More sims 3..
but first.. adventures in price matching.. or; How Zim gets what Zim wants.
I've got a few harddrives.. being what most people call a geek, which is a light way of putting it, I have a thing that some people call a computer. Which is also putting it lightly.
It's my everything. My little world. My society when plugged into the net. My nation.
As such I need to have a dozen harddrives plugged in to hold everything that I don't have the heart to delete. And I do delete shit loads of content on a regular basis.
So.. I think this is my 22nd volume. Something like 14th or 15th harddrive in all. Something like 5 terabytes of storage space.
Some more context is that this morning I had to explain how and why I have need for 5 Tb of storage.
To fill that much space.. while deleting stuff constantly is easy.. but it's hard for some people to understand.
To fill it I download something like 300-600 gigs a month from the internet.
It's easy once you get bitten by the HD bug. I tend them.
Like for a while there I'd just download all my HD shows, several per week, listen to the online radio nearly 24/7 (XTC radio london [evolved fm] and Puls radio france).. amoung other things.
So.. the drives get filled.
Plus ripping blurays so I can play them through my Xbox also takes up crazy amounts of space.
So.. I found myself.. rather.. I kept catching myself craving a new drive.
It took all of 2 hours to finally LOOK for a new one.
Again.. being a geek, to put it mildly, a 1 Tb harddrive is an impulse buy, as would be buying the bluray drive in the first place, and the 24 inch monitor.
Don't get me wrong I'm very poor by most people's standards, but I'm not about to act like it. Just a bit of circumstance and bad planning.... yeah..
So I find myself looking for a drive. Having at least the one 1 Tb drive already, filled quickly considering what's on it.. I was like I only need a tide me over until I really need another big drive, and that's going to be 2 Tb plus.
500 seemed appropriate since I have 4 other 500 Gb drives.
But where to buy?
Most people have been saying getting it online works for them. I'm not a fan of online purchases. Preferentially I'm only for face to face purchases. Online is too impersonal.. rofl.. ain't that a bit paradoxical?
It's just not practical.
I'd rather go to my favorite little distributor and OEM PCCZONE.com in person. Yes it's also because the hottie behind the counter could melt glass.. and somehow I still don't know her name. In fact I slightly rue all the effort of the price matching adventure because it meant NOT seeing her.. rats well.
To buy then fell upon Future Shop or Best Buy. Best Buy is shit for PC parts so they were out.
My focus fell upon FS.
FS however is an oddity in that you will find sales people, assholes, and really smart and helpful associates.
It so happened that whatever imp within so desired the drive foresaw trouble and saw fit to prepare my 'Proof'.
A proof apparently is required when trying to do a price match because it doesn't matter that I could have dragged the asshole to PCCZONE.com which literally is 3 minutes away from FS.. no.. It's for posturing.
Quoth the Asshole.. You need an FRU which matches the the exact product you need.
It's OEM so it can come from anyone.
Rebuked Zim.. Don't BS me
repeat for 20-30 minutes
No price match.
However I did say I could just go to another FS store since my Proof happened to be 3 print outs:
- FS ad for the 500 gig Seagate drive, Sata II, 16 meg cache
- PCCZONE ad for the same
- Email from Seagate tech stating though the manufacturer part numbers are different the drives are identical
I understand this because.. having dozens and being a technician in this things of a sort, yeah.. the little plastic emballage does not invalidate my claim for a price match.
So minutes later, with my poorly worded email from some Saintly Seagate technician, Thanks Adrian A., at another FS store the price match claim was honoured without much more discussion.
Basically the one guy tried to argue down the claim too but his arguments efll to bits when the part numbers on the drives matched exactly.
Yay 4 me.
To then get home, graft the drive in.. and puzzle a moment about just what to do with it.
Whatever.. $50 saved doesn't need looking into the mouth.
So then to the Sims 3...
I find myself asking rather pointed questions about the Sims 3 and what it really is.
IGN has an interesting preview which roq'd my still foetal impressions of the game.
See my biggest argument against the game is that it won't sell. As a PC game, given Spore, given Demigod, blah blah quack quack.. it's likely that since the game was pirated already, two weeks ahead of the official retail street date that either:
It won't sell because enough people are tech savvy enough to BE downloading the game if they want it
It won't sell because soccer moms have converted from PC gaming mavens to MMORPG slaves, Wii sluts or 360 FPS killbots etc
It won't sell for the lack of content
http://pc.ign.com/articles/986/986159p1.html
After reading that though.. maybe, quite as usual, I draw my conclusions too quickly.
