... I dare you to do better. What better existing nerd property to use making an MMO? Star Trek is based on the idea of an ongoing, indefinite journey. Just think, create a character, join a ship, raise to the rank of captain and then build your own ship, explore strange new worlds and new civilizations, boldly go where no man has gone before! The only thing I could think of being better would be a Firefly MMO. Of course the skies of that on-line world would be crowded with gorram Firefly-class transports with Serenity splashed across the side all captained by brown duster- wearing pretty boys.
This is going to be quick. The Star Trek MMO is on it's way! Here's the supposed box art:
And here's a quick clip of the game play:
Looks pretty good to me. And the best part is it would be easy to have universe-changing events. All you would have to do is send out a message to all ships that the borg are invading or something. Check out some of the in game screen grabs too.
Also, here's where R2-D2 was hiding in the new Trek movie. This is confirmed, unlike the last few rumored R2 sightings.
Actually it's the same thing Spence was just talking about. Net Neutrality. In the event you couldn't slug through Specne's tirade, here's the quick and dirty. Right now, you pay a greedy as hell cable company to connect you to the internet, how much you want to pay depends on how fast you get there but once you are there, access to different web pages all run at the same speed. But if the companies have their way, that won't be the case. Google can afford to pay the ISPs a shit-ton of cash so getting to them will be the same speed as now, but Casual Geekery can pay diddly shit so it could take you 10 minutes to load our page. OR, this could happen: think of it as how you pay for cable access. One flat rate just to connect you to the internet THEN, want to get to iTunes and Pandora? An extra $10 per month thank you! Want to get to YouTube and Hulu also? $10 more please ($15 after the first three months). Like to social network? Well Twitter and FaceBook are free (for the first three months, $10 per month after that). Check out this terrifying graphic for more. Think this can't happen? It is EXACTLY what they do for premium channels. The only difference is those are luxuries, the internet should be a right, like it is in Finland. The internet is the last great bastion of the basis of our democracy, the idea that every man has an equal voice and an equal chance of being heard. Public television and radio? Bullshit. The internet has had more influence that both of them combined in the few years it has been readily and quickly accessible to the masses. Do not let them take it from you, fight them every way you can think of.
So as we take our leave, support the new head of the FCC, he's one bad mother - shut your mouth. He just may be the John Connor we need to raise from the ashes of greedy asshole- contorlled internet and lead us into a safer, brighter future.
If there is one thing I love it is to argue, especially when the topic is academic, I just love the idea of taking a train of thought through to the end, and I don’t get emotionally involved in the argument because again it’s just academic. However the is something in Tech news that I do feel very strongly about, and that is Net Neutrality (total name fail). Net Neutrality, which I will refer to here on out as NN, is the hot button topic where the spheres or technology meet politics.
If you are unaware of what NN is let me give it to you in the most concise why I have heard it explained. Basically NN mean that the Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, etc cannot prioritize the packets running over their network, in essence it would mean that an email packet, a bit torrent packet or a packet from a webpage would all be treated the same way. Without NN regulation Comcast could throttle Hulu traffic because they want you to use you’re their competing streaming web page (not sure if they have one but that is my example). The ISPs are totally against the idea of NN because they want to be able to dictate how the internet works going forward, and will obviously pick things that benefit them rather than benefit the consumers. Comcast has already been investigated by the FCC for throttling bit torrent ( I would like to point out that bit torrent is a totally legit peer to peer service and does not always mean there is piracy).
The FCC is the body that is created to regulate things like the internet and television and telephones. Basically they are there to stop the companies from totally screwing their consumers. Without FCC regulation in the internet it would be open season for the ISP to do whatever they want. Right now there is nothing set in stone, but the ISP are held to basically a best practices which give us the internet we know today, and when they violate these best practices, for instance by throttling bit torrent the FCC investigates.
The debate over NN needs to happen, and I would think it will need to be settled soon. I really hope that when this comes up for a vote that NN will prevail and the FCC will set about putting in regulations that keep the internet from being segmented. Now you might be saying to yourself that the government has no business regulating the internet, the internet should be allowed to regulate its self. This is true, and I don’t want the FCC to start laying down crazy regulation, but what I do want is regulations that stop the ISP from coming in and screwing the customers.
Let me lay out an extreme example for you of a world where there is no NN. In this world the packets you send are sniffed at every turn in the internet pipe line. So you send an email from your Gmail account to your buddy who has a Yahoo mail. Without NN the ISP you are using could hold that email back just because they don’t like Gmail, on top of that Yahoo could reject any email from Gmail, since they would want people to use Yahoo’s mail rather than a competing mail service. Does this sound good to you? I hope not, the amount of anti completive behavior that would result from a lack of NN would be staggering.
Basically the FCC just needs to lay down the law and the law is “You cannot prioritize any packets regardless of their content” and just let the internet get back to being the internet.
I have heard an argument against NN that basically says that things like Google and Twitter get a free ride and the ISP are footing the bill. Let me tell you this is BS! Google pays for the bandwidth they use, as does Twitter, the more people that use them the more bandwidth they use and the more they pay the ISP, basically the ISPs want to double dip. I am all for paying for what you use, if you are uploading HD video all day long and you need more upstream bandwidth then you should have to pay for that bandwidth, but I don’t want my packets to be sniffed and the prioritized based on their destination or content.
