NBA Live 2006 sucks

Hey everyone! Do you remember 1999? Sure, it was long time ago, but that year is crucial for one simple reason - it's the last year that EA Sports released a GOOD basketball game. It was called NBA Live 2000. It was almost perfect - great gameplay, solid animations, at least some trace of reality, etc. The only small problem was that the game was a bit easy. Not too terribly easy, though, there was no way you could easily win the championship with same crappy team like Chicago Bulls or something. But, for example, I started a season with Cleveland Cavaliers (who then had their dream-team with Shawn Kemp, Wesley Person, Lamond Murray all on top of their game) and had 20 straight victories (of course, I'm talking about the hardest level). Then I lost a game, got pissed off and stopped playing game.

Anyway, my weird behavior is not the subject of this post. The point is, the game should have been only SLIGHTLY more difficult, you now, not to allow twenty straight victories, no matter which team you control, but that slight increase of difficulty level should have been the ONLY change made. If they had done it right, they could have easily stopped developing game and only release patches every year to update the rosters. Because that way the game would be PERFECT.

But no, EA Sports thought "Hey, wait a minute! Instead of simply improving the last game, let's make something completely new, terrible and crappy!". So we got NBA Live 2001, where players looked like chimps, acted like they were skating on ice (which seems to be EA Sports' trademark lately) and you couldn't hit a three-pointer to save your life.

I'm not going to talk about every single game since (I haven't played all of them, after all), but it seems that the gameplay never improved. For example, I heard that 2002 version had a terrifying domination of point guards. 2003 was OK (I guess), but for some reason EVERYONE was dunking like hell! Wiseguys at EA Sports probably realised that an average PlayStation freak doesn't give a rat's ass about authenticity, reality and crap like that, they all want to see dunks, dunks, dunks and more DUNKS! So, like I said, everyone was dunking. Not just guys like Darius Miles and Vince Carter - EVERYONE (strange, it was really hard to dunk with Vince Carter in NBA 2000). And the game (again) was a bit too easy. Once I had a fantasy draft and purposedly drafted all terrible players except Antonio McDyess (who has been one of my favorite players since NBA Live 2000, where he helped my Denver team a lot). OK, well, let's count Rafer Alston among those non-terrible players, too. Anyway, I managed to have a score close to 50% (though I had the bottom-ranked team) and in each game McDyess and Alston scored approximately 30 points each.

So then, again guys at EA Sports thought a bit about life, the universe and everything, and they decided - no more easy game. Hell, not only that, we will make every subsequent game so difficult that even the most patient players would be pissed off! Yeah!

So, we got NBA Live 2004. The magnificent idea of purposedly pissing off the players was realised through an unbelievenly clever design decision - the game simply decided not to let you have any offensive rebounds, no matter which team you control, and also the free throws were almost impossible to hit. So, if you have the ball possession ten seconds before the end of the game, and are trailing by one point, pray to God that they don't foul you, or else you're down. Even with calm shooters like Predrag Stojakovic or anyone it was hard to hit a free throw. With centers like Duncan it was almost impossible.

Now, we are going to fast forward to NBA Live 2006. All terrible ideas from previous games simply fluorished here. It is really a hard work trying to list all of the game's weaknesses, but I'll still try:

First, not only they changed the terrible decision about offensive rebounds from NBA Live 2004 (which is a good thing), they reversed it. Now, you will often have more offensive than defensive rebounds (?), but any way the computer will have more than you. Even if you have two centers waiting to pick up the ball after the opponent player missed, you will often have their point guard somehow get the ball and dunk over your precious centers, who will just stand there like idiots. At times, the game intentionally cheats and doesn't let you get a rebound. Once when I played with Seattle (it's only a single example) I missed a shot, Vladimir Radmanovic was like totally alone, but instead of getting the ball he kept running away from it (???) until the opponent player took it. In general, computer controled players in your team act like total imbecils. One of the reason you can't get many offensive rebounds (though you'll miss a lot of shots) is that their behavior seems totally random. Imagine this: You miss a shot, the ball falls on the floor, keeps bouncing or rolling on the ground, then your player approaches and instead of simply getting it, he jumps over it (???) and goes somewhere else, like in the audience or something. And it's really hard to switch control between players because everything is fast. And also, the game sometimes refuses to obey your commands. For example, if you have a player with a ball unguarded under the basket and you try to dunk, more often than not he will simply stand doing nothing (no matter how many times you try to press the damn dunk button) until either having the ball stolen from him, or three seconds call.