The picture half painted lacked the lesser known aspects of the game.
That 1, Maxis does have more content ready.. it just isn't for pirate, in the form of Riverview
That 2, Maxis does plan to fill the game with content.. which you'll have to buy
Which shatters my preconceptions:
That 1, it is going to take months for a real expansion which would impact initial sales
That 2, Maxis and EA are bat shit crazy
No, they aren't crazy, not exactly. And maybe yes the leak is as usual a calculated viral marketing ploy.
Their plan makes just enough sense that people may take the high road and buy the game and download all kinds of content.
Maxis of course would have to acknowlegde the pirate copies being Johny virally Appleseeded around the net by torrent traffickers.. and validate them.
If they don't I give them back all the crazy points that IGN article forced me to put up onto the shelf.
Basically they take the Microsoft approach, Spam the game out, regardless of their re and e-tail partners.. which as a publisher in some apparent financial trouble must seem an acceptable strategy.
Later on once people start getting attached, you stab, and stab again, and set out the catchment trays.
Being the Sims 3 exchange.
I could see myself redeeming Sim Points but I can't see myself paying money for them. Instead the fiat currency would better.. more conscionably appeal if it was coupon based. The more you spend at spurned and no doubt vexed re and e-tailer x, the more Sim Points you could earn towards EA's Store currency.
That would be fair to everyone.
Still.. if it came down to playing the game for the months until, and if any, EP's are launched.. then yeah my only major caveat with the article is that they state the game, shipped as is, will last those many long months.
The addition of Riverview coloured my view such that I'll have to wait on more information about Riverview's actual worth, both in terms of game play and in terms of getting purchasers to register, and if Maxis will validate 'stolen' torrent source code.
But still at the end of it all it's moot until Riverview ends up being secure. If any prerelease version of Riverview ends up being patchable into the pirated games sans registration to an EA teat.. it makes no difference has dastardly cunning their launch and short term strategy is.
It's unappealing to purchasers who do not have the means to electronically register their game. Fuck up #1
The other is expecting people to want to pay for downloads when their obviously trying to make it hard for the community of games to create and proliferate content for ourselves. Which has been the biggest aspect of the Franchise. Without communities and a near requirement to visit them for content, mods, and help.. the Sims 3 loses another big edge. Maxis effectively pokes the community in the eye and says tough shit, bring your monies, to buy the game and them buy the bits and pieces you enjoyed for free or nearly for free.
We've been baking this cake called the Sims for so long and now it is finally time to eat it.
Something just screams, the community ain't gonna stand for it.
Besides it's criminally irresponsible of Maxis and EA to really have leaked their own game to bypass the retail and e-tail channels if they intented to require players to register their games anyway. I mean the suggestion brought up by such a blattantly awful tactic is that EA should just grow some balls and release the same leaked game as a free to play download from their own servers. Otherwise they can stop official declaiming the 'damn dirty criminal pirates' who are helping their in their criminal bypass of the retail and etail channels. Assholes.
For Mc users the difference is completely moot too, they have to download the game because some don't have disc drives. *turns up hands*.. isn't that a fine bit of corporate collusion.. rofl.
About the single thing I could agree with from that article is that we can only wait and see. Most people probably aren't going to be bothered by or with online registration. The problem is the great many hundreds of thousands or millions who don't have the means. They miss out on Riverview through no fault of their own.
This after being forced, again, to upgrade their graphics cards to Sharder Model 2.0+ hardware.. just to get the game to run.
This pretty much requires more money to be spent. It also should be the $60 people will be wasting buying the game when they could download it. I mean no moraly turbid opinion here but just stating the fact, why pay for it when all the stuff you really need will be jacked up 300% of any realistic worth. They'll get you coming and going.. and piss of people without internet connections.
And, pulling out and polishing my DA pin.. Heck, EA could be doing many people a favour in requiring them to upgrade their hardware and finally sign for net citizenship. If afterward they aren't satisfied by the Sims 3, there's more in the valleys of the virtual nation beyond to keep them supplicant to an ISP.
We will hear the 200th recognized member state's plea.
EA needs to stop abusing our free trade agreement.
Denied.
