On the blogue on 19th, re bejewelled2:
G'bye, PopCap
I have just deleted the game from my bookmarks. I won't bother to find it again.
Played it for three months, on and off. My (paper) record stands at 318911, and my lowest ever was at 612. Despite being an old geek, I'm still capable of keeping record on paper.
Oh, I think I owe some explanation, why did I forget the game. Well, they weren't satisfied that I'm not watching the ads. So every once in a while, it wouldn't load the next level until something happened, like a variable being set to a certain value (just guessing here), which would have been done if the ad was loaded and shown.
Like I said elsewhere, anyone can try to pull such a trick on me, once. That once was used up tonight. Ciao. I don't need your games, or your ads, and I won't even know what you were advertising in the ads that I didn't filter out. And, ah, I'm still pissed off that you offered me a discount in february, when the game would have cost 10$ (and you kept that offer displayed for more than two weeks after it expired). I said, 5$ is the top that I was willing to pay, after I heard what you charge the iPod owners. You screwed yourself.
This is actually just the epilogue. Go had the game on her iPod, so we played a bit while she was here. Then I searched, we can afford it, why not, tried it, liked it, and then found that the discount price was 10$ for Windowses, but 2$ for macs. Well that got me seriosuly becunted, why so much cheaper for them, their machines cost twice more than ours do. And having read Joel's article on „Software pricing“, I knew how segmenting the market works. You give a discount to a segment of the market where you feel there's room for expansion, and that 10% of the public earns you 2% more customers. Then the remaining 90% of your existing and potential customers hear about it and get mad at you, and you can begin to calculate how many of them you may lose. Same goes for giving discount for new customers only.
(off a recording on the sansa, typing a week later)
Newspeak has already been made. You cannot express anything, except in terms of newspeak, which means anything unpleasant, unfit for political goals of the creators of the newspeak is impossible to express.
This has happened, and that's obvious in english language. The political force which has created the newspeak is christianity. No less.
What do they say when they are about to panic? They say probably the most useless words: "ohmygodwreallgonadie". Or just "ommagawd". Which doesn't mean anything, really, it's just a gratuitous insertion of religion where there's no need for it. Serves no practical purpose in the language, but there it is.
The religion has insinuated itself into the language to such depths, that you cannot even curse without stepping on its taboos, or toes, whichever. You cannot say anything without stepping into it. The term is ugaziti.
So, newspeak is alive and well, sohelpyougod.
The part I didn't record, but was always near, is the explanation of uselessness of the utterance. First, it's adressing the imaginary friend. They send kids to a shrink when they insist on keeping one. Second, if the belief is firm, it's clear that the guy is exactly the one who got them into the dire trouble. And „we're all gonna die“ is a truism, always correct, ergo irrelevant. Look around, see what you can do, instead of singing hymns and dirges.
And, BTW, started a Netflix subscription yesterday. They had some ugly marketing gimmick which annoyed me endlessly, so I delayed this for 2-3 years. Not that they ever fixed it, it's just that I've found that they have stuff they don't advertise, and I wanted to see that.
15-IV-2009 - 8-IV-2026