So, yeah WTH happened to the Internet yesterday...?

Hello all, it's been a while, but finally people are freaking the hell out over attacks on the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. Personally, I've been freaking out for a while, you might have read my previous post ( http://zhir0w.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/how-much-are-you-willing-to-pay/ ) but if not feel free to click the link and check it out.

Anyway the Internet was in an uproar yesterday and still today (sorta) when alot of sites (Google, Wikipedia,Reddit, BoingBoing, etc...) went Black, to demonstrate what the world would be like without their presence because of this upcoming bill that may become law of the land. Many people took it upon themselves to find workarounds to bypass the blackouts and go directly to the sites... But, that's kinda the point.... sure yesterday was a little inconvenient, but imagine if that was the "new normal" as they say. You might not care now, but the majority of things the average person does or shares has some form of copyrighted material, be it a picture, a movie, a song or a funny video. Under this new legislation all of that would be outlawed, sites would be afraid to host anything and all that sharing you like to do, yeah, it'd be gone. You can help discourage our idiotic 'elected' officials understand your displeasure by contacting them after a little research on your part. I've gathered a list of informative links (though note, if this law goes into effect they'll all be broken shortly thereafter) that have:

Infographics ( http://www.vizworld.com/2012/01/sopa-infographic/ ) because a picture speaks a thousand words

synopsis ( http://www.techie-gurus.com/off-topic-discussions-71/all-about-sopa-bill-wants-cripple-your-internet-very-soon-5913/ )

and some sites that offer encouragement about your part in all this ( http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/help-stop-sopa-pipa/ ).

There are bullet points ( http://www.craigslist.org/about/SOPA ) Everyone loves those!

And a Lifehacker article ( http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet ) because it's Lifehacker, Duh....

I'm kinda a paranoid digital rights wonk about these things since the Internet is one of the few future things I find useful. I love information, especially free information (I especially love free information relating to cat videos...) and I hope you do too. The sites listed in this post have links to petitions and digital messages to your congressional representative, it's actually easy to voice your unhappiness, if you ARE unhappy about it that is, if you aren't feel free to respond and elucidate us on why, I know I'd like to hear.

Ryan Reynolds Good guy that Hollywood wishes was a badguy

I just read a new story about one of those actors I think is sorely under utilized, Ryan Reynolds. The story (How to Save Ryan Reynolds’ Career) http://bit.ly/oB1Twc seems to think the only way for Ryan Reynolds to get ahead in his career is to pull a Darth Vader and "go to the Dark Side." Granted that works for a lot of people but it doesn't mean its the way for everyone to go. Reynolds is a good actor, he's also extremely likable, he could just make his career running on that. A lot of actresses manage to do that and have long satisfying and Jennifer Aniston, Sandra Bullock, pre-surgery Meg Ryan had a phenomenal career as the lovable every girl that was a shoe-in for any romantic comedy. Ryan could do the same thing as a guy. Not saying he should do all romantic comedies, but he has a quality similar to 2 other great actors with huge fan followings: Nathan Fillion and one of my all time favorite actors Bruce Campbell. Both of those guys have range, but they both have a quality that calls to a specific type of role. Both can play witty, snarky heroes and in fact have made quite a bit of money playing unique and colorful heroic characters. In fact, Reynolds should have fought hard to get the role of Nathan Drake in the (in production) Uncharted movie. The character of Drake plays to all of Reynolds strength and if done right will be a very lucrative franchise, it's a missed opportunity.

I get why Hollywood wants Reynolds to play evil/bad roles, diversification. The problem with doing all kinds of roles however means your not commoditized as a brand to one specific role. In a market of people trying to be a jack of all trades sometimes it's better to be the master of one. Then again it's just an opinion, hopefully one that Reynolds will see and consider.

And society became salt…..

Hello again readers!

 

It’s been a bit of time between posts, mainly because I’ve been writing them and hen not actually posting them.  A lot of them felt incomplete, but what the heck, I’m not being paid to do this so I’ll be posting them in their ineloquent form. That’s the update there, so without further ado, today’s posting.

