Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-1496755-20190219180642

This might sound as a joke, but it's not - have you tried ear plugs? Recently I read something about noise pollution and what a problem it is becoming nowadays, and how the number of young people with hearing problems is rising, mostly due to loud music in clubs or improper use of headphones. And one simple thing they offered to alleviate the situation was ear plugs. Haven't tried it myself, since I can generally tune out noise. Buti t could help you, who knows...

I could never really get into comics, though it's mostly due to geographic reasons - this medium came to Eastern Europe pretty late, at a time when I had already established that my main interest lies in gaming (and sci-fi movies). Besides, I couldn't really go back in time and explore all the pre-existing lore. Nowadays we have our own comic geek culture, but it's a very limited thing still.

Some people are starting to relize the insanity of the online thing, when faced with multiple publishers each using their own launcher. Before there was just Steam, but now EA has their own launcher, and Epic, and Bethesda, and probably someone else I am forgetting right now. And people start to grumble about this, seeing it as inconvenient, though they still fail to see the main problem - the whole requirement of being online to even access a game you allegedly own. You can't even say you own games anymore, you just "purchase the right to use the software." Ugh.

Yes, yes, while abandonware sites are technically illegal, I've always appreciated and defended them as ways to preserve hundreds of games that are no longer offered by anyone (the companies that created them having died many years ago). Even id Software titles have been affected by this - Commander Keen 6 is not sold anywhere today since it is in some sort of legal quagmire; the copyright was last held by FormGen, a Canadian company that was later bought by GT Interactive, which (in turn) sank into a legal mess of its own after being acquired by others... So the only way to obtain Keen 6 nowadays is from an abandonware site (or buy original floppies from someone who is willing to sell them, and have a suitable PC with a floppy drive to install them on). For people who would never pirate a game, it is inaccessible - a phantom game they can only hear about from those who have played it. Something similar happened to the 2009 Wolfenstein game as well - friction between Activision and Bethesda (which had just acquired id Software from the former) caused this game to be dropped from online sale platforms... so it has become a rarity nowadays. You'd either have to hunt down a physical copy or pirate it.

The good thing about the internet is that piracy always finds a way. FilesTube and The Iso Zone may be gone, but others have taken their place - e.g. 4shared or Cloud.ru. Russian sites are more resilient and offer lots of good stuff, but they are hard to use for people who can't read the Cyrillic alphabet (e.g. you). Abandonware sites are evolving like everything else - they tend to avoid offering games that are sold on Steam and/or GOG, thus staying out of trouble. The more serious ones among them have shifted towards offering floppy/CD images rather than just zipped archives of pre-installed games. This trend is due to the convenience of using such images with DOSBox and modern virtual machine software... and I like it because it feels more genuine. I always prefer to install a game myself, than to trust someone else's work (that's the perfectionism speaking). Sometimes, the GOG versio of a game can also be found on abandonware sites - these come with nice installers, are DRM-free, and often have some kind of modification to eliminate compatibility issues with modern system. This can be either good or bad, depending on how much of a purist you are ;)

The "hit the fan" thing is exactly why I have become so focused on maintaining proper offline archives and backups over the last 5 years. I am preserving history, one way or another. And yes, obscure shovelware runs a much higher risk of fading into oblivion, so we definitely have to do our part. Who can say if this stuff won't save the world some day, right?

I am glad to say I've never experienced any major family drama. You probably remember how hard it was for me to grasp the notion of your own grandma screwing you over at your previous house, the Semi-Cousin Hell. I am a bit biased with regard to this topic, since I often had a rocky relationship with my own father (potentially an echo of his own rocky relationship with his mom - my grandma), mostly due to me not living up to his expectations. But then again, I have to find my own way in life, not try to fit other people's vision, even if they are very close to me. Keep in mind that my dad lost his own father when he was no more than 11-12 years old, due to cancer... I am named after him, though I've only seen him on old faded black-and-white photos.

Every situation in life offers good and bad things - we just have to find the right balance. I had lots of conveniences in my old home too, but ultimately felt I really needed some more independence and more privacy. If your current situation is the best option for the moment, stick to it. Change for the sake of change is never a wise choice. And as the situation evolves, so will you.