I have always tried to keep a balance off of it, but there have been a couple  years where just due to the times I couldn’t help but carry a small balance..

Well the other day I went to pay off my card and I noticed that they bumped my APR to 29.998%…   Are you fucking kidding me?  30% APR is highway robbery..

I called them up and asked them to lower my rate and they refused..  The operator I got ahold of (once I navigated their automated system) told me that “.. they were unable to lower my rate at this time. Thanks for calling.. *click*”

I immediately called them back and told the new operator (that I got after navigating their automated system.. again) that I wanted to cancel my account and that it was due to their recent rate hike.. I have zero intention of paying 30% and that’s ludicrous..   He said, “but wait.. what if we lowered your APR would that make you stay?”

I explained that the previous operator told me there was no way to lower my rate.. So I want to cancel the account.. (2)..  He came back explaining that he could lower my rate to 26% for 6 months.. (after which it would spring back to 30%)..  I said that this was a bunch of crap, that if this was such a deal why didn’t the last guy offer it and that 26% is still robbery..  No thank you, I’d like to cancel my account.. (3)..

“But wouldn’t you like to lower your rate?” ..   I explained that if he could lower my rate to 0% I’d stick around, otherwise, I’d like to cancel my account.. (4)..  “No you want to lower your rate, so that the remaining balance doesn’t take that 30% rate, but instead gets this much lower rate… “  (26% is “much lower”)..  I told him that I just paid the account off, online.. that there is no remaining balance and that I’d like to cancel my account.. (5)..

But.. blah blah.. and blahdiddy blah..   I’d like to cancel my account.. (6).. if you keep pestering me to lower my rate I will ask to speak to your manager..

“Id be more than happy to let you speak to my manager..  but golly we need to lower this rate.. blah blah bullshit bullshit I’m a douche blah blah blah”..   I’d like to cancel my fucking account please.. (7).. and now I want to speak to your manager..

I honestly was getting really pissed.. this asshat wouldn’t let me just cancel the damn account..  I don’t want it any more.. you’re trying to screw me, and I refuse to do business with you..  Take your “amazing low rate of 26%” and shove it up your ass..  cancel my account.. I shouldn’t have to ask for this 7+ times.. (I’m sure it was more than 7.. this is very much the short version.. )

Eventually he asks me to hold (I fully expected him to just hang up the phone..)  A minute or so later someone got on the line claiming to be his manager and I told him that I wanted to cancel the account and that I shouldn’t have to ask so many times, and that I shouldn’t be pressured to do something I don’t want to do.. I want to cancel the account.. Period.. I’m done working with you..

He said, “Fine it’s canceled, do you want confirmation of the cancelation?”  — “You’re damn skippy.. “  –  “It will be sent to your billing address.. *click*”

The manager was rude as hell..  I should never have had to deal with him.. The initial call taker should be fired to be honest.. Or retrained at best..

As to Citibank..  I’m done with you..  Jack my rate to 30% which should be criminal, and then as of April 1st 2010, charge a $60 annual fee just to have the card?!   That’s $60 a year, just to have that card empty in your wallet.  Are you kidding me?  This is some kind of joke right?

It’s clear to me that Citibank doesn’t give a rats ass about their members if this is the way they plan to treat us..   So fine.. Bye.. I’m done with Citibank forever.. I wont do business with you ever again.. period.

More over I plan to tell as many people as possible not to do business with Citibank as they are clearly a bunch of crooks..

Stop the DRM

When will companies learn that their draconian efforts to prevent piracy only serves to hurt their paying customers which directly affects their bottom line!!

Companies, you must stop counting pirated copies of your software as “lost revenue” — it’s not! Someone who is willing to pirate software isn’t willing to pay for it.. EVER! So you never had their money in the first place..

You’re trying so hard to capture that imagined lost revenue that it’s blinding you to how badly you’re screwing yourselves and your real customers..

Equating the number of pirated copies of your software directly to dollars is retarded.. More over, implementing these harsh DRM models only serves to prevent the honest players from playing your games, which effectively assures that you’re going to lose real money in the form of people who actually DO buy your games going else where..

