06.15.08
Posted in Politics at 8:18 pm by superbus
I get a kick out of everyone bitching about Republicans. They failed in Iraq! They gave us a deficit! Bush is stupid! Cheney is evil! Rove is… hey, where’d he go?! Come back!
Americans - and especially those that are Democrats - love to complain about the Republican Party that has essentially run this country since the Richard Nixon administration as if they were a theocracy; you know, something they can’t do anything about. Americans are good at that! Bitch, cry, moan, wail, flail, post on message boards and email mailing groups… and hope their employers never find out about it, or about that picture of someone taking jello shots off of their tits on their MySpace profiles. Can’t piss off The Man™, after all!
The Republican Congress failed. Three of the last five Republican Presidencies (Nixon, both Bushes) either failed spectacularly or went up in the flames of corruption. Partisan politics - usually initiated by a few bad Republicans - have turned Washington D.C. into the political equivalent of gang turf, with virtually nothing of consequence getting done without massive earmarks and favours being given. No one can decide on a proper spending budget, or what to do about the fact that we’ve essentially wiped our asses with both the Geneva Convention and the Constitution for the past seven years, but by God, when it comes time to rename fried potatoes, those fuckers are all over it! And even when the Democrats get a majority, or an important position, they either kowtow to the Republicans (this Rolling Stone piece - though it’s very heavily slanted to the left - has a quote that accuses the Democrats of having Stockholm Syndrome, which I feel is quite accurate), or do the same exact shit, such as the infamous incident of Nancy Pelosi telling the Minority Leader, Sen. McConnell (R-KY), that since the Republicans “lost” in 2006, he doesn’t get to bang the gavel anymore. It sounds like a sitcom full of precocious teenagers until you realize that this is our GOVERNMENT at work, at which point your first instinct is to stop laughing and start emigrating.
So Americans bitch and bitch and bitch. That in itself is fine, except for one slight problem: they really have no right to. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Sports - Basketball at 3:35 pm by superbus
Despite the fact that I subscribe to some of them, I hate conspiracy theories. I hate them mainly because it takes a world class level of cynicism to believe in them in the first place - secret society, Big Brother shit requires a lot of paranoia, and the ability to project like crazy - though I have seen enough bullshit get waved under our noses that I have to subscribe to some of them. Kennedy Assassination? I blame Hoover. Dirty links between the White House and Haliburton? You don’t say! And if anything, the Bush administration has made me at least give some consideration to the ideal of the Illuminati.
Sports fans have believed that the NBA is one large conspiracy, going back to when David Stern took over; they point to the 1985 Draft (where Patrick Ewing - the consensus #1 - went to the large market New York Knicks and immediately resurrected that franchise; he was Lebron when Lebron was in diapers), the amount of lee-way that big stars get with fouls and infractions, and most recently, some officiating in specific games - games that could have either given a big market team a victory or extended a lucrative series - as examples that Stern either directly or indirectly influences the games that are played to maximize exposure and revenue for his league and/or it’s big market teams. The Tim Donaghy scandal just adds more fuel to their fire.
I have to say this much: I don’t there’s any NBA conspiracy, but I have to admit that the NBA isn’t doing a very good job of convincing us otherwise. Read the rest of this entry »
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05.31.08
Posted in Politics at 4:34 am by superbus
So another “advisor” to George W. Bush has come forth with a tell-all book basically saying what any sane person has known since 2002: that Georgy’s been a very, very bad boy, or at the very least, very stupid. This is being treated like news, which is kinda surprising to me, as 1) he’s not the first guy to write a book about his experiences in George’s house of propaganda mirrors he calls the White House, and 2) he’s really, from what I’ve seen, not saying anything new. In fact, a lot of the things he’s saying have been accused by people in the past, people that were run over by the Neo-Cons for being non-patriotic, hating the troops, and I think one blogger was accused of killing Bambi’s mother. In short, for a lot of “conspiracy theorists”, What Happened is the justification they’ve been looking for.
I have my own theories about our current administration, many of which are freely searchable in my own archives. However, if this is justification, I’m not impressed. I’d personally rather have it from someone that doesn’t drip like a smarmy snake-oil salesman. Read the rest of this entry »
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05.30.08
Posted in Site Related, General Bullshit at 5:45 pm by superbus
Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Read the rest of this entry »
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05.09.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:25 am by superbus
In my last article, I gave a hypothetical situation of what could happen if the providers of DRM for today’s downloadable games and content just all of a sudden stopped supporting their system. This was insipired by what’s going to happen to customers of MSN Music on August - something MSN announced without even the faintest hint of an apology.
Literally the DAY I went live with that article, it was announced that the dreaded SecuROM, most famous for it’s Draconian installation rules on the otherwise stellar Bioshock, was making a comeback and tightening things even more. Now, once you install Mass Effect or Spore for the PC, you will have to authenticate once every ten days to external servers. Should you fail to do that, or should your CD key come up on a warez list, you will be unable to play your game at all. Wasted hard drive space for the most part. Read the rest of this entry »
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05.06.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:22 am by superbus
If you don’t directly follow the IT newsletters and RSS feeds, you might have missed a little tidbit about Microsoft shutting down their DRM key servers on August 31st for MSN Music files figuring they were no longer needed with the Zune setup. This has a lot of people from sites like Ars, Slashdot and INQuirer crying for blood. To most people, they admit that even though the MSN music service was terrible to begin with from top to bottom, it shows how scary Digital Rights Management (DRM) can really be, as reading between the lines, it becomes obvious that after August 31st, people that need to re-register their DRM keys - or worse, don’t have them, as Windows Media Player 11 hasn’t let users back them up from it’s inception - will not be able to play music they bought legally. They will not get any money back, just a “tough luck” and a link to the Zune store, or directives to intentionally break their EULA and burn and re-copy their music to and from a CD (hurting audio quality in the process). Most people are concerned about other DRM such as that in iTunes music, and in my industry, the DRM that comes pre-packaged with Microsoft Windows, Office, and just about any other software from any large vendor.
Naturally, being a writer who specializes in the video game industry, I’m a bit more concerned about video games, especially as downloadable content - from horse armour to full scale games - becomes more normal in our industry. Read the rest of this entry »
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04.22.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:15 am by superbus
NOTE: This review was written for Diehard Gamefan
Puchi Puchi Virus
Genre: Colour Matching Puzzle
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Keys Factory
Release Date: May 20, 2008 Read the rest of this entry »
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04.04.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:11 am by superbus
NOTE: This was originally written for Diehard Gamefan. And no, it did not become a weekly column.
Welcome to what I hope will be a weekly column on the releases that come weekly for the XBox Live Arcade service, and whatever I can play on the PSP from the PS Store. To summarize the point of this column, I take the games released (actual games; no demos), play them, and let you know if it’s worth your money or not, and for that, I’ll be “borrowing” Scott Keith’s thumbs up/down/middle standard, because clinical tests show that name-dropping other, more widely published writers makes my balls bigger. These aren’t full reviews - after all, games like Pac Man and Chessmaster don’t need full write-ups - but are intended more or less to be quick and dirty, like the majority of the games themselves. Also, note that we don’t handle Virtual Console games here; someone else takes care of that better than I could.
Of course, Sony and Microsoft combined to give me the perfect warm-up week, as the two services combined conspired to give us a grand total of one game, mainly thanks to the PS Store renovating their entire service. Makes for a slow week, but if it means region-free games, then they can take as long as they want.
GAME: Mr. Driller Online
SERVICE: XBLA
PUBLISHER: Namco Bandai
COST: 800 MS Points ($10) Read the rest of this entry »
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04.02.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:09 am by superbus
NOTE: This article was written for Diehard Gamefan
It’s fair to say that, to the naked eye, the video game industry has never been stronger.
Between three regular consoles to play, all with their own online sevices that enable people to buy new and old games in their underwear without leaving the comfort of their own bedroom/living room/parents’ basement (as if we, as a people, needed LESS human interaction), two handheld consoles, a robust PC gaming market that handles both the hardcore freaks and the more casual, Popcap trained gamer, and add in the fact that every one of the above mentioned has great games almost literally overflowing from it, and there’s almost too much choice for the average gamer. The bins at local game stores are brimming with quality titles, from the newest games to the under $10 bargain bins, and if you can’t find something that suits your fancy - whatever it may be - then you simply do not like video games.
Read the rest of this entry »
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03.16.08
Posted in Archive, Video Games at 2:07 am by superbus
NOTE: This review was written for Diehard Gamefan
Dynasty Warriors 6
Genre: Action
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Koei
American Release: February 19, 2008
Read the rest of this entry »
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