Nick is slamming random keys with oversized mits on

Captured! By Robots

2009-10-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i went to see a show. a one man -- er, one meat bag band. i see a few others, but don't normally go out of my way to watch em unless i know the members directly. like the band my brother's in [ ZeroStars ] or the ones a few of my buddies are in [ Even Bigger ] and days past [ Skagina ].

but yesterday's show was interesting. normally, music to me is like TV. i can either watch it while learning something new, leave it running on the background if it's not that important for my undivided attention or skip it while trying to find something i like. let me rephrase that. music to me is:

not my salvation
doesn't compel me to save the { flavor of the day }
help feed { some kind of meat bags }
or move me to { tears or rise against the masters}

the news in general does that quite nicely for me. (although, i do need to get some of that overseas to get the full picture...)

so, it was ironic when i watched the movie "Almost Famous" and remembered the line:

"They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts."
Sapphire - Almost Famous

it was at this moment, that it dawned on to me that some people (crazy music fans) think like this. it seemed that this also applies to sports, games, cars, whatever. i just never thought of it in terms as the center of the universe.

anyways, back to the show. i was asked if it was a life changing experience. "uh....", i started. that's was when i forgot about how music people thinks.

DRMBOT-0110

i mean, really, the show was vastly different from the ones i have seen before and was more interested in antics, gizmos and gadgets than the songs. but i was happy. happy when meat bag said, "doing covers is the new punk" - happy when donkey kong (or some kind of motor-vational ape) was on stage - and happy when DRMBOT-0110 was doing 256th (could have been 2⁹ for all i know). it also seemed that GTRBOT-666 was only using one string for bass - but was not as pretty or as head-banging with long flowing blond hair and other generous sized proportions as the bassist (forgive me for not remembering your band's name...) who played before them.

GTRBOT-666

while i'm more about video games than anything lately -- i really didn't care about the beatles rockband game announcement earlier this year:

Beatles to re-release catalog alongside The Beatles: Rock Band
Apr 8th 2009

but totally dig this music video - video games related music video:

Video Games - E3 2009 - Attack of the Show

via: destructoid.com 07.11.2009
Attack of the Show celebrates 1,000 shows

doh... i still want to hate that channel... or, is it time forgive...

i listening to:
somafm.com
monkey radio
di.fm + sky.fm
dr.dk/netradio/
bbc essential mix

side of bacon with pork chops, please

2009-05-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

[ image courtesy of gizmodo.com ]

bacon blew up on the scene with the bacon suit, bacon scented or flavored this and that, bacon salt, bacon haikus, bacon weave, and bacon kevin.

so what's one way to stop the bacon craze?

make it a health hazard! and if you really want to loose your appetite for hog, check out this Rolling Stone's article:

Boss Hog
Dec 14, 2006

but, seriously. i'm sure you've all seen by now how the swine flu numbers are tiny compared to motor vehicular fatalities or homicides or even smoker, cancer, heart attacks, etc.

yet, this panic attack has gripped the nation -- when basic preventive steps are only needed, which are essentially the same thing for every other common disease/virus - wear protection, wash your hands and don't eat $#!t that isn't clean (unless you like having dysentery).

Critical Alert: The Swine Flu Pandemic – Fact or Fiction?
Apr 29th, 2009

1976: Fear of a great plague

(Motor) Fatality Analysis Reporting System Encyclopedia
damn, motorcycle fatality rate is going up... better be more careful out there...

The Disaster Center (US) Crime Rates
look under "MURDER" for mortality rates
scroll to the bottom of this link to find your state!

anyways, getting back to the meat of this post. since there isn't any news to "shock" the nation into fearing something, the powers that be were using my latest invention to figure out what to blast over the airwaves next.

[ pick-a-panic-attack ]

this ~~magic~~ highly scientific piece of equipment will figure out what's this season's flavor flav. the cool part of this is: it has a string you pull to pick another one.

and now, something else from my childhood that would be worthy of this robot-chicken-esk article.

[ image courtesy via boingboing.net ]

welp, the video game project i'm working on is almost done. so i will be able to get back to writing my bi-monthly blog posts. a bit of re-visiting some of my past predictions, a bit of what the h*l! are these companies thinking, a guess into what's in the future and who knows what else!

windows is doing fine shooting itself - leave linux alone

2009-02-02T23:56:00.000-08:00

was going to make an image about shooting mafia style, but this is gangsta enough for me... congrats, cobra commander. [ image courtesy of gizmodo.com ]

Microsoft blames netbook appeal, marketing costs for Windows drop
January 22nd, 2009
"Many netbooks cannot run Vista, due to its higher resource requirements.
It is more about the growing percentage of netbooks, for which Microsoft is collecting some amount less-per-copy for Windows than it does with full-fledged notebooks and PCs."

clear, concise and to the point. a smart article. then there's this one:

Windows kicks Linux to the curb
January 25th, 2009

my first thoughts about this guy was that he just wanted to get the linux ~~fan boys~~ enthusiast all revved up. because, if you cut the first paragraph of this ~~smart-@$$ article~~ puff piece it would have seem a bit more sensible like the first one. but noooooo, he had to be ~~a f#ck tard~~ unprofessional about it.

so i would like to challenge that guy to answer if microsoft's FUD machine and sharks didn't have anything to do to derail the efforts for selling a simple and competitive product that just happens to not have windows installed. (here's a hint:)

Microsoft Antitrust: “The Linux Threat on the Desktop” (2006) and Predatory Response
01.22.09 (a few days before his article... ~~dumb @$$~~ guess he wasn't keeping an eye on the interweb)

how about noting that vista's successor will be released in less than half the shelf live of its predecessor. or about things like this is still happening:

People Buying Used PCs for Salvage Copies of Windows XP
Dec 1 2008

let's put that aside and look at some more microsoft goodies.

Microsoft files pay-per-use PC patent
Dec 29, 2008

and a few days later:

Microsoft pay-as-you-go patent application rejected
Jan 2nd 2009

good thing this isn't a patent. (the patent office was open over new years day?) yet, there are posts that are actually in support of it. ~~wtf~~ wow.

Microsoft's Metered PC Idea Is Not Greedy. In Fact, It's Almost Brilliant
December 30, 2008

i don't know where you buy PC's for $1300 now a days. or why, when that's nearing Apple's territory... MS will sell it at $450? you can get that now at nearly any electronic box stores! and Dell always has fantastic laptop on sales with tricked out specs at rock bottom deals. here's a sale MicroCenter just had: $1299 Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 160GB, superdrive, 13.3" MacBook. yup. a MAC.

oh!!! i get it now. that guy was writing, "it's brilliant for Microsoft to convince people to not buy MACs and instead buy a PC with windows on it which will cost you $50 a month. and in 4-6 years time, you've just paid $2400-$3600 for that $450 PC." (btw, those are his numbers too.)

~~watta bargain. stupid @$$.~~ not very cost effective if you ask me.

i guess you can't fault microsoft looking for new revenue sources. so how about one more for the road:

Microsoft's new vision: a computer in every... coffee maker?
January 12, 2009

yup, they are doing fine. windows is only good enough to power your coffee maker. you'll need to pay a yearly license to use it now. unless they forget to update their own certificate.

via joystiq.com

ASSERT() does not fix crashes

2009-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Windwos BSoD

A problem has been detected because coders always say, "this should never happen".

The problem seems to be caused by the use of: ASSERT()

#if DEBUG
#define ASSERT(x) assert(x)
#endif
#if RELEASE
#define ASSERT(x)
#endif

If this is the first time you have this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:

Check to make sure you've bullet proof the code. If this is a new application, ask your fellow coders why you are stupid to only use asserts instead of writing the code to gracefully handle the error condition.

If problems continue, also check for other piss poor lines of code giving lazy programmers a bad name. If you need to use a Safe Mode like try{}, throw() and catch(), you're an idiot. The end user doesn't care about your error codes. Restart your computer and DEL all of your files because crashes aren't useful.

Tech information:

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xDEADBEEF, 0x0000001, 0xBAADF00D, 0x00000000)

*** ASSERT() - Address 1F0CED17 base at F0C17F0C, DateStamp 80fca82

first a few articles to get my point across. the following are error messages made by microsoft engineers.

Best Windows Error Ever May Rip Time-Space Continuum, Destroy Reality
Dec 6 2007

Windows Vista Error?
Jun 3 2007

and i'm pretty sure everyone on the planet (who's a nerd) has seen this great PR shot:

Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird's Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting
Aug 11 2008

first, a sad program just pooped out. the second one a funny accidental icon enumeration selection. and that last BSod could have been a microsoft bug. but then again, maybe not.

with what it is essentially equivalent to a kernel panic -- it pretty much rests on the lowest level of the OS where everyone can point and laugh at the main player. not the application or program.

was it a driver? or the video playback program? who else is responsible for these?
when people start to make fun of spectacular crashes on a giant projector, it's hard to remember that it's sometimes the idealistic coder that broke the application and that windows had nothing to do with it. take the following articles:

Microsoft Arcade Fail
Jan 18 2009

We Interrupt This Program With a Windows Error
Jan 1 2009

Jesus Tries to Save Your Soul But Windows Stops Him
Aug 28 2008

that isn't to say that microsoft should be absolved from all of their own problems. patch tuesdays, red ring of death and zunes freezing at new years to name a few examples.

Cause of ZUNE leapyear problem - Freescale date routine
Dec 31, 2008
now, what basically happened here was that a coder probably had a brain fart and just didn't think through of all of the permutations. it happens to every coder.

this is when i was reminded of the absolute absent mindedness of using ASSERTS();

normally, asserts and exception conditions are pretty useful for developers to announce (NOT TEST FOR) those "this should never happen" situations. to this day, i still see coders do something equivalent to the following:

my_data_block = get_some_piece_of_data();

ASSERT( my_data_block, "data block is empty" );

my_data_block->do_something_with_it();

for those who do not know what the assert() function normally does, is this:

test the first parameter and see if it is valid.
if it is OK, continue on with the next line.
if it is NOT valid, halt the program here.

sometimes, coders will have a second parameter to "provide more information" on what just happened. and sometimes, these ASSERTs are macros that get compiled out during a RELEASE build (versus a DEBUG build). in other words, they are "scrubbed out" of the code automatically when making a version of the application/program for public deployment.

here's why i can't believe people still code just like the example above. if my_data_block did not receive a valid chunk, the program will continue (in a public release build) and crash when we try to do_something_with_it... this is when you'll see one of those error message box.
like i said before, the end user doesn't really care about (let alone know what to do with) your error codes or exception messages you happen to catch. you should NEVER code like that. here's one example to code it properly:

my_data_block = get_some_piece_of_data();

ASSERT( my_data_block, "data block is empty" );

if ( my_data_block )
     my_data_block->do_something_with_it();
else
    tell_user_whats_going_on();
    // instead of terminating the application
    // all of the sudden

there are other ways to do this. but essentially, you need to make sure your code will not just die on you. any time you see an application freeze or see an error message box -- it's the mark of a n00b coder.

if you see your CPU usage spike outta control - then the coder is mediocre. something got locked in an infinite loop. these are sometimes a surprise to find. but that's when testing will make you a good coder. (yes, i still see people submitting stuff in with out testing their work. we normally call them artists. but once in a while, coders do this too.)

what's an expert coder, you ask? that's someone who stopped reading this article right after my little BSoD sample at the top of this article.

courtesy of XKCD

the only time you should terminate a process is a user supplied add-on/plug-in. keep your application running. i'm always surprised to find piles of CRAP javascript code, but am extremely impressed that web browsers will ignore malformed code. too bad not all applications are designed like this.

time and time again, i see high end applications that costs $#!t loads of $ $ $ such as Maya and 3DStudio Max -- crash. the artist constantly complaining, stOOpid editor... when i am willing to bet 95% of the crash is because of a plug-in "one of our" coder wrote to extend the exporter, importer, utility, attach-this, or do-whatever to the 3D editor. if those "scripts" were validated as well as the results they generate - i bet applications would seem much more "stable" to the end users even when shotty (or absent-mindedness) programming are applied to them.

yeah, there'll be a trade off in speed - but if it comes down to the stability of the application - this is something that might need to be considered. otherwise, it's pretty much planned, "let's ruin the user's experience..."

