Results tagged “Facebook”

Behold the power of Facebook: messages in bottles just became easier to trace.  If you included your name and address, of course.  If you've ever tossed a message over the side of a ship, and you're on Facebook, one day someone might message you out of the blue and respond to what you wrote.  That's how to use a site correctly.  Here's how to use a site incorrectly: someone tried to auction off Dr. Kevorkian's bus on eBay.  Apparently, if you drove around a vehicle while you were working in the business of euthanasia, the vehicle is not allowed to be auctioned off on eBay.

It seems the evil way Activision treated Infinity Ward - which recently led to a half a billion dollar lawsuit - hasn't kept other companies from entering into agreements with them.  Bungie, who has developed games such as Halo, has signed a ten year agreement with them.  I'm currently taking bets on how long it takes for Activision to break the agreement and blame it all on insubordination.  Meanwhile, the Starcraft II beta is out, for those of you who have a Mac.  The PC beta was active as of February 17.

But even with that and the new World of Warcraft expansion coming out, there are those who don't want to give up on older titles.  After Microsoft pulled the plug on Live for the original Xbox, users discovered that as long as they kept their machines on and connected, they still had a haldful of Live functions left.  A handful of people wanted to play Halo 2 for as long as possible after the plug was pulled on the game, so they stayed connected since April 15.  As of this writing, they're down to four.  Connection hiccups, and overheating and freezing consoles have taken their toll on a group that was around 14 a week ago, but the group has vowed to keep playing until they're stopped by their own hardware, or by Microsoft themselves.

A few quotes from the many who have strived to keep the game alive, from the thread linked above:

"The power went out in my neighborhood on the 2nd day after they took it down. I wish you guy's luck, stay strong." -Zeta Crossfire

"I keep on getting emails from people I work with, have worked with, went to school with, play with... asking If I was the APACHE N4SIR that they have read about online. I joke with them... Do you know anyone else? (I've had and used the "Apache" name for almost 20 years) ... email, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Skype, ASC, OAS, <The list goes on> & at work." ... "I would like to thank the crew that I play with even to this day. Halo 2 was a time where I could be with friends and family when times were tough and just have fun..." -APACHE N4SIR

"We will keep playing until we are all forcibly removed, it could be by Microsoft, Bungie, our xboxes overheating, or just lagging out. Not for competition, not for a prize, but for the love, and memory of Halo 2." -joe campbell

But the Halo marathon doesn't have to end once the last player is disconnected forever from the game.  GamesRadar has offered the final twelve players the opportunity to beta the new Halo: Reach game.

Remember 2012?  Of course you do, it was in all the theatres just a short while ago.  One of the things that occurred as a result of sudden neutrino radiation or whatever it was, was that the Earth's magnetic poles flip flopped around, until the south pole found itself in Wyoming (or Illinois or another one of those US states).  Well, it looks like the movement of the Earth's magnetic poles is happening, but not to the extreme that happened in the year 2012, in the movie.  Although our physical maps won't change, and the North Pole will remain firmly within Canada, the magnetic North Pole seems to want a Russian vacation.  Apparently, magnetic North was lazy until 1904, when it started to wander, then it sped up in 1989, and is currently fleeing Canada at quite a fast clip.

And what would you do when you're fleeing something, say... the law?  Would you hide?  Go find adequate cover?  Move out of the country?  How about... update Facebook?  It's such an addiction that my mother gets on Facebook and stays up all night.  Well, apparently, criminals can get addicted as well.  Now, you'd think that this would be a case where the police zoom in on a stupid criminal using a public library to access the site, right?  ...not really.  He's still at large.  What this tells you about the British police, I'll leave up to your imagination.

Being addicted to Facebook is one thing, but how about being addicted to alcohol?  The writers of Star Trek used their imagination and solved this problem for our future selves by coming up with Synthehol, which is a non-alcoholic alcohol.  It's synthetic and doesn't give you a hangover, so it has to be good, right?  And to make sure that there'd be a market for it, they outlawed real alcohol, making drinks like Romulan Ale illegal.  Well, welcome to real life, where such a thing couldn't possibly hap- uh, I guess it is happening.  So eventually, someone will come home from work and kick back in their armchair with an artificial beer while watching a football game, an episode of Trailer Park Boys, or the American-Mexican border.  As if the United States needed any more xenophobia.

