as it is usually trying to sell me something, but increasingly I see it written as 'mal' which is quite ironice, but perfectly appropriate as in French 'mal' means sick or bad) and spyware. I have McAfee package that I pay for, the free AVG one as backup and now Spyware Doctor to catch the persistent spyware the others seemed unable to get. I have spent over £60 on subscriptions and protection. I have not had my account hacked again (yet), but now whenever I switch on my computer I have to wait ages for updates and scans. I keep on being asked if I want to run additional scans. The systems do (generally) bounce off the spyware but as a result my internet browser keeps on recording failed connections and asks me if I want to restore a whole string of links to those connections every time I want to browse the internet. I know these security systems are important but they are intrusive and keep bugging me to buy an add-on or run a scan when I want to get on with my work or play. I get severely annoyed when battling some difficult monster in Azeroth to have the game minimised so that I can be asked once again if I want to run a scan.
The updating means that it takes about 10-20 minutes once I switch on before I can actually do what I want to do. Ironically I am now reading newspapers far more than I have done for years as I sit at my desk waiting for the download or the check to complete and have nothing to do except pick up the newspaper and read. I do not want to clean up my desktop of items, if I did I would delete them myself. I do not need to be asked two times every time I switch on if I want someone to do it. I am an adult, I can make decisions myself. I know how to write a letter, I do not want to do it in a juvenile, American way, why do I have to keep telling the system that? I disable and I disable, but it seems that constantly I am being bugged to do something the way someone else wants to do it not. Would you drive a car which decided the way it would take you to the shops? To some extent I do, my sat nav comes up with the strangest routes and has been proven to be unable to deal with the narrow backstreets of Exeter without trying to get you to drive through a house at the end of a cul-de-sac (this happened twice last week on different cul-de-sacs).
The most annoying thing is despite all the security I have bought (or perhaps because of it given the fact that anti-viral software now seems to come with its favoured search engine and none of them are the one I prefer) every time I search for a term, such as today, for 'Victorian labour newspaper' I click on one of the results and instead of being taken to the page of Wikipedia or Spartacus or some other general historical resource, I am taken to another search engine which gives me a list of shops in Victoria (Australia) or even a list of employment agencies or just a list of newspapers. These results are always commercially focused not the knowledge-focused answers I was seeking in order to write a story or find out about something. Sometimes my security systems seem able to stop this but sometimes like today they lose the battle and so my searching time is doubled or trebled. In fact if I analyse my work on a computer, probably 20% of my time is disabling or reversing things that the computer, a service I have bought into or even worse some intruder software is trying to get me to do. Far from being the speedy way to get information it is increasingly becoming a very slow way and one filled with frustration. To a great degree internet searching is now censorship as I am told 'you must be interest in buying not learning' and 'even if you want to know something, you must only learn it from one of our sponsoring partners'.
I know we may never rid the world of the thousands of people who want to peddle stupid stuff to us. I would hope though that we could get more of the things we subscribe to, to work in the background and for computers to accept that we can make a choice and if we say we do not want to clean up our desktop or to write a letter our way we are allowed to do that. If we change our minds in the future we will let the computer know. What we have now was never the image of the future. If people selling services knew how resentful you come of something you have subscribed to if you constantly get updates and queries then hopefully they would back off. I do not know when this will end, but for me, it had better do so soon, because battling every day to get my computer to do what I want to do is driving my blood pressure sky high.
P.P. 26/11/2009: Well, mistakenly I thought that things were beginning to be resolved with my computer until I turned on yesterday and found that somehow the machine had 'forgotten' that it has an internet browser. I worked for three hours, and then, the woman in my house, far more expert at ICT, tried for four hours to restore the browser. We stripped away a lot of software, did a system restore, re-loaded Internet Explorer 8 and so on, but still I cannot browse the internet. Client systems such as the World of Warcraft still work fine, but anything that needs a browser in place such as the McAfee anti-virus software will not work and keeps sending alarmed messages.
This is one of those situations in life when people say 'but that's impossible' and say 'but have you tried ...?' only to recommend an approach you did six times three hours ago in the hope that it would just work 'this time'. Then they begin to doubt your competence, 'but you must be doing something wrong', they say and disbelieve you can have such a problem unless you actually show it to them directly. I have had these kind of responses over the years with everything from televisions to telephones to cars and, of course, computers.
If anyone can explain how you can be accessing the internet one day and then the next time you switch on not only has the browser entirely stopped working but it appears impossible to install a new one, despite good internet connection (as proven by the World of Warcraft connection) then I would be interested to know. If you could provide a solution to this situation, I would be extremely happy.