PLEASE DO NOTE: to the independent / individual / or just starting off developer(s); i completely understand that there is a difference with a handful versus a team of 10, 20 or 100 people that might be physically impossible to code every possibility and know all the permutations with little time (or encounter the occasional brain fart). but if your project is a rockin, and you get piles of people to work on it - please take out the "temporary" assert reminders (or use an alternative "messaging" mechanism), keep your application running and put in actual functions to gracefully handle those unfortunate cases.

the Rape of Midway Games

2009-01-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

a long time ago, in a city far far away (at least from where i'm at right now), the Chief Monkey Officers sought to bleed as much money as they can from the company before high tailing it out of town to escape the destruction they left behind in the wake of:

i have come to the realization that douche nozzles with MBAs (and marketing veeps) who goes into a company who knows nothing about that industry - only takes the job to make out like a bandit not caring about all the peons who work there.

Work Work Work

Me Not That Kind of Orc

and anyone who plays RTS games knows that you can't do $#!t with out the humble peon worker. (images courtesy of battle.net)

note: i started writing this article dec 1st, so this article may sound a bit dated. also, i thought against publishing this since it didn't seem nice to comment on the people who used to be with my former employer (i left more than a year ago -- the writing was on the wall -- and it wasn't hard to see this coming. i gave the company 5 years left instead of just one). anyways, in light of the following articles, it was time to add my 2 cents:

Midway execs get rich while company crashes
joystiq.com - Dec 23rd 2008

Midway Execs Raked In Big Bucks While Company Foundered
ign.com - Dec 23, 2008

let's take a look back at Midway Games when the sith began to take control of the senate.

David F. Zucker Named Midway's Chief Executive Officer and President
may 07 2003

Midway Games Acquires "Area 51" Developer Inevitable for $2.1 Million
October 11, 2004

Midway Games Acquires "Mortal Kombat" Developer Paradox Development
November 30, 2004

Midway Games Acquires Aussie Developer Ratbag for $5.6 Million
August 4, 2005

Midway Games Acquires U.K.-Based Pitbull Syndicate for $3.1 Million
October 4, 2005

more than $11 million so far (ongoing salaries and the cost for paradox, etc.). but first, in light of this whole financial market disaster the whole world is currently in, a snapshot of Midway's stock at the time Mr. Zucker started to the day he filed his fire sale [businessweek.com].

MWY - Midway Games historical price
March 07, 2003 to December 09 2005
a healthy 662.67% gain. nice.
(chart from Google Finance)

this is where it dawned on me, that everyone in the financial sector are also only there to take your money. more on this a little later.

continuing, there was businessweek.com interview "Sumner Redstone, Video-Game Whiz" that has a few juicy tidbits.

...the media mogul,... sat down and explained why he's such a fan of the video-game industry -- even though he has never played such a game [ Mortal Kombat ] himself.

"this company [ Midway Games ]-- which was hardly known a year ago..."

"I don't have any information that is not public. I have told David to never give me any material inside information."

on Paramount making an Area 51 movie:
"I have absented myself completely. [Because Redstone also owns a 70% stake in Viacom, he has recused himself from Viacom discussions concerning Midway to avoid conflicts of interest. ...]

redstone has absolutely no idea what it takes to make a video game. he was someone who had a big bag of money, looking for a project to see if he can get into the video game market. the chiefs smelt blood. here's where the raping begins.

Midway Games to Sell $75 Million in Convertible Notes
May 24, 2006

Video Game Publisher Midway Faces Investor Lawsuits
July 23, 2007

Midway Games CEO David Zucker Resigns
March 20, 2008

Redstone Sells Majority Stake in Midway Games
December 1, 2008

MWY - Midway Games historical price
December 09 2005 to March 31 2008
(chart from Google Finance)
note: this chart does not include the 2008 global market meltdown numbers - only to the day zucker has resigned (almost an 88% drop)

how can redstone keep tabs on a company, that was "hardly known a year ago" (NFL blitz, NBA jam, ... mortal kombat... whatever...), let alone take a no hands approach to running the company is beyond me. he hires some guy who also knows nothing about making video games, and basically "talks the company up, just to drive it into the ground". the guy also plays the moronic "increase market share by buying your smaller competitors" bull $#!t rule.

a whole bunch of peons in the studio were perplexed at the decisions to buy studios (all over the world) only to shut them down in a matter of months (and no, no technology was ever gained from buying these studios - a sequel or 1 was sometimes done... and that's it...). and instead of reappropriating resources on projects that clearly didn't show progressive results, more money was poured into sinking boat anchors. wtf.

image courtesy of ibdeditorials.com

as for the cash infusion, there was no rhyme or reason for it at the time (other than to take more money from these "investors"). did redstone benefit from the convertible notes sales to cover his enormous loses? probably not. but i don't think the company burned through all of that cash on day to day expenses either.

zucker has managed to leave the company with a lower stock value and a humongous debt. the day before he was hired, midway was trading at $3.57 (and at around $8million in debt at the end of 2002). and on the day he left: $2.01 (and a $250million debt).

the following should be in a separate article (since it's getting a little long already - but i don't want to revisit this in a future article).

back to the money people. these dirty wh*res would lie, cheat and basically steal the money that should have been given to the people who are actual making the products. i don't know what were they thinking when they basically cut all of the bonus/royalty numbers, adjusting the payout program or renege on reserves (scheduled retention bonuses) and expect the developers to stick around.

it got so bad that there was a major meeting with the team and the finance department to explain their actions. no answers were ever given to the peon workers. the money monkeys would constantly repeat "the payout equations are complicated". i would love to see who can tell me the answer first, the finance department to rotate a point around a line in 3D space or if the coders can figure out how "complex" the royalty equations really are.

i was going to go on and on about how a bunch of brand new cars (M5's M3's and other 5series vehicles) all of these execs suddenly showed up literally on the following monday right after the theft-fest meeting - all in all, the peons got the shaft.

anyways, what's left of Midway Games right now? everyone who has nothing to do with video games are gone. that's finally a good thing. but, a lot of people i knew are also no longer there. and the ones who are still there... can finally enjoy their down time after crunching for this winter's holiday season releases (maybe permanently, too). it was pretty interesting seeing how many linked-in profile updates were fired up right after this meltdown.

it sucks that matt booty got left in the path of destruction with more than a quarter billion dollar debt to figure out. but i trust him more than any of the other "CEOh-nos" to run a video game company. an actual game developer with experience. but i would actually recommend to leave this disaster and start a brand new studio. leave the legacy of the old studio to the former board of directors and past CEOs. there is no away to keep this studio running anymore except to sell off the assets and IP for the new "owner". basically, a reset like atari did is needed.

i would like to leave this post with a pretty interesting interview with Eugene Jarvis who made a lot of arcade games that many of you may have dropped hojillion quarters in.

The Making of…NARC
edge-online.com - September 16, 2008
“The company was screwed up, like their worst competitor had staffed the upper management. The guys they hired could not have done a better job of destroying everything. A guy with no knowledge about videogames says: ‘What’s wrong with this company is we need more schedules and managers’.”

angels and humanity, i mean humility

2008-12-19T22:00:00.000-08:00

angels: good or evil - a history of angels (2003)

this wonderful documentary was on the history channel. (note: i'm the kind of person that would rather watch the movie than read the book.) they didn't just talked about how angels came to be and where and when they were conceived - but also how some angels were present across some of the most prevalent religions of the world and proceeded to explain how they all pretty much came from one; from Judaism to Christianity and Mohammedanism. it was the link with the heavenly and demonic angels that got me thinking.

Luis Royo - Angel Holding Demon

first, just a few things from the show that i never knew before. eve (from adam and eve) was the second women created (after lilith/adamah) to be more submissive for man? the old testament was written in a period of over 800 years? angels were influenced from egyptian and greek mythology that made it's way over to scriptures found in the 3 religions above (with near identical sounding names as well). very interesting stuff.

then, the most amazing thing i got out of the show was where a lot of angels originated from. many were first written when the "old testament" was being put together, but were "cut" from the "final edit" of the hebrew bible. and then someone decided to put them together in a book called the Apocrypha - a.k.a. the "Secret Books". to which i LOL when i thought to myself about the age old question of "why do people still fight wars in the name of the LORD" - was it because "my stories are better than yours?"

w-w-wait, bear with me on this. let's take, for example, the mythos of star wars or the tolken universe and find people who want to believe in those so much that they want to eat, sleep and breath the life.

Force strong for new Jedi church
bbc.co.uk - 21 January 2008

Darkon - A LARP Documentary

"Star Trek" Fan Documentary "TREKKIES"

it is nothing short of amazing how far people will go defending their "way of life" loosing sight of the some of the basic principles of living harmoniously many of these "universes" are trying to teach.

i mean, let's take another example, this time from south park's episode: Christian Rock Hard

Replace Darling & Baby with Jesus

All right, guys, this is gonna be so easy. All we have to do to make Christian songs is take regular old songs and add Jesus stuff to them. See? All we have to do is cross out words like "baby" and "Darling" and replace them with Jesus.
spscriptorium.com

and now as an exercise, let's see how many parallelism can be drawn from the seven sins if you replaced LORD with a pronoun, a person's name or even a demon. let's use cartman now, shall we?

"For great is cartman and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods"
"Praise be to cartman."

hmm... not very friendly is he? is cartman's ego so fragile and in need of constant attention to boost his level of self awareness he requires daily offerings, daily prayers or else incur the wrath of cartman? i count at least 5 here. i guess he really doesn't want to be forgotten if anything. the LORD is nowhere and everywhere within the Matrix. oops, different article.

so, how about we bring this back to the nerds because you're still reading this.

Star Wars Vs. Star Trek - DMP Edition HQ
via gizmodo.com

Spock At The Star Wars Attack Of The Clones Line

happy holidays!

microsoft, the dying patient

2008-12-03T06:25:00.000-08:00

a few months ago i wrote why Microsoft needed to kill OLPC and touched on how add-on perks gave the perception of what's a better value. it seems now, that they have succumbed to the near unlimited developer resources in the open source communities and have begun to accept them.