Your players acting like morons would be tolerable if opponent players weren't unstoppable. But they are. For example, there is no way you could beat LA Clippers. I'm sure Michael Jordan in his best days could only stand in awe watching Cuttino Mobley and Corey Maggette here. They hit three pointers when they feel like it, or they dribble through your entire offense and dunk over your two tall players, you name it. Similar goes (predictably) for LeBron James, Wade, Anthony, McGrady, Bryant, Garnett, etc. May the Force be with you if you play against one of these. Unfortunately, if they are in YOUR team, they act like idiots. The computer-led teams ALWAYS hit ALL open shots (including three-pointers, regardless of player's three point rating), and MOST of the impossible ones, like when their average-rated guard hits an easy three-pointer over the hand of my small forward. So, basically, if you want to win, you can't make a single mistake during the game. Because you will immediately get punished with seven three pointers. On the other hand, you have an incredibly tough time scoring. Sometimes I have to rip my hair off and stare in disbelief as my Ray Allen misses five completely open shots. Or Kyle Korver, who has like 88 three-point rating. Oh, and speaking of ratings, they are simply moronic. You have players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade (ah, that damn 2003 draft!) being rated like 95, 96 overall or something. Hell, I don't remember Michael Jordan or John Stockton or anyone ever being rated that high. And to see how realistic those ratings are, check the US team performance against Greece on this year's World Championship in Japan. Or any other game for that matter. They got to the semi-finals because they played with terrible teams, and ONLY Carmelo Anthony was constantly good and deserved respect. Also, a change was made in blocking. In NBA Live 2003 (and probably 2004) in order to block a shot, you had to jump the moment the player releases the shot. In this game you have to jump BEFORE that, which makes it sometimes hard to block, not to mention how easily they can pump-fake and get past you once you are in the air. Another thing where the game cheats are, as I mentioned, rebounds. For example, Danny Fortson, one of the best rated rebounders in the game simply CANNOT jump to save his life, even against opponent point guards. So, no matter which team you control, the opponent often has like 15 rebounds more than you. Imagine how that reflects on the scoreboard.

So, we can slowly bring this little article to the conclusion - if you want to test (and destroy) your nerves, by all means play this game. And take Seattle. You have been warned.

PTR programs

Please, first read the previous post, where I talked about the PTR programs in general. I will now mention a few of them.
First, we have

It is the first PTR site I joined, and it is probably one of the best. The payout is 4$, most mails (at least till recently) were 0.5 cents, however lately they've been mostly 0.25 cents, it seems. They don't have PTP program, at least not for free members (you can upgrade your membership, but it costs money). There are trivia games every month, constant flow of e-mails, manual surf option (you get paid to surf various sites, and you can advertise your own, and this site offers the best ratio - you see one site and get 5 points, while showing your site costs only 3).

This site has the most interesting higher-lower game. The game lasts three days. You can have as many tries as you want and each costs one cent. You are given a number between 1 and 1000 and you try to guess whether the next one is going to be higher or lower. You keep guessing until you choose wrong. The people with ten best results share the jackpot (the best one getting 30%). The jackpot usually ends up being around one dollar, so if you're best you can get some 30 cents or something.

Another great site is the aforementioned

The payout is $15, but it is not too hard to reach, due to large number of mails and respectable value of each of them (each mail contains several links mostly 2 cents worth). They also have a higher-lower game, but it's not recommended (you play against the computer, rather than against other players, and they take 5% commission, so you'll probably be on the loss). You can also earn a huge amount of points by clicking on banner, manual surf, etc. You can use those points to advertise, or turn them into cash, or upgrade your account, or whatever you want. So, Seminole Wind is really a great PTR program. One small objection is the lack of PTP program, but you don't need one to reach payout relatively quick.

I'm also a member of three other sites, but they are not as good as these two. But, don't take my word for it. Anyway, here they are: First, the most famous one is

You won't earn much money from reading e-mails or playing games, but this site offers no minimum payout and it has a very good PTP program with $0.75 per 1000 clicks. If you're good at advertising, you'll probably find a way to get much money out of this. I'm not good at advertising, so for me Seminole Wind and Shocking Results are still the best. But anyway, PTP is the most powerful feature of this site, so if you can find a way to utilize it to the maximum, this site can offer a lot.

