The Disillusioned BYONDer Digest

There is no exception to this rule. There isn't a single game on BYOND that justifies a download size larger than 2 MB, much less the 10-50 MB travesties that litter the hub.

Apparently your pirated copies of Photoshop didn't come with the help files that explain image compression. You've spent so much time copying and pasting anime artwork into your crappy title screens... why not take a few more seconds to export them to a proper format? If your splash screens are larger than 30k, you're doing something terribly wrong.

To all of you who use BMP files for map elements or for displaying HUDs -- I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you A.) Can read, and B.) Know how to do a Google search. Here's a search term for you: PNG

That's cute that you want to use mp3s for music. Don't. Most of your games play worse than a generic third-party NES title; using real music samples isn't going to change that. If you use sound effects then go download one of the millions of freeware wav compression programs.

Heck, none of my games even weigh in at over 1 MB.

Proelium: 300k
DWO: 640k
Proelium II: 600k
Acheron's Awakening: 700k
Nestalgia: 600k

That's right, Acheron's Awakening, which has way more icons, maps, music files and sound effects than 99% of BYOND games out there comes in at 700k. Why? Because I compress all of my wav files, I use an efficient PNG format for my splash screens, and I even go as far as to edit the superfluous instrument tracks out of the midi files that I use.

If you "don't have time" to do all of that, you have no business making games in the first place.

Firefox 3 is to IE as Safari 4 is to Firefox 3. There was a time when Firefox was a Godsend... but after putting up with the slow, buggy release that is Firefox 3 for months upon months now, I've moved on.

Apple's Safari browser was a joke when it first came out for Windows, but version 4.0 has changed all of that. It's not only much more stable than Firefox 3, it's way faster (especially on Vista).

Now much like I did with IE back in the day, I'll keep Firefox on my hard drive to load the occasional site that Safari doesn't display properly. Apart from that, we're done.

I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the Hitler's Downfall meme on YouTube. If you're not, here are the best examples:

Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died
Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live
Hitler's Starcraft 2 Downfall


I absolutely love this meme. I've been thinking of doing my own version, entitled "Hitler finds out his Meme is getting old". In order to get a feel for the timing etc., I've used BYOND as the topic for something of a practice run.

Beware, this video contains lots of profanity. Anything less wouldn't do this meme justice. You've been warned!

One of my favorite articles of all time from the Ayn Rand Institute is this piece by Leonard Peikoff: "Health Care Is Not A Right"

It's a couple pages long, but a very interesting read. Not only is this article a great example of applied Objectivism, it's a rock-solid rebuttal of the socialized medicine fantasy.

Anyone who is concerned about all the talk of the U.S. Government taking over health care should definitely give this a read. Here's a large excerpt from the beginning of the article:

Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea—which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical—it does not work—but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan—not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it—to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.

What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with—and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.

Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at McDonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights—and only these.

Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want—not to be given it without effort by somebody else.

The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if and when you have achieved them. In other words: you have the right to act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish. But you have no right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which they voluntarily agree.

To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is precisely that: the right to the pursuit—to a certain type of action on your part and its result—not to any guarantee that other people will make you happy or even try to do so. Otherwise, there would be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your "right" to happiness at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless.

That is why the U.S. system defines rights as it does, strictly as the rights to action. This was the approach that made the U.S. the first truly free country in all world history—and, soon afterwards, as a result, the greatest country in history, the richest and the most powerful. It became the most powerful because its view of rights made it the most moral. It was the country of individualism and personal independence.

This is actually pretty funny:




Come to think of it, this is funny too: