Archive for October, 2007

Timeline of a failure

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

I’ve always believed in being completely transparent and accountable in my “business practices” related to Classic DOS Games. After all, I’ve created a website where I offer downloads to other people’s work, but I’m asking for donations? Most websites like mine talk about their hosting expenses, but don’t tell you what those expenses are, so I created a detailed accounting of all expenses related to the website on the Donations page.

I’m going to be equally honest about the Classic DOS Games DVD. There have been three orders so far: donations of $20, $20, and $100. It took me almost two months to ship them. I’d like to explain why.

When I first had the idea, it seemed relatively simple. I would buy a DVD burner (I’ve been using a generic 32x CD-ROM since 1998), and I chose the Plextor PX-810SA, which I purchased for $93.00 plus tax ($106.02) on August 19. I could have purchased a capable burner for $35, but the Plextor PX-810SA is the best. Plextor consistently produced the highest quality optical drives since I first read a review of 4x CD-ROM drives in PC Shopper, which selected the Plextor QuadPlex as the best drive available. When review sites analyze the quality of DVD burners, they test the discs for C1 and C2 errors with a Plextor drive. I chose a more expensive product because I wanted the best possible quality.

I also wanted to use CD labels so that I wouldn’t just be sending out a DVD with a label written on in marker. I purchased the Memorex CD/DVD Label Maker Kit Expert because it’s the only CD label product that Best Buy sells, and because it comes with a device that attaches the label and makes sure that everything is perfectly aligned. It also has some useless label software, but I didn’t know how bad it was until after I purchased it. At any rate, it cost $28.99 + tax ($33.05). So now we’re up to $139.07.

On September 1, I went to Canada Post to find out about shipping options. They sell a Bubble Mailer for CDs that is “water & tear resistant” and very professional. They’re $1.59 each ($1.82 after tax), and shipping will also be just a few dollars per disc. I can live with that. I bought two, so I’m up to $142.71.

I needed to ship the DVD in something to protect it during shipping and beyond. A jewel case might crack, and besides, that could get expensive. I found Dynex sells a 100-pack of CD Sleeves for $9.49 + tax ($10.82), that are made of soft plastic and have a special non-scratch sheet inside. DVDs will be protected, and I’m only out 10.8 cents per sleeve. Sold! So now I’m up to $153.53.

I designed a monochrome label that was just black text on the white matte label paper, and I was going to print it out on my Brother HL-230 monochrome laser printer. Then a former high school teacher of mine informed me that I could use the school’s HP Color LaserJet 4700n to print color labels. Those things are huge and sell for about $1800. It was inconvenient having to go into the school to print each individualized label, but I could live with that. (Actually I can’t. What happens during summer vacation? I didn’t think far enough ahead on that one.) So I designed two color labels, and fell in love with the idea of color labels. I could never go back to black text on a white label after designing these!

Classic DOS Games DVD Cover 1

Classic DOS Games DVD Cover 2

Unfortunately, the printer wouldn’t print on my label paper. The perforation in the paper where the sticker peels off of the page seems to leave an impression on the electrostatic image, causing a black ring the same size as the perforation to be printed half way across the label. I tried everything, but the outrageously expensive behemoth couldn’t print on my paper.

As I said before, a printer that I can only access under staff supervision on weekdays during the school year doesn’t really cut it. I could only print DVDs from September to June, and only for as long as the school would put up with me. It was a bad idea. I would have to buy my own color laser printer. And I had to find one that printed on my label paper soon! Two orders had come in for the DVD, but I still couldn’t print labels!

I called the computer store that gets most of my business and explained my problem. We’ve had a business relationship for years. I asked if they had any color laser printers in stock that I could do a test print on, and they said that they use a Xerox Phaser 6120N in their office. I tested it out and printed on my label paper without any problems. It was on sale for $339 + tax ($386.46), so I ordered one immediately, and apologized for the delay to the folks who had requested DVDs. It was September 22.