 

I was perusing the internet, looking at various sundry articles about 3D this, that, and the other.  Seems a lot of pundits and professional prognosticators seem to think 3D is a gimmick and is destined to fail.  I’m an ardent believer in 3D, ever since I learned of the premise and saw my first Star wars movie I’ve believed 3D is the way to go.  I actually remember my first 3D experience, I was about 8 or 10, I’d say and was living in P.G. County Maryland. On tv, channel 20 WDCA (I was a big fan of television and it guided my day then) announced a special event. They we’re going to broadcast a 3D movie, The Creature From the Black Lagoon!  Let me tell you as a kid nothing made me more excited then the idea of seeing this legendary movie monster coming out of the screen at me.  The advertisements were very much a draw when you were a little kid and the big gimmick was you needed the free 3D glasses from the 7-11 (marketing tie in!), on top of that going to the 7-11 for a kid is like going to freakin’ Toys R Us, they have the knock-off cheapy toys Trans-Changers, G.I. Jeneric, those balsa wood flyers, green army guy parachute dude, you name it and they had candy, some other stuff chips, and the Coup de grace, the tie-in Slurpee!  If I recall it was Creature Lemon-Lime (get it? it’s green) and you could get the glasses at the register, the old red/blue ones  

and let me tell you it was fantastic!  Sure it was in Black & White (and Red & Blue), but when that arm came towards me I was hooked.  I remember I even kept moving the glasses up and down to see the difference in the blurry multicolored picture and my sorta blurry 3D picture.  I generally try to see movies in 3D whenever possible, I saw the Nightmare On Elm Street 3D movie, now in blurry color!!! And it was good (I mean relatively speaking, it was Nightmare on elm Street).  I saw Avatar back in January of last year when it came out.  That movie was technologically life changing.  It also kicked off the current arms race to see who will be the premiere  consumer 3D sales company.  In Best Buy I’ve fallen in love with   I visit it every time we go.

You know how you can tell though, that it’s both the End of the World as we know it AND totally awesome?  It’s when lingerie goes 3D!  It’s already happened you know… I ran across this little doozy online, totally randomly Feel free to click the link for a bigger pic and also if you have any of the aforementioned glasses, well, go for it. And this my friends is how society ends distracted consumers crashing their hover cars and hover boards into buildings and each other! Sparks and flaming debris reigning down on hapless drivers and pedestrians!! But, at least it’ll be entertaining… well, after they install the gender filter, I don’t wanna see some dudes junk ‘comin’ at me in 3 Dimensions… not cool. Not Cool At All.

Why it’s better to be Beta….

So, you may’ve heard of Google Wave, it was ‘The Next Big Thing.’  Well it was until it’s disastrous unveiling which co-opted user privacy in Gmail and summarily destroyed any chance it had of catching on.  Sure there were some other nifty features it had:

“A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.”

And there was the nifty video

 

In late June Google Wave finally came out of Beta and no longer needed an ‘invitation’ to join. Hooray! A google product not in Beta, well that is definitely a feat.

Coincidentally, I actually figured out a use case for Wave!

But alas, a product that COULD have been great was left to twist in the wind and slowy asphyxiate as the google machine thrummed along.  Now, I’ll admit, I never used it, but then again, you probably hadn’t either.  The main problem with Google Wave is it was an answer looking for a problem. Not to mention noone ever really quite ‘got it.’ So this week is it any surprise that the news is “Yesterday, Google announced that they are halting development on Wave. The webapp will be available till the end of the year—with mechanisms to export your current wave data—and the code will remain open source.”

Part of the problem is, people are just used to Beta, they’ve become used to products that don’t work or kinda work while the user’s figure out the problems and the kinks and suggest work arounds for the publishers to use.  People also, seem to have forgotten what a Final version is, they want all the versatility of a Beta but none of the finality of a Gold/Final version and so you have half-assed products with no clear direction that are kinda designed by committee, unfortunately the Internetz makes a lousy committee. I could go on with other flaws but here’s a kicker that everyone seems to forget.  Google.Is.An.Advertising.Company.

