The Future

A scientific experiment in the power of the internet and the future of human telecommunication. I have no choice, I have to serve that which created me.

Muwahaha.

Seriously though Scott Eric Kaufman is doing research on how blog memes spread across the internet and is asking all the blogosphere to help. I got my link from the Washington Monthly’s blog, Political Animal written by occasionally annoying Mac Booster and cracker-jack B+ pundit, Kevin Drum. If you have a blog, please spread the meme by writing a post explaining the process and linking to Scott’s post. Then make sure you fill out the Ping Form at Technorati. Normally I am anti-Technorati but this is an exception.

I hate Microsoft

This isn’t some anti-M$ rant. Hell in the Mac-PC wars I am PC all the way but look at this story from Kotaku. Crecente sez:

And of course there will be Wii updates for the news and weather channels and PS3 updates for backward compatibility issues. Welcome to the next-gen friends, it’s all about unfinished products and micro-transactions.

Aside from console games telling better stories than PC games, I am a console gamer first because it’s easy. You pop in the game, you interact in a fantastic Japanese story. Sorry Americans, except for a chosen few of us we tell shitty stories. You Brits, you’ve got Tolkien, but you also have Rowling so I guess that ends up as a wash. But you’ve also got Russell T. Davies (well maybe not, he’s Welsh) and Alan Moore so you’re fine.

So anyhow, now they have made us all into PC gamers, who buy badly made games and then have to wait on company forebearance to download patches that fix those issues only to create new ones paying $65 a pop and too stupid to give it up.

Update: I was reminded by a commentator that Americans do indeed have a few more really really good writers. But you’ll note that most of my authors were modern pop-writers as opposed to you know, classic novelist type authors. Even Tolkien though I love the man’s works didn’t write novels, he wrote medeival-style (for lack of a better term) romances. I just felt they were a better comparisson to video game writing which except for a few stories such as FFVII or Metal Gear Solid 1 and 3 don’t often rise to the level of classic literature.

The Violence of It’s Coming

So the PS3 launched in the United States today. Now I love gaming and I still do it when I have time. In law school I was told to pick one thing I did before to relax and keep at it not to get sucked in. Hence the gaming. Now I’m not one of those people standing in line for the PS3 (whether to keep or resell) but I couldn’t get enough of reading about the exploits of those people who were waiting in line. We had a drive by BB gun shoot up in a line, a woman was standing in line while she was in labor and then of course there were the Wal-Mart riots in at least 3 places. So far I think my favorite story, topping even the woman apparently wiling to give birth in the line, was the Smash N’ Grab in Georgia. The result of that incident was armed gangs patrolling the parking lot with baseball bats.

Thanks to Kotaku (which I love because it rocks but hate because I cannot post comments there) here is a list of some of the more shocking criminal incidents.

Putnam, CT – Two armed teenagers in ski masks attempt to hold-up the PS3 line at the local Wal-Mart, fleeing the scene empty-handed after shooting a customer who tried to resist them. The victim, shot in the chest and shoulder, is currently in stable condition.

Sullivan, IN – A man is stabbed as he and a friend try to rob two other men of their newly acquired systems. He is in critical condition following emergency surgery. [The robber was the one hurt? There have been reports of people in the lines carrying multiple knives --Samoflange]

Fresno, CA – Two people are arrested after a crowd tramples people in a parking lot trying to get a chance at purchasing the launch system.

Englewood, OH – Two armed men in black ski-masks enter a GameStop at closing time, forcing the employees to hand over their stock of five PS3 systems.

Manchester, CT – Five men surround a new Playstation 3 owner as he exits a store with his purchase, beat him, and drive off with his console. As they escape they push one of their own out of the car, a 17 year-old male now being charged with multiple crimes. [They will probably charge him with battery, theft, conspiracy and assault and maybe even armed robbery depending on if the men had weapons --Samoflange]

Allentown, PA – A teenager has his system stolen by a man who taps on his car window with a handgun.

Henrico, VA – Police are forced to use a talcum powder ball to get a crowd of 350 under control as they waited for a chance at one of a Target stores 8 systems.

I am a bit of a Sony fanboy (FF Series FTW!) and I want them to crush Microsoft this generation, but I think they should be held responsible to some degree for the rash of violence across the country as a direct cause of their product. But for the launch of the Playstation 3 in quantities approaching 1/5th of what they told people would be there, these incidents would not have occured! While I feel sympathy and horror in regards to the victims, the sheer spectacle of it keeps me diving back in to learn more stories of chaos.

Can you imagine what it would be like if the Playstation 4 is released the day after Thanksgiving? The 3rd biggest shopping day of the year? A reminder: last year Wal-Mart employees were standing on counters in the electronics department hurling $50 DVD players at materialistic mobs.

Yes, I am a horrible person.

The Kotaku link that provided the list above.

Update: From Kotaku it appears that a fugtive under suspicion of rape, William Rick Burdine, Sr. was arrested around the Best Buy the BB gun drive by occured at.

The Grand Old Post

I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was 12 years old in 1994 and watched the results with my parents and saw Democrat after Democrat go down and wondered “Why are they losing?” This is the first time in my political life that my side has won.

“As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.”

–JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King

PS: Via Catherine Andrews

Why are the french so eager to eat horses?
–Tucker Carlson

The losers will cry, because that is what happens when you are personally rejected by so many people.
–Chris Matthews

First

For the first time in my political life, my side has won.

…and it was good.