New Blog

So, I've got a new blog out now, which I'm going to use to replace this blog.  It's called or.ca (maybe when I get some money I can get that actual domain name - it is pretty catchy) and I'm going to be writing on there now, hopefully more often than on the Daily Potpourri.  This blog has a more general scope.  I might be writing about politics, and I might write some stuff that will remind you of this place.  So check it out, and I'll see you all later.

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Tonight, there's gonna be a (legal) jailbreak!

Overheard at a session of Dungeons and Dragons in the past week:
Guy 1: "Ok, can I take the voluptuous tavern maid to bed?"
Guy 2: "Wait, check for traps!"
(Guy 1 rolls a 17 on a trap check)
DM: "You find a chastity belt."
Guy 1: "Dammit!"
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It was announced yesterday that jailbreaking an iPhone is legal under federal copyright law.

And I bet Apple's pretty pissed.

If you aren't familiar with the term, jailbreaking is the act of hacking an iPhone to gain access to apps that aren't approved by Apple, through the underground appstore Cydia.  A similar practice can be used on video game consoles, or the iPhone, to play pirated games

Apple's discouraged the practice ever since someone thought of doing it, since the practice can undermine the closed system that Apple has laid down in the same format since 2007.  Of course, it hasn't been the best system:

Not Invented Here is property of Bill Barnes and Paul Southworth

Of course, if someone were to pirate apps using their jailbroken iPhones, authorities could take action against the perpetrators.  But, the act of jailbreaking is not considered a crime, and neither is the use of Cydia, as long as all developers get credit and/or money for their work.  The system is similar to the system in Canada with respect to BitTorrent: The act of torrenting isn't illegal, since it can be used for freeware.  Pirating is illegal, however.

While Apple can still take action against jailbreakers available to them with their business rights, such as denial of service or refusing warranties, people who jailbreak their iPhones cannot be legally charged.

Of course, Apple doesn't like this one bit.  They think that they're entitled to the regulation of their own system.  However, with all the attention Apple's getting now, you have to wonder how long it might take for them to seriously mess up.

Urghhh

Insomnia sucks.  True story.  Especially when you're looking for a job the next day.

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It's been a week since Apple announced their "fix" for the iPhone 4, in the latest development in what Apple has dubbed "antennagate" - a pretty appropriate name.  The reception for Apple's fix, as with the rest of the debacle, has been generally cool - at best.

Ever since the iPhone 4 came out, there have been complaints about the reception it gets.  Apple claims that only 0.55% of people phoned in complaining about this - some snarky critics shot back that the other 99.45% couldn't get reception.  What really tore it for Apple was when Consumer Reports magazine said that they couldn't recommend the iPhone 4 because of this problem.  So Stevie announced that they were giving everybody with an iPhone 4 free cases - or a full refund for people who still aren't happy.

Apple did what it had to do, true.  Consumer Reports did mention that you could get a reception fix through an iPhone case.  While some people praise the fix, many people comment that it isn't permanent.  Jobs didn't mention any work on getting a fix, and I can only assume that the phones being shipped up here to Canada are going to have the same problem.  There are some theories that phones are getting delayed to fix the problem, but I somewhat doubt it.  Apple is pretty notorious for being slow with updating their products.

At this point, I'm wondering if Apple would have even bothered with the cases if Consumer Reports didn't say anything.

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iGoogle

If you're a regular reader - *insert disbelief here* - you might have noticed the changes to the site.  Among these changes is the new subheading: A (hopefully) daily tech news blog.

Yeah.  I haven't been keeping up well on that, have I?

So, I thought that I would try out iGoogle last week.  For those of you who don't know what iGoogle is, it's Google's alternate homepage.  Of course, you all know about the clean-cut homepage that Google usually sports, designed to load really fast.  iGoogle is an optional build-up of that.

What?  I'm not gonna let you look at my Facebook.  Creeper.

The Twitter and Facebook gadget alone is reason enough to go to the site.  In my opinion, it's much better than those sites that make their whole business off of putting Twitter and Facebook together.  The only downside is that you don't get FB chat on iGoogle.  Another really nice feature is the weather centre.  As you can see, it's matching the extension I have next to the address bar (although I don't know why I have two weather centers now.)  It also has news feeds in there, which you can customize. Other features that I don't have on my page include comics, games, and a TV guide.

The best feature, though, would have to be the Google Calendar feature.  I started my own calendar up recently so that I can keep track of what I'm doing next year when I'm attending university.  Having the gadget there really helps.  I can get my Twitter and Facebook feeds, as well as my schedule, on one site.  I highly recommend iGoogle for anyone who doesn't already have something like this.

Is there anything Dan Brown won't do?

Wow.  Dan Brown.  What a guy.


For those of you who don't know Dan Brown, he's another YouTuber.  One that I haven't been following so much, but respected nonetheless.  From his early days as a Rubik's Cube expert, Dan has come to the forefront of the YouTube community, currently either forming giant collaboration projects or discussing user-generated questions in his basement, which looks like it could be a war room in WWII-era Britain.

Dan Brown in one of his better moments

Just now, Dan officially announced his new project, Dan 3.0, at VidCon.  Earlier this week, he posted a video leading up to the announcement.

Today, he announced the content of this project.  Starting August 1st, Dan is going to give control of his live into the hands of his viewers.  Wow.  I have to admire Dan's ambition here.  There are, of course, going to have to be limits on what people can do here.  In a world that can have 4chan, there are bound to be people that are going to try their best to make him buy a house or something equally lucrative.  Although I have yet to hear the full details on Dan's project, I really hope he can pull this off.  I'm going to be sure to pay more attention to his videos in the future.  To anybody reading this, what are your thoughts on Dan 3.0?

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YouTube makes jobs!

YouTube made a couple of big announcements at VidCon today that I wanted to address. First of all, there was the announcement that YouTube will soon offer 4k-resolution videos, which is actually better than Imax.

Holy shit.

YouTube kind of jumped the gun on this one, didn't they? Never mind that the necessary network speed to quickly download this is not available outside of South Korea, one big factor is that pretty much 99% of all monitors don't go above 1080p. You would need to get a projector that is "typically the size of a small refrigerator" (YouTube's words, not mine) just to watch the video to its full capacity. Although it's nice to see that we can take it that far, it just isn't really worth it to add on to the site, in my opinion.

The second announcement is the announcement of the YouTube Partner Grant Program. I've long been a fan of Internet commerce, and I really approve of the YouTube Partner program. I've seen many people who make their living off of YouTube (a person I mentioned in this blog before, Wheezy Waiter, just started vlogging full-time), and I personally have wanted to get into the business. Although I likely wouldn't qualify for this grant (I don't really have that many views), it's really nice to know that many young videographers are getting what they need to start making videos, especially in this economic downturn. I have to give YouTube a thumbs-up for that grant.

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The National Administration of Self-Esteem and Assimilation

E3 was boring.

Well, that's a bit harsh, but it was pretty forgetful, in any case. The main show was the Nintendo 3DS, the 3D portable console. It was really funny to see both Sony and Microsoft so obviously upstaged by Nintendo, when both of them are pretty much trying to emulate the Wii in the next year.

But enough about that.

I read an article about NASA last week. It would appear that Obama is trying to change NASA's goals. Instead of "going where no man has gone before", NASA now has goals that are a bit closer to Earth: To inspire children and young adults to pursue scientific careers, and to reach out to the Muslim community.

Now, like many people, I scoffed. I scoffed hard. I scoffed like Steve Jobs at a Microsoft convention. 40 years ago, NASA was the only agency to land on the Moon. Today, NASA is still the only agency to land on the Moon. The difference between this is that now, nobody is landing on the moon. Nobody has gone beyond low earth orbit since 1972, when Gene Cernan stepped on the moon for the last time (and yes, I do believe the Moon landings were real. I might do a post later on why I think that). Now Obama's trying to get them out of even going into LEO. It's a bit crazy.

