It’s Nostalgia Goggles time!!

iPod Version
PSP Version

Dragonball Z has been shortened and re-released onto Japanese Television screens as a new Anime named Dragonball Kai. With this repackaging of an old classic, they indeed turned down the suck, and turned up the win! However Even though they cut out the fat (or constipation as some would call it), nothing really important happens till ep3, so that’s the one I posted here. This one is a Must Download, even if you hated the series before I recommend you give this new series a try.

“We’ve all seen the Mac vs PC ads mocking us, claiming that Macs never get viruses. If that were true, there wouldn’t be a botnet of infected Macs completely controlled by unknown hackers.

Botnet? Infected Macs? What?

Security researchers at Symantec recently discovered a group of thousands of Mac OS X computers infected with a Trojan horse application embedded in pirated copies of iWork 09.

The infected users had installed the software without scanning it for viruses, no doubt in part because of Apple’s commercials implying that Mac users don’t need to worry about security.

Once the hacker managed to get his malware installed on these zombie Mac computers, the entire group was fully under his control - and he began to use them to attack web sites, but they could be used for other, more nefarious purposes: like sending spam!

Wait, a Mac can get a virus?

That’s exactly right: no operating system is immune to viruses, worms, Trojans, or even spyware. To be fair, the vast majority of all malware targets Windows users, especially unpatched and horribly insecure Windows XP machines - but that doesn’t mean other platforms can’t or won’t get viruses, especially as Apple gains market share and attracts the notice of the hackers.

My problem with this whole story is that Mac users should be educated - you simply cannot download software from BitTorrent and start using it without doing a virus scan first, and Apple should stop mocking security in their commercials.

But this Hack Required User Intervention, it’s Not Apple’s Fault!

That’s quite true! This problem was caused by users downloading software illegally, entering their admin password, and installing it by choice. Hardly Apple’s fault.

But… this is part of a broader issue: Lying about security features will not keep the hackers away! Apple needs to take security more seriously, or else they will run into the same problem that Microsoft did with Windows XP: massive virus/worm infections across the board, and millions of zombie computers sending us spam.

Case in point: last month, a couple of hackers were able to crack a fully patched MacBook in a few seconds, requiring nothing more than clicking on a link using the built-in Safari web browser. If Mac users are conditioned into thinking that they don’t need to worry about security, these types of attacks could escalate in the future.

Perhaps it’s time to recommend security software to Mac users?”

[How To Geek]

A code failure has resulted from moving the site from one server to another and another and so on and so forth. This has resulted with me having to scrap the old site completely and starting fresh. This may take another day or two so hold tight.

I have also aquired the use of CustomPC.ca to go with a Buisness I now own by the same name. The site will be a technology blog that’ll also advertise sales for the computer store I own. Also as a result of this, ClintIsAGeek.com and CustomPC.ca will be linked to KillerOtakuRobots.com mostly as the main Advertisers, but also CustomPC will be providing equipment and storage for K.O.R. to assit with our filming efforts. In the end I’m really just helping myself by using equipment in my store, and actully planning time in my busy work scedual to work on K.O.R. and maybe actully get some episodes done. But at the least I’ll start posting more.

Well simply no, we did not choose the theme JUST because of Fallout 3. First off I’m not completely pleased with what they did with that game, and second I’m not silly enough to base a theme off of JUST that!

What the Fallout series reminds us of is that sweet and warm dream that we all have in our hearts, that fantasy where the world and everything in it has been NUKED a-fucking-sunder and that because of that all laws and society have been thrown out the window.

This creates a Post Apocalyptic type scenario that several stories both fantasy and fiction come from. Stories such as Rifts, Macross, Scrapped Princess, many Gundam and even Final Fantasy stories were based off of this concept. Even Hollywood has taken it’s fare share out of this idea with movies like Mad Max, the Matrix, 12 Monkeys, Dune, Planet of the Apes, hell I could go on forever here!

Even the bible has it’s apocalypse tale, and many religions Pray for such a thing to occur. Many people believe these END TIMES will be a sort of rebirth, a restructuring of our society into something more holy. The Christians believe Jesus will come again and take all the Christians away to heaven as the other are left behind to suffer; the Norse religion has a all out brawl between the gods; the Mayans predict a series of natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes, volcanoes, floods etc.); And the Buddhists believe that the world as we know it, will be destroyed by our lack of morals (the most likely I.M.O.).

The Hopi native tribe has a fairly decent record of being somewhat accurate with their predictions and they claim that their have been three world catastrophes so far, first by fire, next by ice, most recently by a great flood around 8498 BC, (in fact most religions have myths about this flood from the same time period).

“1st world: ended when all of the volcanoes of the world erupted and an all consuming fire engulfed and destroyed the first world.