Let take the new Silent Hunter 5 game as an example.. SH5 (a game with a lot of bugs and other issues that already pisses paying customers off) comes with the new DRM which forces you to be connected to the internet 100% of the time. The new system which the Ubisoft exec’s spin as being a positive thing for the customer is constantly phoning home to make sure you’re still allowed to play the game.. The game you purchased.

If at any time during your play period the connection to the mother ship fails, you stop playing the game. You can’t save your game.. You can’t do anything.. Effectively the game you purchased goes into cripple ware mode.. This is bullshit.

The hacker community took one good look at that and said “F’to you Ubi” and hacked it within the first 24 hours of release.. These people had no intention of buying the game in the first place so who does it actually hurt?

ME! If I’m playing the game that I purchased and I go on a road trip with my laptop, I can’t play it.. The hacker can.. he can play just fine..

If I am playing the game that I purchased at home and for whatever reason my internet goes out (it happens), I’m screwed.. Not the hacker.. He can keep playing..

So.. whats my recourse? Nothing.. I’m just shit out of luck.. I have to either accept their crappy DRM because apparently they think I’m the problem, or not buy the game in the first place.. The hacker doesn’t care, he isn’t troubled by these problems at all and in no way has the DRM affected him at all..

DRM only punishes the paying customer! Ubisoft is trying like hell to spin their new DRM in a positive light, but it’s not.. they claim that it’s “A platform of online services for PC titles offering gamers a more in-depth gaming experience as well as providing an innovative solution for reducing PC game piracy.” HUH?!

How did you do either of those things? It does absolutely NOTHING to offer me a more in-depth gaming experience and in fact does the opposite in that suddenly I have this invasive piece of software on my system that prevents me from playing at all from time to time.. I paid for the game, yet I’m punished.

And it doesn’t prevent or even reduce software piracy considering it was hacked out in the first 24 hours. The hackers never even notice the games DRM, it doesn’t bother them in the slightest..

At this point you’re actually encouraging people like me to hack the game because your own DRM is preventing the honest player from playing the game he paid for.. That’s right.. your DRM which is there to prevent piracy is actually encouraging piracy because otherwise we can’t play the game.. Good job genius..

You’re so busy counting the imaginary lost dollars you’re missing the fact that your real dollars are heading out the door.. The proof is in the pudding.. Your current sales for this year are down by over 20% and I have to think you only have yourselves to blame..

I realize fully that the “higher ups” are the ones making these decisions, but someone MUST stand up and tell them why DRM is not the right solution.. If you guys don’t stop the DRM shenanigans you guys are going to hemorrhage not money, but customers..

As of this writing the price of gold is at $1120 an ounce which is an all time high.  That alone should be your first indication that;  Now is not the time to buy gold!

The price of Gold is where it’s at right now because of the economy and because gold sellers are driving the cost up through fear.  They want you to go buy their gold so that they make money.  Period.  They don’t give a crap about the economy, your we being or future or any of the other BS they try to sling on the commercials.  Stated simply, they are in the business of making money and they are trying to do so at your expense.

The only “winner” when you buy gold at these prices are the companies selling the gold as they will make out like bandits having sold gold to you at over a thousand dollars an ounce. You wont be saving money, instead you’ll be giving your money to these unscrupulous companies who are doing their best through fear to drive the price as high as it can go before it crashes.  And it will crash.  Let me explain why;

See.. Gold is a commodity and a standard.  As such, it’s value never really changes.  What changes is the dollars value in relation to the gold.. So when you see golds value go up, what you’re actually seeing is the dollar go down.  When you have say 10 ounces of gold worth $3000, and suddenly that prices shoots to $10000 what you’re actually seeing is the value of the dollar shoot down.  10 ounces of gold is still just 10 ounces of gold.

When the dollar strengthens again (as it always does) you’ll see the price of gold go back down to something more reasonable.  This is why I say gold WILL crash..  that means that the folks who purchased gold at $1120 an ounce will take it on the chin..

I’m not saying that you should never buy gold.. Actually I think gold can be a good thing to buy, but only when the dollar is very strong (and thus the price of gold is lower).

Whack a Seal!