Microsoft: We're all 'mixed source' companies
cnet.com - October 17, 2008

Microsoft starts distributing open-source Drupal
cnet.com - October 16, 2008

i guess the nerds at redmond figured out how easy it is to become a package distributer, repository pointer or what ever you want to call it; even though there already was one for the windows platform. cygwin is one of the most important must haves on a windows box. it basically gives me all of the tools, utilities, apps -- everything including the kitchen sink that i have always had on my *nix box.

and really, providing any of the many wonderful projects out there is probably one of the most easiest thing they could have done to enhance their existing product line. the kids on the mac platform already does this too. fink seems to be the favor of choice. (dunno what happen to the whole open darwin project though.)

but it is interesting to see how long microsoft has come since their first tirade when the whole open source software movement became a huge thorn on their side. at first:

Microsoft denies Linux threat
original denial: 03.11.98

followed by a long line of dissemination of FUD statements and money funneling scheme to take ownership of the *nix kernel via patent suits through their SCO cronies.

Halloween_Documents - wiki
December 1998 - June 2004

but they will acknowledge linux during 1999 when the DOJ started looking into their monopoly in the software market and then go right back to attacking the viability of these alternative OS with the virtual limitless amount of add-on software packages.
Microsoft rooting for Linux?
12 Mar 1999

next, the interoperability initiative is launched to lure developers back to the windows platform. as well as deals made in lieu of disclosing what patents were supposedly violated.

Microsoft makes Linux pact with Novell
November 2, 2006

and now, it seems they went and skipped the depression stage and right into acceptance by freely distributing software that was once shunned

and called too complex not but a few months earlier:
Microsoft: Open source is too complex
August 07, 2006

anyways, these behaviors show nearly all five stages in the psychology of a dying patient to the tee:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

does this mean they are dying? well, if another one of my past article, never gonna buy Microsoft hardware again, is any indication, far from it. they have a gazillion dollars to ride this out.

when i say i the command line interface, i really mean all of the tools, utilities, applications, scripts and executables that many, if not all, had their start from the important initiatives of the GNU project.

game makers likes to nickel and dime you too

2008-11-29T02:58:00.000-08:00

on one of my previous article, i was originally going to title it "pooping out games - now with ad supplements". but the topic warranted a whole separate article.

Sony, Double Fusion sign in-game ad deal
joystiq.com - July 10 2008

EA, Massive extend in-game ad deal through next two years
joystiq.com - Mar 18th 2008

Study: in-game advertiser says 82% of you don't mind in-game ads
joystiq.com - Jun 18th 2008

now, i'm not saying that the concept is bad. but if the game is going to be designed with ad's first, games second... (and i'm talking about the console market) then you shouldn't be in the video game business. in fact, i hope you go out of business. and i'm calling out the 82% acceptance study bull-$#!t - or they are not telling the whole story.

anyways, let's start with why advertising in video games is something we even need to think about.

Devs Need To Watch Advergaming, Corporate Training
gamasutra.com - October 29, 2008
"the games industry is worth over $40 billion worldwide"... "advertising is a $270 billion industry in the US"...

those are indeed impressive numbers. but i'm sure you've seen the myriad of negative posts, comments and replies about ads in games that all boils down to - if there are ads in the game, the game better be for free or waaaay less than the full sticker price. the fact that many consumers will not see a price break while the publishers will reap on both ends is causing a rift with gamers. the developers (not to be confused with the executive douche bags who happends to work at a video game company) also sees this and feels for the gamers.

Don't like in-game ads? Mercenaries 2 lets you blow that sh*t up
destructoid.com - July 21 2008

now, going back to the billions of dollars Gamasutra article, the speaker went on to say: "Get Involved -- Before Proctor And Gamble Forces You To" -- that has got to be one of the dumbest FUD scare tactic line i have ever heard. i say, go ahead, let P&G do it. it is going to be no different than what burger king has done back in 2006. it was beneficial for BK and i bet the parents loved it when the games were sold for less than the price of a whopper combo.

Eat Like a King. Play Like a King
xbox.com

Over 2 million BK games served
gamespot.com - Dec 20, 2006

Burger King profits up 40% thanks to video games
videogamer.com - Jan 31, 2007

so why does everyone (who isn't a gamer) want to shove ads down your gaming thumbs? i mean, i understand that product placement is a tried and true method of advertising. but do it for the right reasons - or else, the gamer will be thinking they just shelled out $60 bucks for a game that came with nag-ware; ad-ware; ad-banner; ad-supported; fill-in-the-blank-with-more-ads-shoved-down-my-throat-and-ruin-my-escape-from-reality-when-all-i-wanted-to-do-was-frag-my-friends-and-chain-saw-grubs-in-half-and-call-in-air-strikes all day.

was that last line annoying to read? good, because that's what your damn ads would feel like if i played your games. now, back to the douche bag execs who wants to nickel and dime you:

Microsoft contemplating for-pay Avatar accessories
joystiq.com - Aug 1 2008

Free-to-play Battlefield Heroes delayed
arstechnica.com - July 30 2008

EA's future plans for Spore: hope you like expansions
arstechnica.com - July 30 2008

EA would 'love' to charge for Spore parts ... I bet they bloody would
destructoid.com - July 29 2008

now, as for spore's expansion, i don't mind as long as the price is right for the new features. but if it's only for incremental features (such as madden football year after year) - then it better be for $20 or less. better yet - free or less than $10 DLC.

Activision: if we can't run a game into the ground, we don't want it
arstechnica.com - November 06, 2008

Kotick: Vivendi Titles Dropped Due To Lack Of Sequel Potential
gamasutra.com - November 6, 2008

Blizzard: We're Not "Milking" StarCraft
edge-online.com - October 13, 2008

yeah, that last one (starcraft) came at a time when everyone was wearing their sequels haters-pants on. but, and i am such a blizzard fan-boy, hope that all races will have some sort of playable campaign mode so you are not stuck with just one side of the story. it would make the game... well... sort of boring if you, say, only had to play the marine campaign mode to begin with. anyways, back to the player-haters:

Activision no longer cares about games it can't milk to death
destructoid.com - November 06, 2008
"Something tells me that if the videogames market has another crash like the famous one of 1983, Activision will have a big hand in its arrival. "

ok, now that was just uncalled for. the gaming crash of '83 was because of too many games in the market. and i mean, crap games. if you're saying diablo, starcraft and warcraft are going to cause a gaming crashing -- you're on crack. oh, wait -- those are blizzard's games. um... call of duty 6, uh... i guess, um... oh! there's guitar hero... on crack.

huh..., there aren't that many if you ask me. it seems you would have the power to pick and choose which games to buy and which to ignore. a far cry from flooding the market with a whole heap of random and $#!t games. and now, with download-able games -- there will never be another game glut crash when stores will refuse to stock games because of the limited shelf space. if anything, this will help propel games that are worthy of your precious gaming time to receive your attention instead of the shovel-ware garbage.

iPodTouch + QuickPWN = Me Happy

2008-11-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

well, it all started when my brother, mikey, got me an iPodTouch for christmas '07. the first thing i did was jailbreak it. no music, no videos, no pictures (even to this day). i just wanted the small form factor with wireless capabilities and touch screen ability.

it's the greatest toy i have ever had the pleasure to poke around in. so why did i want to jailbreak it in the first place? it was like: "damn, why did the iphone get the maps proggy and the iPodTouch didn't?" this was my single most wanted feature. i mean, take a look and compare what came on these two devices when they were first released.
i can understand that the iphone would have extra buttons for the phone, sms and (i guess) the camera. but what really miffed me was, "what? you get the stock thingie, weather and note pad too?" and when i had learned how to add them on (and this was way before the 2.0 firmware was out) i figured, this is how they should have released the iPod Touch.

now, i never had the need to upgrade the firmware on my toy for the longest time. but when i accidentally deleted an iTunes folder from my root (user) directory - i got my iPodTouch stuck in a restart loop. oops. lesson learned. but i still have an itchy trigger "rm -r" finger...

anyways, i have a whole heap of stuff backed up except for the iTunes folder for my root user, obviously, and instructions on how to restore and jailbreak my toy. so on to the internet i go. long story short, i ran into this utility called QuickPWN and wow. it was the easiest thing i have ever used.

first, let's make some fun of these guys.

on sept 12 (maybe around 8am according to the comment section) QuickPWN releases a post with instructions on how to use their utility that's kinda long winded. but what really baked my noodle were these 2 sentences at the very top of the article:

View this guide to learn how to jailbreak your iPod Touch 2.1.

[step] 1. Before you do anything, make sure you have a jailbroken iPod Touch.

O.K. wait... what?

my brain just went on a restart loop. good thing they plastered "DO NOT USE THIS" all over the page... so i chuckled. but then i was wondering where do i go to find this "OTHER POST"...

looking around, i see a list of labels on the side of the page. following the cookie trail, i find the second post. this was posted also on sept 12 (and seems like 11:30am this time) and basically the instructions was this:

run QuickPWN.exe ... and follow the on-screen instructions.

heh. O.K. let's see where this goes. after i had grabbed all kinds of firmware files and restoring my iPodTouch to one of them, i download the QuickPWN utility and run it. wow. yeah, i know i said that before. but this was so quick and painless, that it deserved a second wow.

i am so liking this this stuff! proceeding to install the bare minimum must have packages:

bsd system
openssh
sshd

all in all, there seems to be a few things replaced (since i last jailbroke): Cydia is the new Installer. and Boss* has everything else. BossTool, only used once, and BossPrefs, a nice one stop shop to turn things on and off. but i'd like to still keep SysInfo - it's still the best process viewer and killer.

finally, some updated instructions on stuff i can't live with out:

How to Block Ads on Your (Jailbroken) iPhone
Oct 8 2008

Setting up lighttpd web server on 2.0
Aug 7 2008

after installing the lighttpd web server, make a folder:

/private/var/mobile/Site
your lighttpd "home" folder

and think of this as your "everything" folder. i upload all of my media, docs and whatever into the "Site" folder. and i will also make it my download dumping ground. here's why this is my up/down folder.

if you installed MPlayer:

point /private/var/media
to /private/var/mobile/Site/media

if you installed dTunes (DO NOT [ chmod 777 Downloads ] like dTunes will say - this will be fixed with chown below):

point /private/var/mobile/Library/Downloads
to /private/var/mobile/Site/Downloads
or point to /private/var/mobile/Site/media as well to make things simpler

make sure to [ chown -R mobile.mobile Site ] to keep things kosher.

everything is neatly stored in my "Site" folder and this is what i use for quick backup and (r)syncing scripts.

love it!

now, for your mac owners who don't need all of this brain busting instructions and only need to have the freedom of moving your music from one computer to another, mikey has recommended using Senuti.

senuti (which, cleverly, is Itunes backwards), is
freeware. works like a charm.
-- mikey

pooping out games

2008-10-31T23:56:00.000-07:00

Wonderman looks like she's trying to drop a mean duce. but it's not as bad as how EA pretty much decided to destroy a fairly popular title by announcing this:

DICE currently working on 5 Battlefield games
June 24 2008

EA Has Five Battlefields In the Oven
June 24 2008

no matter what kind of resources you have to pull this off, the thought of -- "omg, there's going to be 5 games of this?" just makes me want to say: f#ck it. i only want one good game. not 5 mediocre ones.

and if you're gonna $#!t out games year after year - don't be surprised when the public respond with - "didn't that come out last year?"

a title needs to have time between sequels. a lot of gamers are getting to know what studios are producing the fun time-suck games versus the"alternate year" studios. which in my opinion tarnishes the "franchise". [ infinity ward vs. treyarch ]

now, i can't tell you a single person i know who bought consecutive years of the madden games. and if there's someone out there who did, you're a tool. so what about these announcements:

EA craves sequels for Dead Space, Army of Two, and Battlefield: Bad Company
EA: Dead Space, Army of Two, Bad Company sequels in the works
EA Considering Sequels to Dead Space, Army of Two
oct 23 2008 - three games - three links

as long as it's every other year - then i don't mind. but if you're going to shovel it down our face every year - people are gonna start ignoring the marketing blitz. while paying more attention to these kinds of headlines:

EA Laying Off 600 As Revenue, Losses Rise, Citing Weakening Retail
Oct 31 2008

EA promises its games won't be 'crappy' anymore
Aug 5 2008

EA: Investors don't give a sh*t about quality
July 22 2008

Lawsuit flags EA for illegal procedure on football monopoly
June 12 2008

so you poop out "crappy" games because you are only interested in increasing shareholder value? not caring about the ramifications for the long term? (and it really isn't that long: only 18-24 months cycles - for a title.) and trying to squeeze something out in every 12 month (again, of the same project) -- just to see customer loyalty destroyed at the end of the fiscal year? good going f#ck bags.

oh, you want new buyers? thanks for caring. we're the ones who recommends games to your new potential buyers.

if you have nothing new, nothing exciting and not worth paying full price for -- then why do you wonder people are not buying your games. you'd be lucky if someone waits until it hits the bargain bin.

stick to new/multiple titles. don't grind on the same title until it literally turns in to dust. over exposure is a sure way to turn people off. sequels aren't a bad thing (can't wait for diablo3 & starcraft2). but i guess that's not stopping articles (like this one) from flying off the shelf (even though we are all pretty much talking about the same thing):

Insomniac loves sequels, so it should MARRY them
oct 23 2008

Why Are Gamers Cynical Of Sequels?
oct 24 2008

ps. yes, i know the DC characters here have nothing to do with this article, but they were too easy to pass up to make d!ck and f@rt jokes with...

evil telcos - double charge

2008-10-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

this post is a side bar to the main P2P article.

network caps. please note that there is a difference between bandwidth size limits and bandwidth rate limits. how are these different? i watch A LOT of internet videos (video length contributes to the file size downloaded) and i don't like waiting through the "buffering..." messages (how fast can the video stream be downloaded).

the speed at which the file can be downloaded is dependent on how fast your ISP will plow the files to your home. in fact, when looking into or recommending an ISP to others - i look for the fewest "buffering" message moments. some ISPs do not seem to get this. (yes, speed is also dependent on how fast the source server is - but we are talking about the ISP services to your home. major internet video broadcast networks makes use of CDNs - content distributed networks. and some even distribute their shows on torrent networks. but it all comes down to how tight the pipes gets closed when the ISP's rips you off.)

now i understand that they should be charging more for people with a faster network pipe (which they already do). they have T-1, T-3, OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192 dedicated lines. and they come with (most of the time) unlimited transfer sizes. remember, it's a dedicated line. (and i say most of the time because, for example, it seems to be regional for academic institutions. who knows why - maybe some crazy legislation is why. see my previous article.)

in a nuttshell, the evil-telcos want to double charge you for the same product and services. here's what i mean. a T-1, for example, is a 1.544 megabits per second pipe. a T-3 is 43.232 Mbps, which has 28 times the capacity of the T-1. or in other words, it would take 28 times longer to push the same amount of data on a T-1 than on the T-3. (by the way, a T-3 is just 28 T-1's bundled together. and yeah yeah yeah, packet data [payload] versus packet header [overhead] bliz blaz.) but, keep this simple math in mind as we continue.

Comcast's New Network Management Will Slow Down Heavy Users for Up to 20 Minutes
Aug 20 2008

Comcast to slow down heaviest 'Net users to DSL speeds
Aug 21 2008

we see they no longer wish to honor the services they said they will provide when they have no problem charging you money every month for it. here's where the double charges come in:

It's official: Comcast starts 250GB bandwidth caps October 1
Aug 28 2008

"there was also buzz that Comcast might try to charge customers $15 for every 10GB they went over the limit."

HA! nickle and dime, i tells ya! although this is just a rumor, i'll bet the air you're breathing that this will happen.

ok, back to the double charge and the basic math i mentioned earlier. most DSL and cable modem provider charge you a certain amount of dollars for a certain bandwidth rate.

AT&T DSL price quote as of Oct 19 2008
price	up stream	down stream
$14.99	384 Kbps	768 Kbps
$25.00	384 Kbps	1.5 Mbps
$30.00	512 Kbps	3.0 Mbps
$35.00	768 Kbps	6.0 Mbps

note: i could have posted some cable modem, fiber and DSL prices here from the P2P unfriendly bastards that are all over the newsfeeds. but, this is just an example of the price scam i want to bring up. and you can do your own math with the ISP you're using to see for yourself. oh wait, where's the $10 package AT&T said they are offering? i would put the link here but it doesn't seem to be up anymore. evil and greedy f#ck bags. note: AT&T was required by the FCC to offer the low cost service as an agreement for the bellsouth merger. and what do you know, "at" bellsouth, you can find the information on how to get the cheap offereing.

let's say that you want to download a few files that totals to 250 GB - maybe it's every Linux Distro ISO and all of the source codes that were used to make it. let's see how long it would take to download it.

time to download 250GB
rate	days	hours	mins	secs
768 Kbps	32	8	43	22.67
1.5 Mbps	16	13	40	55.77
3.0 Mbps	8	6	50	27.88
6.0 Mbps	4	4	25	13.94

note: 1GB = 2^30 bytes which is then multiplied by 250 and again by 8 to get the number of bits we are looking to download. yeah yeah yeah packet headers, retransmission & delay windows. just consider them all part of the total 250 GB downloaded.

so, on the slowest tier, it would take the whole month for you to download all of that. good for you! you physically can't download it fast enough to even hit the limit. but if you went and upgraded to the faster rate, not only will pay more for it, but will download it faster and faster and hit the "limit" quicker than the month would end. so you would be charged extra in order to keep using the internet feed you already paid for - or spend the rest of the month unable to access the internet. told you the telco's want to DP you in the @$$.

p2p - 2slow4u - up&down

2008-09-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

last time, i wrote about the evil telcos and want to wrap this up here.

but this time, it's not about the money. i mean, i understand that a company needs to find ways to keep their business up and running. and if they can milk all the dollars they can from their customers, then good for them. however, their tactics that could lead to the demise of the innovative transport medium technology and products as well as the collateral damage of new and interesting media providers and broadcasters.

these new media may be snuff out by the evil telcos, and this is what i fear the most.

first, it's P2P traffic. and even though, technically, one computer linked to just one other is a P2P network, let's assume for this section it's one computer linked to many others (just like what the carriers are all complaining about).

Verizon: we need freedom to delay P2P traffic when necessary
Aug 21 2008

Comcast sues FCC, wants P2P throttling order overturned
Sept 4 2008

it seems that some companies haven't figured this one out yet. the P2P control freaks are completely out of line here -- and need to know that they MUST NOT F@#K with the P2P traffic. these ISPs doesn't seem to not know about the people who: chat (voice or typing) and play games.

these kind of network traffic are your most common and basic multi-point/distributed P2P network. and if the network provider is the cause of that laggy connection (or worse a dropped connection) - YOU WILL LOSE THAT CUSTOMER. yes, most chats goes to a central server, but it is possible to join a pile of IRC channels from a pile of servers with [insert your favorite multi-protocol social chat client]. yes, while it's most likely that you are not joining 100's of endpoints, it is possible to join at least "a" 100 from one user. and if you have more than one users (i.e. roommates) then it is possible to see 100's of connections coming from one IP address. but if your network caused me to drop my game, you're F@#King with my QoS. don't expect me to keep you as my provider.

next, network caps. please note that there is a difference between bandwidth rate limits and bandwidth size limits. [ i when off tangent here - it went back to being about money (those greedy bastards) and said that this article wouldn't be about it. so i decided to put it in to a separate side bar article. ]

bandwidth rate limits are more in tune with what i wrote above about laggy connections (especially sensitive to quick-action games) - but, what the providers are really asking for is bandwidth size limits. and this is HUGE problem for other reasons.

upload and download limits. as HD videos become more and more prevalent in the video podcast world, these transmission sizes may easily reach the 250GB limit. so, can i see myself hitting that cap? well, let's do some quick paper napkin calculations.

if each HD video podcast is 1GB (which the totally rad show @1280x720 ~1hr @24fps - has sometimes hit), then that means i can watch 250 shows a month. which is about 8 one hour shows per day. that's a lot of video watching. i think most people only watch 2-3 hours of TV. a couch potato may watch up to 4-5 hours. and the video gamer may play games with the video podcast running in the background 4-8 hours. yes, there are days where i would play for 4 hours and other where i would play for up to 12 or even 16 hours. but on average, i have hit a stride of 4 to 6 hours. i also download a lot of financial stock data and listen to a lot of internet radio.

what's my current usage? a little less than 100GB/month according to ifconfig. HA! you say? now re-run the calculations when shows become 1920x1080. the data size for a single 1080 frame would be more than twice that of a 720 frame. now how about at 30fps or 60fps. of course, compression technology will try to keep the file sizes small. however, the best way to keep file sizes small is lower resolution running at lower frame rates. but we are looking into the future.

so why all of the sudden the reason to enforce the P2P restrictions?

have the carriers met the usage saturation point (i don't think so)
is this a pre-emptive move to contain users from high network usage (on a system that's pretty much a shared network) (maybe, but really, i don't think so)
do they want to start charging subscribers more money and this is one way to ease it in (plausable)
do they want to help the RIAA or MPAA stop piracy (i don't think so)
do they want to help the major broadcast networks stop loosing viewership to the new media networks (i would say more so than stopping piracy but way less than wanting to charge more $$)

if you ask me, i think it's some RIAA or MPAA douche bag that has somehow convinced the carriers to fight the P2P wars on their dime. or else they would face lawsuits for allowing P2P traffic on their networks. the anti-P2P systems started to roll out, but the carrier's ultimate reason for doing so is that they can upsell additional services that comes with the higher network speed package (do you really need the triple package now a days?) or charge you extra for a service you already are paying for (remember net neutrality?). there really is no reason to throttle P2P traffic when there are many good uses for it. and many good reasons to show your network is multi-user friendly that will shine well with people who wants to have a fat and fast pipe while not feeling like they are being ripped off.

couldn't resist

free wifi, eh? evil telcos to the rescue!