2nd world: ended when the poles shifted and the Earth was covered in ice. Mountains fell into oceans and seas.

3rd world: ended when the waters flooded the world. Large continents sunk and broke apart into small islands. The Chosen were warned by the Spider Woman and built large boats out of reeds.”

“The end of the fourth world (called Tuwaqachi by the Hopi) is described by Frank Waters. Eventually a gourd full of ashes would be invented, which if dropped from the sky would boil the oceans and burn the land causing nothing to grow for many years (atomic bomb). This would be the sign for a certain Hopi to bring out his teachings in order to warn the world that the third and final event would happen soon. That it could bring an end to all life unless people correct themselves and their leaders in time.”

The prediction then describes World War 2 the lunar landing and power lines, a recent prediction was also made by Dan Katchongva (1865-1972).

“World War III will be started by those peoples who first revealed the light (the divine wisdom or intelligence) in the other old countries (India, China, Islamic Nations, Africa). The United States will be destroyed, land and people, by atomic bombs and radioactivity. Only the Hopis and their homeland will be preserved as an oasis to which refugees will flee. Bomb shelters are a fallacy. The war will be ‘a spiritual conflict with material matters. Material matters will be destroyed by spiritual beings who will remain to create one world and one nation under one power, that of the Creator.”

“That time is not far off. It will come when the Saquasohuh (Blue Star) Kachina dances in the plaza and removes his mask. He represents a blue star, far off and yet invisible, which will make its appearance soon. [Some Hopi spokespersons suggest that Hale-Bopp is the Blue Star.]”

The time is foretold by a song sung during the Wuwuchim ceremony. It was sung in 1914 just before World War I, and again in 1940 before World War II, describing the disunity, corruption, and hatred contaminating Hopi rituals, which were followed by the same evils spreading over the world. This same song was sung in 1961 during the Wuwuchim ceremony.

“The Emergence to the future Fifth World has begun. It is being made by the humble people of little nations, tribes, and racial minorities. ‘You can read this in the earth itself. Plant forms from previous worlds are beginning to spring up as seeds. This could start a new study of botany if people were wise enough to read them. The same kinds of seeds are being planted in the sky as stars. The same kinds of seeds are being planted in our hearts. All these are the same, depending how you look at them. That is what makes the Emergence to the next, Fifth World.”

So there you go and this concludes the introduction to the new theme of the month.

P.S. So yeah, ok I lied, It really WAS just because of Fallout 3. All this other stuff were things I learned in writing this article. I really am that silly.

Well anyways for us last month was Politics Month with the Canadian election and the last month of debates with the American election (THANK GOD Mc Cain didn’t win), but this month all of us here seem to be finding ourselves doing something different, playing Fallout 3. Therefore we have voted to make this months theme APOCALYPSE MONTH. We will make it a point to post a few topics based upon this theme, and maybe I’ll even change the sites layout or something…

Yesterday morning in Beijing several people were brought into the Beijing United Family Hospital reportedly dead on arrival.  Though the cause of the deaths were not initially known it was believed to be yet another new virus.

Within hours of the bodies arriving at the hospital there was a commotion at thye hospital and many people came running out, screaming of people killing the doctors and other patients.  Dr. Zhi-Rong Teng told reporters that the commotion started in the morgue and he had heard screams coming from there just before one of the supposedly dead patients came through the door blood dripping from his mouth.

Precious little has been learned since that small amount of information as the Chinese military showed up only half an hour after the first instance of violence occured.  Gun fire and screams could be heard as all reporters and civilians were turned away and warned to stay away and even phones were taken away to prevent any pictures from leaving the scene.

Similar scenes happened at the Beijing International Medical Centre, Xinjiang EMS Center, Shandong Qianfoushan Hospital, and Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital as well as grisly reports of people that have been ripped apart that may be connected.  Information of any kind has seemed to be impossible to get as the chinese goverment has gone far our of the way to put a information blackout on the newest and potentially deadliest of virus outbreaks in china.

Well, that’s it folks. The Doctor is once again one step closer to the end, a sombering thought indeed.
Tennant further remarked that his desicion to leave came partly because of the fact that Russel T. Davies and
Julie Gardner were also stepping down.
A million guesses surge forth as to the how and when The Doctor will leave us, but foe sure it will be sometime in 2009.

In Far Cry 2’s chaotic world of mercenaries, gunrunners, and armed militias, you’ll find yourself dropped into a dizzying web of shady clients and paper-thin alliances. All manner of names and faces are introduced during the course of the storyline, but the real star isn’t anyone brandishing a smuggled weapon in search of blood diamonds; it’s the daunting and awe-inspiring 50-square kilometers of African landscape that make up the game’s open-world setting. Aside from providing the opportunity to soak up an amazing sunset, Far Cry 2’s free-roaming terrain brilliantly harmonizes with the first-person combat. The diverse landscape and myriad environmental factors work alongside a wide assortment of weaponry to give you tremendous freedom to approach each mission. Combined with solid multiplayer, Far Cry 2’s sheer breadth of action provides you with plenty of reason to stay lost in the African wilderness despite an underwhelming plot and the occasional sense of tedium in navigating from one location to another on the gargantuan map.

