Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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.

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.

Monday, March 29, 2010

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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Saturday, March 27, 2010

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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Friday, March 26, 2010

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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Thursday, March 25, 2010

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.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

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!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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.

Monday, March 15, 2010

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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Sunday, March 14, 2010

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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Saturday, March 13, 2010

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.

Friday, March 12, 2010

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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Thursday, March 11, 2010

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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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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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Monday, March 8, 2010

Interim Post

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


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.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

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.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

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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Friday, March 5, 2010

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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Thursday, March 4, 2010

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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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

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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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

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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Monday, March 1, 2010

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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