Why OUYA can be a failure

I was actually pretty excited then I first saw and read the concept of an OUYA. An open game console, isn't that great? But recently I've discovered some thing that missed somehow from me, but I think it's rather important:



This is a serious statement. All OUYA games will be a free-to-play. And most of free-to-play games are simple money-making machines, the legitimate rest are basically using "try before you buy" (shareware) or subscription model.

Serious gamers don't like free-to-play model at all. While it's still possible sell a game in more or less "standard" model in OUYA (as I guess), I think it's rather confusing that free-to-play model is enforced by a console which considered to be a most open game console ever? Absolute nonsense!

As a side effect this type of restriction is actually encourages and attract game developers who are specialized in free-to-play games, thus making a OUYA game marked flooded with "bad" games, which will prevent some "real" games in gaining popularity.

I think OUYA should remove this absurd limitation, if they want to name their console a truly open system. Not only this will attract more developers to console, it's also good for a future reputation of OUYA. I personally will not buy OUYA until this limitation is removed from a system.

A great article on Free-to-play games

An excellent article about Free-to-play games. Go read it now.

As for my personal opinion, I agree with Andrew in a way that every customer always wants a bargain. That's why, for example, I always buy every HumbleBundle that is out. If I even don't like any of the games (that is never happened, BTW) I wouldn't be angry at all, since I got it almost for free. OTOH, I will never buy a free-to-play game, since I'm guaranteed to make a not-a-bargain deal, and that's not the only thing. This kind of games are naturally corrupted, like an arcade, to make money out of you. It feels kind of weird, and I just ignore it, since there is a lot of other games available.

I feel sorry for a little kids (and their parents), which are particularly naive and vulnerable to this kind of abuse. They don't realize what this is and sometimes spend lots of money for some 'crystals' in a game with their favorite cartoon heroes. I guess that's inevitable evil of games becoming a less art and more money making industry.

I don't think that it poses any real threat to gamers, eventually all who exploit this approach to much will suffer the consequences. The only sad part here is that talent is wasted driven by greed.

One more exceptional blog

This guy articles are just awesome. I must read them all! As in introduction I personally recommend to read a this one.

On Windows 8 and it's Modern UI

I'm actually quite a fan of a Windows OS. I've used it starting from Windows 95 and missed only Vista (I also don't count Millenium edition since it was in parallel with Windows 2000 on that time). I thought Vista was a bad version, and indeed, it was. However it was bad in a sense of it made you grumble and mumble periodically 'ah, that's how you do it now'. It was still a good old Windows OS. Eventually a tuned up version of Vista is most successful and popular Microsoft OS of all the time I guess. I was pretty satisfied with Windows starting from Windows 2000.

However situation with Windows 8 is different. For the start you can read this article, which is quite reasonable analysis of the new UI. The so-called Modern UI is terrible. So are terrible each and every new website made using this approach, including, of course, new Microsoft web site.

As a conslusion to this article I can add, that somehow Microsoft now wants you to learn a whole new concept, just because they think it looks cool? My PC is a workhorse with a tons of complex software. I appreciate that Windows 8 is faster, supports new hardware and use CPU, GPU and RAM more efficiently. I like it a lot. I just can't understand why I even need to see this ugly piece of marketing bullshit then I just need my desktop? Well I mean, I can understand their reasoning behind all this. That's a money, a lot of money they want from a new Windows Store. I'm fine with that, but why I should suffer and even pay money for that then?

No way I install this on my computer, at least until they make it possible to switch to desktop right after boot. If they want me to learn new OS, then I'll more probably start to learn Linux, which is much more beneficial in terms of useful knowledge received for time spent on learning. In Windows I'll just will learn the new UI I don't need. With Linux I'll learn a whole new class of OSes. And they all are free at least, but for my money, I want my desktop back.

Kickstarter analysis

The one truly needed post about Kickstarter. A lot of references which are also worth visiting.

P.S. The one thing I really don't understand in modern web design, is a passion to make text not black. I mean like make text #707070. Is it just to make site harder to read, especially on a small phone screen? People, are you there? FTW!

Web-debugging HTTPS PHP cURL requests with Fiddler

Recently I was faced with a task of implementing OAuth 1.0 authentication. The authentication must be done with JavaScript, and I had a working example implemented in PHP (as a console app).

I've done major part of the task, but on the last step - while trying to actually use OAuth token to receive data - I've got 'signature invalid' error. I've studied PHP script carefully and 'echo'-ed values of interest to console, but still no luck to figuring out what was wrong.

It would be very convenient to see all PHP traffic in Fiddler, I thought, and what you need for it is described below.

Assume that Fiddler is running as usual on localhost (127.0.0.1) on port 8888. First of all you need to tell cURL to use proxy.

$proxy = "127.0.0.1:8888";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);

for your convenience you can also tell cURL to print debug info:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);

This will run cURL thru Fiddler, but you will not see (by default) decoded HTTPS traffic, because Fiddler decode HTTPS only from browsers (again, by default), so you need to change it to '...from all processes' if you run from command line PHP script (or just cURL):



again, this will, most probably result in HTTPS certificate errors since cURL knows nothing about Fiddler certificate (and Windows certificates), so easiest way is to just tell cURL to ignore SSL certificate errors:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);

That's all, now you should see PHP cURL traffic, both HTTP and HTTPS.

Great tools for browsers

Sometimes working with a browser becomes real frustration. Especially if this browser is Internet Explorer. Some simple operation like viewing and managing your cookies can become a real mess. They built in facilities are slow, and not comfortable at all to work with.

NirSoft web browser tools are invaluable in that aspect. It's fast, it's really good, and it's free! Particularly IECookiesViewer just saved me a ton of time and my brain.