2008-09-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

about a month ago i wrote how telcos want to nickel and dime (and by nickel and dime, i mean $5 and $15) their subscribers for every little feature. i want to expand on that with how they also want to/will kill anything that would threaten their stranglehold on ~~your wireless communication needs~~ their cash cow.

a long time ago, a city wanted to roll out a free or subsidized low-cost wireless network:

Philadelphia Plans $10M City Cloud
aug 31 2004

and in three months, some evil telco convinced the governor to make it illegal for a city to provide such services. how is it possible to make this "illegal" is beyond me.

Philly Negotiates a Cloud
nov 30 2004

Every cloud has a Verizon lining
nov 26, 2004

image courtesy of: prickwear.com

here's a nice article that wraps all of this up from an interesting source. how and why does the UK have any interest in this is amazing.

Wi-fi venture tests Philadelphia
dec 4, 2005

fast forward a few years:

FCC boss mulls free* wireless for all
may 27, 2008

and now, free wifi is under attack as a health scare?

City sneezes at WiFi allergy claims, goes ahead with hotspots
jun 17 2008

although there's no wireless provider officially involved with that uprising, i bet dollars to donuts one of them are. anyways, let's not forget the land based telcos.

the attempted assassination of the internet by twisting the net neutrality principle would have been a major coup for the few ginormous ISPs. the FCC are trying their best to keep the network free and open - but that's not stopping the telcos from going in to their bag of dirty tricks to choke out your options.

Telco to fiber-deploying town: we sue because we care
Sep 11 2008

Comcast Sues FCC to Get P2P Slowdown Ban Reversed
Sep 5 2008

image courtesy of: njvadala.blogspot.com

hell, they'll even resort to bribing, kickback, payout or what ever you want to call it:

Comcast pays $150K to put end to Florida bandwidth cap probe
Sep 8 2008

FCC Order scolds Comcast for changing story on P2P blocking
aug 20 2008

ha! lying - now i see how they get these lawsuits, legislation and health scare "facts" through the system. how naive of me.

or is it because they do not want any competition by ~~making up excuses~~ lobbying for laws that is in the telcos best interest. smash your options if it's going to save you money. and if they can take your money by ~~force~~ law, they will.

German court bans VoiP on iPhone
sept 12 2008

image courtesy of: freemagenta.nl

this rant will be concluded on my next P2P article.

OLPC - a lesson in product development

2008-08-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

a couple of months ago i wrote why microsoft needed to kill the OLPC. this time, i felt like writing why the OLPC project nearly failed from a product development view point.

they had a near feature-complete product that was ready to be manufactured and then shipped. the product should have been in design lock down after the first prototype was spec'd out. the sales agreements should have been put down in writing. and then followed through (i.e. make, boxed and then shipped).

so what happened. a big pile of $$ was dangled in front of their noses - allowed intel to smeared Negroponte with the "you can't sell the classmate" PR disaster. and then they let microsoft in to the party. again, loosing sight of the road map. this should have been version 2.0 for a brand spankin new OS implementation, feature locked and signed off on the hardware platform.

there is something to be said about being ahead of your time.
OLPC Founder Negroponte Wanted to Make Multitouch XO-2 Laptop 20 Years Ago [Olpc]
june 2 2008

but you should not compromise your release cycle by being distracted with the bells and whistles of what could be. i mean, there was all of these dual touchscreen articles popping up all over the place like this one:
V12 Design Delivering Dual Touchscreen Laptop Within Two Years [Laptops]
july 9 2008

again, they lost focus on releasing their first product out the door. with all of these add ons, did they honestly thought they were going to keep the costs down by adding two full touch screens?

when all of this was happening, a whole heap of cheap "netbooks" started to pop up from all kinds of manufacturers. the ASUS eeePC is an excellent example of them. they've manage to release different versions upon different versions all aiming at the same market the OLPC was in. the eeePC 700 was the linux book, 701 had XP, 900A a faster processor, 1000 a larger screen. there is a giant table of all the different models they did that it's mind boggling trying to keep track of it. and since there are so many of these eeePC out there, people have started to mod them with things like touchscreen capabilities.

finally, an interesting read on how the OLPC journey was taken:

How the OLPC Changed Laptops Forever: The Untold Story [Origins]
aug 14, 2008

and what's also curious is that this article link used to be found through gizmodo's pages:

even their twitter feed has it:

twitter.com/Gizmodo

don't they normally mark the article as inaccurate or strike the lines in the article to "update" their findings? i have never seen them pull down a post like this. and now it's:

stay tuned

maybe it wasn't popular enough for people to take interest in this, it seems to only have 18 diggs so -- no one will miss it...

update: it seems that a new article has been posted on gizmodo:
Secret Origin of the OLPC: Genius, Hubris and the Birth of the Netbook
aug 26, 2008

update: here's another fancy article that bears a similar headline to my original article:
Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop
aug 10, 2008

real time ray tracing, huh...

2008-08-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

there's been a lot of graphics technology goodies piling up. too good for me to pass up on some more of my thoughts.

Intel takes another jab at Nvidia during its research day
june 12, 2008

"[ray tracing] doesn't waste time drawing things that are hidden and, according to Intel, it is best done on the CPU."

i think the über managers doesn't realize the complexity of raytracing. there is no such thing as "things that are hidden" object in ray tracing. in fact, it's quite the opposite. you need all of the objects in the scene to calculate for reflection and refraction, scattering, and chromatic aberration (wiki). to make a high quality rendered scene depends on the number of times the ray is bounced (reflection) or passed through (refraction) an object. hidden (off screen) or not, the object needs to be in the scene no matter what.

16-core, four-chip monster CPU, running last fall’s game, “Quake Wars: Enemy Territory.” It ran at 16 frames per second, not the usual 60 frames per second that is possible on a good graphics chip.

wow, that's a lot of hardware for 16 frames. granted this is ray tracing but still. i would throw my computer out the window if i can't get my frag on smooth silky frame rates.
Nvidia video: No quad-core chip needed for extreme PC
june 20, 2008

from intel, again:

"...programmers will like ray tracing better because they can do many complex tasks with simple one-line programs."

huh? did i just read that right? what hell are function and macros again?

this guy has a much better thought on these issues.
Ray tracing for PCs-- a bad idea whose time has come
june 12, 2008
and now, back to more graphic goodies. to achieve some pretty good results, there's been a lot of work going into the multi-core chip solutions.

AMD, Nvidia graphics chip designs diverge
june 16, 2008

Intel aims x86 at GPU market
aug 04, 2008

and, it seems to be kicking ass so far:
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Preview
july 14, 2008

finally, john dvorak said this on his podcast:
Save Your Phone Books
06/18/2008 06:35 PM @3:55 mins:secs

"... it would be difficult for a CPU company to make a GPU as it is for a GPU company to make a CPU... mindset and marketing style are different..."

i think that's only true for CPU to GPU. going the other way should be much easier for the GPU maker. a CPU works much more simplier in a linear fashion with a lot of instruction sets that are more in tuned with logic processing. the GPU on the other hand has a lot of pipelining effiency designs that needs to be taken into consideration with data that are normally processed/passed over multiple times.

plus, it's funny how all the major CPU makers are into the low power processor:
AMD may be planning its own CPU to compete with [VIA] Nano [and Intel] Atom
june 19, 2008

and the lone GPU maker:
NVIDIA pays Transmeta $25 million for LongRun technology
aug 8 2008

but i hope there's more work like this being done from all graphics makers:
AMD Cinema 2.0 tech demo: real-time photo-realistic human models
aug 12 2008

there's nothing more outstanding than showing what you are working on and what your graphics chip can do. nvidia used to always showcase their cards by constantly displaying all of these cool demos, samples and apps. it seems that they are kind of slipping as of late.

iphone vs gphone

2008-08-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

so a buddy if mine forwards me this artcle and proceeds to mention that he "had hopes for Android but [is reading] many disappointing things about it so far":

Google Android flaws pushing software firms towards iPhone

and i reply with this:

this "flaw" is just a publicity slam (scam) to keep the market's perception of iphone is better than google android -- just like how apple did the whole mac vs. vista ad/smear campaign.

the article is total BS.

the article jumps directly into the open source "problem".

[cherry-picking the teams ] with "advanced releases of Android's Software Developer Kit"

almost every mega-software house on the planet does this. external developers who shows skills ahead of the curve will almost always be tapped as "guinea pigs" for testing prototype code and asking for their remarks before releasing the features out into the wild.

"open source software ... allow early adopters access ... buggier pieces of code... can help fix them or let people ... wait for a solid release ..."

again, i'm sure that there are piles of "test" code within the OSS community that will never see the light of the day when ideas are getting bounced around between the project leaders -- just as well as coders external to the project who tries submitting patches that also never become part of the official tree. every one has a process. non-disclosure agreements may not be one of them, but when it comes to dealing with evil telco's... more about on that later.

"carriers and hardware manufacturers are believed to be encountering technical problems regardless of their access to code."

this isn't a google flaw. this is an evil telco problem...

the poorly supported article continues with a link to a "language translation problems" -- a stupid remark about a mobile phone company having problems to re-write the code base into another language. if you don't know how to convert (written/read) text from one language to another, you should be out of business. localization is one of the most basic programming task a junor coder should be able to do in his/her spare time.

if google android is to fail - it's because of the evil telcos.

google has a bigger problem. most of the major cellular proviers will not want to sell (or allow on their networks) android phones because subscribers will be able to put their own applications and files on their own phones. they can't charge you $ if you can put stuff on the phone for free. they want to nickel and dime (and by nickel and dime, i mean $5 and $15) for every little feature they want to up-sell you (every month). not to mention "time-limited" ring tones, games, apps, or what-ever.

the telcos (wireless, land and even internet providers) are a bunch of greedy bastards. i am actually very surprised that android phones will make it out into the market by the end of this year. with such open access to the device - i thought it would have taken at least 4 or 5 years to make it a reality. but, i wouldn't be surprised if either of the following are/will be happening:

the telcos will sabotage android phones ability to work on their networks
the telcos are kicking begging and screaming to "lock down" the phones so apps/files/add-ons can only be installed via the provider's "store"

i can go on and on about this -- but i think i'll save that for another post.

dear buffy fans, i'm sorry for making fun of you

2008-07-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

ok, there was only really one person i actually did that to. and that was in 1998 - way back when i was working at motorola. we will just call him thomas - he was in his late-40's watching the buffy vampire slayer series with his wifey. and he was my senior engineer so it was a playful "making fun of". he went on saying that the series was whitty, clever, yes - tongue in cheek about the whole vampire things, but "quite good". but i just never got in to it. every time i must have popped on the teli when buffy was on- it must have been during those cheeks stuffed with cheese moments.

anyways, fast forward all the way to 2005 or 6, there's a guy i work with at midway games who always made it a point to watch buffy when ever it was on - we will just call him brian. it was also when i noticed he started having bleached blonde hair. but this was not unusual - he would every once in a while have a mohawk ever since i started working on the mortal kombat projects. i never knew about the whole spike thingie. and finally figured out why he always dated really thin drusilla-look-a-likes.