The net free state's citizens continue to be oppressed by evil corporations.
but first.. adventures in price matching.. or; How Zim gets what Zim wants.
I've got a few harddrives.. being what most people call a geek, which is a light way of putting it, I have a thing that some people call a computer. Which is also putting it lightly.
It's my everything. My little world. My society when plugged into the net. My nation.
As such I need to have a dozen harddrives plugged in to hold everything that I don't have the heart to delete. And I do delete shit loads of content on a regular basis.
So.. I think this is my 22nd volume. Something like 14th or 15th harddrive in all. Something like 5 terabytes of storage space.
Some more context is that this morning I had to explain how and why I have need for 5 Tb of storage.
To fill that much space.. while deleting stuff constantly is easy.. but it's hard for some people to understand.
To fill it I download something like 300-600 gigs a month from the internet.
It's easy once you get bitten by the HD bug. I tend them.
Like for a while there I'd just download all my HD shows, several per week, listen to the online radio nearly 24/7 (XTC radio london [evolved fm] and Puls radio france).. amoung other things.
So.. the drives get filled.
Plus ripping blurays so I can play them through my Xbox also takes up crazy amounts of space.
So.. I found myself.. rather.. I kept catching myself craving a new drive.
It took all of 2 hours to finally LOOK for a new one.
Again.. being a geek, to put it mildly, a 1 Tb harddrive is an impulse buy, as would be buying the bluray drive in the first place, and the 24 inch monitor.
Don't get me wrong I'm very poor by most people's standards, but I'm not about to act like it. Just a bit of circumstance and bad planning.... yeah..
So I find myself looking for a drive. Having at least the one 1 Tb drive already, filled quickly considering what's on it.. I was like I only need a tide me over until I really need another big drive, and that's going to be 2 Tb plus.
500 seemed appropriate since I have 4 other 500 Gb drives.
But where to buy?
Most people have been saying getting it online works for them. I'm not a fan of online purchases. Preferentially I'm only for face to face purchases. Online is too impersonal.. rofl.. ain't that a bit paradoxical?
It's just not practical.
I'd rather go to my favorite little distributor and OEM PCCZONE.com in person. Yes it's also because the hottie behind the counter could melt glass.. and somehow I still don't know her name. In fact I slightly rue all the effort of the price matching adventure because it meant NOT seeing her.. rats well.
To buy then fell upon Future Shop or Best Buy. Best Buy is shit for PC parts so they were out.
My focus fell upon FS.
FS however is an oddity in that you will find sales people, assholes, and really smart and helpful associates.
It so happened that whatever imp within so desired the drive foresaw trouble and saw fit to prepare my 'Proof'.
A proof apparently is required when trying to do a price match because it doesn't matter that I could have dragged the asshole to PCCZONE.com which literally is 3 minutes away from FS.. no.. It's for posturing.
Quoth the Asshole.. You need an FRU which matches the the exact product you need.
It's OEM so it can come from anyone.
Rebuked Zim.. Don't BS me
repeat for 20-30 minutes
No price match.
However I did say I could just go to another FS store since my Proof happened to be 3 print outs:
- FS ad for the 500 gig Seagate drive, Sata II, 16 meg cache
- PCCZONE ad for the same
- Email from Seagate tech stating though the manufacturer part numbers are different the drives are identical
I understand this because.. having dozens and being a technician in this things of a sort, yeah.. the little plastic emballage does not invalidate my claim for a price match.
So minutes later, with my poorly worded email from some Saintly Seagate technician, Thanks Adrian A., at another FS store the price match claim was honoured without much more discussion.
Basically the one guy tried to argue down the claim too but his arguments efll to bits when the part numbers on the drives matched exactly.
Yay 4 me.
To then get home, graft the drive in.. and puzzle a moment about just what to do with it.
Whatever.. $50 saved doesn't need looking into the mouth.
So then to the Sims 3...
I find myself asking rather pointed questions about the Sims 3 and what it really is.
IGN has an interesting preview which roq'd my still foetal impressions of the game.
See my biggest argument against the game is that it won't sell. As a PC game, given Spore, given Demigod, blah blah quack quack.. it's likely that since the game was pirated already, two weeks ahead of the official retail street date that either:
It won't sell because enough people are tech savvy enough to BE downloading the game if they want it
It won't sell because soccer moms have converted from PC gaming mavens to MMORPG slaves, Wii sluts or 360 FPS killbots etc
It won't sell for the lack of content
http://pc.ign.com/articles/986/986159p1.html
After reading that though.. maybe, quite as usual, I draw my conclusions too quickly.