The one person in the world who is probably the least xenophobic ever has got to be Santa Claus.  For years, people have been trying to figure out how he delivers gifts to everyone in the world.  However he does it, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Everyone except the bastard who tried to take down a plane during Christmas.  Seriously, what the fuck, man?  Not only did you try to take the plane down over Canada, but you also tried to do it when people should've been celebrating the holiday season.  I'm glad that you're so piss poor at terrorism that all you did was set your pants on fire and get tackled by other passengers.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, you suck.

NORAD sucked, this Christmas.  But only if you were a Linux user.  I wonder how hard it is to program one of those .kml files.  Sounded like more trouble than it was worth for them.  Maybe they were told that .kml files required lots of bandwidth or something.  It seems to work on ordinary sheep customers, so who knows?  (I know a guy who used to work for an ISP, so I could ask him.  Come to think of it, I have a neat idea for a series of articles for January, or maybe February.  I could try to bust some myths about throttling and other misconceptions in the computer world...  Sorry, was I thinking out loud?)

Meanwhile, yet another article busting myths about girl gamers has surfaced.  And last but not least, I want a pet foxie!

Bonus article: As a Canadian blogger, I now have less to worry about in regards to free speech!  I wonder how that works, since I'm currently writing for an American blog.

Facebook has announced that they're going to preserve the inactive accounts of dead members and protect against further changes and updates.  In an Internet where inactivity is generally regarded as an excuse for deleting someone's stuff (Geocities, I'm looking at you), Facebook clued in that if someone's dead, there isn't anything the person can do anymore to maintain their space, and their passwords have most likely died with them.  They also finally acknowledged that if someone's dead, they shouldn't be able to post any more updates.  This comes a couple weeks after a girl in Nova Scotia brought the issue to media attention.  A spammer had cracked into her dead mother's page, posted some spam, and Facebook did next to nothing about it.  Until now.

But speaking of them, the biggest news of the week was probably the death of Geocities.  To anyone who remembers when the news broke back in April, this doesn't come as a surprise.  Its death was imminent, and it was only a matter of time before the site that was originally "free, forever" was shut down.  Forever.  Even xkcd did something special to commemorate the event (which is no longer available on the website, but is mirrored here).  But after Monday, everyone stopped caring.  It's kind of like the final game of a season for a losing team.  Once it's over, you don't have to pay attention to it anymore.

Instead, why don't we look ahead to the future?  It's almost NaNoWriMo time again!  Participants in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia have already started, and it's close to starting time for North and South Americans.  The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words within 30 days, local time.  The key words there are "local" and "time".  Those who live in an area still affected by Daylight Saving Time (those who haven't already changed back to Standard) get an extra hour advantage over those who don't, since clocks in the affected regions get set back an hour at 2am on November 1st.  So if you're participating in NaNoWriMo like I am, don't let anyone else in your house set the clocks back until well after the event starts.

Just make sure you don't leave your P2P software open, or if you do, make sure to save your novel to a folder that the software doesn't share from.  Admittedly, it isn't really earth shattering if your first draft of NaNo Novel '09 is broadcast to the world, but it would probably be just as embarrassing for you as it was for the person who accidentally shared a confidential government report over a P2P network and then got fired for it.  He probably did it while downloading music or video games or something.  It goes to show you just how many people do that these days.

He probably wasn't pirating games for the N-Gage, though, which by the way has been given its own death date, a vague 2010 prediction.  Just like Geocities, few people have even bothered to mention this or even care about it.  Nintendo never seemed to view Nokia as much of a threat in the handheld gaming industry, but the presence of Sony's PSP must make them feel somewhat nervous, since they've suddenly redesigned their brand new DSi just shy of a year after its debut on the market and are pushing it out onto store shelves in time for the holidays.  The DSi LL/XL is the fourth version of the DS to be released since 2004, which is ridiculous if you ask me.  It makes you think twice before buying any more of the system, since you just know Nintendo will announce another version in 2010.