so, a good buddy of mine was dating a girl, amanda, who was all about buffy. since then, the box set for buffy was out, she got it as a gift from demon snowman (and he got a xbox360). they are now married. you can't just make that up. it's poetic.

anyways, i have since borrowed her box set - and finally plowed through to season 5. to sum it up to now in one word - awesome! the only thing i didn't like -- it was the extras that was slipped into season 5 disk 3 (of 6) that basically has some major spoilers for the rest of the season.

now, the question is, season 5 left off on a high note. i mean, the story and plot development culminated in the end on top. it had everything, main character against a much more powerful opponent. every protagonist was struggling in their most darkest hour. a whole heap of emotions running wild - from the usual fear, sad and happy to the pain, confusion and love (of a different kind). and good ol fashion um... s5d3extras...

so should i continue on with season 6 + 7? the series has reached a point that is of shakespearean epic proportion. do i ride out the rest of the story and see what lies ahead? risk some cheesy plots and come back stories that has been done over and over before in the many comic books and video game story lines i have seen. (i don't read "books" unless it has purr-ty pictures in them - or it's full of lines of code.)

eh, who am i kidding. i'm gonna watch it.

oh no, x-play - not you too

2008-06-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

here are but a few emails snippets i have written in the past:

2004-06-02:
techTV, used to be my favorite channel. until G4 bought them out -- it has now become one of the worst cable channels on the planet.

they have so many shows that does the same d@m# thing: 4 video game review shows, 3 retro vidoe game shows, 2 "behind the video game" report shows, etc. no wonder they got their @$$ kicked by just one video game review show from techTV.

so far, judgement day and g4tv are the dumbest shows i've ever seen. and electric playground is no x-play.

i hope gamer.tv and pulse will be better. cinematech looks to be interesting. but i dunno -- we shall see...

fast forward to 2004-07-28:
icons on G4TechTV is a pretty cool show. it's like "the history of" the topic they cover...

fast forward to 2006-10-12:
hahahahaha, G4 is dead, finally...

or so i thought. but these remarks are pretty much on par with nearly everyone on the planet who felt like they got their sack kicked when cun#cast basically neutered techTV. dumbing it down to level of spikeTV. (although, to spikeTV's credit, i'll have to hand it to them for bringing XMC over here. their one saving grace for launching what i like to call "ninjaTV" viewing on both of these channels.)

but, back to the original reason for posting this entry:

Top 5 Games For Real Men [ G4 - 20080604 ]

WTF! this was basically a commercial for all of EA's games. oh, adam sessler, one of the biggest reason i watch your show (besides morgan webb) was your unwavering and candid reviews while not selling out. most of the time it's obvious when you're placating, but this was pretty much... um... in bad taste.

FU, for allowing this $#!t out.

Black? Army of Two?
im glad you have GoW on there, but where's CoD4 and Halo in this mix? how the HELL are those better than these. "pressure cooking can crushing granado your barrels will unleash" IS CoD4 (and swarm on legendary is...). and how "...on a collision course with death" isn't either of these makes me wanna remove this show from all of my DVR's and podcatchers.

Fight Night?
are you outta your f'n mind? sure, the game "looks good" -- but the (blending) animations are one of the most piss poor results i have ever seen on a AAA title. which leads to not-so-fun game play. the game feels sluggish - and not in the boxing sort of way. hopefully, they'll fix these issues in round 4. but, if you needed to pick a fighter for dudes, how did DoA4 miss the list. i mean, what man doesn't like bouncy boobs. and if he needs to pick a guy... then he should be playing wresting games no matter how bad it is.

Madden?
christ, i cannot believe this is #1 on the list. you might as well put tiger woods pga tour instead of GoW to complete the "men who has no eyes when playing video games with broken fingers" list. madden is no "series". everyone i know, who even owns one, just has that -- one of it. some back to the the gamecube days. that includes the ncaa football "series". "nothing alienates men and women more..." wait... there might be some truth to that for this... damn, caught in my own logical vortex. oh wait! got it, "nothing alienates men who think they're real men and everyone else more than..." eh, what ever, this post is stupid.

please don't do this again, or else leave G4 and go somewhere else (like to revision3) and make the show good again (don't leave webb behind either).

mmmmmm, BBQ, aaarrrggguuuhhh

2008-06-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

so, i happen to see a cooking video on youtube via one of my RSS feeds. one thing lead to another and all of the sudden, i was watching "how to cook this and that" for hours. and since BBQ is the quintessential combination of all things awesomeness - food, fire, friends and family (just be sure to know which recipe goes where) - i thought i share some of my favorite yums.

it all started with [ Maangchi ] - in korean it means [ hammer ] - making one of my favorite eats [ Job Chae ] (Korean stir fried noodles and vegetables).

oh, but what's this? how to make: Sweet and crispy chicken wings ("dak kang jung")

OMG! it's almost like my most favorite dish in the world ("Hot & Saucy Chicken Wings) from the [ Great Sea Chinese Restaurant ] here in Chicago... i can just taste it and smell it while writing this... DAMN IT!!! it's sooo good... if you happen to go there, i would also recommend:

"Three Sea Spicy Noodle Soup" (a.k.a Jampong)
"MaPo Tofu" (Hot & Spicy Tofu)
"Seven Seas Jja Jang Myun" (noodles with blackbean sauce) and make sure it's "seven seas" -- 'cause they have a smaller regular "Jja Jang Myun"

anyways, back to BBQ's. so then i run into this guy's youtube channel: the [ BBQ Pit Boys Show ]. a few of his early vids just does "fill in your favorite bbq sauce here". but it does get better with actual recipes, times and step by step info. here's a fun one: BBQ Chicken Recipe Beer Can Barbecue

some of my other favs are:
indirect grilling:

smoking:

something a little random:

i FOOD!
i mean, really, who doesn't?

Microsoft needed to kill OLPC

2008-05-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

the story that made everyone scratch their head:
Microsoft to Limit Capabilities of Cheap Laptops
pcworld.com May 9 2008

some good speculations:
Why is Microsoft underpowering One Laptop Per Child?
cnet.com May 13 2008

and then the final solution - use the sledge hammer to stamp out the competition:
Windows XP on the XO Laptop - Microsoft Buys Out OLPC
olpcnews.com May 15 2008
so i thought to myself and wondered about the whole low-end requirements. you should already know about where i stand in microsoft dictating the direction of any hardware design -- and they need to stay out of the way from what the PC manufacturers want to do.

at first, i thought the low-end PC requirements was to create such an unwanted experience that it would kill itself. but linux can run on very slim resources. i still run two ancient 300MHz sony vaio laptops who are notorious for ~~not following~~ using alternative port values on some common IO devices.

but i really think, IMHO, it's basically down to these two points:

1) when the ASUS eeepc (3E PC) laptops were coming out with larger hard drives on linux (20GB) versus the window (12GB) version (eee 900 series), the add-on perks gave the perception of what's a better value with a hard tangible product on a system that provided basically the same functionalities. this made the choice of what OS running on it a secondary thought.

2) and i believe this is ultimately the main reason why microsoft want XP or what ever else they can put on a computer, on any computer; to get a person familiar with an OS where they will learn usability habits. this is one major sticking point i run into all the time when trying to teach/help people on how to use/fix computers. after someone learns a pretty complex behavior, they tend to stick to it and refuse to change in fear of learning more complex routines. that is, until they find something else that's easier to use.

i can't tell you how many people i know who switched to MACs and completely forget how to use a windows box in less than 4 months (shortcut, hot keys, where things are located, etc. -- usability).

but if you ask me, microsoft has also done a fine job doing this themselves by moving all of the configuration panels to who-knows-where-it-didn't-make-sense on their latest vista product. this basically required any one who knew anything from NT up to XP in a production house to re-learn all the little nuance again. not to mention the fact that it was also a huge problem integrating shared networks with vista and XP without upgrading all kinds of servers to make it vista aware.

you might as well get a MAC if you're going to re-learn some new system. that platform is by far the most user friendly, graphical eye pleasing and the most intuitive computer to use. i've been recommending that to everyone i know. disclaimer: i don't own any MACs, i've just used a lot of them. and i only build linux and bsd boxes.

i command line tools.

never gonna buy Microsoft hardware again

2008-05-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

before you accuse me of jumping on the microsoft bashing bandwagon, the following are actually $#!t that's broken on microsoft released products.

first, there was the xbox power cord fire hazard:
Xbox.com | Press: Microsoft Announces Power Cord Replacement for Xbox

next, xbox 360 Red Ring of Death:
Xbox 360: Three red lights flash on the Ring of Light

and my microsoft branded optical mouse died.

it wasn't until when the mouse died on me (a fricken optical mouse, mind you) that really made me question why did microsoft go into all of this hardware business, get kicked in the left nutt with major manufacturing defects, survived it, get kicked in the other nutt with another defect and is still able to go on. to which i guess, if you have more money than god, then you can pay off any debt you have with the devil.

fast foward to these recent weeks, and you'll see these headlines:

The reason for shutting down the DRM-licensing servers was "every time there is an OS upgrade, the DRM equation gets complex very quickly,"

ok, these are technically software and not hardware failures -- but if you follow the music content to your PC and then to your zune or any of your other PlayForSure device, garbage. who else even had a "playforsure" device for that matter... so what if you paid for all of that content. when you get a new computer you need to pay for it again?

the "DRM equation gets complex very quickly" ?!? what a total cop out admission.

which finally, brings us to the icing on the cake:

now, they will actually go out of their way to break your viewing experience. usually, you would want to cater to your audience. present your product that provides and delivers value and entertainment, not frustration and anger.

yes, this is another software "problem". but this isn't like a bug or a security hole. this is planned "let's ruin the viewer experience". and to tie this to the whole "i'm not gonna buy microsoft hardware ever again" mantra, if i have a remote control in my hand, and i press "record this show" - like how i can do this on my TiVO, cable DVR, VHS VCR, MythTV, etc. - i expect it to record it. now, i will never pick up (nor recommend to anybody) a media center PC. too bad for the PC manufacturers, who is not to be blamed, but who suckered into using the crippled OS.

to the fans of DRM, go ahead, lock your content out. you will loose your audience in droves when they basically "can't" watch your shows. people will find something else to watch. or on something else that will allow them to continue to watch their must see tv.

air force wants a botnet?

2008-05-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Preparing for cyber warfare: US Air Force floats botnet plan
arstechnica.com - may 12 2008

Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet
blog.wired.com - may 12 2008

in both of those articles, they kinda missed a very important point that piling a bunch of computers to run DDoS attacks isn't the most efficient way to do this. however, a pile of routers on the other hand...

first, let's say that the attacks are foreign -- the best course of action is to take control of the routers that are the gatekeepers for all communication lines to inside the states. this step is much easier to do if carnivore is already installed on the routers. if carnivore is not installed, commandeer them via a root kit. contact "ted" at NSA to enable the tube. if they ask if you are an AT&T customer, respond "yes".