But then I thought on it. Last summer, I was big on space. Of course, last summer was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. I really wanted to go into space. In fact, I'm sure everyone has really wanted to go into space at some time. So, NASA actually can inspire people to pursue scientific careers. But it was able to do that before. It was able to inspire by undertaking grand projects, like the moon landings and the ISS. So why take the US out of orbit?

I took a good look at the second of NASA's new goals. Obama wants the American scientific community to partner with the Muslim scientific community, to get space programs in the Middle East. This is instead of partnering with Russia, the EU, and Japan, with whom the US could achieve more great projects. This has more of a political goal. One of the main reasons that the Middle East is so violent, no matter what anyone tells you, is jealousy. One way to get the Middle East to co-exist peacefully is to get them on an even footing with the rest of the world, and with each other. One way to do that is to get them their own space program. Or so Obama hopes. It's still up in the air if the Middle East will accept this help. It certainly would be nice to see more independent space programs out there, and it is also nice to see Obama trying to win back the American reputation of multilateral leadership. It could turn out that

In conclusion, this could turn out to be an important part of Obama's presidency. But only time will tell if this would make him one of the "great negotiators", or if his presidency was a waste of time.

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Light-speed High School

Well, I'm starting to figure out why tabloids make so much money. Let me recap my last story for you.

On Sunday, at around 9:30 PM EST, a post was made on the "infamous" /b/ thread on 4chan, telling people to search up "Justin Bieber syphilis". With the popularity of the /b/ board, and the extreme hatred some people feel towards Justin Bieber, the board managed to get the search term up to #1 on Google Trends (although you won't be able to find it now). So, I stumble on this 2 hours later, and find rumors that CNN, FOX News, ebaumsworld and TMZ, among others, have reported this as true. While I didn't find any mention on TMZ.com or ebaumsworld, it's possible that a TV segment speculating the rumor came up on CNN and FOX.

Now, both Bieber-haters and -lovers were in an uproar. At least 40 questions on Yahoo! Answers were started within an hour of my discovery. Vast amounts of blog posts were made. And the number of visitors on this site doubled in less than an hour.

That's the power of the internet. Now that we've got information going at close to the speed of light over the Internet, it takes that much quicker for rumors to spread. Think of your average high school on Red Bull, speed, and steroids at the same time.

So I guess it'll be a return to tech news for me, now that my "15 minutes of fame" is done. Not that E3 is this week or anything...

The influence of 4chan

Wow. Just, wow.

So, I went onto 4chan for the first time in ever, pushed there by a TED talk from Christopher Poole, when suddenly, I stumbled along this:

So, I decided to do the search, just for sh*ts and giggles, and I find this:

I don't believe it. 4chan has managed to con CNN into thinking Justin Bieber's got syphilis. In less than 2 hours. Read down on that page and you'll see that Fox News has reported the same story (I'm assuming a bit here).

Wow. Good on ya, 4chan. Is it ironic that the talk I was watching had to do with the whole influence of 4chan deal?

UPDATE 11:33 PM EST: I just figured out that the certain thread on 4chan has just been deleted.

UPDATE 12:25 AM EST: Well, as far as I know, I'm the only one who confirmed this. There might be others, but they aren't high enough on google. Neither am I, I guess, if nobody else has commented on it. Just one last time before I go to bed: Justin Bieber does not have syphilis. I repeat, Justin Bieber does not have syphilis.

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ROCK BAND 3

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!

Rock Band 3.

Did I mention OMG?

It seems weird that, even though I'm basically flat broke, I can still get excited over new games, rare as it may be. But Rock Band 3 is definitely getting me excited.

For one, there's the pro mode. I'm a great Rock Band drummer, if you haven't noticed. I've also been messing around with the drums that we have in the band room at school, and I'm getting pretty good at those too. Pro mode for drums seems like a challenge that I'm willing to take up. Also, as a musician, I can see pro mode as a way to get people to actually learn how hard it is to play the actual guitar, or the actual keyboard. It isn't as easy as it looks. The option of having pro mode on helps the game keep its "party game" feel, while appealing to those hardcore, need-to-get-100%-on-Dragonforce players.

The vocal harmonies is a great addition, too. I loved this part in The Beatles: Rock Band, although I didn't get much of a chance to try it out. This was mostly because all of my friends hate the Beatles. Applying the three-part vocals to a wider variety of songs not only will appeal to more players (Flight of the Conchords, anybody?), but gives the crew at Harmonix more of a library to work with, while letting more people actually play the game. Seriously, after Rock Band 3, you're gonna have to work hard to get more people on one console.

Now, I'm a piano player. Naturally, when I listen to Baba O'Riley or Bohemian Rhapsody, I play along with the keyboard/piano solo. While I'm still neutral about the addition of keyboards, it has potential.

One of the things I have to give Guitar Hero credit for (after Harmonix got axed) was the ability to drop in and out of songs in the middle of the song seamlessly (well, that and having any combination of instruments). I like seeing that Harmonix has incorporated this into Rock Band 3 (which I feel is justified - hypocritically on my part - since Activision ripped off Harmonix here), which keeps it pretty laid-back.

Not that there aren't any flaws in this game. One concerns the addition of the keyboards. Now, whenever I get together with 3 friends and play 4-player Rock Band, I find it pretty hard to see my part. Of course, I could get a bigger TV, but I still need to get a job. Another instrument added in there would only make it more cramped and harder to see.

My other main concern is going to be the price tag. When Rock Band 1 came out, it cost me $200 for a guitar, drums and mic. With Rock Band 3, you're adding the Pro guitar, cymbals for the drums, and a keyboard. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole set came out to $300, maybe $350.

Since I'm going to be living in residence next year, this is pretty exciting for me. When 7 people can play music at one time, you've got almost the ultimate party game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna look for a job so I can buy this.

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Finally!

It looks like SpaceX has finally launched their Falcon 9 rocket. It also looks like it went off almost perfectly. Congratulations, SpaceX.

This launch opens up many possibilities. For one, the cost per launch of a Falcon 9 rocket is around $50 million, about 15% of that of the Space Shuttle. Also, it takes the space business further away from the government, which is more interested in other pursuits. Commercial space is really where it's going to be at, the way that airplanes were last century.

However, there's still some other stuff that has me worried about commercial spaceflight. First of all, it seems to be getting off to a slow start. The Falcon 9 was delayed by over half a year before it finally got off the ground. Commercial spaceflight has been crawling along since it first started. The first person in space from commercial spaceflight was about 7 years ago (I think). It took the US government 8 years between the first orbital spaceflight and the moon landing. Meanwhile, commercial spaceflight has seemingly gone backwards. While there are numerous projects in development, there hasn't been a real breakthrough in a while. Which could be said about the entire field, I suppose.

Second of all, there's the enormous work involved with launching people into space. The Wright Brothers were able to fly largely on their own financial and intellectual steam. They were bicycle shop owners. The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, also founded PayPal, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. He was able to employ professional engineers and scientists to get the Falcon 9 off the ground. The Wright Brothers didn't even build the engine used in their plane. They just made it aerodynamic. I don't see anybody selling rocket engines on the corner.

That doesn't mean that it's all expensive. There has been a few successful attempts to get pictures of space with just a balloon, a camera and a cellphone. I highly recommend that you try it. It would make for a great summer project.

I'm still pretty excited for the coming expansion of commercial spaceflight, if it ever does get here. For now, however, I'm gonna keep a lookout for stray rocket engines.

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The Library

I went to the library downtown a few days ago to kill time by surfing the web. I noticed, however, that every site I visited wanted me to upgrade the browser.

Which is when I figured out that the library still has Internet Explorer 6.

Kill me now.

Nothing really worked. Wikipedia was 10x the size it should have been, Twitter's layout was all wonky, and I couldn't even get into Facebook.

They had Firefox there too, but it wasn't really an improvement. The version of Firefox they run is as old as IE6.

A little investigation revealed that the library hadn't updated their software in almost five years. Their copy of Microsoft Office was from 2002, the messenger service was MSN messenger (not Windows Live Messenger), and they even had the very first version of Google Earth (the newest software they had, being released in June 2005).