Hulu staff apparently stay up and cry all night at the thought of international users (like me and all the other damn dirty Canadians out there) accessing their site.  There are ways around their US only restrictions, but now Hulu's managed to block another way to access their content.  I hope this helps them sleep better, but everyone'll just use other methods to view their site.  Sorry, Hulu, but you fail.  Unless you take all your toys and go home, you can't keep others from playing with your content.  It doesn't help that American television is a lot better than Canadian television, but at least we have shows like Canada's Worst Driver, which are interesting to watch.  It's just too bad that bad driving may not be entirely the fault of the driver, according to a recent study.  Of course, what this means for drivers is that they can now claim the gene as an excuse for getting pulled over for speeding ten times in a month.  It's bad enough that we have a lot of bad drivers where I live.  If you ever receive news that I've committed suicide, it's not suicide.  I've most likely been struck and killed by a bad driver on the corner of 1st and Connaught.

Apparently, the United States needs fewer science students, not more.  That's bad news for geeks everywhere, because this means we'll need to actually develop muscles to do other, more physical pursuits.  And finally, if you think your laptop takes too long to boot up, you're probably right.

One of the worst economic recessions in recent history has nearly dragged on for a year now. Even if the recession were to end tomorrow job growth and creation would still be a lagging indicator. In others words, job loss would continue for a while even as the economy steadily improved. Many college graduates across many fields have been hit hard as they've left school only to be laid off from a job or are completely unable to find work in their respective field. One New York college graduate was so upset by her jobless situation that she took matters into her own hands by suing her school to recover the $70,000 she spent obtaining her degree. Call me unsympathetic but many of us are unable to find field related work after college and we're not suing our universities-- yet.

In news of a less frivolous nature, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is resigning from Apple's board of directors as the companies increasing find themselves in competition with one another. Unfortunately Schmidt's resignation from Apple comes too late to avoid an FTC inquiry into both companies. Better late than never, FTC? If having the CEO of one major IT company sit on the board of another IT company doesn't raise a few possible anti-trust red flags I'm not sure what does. On the upside for Apple, rumor has it the upcoming Apple tablet tentatively called the "MacBook Touch" could act as a gaming console. I personally feel it's silly to call what is essentially a tablet a gaming console at heart, yet denying the possibility of it also being used for gaming would be foolish. If the upcoming "MacBook Touch" was first and foremost a gaming device rather than a personal computer/multimedia hub, a price point of $800 would be way too high. If viewed as a PC/multimedia hub that also happens to play games a mere $800 is very reasonable.

To be fair I'm certain the upcoming MacBook Touch (or whatever it'll eventually be called) will be used a fair amount of times to check up on Facebook and Twitter. Unless the said popular social networking sites are down due to distributed denial of service attacks. On Thursday that is exactly what happened to both sites to the detriment of heavy users. Unsurprisingly, security experts are not shocked about the DDoS attacks. In a brief world without Facebook and Twitter people can always find other things to do like take the time to learn to play Guitar Hero while solving not one, but two Rubik's cubes.

While I'm on the subject of games, there has been an update in the Activision lawsuit against Double Fine. The lawsuit over Brütal Legend was settled, and thankfully Activision received little to nothing in terms of compensation.

The anime distributor 4Kids Entertainment has put itself up for sale after several years of steady profit loss. Outside of the Pokemon anime the company was not very popular with anime fans, as 4Kids often lived up to its name by editing (or butchering) anime series never intended for kids. And in a case of either "too little too late," or "what the hell took so long?!" 4Kids has begun releasing subtitled episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! on Youtube. The anime distributor had originally released the first 12 uncut and subtitled episodes on DVD in 2004 and never picked up the project again until recently. Uncut and subtitled Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes are awesome (in my opinion), but having to wait five years for the project to resume is just madness.


Image courtesy of Gizmodo.

Last week I mentioned salvaging content that I'd previously written but not posted.  What follows is taken from a column I had written nearly two months ago, and then was too lazy to post.  I've edited it a little to bring it up to date, of course, and chopped the ending because it sucked.  New content to follow afterward.

These days, it seems that us Canadians are too busy telling our neighbours to the south that their politicians are full of shit to even have time for something like video games.  It doesn't help that our own politicians come to town every so often without warning, so we don't have time to come up with any interesting signs ("ARE YOU SOBER, CAMPBELL???????" read the sign I saw across the street from where I work, two doors down from where Gordon Campbell's bus parked.  I wish I had come up with that one.  In fact, if I had, I bet they'd still try to paint it as a dirty NDP trick).