Rootkits on routers threat to be demoed
theregister.co.uk - may 15th 2008

reconfigure the routers for firewall duty and done, you are able to fend off any inbound attacks.

to initiate the attacks, reconfigure the routers to generate network traffic with your method of destruction. search for "DDoS types" in your favorite "the google" if you need examples. you don't need an army of computers. just one misbehaving router. preferably one that's closer to the source/target of the attack.

now, if the attacks originate stateside, the defensive option should only used. do not launch any DDoS offensive in this case. the president may be inadvertently knocked off the internet while reading those missing emails.

if hacking routers proves to be too difficult, look into placing your own pre-hacked routers the old fashion way:

FBI looks into fake Cisco kit
techworld.com - may 12 2008

i the armed forces.

a shout out to
dave, ryan and iggy
in the USAF.

multi CPUs GPUs and Cells, Oh My!

2008-05-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago, i wrote the GPU is the new CPU and then ran into these little nuggets of goodness:

ASUS Creates Upgradeable Graphics Cards

Linux-friendly SBC hosts dual quad-core Xeons

a CPU-centric board and a GPU-centric board -- just the way i wanted! not quite what i had envisioned, but slap these on an industrial backplane like this one and there you have it:

PBPE-06V3

will it work? i have no idea -- but i am willing to try if someone would send me these items... =)

ah, this brings back memories of carrier boards and those ginormous "compact" PCI mini-fridge size chassis back in the day. except this time, i can probably fit these boards inside a shoe box, i.e. shuttle-sized. although, i'll have to get a backplane that has all the slots on one side like the PBPE-06A364. but if there's a 1U backplane available, then i can fit it in a pizza box!

and finally, will the CELL processor become the third major player in the video graphics arena? forth, if you count intel... oh, snap!

Toshiba to ship laptops with Cell-based GPUs this year

i Art of Pizza

Wii Sports? No, Vii Sports

2008-05-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

i talked about the wii-remote-with-everything a few months ago. and now, there's this:

Another Wii knockoff arrives to give Vii some competition [ via engadget ]

HAHAHAHA, this is too rich.

Nick: Vii? Sounds German...
Katharina: I am German.
Nick: Your accent is adorable.
Katharina: Go aVay from Mii!

but, really, here's something that actually pretty useful:

Lightning Review: Nyko Kama Wireless Nunchuk [ via gizmodo ]

now, you can play nunchuk enabled games without restricting yourself with an arm span of a two year old.

the GPU is the new CPU

2008-04-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

there's seems to be a lot of smack talk with the nVidia versus Intel shenanigans in the feeds lately.

Nvidia CEO "Not Afraid" of CPU-GPU Hybrids

CE-Oh no he didn't! Part LV: NVIDIA boss says "We're going to open a can of whoop-ass" on Intel

NVIDIA continues to hate on Intel, promises sub-$45 integrated chipset

basically, the VIA Isaiah + nVidia GeForce(5?) combo are pit against the Intel Celeron + G945. and really, the performance they are talking about is akin to my solar powered calculator.

however, i do like the idea of putting a full fledged GPU on the motherboard (and not just an IGP).

i predict that motherboard manufacturers will one day make mobos targeted with GPU specific chipsets just like how they are currently CPU centric. zif sockets for the GPU on the motherboard is an evolution that needs to happen and long overdue. the dedicated memory chips on a speedy bus found on all modern graphics cards is probably going to prevent this from happening. but hopefully, as the xbox consoles have demonstrated, a unified memory architecture will satisfy that limitation / requirement.

to offset the dedicated RAM + speedy bus loss, programmers will need to learn to make their code go "one-way" in a "fire and forget" style coding. set top box, portable media players, the playstation 1 2 & 3, etc., all perform very well when you push data through one end of the hardware accelerated "blackbox" and just let it do its thing spitting stuff up on the other side (normally the end destination as well).

Toshiba releases SpursEngine graphics co-processor for testing

but, what's most likely going to happen is:

the CPU will gobble up the GPU

in terms of raw number crunching, the CPU will become less important in pushing the performance bar while the GPU will dominate the clock cycles for painting and positioning pretty pixels. and i'm not talking about those office or other desktop apps, but as a graphics / multimedia combo system.

in light of all of this, i don't know why AMD/ATI hasn't made a run for a mobo with sockets for their CPU and GPU separately. it would have been quicker for them to push this out in to the market instead of them trying to complete their CPU/GPU combo first. and who knows how much that's going to cost.

War for Visual Computing: Why AMD Could Have the Best Chance

just as the CPU has gobbled up the once separate math co-processor, this shouldn't be a surprise to see the clash of the GPU and CPU colliding. hopefully, the GPU will win this time, 'cause the plain box PC isn't exciting anymore. the cool stuff is all of the eye candy you see now-a-days on stuff like the latest OSX and compiz goodness. what? vista?!? you're insane...

the original human powered GPU
who bitch-slapped the CPU
into submission.

i HATE the RSS feeds on April 1st

2008-04-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

oh holy jeebus, there was twice the number of RSS entries today and damn nearly all of them were filled with "haha, fools day" -- i felt like taking a $#!t on my reader.

the only saving grace was the bazillion Mr.T cameos from Gizmodo's posts.

i couldn't tell if the video card releases from both nVidia and ATI were real because i was p33ing on the screen.

all of the autoblog entries were useless, "cars now eco friendly made from TP and water proof." no, really, how about this: "Double-decker smart fortwo a little top-heavy":

be sure to see this to the end if you watch this.
you can never tell which of the MAKE:Magazine projects are fake -- because, i mean, have you seen some of the projects they feature? none of them look like they would work... you know, ever since the first issue came out.

even the podcasts i listen to and video shows i watch are all in this f$@kfest.

crikey, i would rather them take a day off than me trying to scan through the piles of @$$ while scraping my eyes out with chopsticks...

BTW, i still Ars Technica, Autoblog, Gizmodo, Make:Magazine and Systm

my favorite TV is called miro

2008-03-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

in the beginning there was something called "democracy player" - an open-source TV application way back in 2006. i tried it, and it was dogg $#!t slow, klunky and an overall experience of: "this is so useless, compared to my wget scripts, no one is ever going to use this."

fast forward a year later, early 2007, democracy player was renamed to miro -- with all kinds of updated code and what not. but that first experience i have had with the original democracy player was enough for me to skip it and continue using my shady scripts to download all video podcasts i was just getting into. i was behind on piles of new shows that i have never seen before and wanted to watch them all from the beginning.

get miro

fast forward another year, early 2008, miro version 1.1 comes out -- i see it all over the blogs, articles on a heap of web sites and a pile of the shows i watch started to put the little miro icon next to the itunes subscribe buttons. what's this? is miro that good to be placed next to the itunes jaggernaut? so i decided to download the latest miro and try it out again.

holy $#!t, everything that was broken on the previous versions has been fixed and it's very zippy. i likey.

miro is so easy to use, that it has become my de facto standard media downloader, podcatcher, podshow aggregator and media player for all of those files downloaded from it. the one feature that totally retired my shell scripts was how torrent files was completely integrated with miro. click on a torrent file from your web browser (or on your local file system) and miro automatically goes into action downloading the file with practically zero user intervention. and the torrent files do not have to be just media files. i have used miro to torrent iso files, zips, distros, you name it -- it'll grab them.

the user interface (which hasn't changed much since the democracy player days) is very intuitive, clean and simple. with the application speed improvements, making it my primary media file and torrent downloader was a no-brainer.

and finally, the best part of miro is the HUGE number of "channels" it knows about to make your online "DVR" completely replace any need for keeping your traditional broadcast television connection. i have been living without cable or satellite television for more than a year and am perfectly fine with all of the online alternatives. there are still a bunch of shows not available for miro to grab - but that's for another article.

miro has replaced the following for me:

text file for keeping track what shows i have been watching
the giant list of what episode i was on for which shows
the script file that automated the shows i was downloading

and miro offered these additional features:

keeping track of what i have watched

any new episodes available are downloaded automatically
any new channels i add to it, knows to start grabbing the files i haven't watched yet (three at a time)

keeps track of where i have "left of" since last playing the file -- and automatically plays from that point when going back to that file (most favorite feature)
has a nice visual representation of all of the files in the middle of downloading
also a nice way to see more details about the media file you are looking at, including a link to the source/web site where the file is from

if you need any ideas on what to get started with, here are a few of my current channel listings:

Tech

Science/News

Finance

Wallstrip

Audio

tech5

play with miro, i'm sure you are going to enjoy it.

xbox360 + bluray player = not gonna happen

2008-03-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

there is no reason for the xbox 360 to come out with a blu-ray drive. yeah, it came out (later) with an HD-DVD drive add-on, but no one was buying the HD-DVD drive to play movies with it. if you did, then you would have helped to push the numbers of HD-DVD discs selling off the shelves. but since the numbers shows that blu-ray titles are outselling HD-DVD, you didn't. (search for "hd-dvd bluray outselling" in your favorite search engine and then figure out which results you would believe in.)

NO game was ever made to take advantage of the HD-drive. in fact, it's not allowed by microsoft (search for "hd-dvd 360 game"). video game development needs to target the base model that every gamer will have -- a DVD-9 with no harddrive pizza box.

but, if i had to guess when there will be a blu-ray drive xbox system, it'll be at the end of 2009. what makes me say this? currently, microsoft is running on a 4 year life cycle on their xbox line. let's take a look at some past history.

nintendo has about a 5 year period between each console: (wikipedia)

 nes: fall/winter 1990
 n64: summer/fall 1996
 gc: summer/fall 2001
 wii: fall/winter 2006

sony has about a 6 year period between each console: (wikipedia)

 ps1: winter 1994
 ps2: spring 2000
 ps3: fall 2006

and microsoft has released their xbox like this: (wikipedia)

 xbox: fall/winter 2001
 360: fall/winter 2005

so, in the span of one playstation product release, there has been two xbox products. this should piss off a lot of gamers if they finally sit down and do the math for owning 2 xbox consoles for every 1 playstation. but, for some people, the newer the better. right?

and then there's this article:
Unreal Engine 4 to "exclusively target" next-gen consoles

it makes me believe there's a new xbox under development for something like this to be even remotely mentioned about. the sony and nintendo shout outs were just a cover for the "we are working on a new engine for the next xbox" statement. i bet that by the time unreal engine 4 is about to be released, so will the xbox 3/720/me/vista/fill-in-your-flavor-here...

wii-remote-with-everything

2008-03-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

is it just me, or do others find the wii-remote peripherals getting ridiculous?
there's now a wii-crossbow:

and then i come to find out there's all kinds of goofy wii-remote peripherals in the side wings:

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/01/30/diagrams-for-wacky-wii-remote-peripherals/

i'm just waiting for the the wii-gun with everything like this machine-gun-with-everything:

*image courtesy of hackedgadgets.com

but, in all fairness, here's something that is actually useful ( i just wish this was available on doom 3):

*source: gizmodo.com/365738/from-flashlight-to-flash-fight-with-the-fmg+9-concept-from-magpul

mac owners are "snobs"?hello, 2002 called and wants this headline back...

