Cogs can think.

So, I thought I’d give Grand Theft Auto 4 another go after I tore it apart in my review. And you know what?

The game is still a fcuking piece of shit. I have NO fucking idea why the press gave this game so much acclaim.

The missions are all strictly linear, without deviation. This means that the world gets “reset” as soon as you start a mission. This may seem insignificant, but it makes GTA4 nothing more than a stricly linear progression of missions where you are nothing more than a string puppet.

In Saints Row 2 (A MUCH BETTER GAME), missions are not linear. In Saints Row 2, you can be clever. In games like this, you can bet your sweet ass that a simple objective like “kill guy Abc in building Xyz” will end in him escaping the building and driving off, where you have to follow him. I hate sequences like that, so I get clever and use my Latin/Greek-school educated überbrain: in Saints Row 2, I usually parked stolen cars in front of all the exits before the mission started, blocking the thugs from escaping. This way, I could kill them inside, and not be forced into stupid car chase sequences.

In GTA4, by contrast, you sure can park cars in front of all the escape routes, but because everything gets reset to a prescripted setup as soon as you start the mission, it’s all for naught. You are forced to play the mission in exactly the way as the guys at Rockstar set out for you - to the fucking letter. Deviation is not possible.

So, while GTA4 might give you the illusion of being in a sandbox, the sandbox is nothing more but a glorified mission hub where you play a few strings of strictly linear missions where player ingenuity is not welcome. My überbrain gets to hop up and down impatiently, brimming with ideas of more clever ways to finish a mission, but GTA4, the mother of all sandbox crime games, just won’t fcuking let me.

The linearity of missions pokes through in an even more fcuked up way too. I’m currently trying to complete a mission where some guy is holed up with a whole bunch of his lackies. His lackies are easy to kill, but at the end, he escapes the building (HOW FCUKING UNEXPECTED OF YOU, GTA4), and hops into a boat, where you have to follow him on a bike. When I started the mission for the first time, I noticed the boat and realised he’d use it to escape, so against my better judgement, I decided to move the boat into the middle of the ocean, and destroy it. Pointless, of course, as the boat magically reappeared when the bad guy got there.

Anyway, when he gets on the boat, you are supposed to jump on a motorbike and follow him along the coastline. Another linearity limitation: you must follow the exact path as set out by Rockstar. Any deviation from the bike path set out by Rockstar will make you fail the mission. After trying this for the umpteenth bazzilionth time, I got pissed off, and decided to get him before he could enter the boat.

At one point during the chase, he jumps off a building. So, I jump too, and aim to land directly on top of him. He falls down, I get up and think: I got you now you sorry fcuk. I was already waving the flag, but I was too early. As it turns out, you are not allowed to kill him yet. He was invincible. I emptied my entire machine gun on him, but he wouldn’t die. He can’t die. The guys at Rockstar do not want you to be clever or good at the game - they want you to do the fcuking impossible motorbike chase.

And then you fail the mission for the 398573495730495872349075349796760158734674363426th time, and you have to start the entire 20 minute mission all over again because the guys at Rockstar were too busy coming up with ways to make your cousin Roman AS FCUKING ANNOYING AS POSSIBLE to still have time to implement a fcuking CHECKPOINT SYSTEM. On top of that, the bad guys all magically respawn, but your own used ammo and health does not. Meaning my bank account is now empty, so I can’t restock on ammo and health, and there are no other missions currently available to earn any money.

These issues come on top of all the problems I already touched in the review. GTA4 is an utter and total piece of shit - sure, a pretty piece of shit with sparkly diamonds and realistic lighting effects - but a piece of shit still. People are so busy jerking off to the graphics that they forget that the gameplay is so utterly constrained, broken, and idiotic.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is still one of the worst games I’ve ever played. Then again, I’m the idiot here, and Rockstar is laughing its ass all the way to the bank - I paid 64 EUR for this shit.

Ordered a new computer today, to replace my way-too-loud P4 media centre.

Foxconn L10-S3 barebone, which is a mini-ITX system which comes with a dual-core Intel Atom 330 processor (2x1.6Ghz) with HyperThreading enabled. It uses Intel’s 945GC chipset, which has an Intel GMA 950 graphics processor. The motherboard has two SATAII slots and one low-profile PCI slot. The small case has two 2.5″ bays, and one 5.25″ one. I ordered 2GB of DDR2-533 RAM, and a 160GB hard drive.

