Making Gaming Better @ bit-tech.net
Buy the games
Piracy is a topic in itself. It goes without saying that devs need to eat and if a game doesn't sell you can kiss goodbye to support, sequels and similar games. If you are playing a game you haven't bought, you are invisible as far as the developer is concerned. Only by buying the games you like can you possibly encourage similar, good quality games to be made. And confront other people who are pirating games too. You are subsidising them getting free games, so make sure they know how you feel about such freeloading. People asking for cracks on developer forums are the worst of all – report them, and tell them it's not acceptable.

How to Fix PC Gaming Once and for All @ ExtremeTech
Fix the Piracy Problem or Shut Up About it
I, and a great deal of gamers, are so damn sick of hearing developers whine about piracy. Look, if it's that big a deal to you (and noting that unprotected sometimes make a killing), fix it. And I don't mean by making your CD keys 10 digits longer than they are now. In fact, you can shove those CD keys somewhere painful, because they obviously don't work. If you want to stop pirates, quit whining and use your heads. If you can program a game that takes up five gigabytes of my hard drive, you can figure out a way to make it uncrackable without forcing me to stand on my head and recite the alphabet backward to play it. Maybe online distribution is the key, with online components that, unless they're present, cripple the experience. I know that would piss off anyone without a decent online connection, but who cares?

What the hell is wrong with me!? I'm in complete agreement with ExtremeTech and, holy shit, Cliff Harris, you're a Goddamn pussy. If I can't act like a jerk online, I'll wither. And I'm not going to dick around trying to get Dwarf Fortress to work if I can just play some Bioshock.

So if you're reading this, and think that maybe playing an hour or two of Team Fortress after work just to tell a n00b that you fucked his mom with a pole* sounds like a great idea, kick it up a kick tonight--and maybe Cliff will just give up.

*you can all thank kurtis for introducing this idiom to my lexicon--it's pretty funny, after all

Many months ago I purchased my first HDTV, and I wanted to take full advantage of its capabilities so I ended up purchasing both an Xbox 360 + HD DVD add-on and a Playstation 3. The format war didn't seem like it was coming to an end anytime soon, and I was impatient. It didn't some as much of a surprise when Toshiba officially announced the death of HD DVD, but what did come as a surprise is the email I received from Best Buy shorty thereafter.

The email basically said how they were sorry for my poor choice in techno-gadgetry, but that they were dedicated to my satisfaction (that's what she said) and would be sending me a gift card, no strings attached. This is really where I was surprised. I wouldn't have thought it particularly unusual had they only offered a trade-in, but to just offer a gift card for nothing in return is a really nice gesture. Today I received my $50 gift card from Best Buy along with a short letter - so I guess they weren't just kidding. Here are some choice excerpts from the FAQs on the back side of the letter:

Is my HD DVD player still useful?
Absolutely. It will continue to play HD DVD movies and continues to be an excellent player for your regular DVDs, improving the picture to near-HD quality.

I bought an HD DVD player as a gift. Can I still use the gift card? As the purchaser of the HD DVD player, you've received the gift card. You can choose to use the gift card yourself or pass it on to the gift recipient. But you'll be a total douche if you keep it for yourself.

Okay, so they didn't really say that last little bit. Image above the result of "HD DVD for teh win" on Google Image Search.

Last week I bought an Xbox 360. I've been thinking of getting an HDTV recently, and I was bored, so I figured i'd get the console and it would be even more fun when I do take a dip in the HD pool. My experience up until now has been positive. And by "up until now" I mean now I'm not so happy with it.

I was minding my own business, playing Forza Motorsport 2, when I suddenly realized that in horizontal orientation, the green player indicator light on the front of the Xbox was oriented differently than I'd remembered. Then I suddenly thought to myself... Ooo, I bet it re-orients itself when placed horizontally or vertically. So, making sure to pause my game so as not to lose my current race, I walked toward the console. The child inside of me beckoned, Make it vertical, you know you wanna... And so I did. KCCCHT EEEEK. WTFOMG!!1!!one! I feared the worst. And I was right. El disco scratcho fantastico.