P.P. 2/12/2009: The problem was finally resolved. After seven hours' work from myself and the woman in my house, I paid for two hours' work by a 'computer doctor' (costing £102; make sure you book a 'no fix, no fee' person) to resolve it in my house. He could not do it there so took it away for another day to wire it into his next work and bombard it with anti-viral software. All other software had to be removed though documents, photos, etc. were quarantined and have not been lost. He said that he had read 400,000 people have suffered from this very virulent kind of virus and anti-viral software even stuff you pay a subscription for, generally cannot fight it. I can understand people hacking computers or using spyware to get access to your bank account and to steal money, even (though to a lesser extent) people getting into your computer so they can steal the virtual money and magic items you have in 'World of Warcraft' but in this case I have been told it was simply a question of revenge. Apparently the man who hacked my 'World of Warcraft' account in October was angered by the fact that through friends alerting Blizzard who run the game, he had my account taken from him and given back, so he sent out a virus which 'jammed open' my computer allowing all the nasty stuff viruses, mallware and spyware which is constantly on the internet seeking a chink in the armour, to flow into my machine, as some kind of punishment for me getting my own account back.
I have commented before about the twisted morality of a lot of people active on the internet. Ironically while the internet gives you potential access to millions of people it seems to narrow many people's horizons and makes them feel that their greed is all that matters and to sate it is legitimate. There is a spectrum from bloggers like me who arrogantly think people might be interested in what I am going on about across the vindictive who relish their power in turning people's lives upside down. I almost feel there is more honour in someone who steals money electronically than in someone who behaves in a childish way, hitting back at people because they will not give up their toys to them for free. My key concern is, given the level of anti-viral, spyware and mallware protection I had what is to stop this all happening again next month?
This kind of thing is the reality of using computers and communication devices today. I answer my telephone and I find five times out of six that it is not even a human trying to sell me something, it is simply a recorded message; my text inbox on my mobile phone is filled with messages advertising things. I know I do not know lots of people and in fact my friends tend to write postcards to me, we are that archaic, but stuff I do not want is now sent to me far more often than anything I am interested in. The closest I have seen to all of this in a science fiction novel was the subliminal advertising in 'The Merchants' War' by Frederik Pohl (1984) in which people are bombarded with advertising that they are not even aware of constantly.
I play 'World of Warcraft' and I guess that makes me vulnerable. People want to break into accounts on the game so that they can benefit their own game characters by asset stripping your character and also because game items and game money sell for real money on auction sites. Thus, people use spyware to try to identify my login and password and sometimes they are successful. If something is recording your key strokes then it does not matter how complex the password is they will read it. I have just started a new job and was told my password must not use any words that appear in any dictionaries anywhere in the World. How can I know that? I cite the case of the Commodore computer company who found the title of their machine the Vic and that of their Pet were rude words in France and Germany respectively; the same happened to the pop group Roxette who had to perform as The Rockers in South-East Asia. How do I know that my made up password is not some legitimate word in Thai or Samoan or something? In addition, how am I supposed to remember it? One company I worked for made you change your password every month and you could not repeat a word until 10 months had gone by. Trying to remember the password for that account as opposed to all the company websites I have to log on to in order to buy a train ticket or a book or simply check my bank account means you end up with files of lists of different passwords.
Of course, all this security is necessary as we are under constant attack. My World of Warcraft account was hacked and I could not access it for two weeks. This also seemed to open the gateway for a lot of mal(l)ware (I assume it is 'mall' as in the US shopping centres as it is usually trying to sell me something, but increasingly I see it written as 'mal' which is quite ironice, but perfectly appropriate as in French 'mal' means sick or bad) and spyware. I have McAfee package that I pay for, the free AVG one as backup and now Spyware Doctor to catch the persistent spyware the others seemed unable to get. I have spent over £60 on subscriptions and protection. I have not had my account hacked again (yet), but now whenever I switch on my computer I have to wait ages for updates and scans. I keep on being asked if I want to run additional scans. The systems do (generally) bounce off the spyware but as a result my internet browser keeps on recording failed connections and asks me if I want to restore a whole string of links to those connections every time I want to browse the internet. I know these security systems are important but they are intrusive and keep bugging me to buy an add-on or run a scan when I want to get on with my work or play. I get severely annoyed when battling some difficult monster in Azeroth to have the game minimised so that I can be asked once again if I want to run a scan.
The updating means that it takes about 10-20 minutes once I switch on before I can actually do what I want to do. Ironically I am now reading newspapers far more than I have done for years as I sit at my desk waiting for the download or the check to complete and have nothing to do except pick up the newspaper and read. I do not want to clean up my desktop of items, if I did I would delete them myself. I do not need to be asked two times every time I switch on if I want someone to do it. I am an adult, I can make decisions myself. I know how to write a letter, I do not want to do it in a juvenile, American way, why do I have to keep telling the system that? I disable and I disable, but it seems that constantly I am being bugged to do something the way someone else wants to do it not. Would you drive a car which decided the way it would take you to the shops? To some extent I do, my sat nav comes up with the strangest routes and has been proven to be unable to deal with the narrow backstreets of Exeter without trying to get you to drive through a house at the end of a cul-de-sac (this happened twice last week on different cul-de-sacs).