Apart from the PSU, the entire system is passively cooled, no fans whatsoever. Technically, you could use boot132 to install Mac OS X on it without actually modifying the Mac OS X disk, which means you’re not circumventing any protection measures from Apple. That will be the first article for OSNews.

I’m pretty psyched about it.

Sometimes, I ask myself: why do I do it? Why is the first thing I do in the morning to check the web for new stories to clear the submission queue, to try and get any really hot news out there as quickly as possible? Why is that also the last thing I do before I go to bed?

It’s not that I feel underappreciated - oh no - it’s just sad that some people have the apparent urge to deride your work every chance they get. No matter how much you improve things, no matter how much you listen, no matter how much you try to cater to their needs, there is always this small, but very vocal group of people who feel like they’re entitled to more. Like I owe them something. Like they can boss me around and order me to do things because they somehow think they “know” how to run a website.

The problem is that most of the people that read OSNews are silent readers. They don’t have an account, they don’t comment. So this small and vocal group have this delirious idea that they are a majority, because they are too stupid to realise that OSNews’ readership is much, much, much larger than the small group who regularly comments.

And me, I have to accept all their bossing, whining, entitling. I have to suck it, swallow it, and if I don’t smile while doing it, they’ll threaten to shove it down somebody else’s throat.

You know what? If you don’t like OSNews, you are free to go somewhere else. Heck, you can even start your own website. In fact, I urge you to do so. I hope it will be a massive success, that you’ll have lots of visitors.

Then we’ll see how truthfully you can smile.

When even MacDailyNews - of all places - agrees with your article, then there’s something seriously wrong.

I’ve been spending lots of time on Mac websites the past few days since Safari 4’s release, and the community is torn. Half got used to it after a few days and thinks it’s the next best thing since sliced bread - the other half hates Safari 4’s tabtitlebar to bits. It’s not very common to see the Mac community so torn up over something. Usually only a few mouthy people disagree with Apple’s wisdom, but rarely are they with this many.

Funnily though, looking at the OSNews comments’ section - no one is actually able to refute any of the arguments put forth by the detractors. If you like the tabtitlebar, that’s fine, great, awesome - but that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to like it too, or that those that don’t like it are idiots, arrogant, or “killing OSNews”.

It just means that Apple has to go back to the drawing board - or piss off half of its userbase.

Cupertino’s choice. There’s always Camino, Omniweb, and Firefox.

As most OSNews readers here will already know, I published a very interesting article today - an interview with Nicki Clyne, who plays a very important character in Battlestar Galactica.

I must say, it was a very fun experience; reading through all her previous interviews, her blog, studying her work, and trying to form a picture in my head of who she is (which inevitably is a flawed picture since information on the internet is inherently wrong). Let me just say that right now, I’m actually a bit sad this wasn’t a face-to-face interview. She seems like a really nice person to interview ‘for realsies’ (instead of via email).

If you haven’t already, be sure to read it.

Several small things.

I have a new main desktop computer, built it myself from hand-picked parts. AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor (4x2.2Ghz), 4GB of gaming RAM from Geil (whatever the hell gaming RAM means), and a fancy motherboard that can connect the on-board graphics chip to a discrete one via SLI. Also bought a red Asus case and a power supply picked because it was silent. It’s a blazing-fast machine now, and I’m really happy with it.

It set me back a mere 320 EUR. I forgot to order cooling paste, so I quickly drove to town to buy a tube of the stuff, and as I walked by the Apple store and noticed the prices, I couldn’t help but chuckle.

I also have a new job. I can’t say much about it, but it’s nothing fancy. I’m quite happy with it, in any case. This new job does mean more time for OSNews, which is always a good thing.

I bought This Is Alphabeat today, Alphabeat’s debut album. Great stuff.

Last night’s new Battlestar Galactica episode kicked major ass. Awesome stuff.

That will be all.

I try to stay away from angry rant blogging, since it doesn’t really make me look good, but sometimes, I jut have to let of steam a bit.

Not too long ago, Eugenia took down GnomeFiles.org because it got hacked, and she didn’t feel like fixing it any more. She set up a redirect from GnomeFiles.org to OSNews.com, which is not weird seeing OSNews is more or less GnomeFiles’ parent.

Oh boy, the reactions.

From the OSNews contact form:

Whatever lame reasons lead you to put down gnomefiles.org just don’t redirect me to this osnews.. it’s a shame that a site like gnomefiles.org is in hands of incompetents…

And from the OSNews mailing list, a certain Ray Carter:

OS news

Why have you taken over the Gnome Files site?