So, on Saturday the 11th of April, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) held an awareness gathering in World of Warcraft where they killed four quest NPC’s as a form of protest for the unethical killing of seals in real life.  Some how it got into their heads that by focusing on protecting the digital seals in a game and instead performing the far more ethical act of killing the would-be digital seal killers, it would bring awareness to the unethical killing of real world seals.

So.. let me sum up for those who can’t put this together — what they are saying is..   Kill the people who are killing the seals.

Are you fucking kidding me?!  How is that more ethical?  They honestly are saying that it’s more ethical to kill humans than it is to kill seals?  That’s their stance?  Really?

I’ve always heard PETA was a bunch of psycho douche bags but damn.. But to their point; Apparently a lot of seals (between 100k and 400k this year depending on which website you go to..) are killed annually by the Canadian government..  Or rather, their killing is sanctioned by the Canadian government..

PETA’s website goes on a very graphic tirade about how awful it is and how each seal “must look on as fellow pups are bludgeoned to death before meeting the same bloody fate.  The anguish that a mother seal feels as she watches her baby being beaten to death just a few feet away from her is horrifying and can be heard in her desperate cries…” Wow.. Nice spin.. Complete bullshit, but a good spin all the same..

In doing research for this, I have watched a lot of videos.. And in each video I have seen it has had some lone guy run up on an individual seemingly adult seal that was alone on an ice flow and repeatedly whack the seal in the head with a hammer on a pole.. Kinda gruesome true.. But PETA paints this as mass murder where all the baby seals are gathered up and executed Auschwitz style.. That simply isn’t true..

Firstly, I have no idea why the Canadian government has an annual seal season.  And from what I have read, no one else knows either..   There must be a reason, and despite what PETA thinks its not because they are all evil evil communists who hate children..  Thats how PETA paints it, but again.. not true..  That’s propaganda..  There must be a reason it’s legal — what is it?

Apparently I’m willing to look at it a bit more objectively than PETA is;  It could be just like the deer season here in the US.. I simply don’t know.  All the websites I have found on the issue are one manner of propaganda or another..  Finding hard facts is near impossible at this point because of all the inflammatory crap being flung back and forth..

The simple truth of it is;  If it’s legal, then it’s legal. You can be offended by it, but that doesn’t mean that its against the law.  You can delve all you want into the morality pool and every one of us will come up with a different opinion on the subject.. But from a legal stand point, you can’t say that killing seals is illegal.  It’s not illegal.

I personally think the primary difference is that seals are endearing..  It’s sort of the same difference between a rat and a squirrel.. Squirrels are cute, we love them!  Rats are ugly, we hate them!  When the simple fact is they are both rodents that carry diseases, only one has a fluffy tail and lives outside which people find endearing thus squirrels are thought of more positively..  Seals are cute and as such we are offended by their early demise..

I’m more than willing to concede that there are baby seals being killed out there on the ice flows.. Probably more than a few.. but to say that all the seals being killed are just cute cuddly wuddly baby seals is pure propaganda plain and simple.  Most folks that look at a picture of a seal have no idea how old that seal is..  Hell they all look like babies right?  I’m not 100% sure, but I thought seals out on the ice flow alone (as in the videos I saw) are adults, no baby seal would go out that far alone..

Here is one of the videos I saw of seals being clubbed to death, and yes — it’s pretty gruesome.   But I would say it’s no more gruesome than a deer getting shot during the annual hunting seasons here in the US..  How is that different?  It’s an animal being killed by a superior species..  Just like a lion that chases down and kills a gazelle for it’s meat..

I eat meat.. The steak, pork and chicken that I consume also was once alive.. and is now dead..  And according to PETA I’m a murderer for it?  Really?  It’s been going on for a long time.. And my maxillary permanent canine teeth sort of imply it was meant to go on.. So why does PETA think that this sort of activity is so bad?

They would answer that a lion wouldn’t kill for sport, or wouldn’t kill for just the skin.   To which I say; Sure they would and do all the time.   Dolphins are one of the more intelligent animals on the planet and they kill for sport..

Frankly, this is just propaganda by an organization that has no power.. You see,  PETA wants to bring your attention to what they call, an injustice.. Something they call unethical..