A similar site is

Its payout is low (1 dollar), and they send tons of e-mails. The problem is that the links in the mails for some reason expire very soon, and most of the mails are only 0.01 cents. Which means you have to read 10000 mails to reach the payout. Fortunately, you can exercise your advertising skills on the site's PTP section ($0.6 per one thousand clicks).

The last one I will mention is

This is another one with no PTP program, and the e-mails usually don't pay much and arrive rarely, so I still haven't "cracked" that one. There's probably a way to earn more money, but I haven't found it yet.

No matter which sites you join, you should always try to get as many referrals as you can. This will increase your winnings and get you to the payout sooner. Most sites pay using e-gold, and it usually takes around 20 days for the money to appear on your account after requesting payout. I'm currently near reaching the minimum on Shocking Results and Seminole Wind, so I will keep you informed on my money-making adventures after that. Till next time, take care of yourselves... and each other.

PTR

Some of you may remember I promised to talk about the PTR programs a few days ago. Centuries ago, actually. But, never mind. Here we are...

Anyway, you probably always wanted to earn tons of money from the Net. A good idea is to check that site I mentioned in the previous post, dedicated exclusively to that topic. But, what is the problem? As you could see, most of the moneymaking programs listed there required at least a small financial input from your side. So you opened an e-gold account (hopefully using that link to the bottom of the link section of this blog, so I would get credit) and wondered what next. You have an e-gold account, but it's empty. And maybe your mother is not willing to lend you her credit card to spend her hard earned money on that "crap". In short, you may find yourself in a so-called "empty e-gold account" situation.

How to solve it? You don't have a credit card, no means of transferring "real-world" money into the electronic form and all hope is lost. This is where PTR programs kick in. They give you the opportunity to make money from scratch. This is NOT a big money, and it takes TIME to earn enough, however this will give you a unique feeling of accomplishment once you spend months to get, say, ten dollars in your e-gold account, and then turn them into millions within weeks using one of those programs the other site mentions.

So, what is PTR? PTR stands for "paid-to-read" and, in short, these are sites that will pay you to read e-mails. Basically, the situation is as follows: You open a free account (most sites accept international members, if you're from USA, you don't care about that, but for me it's very important since I'm an international member) and choose to receive mails in site inbox only (trust me, it's much better having to spend a few seconds to log in than have your regular e-mail inbox flooded with messages, especially if you join more than one PTR site). You will start to receive mails probably the day after registering. So, it works simply like this - you get an e-mail with link (or links) inside it. You click the link and you're taken to a site. You wait a few seconds (usually 15 or 20, but don't worry about that, you're notified about time remaining) and your account is credited. With how much? Well, that depends on the site. Mails are usually from quarter of a cent to a whole cent. Of course, there are extremities on both sides. For example, Midnightclicking credits only 0.01 cents (isn't that a bitch?) while on Seminole Wind they go up to 5 cents.

The important thing is the payout - the minimum amount of money you have to reach to get paid. For example, at Seminole Wind the payout is $15. At MidnightClicking $1. But those payouts are equally easy/hard to reach. The sites that offer low payout as a general rule pay you much less for the e-mails. There are also some sites that have no minimum payout, i.e. you can request payout anytime. Most of the PTR sites offer many other goodies apart from mails. There are many contents, banners to click, games, bubbles, referrals, etc. Once you join some sites you will see that every single one is different, but you'll get the hold of it in no time. I'll only mention two most important features:

First, there is paid-to-promote (PTP). You have a link, similar to your referral link (but NOT the same). When someone clicks that link, they are taken to the site and you get credited for that. Usually you get around 75 cents for 1000 clicks. It is a pretty good feature to use, especially when a payout is a bitch to reach, due to low-cost e-mails. You can use some of those traffic websites, or advertise on other PTR sites, or something else, it's your choice. One warning, though: You can only advertise on approved sites. You have the list of all approved sites in the PTP section of your favorite PTR program. Also, not all PTR sites offer this feature.