Now, think about all that's happened in those 5 years. Five years ago, the NHL lockout had just ended. In the last 5 years, the Who released their last album. Katrina hit. Dumbledore died on page 596. 2007. Obama got elected (C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER). And I wrote about how the library has no sense of technology (you're damn right it's a sense).

You know, I shouldn't be surprised. Every single person who works at the library is a middle-aged woman. I wouldn't imagine that they would have the inclination, not to mention the knowledge (no offense, but they're librarians) to upgrade their software.

In the meantime, I'll go home if I want to get on the internet.

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A momentous occasion

This has to be the third best moment of my life, after graduation and being born. Today, I finally five-starred Panic Attack.

I'd like to take this time to thank the Academy, and everyone that made this achievement possible. So yeah, that's been my weekend.

Also, it snowed here all weekend. I hate this town.

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Free stuff!

I was browsing my Facebook the other day when I came upon a news post by the "Chuck" fan page (the TV show, for those who are confused). They said that the latest episode would be available for viewing. I took this to mean torrenting, or at the very least, watching it on nbc for a hefty fee. It happened to be neither. I was able to go to nbc.com and find full episodes of Chuck, The Office, and other shows. Now, this might be available only to you in the US, or I might not have the right player, since it didn't play for me, but the concept of it is something that should have come along a long time ago.

Another thing I found out was that two of my textbooks for next semester, for both my computing science courses, are available for free download in an online library, with a valid student code. This is another big help to me, and saves me at least $200 in theoretical textbook funds.

I decided to go on a sort of "quest" to see how much content on the Internet I can get for free (without breaking the law). Truth is, there's a lot, provided in the US. All four major broadcasters provide free full episodes of shows that they show on their channel to citizens in the US. A number of authors give permission to have their work distributed on the Internet for your enjoyment on your Kindle (I actually laughed a little typing that last word), and of course there are a large number of games on the web, if you don't mind playing flash games. Even Internet radio is catching on.

The two areas behind the line are feature films and music. I can kind of get both, but there are ways to get around those flaws. The main flaw with movies is the wide array of distributors, and their unwillingness to communicate on an open medium. The movie distributors only ever release their film on reels (never seen the screening room in a theatre, they might use different technology now) and DVD/Blu-Ray discs (does anybody distribute on VHS now?). They control the supply, until someone gets a copy on Pirate Bay. The best way for them to save their hides would be to overcome that fear, and either put flash advertising throughout an internet-distributed movie (financially viable since there is no cost going to the movie theater or theater workers) or subscriptions.

Music. Sigh. You might know how much I despise the RIAA for wanting money over distribution if you've read earlier posts. Just wow. But anyway, I think that we'll be seeing more independently distributing artists. This won't be as much of a problem as independent films, since it costs relatively little to make an album over, say, Avatar.

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I'm edumacated now!

Yeah, I haven't been posting much. For one thing, I haven't found anything that I'm particularly excited or angry about, apart from the usual RIAA stuff. Another thing is that I've had some other personal stuff to deal with. But I think I came out on top

Item number one: I am now a theoretical graduate. I haven't actually graduated yet, since I've got diploma exams next month, worth 50% of my mark. But I have a really cool hat now, and a diploma and rose.

Item number two: My residence fee, which none of you will remember is the whole reason I started this blog in the first place, is now paid, along with my tuition for next year. As of now, I have $4250 in scholarships, plus another $7000 - $8000 saved up in the bank. Since I'm able to pay my tuition and textbooks for next year, my parents have agreed to pay for my housing and food next year, a total of $6200.

Item the third: I got singled out for two out of eight awards during my graduation: The RCMP Citizenship Award and the award named after my school (gotta protect my privacy somehow, even if Facebook doesn't), which was a pretty cool thing.

So it seems I've come out on top this weekend. I've even got a day and a half left in it! Rock Band time!

Afternote: It seems that the first launch of the Falcon 9 has been delayed by another week or so. It's on your head, SpaceX.

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SpaceX, get your act together!

So, just some advice to everyone out there: drinking a 1-liter slushie in less than 5 minutes is not such a good idea.

My favorite viewing spectacle of all time would have to be rocket launches. Not just because I want to be one of the people to see a crash, I also like the technological advancement it represents. It's something when we can send people hundreds of miles up in the span of a few minutes.

So you'd imagine that I'd be excited to hear that SpaceX was planning to launch a rocket from Cape Canaveral today. Emphasis on was. Big was there.

I first heard about the Falcon 9 rocket around the middle of March. Back then, it had a set launch date for April 6. As April crept closer and closer, I got pretty excited. I only ever got the chance to watch Space Shuttle launches (the Ares rocket doesn't count, it didn't succeed and it was scrapped three months ago), and it was exciting to have a change.

Then it got delayed a month.

I thought no problem. I mean, they're doing rocket science, aren't they? They want to have it right.

So a month has passed by. Where's my rocket?

About 9 days in the future, it seems. The launch has been delayed another time to next Sunday. I'm starting to get pretty impatient now. I did some research, and SpaceX has had this coming for a while now, over six months. Sure, it's rocket science, but you're a FUCKING SIX MONTHS OFF YOUR FIRST DEADLINE. Now, if I was six months off of a deadline at school... well, the semester would be over.

So, I'm going to be watching on May 16, or whenever they decide to launch this thing. But you better hope this works, SpaceX. If not, you're gonna have a lot to answer for.

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I'm back

<.<

>.>

Empty around here, isn't it?

I'd like to say it was school. I'd also like to say it's scholarships for next year. But really, I don't do much in school and I applied for one scholarship so far. I'm lazy. What can I say?

I hope I can get back into the thick of things. I'm not going to stick to the daily schedule, though. I'll post as much as possible, just not every day necessarily.

So, I finally got a proper look at the iPad yesterday, even though it isn't out in Canada (I think). A classmate brought it in, and I am actually pretty impressed, although it was a bit lacking. I found a big difference in using both your hands when using the iPad and using your thumbs when using the iPhone. It just gets really tiring. I took the elements app and the Marvel comics app for a spin.

The Elements app is really good, I have to say. I found it accurate and really entertaining. However, the usefulness of this app is in question. Sure, it looks cool, but so did The Force Unleashed. I don't play The Force Unleashed anymore, and it's not likely that I'll use the Elements app for anything worthwhile. Although it showcases the graphics capability of the iPad, I don't actually think I would use it for more than its $10+ worth.

The Marvel comics app is astounding. If you've ever seen how, in the movies, they run through the panels of a comic, by panning from panel to panel, it's just like that, and it looks amazing. The one thing I could say that would ruin a comic app would be the need to zoom out and in between panels. Marvel comics has none of this. I cannot tell you how exited I was when I saw the transition between panels. I'm not much of a comic reader, but that's mainly because there are no places to buy comics in my town. With the Marvel comics app, I could see myself getting very much into comic books.

Overall, the iPad does good for itself. The apps are above par, and the possibilities of using it are dizzying to think about. I can see myself buying one of these, but I think I'll wait until next generation, to see what Apple improves upon.

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Miegakure

I read XKCD, and saw a game in the comic called Miegakure. It looked pretty good, and I thought you guys should check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhBoY6s-Fhw

Rube Goldberg, 90 years later

Nothing much this time, just a link to a bunch of Rube Goldberg videos. After that one OK Go video, they seem to be pretty popular.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/rube-goldberg-video-gallery/

CNN this week

Wow, that's scary. Last time, I said I wouldn't make it to 2:00 PM without sleeping, and that's right when I fell asleep.

So, I've been paying attention in Social class - which is rare for me - and after watching a bit of CNN, I think I'll try and watch that channel more often.

Sure, most of the correspondents are opinionated and biased, but there was one man who didn't actually seem that way, and that made me think.

He was talking about the current economic status of the United States, and how the health care bill would be digging a bigger hole for America. He went on to claim that he wanted to abolish Social Security, which to me seemed extremely radical.

He said that not only was Obama to blame, so was George Bush. That struck me as odd. Here, this guy was talking about Republican views, but he said the Republicans were at fault. Now, I support the health care bill, but it seems to me that he has a good point. He said that the government was paying out Social Security with IOU's, which was true. He said that for the government to not have the money that they took from the people to pay social security means they've been scamming the American people, which is also true.