And since PETA has the word “Ethical” right in their name they must be good right?  The words right there, therefore they must be the ones doing the ethical and moral thing..  So if you disagree with them, then you’re unethical!!  You bastard.

The problem is, it doesn’t work that way.  Ethics are a system of moral principles governing an individual or group.  Those principles are discussed and agreed upon by that group.  No one individual or group can decide what those principles are for another individual or group.  Meaning, what’s ethical here.. may not apply there.  What’s moral and ethical for you may not apply to me..

In this situation you have PETA trying to tell another group what’s ethically right, and if you don’t do what they think is right you’re wrong.   PETA is trying to control you and your way of thinking..   And they think you should DIE for disagreeing.  That’s right..  Remember from above, they think the people killing the seals, should be killed…

Frankly, I find that PETA is nothing more than a terrorist group (or even religious cult) that is extremely vocal and is very good at crafting sensational, vivid, graphic and even horrific language and imagery in order to manipulate people.  They do it in such a way as to make you feel bad if you don’t side with them, and if that doesn’t work they will intimidate, harass and threaten you..

That alone to me seems unethical.

The issue here is, like so many other animals in the animal kingdom (and yes, WE are animals) we tend to think animals are good to eat.. Most PETA members are vegetarians and as such have a moral stance that killing an animal of any kind for any reason is wrong.  Oh and they’ll tell ya about it too.. We have differing ethical stances when it comes to the killing of animals.

I’m all for not killing critters if we can get around it.. but sometimes it’s necessary.. Like for food or for other products that we deem necessary.. Where as PETA paints this picture that we are torturing animals for our food.. Or that these seals are being tortured to death for their fur.  I haven’t seen that.  I have yet to see where they hook up the car battery to the seals teets just to cause pain.  Or where they derive some sick pleasure from slapping a seal around..

In every video I have seen, they kill the animal in very short order.. It may take two or three whacks but its over and done fairly quickly..  How is that torture?   Torture to me implies the repeated infliction of pain over a period of time from which you derive some sick sadistic pleasure..  Walking up to an animal and bludgeoning it to death with intent to use it for one purpose or another, isn’t torture..

I have seen horrific and evil video of animals being tortured.. (Just watch the PETA website..)  Yeah that shits awful.. But that stuff is illegal and there are laws in place to stop it.   The seal hunts are legal, and not in the same category despite what you think.

Look, I love animals.. I do.. I always have..  And I think the torture of animals is wrong and the people doing it should go away for ever.. But it’s pretty clear to me that PETA loves animals more than Humans..

PETA will try to tell you that animals are todays “slaves” and that what happens to a cow or a chicken today is morally identical to what happened to the Jewish people in the holocaust..  And that shit is fucking offensive as hell.. And I’m not Jewish!!  To actually trivialize the holocaust like that is just unimaginable and goes a very long way to prove that anyone who belongs to PETA has no basis in reality.

Hrmm.. maybe they belong in a game?

2009 Penny Front

So I wasn’t terribly shocked to find a brand new penny in my hand upon receiving change for the breakfast I purchased this morning..  I was however shocked to see that they have been completely redesigned!!

Apparently 2009 was the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and as such four new designs were commissioned and released to celebrate that as well as the 100th anniversary of the production of the Lincoln cent (penny).

I have to think that Lincoln would be embarrassed…

click to enlarge

The front design is the same as it was, but the reverse has 4 new designs apparently featuring four major aspects of President Lincoln’s life;  his birth and childhood in Kentucky, his formative years in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois, and his Presidency in Washington, D.C as seen to the left.

I’m okay with the first two.. The log cabin and the rail-splitter designs are nice and seem appropriate to me.  The last two are also nice designs but I question how those images were more relevant to Lincolns life than say; the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Lincoln-Doublas Debates on the topic of Slavery. or something related to the Gettysburg Address maybe? etc..

I’m just not sure that a picture of the Capitol cluttered by scaffolding was a good salute to Lincoln’s life.

But most importantly;  Dear god, WHY?! … why do this?  Amid all the government bailouts, corporate bankruptcies, and an economic down turn to rival that of the great depression, how much money did the government blow to redesign those coins?

