Play Russian Roulette With Your Pocket PC

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productType=2&productId=160583' target='_blank'>http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/...roductId=160583</a><br /><br /></div><i>"You would like playing hazardous games? You heard about Russian Roulette? This game is famous all over the world. And now you can play this game and see how lucky you are."</i> <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/westfall-20050318-russian.jpg" /><br /><br /> 8O So here is the story. You play Russian roulette by selecting your preferred level of destruction (soft reset or hard reset) and take your chance that you'll either come out OK or you'll be restoring a backup (For the truly brave: erase your backup files first). With an asking price of $17.99 and no trial, you really have to be masochistic or a bona-fide risk taker to buy this. It just so happens that I'm working heavily with risk &amp; decision making right now at work, so playing this game struck me as a very interesting psychological choice that apparently already one person has made this week. I hope that brave person didn't regret their Handango purchase!

[andyb]

Of course, if they provided a demo for this each time your device was hard reset you could just reinstall the program without ever needing to buy it.

But really, this has got to be the dumbest game I have ever seen. I mean - what is the point?!

[MBurch]

I once owned a really crappy Casio E-115 that did this on its own. Each startup was either normal, partial grayscreen, or a hard reset! Casio must have sold the technology to a new vendor!

[Darren Behan]

I think I'd rather use a real gun pointed at my head. Still, I can see an image of a musty basement with a bunch of geeks in Star Trek shirts drinking heavily of chocolate milk and playing this game. Apparently D&amp;D can get pretty boring...

(Disclaimer: I probably am a geek by most standards, I love Star Trek, and I'm a little hopped up on chocolate milk at the moment so I may not be thinking clearly)

db

[wocket]

Leaving your pocketpc in work when you go away for a week is risky enough and costs nothing. Been there done that :evil:

[Deus]

LMAO this is great! Its nice to see someone not taking things too seriously. lol

[mvirata]

I've read about folks playing the real thing, get the bullet, but the angle of the shot didn't do the job effectively enough, leaving the person in a vegetative "limbo" state.

I guess I'd hope this program "does the job" and no software quirks cause a similar situation of a device that's supposed to hard-reset and instead bricks your PDA.

I wonder how often the program gets updated to work out any such bugs.

[Darius Wey]

:huh: :confused totally: :eek:

There are honestly no words to describe this. :|

[Kati Compton]

This is just... WRONG!

[Adrian Knack]

Darius Wey -> you took the word out of my mouth...

wrong on so many levels!!

[Jacob]

Some people have just way too much time on their hands and whoever buys this has too much money on their hands.

It is funny though.

[bluevolume]

:huh: :confused totally: :eek:

There are honestly no words to describe this. :|

Here's some: Ridiculous, reckless, idiotic.....

This is easily the stupidest idea I have ever seen. Why not just blindfold yourself and try sticking the stylus in the 'reset' hole? Or maybe you could try dropping your PDA from 1 foot, then 2 feet... and see how long it takes till you smash it. If this app really does what it says it does, then it should be considered a VIRUS and removed from sale.

[PhilH]

I don't worry about people who make software like this, or those who buy it.

What does concern me is that there is a hard-reset function that any old piece of software can invoke without you doing anything about it.

At least the old fashioned 'format c:\" asked you to confirm it first!

[Janak Parekh]

What does concern me is that there is a hard-reset function that any old piece of software can invoke without you doing anything about it.

At least the old fashioned 'format c:\" asked you to confirm it first!
Hang on. Format prompted you because the program has code in it to ask you the question before formatting. It's trivial for anyone to write code on a desktop that will format the hard drive without asking you (hint: this is one of the more common payloads of a trojan horse). In fact, format only had the yes/no question starting with MS-DOS 3.0; MS-DOS 2.x just said "Press any key to start formatting C:" and anything but a CTRL-C toasted your disk. (Even better, MS-DOS 2.x assumed the "current drive" if you didn't type FORMAT A:. I can't count the number of machines I had to reinstall that were accidentally toasted in the old days.)