The most annoying thing is despite all the security I have bought (or perhaps because of it given the fact that anti-viral software now seems to come with its favoured search engine and none of them are the one I prefer) every time I search for a term, such as today, for 'Victorian labour newspaper' I click on one of the results and instead of being taken to the page of Wikipedia or Spartacus or some other general historical resource, I am taken to another search engine which gives me a list of shops in Victoria (Australia) or even a list of employment agencies or just a list of newspapers. These results are always commercially focused not the knowledge-focused answers I was seeking in order to write a story or find out about something. Sometimes my security systems seem able to stop this but sometimes like today they lose the battle and so my searching time is doubled or trebled. In fact if I analyse my work on a computer, probably 20% of my time is disabling or reversing things that the computer, a service I have bought into or even worse some intruder software is trying to get me to do. Far from being the speedy way to get information it is increasingly becoming a very slow way and one filled with frustration. To a great degree internet searching is now censorship as I am told 'you must be interest in buying not learning' and 'even if you want to know something, you must only learn it from one of our sponsoring partners'.
I know we may never rid the world of the thousands of people who want to peddle stupid stuff to us. I would hope though that we could get more of the things we subscribe to, to work in the background and for computers to accept that we can make a choice and if we say we do not want to clean up our desktop or to write a letter our way we are allowed to do that. If we change our minds in the future we will let the computer know. What we have now was never the image of the future. If people selling services knew how resentful you come of something you have subscribed to if you constantly get updates and queries then hopefully they would back off. I do not know when this will end, but for me, it had better do so soon, because battling every day to get my computer to do what I want to do is driving my blood pressure sky high.
P.P. 26/11/2009: Well, mistakenly I thought that things were beginning to be resolved with my computer until I turned on yesterday and found that somehow the machine had 'forgotten' that it has an internet browser. I worked for three hours, and then, the woman in my house, far more expert at ICT, tried for four hours to restore the browser. We stripped away a lot of software, did a system restore, re-loaded Internet Explorer 8 and so on, but still I cannot browse the internet. Client systems such as the World of Warcraft still work fine, but anything that needs a browser in place such as the McAfee anti-virus software will not work and keeps sending alarmed messages.
This is one of those situations in life when people say 'but that's impossible' and say 'but have you tried ...?' only to recommend an approach you did six times three hours ago in the hope that it would just work 'this time'. Then they begin to doubt your competence, 'but you must be doing something wrong', they say and disbelieve you can have such a problem unless you actually show it to them directly. I have had these kind of responses over the years with everything from televisions to telephones to cars and, of course, computers.
If anyone can explain how you can be accessing the internet one day and then the next time you switch on not only has the browser entirely stopped working but it appears impossible to install a new one, despite good internet connection (as proven by the World of Warcraft connection) then I would be interested to know. If you could provide a solution to this situation, I would be extremely happy.
P.P. 2/12/2009: The problem was finally resolved. After seven hours' work from myself and the woman in my house, I paid for two hours' work by a 'computer doctor' (costing £102; make sure you book a 'no fix, no fee' person) to resolve it in my house. He could not do it there so took it away for another day to wire it into his next work and bombard it with anti-viral software. All other software had to be removed though documents, photos, etc. were quarantined and have not been lost. He said that he had read 400,000 people have suffered from this very virulent kind of virus and anti-viral software even stuff you pay a subscription for, generally cannot fight it. I can understand people hacking computers or using spyware to get access to your bank account and to steal money, even (though to a lesser extent) people getting into your computer so they can steal the virtual money and magic items you have in 'World of Warcraft' but in this case I have been told it was simply a question of revenge. Apparently the man who hacked my 'World of Warcraft' account in October was angered by the fact that through friends alerting Blizzard who run the game, he had my account taken from him and given back, so he sent out a virus which 'jammed open' my computer allowing all the nasty stuff viruses, mallware and spyware which is constantly on the internet seeking a chink in the armour, to flow into my machine, as some kind of punishment for me getting my own account back.
I have commented before about the twisted morality of a lot of people active on the internet. Ironically while the internet gives you potential access to millions of people it seems to narrow many people's horizons and makes them feel that their greed is all that matters and to sate it is legitimate. There is a spectrum from bloggers like me who arrogantly think people might be interested in what I am going on about across the vindictive who relish their power in turning people's lives upside down. I almost feel there is more honour in someone who steals money electronically than in someone who behaves in a childish way, hitting back at people because they will not give up their toys to them for free. My key concern is, given the level of anti-viral, spyware and mallware protection I had what is to stop this all happening again next month?
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
The Change4Life Console Game Controversy
Like me you probably get random emails coming into your inbox which are not really junk, but you do wonder how they got on your mailing list. For many years I used to receive emails about safety equipment for children's playgrounds and invitations to conferences about such facilities and I could only think that someone had written down my email address at some event by mistake or the company had got the wrong suffix, the whole thing of @hotmail.com and @hotmail.co.uk and @mail.com and so on. Anyway, on one of my email accounts I get industry news about computer game design. I think this may stem from me contributing to various message boards about computer games. However, the thing that attracted my attention is the hostility coming from gaming companies to the UK government's Change4Life campaign which is aimed at getting children to eat more healthily and exercise more.