Speaking of waste products, it seems that comparing feces and compressed carbon in video game reviews isn't just my thing any more.  I wonder if sometime within the next few weeks, Yahtzee will have a review that discusses F cup princesses.  Side note: the video I stole the images from for my Bad Dudes II prank was the one for "Mosh" by Eminem.  I can't believe I hadn't said that until now.  [Note: this is especially troubling since I'd written this so long ago, and so I had intended to say this back in April.  But didn't.]

An annoyance of living in a small city that can't even support a full fledged comic book store is that it's entirely possible that the new issue of a comic book will be out before we get the previous issue.  It doesn't really matter, though, since we get them eventually.  When we received a recent issue of Sonic The Hedgehog (#198), I naturally was quick to buy it.  Unfortunately, I had a couple issues with this issue.  First of all, it seems like the only good reason that the Freedom Fighters ever go and try to end their fight with Robotnik once and for all is whenever a milestone issue is coming up.  Oh look, here comes #200.  Let's try to defeat Robotnik again.  Just once, I'd like to see a major bad guy in a series meet their end on an episode or in an issue number that has no direct meaning to the series.  Have the readers think, "Oh, it's only issue 61.  They're not going to kill off the evil Dr. Toiletmaster.  Wait a second... they just did.  Wow.  Well, I bet he'll be back in the next issue.  Wait, the next issue starts a brand new storyline.  Wow."  I realize this would cause a dangerous void for the series in that there would be no reason to continue it if the conflict is over, but just introduce another storyline, or feature smaller conflicts that will slowly build up to a new one.  I'm sure the writers can come up with a new villain for the series.

Of course, the fact that Robotnik is usually in the Sonic video games just means that they'll have to keep him in the series one way or another.  Any other character that hasn't appeared in the games yet seems to be fair game to be killed permanently, like many of the secondary villains that have appeared in the series (not-really-a-spoiler: if they're not an alternate universe's version of Sonic or Robotnik or in the core group of Freedom Fighters, they're probably gonna die, with few exceptions).  It looks like something interesting is being done with Snively's character, but I'll wait and see what they do.  Maybe he'll be the new villain if they kill Robotnik off again (fun fact: they managed to kill Robotnik off as early as issue 21, but they always have ways of bringing back their villains.  He's died on other occasions as well in the series).

Second of all, and this is my main problem with the issue, it seems they stole a scene from a Japanese animated movie.  In one scene in the comic, Sonic and the core Freedom Fighters (although Nicole isn't with them, which disappointed me) are trying to defeat a new invention Robotnik came up with to destroy them.  The Phoenix seems more powerful than anything he's thrown at them before (aren't they all?), and they get this idea to make the Phoenix fly straight up as high as it can go so that it'll stall and fall down to Mobius.  They use its moments of immobility to complete their plan to destroy it, and in the end, they've saved the day again (and Robotnik ejects before it explodes, of course).  And naturally, they make Robotnik fly up by sending Sonic flying high in the sky.  Various Freedom Fighters who have natural flying ability toss him upwards to an ever increasing altitude one after another, higher and higher.  Kinda sounds like a scene in a certain movie, doesn't it?

Now, it's possible that the issue was written without the writers realizing that it's already been done.  But given the title of the comic, I'd say it was a blatant rip off.

"Phoenix Down".

I rest my case.

---

After writing that, issues #199, #200, and #201 have come out.  I haven't read #200 yet, as I need to catch up on old issues first, so that I can get the full impact from the issue.  Silly, aren't I?

Keep Being Awesome!
June 2009

I didn't think that the world could get any more awesome, but it did.  Every month from now on, I'll pick the most awesome thing to come out of the month, and highlight it here.  But this month is tough.  So much good stuff went on that I have a runner up, too.

Runner Up: Pixar

As if their movies weren't enough.  Heck, one could declare them awesome just from the movies they make.  If recent hits such as Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up are anything to go on, this company has a bright future ahead of it.  I just hope they don't turn into Disney, who suddenly started milking their hits for all they're worth by creating sequel after sequel, and who went in a downhill slide after Pocahontas.  Some declare Pocahontas to be where they start going downhill, but you get the picture.  The early to mid 90s were the good years, and then everything ended by the end of the 90s.  Their upcoming The Princess And The Frog might be a return to earlier times of success, but I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, Pixar has yet to disappoint me, although their next to films are indeed sequels and so I'm kinda cringing yet holding onto hope, since Pixar so far has not come up with a horrible sequel.  And if Cars 2 is horrible, you could probably let it slide, since cast members from the original movie are literally dropping like flies (not in the recent string of celebrity deaths, fortunately, but still, three cast members from the original Cars are dead now).