The picture half painted lacked the lesser known aspects of the game.
That 1, Maxis does have more content ready.. it just isn't for pirate, in the form of Riverview
That 2, Maxis does plan to fill the game with content.. which you'll have to buy
Which shatters my preconceptions:
That 1, it is going to take months for a real expansion which would impact initial sales
That 2, Maxis and EA are bat shit crazy
No, they aren't crazy, not exactly. And maybe yes the leak is as usual a calculated viral marketing ploy.
Their plan makes just enough sense that people may take the high road and buy the game and download all kinds of content.
Maxis of course would have to acknowlegde the pirate copies being Johny virally Appleseeded around the net by torrent traffickers.. and validate them.
If they don't I give them back all the crazy points that IGN article forced me to put up onto the shelf.
Basically they take the Microsoft approach, Spam the game out, regardless of their re and e-tail partners.. which as a publisher in some apparent financial trouble must seem an acceptable strategy.
Later on once people start getting attached, you stab, and stab again, and set out the catchment trays.
Being the Sims 3 exchange.
I could see myself redeeming Sim Points but I can't see myself paying money for them. Instead the fiat currency would better.. more conscionably appeal if it was coupon based. The more you spend at spurned and no doubt vexed re and e-tailer x, the more Sim Points you could earn towards EA's Store currency.
That would be fair to everyone.
Still.. if it came down to playing the game for the months until, and if any, EP's are launched.. then yeah my only major caveat with the article is that they state the game, shipped as is, will last those many long months.
The addition of Riverview coloured my view such that I'll have to wait on more information about Riverview's actual worth, both in terms of game play and in terms of getting purchasers to register, and if Maxis will validate 'stolen' torrent source code.
But still at the end of it all it's moot until Riverview ends up being secure. If any prerelease version of Riverview ends up being patchable into the pirated games sans registration to an EA teat.. it makes no difference has dastardly cunning their launch and short term strategy is.
It's unappealing to purchasers who do not have the means to electronically register their game. Fuck up #1
The other is expecting people to want to pay for downloads when their obviously trying to make it hard for the community of games to create and proliferate content for ourselves. Which has been the biggest aspect of the Franchise. Without communities and a near requirement to visit them for content, mods, and help.. the Sims 3 loses another big edge. Maxis effectively pokes the community in the eye and says tough shit, bring your monies, to buy the game and them buy the bits and pieces you enjoyed for free or nearly for free.
We've been baking this cake called the Sims for so long and now it is finally time to eat it.
Something just screams, the community ain't gonna stand for it.
Besides it's criminally irresponsible of Maxis and EA to really have leaked their own game to bypass the retail and e-tail channels if they intented to require players to register their games anyway. I mean the suggestion brought up by such a blattantly awful tactic is that EA should just grow some balls and release the same leaked game as a free to play download from their own servers. Otherwise they can stop official declaiming the 'damn dirty criminal pirates' who are helping their in their criminal bypass of the retail and etail channels. Assholes.
For Mc users the difference is completely moot too, they have to download the game because some don't have disc drives. *turns up hands*.. isn't that a fine bit of corporate collusion.. rofl.
About the single thing I could agree with from that article is that we can only wait and see. Most people probably aren't going to be bothered by or with online registration. The problem is the great many hundreds of thousands or millions who don't have the means. They miss out on Riverview through no fault of their own.
This after being forced, again, to upgrade their graphics cards to Sharder Model 2.0+ hardware.. just to get the game to run.
This pretty much requires more money to be spent. It also should be the $60 people will be wasting buying the game when they could download it. I mean no moraly turbid opinion here but just stating the fact, why pay for it when all the stuff you really need will be jacked up 300% of any realistic worth. They'll get you coming and going.. and piss of people without internet connections.
And, pulling out and polishing my DA pin.. Heck, EA could be doing many people a favour in requiring them to upgrade their hardware and finally sign for net citizenship. If afterward they aren't satisfied by the Sims 3, there's more in the valleys of the virtual nation beyond to keep them supplicant to an ISP.
We will hear the 200th recognized member state's plea.
EA needs to stop abusing our free trade agreement.
Denied.
The net free state's citizens continue to be oppressed by evil corporations.
LittleK15