Google offers you all these nifty ‘products’ because they sell ads.  They aren't a tech company, but people are so fascinated by “new” they jettison common sense, then get mad when a company that yes, has engineers, can’t seem to get the pulse of the community.  They don’t have to, it’s not their core business, they sell ads.  A lot of ads. But they aren’t marketers, they also, aren't designers.  So yes, their designs look like crap, most prototypes do.  Make no mistake, everything Google does is a prototype and a hobby.

Oh… you didn’t realize that did you?  Yes, Google Docs, Gmail, all those “cool services” in the cloud you enjoy for free… they’re all just a hobby.  Google has a ton of hobbies, just look

(click pic to goto Google option page)

and the thing is, you probably didn’t even know about 80% of them.  The thing about hobbies though, is they’re fun, like a game and they aren’t: Work.  hobbies aren’t your job, you do them because you want to not because you have to and when you get bored or tired, you stop. In this particular case Wave went from a hobby, to work and frankly, Google didn’t want to do it as work because it wasn’t as fun or profitable as they’d hoped. So, what about the people that got to attached to it….?

Just try to remember, using a Beta is like hooking up, it’s wild and fun and you both had a great time, but you really didn’t think it was a relationship did you?

The other war...

There's a war going on all around you, but you probably don't even realize it.  Your a combatant.  No, you didn't enlist in it but it's still being waged against you and it's slowly becoming a losing battle for you.  The battlefield is your home, your pocket, your car, your free time.  To me it's more important then whatever is going on in the Middle east.  I'm American and frankly, we'll never actually 'know' what is indeed going on, therefore I don't care.  Muslims on a whole are not evil or even our enemy, no more so then Buddhists, taoists, pagans, or jewish individuals.  Religion on a whole is a destructive topic to discuss however and an entire subject better reserved for another post.

It bothers me that reviewers are apparently bought and paid for these days, no longer even pretending to be helpful or useful, they all seem to be shills.  Worse then that, they are shilling for the enemy of you and I!  I'm talking about online services.  Laugh if you'd like, your probably thinking that's nuts, this dude is paranoid or a nutjob.  Hear me out, it costs nothing to listen but a little time and you might see my point.

First an example. http://www.onlive.com/ Onlive is quite the potentially awesome prospect.  It's a company that streams, via their servers, games, high end games! At that, in real time and you can play then, no matter what type of computer hardware you have.  Now, that's pretty epic!  Just look at some of these titles it's mouth wateringly tempting. But here's the catch, the first year is free subscription, so you buy your little titles, so you can play them. you don't actually get a disk, you get access to the game as it's stored on their server, so they in effect act like your gaming system. There's no mess, no wires, nothing for you to do but log in and play. You do need a high speed connection, but that's not that bad a deal is it?

Yes, actually it sucks. The service itself seems to work without a hitch but don't be lulled into this sterilized bliss. Your not getting a game! On top of that, your subscribing to a service to play a game you bought! This means you HAVE to have internet to play and you HOPE their servers arent down for maintenance, or for repair or overloaded. Hell, twitter cant keep their servers up and you only write 140 character messages. Your supposed to be cool with this why? Oh, because it's 'The Future'. Man, let me tell you, I'm sooooo over hearing that crap. The 'Future' is you being forced to spend money on a sbscription just to use something you 'bought' and did I mention if you let your subscription lapse, then well, you lose your games you paid for after a period of time. See, so you pay for a 1.) computer, 2. Internet... broadband at that, 3.) this service after the year free subscription, and 4.) the games you want to play. Well hell, that seems like a nice racket to get into to me, you funnel money to the ISP, then this game company...twice! Once for the honor of playing the game and second to actually 'buy' a game you don't get.

