The Dink Network

Poll Comments

The following are the best poll comments, in my extremely subjective and biased opinion.

Poll 9: Favorite Message Board Forum?

5) I rarely go to anything but development.. i put up with enough inane drivel in my life as it is, i don't need 14 year old european twits typing in caps and spouting inflamitory garbage
4) Tal's Pants?! I'm not even going to touch that... in every sense of the phrase.
3) Tal's 'parts'? Are any these private?
2) I like to no that other people have no lives like me!
1) I'm having trouble getting into Tal's Pants. I just can't seem to open it, for some reason. It's a shame... I'd really like to see what's to talk about in there.

Poll 10: What Forum would you like to see added?

5) why hasn't this question been asked before???
4) Offtopic is good for all of those, and site suggestions can be in general, we don't need another place for mindless banter from pre-adolescant twits
3) WC vs the World!
2) The Flatline is God Forum
1) Cheese Throwing?

Poll 11: Are you going to donate funds so the file mirror can stay?

5) File planet isn't bad, really, there's never any waits on our server, and it's not horribly slow
4) I hate file planet they wont even let me log in to the public servers without my gamespy id
3) I am cheap and selfish, no?
2) I would if I had money and could donate it.
1) If I had two nickels to rub together I might donate until then i'm accepting donations

Poll 12: Favorite non-Dink RTSoft game?

5) mmm yes it comforts my butt
4) only one of them i've played.. yeah, i'm a loser among losers
3) It's mario... in space!
2) I only Play diablo!
1) LORD totally rules! I live in it and I love my life now! P.S. The bard is just hot.

Eternal Pettiness - Why Eternal Suicide Is No Longer Available to Download

Please note: the *goal* of this little rant is to chide both WC and Nitronic, and to agree with both of them as well. And to show you what I knew. Or something. To WC: don't resign (again) over this. To Nitronic: no, I still won't remove your account, dangit, as I'm sure it would be a leading event for the world to end.

It all started in the good ol' days, about last Thursday. As everyone knows, Thursdays aren't very good. I was doing the mandatory lawn mowing (the stupidest thing almost everyone does without question), and someone left a message on the answering machine. A while later I find out about it, and I discover that WC called me. Just to let all you ducks and pigs know, WC has never called me before. It isn't like us staff members call each other all the time; this was a super rare occurrence, probably on the scale of someone playing Dink without burning any trees or beheading any ducks.

It turns out something is up on TDN, so I connect to the internet and see. WC tells me that Kyle uploaded a midi pack from Eternal Suicide (Nitronic's recent D-Mod endeavor) and he removed it because he thought it violated the "Do not send a 'pack' of files that already exist on The Dink Network... for example, do not zip up the entire Friends Beyond Trilogy and submit it." rule. I agreed. And so the day finished itself without much commotion, and the Day of Fries arrived.

I log on in the morning, and Kyle is there. I chat with Kyle a bit, and he makes a couple good points... why do we allow graphics packs and such from D-Mods, but not midi packs? So I was this close to reversing WC's decision and allowing Kyle to upload the Midi pack (again). But then I ask if Nitronic created the Midis. Kyle says no, they're from various tv shows/movies/games/etc.

And this definitely violates one of the rules. If you're an ol' timer, you remember Points. And Point Whores. Basically, people would just go to any ol' web site and download some midis, pack them up, and send them to The Dink Network so they could get points. Points were since abolished, but the fact that you would take someone else's midis and get *any* credit for them didn't make any sense. Hence the rule.

So I tell Kyle this, and after a bit he agrees. Now I'm thinking the worst is over, and The Dink Network has survived another petty squabble in the vast electronic weather system known as the internet. Ha. Hahaha. Stupid Dan-from-Friday-morning... he was very naive.

So then I log on later that afternoon. WC wants to call me, something has come up. So I disconnect, and he calls me to say that Nitronic wants Eternal Suicide removed, all reviews for Eternal Suicide removed, all reviews he ever wrote removed, all message board posts he made removed, his account removed, a llama, and ice cream. Ok, not the llama and ice cream. But you get the idea. Needless to say, it would take a Herculean effort to do that. There was some discussion a while back on Author's Rights to not have their file hosted on TDN if they wished, and we agreed that we should bring the 'Neglected' thing back so Eternal Suicide couldn't be downloaded any more. And so Eternal Suicide was 'Neglected', and WC made his infamous news post.