The second feature are bubbles, and it seems they have them on all sites. It works like this: You pay a certain amount of money, say, 8 cents. When you make a payment, you get to the bottom of the line. You have a "bubble" worth 8 cents (or whatever the amount is, they usually range between one cent and one dollar). At the same time while you are at the bottom, your payment (and other payments) are used for the bubble on top. Once the bubble gets on top, the payments made after that moment are used to "burst" that bubble. It means, when 125% of the bubble amount is reached, the one on top get that amount of money. So, you're on the bottom, right? When someone makes a payment after you, they get at the bottom, and you're one place above. And when (after a few days, usually) you get to the top, other payments work for you. Once the other people pay 10 cents (for that is 125% of 8 cents), you get 10 cents. So, you turned your 8 cents into 10 doing nothing. But don't start drooling over this, it's not as good as it sounds. If you think about it a bit, you'll realize that the more money is in the "bubble pool", the more time you need to get your 125% back. So, as the bubbles get older, the more time it takes to get on top.

Now, in order not to get too long a post, I will publish this and describe several PTR programs in the next post.

Cyberbegging

You know how it sometimes happens that you walk down the street, minding your own business, when you suddenly notice someone sitting on the sidewalk with a hat or something lying beside them and you are expected to put some money into it? That is what we shall call: BEGGING.

So it crossed my mind that so far there probably aren't any Internet equivalents of beggars around. Which is kinda strange, because almost every single social, cultural, subcultural and you-name-it phenomenon from the outside world has found its Internet equivalent. Let's first consider one of the most obvious ones - spamming. Years ago, before we got blessed by the presence of Internet, you would return home from work, opet your mailbox (your REAL mailbox, you know the one where you insert the key in the lock, unlock it and open the little door?) and find it full of various junk - bills, bills, more bills and tons of advertising flyers, like BUY HERE or CUT YOUR HAIR THERE or IF YOU SCREWED UP YOUR TOILET, WE'LL FIX IT and stuff like that. It's completely the same with Internet, except that the spam is now virtual, which means you can erase it with one click (those flyers you had to burn, or throw into the trashcan, the latter obviously similar to putting spam in your TRASH folder). And of course, the messages have much more imagination - instead of flyers advertising stores, malls and similar stuff, you now have golden opportunity to fix every single aspect of your sexual and financial life in like one second, from the length of your you-know-what to the depth of your bank account. Aren't we happy?

But anyway, I'm digressing. The point is, Internet still hasn't got its equivalent of begging. I.E. having someone ask you for your money and promising nothing in return (except giving you some form of gratitude). So, Dragon's Vampire is here to test whether the cyberbegging is unjustifiably overlooked, or there's some reason for it. Of course, we're not beggars, but for the time being we will act like them. Of course, this is only for testing purposes and has nothing to do with us wanting money and having to do nothing in return.

So, the point (finally) is: Give Us Your Money! It doesn't have to be much. We don't ask you to give us, say, ten million dollars. No, a mere thousand or two would be perfectly alright. Just click on that "pay with e-gold" thing to the right. Of course, you have to have an e-gold account. To get one (if you don't already have it), click on that link in the "Earning money on the Net" post, so I would get credit for it and get tons of money. There! I really hope more people would see this blog, because we obviously have some revolutionary ideas (like this one) and it would be a shame for them to go unnoticed.

Make Serious Money On The Internet .ws: Introduction

Okay, this is just a short note. If you remember, last time I talked about making money on the Net. I just found this blog that covers the subject in detail:
Make Serious Money On The Internet .ws: Introduction
You may want to check it out. I still owe you that article about PTR. Yes, yes, I will write it soon!

Earning money on the Net - can it be done?