But it works in places like Canada, the UK, France, and many other places in the world. So why not the US?

Two reasons: Tradition and Corruption (or, less radically, misplaced ideals). That money had to go somewhere. Name your area, and it's a good bet there's Social Security money in there. Bailout, energy, war fund. But it's time to own up, government. Give the people the money back.

This last comment is directed toward Rick Sanchez, who hosted Campbell Brown tonight: You promised John Fund and Craig Crawford, mano a mano. There was no fistfighting that I could see. Get your facts right.

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MW2 Ending

Don't expect anything much tomorrow. I got 5 hours of sleep last night, and I won't be getting any tonight. I'll be surprised if I make it to 2:00 tomorrow.

So, I just finished the Modern Warfare 2 campaign for the second time. It is a really good story, and frighteningly realistic. Over the whole story, though, there was one thing that bugged me. The ending.

Not that it wasn't terrible. I was pretty satisfied with the ending, a sign that it's a really good game. Plus, it paves the way for more sequels, which usually I don't like in a game, but I thought was a given.

But partway through the ending of the game (from when you crash the boat to the credits), they could have cut it off. You just killed Sheperd, you were bleeding out on the ground, and Price looked about to die. If they had finished it right there, that would have been a great ending, enough to get it that writer's award they lost. It would've sent a message like "in war, everyone dies". Every important character in that game would have been dead (except Ramirez - Foley would tell him to resuscitate himself), and a huge message would have been sent.

Instead, Price lives, patches up Soap, and Nicolai decides to pick them up after all. It might not have been the best ending in the world, but with a developer like Activision hanging over your shoulder, I understand.

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1b1t

I suppose you're wondering about the cryptic title. Well, I stumbled upon this a few days ago. For those too lazy to click and read, let me sum it up for you. Jeff Howe, a writer for Wired magazine, has proposed a sort of Twitter book-club. The idea is that Howe is going to try and get as many people on Twitter to read the same book as possible. They'll discuss it on Twitter, and present arguments, like a book club you'd see in a library or some sort of Desperate Housewives-esque setting.

I know what some of you are doing. You're scoffing, and saying "Me, read? HAH!" Well, I would like to point out that you're reading right now. You're also arguing about this text with me by saying that you don't read. All you'd have to do is write it out in 140 characters or less.

Now, beyond the somewhat advertising nature of this post, I genuinely think this is a great idea, and I want to say that I will be participating in this. Twitter is well known for its ability to communicate news at lightning speed in vast quantities (an example from my experience: while I was watching the Canada-USA men's hockey finals, I managed to find out about Crosby's goal on Twitter before I saw it - live). Some examples of this are the Haitian earthquake and the election dispute in Iran. For months, neither topic would come off of the trending topics. What Howe is trying to do is transplant that unity on Twitter that I'm calling "Twinity" (I want a copyright on that, Twitter) from the area of news topics to books. And books, last time I checked, are an endangered species.

Also, if proven successful, this might become a practice in some schools. I know in my school, we've already integrated the blog. Why not the microblog?

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Dammit, Jagex!

Well, I'm back, like I said I would be. It's been a nice week, except for one thing.

Runescape.

I didn't want to. But I did. I made another account on Runescape. And I'm actually starting to like the game again, against my will.

It might just be that my attention span has lengthened, but I can actually stand doing one thing for hours on end, just to work towards a goal. And that's all that Runescape is, is doing one thing for hours on end, then doing another thing for hours on end.

Plus, I'm even considering the membership.

Oh, no.

Ah, hell

Ah, hell. Two days without posting.

I think I'll actually take the last 5 days of this week off, for school and money reasons. I'll see you all next Thursday!

FCC Broadband

So, the FCC has a plan to bring broadband to 90% of the US population by 2020.

Really, now. That's just ridiculous.

According to the FCC, 65% of the US now has broadband. That's since broadband first became popular, about 10-12 years ago. So, if that 65% of the country adopted broadband in 10 years, it's likely that the other 25% needed will get a connection in the next 10. They don't need the FCC's help.

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Little Plug

I don't have many ideas for posts today, so I'm just gonna plug Dungeons and Dragons Online. It's not bad. It's not good, mind you, but it isn't bad. I recommend you play it sometime.

Cheap 'puters

Mondays. 'Nuff said. Plus, the Monday after I lose an hour of sleep. It's a good thing someone figured out what coffee does.

It struck me today to think how much we use technology now. My history class now has a Smartboard, and a set of 40 netbooks. I also figured out that about a year or two after I've graduated, my school will likely have at least one good computer for every person there. Which isn't saying a whole lot, since in a few years, there'll be only 200 or so people, but still.

And as everything gets cheaper, it's gonna get even easier to put computers everywhere. Even now, you can see the effect of the lowering prices of computers. When I bought the laptop I have now back in November 2008, it cost $800, including the extended warranty. It came with 3GB of RAM, a 2GHz dual-core processor, and a cheap-a** Intel graphics card (which I absolutely hate). Now, a year and a half later, it seems you can get a hell of a lot more for $800.

Makes a person want to believe the stuff Ray Kurzweil (<- Really, Google Chrome? You think I wanted to say "unwieldy"?) says.

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Browser Wars

Hi everybody! Today is March 14, more popularly known as Pi Day! In addition to that, tomorrow is the Ides of March, and Wednesday is "Happy Happy Drink Drink Day"! Wow, that's a busy week!

It happens to be a busy week for me too, as was last week apparently. I might be a bit late with some of the posts next week, but don't worry, I'll do my best to have all of them up.

So I heard that Opera is going to be on the iPhone (the browser, not the genre). I'm going to grab onto this opportunity like Halo with Spartans and compare a few browsers competing in what is dubbed "The Second Browser Wars".

Safari: I only ever used this in my Communications Technology class, and it's not bad. There are some things that you need to get used to, but that's only because the Mac uses the Command button instead of the Control button. Potato, Potahto. I did have some trouble, though, with needing to use the keyboard to right click. Seriously? As a browser, though, Safari does well for itself.

Opera: Again, something I haven't used much, just on the Wii. On the Wii, it's terrible, but that's almost to be expected. Nintendo definitely didn't make the Wii for web browsing. The Wiimote's atrocious. Opera runs a bit slow, but that might also be Nintendo's fault. Jury's out on this one.

Now for the three browsers I have used a lot:

Internet Explorer 8: My first browser. Like everybody else, I started out browsing the internet on IE. It's served nicely in its heyday, and I really never noticed anything wrong with it. Well, except for the toolbars. Seriously, they take up a third of the screen. I checked. However, last summer, IE started crashing on me. It was getting to the point where I was groaning in frustration more than I was browsing. That was only a few months, too, since I had downloaded it. So, IE was dumped.

Mozilla Firefox: I found this to be a bit of an improvement over IE, but not that much. Firefox dumped some of the toolbars, and it ran a tiny bit faster than IE, but it did crash. I never liked crashes, since I would have to get my tabs back.

Google Chrome: A guy at my workplace suggested this to me, just a week after I got Firefox. I've been hooked since then. For one, the web page takes up a lot of the screen, instead of needless toolbars. That extra 20% makes a big difference. Second, Chrome saves all your work, so if you accidentally go back a page after writing a bunch, it's all there for you when you go back. Chrome saves which tabs you closed last, so even if it does crash, I just need to click once for my entire session to go back. And I've never come across a situation when I've needed to do that. Well, except when I'm running a lot of Flash. Get on it, Adobe.

So, out of all these browsers, I definitely recommend Google Chrome the most. Which browser is your favorite, and why?

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Interim Post III

Late again... well, I suppose I could have done this earlier.

Unfortunately, I was born after Tron was released, so I never really got caught up in the hype, and I never actually got to watch it.

That being said, I'm still somehow excited for Tron Legacy. Just the formula: Boy loses his dad, and finds him as a "master of his domain" - it catches your attention. That, and light cycles. Honestly, that has to be the best game known to man.