But you aren't the only victim, this little double dip is also aimed at screwing over the game resellers like the oft evil Gamestop. Now, I'm not a fan of Gamestop persay, but, they do buy back games. Yes it's at a ridiculously low.. I would go as far as to say loansharkian price, but something for a game I dont want anymore is better then nothing. Not to mention the money can be applied to a used game you buy at a significantly reduced price. So, it's cheaper then new and the game gets re-sold as used and everyone is happy... well, except the game makers. See, they want to make more money off of you, it's not enough they sold the games to the original owners. They should get a cut of everytime it's sold because ... well, just because. So, to give you a ludicrous example, you buy a shirt, you wear it til your bored with it, you want to sell it at a yardsale, well... that's not fair to the manufacturer! They should be the only one selling that shirt. In fact, you should be leasing that shirt monthly and if you discontinue your subscription, they should just keep the shirt. That's the state gaming is moving towards. It's not just gaming though, music has fought this battle and lost. People use Netflix (myself included) but we still like to own physical media. So the corporations decided the best way to get around our reluctance to give up buying physical media is to push the new buzzword 'online services' and spin it as a good thing. "You don't have to worry about updates!", "It just works", "Let us do all the heavy lifting", but really... why should it be THAT simple? I mean really? Are you THAT lazy? Is it THAT hard to take some initiative and not just give up all your rights to property? What if you don't like the new version? What if you don't need some of the features? What if you need more features?? What if you dont want to be 'connected'?

But it's an invisible battle because most consumers hear 'Cloud' (another buzzword) and thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's not, that's why server computing failed as a platform in the 70's. Not to mention, bandwidth. Slowly over the course of the next 3 to 5 years you'll see a guerilla campaign to assassinate unlimited broadband. Now all these 'Cloud services' start looking a bit pricier because your using YOUR bandwidth and there are caps, no more doing what you want online, no more watching what you want, when you want, downloading what you want. it's a clever ruse. You can't go back once the final onslaught begins. Want to cut costs? Tough, you pay and your going to keep paying because 'they' have all your information, all your stuff, and you gave it to them for the sake of convenience. And now, like extortionists, your beholden to someone else, nothing more then an indentured servant.

And then, it's too late. Yes, it's possible that I'm just paranoid but just look around you. Streaming games, streaming music, Google docs, all in the cloud, somewhere....

I like my stuff. I like putting a cartridge or a disk in a system and playing a game when I want, how long I want, and with no additional costs unless I buy an optional addon. I like using the programs I buy without worrying about having an internet connection or paying additional costs. I like having CD's and DVD's or music players/multi media devices. I can go where i want, when I want, and watch/listen to what I want. In the end it's all about choice. Either you don't care or don't want it or you do...

And you fight for it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Future is… Now! Well, sorta….

So, i was talking to my little brother on PlaystationHome yesterday and we were discussing some of the things he’d been missing out on because he doesn't visit it regularly.  For instance, every Thursday (as of this writing) there’s an update to Home.  Considering the online service is free and a place for PS3 owners to meet up it’s actually quite the added value.  Some of the things added were an upgrade to the virtual theatre (from 1 to 10 theatres) the addition of the bowling alley

Good luck finding a free lane, I really think they should be ‘Instanced’ like in World of Warcraft. 

Instancing is a new feature where people are in the same generalized area but a small group can enter an area that is already occupied and access a small ‘instance’ of the same area so they can access the same things as the occupying group.  The two groups don't interact per say but can use the same facilities simultaneously. and are in a localized setting, then when you finish using the ‘instance’ for say… bowling… you and your little group pop back into the real world.

 

Anyway, there are also new zones added, they’re generally game themed for popular games on the platform such as Uncharted, Killzone, Siren…. etc. 

One zone in particular is of interest because I mentioned it in passing to my brother is Xi (Xi overview),

  Xi was actually alot of fun and engaging.  It is an ARG an alternate reality game. It is actually the second ARG I’ve ever played, the first was ilovebees (I provide an article with a link towards the end also,btw) which totally blew me away.  Interestingly, it’s totally marketting for Halo 2, but you don’t really know if you just listen to it.  ARG’s are an underground phenomenon that happens and most people don’t even know about it.  My other half is a fan of ARG’s currently she’s trying to find a fun one to participate in. The best part is they’re free and most are still enjoyable even if your looking at them as a story and not participating.  So, I wanted to draw attention to something your probably missing out on.  Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed and most of your friends won’t even know what’s going on, hehe.

