You've
Got Hate Mail!
By Chris Clark |
 |
 A
few years back I created a little Half Life CD Key
Generator. If you aren't sure what that is, it's a little poorly programmed
script that spits out random characters, calls it a "CD Key"
(a sequence of numbers and letters necessary to play Half Life online),
and then describes how it works.
People,
that article was satire. Nothing about it was meant to be accurate. There
are some individuals out there who couldn't see the satire that was beating
them in the face, so they got a little angry when the CD Key they got
didn't work. Over the years I've received over a hundred emails saying
how stupid I am for creating a generator that doesn't work. None of them
ever warranted publishing on the site... until now.
 Meet
Chris Tso. Pictured here is an artist's rendering of this brilliant individual.
I had the fortunate opportunity to have a pleasant email conversation
with Mr. Tso earlier this week. I'd like you to first read the correspondence
that he was so nice to send me in the first place. Please note, all profanities
have been replaced with happier words written in green
boldface. I apologize if you find this happy-swear language
offensive, but I feel that keeping these messages as pure as they are
is important. What you are about to read is virtually unedited. Enjoy!
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To: chris@reality-syndicate.com
From: "Chris Tso"
Subject: "i've got a suggestion for your site"
Your site sux, for your your crappy half life cd key generator page
your
facts are all completely wrong lollipophead
-sorry for my language, anyway... At the start you said " We
all know that HL CD keys are composed of strings of numbers (0-9)
and letters (A-Z)", wrong lollipophead,
there are no letters
only numbers. Another thing you assumed that there are, at the most
25 nimbers in the sequence, wrong again puppydogface,
there are only 13 didits in each string of NUMBERS. therefore: NO
there are not 808 duodecillion possibilities. If your thinking to
yourself "how does this little candycane
know all this stuff" will actually my friends and i all have
the game Half Life,
and counter strike - good game that :) and we've all bought it, and
it just so happens that all the code have only numbers and only 13
digits in the sequence. Ahhh God that felt BE-UTIFUL to get my frustration
out, especially at a bunny rabbit
like yourself. You also stated that cdkey generators wont work, yet
again, yep you guessed it, you are wrong. I have downloaded a few
HL keygens, just to try them out, and yes they do work. It's only
for playing
online that you need them for. Getting an online keygen though is
impossible. Other than that your site looks pretty good, i enjoyed
reading your piece called " A Day for Mother
Mars" quite funny coming from me :) Anyway i hope you've
learnt your lesson, and next time if you write an article, i recommend
you research the topic.
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Well, due to Chris's skewed facts, poor assumptions, and general liking
for our site, I felt he deserved a bit of truth instead of a brief email
outlining his stupidity. Here's what I had to say, and once again, those
cute little swear words are made family friendly!
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To: "Chris
Tso"
From: chris@reality-syndicate.com
Subject: "Re: i've got a suggestion for your site"
Hey "lollipophead" (or
maybe I should call you "puppydogface"
too), I suggest you do a little research of your own. Locate a dictionary
and look up the word "satire."
Hopefully then you'll understand that entire article, like everything
else on that whole site, is made up. Of course the keygen doesn't
work. It's just humor article that entertains people who know how
keygens are ingrained in the HL community and makes idiots like yourself
who think they know HL go crazy frustrated and write emails like the
one you sent me.
Here's some "research" for you.
The HL CD key is used only for WON authentication for online gameplay
and yes, isn't all that necessary for single player (I'll go into
this later). CD keys for expansion packs and mods like Opposing Force,
Counter Strike, or Blue Shift use different algorithms and thus have
more digits and even use the A-Z character set. Since some of these
expansion packs/mods are boxed for retail to be sold to people who
don't already own HL, they have the HL engine built in and their CD
keys will work with the same WON authentication. You can play online
with a key from any one of those packs, as long as it's valid. Now,
back to how CD keys aren't necessary for single player... Whenever
you start HL for the first time it prompts for the key. As long as
the CD key fits the algorithm it'll accept it and let you play. Once
you enter the key it's stored in your registry and repeatedly referenced
whenever you start the game (this way you only type it in once). When
you play online though, your key needs to be authorized by WON, which
has a huge database of all the keys in use and their corresponding
IP locations. If your key is already being used somewhere by someone,
regardless of whether or not your key fits the algorithm, you don't
get to play. So a working non-satirical keygen will pump out valid
keys, but chances are every key it creates is already in use somewhere.
This is why most keygens work for single player and not for online
play.
Now, if your wondering whether I just went and researched this just
now so I don't look wrong to an obvious intellectual mogul such as
yourself... This is common knowledge. I've owned HL since 1998 and
I wrote that keygen article in 2001. I downloaded CS when it was still
a small cult mod and nobody even dreamed it would be picked up by
Valve and sold retail. I've had this article and a few others featured
on Planet Half-Life and Counterstrike.net. I don't think they would
have featured me if I was really as far off base as you seem to think
I am.
I am glad you liked the rest of our site though. I actually get a
lot of emails from people just like you who think my "keygen"
is flawed because they think it's real. I usually just insult them
back, point it out that it's satire, and be done, but since you actually
tried to back up your argument with facts and happened to like the
rest of my site, I figure I owe you some truth so you can get your
facts straight. Calling me a puppydogface
wasn't really all that appropriate though, was it?
-Chris Clark
Webmaster
www.reality-syndicate.com
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I thought
I had made a new friend. Chris seemed like a really nifty guy and I wanted
to hang out with him because he was so swell. Imagine my discontent when
I got this back. Oh, and by the way, watch out! This one's language
is rated NC-17!
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To: chris@reality-syndicate.com
From: "Chris Tso"
Subject: "Gingerbread-man
off.............................rainbow"
Look, hot cocoa, i don't know
why you replied to me; i mean no i don't want to
be your friend. I thought you would just take my earlier e-mail in(the
HL
keygen) and just leave it, because of your sun-shiny
e-mail i missed out on
watching the intro of Futurama on the tv (you know the little unique
movie
clip things on that big screen, that Fry's ship crashes into??) something
that is much more important than your insignificant life. Oh yeah
and i
changed my mind about your site, after reading all the unfunny, memory
wasting, stupid articles at your front page, i found out how you've
got
nothing better to put on your site except random news about wool
mittens, who no-one will ever give a sugarplum
about. Your site sucks no-one will ever want to visit your smiley
site so dandelion you, you might
as well take your site down, it will do the whole entire web a lot
of good. Anyway stop sending me e-mails, just tea
party off and get on with you yummy
life.
p.s. if you by
any chance reply don't hassle me about me having a baby
kittens
computer, actually i got a new p4 2.66gHz from Dell, if your clever
enough
you'll find out why i added this little bit at the end.
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Dude,
he's got a Dell! This guy is so cool, and I fear I'll never be his friend.
I mean, it's my fault that he missed a part of his show because
I somehow forced him to check his email at a specific time. What was I
thinking? He even changed his mind about our site. I guess I really dropped
the ball on this friendship, hmm?
 Well
Chris, if you're reading this, I'm truly sorry that my site made you unhappy.
I am amazingly impressed by your computer since I had planned on
"hassling" you about it for no particular reason (you're so
smart!). I'll do as you advise and get on with my yummy
life, but just know that I'll miss the fun times we shared.
For the
rest of you reading this, feel better knowing that there's always somebody
out there who is profoundly stupider than you.
-Chris Clark
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