The Change4Life campaign up to now has featured television advertisements of a plasticine family stopping watching television and eating fattening foods and getting out and exercising. The Change4Life campaign is being termed a 'movement' and is receiving widespread support from medical bodies and charities such as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK who worked with advertising agency The Gate on the project. Many local groups are getting on board and doing initiatives to get people exercising and eating healthier food. With the recession biting, ironically consumption of takeaways and high carbohydrate and fatty foods has risen. In the UK apparently 2 million children aged 2-10 are overweight (25% of girls and 20% of boys in that age group) and 700,000 are clinically obese. Health provision is already having challenges with obesity in adults but clearly if this high level of children is moving in that direction the death rate in the UK will rise in the next few decades. There is also a rise in illnesses associate with overweight, not only heart disease but also Type 2 Diabetes which leads to complications and can result in blindness and amputations as the body decays.
Now we come to the controversy which raises all sorts of questions about how big business seeks to restrict the ability of government to act. The print advert appearing first in women's magazines which has angered games companies the most shows a boy probably about eight or nine years old slumped on a sofa with a games controller in his hand staring blankly at a screen. The slogan says 'Risk an Early Death Just Do Nothing'. I have tried to put a copy of the advertisement on this posting but probably due to copyright sprites it will not upload. You can access it here: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4973/change4lifelarge.jpg
MCV an online gaming publication made an official complaint last week to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) about the advertisement claiming it was 'unfair and inaccurate'. They say that the advert implies that to stop children playing such games will improve their health and that is not true and simply damages small businesses. Of course it is not the small businesses who have reacted most harshly it is the very big ones.
Sega said it was 'disappointed and frustrated' by the advertisement. They said: 'Television, radio, cinema, listening to music, computing, video gaming and of course, reading all require a high element of passive participation, but of all these media types it is video gaming that provides the most potential interaction and activity. It seems that an advertisement has been put together by a poorly informed advertising agency.' Of course this is rubbish, the government especially since the era of Thatcher and the spin days of Blair has always known precisely what it is doing with its advertising. The government's media image and its use of things like Directgov website are very precise. Other companies have complained including Atari, Konami,Tiga and Sony plus Future a publisher of games-related magazines. Industry body ELSPA demanded an immediate meeting with the government and then went on to pursue the charities. They feel the campaign has gone against their 'responsible' guidance on the Ask About Games website. Of course, ask a child how often they have visited this website and I will be surprised if you can find one.
Richard Wilson head of Tiga began creating wonderful new excuses and whining: 'This advert is absurd and insulting in equal measure. To imply that playing a video game leads to a premature rendezvous with the Grim Reaper is a non-sequitur of colossal proportions. Alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, obesity and involvement in violent crime are forms of behaviour that risk an early death. In contrast, many video games are mentally stimulating, potentially educational and social and some involve physical exercise.' Richard, in the UK far more children and adults will die of obesity than violent crime, I think you are believing some of your gaming scenarios far too much. I think Atari have been more honest when they said: 'At best, the campaign is misleading and at worst, damaging to the industry, its reputation and its potential.' Naturally their profits especially in the recession are what really concern them. These companies only think about children as consumers rather than people who have to live.
Sony has gone one step further and because the child in the picture has a 'Playstation-like controller' they are angered that they were not consulted before the advertisement went ahead. This is just appalling thinking, that a company should be able to stop a government health campaign. Sony are looking into sueing the government over the campaign. I hope they do and I am sure they will lose.
In response the onslaught, the Department of Health has refused to apologise for the campaign, not feeling it was at all misjudged: 'The campaign takes a direct approach, setting out the issue in succinctly and in straightforward language. An unhealthy lifestyle, including poor diet or being inactive, can lead to health problems in later life. If current trends continue, nine in ten people will be overweight or obese by 2050. This can increase your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers."We are not saying that children shouldn't play computer games or eat treats, but parents and children need to be aware of the benefits of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle. The activities portrayed are examples of poor diet and lack of physical activity.' Diabetes UK has been quoted as being surprised by the harsh reaction of games companies and plans to make legal challenges against the campaign.
I am a big fan of computer games and do not want the industry to suffer, but the time has come for the games industry. They are in the position that MacDonalds and other burger chains were in the 1990s and the cigarette companies were in the 1980s when people realised that what these companies were legitimately promoting were actually doing great harm. Burger chains have responded and the menus especially for children are a world away from what they were twenty years ago. The games companies are looking petulant and bullying. Those complaining are multinationals unused to being challenged. If they react in such a hostile way they are likely to egg the government on to stricter measures such as banning sale of games to anyone under 18. In New Zealand parents face a fine of NZ$10,000 or 3 months' imprisonment if their children play games with a higher rating than their age, notably violent '18' certificate games. I am sure we will see something similar. Keith Vaz, MP, was talking to a select committee about this problem in the UK only recently.