So, it’s October 9 and they still don’t have my printer. A nearby computer store that I used to shop at was selling the Xerox Phaser 6110N for $257 + tax, and I had to incur a 3% credit card fee because I was out of cash ($302.94 total), and they had one in stock. I did my due diligence and found out that the 6110N has half the RAM and a smaller tray than the 6120N, and it prints a bit slower. I can live with that. There’s only a small difference in model numbers, so I emailed Xerox and asked if the print quality would be comparable, and they said yes. I purchased the printer, took it home, and printed some labels!

The print quality was noticeably inferior even on regular paper, and it wouldn’t print on my label paper at all. The toner looked burnt on and clumped all over the label. It would flake off with just a touch. I could have bought new label paper, but the print quality was still lousy. I had no choice but to return the printer and pay a “20% restocking fee”. 20% of $302.94 is $60.59, they only refunded $235.29, which means that I paid $67.75 to not buy a printer. So now we’re up to $221.28, and I’m still waiting for my $386.46 Xerox Phaser 6120N!

Well, the printer still hasn’t come in, and perhaps it never will. After waiting a month for my printer, I called the store and asked them to let me come in and print all of my labels on their Phaser 6120N. They agreed, and on October 23, I fulfilled the first three orders, which amounted to $140.00 in donations. So if you’re wondering why I’ve gone to such great expense on this project, it’s because people have been so generous! They deserve to get something really good for their donation, so I chose to burn the DVDs with the best DVD writer, and print the labels with the best color laser printer I could afford, and ship them in a quality CD sleeve. I’m trying to create a collectible, so I’m not going to ship out a DVD-R with a label written on with a Sharpie! I hope that everyone will be happy with the product, and I can finally say that I’m happy with what I sent them.

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Tracker of lies

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

This post isn’t particularly game related, and believe me, I have some blog entries about games coming. I just can’t really write those right now because my good computer is broken.

I would like to talk about Archive.org, though. I mentioned in my interview on ASCII World that I think Archive.org is perhaps the second most useful site in the world. To people who aren’t as obsessed with preserving old games as I am, it should be #1. Archive.org archives the entire history of the internet, which makes it a database of pretty much everything that has ever been online! I find it useful for searching the websites of defunct classic DOS game companies. I also find it useful for keeping people honest.

I caught someone in a lie recently by looking up old versions of his website in Archive.org. Archive.org respects the robots.txt file, and doesn’t archive any page that webmasters have forbidden search engines to crawl. I agree with that. They take it even farther by retroactively removing any page from their archive that is excluded by the site’s robots.txt file now. When I exposed the liar’s lie, he changed the name of the page and added the old page to his robots.txt file, and now it can no longer be accessed from Archive.org. This lie affects all of his customers, now and in the future, and all record of the lie has been erased forever.

As you may have inferred, I have a problem with this. Archive.org’s slogan is “Universal access to human knowledge”, but how can they call it universal if it can be censored? I think that when you post something on the internet without excluding it from web crawls, you are consenting to have that information appear in searches and be archived forever (this is a good reason to never say anything online that you don’t want permanently recorded). You shouldn’t be able to do the wrong thing, such as post something illegal, commit copyright infringement, libel or defame someone, and then be able to cover your tracks afterwards by editing your robots.txt file.

Archive.org’s About page explains their mission and the ideals that it fails to live up to. The comments in boldface are mine.

Why the Archive is Building an ‘Internet Library’

Libraries exist to preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. It’s hard to preserve and provide access to artifacts if you keep letting people delete them! If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it’s essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.

Many early movies were recycled to recover the silver in the film. The Library of Alexandria – an ancient center of learning containing a copy of every book in the world – was eventually burned to the ground. Even now, at the turn of the 21st century, no comprehensive archives of television or radio programs exist. Heck, even we allow our archives to be burned. And we put up less of a fight than the Alexandrians did!