Interim Post II

Hmm... I seem to be a bit late today.

Well, I thought I'd post something that I thought was a good idea, since you already know my views on how the US broadband system works: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/fcc-broadband-test/

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Really?

Well, I literally just got home right now, so I'll make this short. Remember me talking about the prototype gigabit internet offered by Google? Well, two things: First, another company is doing the same thing in my hometown (yay!). Second, people are getting desperate. Towns are offering to name first-born children Google (or something to that effect).

Ridiculous.

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The United States bubble

Whew. Heavy stuff yesterday. And another late day today. I might consider taking naps in school. Either that, or get an IV full of coffee to take around every day.

Somehow, I managed to stay awake in Social class today, and we were talking about economics. He explained different government spending systems. it boiled down to two ideals; in one, you spend mostly during a recession, and in the other, you spend mostly in an economic boom. One thing that made it difficult to understand is that there isn't really a system that is loyal to either one. In many poor systems, money is hardly ever spent. In rich countries, money is almost always spent, such as the US, where nearly every fiscal budget results in a defecit (I checked this on Wikipedia, and the only presidential term when the debt fell in the last 30 years was Bill Clinton's second term, and predictions say that Barack Obama is going to run the debt higher than Ronald Reagan and George Bush combined). In fact, throughout the history of the US, there has only been one day when there was zero public debt: January 8, 1835.

I'm an analogy person. If you haven't figured that out, then I haven't been trying hard enough. But the US's debt was a big pill to swallow. Then, I found it. Remember the dot-com bubble and bust? The bust happened 10 years ago today. But the basic story is that the dot-com companies were getting lots of money with the promise of a huge return. But they didn't have a plan. Once people figured that out, down goes NASDAQ. Think of the US like that. Not to offend anybody, but there hasn't been a real plan to pull down the public debt since Truman was president (though Clinton did help a bit). But, there are two main differences. One is scale. The United States is the one country that props up the world's economic system. As shown by the recent recession, if the US goes down, so does everybody else. Kind of like the dot-com companies were the main reason that the NASDAQ ever got above 5000. The other difference is the time frame. The dot-com bubble built up for about 3 years. The US has been in debt for 180.

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My thoughts on file sharing

So yesterday, I posted a link that related (vaguely, I admit) to the topic of file-sharing - specifically, pertaining to music.

Now, this is a sticky topic, and it is best to tread lightly here. Just about everywhere in the world, the practice of file-sharing is illegal in some way, if not in the act, in the copyright infringements stemming from the act. It is also, by far, the one crime with the highest chance of "getting away with it", so to speak. Just about everybody between the ages of eight and thirty have done it at least once, and there haven't been many convictions.

Why is this? Why is it that with all the complaints about file sharing, there's a record high rate of committing the crime, and a record low rate of being charged for it? One could argue that it is because of the anonymity that the internet gives people (a topic I talked about once or twice). This can't be the case however. It's been shown many times that it is a simple thing to find out a person's IP address, and then find out their relative location from that (Wikipedia, for one, publicly shows a person's IP address when they edit anything). Any power looking to charge people with file sharing likely has better technology - plus the authority - to pinpoint an IP address down to the home address of a person. So no, that can't be it.

How about power in numbers? This seems a lot more likely, but it is not the full reason. Sure, millions of people file share, but that doesn't stop parking tickets.

The other reason that file sharing is so rampant without any charges is that the artists don't seem to care much about it. Sure, the artists need to make a living. But I find that most of the complaints about music file sharing comes from the RIAA and the record labels in it. The artists themselves have little or no problem with it, from what I've heard. Many of them just want to get their music heard, which I can relate to, being a very amateur musician.

In fact, there are some artists, like Kid Rock and Nine Inch Nails, that offer their music for free over the internet or just advise illegal downloading over the legitimate alternative. Which raises the question: why don't artists just do away with the record labels entirely?

I don't doubt that most of them would in a heartbeat, if it catches on. But even though there are a lot of us who download music, there is still a large market for CDs, and as long as they're making money off of that, they might not be in a hurry to do away with CDs entirely. I mean, you wouldn't turn down your salary, would you? Plus, there's the contracts that the artists have made with the record labels.

However, as the internet becomes more and more widely used, it is only a matter of time before record labels become obsolete, and artists sell their music (or maybe merchandise, as I saw in one Wired article) on one communal site/service, sort of like a YouTube for music (YouTube might even rise up to the plate to be that site).

And you know, that might be what the record labels are afraid of.

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Interim Post

Late day today, so I leave you with a link that I'll follow up on tomorrow... broadly, anyway.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/fifth-annual-sxsw-bit-torrent-download-is-almost-legal/

Also, as a follow-up to my review on 2012, I realized something wrong with the whole "microwaving the earth" deal. If there were really microwaves powerful enough to destabilize the earth coming in, then we would all be dead by now, anyway, since the microwaves would likely boil our bodies, so to speak.

Also, when I heard the line in Metal Gear Solid 4 "Snake, the hallway ahead is full of microwaves", I must admit I thought at first that meant microwave ovens.

Starcraft

If you've been reading my Twitter, you know that I've been trying to play StarCraft for the first time in my life.

Trying being the opportune word.

I've got the basic strategy down, I've been able to get a bunch of guys, I've even gotten 30 Goliaths at one time, but for some reason, the computer always seems to have a combat advantage equivalent to sending a squad of gunmen into a sniper ambush (which is another one of my pet peeves). The enemy also almost always seems to outnumber me at least 2 to 1, and to date I haven't even managed to win one encounter (an encounter meaning just a 30-second battle between my guys and the computer's guys).

Maybe I should just wait for Starcraft II. They say it's supposed to be easier on the newbies.

2012 review

Well, today I watched 2012, against all advice. It actually wasn't half bad. You could even say it was good.

--------------------WARNING! SPOILERS ENSUE!--------------------

You start out listening to a guy explain how a really big solar flare released a massive amount of neutrinos. Those neutrinos mutated, and acted like microwaves when it hit the Earth, warming the core. Actually, that's probably the most believable part of the whole film.

So this whole story centers on a few main people, one of which is Jackson Curtis. He's a lovable guy well disguised as a nutjob, and he's divorced (big surprise). He takes his kids to Yellowstone, and meets this other nutjob who says that the world's gonna end in a couple of days. Well, he's right. A doctor named Adrian (who happened to be listening to the same lecture I explained last paragraph) happens to also be at Yellowstone, taking readings to see when the crust gets too hot. He finds out that the world is gonna end in two days, and the evacuation starts.

Jackson takes his kids back to his ex's after she gets worried about them, an apparent side-effect of almost being killed by the San Andreas fault. He gets suspicious when his boss and his children suddenly leave the state, mentioning he's gonna die. He hires a plane, and then the Earth decides to give way, just as he's picking his family up. We go through a chase scene in which Pasadena falls into the Pacific Ocean, with Jackson and his family (and his boyfriend who happens to be a pilot) escaping death around 20 times, with the whole earthquake thing only counting as 1.

He heads to Yellowstone, and finds the crazy dude (who also happens to be Tallahassee from Zombieland) on the top of the Yellowstone Caldera. While there, he gets info and a map from the crazy guy. Apparently, there's a bunch of ships that are in China, which are supposed to save some people from what's gonna happen. So, as soon as Jackson leaves Tallahassee, the volcano erupts, giving the crazy guy a great way to exit. Meanwhile, Jackson tries to escape the eruption. Cue destructive chase scene!

But China's far away. So, Mystery Inc. stops in Las Vegas, where Jackson finds his rich boss, who needs to get to China, but also needs a second pilot. So heroic Gordon (that's the boyfriend) steps in. Another destructive plane getaway!!!!