Games companies would be sensible to learn from the MacDonalds approach to health challenges. The Wii physical games can be seen as the first 'healthy option' on the games companies menu but they will have to do more. It is interesting that these days you do not get things as you did on 'Stronghold' (2001) a PC castle building game, had a function that after a certain period of game play your advisor would tell you that you had been playing the game for too long and that you should take a break. City-, business- and castle-building games are very easy to lose track of time with when playing. I think all companies should be compelled to introduce a function in all games which effectively has an 'interval' say after 45 minutes of play the screen freezes just where you have reached and will not release for say 30 minutes compelling you to go off and do something else. This can be introduced first for games which appeal most to children and as with the MacDonalds advertisements they should advise children to go and get some exercise. Of course this will generate hostility for parents many of whom use game consules as a way to keep the child quiet and out of their hair. That change, though, is just what Change4Life is about and it is going to upset people, but it may keep them alive. Evidence this week has shown that even if you do not start exercising until you are over 50 years old, it will lengthen your life.
The games companies no doubt have decided to adopt the 'don't blame us' approach and like many industries in the past especially in the face of a Labour government, will use the full weight of the law and their vast funds to try to stop government policy. They may win, some industries have in the past. However, this is not something like releasing control over copper supplies or not nationalising the sugar industry, this is about the health of children and that is a very emotive subject which parents can be made to feel very guilty about in a way no games company can assuage. In addition, this campaign is perceived as something coming from the government or particular charities but the games companies have missed the fact that it is in line with policies already in place especially in schools and leisure facilities. This is the most prominent bit of the iceberg, but there has been a lot going on in the UK regarding children that they seem to have been oblivious to. If they are sensible games companies will be looking at ways to alter their products. As the Department of Health has noted they are not seeking to ban children playing computer games, but the more hostile the industry is, the more likely they will move in that direction. To get through this the games companies need to be clever not aggressive which does them no favours.
P.P. 24/04/2009 - Online games industry journal MCV is lauding the 'shock U-turn' in the Change4Life advertisements as the latest ones say that exercise got through games such as those used with Wii that make the players move and jump around can contribute to the children's daily fitness. The industry feels that its bullying has paid off. Many games companies tried to censor the campaign last month when it rightly said that if children were simply stuck in front of console and computer games they would have an early death. Of course Change4Life has not done a U-turn, it always said that restricted games playing by children was fine, but of course the games industry had to act in its exaggerated outrage arguing the government was seeking to ban console games. In addition, it is not a U-turn because active games such as those provided through Wii remain a small minority of console and computer game playing. The Wii has sold 50 million units across the world since 2006, Playstation 2 has sold 136 million, but of course many are in use by second and third hand owners now. The Wii has sold 4.9 million in the UK and the Playstation 3 has sold 1.9 million since Marh 2007. So passive-activity games consoles still remain predominant. The console games industry cannot be allowed to bully or censor health campaigns and like the fast food industry has done, need to wake up to the harm their products can cause, especially to children.
The Change4Life campaign up to now has featured television advertisements of a plasticine family stopping watching television and eating fattening foods and getting out and exercising. The Change4Life campaign is being termed a 'movement' and is receiving widespread support from medical bodies and charities such as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK who worked with advertising agency The Gate on the project. Many local groups are getting on board and doing initiatives to get people exercising and eating healthier food. With the recession biting, ironically consumption of takeaways and high carbohydrate and fatty foods has risen. In the UK apparently 2 million children aged 2-10 are overweight (25% of girls and 20% of boys in that age group) and 700,000 are clinically obese. Health provision is already having challenges with obesity in adults but clearly if this high level of children is moving in that direction the death rate in the UK will rise in the next few decades. There is also a rise in illnesses associate with overweight, not only heart disease but also Type 2 Diabetes which leads to complications and can result in blindness and amputations as the body decays.
Now we come to the controversy which raises all sorts of questions about how big business seeks to restrict the ability of government to act. The print advert appearing first in women's magazines which has angered games companies the most shows a boy probably about eight or nine years old slumped on a sofa with a games controller in his hand staring blankly at a screen. The slogan says 'Risk an Early Death Just Do Nothing'. I have tried to put a copy of the advertisement on this posting but probably due to copyright sprites it will not upload. You can access it here: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4973/change4lifelarge.jpg
MCV an online gaming publication made an official complaint last week to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) about the advertisement claiming it was 'unfair and inaccurate'. They say that the advert implies that to stop children playing such games will improve their health and that is not true and simply damages small businesses. Of course it is not the small businesses who have reacted most harshly it is the very big ones.
Sega said it was 'disappointed and frustrated' by the advertisement. They said: 'Television, radio, cinema, listening to music, computing, video gaming and of course, reading all require a high element of passive participation, but of all these media types it is video gaming that provides the most potential interaction and activity. It seems that an advertisement has been put together by a poorly informed advertising agency.' Of course this is rubbish, the government especially since the era of Thatcher and the spin days of Blair has always known precisely what it is doing with its advertising. The government's media image and its use of things like Directgov website are very precise. Other companies have complained including Atari, Konami,Tiga and Sony plus Future a publisher of games-related magazines. Industry body ELSPA demanded an immediate meeting with the government and then went on to pursue the charities. They feel the campaign has gone against their 'responsible' guidance on the Ask About Games website. Of course, ask a child how often they have visited this website and I will be surprised if you can find one.