Not only does Pixar believe in their movies, they will walk to the ends of the earth for their fans, and for that, I almost gave them this month's Awesome award.  Instead, this month goes to...

Winner: Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook and other media and social networking sites)

As much as I make fun of Facebook to my friends and have declared that I will never join the site unless circumstances require such, I will be the first second to point out when they've done something awesome.  What did they do this month?  Simply existed.  This past month in Iran, after all the reporters were kicked out and/or arrested, the social networking site Facebook was one of the key sites helping news emerge from the country, where civil unrest has erupted over an election that may or may not have been rigged.  Facebook was second to one in the desperate struggle to broadcast the plight of the Iranian people to the rest of the world.  When it came to live updates within Iran, Twitter was king.  The citizens flocked to Twitter like college students to pizza.

But Twitter wins the title this month by going above and beyond even what Facebook did.  Twitter had scheduled an update to their servers, an update which would've provided a necessary update to their system, but would've required some downtime on their part.  The US State Department contacted them and asked them to consider delaying the update, due to the events in Iran.  Twitter could've said no, they can't make an exception for users in one country, when the update can benefit users in all countries.  But they didn't.  Instead, Twitter rescheduled their update to when most people in Iran would be asleep, and kept their servers up and available when they were needed the most.

So Twitter: Keep Being Awesome!

Currently Playing: Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled (DS)

You are no doubt aware of my plight trying to purchase this game, which I posted about last week.  I went through something similar, a long wait to receive another GBA game that I'd been looking forward to, a few years ago.  During that time, I began to see some bad news about the game emerge after the release, and wondered if it was indeed going to be worth it.  Then I received it and played it...

When I began to see negative reactions to this game, too, I thought the worst.  What if this game turns out like that other game?  And it's not even a Japanese game.  Can't anyone make a game anymore that lives up to its hype?

Then I received the game and tried it out and it's awesome so far.  It has a relaxed feel to it, the kind of game that you can just lay in a hammock and play without worrying about zooming here and there as quickly as you can in a rush to finish it so that you can find out what happens.  This game is a journey that you take so that you can enjoy the journey.

I would tell you where I am right now, but I am loathe to give out spoilers, so let's just say that where I am now came out of left field.  If you must be spoiled, I'll just say that it reminds me of one of the plot points from Dragon Warrior VII and Final Fantasy III.

Not only that, but I'm enjoying the music so far, and the graphics are pretty good.  There are supposedly glitches, but I've not run into any so far that break the game.  The only things I've noticed so far are asthetic only, not affecting game play like some have said.  On that note, fandom sucks.  Maybe I'll elaborate in an upcoming week, but don't count on it.

Looking Forward To: Pier Solar And The Great Architects (Genesis), & The Wotch: My Sister, Myself (DS)

Classic gaming is certainly alive and well.  Not only that, but I predict that within a couple years, there will be more independent studios creating and releasing classic-style games for consoles like the DS, the Wii's WiiWare system, and others.  Black Sigil has already paved the way for more indie titles to emerge, so I'd love to see what other people can come up with.  Now that Black Sigil is out, I can turn my attention to other independently produced games that are still in development, like The Wotch: My Sister, Myself for the DS, an independently produced game based on a web comic (Penny Arcade has proven that it can be done), which has an old school Zelda type feel to it, from the videos and screen shots released so far.  Even though the website's not been updated in one and a half years, there are updates being released on the comic's forum, to prove the project is still alive.

Then there's this little known title that is set to release hopefully this year.  If the screen shots of Pier Solar are any indication of what the final game is going to be like, it looks like it'll be well worth finally buying a Genesis.  They've even released a demo, which I will get around to trying just as soon as I've finished Black Sigil.  There's no solid release date yet, but when there is, I'll immediately rush right out and-

Okay, now you're all looking at me funny.  What, was the Genesis discontinued or something?  It was?  It couldn't have been, there's still games in development for it.  God, it's like the PS2 all over again.  Except at least Sony's still making PS2s.