| Thursday,
October 31, 2002
All Hallow's Eve
Resistance is Futile
The following has NOTHING to do with the picture above, which is
intended to be humor. What comes next is a deadly serious Halloween story.
It took me a while to find the actual stories; the
best way is to go the "read the Press" link on http://www.youmaybenext.com/news.html
; but once there it was horrifying enough.
If there were justice in this country, something horrible, physical,
and public would happen to lawyers who play games like this; while Patent
Office officials who stupidly issue patents on common activities ought to
be paraded in dunce caps to an auto-de-fe. They need not be burned alive,
but all the other humiliations are in order.
One good thing about an Empire: an emperor could rid us of legal
barnacles. The Emperor Claudius, for example, is said to have thrown out
over a thousand laws and regulations that harried the people of Rome and
nearly destroyed foreign commerce through barratry in the law courts. He
also exiled forty lawyers whose sole purpose seemed to him to be
obstructionism for their own personal gains...
I may have to go back to the satellite and dialup connectivity. Covad
seems unable to keep my communications going with any degree of
reliability. Yesterday the system connections died at least five times, no
warning, and for the first hour or so not even a message on their network
announcements hot line. Later there was a message, which said, the system
is having problems, and we don't know when it will be back.
A few minutes ago the same thing this morning. No warning. Just it's
gone. No connection.
I will certainly need a way to fail over to dialup; I may need to go
back to dialup for routine activities and the satellite for big files. I
do not recommend Megapath and their service provider Covad for anyone who
needs reliable connections.
Ten minutes and counting, from failure without warning. We'll see how
long this time. At least their hot line says the problems are Covad, and
Los Angeles. What it does not say is when it will be fixed. "We're
aware of the problem. We have no clues about when it will be fixed."
I wish Pac Bell offered iDSL, or DSL... Interestingly, the modem lights
show I have a good connection to a high speed line. Apparently the problem
is in the server. Tracert shows that I do get out into the wide world, but
then everything times out. Sigh.
And the satellite system (Mercury) turned out to have needed massive
software updates, so that it is taking a while. Of course not all that
long ago I wasn't on line at all, then I was only periodically with
dialup; now it's a flap if I lose connectivity for half an hour...
Anyway, this is by satellite. But I'll try the Megapath iDSL again
shortly. One problem is that there's no convenient way to know when it's
up, since the lights don't change...
And man! do I get tired of waiting for page requests by satellite.
Impatience is one by-product of good Internet connectivity...
Add to the unreliability of the Megapath system egregious unreliability
of the Earth and Beyond game network, and rather shaky software. You can
find yourself disconnected due to Megapath or due to E&B, without
warning and with considerable waste of time (Yeah, I know, talking about
wasting time when trying to play on-line games is a bit odd...) The result
is unpleasant. When E&B is working it can be frustrating, but a
lot of fun if you stick with it; but being repeatedly unable to connect,
or dropped in the middle of a fight, is infuriating.
I think their servers are overloaded. I suppose they are happy to be
successful, but too much success after collecting money for memberships
may work for cheap health clubs, but it's not the right thing for an on
line game company to do. It has taken me ten minutes of staring at the
"transfer" screen only to be dropped to the log-in again: and
that three times. This isn't acceptable if it keeps up. I expect they'll
fix it; growing pains and all that.
On the other hand, the Halloween specials -- goofy costumes, and Great
Pumpkins as advertising stunts for a weapons systems company -- are neat,
and may have added to the overload. I have to say, it's been fun.
And now I HAVE TO WORK...
Went hiking with Niven. Is now after dinner.
And clearly Earth & Beyond is overwhelmed. Their solution is simple
to dump you back to the login screen after a long period of
"loading", and act as if you had some kind of network link
problem. No explanation, no apology. This is more infuriating than if they
admitted the problem.
And they don't give you any estimate on how long the problem will last.
I wonder if they are signing up new accounts, while being unable to accommodate
the ones they have?
And after two hours it is still that way. This is no fun, and I can't
in conscience recommend this game. It's very frustrating when you want to
play, go through a long log-on sequence, and without explanation are just
kept waiting a long time, then dumped back to the login screen. If there
is anyone out there who has a way to communicate with the Earth &
Beyond people, I would like to know how to do it. I'd like to know if they
know what they are doing, and if something is going to be fixed.
Later: the problems have fixed themselves. I suspect that their
Halloween Specials got in the way two ways: new patches and art and
objects, and they attracted more people than they expected, which
overwhelmed the servers.
Anyway, it's back again, and when it's working I like it well enough.
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