Richard Wilson head of Tiga began creating wonderful new excuses and whining: 'This advert is absurd and insulting in equal measure. To imply that playing a video game leads to a premature rendezvous with the Grim Reaper is a non-sequitur of colossal proportions. Alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, obesity and involvement in violent crime are forms of behaviour that risk an early death. In contrast, many video games are mentally stimulating, potentially educational and social and some involve physical exercise.' Richard, in the UK far more children and adults will die of obesity than violent crime, I think you are believing some of your gaming scenarios far too much. I think Atari have been more honest when they said: 'At best, the campaign is misleading and at worst, damaging to the industry, its reputation and its potential.' Naturally their profits especially in the recession are what really concern them. These companies only think about children as consumers rather than people who have to live.
Sony has gone one step further and because the child in the picture has a 'Playstation-like controller' they are angered that they were not consulted before the advertisement went ahead. This is just appalling thinking, that a company should be able to stop a government health campaign. Sony are looking into sueing the government over the campaign. I hope they do and I am sure they will lose.
In response the onslaught, the Department of Health has refused to apologise for the campaign, not feeling it was at all misjudged: 'The campaign takes a direct approach, setting out the issue in succinctly and in straightforward language. An unhealthy lifestyle, including poor diet or being inactive, can lead to health problems in later life. If current trends continue, nine in ten people will be overweight or obese by 2050. This can increase your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers."We are not saying that children shouldn't play computer games or eat treats, but parents and children need to be aware of the benefits of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle. The activities portrayed are examples of poor diet and lack of physical activity.' Diabetes UK has been quoted as being surprised by the harsh reaction of games companies and plans to make legal challenges against the campaign.
I am a big fan of computer games and do not want the industry to suffer, but the time has come for the games industry. They are in the position that MacDonalds and other burger chains were in the 1990s and the cigarette companies were in the 1980s when people realised that what these companies were legitimately promoting were actually doing great harm. Burger chains have responded and the menus especially for children are a world away from what they were twenty years ago. The games companies are looking petulant and bullying. Those complaining are multinationals unused to being challenged. If they react in such a hostile way they are likely to egg the government on to stricter measures such as banning sale of games to anyone under 18. In New Zealand parents face a fine of NZ$10,000 or 3 months' imprisonment if their children play games with a higher rating than their age, notably violent '18' certificate games. I am sure we will see something similar. Keith Vaz, MP, was talking to a select committee about this problem in the UK only recently.
Games companies would be sensible to learn from the MacDonalds approach to health challenges. The Wii physical games can be seen as the first 'healthy option' on the games companies menu but they will have to do more. It is interesting that these days you do not get things as you did on 'Stronghold' (2001) a PC castle building game, had a function that after a certain period of game play your advisor would tell you that you had been playing the game for too long and that you should take a break. City-, business- and castle-building games are very easy to lose track of time with when playing. I think all companies should be compelled to introduce a function in all games which effectively has an 'interval' say after 45 minutes of play the screen freezes just where you have reached and will not release for say 30 minutes compelling you to go off and do something else. This can be introduced first for games which appeal most to children and as with the MacDonalds advertisements they should advise children to go and get some exercise. Of course this will generate hostility for parents many of whom use game consules as a way to keep the child quiet and out of their hair. That change, though, is just what Change4Life is about and it is going to upset people, but it may keep them alive. Evidence this week has shown that even if you do not start exercising until you are over 50 years old, it will lengthen your life.
The games companies no doubt have decided to adopt the 'don't blame us' approach and like many industries in the past especially in the face of a Labour government, will use the full weight of the law and their vast funds to try to stop government policy. They may win, some industries have in the past. However, this is not something like releasing control over copper supplies or not nationalising the sugar industry, this is about the health of children and that is a very emotive subject which parents can be made to feel very guilty about in a way no games company can assuage. In addition, this campaign is perceived as something coming from the government or particular charities but the games companies have missed the fact that it is in line with policies already in place especially in schools and leisure facilities. This is the most prominent bit of the iceberg, but there has been a lot going on in the UK regarding children that they seem to have been oblivious to. If they are sensible games companies will be looking at ways to alter their products. As the Department of Health has noted they are not seeking to ban children playing computer games, but the more hostile the industry is, the more likely they will move in that direction. To get through this the games companies need to be clever not aggressive which does them no favours.