So the rhetorical question of the day is... Who makes a re-orientable consumer electronics device that doesn't play nice when you re-orient it while it is on? Obviously, the answer is Microsoft.

A quick search on Google brought up plenty of results, showing me that I was not alone. Some might call me an idiot for moving my Xbox 360 while a drive was spinning. I'd like to point out that, while such claims may be valid, this is not a universal problem for any optical drive. I can shake my laptop around while a drive is spinning and not have a problem. I can lay my computer on its side while a drive is spinning and have no problem. So what genius decided to put a drive in the Xbox 360 that will etch such a horrible scratch into your disc that it can no longer be read, by simply moving it when it's on? And taking that question a step further, why does the pretty green ring on the front re-orient itself? That's why I moved the damn thing, because I saw that it had re-oriented and I wanted to see it in action. So yeah, that might make me an idiot, but that's why companies are supposed to idiot-proof their products, and not create pointless tantalizing features that queue such "idiotic" behavior.

So, that ended my night of gaming... Hopefully tomorrow Best Buy will replace the disc for me, but I really don't know what to expect from that. I didn't buy the replacement plan for the disc (I mean, who screws up a disc?), though I did buy it for the Xbox 360 in light of all the overheating issues etc. that have plagued it since launch.

For the curious, here's a link to a site I came across on google when searching "xbox 360 scratch disc" - they talk about how it happens and even show a video of it happening.

The image above the result of searching for "the child inside of me beckoned" on Google Image Search.

Bit of an upgrade from the Camaro. Me so happy. :)

I don't understand. Maybe it's pro-Windows, maybe it's anti-Windows, or maybe that abject confusion is the point? Either way, it's hardcore for hard coders.

Check the comments on this link for more geek tats. Come on Max...an AMD tattoo is screaming your name.

Another site with the artist's explanation here at ModBlog.

What Paul loves most is the idea of explaining this tattoo to his grandkids, when Windows 98 is so outdated as to be completely obsolete.

Wasn't Win98 pretty much obsolete when it was released?

Insurmountable evidence points to the cause of the power outage: my neighbor's tree grounded a bolt of lightning. I thought it was peculiar that I could see the lightning and hear the thunder at the same time.

For being such a nice day, everything's wet. The whole city got hit by a flash flood and cars were shorted out at rush hour as far as the eye could see. It would have been funnier if my power wasn't killed by the same precipitate...

Apparently, it is unclear to the executives behind Transformers why we, and many other nerds, watched the show to begin with. We suppose the burden of responsibility falls on us to clarify: It's the giant robots fighting each other . In case you guys weren't sure–if, perhaps, it was neck and neck between robot-fighting and data analysis–we pray ours can be the deciding vote. When you have five loose-cannon robots, all of whom are just itching to fight other robots with or without a reasonable excuse, for Christ's sake, don't ruin every single one of them by sticking them together to make Nerdmotron 6000.

The most enlightening thing about this article was how all grown up Cracked is on the Internet.

That, and how could they not make fun of Cosmos? The dude transformed from a tiny green spaceship into a GoBot.

Independence day. The day we were all saved by one of the Quaids plowing right into the wang of a UFO. Also, we were saved by an Apple, what was it? A MacBook? 'Cause that Objective-C be tight. We shall never forget the day Jeff Goldblum stuttered, insisting we must go faster, and the downed Will Smith punched an alien instead of barbecuing. Long live the First Lady, re-born as the once-again dying--what I mean by that is she's dying--President of Battlestar Galactica.

This Friday, July 6th The Tatamimats will be doing an encore performance of "Dark Side of the Uke", their ukulele-only version of Pink Floyd's classic album "Dark Side of the Moon". The show takes place at The Knockout in San Francisco and is in celebration of The Knockout's 2nd anniversary. The Knockout is in the venue that was previously Chicken John's infamous Odeon Bar.

I heartily recommend that anyone who enjoys "Dark Side of the Moon" check out "Dark side of the Moon 2001" by Out of Phase.

But this is definitely as cool as While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the "uke". Of course, the guy looks like his mom was a Muppet and his dad was a bottle of cologne.