But without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Which is why we want people to be able to erase their failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our “digital dark age.”

The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet – a new medium with major historical significance – and other “born-digital” materials from disappearing into the past. Unless the author wants the materials to disappear into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come. You know, whatever survives of the record.

Okay, I’m being a bit of a jerk here, but hypocrisy brings out the worst in me. They claim to value preservation, but they’re willfully compliant in allowing data to be lost! I know they probably have legal concerns about archiving data that people don’t want archived, and nobody wants a lawsuit. Still, I’d like them to fight at least a little bit. When the U.S. government started asking search engines to hand over their search records, most of them said no. When the RIAA subpoenaed personal information about people they wanted to file lawsuits against, including a number of Canadians, the ISP that I worked for, and every other major Canadian ISP, created press releases to announce that they would never release their customers’ information without a fight. I’m proud to say that my employer never released any information to the RIAA. We stood up to the bully, and we won. It seems like Archive.org is going out of its way to avoid a fight that may never occur!

Now, don’t get me wrong. They’re doing a fantastic job, and thank God that someone is bothering to archive the internet at all. I’m sure that 99.9999% of all of the web pages that there have ever been are still on there. Of course, the more popular the service becomes, the more people will remove their web pages from the archive. Especially people who have something to hide!

Now, I know, I know, the police could always issue a warrant to get the archived page. That is, as long as they knew that it had existed at some point. If no one notices the crime before the perpetrator covers it up, they’re SOL.

I’m not suggesting that Archive.org should be a tool for police to catch criminals, or for investigative journalists to expose lies. I think it should be neutral and unpolitical. It should simply archive everything exactly the way it was. That’s what archiving is. An archive records history, warts and all, including the things that we would prefer not to have archived. You made a choice to put something on the internet. If you later regret that choice, I have no sympathy for you. History records itself, and it has no bias. The past is the past, and no one should try to erase it or change it.

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The Gaming Capital

Monday, October 8th, 2007

I found a game at at my local Salvation Army Thrift Store a year or two ago that will likely be a blast from the past for some of you. It was Wizardry Trilogy 2, which collects Wizardry V, VI and VII. The first seven games in the Wizardry series of RPGs were sold between 1981 and 1992, and Wizardry VIII was released in 2001. Since the oldest games are more than 20 years old now, I thought that they might be good candidates for freeware releases, so I did some research into Sir-Tech and found out that they’re based in Ottawa, Canada, where I live.

Last year I got addicted to Clyde’s Adventure. Moonlite Software is best known for developing Hocus Pocus, Clyde’s Adventure, and Clyde’s Revenge, and they also made Taking Care of Business, Crazy 8s, and Cribbage. I decided to look them up and, once again, found that they were located nearby in my hometown of Ottawa.

A few days ago I was playing Vinyl Goddess From Mars, developed by Union Logic Software Publishing, who also made Radix: Beyond the Void and TeenAgent. When I quit the game, I saw a familiar area code and noticed that they were located a few blocks from my house, in Nepean, a community in Ottawa. I could walk to their headquarters, but there’s a bus that comes down my street that would take me right there.

There are three significant game developers in my neighborhood. That’s pretty good. Ottawa has always been one of the largest high tech employers in Canada, but I’ve never thought of it as being a gaming community. It turns out that the capital of Canada is also the gaming capital of Canada.

While I’m on the topic of Canadian gaming companies, Psycon Software (Cybersphere, Cybersphere Plus) is from Calgary, Alberta, and Summit Software (Crates, Jelly Bean Factory) is from Gormley, Ontario, just north of Toronto. It’s interesting to see the Canadian contribution to classic DOS games.

Great games come from all over the world, but I think it’s pretty cool so that so many of the best DOS games came from my community. Since it’s Thanksgiving here in Canada, I’m giving thanks for the many Canadians who have given the world countless hours of quality entertainment.

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