P.P. 24/04/2009 - Online games industry journal MCV is lauding the 'shock U-turn' in the Change4Life advertisements as the latest ones say that exercise got through games such as those used with Wii that make the players move and jump around can contribute to the children's daily fitness. The industry feels that its bullying has paid off. Many games companies tried to censor the campaign last month when it rightly said that if children were simply stuck in front of console and computer games they would have an early death. Of course Change4Life has not done a U-turn, it always said that restricted games playing by children was fine, but of course the games industry had to act in its exaggerated outrage arguing the government was seeking to ban console games. In addition, it is not a U-turn because active games such as those provided through Wii remain a small minority of console and computer game playing. The Wii has sold 50 million units across the world since 2006, Playstation 2 has sold 136 million, but of course many are in use by second and third hand owners now. The Wii has sold 4.9 million in the UK and the Playstation 3 has sold 1.9 million since Marh 2007. So passive-activity games consoles still remain predominant. The console games industry cannot be allowed to bully or censor health campaigns and like the fast food industry has done, need to wake up to the harm their products can cause, especially to children.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Computer Let Me Be! 2
Last July I posted a posting about how I hated being patronised by my computer which seemed unwilling to accept the proper UK spelling for things and tended to shove everything into active US grammar. Another thing I mentioned was how the computer constantly wants to shove downloads at me. This is still going on. I find that I am mid-way through writing an email for work when I am told I have to exit and shut down the computer because some download I did not request is complete. Again I feel patronised that my work counts for nothing compared to what the machine feels is more important. Of course it is not really my machine, which is loyal to me, it is the company at the end of the internet connection that keeps on wanting to remind me that it is there and install some incremental change. They did not provide me the computer for free so I do believe that my priorities should outrank theirs, but that does not seem to be the case.
It is far worse when the computer is provided to you for free, namely at work. In my company IT support did not feel we were paying them enough attention so now they have changed all the screensaves to simply show their name and have disabled us from putting any other screen saver on. They have done the same for the default internet page so that a dozen times a day I am told how wonderful the IT support team are and by implication how grateful I should be to them. I know IT staff feel undervalued now that so many of us can edit our own webpages and set up email accounts, but the finance department does not keep sending me reminder cards now that I can make payments to temporary staff employed electronically; the canteen does not pile cakes on my desk now that I can go across the road to a bakers instead of to them. I would like the ability to personalise my computer at least a little bit, but now, it is now a servant of IT support to force me to bow down to them with the respect they feel is due.
The other thing is passwords. Anyone could access my computer and find nothing of commercial or personal sensitivity. No-one has even tried to hack into my machine, I am sure they have better things to do with their time and if they really want to see a series of dull reports I am more than happy to email them to them. So, why do I have to keep changing my password? I have enough trouble remembering all my pin numbers (needed even to operate the photocopier these days, let alone to open doors) and now the passwords to get into my email account, to access this place, to shop online, to restart the computer when it has gone into screen save and so on. To make it harder every four months I have to change my password away from the one I have become familiar with to something else. At my last employers it was worse, you had to change it every month and you had to have 10 different ones as they would not allow you to repeat the first password until you had used 9 others. Consequently, what do you do, to stand any chance of remembering not only the current password but also the one you used 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 months ago especially when you come back from leave? You write it on a piece of paper which you stick next to the computer. So this is supposed to increase the security? IT staff need to realise to hold all these passwords we need another computer to put them on. I end up emailing it to myself and then at least I can go to a cybercafe and access the list of passwords so that when I get to my office I can get into my own computer!
IT support we love you, you do not have to keep on thinking up rituals to insert yourselves into our everyday life and make us poor workers exasperated as we watch your name scrolling across our screen as we struggle to conjure up yet another memorable password.
It is far worse when the computer is provided to you for free, namely at work. In my company IT support did not feel we were paying them enough attention so now they have changed all the screensaves to simply show their name and have disabled us from putting any other screen saver on. They have done the same for the default internet page so that a dozen times a day I am told how wonderful the IT support team are and by implication how grateful I should be to them. I know IT staff feel undervalued now that so many of us can edit our own webpages and set up email accounts, but the finance department does not keep sending me reminder cards now that I can make payments to temporary staff employed electronically; the canteen does not pile cakes on my desk now that I can go across the road to a bakers instead of to them. I would like the ability to personalise my computer at least a little bit, but now, it is now a servant of IT support to force me to bow down to them with the respect they feel is due.
The other thing is passwords. Anyone could access my computer and find nothing of commercial or personal sensitivity. No-one has even tried to hack into my machine, I am sure they have better things to do with their time and if they really want to see a series of dull reports I am more than happy to email them to them. So, why do I have to keep changing my password? I have enough trouble remembering all my pin numbers (needed even to operate the photocopier these days, let alone to open doors) and now the passwords to get into my email account, to access this place, to shop online, to restart the computer when it has gone into screen save and so on. To make it harder every four months I have to change my password away from the one I have become familiar with to something else. At my last employers it was worse, you had to change it every month and you had to have 10 different ones as they would not allow you to repeat the first password until you had used 9 others. Consequently, what do you do, to stand any chance of remembering not only the current password but also the one you used 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 months ago especially when you come back from leave? You write it on a piece of paper which you stick next to the computer. So this is supposed to increase the security? IT staff need to realise to hold all these passwords we need another computer to put them on. I end up emailing it to myself and then at least I can go to a cybercafe and access the list of passwords so that when I get to my office I can get into my own computer!
IT support we love you, you do not have to keep on thinking up rituals to insert yourselves into our everyday life and make us poor workers exasperated as we watch your name scrolling across our screen as we struggle to conjure up yet another memorable password.
Monday, 2 July 2007
Computer: Let Me Be!
One irritant that I have not yet tackled is the hassle with computers which seem to think they know what I want better than I do myself. They are not my servant, rather they are like an annoying salesman camped out on my doorstep, who, whenever I happen to open my front door or even look out of my window bombard me with the latest products. Even in my house, they keep changing the channel on my TV and the decor on my walls, with the arrogant attitude that they know better.
