The Reals

I've always had an eerie fascination towards The Sims - it always seemed to be the game I'd borrow, install, fiddle around for half an hour and then forget about (until the hard disk became full). Ever since it came online, I've wondered how it would be like actually playing the thing (provided I had the time and the attention span to actually keep at it during a couple of weeks), so coming across this item on CNN was interesting. It seems that people always find a way to run rackets and harass people, no matter what the game is - taking alternate realities' built-in rules and laws and bending them to become the kind of characters they can't be in real life.

I shouldn't be too surprised. Anti-social and aberrant behaviour in games dates from the MUD age. It happened in nethack. It happened in Ultima. It rose to an utterly childish degree of abuse in Counter-Strike, and can be witnessed in Quake matches every single day.

And, of course, there is The Matrix. Now that's a simulation game if I ever saw one.

Thanks to a kind loan (thanks, M.) I'm currently fiddling with a 7250i trying to get the Nokia Image Upload Protocol to work. Oddly enough, it doesn't. I'm still trying to figure out if it actually supports HTTP "upload" like the 7650 or if the example Nokia links to on its 7250i page uses another protocol - my best guess right now is an MMS-based upload to a predefined address, which is not the same thing at all.

The built-in browser supports XHTML, which is nice - and well enough for me to view Slashdot, sections of this site (if I render for it specifically) and a few comics. Definetly recommended for non-techies, but I still prefer my 7650.