 

Here’s an engaging quickstart guide: An example and overview of ARG's and how to play

Hello Robots Overlord!

How many people really give thought to the fact that we're supposed to like crappy service?  Sure your told this and that, but when did most people decide to give up independent thought?  This isn't my own personal paranoia, it's all over television and the radio.  It's things like, getting worse service for higher prices (hello airplanes....), or purchasing products are at a premium and finding out they aren't yours (hello music industry...) or how about the discouragement inherent in voting (The 2008 Presidential elections, anyone....)?  Maybe it's just me.

I'm not really that old persay, but I remember when consumers had fair rights and you could have a  disagreement with someone and you could agree to disagree.  Apparently everything's become so divisive that's becoming a bigger and bigger problem for people.  An example,  politics.  In the United States, we are supposed to have a multiparty system.  In case you didn't know, multiparty systems generally consist of more then just two parties in the political process.  Somewhere along the line, most Americans seem to have forgotten this little fact,  now it's Democrats or Republicans, Red vs. Blue, Conservatives versus Liberals, in other words it's all B.S.  When your given a chance to vote, most people (myself included at times) don't fully appreciate the freedom of being able to decide for themselves.  I used to be one of those people "Back in the Day..." as they say, I used to listen to the angry gangster rap and be all "down with the man" and this and that, but it wasn't because I had a reason to be, it was because I was slowly hypnotized into believing that's how I was supposed to feel, I was subliminally co-erced or as Malcolm X famously said "I was hood-winked, bamboozled, led astray,run amok...." It didn't take overly long for my cognitive abilities to kick in and say "hold on, dude, think for yourself..."  Sadly, alot of people these days don't have the same cognitive abilities.  Republicans have branded themselves as the right wing, conservative, Christian party. They represent the old guard, the standard of American values.  The Democrats on the other hand have branded themselves the liberal left wing party,  as far as the media espouses Democrats don't have any similarities with the Republicans, Republican = pro-life, Democrat = pro-choice, Republican  = solid Christian, excuse me as John McCain put it Judeo-Christian values, Democrat = multi religious beliefs, monotheistic, polytheistic, Patriarchal, Matriarchal, etc...

 

This simply isn't the case,  both parties have a lot of similarities but that's all drowned out by the media hype.  Most of the times you have a choice, it becomes drowned out by the pomp and circumstance of smoke and mirrors.  See, we're not supposed to think for ourselves, we're supposed to do what we're told, believe what we're told and doubt or cast aspersions on anyone that dares question that which is believed to be the "gospel"  (religion pun intended).  Don't get me wrong, stereotypes do serve a minute purpose, they give us an inkling on how to deal with a specific type of situation.  The problem with stereotypes is often their used to instill fear or racist beliefs in people and that's never of use to anyone.  I'll give you a typical stereotype.  Tech support phone calls are routed through foreign countries.  This is usually the case, of that I don't deny, I honestly don't remember the last time I called tech support for anything and spoke to another American on the line.  Now that's not to say, foreign help desks are bad.  I'm sure some are quite good, BUT, for the end user it can be a massive headache and can actually turn them off to ever buying from that company again.  It has nothing to do with patriotism, it has to do with convenience and trust me trying to decipher what each other is saying is far more exasperating to both parties then the reason for the phone call, but I digress.

 

We're talking about stereotypes and their uses  the aforementioned scenario brings to mind two different thoughts, the first is sub-par service, the second is a aggravating phone call.  The stereotype should actually help with the situation however.  If you know the person on the other end is going to be fluent in another language and yours may be a distant third then there's no reason to get upset when they don't understand you.  You should also alotte additional time for the phone call and  you shouldn't get frustrated by the experience because really, it should be expected.  If anything, a good experience should be bumped up to excellent because your expectations should have started off low.  But back to the main point, you have a choice in this situation as well, don't deal with that company, not the tech support people, they're doing their job, the company you purchased from however should be penalized.  They know the situation, they know customer unhappiness, but because its cheaper, they outsource and so they should reap the full gamut of good and bad from it.  You have a choice to end or perpetuate the cycle of poor customer experience.