The key is to be careful as to what software you install. Do you really want a third party being an arbiter as to what you can and can't do on a device? Here's a perfectly good example of a program that needs unfettered access to the hard reset code: if you've got a corporate PDA deployment, you need to be very sensitive to device theft. One way would be to install a centrally managed solution that, after a number of failed password attempts and/or inability to contact the central management server, would hard-reset the device to prevent confidential information from leaking out.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

This is easily the stupidest idea I have ever seen. Why not just blindfold yourself and try sticking the stylus in the 'reset' hole? Or maybe you could try dropping your PDA from 1 foot, then 2 feet... and see how long it takes till you smash it. If this app really does what it says it does, then it should be considered a VIRUS and removed from sale.
It's not at all the same thing as dropping your PDA. I personally wouldn't spend the money, but if it clearly declares what it does, why limit its sale?

(And, for the record, a virus has a means of self-propagation, which this code clearly doesn't, so this isn't a virus.)

--janak

[Kevin Daly]

I'm not sure whether this is

a) An innovative approach to getting people to hand over money for nothing that I wish I'd thought of myself.
b) A prototype of the new "Full Disclosure And Transparency" interface for Magneto.
c) Just bloody stupid.

Seriously folks, you can play the same "game" with just your stylus and without handing over any money to anybody, so if you fork out for this I greatly fear you're That Goddamn Person Who Keeps Spammers In Business.

[yslee]

Heh, with the problems I've been hearing about a friend's HTC Blue Angel, I think his device comes with the software built-in already!

[Pat Logsdon]

I heard that version 2 will have an Exploding Battery option.

&lt;ba-dum-ksssh!>

Thanks, folks, I'll be here all week! Whether you like it or not.

[beq]

But... $18 for this app?? I mean, that's expensive for something that really does one simple function (with a randomizer to make up the "game"). I wonder if the developer really expected to make money off this, or is the high price supposed to be part of the joke?

[Wiggster]

But... $18 for this app?? I mean, that's expensive for something that really does one simple function (with a randomizer to make up the "game"). I wonder if the developer really expected to make money off this, or is the high price supposed to be part of the joke?

If people buy it, he's likely making money. I doubt much effort went into this, it's just a fun project he decided to do. The high price also keeps casual users away from it, thus preventing some well-meaning-but-inept person from downloading it onto his PDA to play a nice card game.

[ctitanic]

well, he got already one sell ;)

http://www.handango.com/ampp/store/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&amp;productType=2&amp;productId=160583

[mmidgley]

At least this author isn't going to get flooded with questions on how to unistall his software...

m.

[NeilE]

Here's something along similar lines that might actually be fun for a party:

http://www.firebox.com/?dir=firebox&amp;action=product&amp;pid=604

It's chocolate russian roulette. Chocolate bullets, one of which has a hot pepper in it. Yummy!

Neil

[ChunkyMonkey]

I wonder how many dummies buy this program and are shocked that their device really hard rest.... :roll:

[griph]

I wonder how many dummies buy this program and are shocked that their device really hard rest.... :roll:
Dunno - but 51 people have purchased it! 8O 8O 8O 8O Guess Caveat Emptor applies!

[Jon Westfall]

I wonder how many dummies buy this program and are shocked that their device really hard rest.... :roll:
Dunno - but 51 people have purchased it! 8O 8O 8O 8O Guess Caveat Emptor applies!

If those 51 people had simply sent me their devices (postage paid, probably would have been the same amount of $$$ as they paid on the game) I would have gladly tossed a coin and decided to hard reset it or not for them...

Jon.

[Damion Chaplin]

After thinking about it since the original post, I can only come to one conclusion:

This must be a 'utility' for those who need to soft- or hard-reset their device, but want to have some fun during the painful process. I can't imagine any other reason why someone would pay money for it.

(Unless it's just his 51 friends and family members?)

[Fuego]

Hey, wait up!

Where's the Bluetooth version without the namby pamby soft reset option????

You know, the one where you get a bunch of mates together with their PDAs, drink lots of beer and high-octane chasers whilst taking turns to press that trigger on your own PDA.

Who's PDA is going to get wiped first today? Who's light in the kitty .. c'mon stump up the twenty quid ... Let's see .... click ... doh