Tonight I decided to try my hand at something that I've always wanted to do... take photos of water, you know, in drippy-drop form. When I feel like I'm a bit more experienced at it, I'll write up a thorough guide on how to take drippy-drop photos, but for now I'll just show you some of my experimental results thus far, and continue practicing. =)

I was checking my mail just as I normally do in Outlook, when I noticed this...



It's like a sign. I always knew I was different. No... special.

Today, an inbox. Tomorrow, the WORLD!

Its'a Niiiccceee...

I haven't really kept up with games for a while, simply because I don't have the time for them these days. Tonight I was doing a little random web browsing and stumbled upon a game called World in Conflict. Maybe you've already heard of it, but this isn't about you. Got it? =)

At first when I saw the trailer it looked exactly like BattleField 2. And then I realized I wasn't looking at rendered footage, this was actual gameplay. World in Conflict is an RTS with FPS-like graphics. Think Company of Heroes with a sprinkling of Hell Yes. If you haven't seen it already, check out the movies at GameTrailers. Now if only I had time to actually play it when it comes out in September...

Note: I also had never been to GameTrailers.com before... it's nice that they don't make you register to watch stuff like on GameSpot and the other big gaming sites. You have to watch an ad (only once per day it seems?), but if I don't have to register or pay, that's cool with me. I'm easily excited, huh?

All citizens please move to quarantine in Sector 1, District 1. Please have your identification ready. In the meanwhile, pay attention to the brief playing on the monitors. Welcome home!

So, this really has nothing to do with TheTechLounge, but such is the beauty of a blog, no? Since their first album, LP has always been one of my favorite bands (of which I have few), so it follows that I've eagerly awaited a new album from them since Meteora came out. Today it finally hit the stores so I swung by and picked it up.

I reserve any judgements until I have listened to the album at least a few times over and had time to let it sit. But, my first impressions follow:

This latest album is a big leap from anything LP has ever done before. They are quite clearly evolving, as artists. I haven't decided for myself yet whether this change is for the better or not. Either way, though, I appreciate the creative process and I know that as an artist you must continue to challenge yourself and step outside of your comfort zone. Otherwise you will quickly bore yourself and your audience.

So far I have listened to the album once over and am just beginning to listen to it again as I write this. My overall impression at this point is one of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am sort of mourning the death of LP as I knew it (yeah yeah, pour on the cheese). On the other hand, I truly am appreciative of their evolution as a band and I do think I would have been disappointed if the new album was just more of the same, especially after such a long wait.

I'm leanings towards a thumbs-up for their new direction; some of the songs are immediately catchy, while I think others will grow on me.

I'll post in a couple of weeks with my updated thoughts after I've had time to listen to it more.

I recently signed TheTechLounge up for ReviewMe, a site which allows companies to pay publishers a small fee to have their product or service reviewed. The fee is pretty insignificant, so I can't say I'm really doing it for the money. I just figured it would be an interesting new way of finding new (read: random) things to write about. This will be my first ReviewMe review, but you can expect more to be posted on my blog in the future.

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If you're anything like me, you probably spend hours researching products before you actually make a purchase. And much of that time is spent looking at all the various prices, sales, discounts, and rebates available for that product. When you do a little research, sometimes it really pays off, as it did with my Canon 24-70 2.8L purchase with huge discounts from Dell. I ended up selling that lens for a profit a couple of months later. You gotta love a good deal.

FuseDeals.com is a website which basically consolidates deals from all the major deal websites such as SlickDeals.net, FatWallet.com, TechBargains.com and more... There are 12 total feeds. The site is updated automatically throughout the day, so you don't have to worry about any lack of updates. This is a really great idea for the frequent deal hunter, and I can see myself using it in the future. With that said, the site isn't perfect, and I have a couple suggestions for improvement.

1) It would be nice if there was some sort of categorization of the deals, like there is on FatWallet, for example. I realize this may not be possible to do automatically, however, so it may not be doable.
2) A more realistic feature which I think should be implemented is a search function. It should be possible to parse all of the feeds in order to search for something specific, such as "Dell" or "iPod Nano." This alone would make the site much more useful.