I haven't mentioned it earlier, but apart from listening to prog-rock music and watching all sorts of crappy movies my main occupation is trying to earn $960799, so I can buy a house in Greece for my mother and a few little things for myself, like a nuclear warhead or a pack of chewing gum or something similar. Those of you who immediately remembered that immortal quote "I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum!" get a plus. Anyway, why would anyone try to earn only $960799 instead of, say, one million? Well, first of all, life teaches us that you should always be humble and never want too much. As they say in my country, he who wants more, loses from his sack. In my language it actually rhymes.
Where was I? Ah, yes - 960799 is the sum you can (theoretically) earn if you enter the magnificent 7DollarsMagic program. You pay $7.5 and get $960799 within weeks (!). Sounds terrific! But does it work? Don't ask me, I'm still working on getting my first $7.5. It's a real pain. If I had a credit card, I would pay with it and everything's fine. Since I don't have one, I have to either steal my mom's card or try to get the money myself. Naturally, being a good son and respecting my mother's hard work, I decided to go with the second option. So, how can someone with not a dime in their pockets get $7.5, the ticket to wealth & fortune? My first option was to try some PTR (paid-to-read) programs. I will be writing about them in more detail next time, but to answer the question that inevitably popped up in your mind ("Does THAT work?") - no reason to doubt. Of course, you may be skeptical and think "Yeah, right, as if someone's going to pay you to read e-mail!", but first, they are not paying out of their pockets (they share the money they get from their sponsors), and second, there are many good sites that discover scam and immediately notify the public. So far none of the PTR programs I joined ever appeared on any of those sites. If you think of joining a PTR program, it is recommended that you first check www.ptrpolice.com and www.gptboycott.com to see if that site is blacklisted. Some recommended sites you can find to the right (by joining some of those programs, you will become my referral and I will earn more money and I will be nearer to buying that house in Greece for my mother, and I will be forever grateful to you). As I said, more about PTR next time.
Another "great" opportunity are those HYIP's (High Yield Investment Program). What is that? Well, basically, you pay, say, ten dollars, and in a few days you get, say, 15 dollars. It is that simple, though the percentages vary. For example, I ran into some sites promising to give you like 300% of your investment within the hour (!). It is simply screaming STAY AWAY, IT'S SCAM!!! But heck, I'm not going to stay away because I'm an adventurous person and like to try new things. As soon as I get my first e-gold payment, I will try that and you will be notified if that works. It shouldn't. The percentage is simply too high, and the time too short. But, who knows.
One last word - if you're from one of those countries (like myself) that can't get a PayPal account, you may try http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=3419678 It is a payment service that accepts members from any place in the world, unlike those lameasses from PayPal. I use e-gold to get my payments (of course, I'm still waiting for my first payment).
So, over and out, finally. Next time we will talk about PTR programs, and probably about HYIP, though I don't know much about the latter. You can abuse the fact that I'm an adventurous person - if you find a HYIP that sounds too good to be true, tell me and I'll try it before you can spend your hard earned money. You may call me ScamTester. Hehe. But, nothing can happen before I get my first payment, and I expect it will happen within a week or so. Stay tuned.

Embarrasing stuff

I just thought a great way to embarass yourself in front of your friends and/or family. Imagine you put a DVD in your DVD player. Since you're alone in the room, the first thing you do is, naturally, fast forwarding to the nude scenes. Then, imagine that you hear someone coming. Of course, you press STOP (or EJECT), take the disc out quickly and everything's OK. Right?
WRONG! A few days later you decide to watch that same movie with friends and/or family. You put the disc in the player completely forgetting about that ghastly LAST MEMORY thing, so naturally the first thing that pops up on the screen is that very nude scene you managed not being seen seeing a few days later. And your relatives and/or friends will naturally laugh their asses off and call you a loser for watching those nude scenes. Cool, eh?

Another embarrasing thing (again related to the nude scenes) can happen when someone comes into your room totally unexpectedly. If you had your nude scene running in full screen, you had a pretty big chance of being busted. The thing is, you have to think (and work) fast, and at that particular crucial moment it is unclear what you should do. Quickly double-click the screen and then trying to minimize the window (which could take too much time in terms of miliseconds, leading you to being caught), hit the ESCAPE key like a maniac (same problem), press CTRL-ALT-DEL, or even trying the extreme solutions, like pressing the reset button, or even POWER (note that the last solution may not work, in fact it is generally considered as a very bad move to press POWER, as that button probably works only for turning the computer ON). You can even try ducking and hiding under the desk, gaining enough time to plug the computer cable out. The downside of this choice is that eventually you have to come out from under the table and then everyone will know it was you. Also, there's a possibility that the person that entered the room uninvited will notice your absence and look under the table.

As you can see, watching nude scenes can lead to a whole lotta embarrasment. So far, the scientists are still working out a solution for this. One helpful strategy is to watch "things" only when you are completely alone in the apartment / house, and with all doors locked. That gives you enough time to clear all traces of your lewd and indecent behaviour. I love my blog.