Stopping with the analogy. Every time I switch on a computer, and on average, due to my work, I use three different machines in the average week, I have to wait for all the updates from the various companies to load in, plus the ones my own company feels I need. This means it can be 2-3 minutes before I can even start work. I cannot believe that there is that much new stuff every week that they have to take over my machine to load it in. Of course if I was not firewalled then there would be all the spam and the spyware and the adware and so on. In order of priority for access to my machine, I come last. As if this was not enough, when I come to close it down I have to wait sometimes fifteen minutes for it to do all the uploads. With a PC I walk away but with a laptop I have to keep it internet connected otherwise there will be twice as much stuff to wade through. If I happen not to use a computer for a couple of weeks, then it is 30 minutes plus. Why? Surely it is inefficient if each day I am losing 15 minutes' work watching a bar move across the screen.
On my home PC somehow I got an Adobe photo album tester. I have no idea how, but now I cannot rid my machine of it. Every time I log on it asks me if I want to buy it, I say no, but it still proceeds trying to search out photos on my machine and telling me my digital camera battery is low (I do not even have a digital camera) and so on. It tries again later too. For me, no means no, why can it not understand. My house mate's son who is almost 6 and can read a little, gets bewildered when midway through a game of 'Shrek' or 'Finding Nemo' the machine starts binging at him and sending up pop-ups even when he is logged in as his own identity. What is the point of asking him if he wants to upgrade the DVD player, he cannot even understand the words?
It does not stop when you are not even connected to the internet, software is just as bad. I write a lot, and yet even when I have corrected the spelling and grammar checker from US to UK spelling it still keeps interfering, putting in bullet points when I do not need them, telling me effectively that 'which' is not a proper word and you just try typing 'fora' as in the plural of 'forum' (for those of us who use proper plurals)! If I try to write a letter, it says do I need help - no I have been writing letters longer than even Microsoft has been in existence! It tries to put 'yours truly' at the end of the letter, even though in the UK that is a sarcastic phrase and 'yours faithfully' or 'yours sincerely' which it never offers me, are the correct ones. Every machine I have go through disabling all of these interruptions.
I understand that people often need help, but as in the classroom you should be able to ask for it when you need it. I hate my computer patronising me and trying to force words and a culture on me which I do not want. A computer should be about granting you freedom to compose and to explore as you choose, but instead we are driven to behave identically to each other, and coming from a non-US culture, in a way which jars with what I know and is correct for my 'locale'. Give me a computer that treats me like an adult.
Stopping with the analogy. Every time I switch on a computer, and on average, due to my work, I use three different machines in the average week, I have to wait for all the updates from the various companies to load in, plus the ones my own company feels I need. This means it can be 2-3 minutes before I can even start work. I cannot believe that there is that much new stuff every week that they have to take over my machine to load it in. Of course if I was not firewalled then there would be all the spam and the spyware and the adware and so on. In order of priority for access to my machine, I come last. As if this was not enough, when I come to close it down I have to wait sometimes fifteen minutes for it to do all the uploads. With a PC I walk away but with a laptop I have to keep it internet connected otherwise there will be twice as much stuff to wade through. If I happen not to use a computer for a couple of weeks, then it is 30 minutes plus. Why? Surely it is inefficient if each day I am losing 15 minutes' work watching a bar move across the screen.
On my home PC somehow I got an Adobe photo album tester. I have no idea how, but now I cannot rid my machine of it. Every time I log on it asks me if I want to buy it, I say no, but it still proceeds trying to search out photos on my machine and telling me my digital camera battery is low (I do not even have a digital camera) and so on. It tries again later too. For me, no means no, why can it not understand. My house mate's son who is almost 6 and can read a little, gets bewildered when midway through a game of 'Shrek' or 'Finding Nemo' the machine starts binging at him and sending up pop-ups even when he is logged in as his own identity. What is the point of asking him if he wants to upgrade the DVD player, he cannot even understand the words?
It does not stop when you are not even connected to the internet, software is just as bad. I write a lot, and yet even when I have corrected the spelling and grammar checker from US to UK spelling it still keeps interfering, putting in bullet points when I do not need them, telling me effectively that 'which' is not a proper word and you just try typing 'fora' as in the plural of 'forum' (for those of us who use proper plurals)! If I try to write a letter, it says do I need help - no I have been writing letters longer than even Microsoft has been in existence! It tries to put 'yours truly' at the end of the letter, even though in the UK that is a sarcastic phrase and 'yours faithfully' or 'yours sincerely' which it never offers me, are the correct ones. Every machine I have go through disabling all of these interruptions.
I understand that people often need help, but as in the classroom you should be able to ask for it when you need it. I hate my computer patronising me and trying to force words and a culture on me which I do not want. A computer should be about granting you freedom to compose and to explore as you choose, but instead we are driven to behave identically to each other, and coming from a non-US culture, in a way which jars with what I know and is correct for my 'locale'. Give me a computer that treats me like an adult.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