No one forges the penny so why redesign it?  Did the old designs some how fail?  Not only that but these 4 new designs during 2009 are mandated to be further redesigned again in 2010 to a permanent design.

Is this some effort to instill value in an almost valueless coin? I’m sure all the numismatists will appreciate it.. Or maybe it’s bizarro feel good tactic by the government to cheer us up?  I dunno..  But the amount of money that was bound to be put into this redesign process seems silly.  Especially in an age where the penny seems largely pointless.  Most people don’t stop to pick pennies up off the ground..

To be fair; No they aren’t worthless.. think how much everything would go up if you had to round up to the nearest nickel.. but still..

At one point (prior to 1982) all US pennies actually had a metal content that at market value was worth more than face value of the coin. Now however, all pennies are 97.5% zinc with only 2.5% being copper (coated over the zinc) and as such have an intrinsic value of $0.0028… So 0.28% of face value..

According to the US Mint the costs to producing and shipping already designed one-cent (penny) coins during the fiscal year 2007 was $0.0167 per penny.[ref]  That doesn’t count the cost of redesign..

$0.0167 to produce a coin worth $0.0028, with a face value of only $0.01..    Dear god no wonder we are in debt..

So, 5 billion pennies in circulation worth $50 million dollars, cost the government $70 million to make..  For those of you who are really bad at math, thats $20 million dollars wasted..

I have to think even Lincoln would be ashamed..

Dawn of War 2

I love Warhammer.  I have played Warhammer table top war game both fantasy and 40k pretty much since they came out.  I also have the Warhammer fantasy role playing game, the more recent Warhammer 40k role playing game and gave the Warhammer fantasy MMO a spin.

Games workshop has done a really good job at creating a compelling IP (too bad blizzard stole most of it.. but I digress).. So I was extremely excited about Dawn of War, though for whatever reason I didn’t get to play it much.

DoW looked very good and I wanted to make sure that I played DoW2!    I wasn’t about to let more Warhammer goodness slip by!

DoW2 made by Relic studios uses the same engine that Company of Heroes uses and looks fantastic.   More over, so long as you never actually try to play other people you’ll have a great time!    The game is designed to be very fast paced and they have removed the “build” element from the game entirely.

It’s pretty clear to me that they have geared this game towards the 16 to 20 year old Korean kids or people with a severe case of ADD as the game plays at a pretty much frantic pace.   Not my style, but I can see why it would be fun.

More over, I bet if I were actually able to play it multiplayer it would be a cool game..   Oh but I can’t.

Why you ask?

Simple really.. Relic uses the same craptacular network code that Company of Heroes used back in 2006, and as such a good 50% of the game owners out there, can’t play it online.  The game always complains of a “NAT ERROR”.

I can (and do) play other multiplayer games all the time.  I can play GRID, Call of Duty, Battlefield 2142, Left 4 Dead, TFC2..etc.. all multiplayer, all online over the internet and all work just fine.   Yet DoW2 (and Company of Heroes) all say my network is bad.   And I have tried everything right down to plugging my system directly into the modem which generally I think is a bad idea..

More over, the relic forums have a LOT of folks complaining about this issue.  Since this exact same error has been in effect since CoH was released in 2006.. It’s pretty apparent that Relic doesn’t give a crap..  And as such, I will not buy this game, and would further ask others to not buy this game.

If the game developers can refuse to fix a problem that has been plaguing their games for a while (and blame the users instead of their code or code decsisions for the problem), then why should I or any one else buy their game?     You don’t reward the dog and say “good boy” when he craps on the carpet..  Paying money for something we can’t use effectively rewards them for making something that doesn’t work.

I wont be buying this game.  The game play gets a 2 1/2 out of 5.. the speed RTS isn’t my style but I can see what some would like it, however the removal of the build element completely turns the game into a zerg fest designed to compete with star craft 2 which I don’t find fun at all..

The network thing drags the score down to a 1.  Fix your shit Relic.

Not Malygos, but cool

So we have been playing a LOT of World of Warcraft of late.  I must admit I’m very much enjoying it for the most part.  But we have gotten to the point where we are farming the end game content because by and large, it’s way too easy.