Movie Reviews: Three

Why, o why do people have to make these terrible, terrible movies? There is only ONE reason to see this movie: If you watched that nice little thriller House of 9 and liked the main actress (who happens to be called Kelly Brook). Because here you can see her pretty much naked.
This movie follows three characters who survive a shipwreck and end up on a deserted island. A rich man (Billy Zane), his young and beautiful wife (Kelly Brook, though he looked MUCH better in House of 9) and some Latino stud, I can't even remember his name. Anyway, that Mexican-Spanish (or whatever) dude is one really irritating bitch, just like Kelly Brook for that matter, and you can see straight away that they are going to have lots of sex and that bastard of her husband is going to try to kill them and he's going to die. Well, that's pretty much what happens here, with some small alterations. The irritating Latino-dude had an earlier trouble with his girlfriend (?). She slapped him a few times (apparently because he didn't want to marry her), and then he slapped her and then she threatened him and there was lots of yelling and stuff, all in Spanish (or maybe Portoguese, I'm not good at languages, I even thought that SHUTTER was a Korean movie, while in fact it was made in THAILAND, silly me). Anyway, the girlfriend leaves pretty pissed off and we immediately discover that she's some sort of a voodoo-witch or something, because she immediately starts performing an extremely long voodoo-dance including some voodoo-clothes (unfortunately, no nudity there) and a voodoo doll of her boyfriend. I have no idea what was the point of that dance (except maybe to extend the length of the movie), but the scenes from it are often inserted into the island scenes with the three survivors. Of course, everything looks totally ridiculous.
Anyway, that Latino-guy works as a waiter (or something) on the boat that the rich guy, his wife and some of their friends rent to sail and have some fun. From the beginning he dislikes Billy Zane. Sure, Billy Zane wasn't extremely sympathetic (though he was nowhere near as bastard as he was in Titanic), but that guy (which we shall abbreviate as GUY from now on) is sooooooooo incredibly irritating, due to terrible dialogs, overacting and the Latin-soap-opera nature of his character. So, as expected, Billy Zane and the Guy are not getting along, Kelly Brook has sex with the Guy, Billy is pissed off etc. etc. etc. Everything was seen million times before, except that this movie is worse than others. The reason is that the writer-director was obviously drunk (or drugged) during the entire filming (and writing), so he expected us to sympathize with Kelly and her Latino-banger (who's probably a gay, anyway) and hate Billy Zane's character. Of course, we should ignore the fact that he does her while Billy Zane dives into the shark-infested water to find some food. Bitch! And also, when Billy finds a boat and wants to leave alone (what would you do? your wife has just had sex with some moron!) they STEAL the boat from him and leave him on the island. Fortunately, it turns out that he actually predicted this (he watched them while they were screwing and at the same time making the plan to steal his boat) and left a hole in the bottom, so they didn't get far. They managed to swim back to the island and then the final battle took place. I'm not going to spoil it (though there's nothing to be spoiled in a movie as terrible as this one), but I can say that the ending is totally unsatisfactory. It's not as horrible as in Pleasantville, but it sure sucks.
This movie smells not only because of lame writing and crappy and irritating characters. It is also terribly directed, having such a huge amount of goofs that you simply cannot overlook them. For example, someone is swimming and you can easily see that it is very near the shore, you know, by the colour of the water and stuff. However, then they cut and it is an underwater view, showing that the water is VERY VERY VERY deep and even the sharks are there. It is so frustrating, they swim in the water that is so shallow they could probably walk, but the director expects us to believe they're somewhere out there, on the open sea and stuff. Not to mention the fact that none of the male characters grows a beard during a one-year stay on the island, Kelly's pretty white bikini is always white, not a hint of dirt on it, not to mention that they have a lighter that works perfectly despite being in the water (and even a year later there's still gas in it), not to mention the scene where Kelly Brook goes into the water completely naked and returns with the bottom part of her bikini, etc.
There's only one nice scene, and of course it is the one where she gets out of the water topless (though technically she should have been completely naked). The rest is utterly forgettable. So, better idea than watching this movie is going to mrskin.com and downloading that scene. You have been warned.
This movie is also called Survival Island, but I don't guarantee you'll survive watching it.