Meanwhile, Washington needs to deal with the whole "world ending". Dr. Adrian talks to his dad, says goodbye, and tries to get President whats-his-name to leave. You see, the plan was to get the President to China via Air Force One, but he doesn't want to go quietly into the night! Like Bill Pullman before him, the President roughs it out with the civvies, and then gets crushed by the USS John F Kennedy. Oh, did I mention there's tsunamis all over the world? And that the South Pole is now in Wisconsin? And that Dr. Adrian's dad dies, and that the President's daughter now has to cope with her father's death, and that Dr. Adrian has a crush on her, and he has to deal with the Chief of Staff, who is just a mean person? Whew, that's a mouthful. Back to Jackson.

Jackson's boss' Russian pilot (Sasha) tells everybody that they need to stop and refuel somewhere west of Hawaii (which is now Lava Central), expecting to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Since there isn't fuel in the Pacific Ocean (other than the oil from the Exxon Valdez), they all prepare to tough it out in the ocean. But, since the South Pole is now in Wisconsin, the Earth decided to meet them halfway. Surprise! You're in the Himalayas! Even then, the engines decide to c**p out on Ol' Sasha, and he tells everyone to escape in the Bentley that happens to be in the cargo hold. Everyone gets out as Sasha steers the plane, and Sasha is now hurtling towards a cliff. Oh no! Oh wait, he's safe. Oh wait! He died!

Soon after that, they see a bunch of helicopters flying by, carrying animals (sure, two by two if you want). They stop and pick up the rich boss and his sons, but not his girlfriend, because the boss never got her a ticket D:<

The rest of them make their way over to the ships, where they find a family who is being smuggled on board. They band together and successfully get into the ship. Meanwhile, one of the "arks" isn't going to be launched, stranding thousands of people (including the boss) and putting Adrian in a dilemma. After the movie's mandatory moving speech by Adrian, they decide to let the stranded people on board, even though the Chief of Staff thinks that they're all going to die because of it. Oh, did I mention that there's another wave they didn't see coming, which cuts down their available time? Suspense!

After everybody gets on board (except the boss, by a freak accident... yeah, let's go with that...) they try to get the other doors closed... except! Since the Jackson 9-or-so weren't where they were supposed to be (learn a lesson from this kids!), the door's jammed with an electrical cord... oh, and Gordon's corpse. So, SuperJackson goes down on a "suicide mission" to get the cord out, while the wave strikes, drowning the boss' girlfriend and putting all of mankind in mortal peril.

--------This part edited out due to copyright issues-------

So, Jackson saves the day, lives through the suicide mission, and everyone gets saved from crashing into Mt. Everest ("Target elevation 29,000 feet?! What's at 29,000 feet?!?!?!"). Everybody makes their way to Africa, which happens to have survived the whole earthquake-tsunami thing.

-----------------End Spoilers-----------------

While what I said here seems to be mocking, this was actually a pretty good movie. The one problem with it was that, comparable to the "_______ Movie" series (Epic Movie, Scary Movie) which used pop culture references, this recycled every generic drama script known to man. There was a bunch of characters there that didn't need to be, and the whole thing was a bit overplayed. However, if you're looking for a disaster flick, this fits the bill very nicely.

If you managed to read through all of that, I congratulate you!

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There are three things that I truly hate in life. One is whiny, prepubescent kids. One is sequels. The last one is remakes. Until now, I was okay with the Final Fantasy series, because it only had two factors on this list - kids and sequels - and because it never actually impacted my life.

Well, that ends today. They're finally considering remakes for Final Fantasy 7. Now, I might have let this slide, but Final Fantasy has done enough already. With the biggest continuous series in the history of video games, and one of the most confusing numbering systems, you'd think that by now, the developers would give it up. With remakes for the first 3 games, it gives them even more reason to quit while they're ahead.

It doesn't help the case that the gameplay for the series hasn't really changed. At all. It's always been a turn-based RPG with a recycled plot. I'm getting pretty sick of what must be the biggest cash scheme of all time. Just give it up, Enix.

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One month!

Well, it's been one month now since I started this blog. I want to thank all the people that have read this blog, and I especially want to thank anybody who's promoted me to other people. I thought I would tell you a bit about me.

I'm a 17 year old living in Alberta, Canada. I'm finishing my last year of high school, and I'm going into the University of Alberta next year, specializing in Computing Science. While I'm all set for university, I still need to get the money for residence. I'm applying to scholarships, and looking for a job, although if putting ads on my blog works out, I might not do that.

Hmm... what else? Well, I own an Xbox 360, I've been to Germany, Mexico and the US, I play the tuba... ok, maybe this is getting a bit too close to home.

Another thing to add onto my link list is a webcomic called Unshelved. It's about an ensemble of librarians and their patrons. If you like sarcastic humor, I suggest you read it.

Video of the Day

As you all might know, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is quite possibly the best game of all time.

My "Video of the Day" goes out to a person who managed to write out an entire script to play the game blindfolded. And the best part is, he didn't actually do it for himself. He did it for a blind kid. See the video to find out.

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Dammit, Bungie! (Part deux)

So, Bungie put out a video of the multiplayer gameplay for Halo: Reach. Now, after Halo: ODSt(Also known as Halo 3+1/2), I fully expected this thing to look a lot like the rest: all machine guns, rocket launchers and swords.

Then I saw the video. They still have the rocket launchers and swords and automatic weaponry (as well as the gravity hammer, which should infuriate some diehard fanboys), but there seemed like some intriguing new weapons. One that I'm a bit excited to use looks like a battle rifle, and seems to fire like a guass cannon from Halo 2. They also decided to put in more awesome assassinations (not sure how this will factor into time spent killing), which should make for nice movies. Then I saw it. Jetpacks.

S**t.

Yes, Halo decided to include jetpacks in the game, upping its awesome factor by at least 10337%, which does not bode well for my social life, or for anyone else's. Reach is shaping up to be a really good game, provided Bungie doesn't f**k it up with prequel shenanigans, like George Lucas did. I can assure you, however, that good or bad, many people's social lives will be obliterated by this game.

Look ma! I can embed videos now!

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What about the movies?

If you are a regular reader on this blog, you are probably alone. Also, you might have read my post on how 2010 is going to be the year of 3-D. We've seen Avatar take in record sales at the box office, and we've seen Sony and Toshiba planning 3D TVs for this year. We've seen TSN and other networks planning to offer 3-D TV channels, and we've even seen Alienware offering a 3-D monitor for their desktop systems.

And if you need more confirmation that 3-D is here to stay, Acer is currently producing 3-D projectors. That's right, for $700, you can get access to a 720p, 120Hz HD 3-D projector. However, there's one point that I need clarification on. What are you going to watch?

True, Avatar is probably going to hit DVD in two or three months, but after the first initial Avatar and 3-D craze, I haven't seen anybody working too hard on media for these 3-D viewers, at least those using the active-shutter deal.

Because that's the whole deal, isn't it? You need to have 3-D movies, 3-D games, or 3-D TV shows in order to watch them. Just like you need an HD camera to film in HD, you can't just expect to pop in your favorite DVD and expect it to be in 3-D. Right now, the library of 3-D movies is sparse, to put it lightly.

It could be that Acer, Toshiba and Sony are jumping the gun a little bit here. What happens if it happens to be harder to do 3-D than we thought it was? What happens if there happen to be a lot of traditionalists in the movie business? It could be that in 10 years, these questions might be silly. But as of yet, I have yet to see one active-shutter 3D movie outside an IMAX theatre.

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PS3 Phale

Even though I try to be open-minded about brand loyalty, the one are where I tend to pick sides happens to be video game consoles. I'm a Microsoft man this time around. Nintendo didn't seem to be trying to compete with the other consoles, and PlayStation was... PlayStation.

That's why I have to laugh at the recent bug in the PS3's system, which caused most of the consoles to stop working for one day.

What happened with the PS3's? Did somebody decide to put a virus in the consoles through the Internet? Is there actually a "kill switch" activated by Sony?

No. It seems that the consoles actually thought that today was not actually March 1st, but February 29th. It would seem that the consoles thought that 2010 was a leap year.

What gets me was that the problem couldn't be an accidental mistake in the syntax. A leap year happens every 4 years. A programmer would just have to tell the console that when you hit a year divisible by 4, then put Feb. 29 in the calendar. That just cannot be mistaken by a computer. No, somebody actually thought that 2010 was a leap year. Since the leap year in 2008 was observed, that just meant that somebody thought that leap years happened every 2 years.