So exactly why did Nitronic want Eternal Suicide removed in the first place? I had a theory, which involved comets, chickens, and robots, which didn't turn out to be correct. Dang. So basically I was as mystified as anyone else. WC assumed that Nitronic didn't want Eternal Suicide up any more because maybe he felt that WC was being biased against him. And maybe he was. WC's initial reasons seemed to twist the rule to fit the file. But after the realization that Nitronic never made the Midis, that didn't make much sense.

Nitronic told me that WC said it was Kyle's fault that the Midi Pack was uploaded, and that this was the reason why Nitronic made his demands. But... it was technically Kyle's fault. Kyle uploaded it, added it to the database, made the news posting, etc. Did Kyle know that we no longer accepted midi packs that weren't created by the submitters? Nope. But ignorance of a rule still means you 'broke' a rule. But it was harmless.

Removed This was originally the slam-everyone section of the rant. It has hence been removed, because its been plonking my conscience all morning... it just doesn't make much sense for me to criticize folks for their actions which I don't understand.

Um... so why exactly is Eternal Suicide unavailable for your downloading pleasure? Beats me. I'd attribute it to two alpha-males striving for dominance over the other, waiting until one caves into the pressure. But that's probably completely wrong as well.

Matrix Reloaded Review (relatively Spoiler free)

The Matrix Reloaded was probably my most-anticipated movie of all time. I really liked The Matrix. Was The Matrix perfect? Far from it. Characterization was slim-to-none. But it did something quite cool by adding a bit of philosophy with an action film. And all of the action scenes made sense (i.e. they were justified), and Cypher's betrayal tied it all together.

Unfortunately, The Matrix Reloaded just doesn't live up to its predecessor. After thinking about it for a while, I guess the way I feel is how Neo felt in the first Matrix when he was told he wasn't 'The One' by the Oracle: disappointed at what could have been. In that line of thought, I'm also hoping that Matrix Revolutions will make up for Reloaded. After all, Neo was wrong.

Sadly, the only truly justified action scene in Reloaded is near the beginning, with Neo kicking some agents for a little bit. The rest is just... 'meh, more Kung Fu'. I mean Christ. Neo can do whatever the heck he wants in the Matrix. Why Kung Fu? In the 'weapon battle' where he fights French Man's minions (you'll know it if you see it) I just don't understand why the heck Neo is fighting these guys. Shouldn't he be with Trinity and Morpheus helping them doing what they're going? But no, Neo is just doing silly 'Wire-Fu' against some 'rogue programs'. There is no sense of danger or urgency. Hell, Neo is The One, after all. Why he wastes his time against these fools, I have absolutely no idea.

Then there is the much-vaunted 'Burly Brawl', where Neo fights 100 or so Agent Smith clones. Does it look cool? Yeah, pretty much. Is it heart-pumping action? Not really. I read one summary that gave the scene more depth, and I'll have to see it again to see if it fits what is shown.

The entire Freeway scene was pretty dang neat. The last 20 or so minutes (after the Freeway) is the best material, especially so with the final 5 minutes.

Personally, I feel that the movie lacks any emotional involvement. Sure, the machines are digging to Zion to destroy it... but it lacks a human element. I mean, in the first one we had Cypher's betrayal. It wasn't one of the better betrayal stories of all time, but it was good enough to carry a huge chunk of the movie. In this one, we have no parallel. The good guys do good things, and the bad guys do bad things. It's just so infuriating.

I guess another way to think of Reloaded is to imagine The Matrix ending when Morpheus reveals the truth in the Construct with the TV, and filling in the rest of the movie with other things. Just when things start to get interesting, the movie ends.

That's why I have such high hopes for Revolutions.

The New Forum

This Recondite is getting far too long, so I'll be brief. Right now I'm writing a versatile forum system that will bascially improve the code that runs the current message board. Will you notice any changes? Not really. Things will be done slightly different, but the majority will stay the same. The main change is the File Discussion forums will just 'work' better, and you will be able to set a Preference so you don't see the division between the different Forums at all, so it'll work just like the old board from months ago. I'm guessing I could be done next week, but I have no idea what code I'll be able to re-use and what I'll have to code from scratch.

Links

I had two Yahoo! News links I was saving for this Recondite, but they 'expired'. That's lame.

Jaina's Brother's quotes.txt: Some quotes done in the RTSoft style, from Jaina Jade's (an old school Dinker) brother.
Sewage blamed in Hong Kong SARS outbreak - Gross.
COKE PULLS ITS ‘NAZI' TOY ROBOT - Nazy Robots! Run for your life!
Man Guilty in Toe Sucking - A guy gets 300 years in prison for sucking 12 different kids' toes. That's it; nothing explictly sexual.