Check it out here: Daily Deals

So Digg did something that protected their interests, so that they could continue to earn their living and all that and not get crushed by the DMCA. I have little issue with that. To be honest, I've been ignoring what's going on with the HD-DVD key and Digg and the people who love/hate them.

I really hate how many people are calling this an "Internet Riot".

Let's go past the fact that if this were a riotous event spawned by Internet activity, there would still be people, all over the world, smashing cars, flipping them over, destroying public places and damaging any and all property at arm's reach. That's not even what's going on symbologically. I may have made up that word. The point is that Digg isn't getting demolished, other neighboring social networks aren't suffering any wandering flames, and most importantly, the FBI isn't hunting down any out-of-control script kiddies.

This isn't a riot, nothing's in need of rebuilding, and honestly, I think most people have kind of changed the subject already. We just saw a bunch of Internet monkeys flinging poo. We've all done it before, (metaphorically, dear God I mean metaphorically) but if we plan on living near this series of tubes we're going to have to ignore this stuff.

For the next couple of weeks, though, we're going to see a lot of people who are crapping into their palms as I write this--Ars, don't think I'm not looking in your direction--but Jesus, it's just a website. You can ape up for the next round of high-level scat-slinging, or, you know, go outside, it's spring, and all beautiful 'n' stuff.

For the first time in my life I will endorse World of Warcraft as the better pastime.

Well, I finally bought an iPod - the iPod nano 8GB black to be exact. I have been using an iAudio M3 20GB for quite some time, but it finally died on me and no amount of reseting or reformatting has been able to bring it back. I'm not really disappointed though, because I've been wanting to get an iPod for a while and this was the final nudge pushing me back to the Apple store. While the M3, like many other portable audio players on the market, trumps any iPod when it comes to features, I still found the iPod to be a better match for me.


I have used the iTunes store for quite some time now, and it has been my main source of music purchasing. It's so easy to find music, especially music I wouldn't have otherwise heard in a hundred years. I am very picky when it comes to music that I purchase, and my ears are very tired of the same sounds, instruments, voices and song structures being repeated over and over again. Daughtry? Do we really need another Nickelback? The "Top 20?" They all sound the same to me. Thanks to iTunes, I have been able to search for unique and talented artists, making sure I like the sounds before I spend my hard-earned money.

No, iTunes isn't perfect, but it's damn close. Sure the sound isn't CD quality, but it's close enough. I am able to enjoy crisp, clear notes on my Bang & Olufson earphones as well as my Infinity stereo system in my truck (which, by the way, I became more appreciative of after I tried out the earbuds included with the iPod nano). Then there is the pricing: songs on iTunes are cheaper than buying CDs, but I'm still spending a buck a song, which can add up easily due to the ease of purchasing songs. However, as a personal counterpoint, I like to spend my credit card reward points on iTunes gift certificates (thanks American Express), which basically means I get a nice earful of new music every couple months without spending a dime (that I wouldn't have otherwise spent).

I have played with the iPod before, as well as a couple other old and new variants, and I have always liked their ease of use and simplicity, as with most Apple products which I discovered when I purchased my MacBook four months ago. I also don't need most of the features that the iPod lacks (such as an FM tuner; the radio stations here just plain suck so I would never use it). A couple things I wish the iPod had include a more advanced equalizer and easier switching to and from "Disk Mode" (the iPod is able to be accessed through Finder or My Computer to carry data other than music and podcasts, but it requires a sequence of keypresses which I feel is overkill).

I am extremely happy with my purchase, but I knew I would be, which is why I bought the thing. Seeing as I already organized my music and CDs in iTunes, the iPod just made my music consumption that much easier. Instead of purchasing music on iTunes, burning the CDs to play them in my truck, then reimporting them as MP3s to transfer them to the M3, I just plug in my iPod, and my music syncs and goes wherever I am. I attempted to use the M3 through my truck stereo's auxiliary input, but I got tired of fumbling with the controls while driving. The iPod is much easier to use while on the road.

And best of all? Now I'm hip, just like what's-his-face in the Apple commercials... sans white earbuds.