All that is except Malygos.   We have beaten Malygos before but for whatever reason our guild can’t seem to pull it’s collective head out 9 times out of 10.  Things just go wrong.

That’s fine and acceptable except they all seem to think we are going to one shot him and move on. Over confidence is our down fall, but not our only one.  The real issue isn’t our guild or our game play, but rather the fucking lag!

We have the same issue in 25man Nax killing Thadius..  The server always lags out on us at exactly the same time, every time.  It’s almost like this is blizzards cunning plan to make the content more difficult..

Pretty hard core burning hatred from me when we get in there and the game lags out.  Malygos is probably the easiest boss in the T7 content, but the lag during phase 2 screws us every time.. (Or just about — it took us like 8 tries tonight to kill him due to lag.)

Blizzard needs to fix this.  I can’t tell you how many times we have failed at Thaddius too for the exact same reason.. just lag.  It’s pretty darn hard to fight a boss when the timer keeps counting down but the game stops for everyone..

Mirrors Edge — Faith

Mirrors Edge for the PC is a first person action-adventure puzzle game with an extremely compelling story line and quite possibly the most frustrating game play known to man.

I want to preface my review by saying that I really, really want to like this game and it’s close to being actually good..  close, yet so far.

Over all the story line is very good.  I very much enjoyed the game for the story aspect, and I do like the idea of a FPS game where the S is largely missing.  The ability to interact with your environment is extremely enjoyable and is something that is almost entirely missing from any other game out there.

More over, the game has a lot of nice touches like the rats everywhere indicating the decay of society and the occasional airplane flying over at 30+ thousand feet.. but there were far more frustrating elements.

Known Bugs — the game had two bugs that made the game completely unplayable and by reading the forums they are known;

1.  even with the latest physx drivers installed, once the soldiers start shooting at you and glass starts breaking the game would slow down to 1 or 2 frames per second making it completely unplayable.   My computer is a big fat quad core so there was no excuse for the kind of lag I was seeing other than poorly written drivers.  Disabling the physx stuff resolved this issue and there was no noticeable impact to the game play.

2. if you have any audio acceleration turned on the ambient noises would be so loud you couldn’t hear anything else.  Again according the forums this is a known issue and simply turning off the audio acceleration resolved the issue.

Aside from those two bugs, the rest of my complaints could easily be described as nitpicks but in my mind make the game a lot less fun than it could have been.  Frustrating, isn’t fun.

Game play issues;

Craptacular Tutorial — The tutorial for the game is extremely weak and cleary written by folks who have been playing the game for years and as such everything is already intuitive for them.    They would give you a written queue as to what you’re supposed to do, but instead of writing it prior to the action, they give it to you WHILE the action is going on.  That means by the time you’re done reading the instruction it’s typicallytoo late to perform the action.  So you end up doing the same thing over and over again to get it right — this is likely to prepare you for the game to come as you’ll end up doing the same thing over and over a lot.

Linear — Despite what you might think or any billing to the contrary, the game is extremely linear.  You’re always at point A trying to get to point B and there is just about always only one way to get there.  Once you get to point B, it becomes point A and now you have a new point B.   Any death along the way and you start back at your last point A..  Oh and you will die.. Oh yes.. You will..

Frustration Factor — The almost constant injection of enemy soldiers in your way turns what would be an extremely fun puzzle game into an even more frustrating set of “do overs” as you try to do the same crappy set of objectives over and over again while they shoot at you..  You don’t have time to observer the solution 9 times out of 10.. You’re just running balls to the wall all the while trying not to be killed..  This sucks.

Runners Vision — The game is supposed to have a system by which you see where you’re supposed to go and what you’re supposed to do by cleverly placed visual queues in the form of the color red.   Firstly, a big thanks from all us color blind folks.   Secondly,  they don’t work 90% of the time until you’re standing right on top of them.  So you end up racing towards the unknown away from the guards trying to kill you.  You end up doing it over and over simply because you have no idea where or what you’re supposed to be doing..  This sucks.

Sluggish — The input often feels extremely sluggish.  My game would have a solid 60FPS with vsync turned on or over a 100 without and still sometimes it feels like there is a delay in faiths responses to any input.  More over, even though she seems like she is running quickly, often it feels like she is wearing lead boots..