That's not the worst part. Sony likely knew this was a problem. They fixed the problem with the PS3 slims, since the error didn't appear for anybody owning a PS3 slim. While there is some room for doubt, there isn't much.

So Sony, like I told Twitter before you, fix your s**t. If I see that all the PS3 consoles don't work on March 1st, 2014 - or even worse, March 2nd, if you didn't bother to fix the date right now - I will personally b***h slap whoever is in charge of fixing this.

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So sue me

Slow news day, so I'm leaving you today with a video of a bird stealing Doritos.

http://failblog.org/2010/02/22/shoplifting-win/

Google Streetview

So I figured out yesterday that I can find my house on Google Streetview. I was pretty excited. The house looked pretty good. The grass looked green, and there wasn't any vandalism or anything. I mentioned this to my dad, who told me he "wasn't impressed".

He clarified that he wasn't impressed that now, everybody with access to the Internet will be able to know where our home is, and what it looks like. I wasn't buying it, but he seemed pretty sure of himself.

Now, why is this such an invasion of privacy? I took a deeper look, and found that while Google wasn't breaking any laws, they have been getting a lot of backlash for the Streetview project. This isn't really new to Google, who has done a lot of things that were deemed "questionable" (i.e Google Books, Google Buzz and Gmail in the early days). But while I can understand the controversy of scanning copyrighted books without permission or storing people's private information without their knowledge, I don't see much of a problem with photographing houses. It's not any more an invasion of privacy as letting people walk on sidewalks.

In my opinion, the main opposition here comes from "future shock". It's a term you might have come across before. It's pretty much the feeling you get when you see technological advancements happening faster and faster. You feel lost, and you feel like the world's a worse place off, somehow. And that might be true. For every benefit coming out of a product, there's a downside. While Facebook gives you a chance to reconnect with people you haven't seen for years, it's possible to spend hours waiting for updates from people.

If there is one thing Google wants to accomplish, it's to obtain as much information as possible, and make it easy to access (maybe part of the reason Finland is declaring the internet a legal right). That's what they did with their search engine, their photo service, and their video service, which have pretty much cataloged a good deal of the Internet. That's what they're doing with Google Books, even with the opposition. And that's what they're doing with Streetview.

Streetview can be considered an experiment for now, but there are already some uses to it. Yesterday, I used it to plan an outing into the city, looking for restaurants close to where I was going and looking at landmarks to help me find my way there when I actually was there. You can use it to look at neighborhoods, to see if the place your new apartment is located is actually as good a neighborhood as the landlord claims. One of my favorite uses is to locate landmarks around the world, and get a good look at them, with shots like this:

which makes for a better experience than just through pictures, anyways.

And to those people who might oppose Streetview, let me ask you this: what was the first thing you looked for when you heard about it?

What are your opinions on Streetview? Leave your comments below.

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Linky Linky (part deux)

I'm feeling a bit lazy today, so today's gonna be another link day.

For those physics geeks, like me: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/

Now, as a rule, I stay away from card games other than poker and blackjack. But this is a pretty fun game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/zanzarino/elements

Fail: http://failblog.org/2010/02/26/celebration-fail/

And, finally, I recommend you to try out the YouTube HTML5 beta. For those of you who are frustrated with the CPU-sucking Flash, this is a pretty good improvement over YouTube's current player: http://www.youtube.com/html5

That's it for now, I'll see you all tomorrow!

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The Verdict is In!

Well, that's about as good an ending as we could have hoped for.

It would seem that iTzLuPo has lost the battle with Microsoft. His Twitter account has been deleted, as I had mentioned yesterday, and he changed his stance completely, posting an apology on his YouTube channel earlier today. Then, in a really unforeseen move, iTzLuPo's channel was deleted. I took a quick glance at Google, and while there are many stories on Lupo, the guy himself can't be found on the Internet.

So, what happened?

I see two possibilities. One, the online community has completely cast out Lupo, making him realize that he was wrong, causing him to make his apology. His accounts were deleted by Twitter and Youtube, and he decided to take his permaban on Xbox Live.

Two (which, to me, seems like what actually happened), his parents wised up. If you weren't aware, somebody on Twitter, @WeKnowWhoYouAre, posted Lupo's full contact information, including his address, his phone number, and even his parent's names (@WeKnowWhoYouAre has been suspended by Twitter for "suspicious activity", likely because of the posting of Lupo's information). With the number of people that are angry at him, some people were bound to call Lupo's home, and his parents were bound to answer. I'm betting that Lupo's parents finally found out about their son's shenanigans on the Internet, and decided to pull the plug.

As for the pro (apparently, there's a space there), I'm told that he is not actually suspended, or even reprimanded. When going over the video, he admits that he was a bit too aggressive in his tone. That about sums it up on the corporate end.

And as for all of us gamers who watched from the sidelines? We just got told by Microsoft that they aren't going to be putting up with hackers, modders, and general cheaters anymore. Which is fine for most of us, since we don't do any of those things (right?). We should be relieved. But I can't help but sense that there might be even more chapters in this story, and we might see a lot more stories in the future like the saga of Lupo and the pro.

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You lost your mind boy? ('cause I'll help you find it)

Kudos if you know where the quote is from.

It has recently come to my attention that there is a little spat going on concerning a person known as "itzlupo" and pretty much the rest of the gaming world. If you aren't following this, let me explain.

Sometime this week, itzlupo was playing Modern Warfare on Xbox Live. He allegedly was being harassed by a mod called "thepro", who has a history of being a bit on the brash side when acting out his powers. Now, Lupo has a very large, if not long, history of being a modder when it comes to Xbox, having a large Youtube library full of mods and even evidenced in a personal Tweet sent to Robert Bowling, taunting him about his ability to mod (I can't get the tweet because iTzLuPo's Twitter account has been deleted.) Lupo was subsequently suspended from Xbox Live by thepro.

So, being a banned modder, he did what any banned modder would do: he whined. He made a video to share with other people and worked up quite a following. Thepro's previous history as a hasty banner helped along the modder a lot.

However, thepro's boss, Stephen Toulouse, stuck up for his deputy, and released a fully unedited video showing thepro being heavily provoked by your average preteen gamer.

However, I still have to come up with a conclusion on this. I was dead set that Lupo was guilty, but there are serious inconsistencies on both sides. On the fully unedited video, it can be seen that Lupo was not in fact the one provoking thepro, but a guy named mmmmmhhhhmmmmmPie (I might have mispelled that). This one mistake puts me in doubt.

However, there are a lot more things counting against Lupo. The fact that he edited the video in the first place does not look good for him. Also, even if he wasn't doing anything when the video was being filmed, Lupo might as well be banned from Xbox Live with all the obvious modding that he's doing. Calling attention to himself might not have been in his best interest. Like Tiger Woods before him, Lupo managed to blow this whole thing wide open, and even if the first incident wasn't actually incriminating, all the videos on his channel certainly are, especially now that he's under Microsoft's radar. Another thing that might not look suspicious, but doesn't sit well with me is his denial of anything bad said about him. I suppose that we all feel this, but it still doesn't sit right. Lupo has deleted his Twitter account as I had mentioned earlier, and it appears that every comment directed towards him on YouTube has to get approved, of which he only selects the "Pro Lupo" comments, portraying him in an unnecessarily positive light. Lastly, he seems to be talking too much about suing Microsoft. What would he be suing them for? The $60 for the one year membership they cost him? Any other expenses that he might have were agreed to when he accepted the Terms of Service. If he ever went to court for this, it would never turn out well for him, since Microsoft could easily sue him for their legal costs if they won the case, which would be disastrous for Lupo, who still attends high school.

So, who won here? Nobody! Thepro didn't win, since he is reportedly suspended (though this might be false), and Lupo definitely didn't win, because now he has 90% of the internet against him. If more information comes up tomorrow, I'll be reporting a final verdict.