God I hate people like you. I shall never read your rag and will advise others to avoid you like the plague.

If you are a yank may many hurricanes forever plague you.

Why don’t you just go away.

I was baffled. Here OSNews and Eugenia are, working hard to provide a service to the GNOME/Gtk+ community - a service they aren’t providing themselves - and this is what we/she get in return? Eugenia has received almost nothing but crap from the GNOME and Gtk+ guys, for her often harsh but almost always valid criticisms, and despite all that, she continued to work on providing a valuable service for them. A service, I might add, almost all self-respecting desktop environments/operating systems provide.

You know what? The GNOME and Gtk+ community can GO FCUK THEMSELVES. If I were Eugenia, I’d let GnomeFiles stay offline, and I wouldn’t find a maintainer at all. Let them figure it out themselves.

Bunch of ungrateful twats.

I have temporarily stepped back from OSNews due to health issues (nothing serious). I’m cutting down my computer usage to the absolute minimum, which includes this weblog. This might take a few weeks, I don’t know.

I needed a break anyway.

Regarding OSNews… I became the managing editor (whatever the hell that means) of OSNews in June of 2005, so it’s been three years already. During those three years, I’ve published stories on a nearly daily basis, with only a few breaks here and there because I was away for the weekend or too busy with life beyond my laptop’s lid. I have my priorities straight, you know.

We also introduced some massive, massive changes. We released a completely new version of OSNews, with a completely overhauled website both internally and externally, and it took us a few graphical revisions to get it right - and I believe we are on the right track there. As far as looks go, I find the ‘new’ OSNews to be highly pleasing, comfortable on the eyes, readable, and free from clutter. Great work by mostly Adam, mystery designer Britney, and OSNews reader Kroc.

In addition to that, I personally made some hefty changes to our editorial policy. Most importantly, I introduced something we merely refer to as ‘new style’ items: items with more background information, more details, some context, and an opinion or two. Despite cold feet here and there concerning our readership’s response, they seem mostly positive. I’m quite happy with how that turned out.

A partially successful addition was Focus Shift, the OSNews comic. Quite a few people genuinely liked the comics I drew, but as was to be expected, quite a few hated them too. As some may have noticed by now, Focus Shift is no more - I liked doing it, but I simply lacked the time, and when it comes down to it, I obviously find OSNews itself more important than a comic. So, yeah, we shifted our focus away from Focus Shift (I owe you a punch in my face for that lame joke).

That’s all in the past now, so on to the future.

I have a certain vision in my head for how our editorial staff should function. I want to move away from the situation where OSNews was effectively Eugenia’s or my own weblog, and have a larger editorial staff where each member has his or her own speciality and areas of interest, so that we can offer more detailed and accurate stories. This will also allow for a more diverse stream of opinions coming from OSNews, which is something I’ve been really struggling with. Doing OSNews all by myself is doable at a glorified-RSS-feed-level, but with the new style items, my personal opinion just gets a little too obvious simply because there’s no counterweight. I want to combat that, and hence our quest to find more editors.

So, that’s how I envision OSNews’ future: multiple editors writing more detailed items about their personal areas of interest. Yes, that sounds a lot like Ars Technica. That’s because Ars Technica is a really, really good website. However, Ars has an entirely different focus than we do, and I believe that OSNews has a lot more opportunity to grow as sort of the “Ars of the OS world” than it has as the “glorified RSS feed of the OS world”.

However, we’ll obviously need everyone’s help to get there. If you believe you would be a welcome addition to the staff, let us know by sending an email to OSNews’ owner David Adams, or, when submitting a news item, try to write a bit more, give some background, make it a few paragraphs longer with links back to other relevant OSNews publications.

But most importantly, bear with us. Running a website about a field with so many personal opinions and conflicting interests is very, very difficult, and more than once have I failed to balance properly on the tight rope. Having more editors will certainly diminish my personal reflection on the news that gets posted on OSNews, and that’s a good thing for all of us.

Thanks for commenting on and reading OSNews.

Meanwhile, in #haiku:

[05:43] Thom_Holwerda: link
[05:43] Thom_Holwerda: god im waking up at 5am just to update osnews
[05:43] DeadYak: hah
[05:43] absabs: :D
[05:43] Thom_Holwerda: i should be getting paid for this nonsense
[05:44] Thom_Holwerda: cant these guys do their thing according to old-world time
[05:44] Thom_Holwerda: GMT, you know.
[05:44] Thom_Holwerda: my cat sure is cheerful at 5.44am