Caddy says, "Just let me call this up on my computer and I'll show you something really stupid. See this program? It's called The Namer. You can download it from the Aspyr web site. It's a nicely written utility that does exactly what it's supposed to do, but the stupid thing is that there's no excuse at all for this program to even exist!

"The only reason Aspyr had to release The Namer is that someone foolishly thought it would be a good idea to hard-code absurdly long filenames into The Sims. I would guess that the original plan was to embed information in the filename that really belongs in the file's content, but once the die was cast, this amateurish blunder got compounded thousands of times.

"Have you seen those files with ridiculous filenames like xskin-b666FAFit_IAmAnIdiot-MBODY-PELVIS-BELLYBUTTON-LINT.skn? That's what I'm talking about.

"And then, to compound the silliness, people who make new things for The Sims blindly follow the same filenaming conventions. A few low-brows might do this just to be malicious, but my guess is that most people just plain don't know any better. Some people even screw up the names of their .bmp files, and that's just plain dumber than a stone, but it's the xskin files that are crashing The Sims all over the world!

"Now, here is why it's so frustrating: It's easy as pie to create skins with filenames that are compatible with all platforms! That's what really chaps. Why spend hours, or even days, to create a terrific new object or skin for The Sims and then fail to take two minutes to give it a workable filename? Why bother to publish your work on the web if you don't want people to use it?