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Stardraft II

As I have mentioned before, I'm still pretty mad at Blizzard, namely because they seemed more concerned about harvesting their quarter of a billion dollars from World of Warcraft. However, I'm willing to forgive them, if they keep to their promise this time and release Starcraft II before July hits. That being said, I'm getting really excited for Starcraft II.

I've never really played much of the RTS genre. I've played Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth a couple of times, but I've never really played that for the last 4 or 5 years. And I've never played Starcraft.

But Blizzard says they're supposed to be gearing the game to all skill levels, which should appeal to everyone. My friends tend to play Starcraft a lot (or they used to, anyway, until they heard Starcraft II was coming soon... back in 2007 *cough* *cough*... OK, I'm officially through with the vaporware talk), so they should be able to find good matches through Blizzard's new match system, and I should be able to find a couple of nubs that are the same level as me that I can beat.

The game should really appeal to really experienced players (You know, Koreans) too, with the new classes that keep people guessing as to exactly how the hell to use them. The only problem I foresee is people who purposely do terrible in the skill level match just to get a bunch of new players as opponents, and win every match. But that would just be boring.

So, Blizzard, I'm taking you off of my Axis of Evil. You'll just sit beside Bungie in the naughty corner.

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How mafiaboy didn't teach us anything

Got one more question for everyone, and maybe you can help me with this. Why is it wireless B+G+N? Why did they skip letters, and inconsistently, for that matter? Is it random?

As a follow-up to what happened to be my second blog post, apparently some other people feel the same way about placing rules on the internet.

Now, this is something I feel poses a real threat to us, maybe not now, but in the future. Bear with me for a moment. Imagine that you're twenty years in the future. Your life is full of computers, all communicating with each other. Your lights turn on with your alarm, your fridge is able to tell you what to have for breakfast, your car is able to predict the traffic, the whole works. But there is still no actual security on any of this stuff, other than what Norton or whoever is giving you, which really isn't much. Now, imagine some Chinese, Russian, Korean, or any hacker manages to take down the entire computer network for a city, or even a country. Really, everything would grind to a halt. Some cars might crash. Nothing really drastic would happen, except 99% of people would probably have nothing to do until the computers come back up. But who knows how long that would take, if nobody has been taking measures to keep this from happening?

Sound far-fetched? So did taking down Yahoo.com, back in 1999. But then a 15-year-old kid named Michael Calce AKA mafiaboy did it. Yahoo didn't know what to do with it. Neither did Amazon, Dell, Ebay, or CNN. That 15-year-old kid reportedly did over $1 billion worth of damage.

That's pretty much why I feel that the government, the science community, someone should be doing something about the paltry security we have right now on the internet.

But, unfortunately, I don't decide anything.

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Questions that make you go "Huh?"

Have you ever played Antbuster? The plot is nonsense. The humans who left the cake out there never once tried to get the cake in the half hour I played it for. Why am I trying to protect a cake that nobody wants?

If the update to this "Facebook Gold" thing is actually free, why don't they just offer it to everybody?

How can Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If they were pickled, wouldn't they already need to be picked?

Why is it that the only place north of Florida that doesn't have snow is the one holding the Winter Olympics?

Why was the movie called "Mission: Impossible" if Tom Cruise actually accomplished the mission?

What's the deal with Justin Bieber being a trending topic on Twitter? Isn't it because people are just Tweeting about how they hate him?

Why is it that the main demographic that the Jonas brothers appeal to are under 13? Seems a bit weird...

And finally, why is it that so many people are dramatic on Facebook, but hate people that are dramatic on Facebook?

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Canadian

I have a confession to make, everybody. I'm... yes, I'm saying it... I'm... Canadian *gasps*.

Now, as a part of my "Canadians Anonymous" program, I am required to write one satirical piece on Canada and share it with as many people as I can. So, here goes:

Some guy named Pierre once said, “Canada is a country built against any common, geographic, historic or cultural sense.” I thought long and hard about these words, and I believe this guy was wrong. There’s some geographic sense in there. But after my research, I’ve come to the conclusion that the rest doesn’t make any sense.

You know who the top dog is in Canada? The Big boss, the head honcho? It’s the f-ing QUEEN OF ENGLAND. Now, this definitely came as a surprise to me. I went 14 years of my life not knowing that our every political move is really controlled by England. What is Canada, a momma’s boy? After my research, I came to the conclusion that, well, yeah, Canada is a momma’s boy.

Let’s say that the US, Canada, England, France, and Spain are all in a family. Now, France is the father of Canada, Spain is the Father of the US (Yes people, you purchased Louisiana, remember!), and England is the skanky whore that is the mother of both Canada and the US. Now, England, France, and Spain are really distant from their kids. The US decides to go live off on his own. England goes over there, and the US tells her to f off. Then, after he’s become big and successful, he gets property from Spain, his father, by buying him out. Now that the US has split, England gets pretty possessive of Canada, and decides that she wants full control of him. So, she smacks France around, France smacks her back, and eventually, England gets custody of Canada. Later on, Canada decides it’s time for him to get out on his own. So, he tells England that he wants to live in his own house, and buy his own food, but England can still have some control. So, papers get signed, and Canada leaves home. Yes, that’s right. Canada wasn’t formed by some war or resistance movement. Canada was formed by signing a piece of paper that the Queen endorsed. Sounds lame, huh? Well, you’re right. It is lame.

So, fast forward a hundred years, and you get Canada as it is today, and it decided to have a big party. You have Chinese-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadians, African-Canadians, Japanese-Canadians, and Indian-Canadians, not to be confused with Native Canadians. I myself am an Irish-Ukrainian-Canadian. You can get this all the time, which leads to Russian-Ukrainian-Canadians, African-American-Canadians, and Banana-ana-fo-Canadians. You know what you don’t get? CANADIAN-CANADIANS. Everyone is an immigrant, except the Natives, but even then, they’re just Natives. Not even a hyphen in there. Pretty biased, don’t you think?

Well now, you’d think that with all these different cultures living in Canada, that we would have started some religious civil war by now, right? But then you look back at the only 4 major events in Canadian history and find that we’ve never had a civil war. Well, you think, the Canadians must have covered it up. They had to have had a civil war by now, right? No, because we Canadians have found the solution to global peace. Can you guess what it is? Shopping malls. You see, shopping malls contain all types of distractions. You’ve got restaurants, large department stores, and 25 cent kiddie rides. If you take a look back, every country that has had a civil war has had a distinct lack of shopping malls.

Now, I’ve prepared a mathematical equation here. The probability, P, of a country ever being embroiled in civil war is related to the number of shopping malls it has, or n, by the equation P equals 80 minus I divided by 650 squared percent. Now, as you can see, this shows that a country will need to have 5850 shopping malls before it can be safe from civil war, a statistic which Canada reached hundreds of years ago. In fact, to be able to qualify for a township in Canada, you have to have at least one strip mall, and to be a city, you have to have at the very least 4 full-sized shopping malls. To be a fully recognized citizen of Canada, you have to take an oath, kill a beaver, and be able to walk through a shopping mall without buying anything.

And that “killing a beaver” deal is an actual fact. We are one of the only, maybe the only country in the world that actually attempts to exterminate its national animal. It’s really because we were late to the party. In the USA, they got the bald eagle. The United Kingdom has a lion. Bangladesh has tigers, and we were even a country before them. Even Poland has a good animal, and we know how good THEY are at making decisions. Since every other animal in our country was covered (except for the deer, but seriously, we weren't gonna pick an animal whose one main predator is SUVs driving on the highway), we were stuck with the animal who happens to be a pest in Canada. Not a problem anywhere else, but in Canada, oh boy. There's even "beaver bounties" that are offered to people willing to hunt the creatures down, so they'll stop building their damn dams (ba-da-psh!).

Oh, it’s time for the mandatory dispelling of all stereotypes. No, we don’t use dogsleds, just in the summer. No, we didn’t just come out of the ice age last year. No, we don’t live in igloos, just people outside of Toronto. Yes, we do have FM radio. And finally, yes, we are the best at hockey. If you don't believe me, ask any Canadian hockey fan.

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