Single Solutions — Many of the “puzzles” are a single solution only situation in that if you didn’t know to do the exact right thing, you’re done.  Put another quarter in, try again.   Example;  if you didn’t know to grab the gun and shoot out the window on the third floor of the room you wouldn’t be able to jump across to it..  Or if you didn’t know how to navigate the building side scaffolding correctly then you die horribly to the helicopter gunship.. or if you don’t click the right mouse button at the right microsecond when the big dude is swinging the pipe, then he kills you.    This is just a small example, and really really lame.   These extremely scripted do or die points suck and detract from the game entirely.

Right Click My Ass — The right click grab thing is almost impossible to get working correctly.  I can’t tell you the number of times my character was butt stroked to death simply because the 1/20th of a second red queue flashed before I could react.  Or my character was in the middle of a slide or some other action and couldn’t react.. etc..

Once I did get a gun I just about always fell back on to my FPS roots and shot that sucker until empty.  This is sort of contrary to the point of the game, but I felt there was no other way to resolve the situations.

Farther into the game you’re confronting what I can only assume is your female counterpart on the roof of a cargo ship.. You’re forced to play the “grab the gun” game again and this time there is no avoiding her.   You MUST do it to continue the game and it’s nearly impossible.  You’re only presented the opportunity to do it in rare circumstances and only for 1/20th of a second again.. It was entirely to hard, and the 20 or so deaths I took there made me want to throw in the towel.

Once I did get past that point I was excited that I finally got to move on, only to be thrust into an impossible chase scene.. Who were the assholes that thought raw frustration was fun?  The computer opponent is able to make jumps that you simpley can’t make.. Sorry the cake is a lie.. OR if you can make them it’s because you have been playing the game for a year and its second nature to you.. Also, making it timed is just fucking dumb.  If she “gets too far ahead” it STARTS YOU OVER!!  okay fuck it.. I’m done.

This shit isn’t fun.  It’s frustrating.  It speaks to the fact that the game designers didn’t think the puzzle aspect of the game was fun enough when IT WAS!  They had to add all these crappy FPS elements and “make it more exciting”.. All they succeeded in doing was pissing me off..

I played pretty far through the game and I can say that I think it has a lot of potential.. The way you can interact with the game environment is awesome and every game out there needs to take a hint from it..  But mirrors edge itself isn’t fun it’s just too hard, and entirely too frustrating.

I may continue to play it a bit, just because I don’t want it to beat me.. but I’m not doing it out of enjoyment.. This is the first game that I might finish purely out of spite..

My stance on it is simple; Don’t do it — If you ever catch me encoding or obfuscating my javascript, come kick me square in the jimmy.. I simply cannot abide by people who think they need be secretive with javascript.. And lets be completely honest here, that’s what it’s about.

Some folks will try to sling a steaming pile by saying it’s to shrink the file size for bandwidth purposes, but that’s crap — most .jpgs on this site are larger than its javascript. Most servers gzip everything before sending it to the client anyway so any file size benefits gained by obfuscation is nearly nil — unless you’ve written war and peace in the comments of the file.

Javascript obfuscation is purely about power — People who think they are smart and have done something they want to be noted for obfuscate their code to play the pointless and asinine game of “knowledge is power”. They yammer on about how they don’t want anyone to “steal it” — which is again a steaming pile of shash..

Obfuscation is at best like a padlock on a door — “it keeps the honest people honest” as my father would say.. if someone wants it their gonna take it.. More over, javascript on some webpage SHOULD be free and open..

Most of these folks fail to realize that they themselves wouldn’t be able to write the code in the first place if there wasn’t a “view source” button. Myself included — And now you’ve written something you think is so awesome and innovative you need to hide it?! Douche..

By obfuscating all you’re doing is refusing to give back to the community and saying “fuck you” to the very system that trained you to begin with. You are stifling innovation in the industry, screwing over the little guy who doesn’t know as much, and making yourself look like an ass and generally speaking you should hang your head.

All of us are the modern day equivalent to shade tree mechanics.. You wanna know how something works? Look under the hood.. That’s the beauty of the system we use.. There are no secrets, and there shouldn’t be..

Stop it.