2008-03-10T19:42:00.001-07:00

here's the link that are getting mac users in a tizzy:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/02/17/the-street-mac-owners-are-snobs/

it's suppose to be all tongue n cheek. but really, when something like this was printed about 6 years ago, there may be some truth about this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/12

i Penny-Arcade

blu-ray bonus/live update problems for early adopters

2008-02-22T10:57:00.000-08:00

there's some good info in the following thread about the wacky blu-ray features coming up that's getting all kinds of people's panties in a bunch. this one is about the "Blu-ray Disc Live" feature on internet enabled bluray players which will allow dynamic content updates during the menu screens or "bonus content" featurettes. in other words, "newer" or more "current" movie trailers will be shown instead of the ones cut into the disc during pressing. or additional bonus (or ads) content can be downloaded and viewed to supplement the audience current offerings.

in any case, as long as i can watch the bonus content just like as if i do not have the bluray box plugged into the network, that's all i want. if i am forbidden to watch any the bonus features unless the box is online -- then f#%k it, guess i won't be watching it. just one more reason to get it DRM free so i can watch it how i like it. unencumbered, convenient and less aggravating.

how many of you like to sit during the FBI and Interpol warning screens every time you pop in a new disc. or raise your hand if you also like the fact that you can't fast forward the trailers and stuff before you are ever shown the menu screen.

every time i see that or when i try to use my DVD remote and it always shows "this function is prohibited" -- i remember to keep my EFF donations going.

"I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do,
I care about what it CAN do."

Gene Kranz
from the movie of: Apollo 13

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On January 14, 2008 12:59 PM Devon S. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

http://consumerist.com/344116/buyers-beware-current-blu+ray-dvd-players-wont-correctly-play-future-discs

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On Jan 14, 2008 1:45 PM, Kurt M. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

yeah, thats been what the problem with bluray is. hd dvd forced manufacturers to have ethernet capability and bluray did not
- Kurt

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On Jan 15, 2008, at 4:30 AM, Nick Shin wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

this is a problem like if someone _doesn't_ have broadband access -- not an issue.

will hd dvd players break if there is no internet access like the ill-fated divx fiasco?

the fact that blue ray didn't have ethernet on earlier models will just mean that you will not get live updates on some disc that you pop in your player every 6 months (if that...).

remember when the std def DVD players came out and it was only single layer -- i think blix had one of those... =)

i think that kind of change is more of a "what the hell" than this ethernet requirement. the stupid US telcos also have one of the slowest broadband rates in the world. so i don't think this is a big enough issue. BUT I WANT FASTER BROADBAND ACCESS!!! (is definitely a bigger issue, at least for me it is...)

http://www.gadget9.com/2007/09/01/average-broadband-speed-chart-by-country/

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On Tuesday 15 January 2008 20:34:19 Mike S. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

From "The Consumerist" article:

"So here's how it's going to work: current players are Profile 1.0, and can play future hi-def discs but no bonus stuff. Profile 1.1 dics will include additional bonus material that won't play on 1.0 players— these discs will have a "Bonus View" sticker. Come October, Profile 2 capability will come to the market, which includes Internet activity, but only on Profile 2.0 players—these discs will have a "BD Live" sticker."

You'll always be able to play the movie. The bonus stuff is what is at risk.

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On January 15, 2008 8:05 PM Robert M. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

actually it IS a big issue if when you want to watch a new movie you have to update the firmware on your player... sounds pretty annoying...

but whatever...i don't care. go blu-ray. but i'm not buying one till the firmware becomes more stable (i don't think.... everyone knows i like impulse purchases) :)

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On Wednesday 16 January 2008 09:30:48 Mike S. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

From wikipedia "Blu-ray disc":

"On November 1, 2007,the Grace Period Profile was superseded by "Bonus View" as the minimum profile for new players released to the market.[61] With the exception of the PlayStation 3, profile 1.0 players cannot be upgraded to be Bonus View compliant.[62] On December 17, 2007, the PlayStation 3 became Bonus View 1.1 compliant through PlayStation 3 System Software version 2.10.[63]

When software authored with interactive features dependent on "Bonus View" hardware capabilities are played on profile 1.0 players some features may not be available or may offer limited capability. *Profile 1.0 players will still be able to play the main feature of the disc, however.*[64]"

I'm using these sources because I too do not have first hand experience with this. Everything I've seen says that every Blu Ray player out there should be able to play the movie itself. Now, if some manufacturer has buggy firmware for their product that prevents the movie from playing, I would say it a problem specific to that manufacturer, not the Blu-Ray standard.
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this is my last post on this bluray stuff... unless something incredible happens that needs to be mentioned -- such as a bluray player that will teleport you a sandwich.

bluray vs hd-dvd

2008-02-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

i was cleaning out my mail boxes, found this and figured that it would be a good post for this crappy excuse of a "blog"...

the emails will be listed in the order they were written/received/emailed/etc. with all names and contact info scrubbed for the hell of it. but all of the message are kept as is, misspelling, bad grammar and all.

enjoy!

PART 1

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On Dec 6, 2007 8:25 AM, Kurt M. wrote:
Subject: blueray vs hd-dvd

so whats the current score between the hd dvd vs. blu-ray fight?
- Kurt

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On Dec 6, 2007 11:11 AM Nick Shin wrote:
Subject: blueray vs hd-dvd

the industry screwed themselves on this. the consumer are now in a wait-and-see pattern -- holding out to see who's going to win the format wars.

this is not good for either side. sony would have had the market cornered if the PS3 allowed to do 1080i/p. for some reason, they didn't. the xbox360 can do it because they plopped in a chip that will convert 720 up to 1080. a cheat, but it works. microsoft managed to convince (i.e. sucker) people into getting the HD (high-def) drive as a separate component. getting a little more $$ out of people.

but even with that -- they are not shifting the masses to HD. really, it's going to come down do what favorite movies are available on what format. but the problem with that is most movies were never filmed on HD cameras. only CG animated films can take advantage of this format.

the image quality on CG films is AWSOME on the blue ray players and a giant plasma screen. lcd screens look also good if the room is dark enough. you would think movies coming out now should look better in HD -- like transformers for example -- but it isn't as crisp as i would like on a 1080p screen... kinda looks like you're watching the digital channels from your cable box...

this is also why i haven't bought the next gen tv yet. i have my minimum requirements -- but the more i wait -- the better the tv's get. so right now, i'm hoping the OLED panels will start rolling out.

but if you ask me -- if apple came out with a HD HD (high-def hard drive) appleTV box -- they would kill blue-ray and hd-dvd together -- because that's where most of the HD content are available -- online... it's still better to buy the movies on disc, but as networks gets faster and faster, movies (like music) will start to be distributed online and that's were tivo, appletv and the likes will corner the market.

and US broadband speeds are dog $#!t compared to other countries.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-survey-average-broadband-speed-in-us-is-1-9mbps.html

when it gets faster, then the online HD boxes will takeover the media war.

PART 2

< i deleted the emails i want to put in this section -- trying to retrieve them from the nerds that were cc'd on it -- it's about bob's email for the amazon.com hd-dvd player and 10 movie deal + me replying with the warner bros. switch to blu-ray just before CES 2008 -- and then bob asking us not to hate him for the hd-dvd special buy...> =)

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/04/hd-dvd-group-cancels-ces-press-conference-in-wake-of-warner-anno/

PART 3

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On January 08, 2008 10:21 AM Mike S. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

If this is true, it sounds like HD-DVD is the new beta.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc409afa-bd75-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html?ncli

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On Jan 8, 2008 11:01 AM, Jayanth M. wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

We (Bob, Brad, Me) just had a big discussion about HD this morning.

Here are the takeaways:
1. End of HD....eventually.
2. Not anytime soon.
3. Paramount can get out of the contract because they had an escape clause based on Warner's actions.
4. Dual players will be in the immediate future.
5. HD is superior to Blu-Ray in most ways but Blu-Ray has the advantage with their partnerships.
6. Bob and Bryan (Brad's brother) will buy a lot of HD on DVD as people sell them cheap on ebay.
7. I enjoy steak.

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On January 08, 2008 6:21 PM Nick Shin wrote:
Subject: The Death of HD-DVD?

hd-DVD is NOT superior to Blu-ray. quite the opposite.

hd-DVD is a better marketing term than technology.

at CES here there is only one hd-DVD booth and it's a pittiful sight compaired to the blu-ray section right next to it.

what's also weird about this whole thing is that toshiba (in the hd-DVD camp) co-produced the cell chip used in the PS3. so I'm wondering if the hd-DVD vs blu-ray war was made up to force the consumer to chose between those two, locking out other options ( like holographic storage) and blitzing people to become more aware of those two formats making the sheep feel like they're really foxes.

how many people can you think of now a days that are getting hd TVs dunno about hd-DVD or blu-ray...

I'm still sticking to my claim that ipTV will take over the media distribution - which most of them will not be available on either format. you will see more "tivocast" type systems out there.

there I said it.

nuff said, signing out from the CES floor on my iPod touch.
--
nick
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< thanks goes to mikey for getting me an iPod Touch to allow me be a cockbag about this >

PART 4

and finally, here's devo FTW: found this from his google reader shared items list (and which prompted me to plow all of this blu-hd goodness here):

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/19/official-hd-dvd-dead-and-buried-format-war-is-over/

whew! this post is finally done...

mikey now has a tivo

2008-02-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

i just bought my brother a tivo series 3 HD dvr (above) for his birthday and i have to say it's much better than the cable co's "digital receiver" box. the menu system is faster, the interface is cleaner and simpler to find the shows you want to watch.

but, the series 3 (not to be confused with the "tivo HD dvr" below) had a minor hitch when getting the digital cablecard hooked up. the channels took time to trickle in before becoming "viewable". it was a little weird. but worked after you let it do its thing for 10-15 mins.

the tivo HD dvr was reported by the (second) cable installer to work pretty much right out of the box.

just a few notes for you all if you want to get the newest tivo and digital cablecard working.

the cablecard needs to be DIGITAL cards (the first cable installer who came in didn't know what the tivo box took -- and put in one digital and one analog card in -- i wasn't there to tell 'em they needed to be both digital)
you need to have an M-card (multi-stream) on the tivo HD - this allows the tivo box to watch/record 2 channels with just one cablecard
the series 3 tivo can take both M-card and S-cards (single stream) -- but the series 3 does not make use of the multi-stream capabilities (hence the two slots)
on the series 3 -- YOU NEED TO PUT IN AND INITIALIZE (a hit signal from the cable operators) ONE AT A TIME STARTING WITH THE BOTTOM SLOT FIRST
DO NOT SWAP THE CARDS ONCE THEY ARE IN -- or you will need to re-initialize the cards because the cable company uses the slot number as part of the cable card's identification/authentication value

this basically boils down the forum posting i found for RCN here in chicago:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=316405

and just in case you need to brush up on the tivo setup steps:
http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=B03267A0-BE94-4F14-8E2C-8AE7B4EB5249
http://tivosupport2.instancy.com/LaunchContent.aspx?CID=F8F40DC6-5FB6-4ED8-AC41-D8CD0D5C0824

the second RCN guy who came in knew exactly what needed to be done and was really a cool guy to get it all working for me so i can watch all of the premium channels mikey was paying for.