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

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.

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 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.