John McCain, who I personally did not vote for but is a person I have a decent amount of respect for, is proposing a bill called the something like the “Internet Freedom Act” but basically what it says is that the government cannot regulate the internet, dumb dumb dumb! The name of the bill is total shit too, yes while on the surface the bill is providing freedom because the government is not regulating the internet, but what it does as I have said before is open the internet up to the ISPs. McCain is also the number 1 recipient of money from the Telecom, over $900,000, companies who are for the most part the ISPs (he is not in their pocket or anything, also if you can find me a politician that is not in someone’s pocket I will print this out and eat it) McCain has said himself that he does not understand the internet, and I am not expecting him to (insert age joke here), but I don’t think it’s out of the question for me to expect him not to try to make legislation on something he has no idea about. I would like to paraphrase Dan Carlin (who I think said this) “when you make legislation the most important things is to see how the legislation is pissing off” for NN the legislation is pissing off the ISP and thus it is good.
The ISP like to claim that if the FCC regulates the internet in favor of NN then they will lose all sorts of money, but right now we have a free internet (free in the sense that all packets are the same) and they are making a mint! I think the figure I read said that Comcast had a 22% jump in earnings. A jump during a recession, they are raking in the money. Without NN the ISP would definitely make more money, but is that really the direction we want the internet to go in? I for one as a consumer and pretty heavy internet user want the FCC to regulate in favor of NN and I know that there are many tech people who are in my camp too (well really I am in their camp since I am not popular enough to have a camp) Check out the video below, it’s a clip from the long running and trustworthy show “This Week In Tech” with Leo Laporte.
If you disagree with me definitely send me an email imaglide@gmail.com! I would love to hear what you think, but if you disagree I am going to assume you are either a greedy bastard or out of touch. If you want to help go check out http://www.savetheinternet.com/ and sign the petition, they will send your request to your politician and get them to make the right call when it comes to voting on this.
Over the years, three movies have stood out in my mind as totally and completely abusing midgets, now more commonly known as little people. These flicks are (in no particular order) The Wizard of Oz, Return of the Jedi and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The reason these three are the worst offenders should be obvious, Munchkins, Ewoks and Oompa Loompas. The only real question is, which is the bigger crime? Dressing up little people as semi retarded man-child things? Dressing up little people as Teddy Bears?
Or dressing little people up as psychedelic acid-trip nightmare creatures that sing perfectly without rehearsal?
Only you can decide but either way, I'd say the little people inside the suits just struck back at LucasFilm Ltd. during the Today Show's Halloween special. I present to you, Ewoks, drinking, brawling, moonwalking and humping Al Roker!!!!
By now, you've all seen the trailers for that flick "The Box". In the event you haven't, here's the setup. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are a happily married NASA technician and school teacher who are going broke for some reason. One day, they are visited by a gentleman who drank acid or something and brings them a mysterious box containing nothing but a button. He then makes them an offer, push the button and you get $1 million but someone in the world you don't know will die. Check out the trailer. (sorry about the asinine intro, it's the only trailer I could find to embed.)
While there are some good aspects of Sci-fi, horror, conspiracy and I'm going to say aliens, I'm not super excited to see it. However, after seeing that trailer over and over on TV, I laughed my ass off when I saw this little gem on Funny or Die.
That's what I always thought should happen whenever people in movies and on TV are presented with a moral dilemma. Imagine how much easier it would have been if the castaways on Lost just shot Ben Linus the first time he double crossed someone? How awesome would it have been if the Joker said "you'll never kill me because of some misplaced sense of self righteousness..." and Batman said "Fuck this" and dropped him? What if Luke, sans-hand on Cloud City said "oh sure Dad, I'll join the dark side with you, just help me up" Then he force pulled Vader's lightsaber off him and cut him in half?
While I read and enjoyed a number of H.P. Lovecraft's works over the years I've never been a HUGE fan. I treat the godfather of horror/science fiction much like I do Monty Python - I like it, I don't have a boner for it.
That said, I have mentioned H.P.'s Cthulhu Mythos more than almost any other topic on this blog with the exception of the undead. Here's a little something that was brought to my attention on YouTube
Just another evil attempt to make children think the great priest of the great old ones is cuddly and not the one that will rip out their souls and ... chew them... or something. It's been a while since I read the Call of Cthulhu.
I sent most of last week on a vision quest in the desert of California, so I have been a little out of the loop on tech news hence the lack of posts. Luckily Ryan is not as crunch and has been posting alone, but I am back and to ease back into this as well as to get my dander up again about something I wanted to bring up the update on the whole “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign being run by Verizon. ATT is suing Verizon over the ads claiming the ad “mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn't offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country.” Basically they are mad because the casual non-nerdy consumer will not be able to tell that the whole in the map are not areas with no coverage rather they are areas that lack 3g. Personally I think this is a great attack, and it might be hard for ATT to win this battle since the ad is pretty clear to anyone in the know that the map is just about 3g and not about total coverage, but since 3g is a cell phone buzz word that all of the providers are throwing around most consumers will have at least heard it before and probably think it is cell phone coverage. On the other hand most judges are not all that tech savvy especially if they try the case in Texas, so maybe they will win. I think the end goal here is to have Verizon stop the ad campaign basically because they don’t want to deal with the ATT law suit. Will it work? I say no.
And here's a quick clip of the game play:
