Qlayer2's Blog

I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with an android tablet that can give the iPad a run for its money, and this is the first one I’ve come across that even comes close.

http://www.viewsonic.com/gtablet/

The priorities of a tablet for me are video playback, app store access, comparable size/weight, and the proper price point.  I think the iPad is a nice device, just not for the cost- it would primarily be used as a e-book reader/video player when the laptop is too big or inconvienent to carry.  I can’t see shelling out $500-800 for that.  Motorola and Samsung came out with decent competing products, but at similar price points- making them less interesting as an option.  Tiger direct is selling this one for $300, and the Nvidia Tegra 2 is an excellent chip for this device, and should be more than capable of handling everything I’d ever use a device like this for.

In case you missed it earlier, scroll down and view the glory of the $500 1.5 m patch cable.  Not good enough?  It’s been updated to $9,999!!! Never fear, because if that is too rich for you, you can get a used one for a mere $2,499.98.  Or even a refurbished one for only $999.99!!  There are more great reviews too- check them out if you have some spare time to kill on the internet.  And a shout out to Stumpy for noticing the update on the price!

I love first person shooters as much as the next person, and I’m a big fan of the Call of Duty series.  The new Call of Duty: Black Ops is set to drop next month, and should be pretty interesting, being set during the cold war.  To highlight this achievement, The good folks in the automotive industry decided this would be a great time for some tie-in marketing.  I give you:

http://www.insideline.com/jeep/wrangler/2011/2011-jeep-wrangler-call-of-duty-black-ops-edition-debuts.html

The Jeep Wrangler: Call of Duty Black Ops edition.  Wow.  I’m blown away- at the fact anyone thought this was a neat idea.  As far as Treyarch (the creators of this new version of COD, as well as World at War and COD3), they get some advertisement money, and probably had to shoehorn the Jeep logo onto some vehicle sequences in the game, so no real loss for them.  As for Chrysler, it seems to be a lot of money to throw away.  How many people are willing to buy a Jeep for around $8000 over the standard high end configuration Rubicon model for the Call of Duty Badges?  Seems like kind of a long shot, but hey, someone out there still has money to spend, right?  Oh that’s right, were in an economic recession, the auto industry is hemorrhaging money, and we’re building cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles now.  This beautiful machine gets an amazing 17mpg highway!  Who could turn that down!  Be the first on your block to get a video game themed car!

This is an interesting article, that hits close to home for me, as an avid first person gamer.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24513

I play first person shooters both competitively and for fun, and have done so for a long time.  I only really play them on the PC, as I find the controller on consoles just isn’t up to the task of high speed aiming and moving in FPS games.  This is clearly an opinion piece, as it discusses his difficulty in getting into FPS games originally, and how he doesn’t feel for the character he controls, since he can’t see him.  I find this to be much different from my experience.

In first person shooters, I tend to enjoy most the realistic, life-like games, most notably the call of duty series.  These games place you as a soldier (and often different soldiers, in the single player campaigns), in the middle of a global conflict.  I find myself very immersed on the character, as I directly control their fate, in a role a person has or could actually play in life.  The author complains that he doesn’t understand how you could interact with a character you can’t see.  This to me is the thickest part of the article- isn’t it easier to place yourself in the position of the player you control without visual cues to remind you you aren’t that person?  FPS games allow you to control your player and environment directly- there is no interface, avatar, or other barrier to change your perspective- you are directly controlling the character.  An excellent example of immersion in an FPS is found in the COD4 single player campaign.  In one of the missions, you are attempting to capture a rogue leader of a nation, who has taken control by force.  You are flying in by helicopter, when a nearby helicopter crashes, leaving many dead and a wounded pilot.  While you attempt to save that pilot, the rogue leader, realizing he cannot stop the attack on his overtaken empire, detonates a nuclear weapon.  You are left on the ground, far enough away to not be vaporized, but not far enough away to escape the fallout.  You literally see this occur through your characters eyes, and watch in vain as you attempt to walk, stumble, and crawl to safety, only to find none.  Your character dies a slow and painful death, miles away from home.

This is just one example of many.  I find that with fewer barriers between the character and you, it is easier to place yourself in that role.  I think this author confuses immersion with his ability to do what he wants- he struggled getting into the genre, as he found the perspective difficult to handle, so he abandoned the FPS games early in his gaming, then when he went back to them, he found it difficult, and therefore not immersive.  His inability to place himself into the character he controls comes from a dislike of the gametype, rather than the camera viewpoint.

This link carries the charming story of a company who decided that support issues stemmed from poor design and implementation of their software, so each support request would have to have a summary of the problem and solution to the issue, so the higher ups could identify and solve the issues, thus eliminating their technical support team.  Sadly, the examples proved the company’s strategy to have a fatal flaw- that users have access to their technical support email address.  Browse the other articles on the site as well, there are many entertaining ones.

About three weeks ago, Google made a splash by announcing their newest plan to dominate the world- Google Chrome Operating System.  They list a pretty heavy list of companies that have agreed to work with them, and expect devices to be released by the second quarter of 2010.  They also plan to release the open source code by the end of the year.

Their premise and idea behind the concept is simple- operating systems were designed in an era before the internet, 95% of tasks done by your average computer user are using the internet, so why not design as OS that is tailored to such a use?  Their primary targets will be the netbook market, the most rapidly growing segment of computing right now.  They want to remove all the interfacing with the machine to the background, and make your computer simple to do one thing- access the internet and internet-based programs quickly and easily.

Things I like about this idea:

• Open source
• Lightweight and fast
• Secure
• Ideal for netbooks

Things I don’t like:

• May hurt Linux development as a PC platform- Linux had been making inroads in the PC market in the netbook segment.
• Online computing is great- except when I don’t have internet access and still need to finish something.
• How accessible will the UI be if their goal will be to hide it from the user?
• Online cloud storage of data is relatively untested and not secure for important documents

All of these things will obviously have to wait until the software is released, obviously.  I think how it interacts with other platforms will make or break this as a platform:  file systems, hardware and driver support, and network interaction with existing platforms will be the key, even in the netbook segment.

Since 1997, there has been rumors and press releases of the fabled Duke Nukem Forever.  They have since canceled the production this year, sadly.

This site has a great list of all the things that have happened since the release, and also has a funny list of all the things that took less time than the game production.

Some of my favorites:

• The United States entire moon landing program, from the challenge from Kennedy to landing on the moon
• The entire Manhattan Project and WWII
• The Beatles formed, released every one of their albums, toured the world several times, and broke up
• The entire Harry Potter Series
• The entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, including extended editions
• Aside from Wolfenstein 3D, every single First Person Shooter based during World War II, including the entire Medal of Honor series and call of duty series.
• The fastest internet connection at announcement was a 33.6 kbps modem

What was your favorite item from the list?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/10/police-fraud-online-music

So this ring of thieves was more intelligent than most, but of course, took it way too far, and got caught.  10 people conspired to allegedly upload some songs to itunes and amazon, and then bought them with stolen credit cards- to the tune of $750,000 in fraudulent charges.  They then collected the royalty checks, about $300,000.  My question is:  does Apple and Amazon give back the $400,000+ they collected for selling the products?  A company will reverse a transaction for a fraudulent claim on a credit card, but will they return the money for these tracks automatically?  Or will they just wait and see how many of the stolen credit card users report the theft, and cancel the sales individually?

So by a circular route, I stumbled over this page:

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

It is the review page of a $500 1.5m cat 5 cable. The description is great, too:

Amazon.com Product Description
Get the purest digital audio you’ve ever experienced from multi-channel DVD and CD playback through your Denon home theater receiver with the AK-DL1 dedicated cable. Made of high-purity copper wire, it’s designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable’s shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

Product Description
Denon’s 1.5 meter proprietary ultra premium Denon Link cable was designed for the audio enthusiast. Made from high purity copper wire and high performance connection parts, the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction from any of Denon DVD players with the Denon Link feature connected to a Denon Link enabled Denon A/V receiver. The AK-DL1 employs high level tin-bearing alloy shielding not typically available in commercial cabling, to eliminate data loss caused by noise. Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer. Attention to detail when building this cable was used by employing high quality insulation and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability. Rounded plug levers help prevent breakage.

Read the reviews. Priceless.

Here’s a fun site to waste some time and look back fondly on all the things you’ve done instead of work on the internet.  An excellent Internet Memes Timeline has arrived, complete with pictures, links, and video to describe each one.

Also, this guy has way too much spare time.  I don’t even want to know how he figured out where and what size data was required to make the ntoes.