Benjamin Bloodworth's Blog

Archive for March, 2009

http://kotaku.com/5181625/see-onlive-in-action

http://kotaku.com/5181300/onlive-makes-pc-upgrades-extinct-lets-you-play-crysis-on-your-tv

I’m incredibly skeptical over the claims of pings of less than one millisecond.  The only way to achieve those speeds is through a LAN.  As soon as you go across the internet, you’re lucky to get under 50 milliseconds ping.

People already play games online, WoW, Metal Gear Online, WAR, etc… but these games were built to compensate for the lag.  Games that are intended to be played locally, don’t account for the lag.

It’s an interesting concept, but I just don’t see how they can overcome the lag issue.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29731643/

This is what happens when you assume people will do the right thing.  All too often they don’t.  I’m always surprised that no one, ever stops to ask the simple question, “What if people choose not to follow our plan?” or “How can this be abused?”

We gave out this money assuming it would be used in good faith, instead bonuses were paid.  That’s just simple human nature.  There’s also the issue that these companies may be contractually obligated to pay these bonuses.

The amusing part is that Obama is being blamed for it.  Even more amusing are the Senators and Representatives who are angry with Obama over it.  The executive branch of the government doesn’t write laws.  If anyone deserves the blame, it’s the Senators and Representatives who failed to write into the bailout provision a means for the executive branch to stop the bonuses.

Blaming Presidents for things they have no control over isn’t anything new.  Everyone blamed George W. Bush for the rising gas prices during his Presidency, but no one blamed him when the prices fell in the last few months of his Presidency.

You can now add and delete WoW characters on your gamescape.com profile.  The characters are displayed in a grid with links to the WoW Armory for the character and guild, if the character belongs to a guild.

I’m working on adding a way to track all of your MMO characters on gamescape.com.  You select a game, WoW, DAOC, etc… and your server from drop downs and then type the character’s name in a textbox.  I query my local database of characters first, if it isn’t found, I query the armory.  If the character is found, it’s added to my local database and linked to the user’s profile.