Far Cry 2 is quite the looker.

Far Cry 2’s story is filled with potential. You’re a mercenary working for a client who’s sent you to an unnamed African nation engulfed in civil war, and your job is to take out a notorious arms dealer known as “The Jackal.” He quickly proves to be an elusive figure, so you’ll need to begin working for various warring factions that the Jackal has armed so you can trace the supply line back to your target. The two primary organizations at the heart of all this bloodshed are the militaristic UFLL and the revolutionary APR. You’ll spend the bulk of the story working for these two groups, getting to know their power structures, and taking on all of the violent tasks they throw your way. Complicating things is the fact that your character has malaria, which means you’ll need to occasionally play nice with the more ragtag Underground, the only group with the medical connections necessary to keep your potentially life-threatening symptoms at bay.

Each story mission can be played in multiple ways. There are 12 potential buddies randomly scattered throughout the storyline who you can befriend (nine of whom are available to choose as your silent protagonist), and they’re often keen to tack on their own interests to the quests handed out by the UFLL and APR. Instead of just taking out a target, you have the option to earn extra reputation points by working alongside your buddy to first squeeze any remaining assets from the soon-to-be-deceased. This also earns you the ability to increase your level of companionship with that buddy. It’s a neat reward, but it doesn’t shed much light on their backgrounds. But that’s par for the course; the main story is delivered in such a rushed, quick-and-dirty way that you never feel very involved in the game’s overarching conflicts. The plot is less Blood Diamond than it is early Grand Theft Auto, a long roster of changing faces that scroll by far too quickly to capitalize on the politically charged setting.

Although disappointing for a single-player campaign that could easily drain more than 30 hours of your time, any shortcomings in the plot are mostly forgivable thanks to Far Cry 2’s overall structure. The game is organized in a way that provides a daunting amount of freedom to explore, earn currency, and wreak havoc on the game’s landscape and its denizens. It’s all laid out in a manner typical of sandbox action games. Pulling out your map reveals a collection of icons that signify available missions and points of interest that you can meander toward at your own leisure. Among these are dozens of side missions that you can take on, with various forms of rewards. Delivering transit papers to trapped refugees earns you malaria medication, destroying rival convoys for gun merchants unlocks new weapons for purchase, and performing assassinations for mysterious voices at the other end of your cell phone rewards you with diamonds. You can also rough up militias stationed in small camps and turn their dwellings into your own safe houses. The side missions can feel a bit repetitive when played through in rapid succession, but they offer a great change of tempo when sprinkled throughout the main narrative. But what’s most clever is how their differing rewards intermingle so wonderfully with your needs in progressing through the story: Malaria pills keep your HP and stamina up, diamonds buy you new weapons and ability upgrades, and safe houses provide temporary shelter to stock up and save your game.

With so much ground to cover, you’ll be spending a lot of time driving, boating, running, and swimming.

The freedom of choice that goes with selecting which mission you want to perform carries over to how you execute them, and that’s where Far Cry 2 really shines. There are a variety of factors that affect the way you approach each mission, from the number of people you need to kill, to the landscape, to the weather and time of day. If your job is to take out a key figure hidden deep within a militia camp in the jungle, you’ll do well to take a nap at your safe house until nightfall and silently stalk your prey under the cover of darkness. If it’s a windy day and you need to take out a bandit outpost in the dry plains, you can start a fire from far away with a flare gun and let the breeze and arid conditions collude to spread the flames toward their camp, finishing off the survivors with a sniper rifle. Need to clear out a bunch of scattered guards? Why not shoot an oil drum near an ammo stockpile and watch as the bullets erupt in every direction like deadly pieces of popcorn? Of course, you can also get up close and personal with pistols and machine guns, but the moments in which elaborately planned assaults succeed are some of the most gratifying points in the game. The whole process of staging an attack only becomes more intricate and rewarding as you slowly upgrade your safe house into a full-blown armory and unlock new weapon and vehicle abilities–all done through the gun shops.

The sheer variety of weapons plays a big role in your ability to craft a personalized approach to each mission. For every situation, there’s a weapon ideally suited to delivering mercenary justice. From the AK-47 to the Molotov cocktail and the remote-detonated improvised explosive device, they all feel like weapons that could easily be plucked from the civil wars of Africa. Furthermore, your weapons will cycle through an authentic level of wear and tear, particularly those picked up from ragtag militiamen; secondhand weapons will show dirt, frequently jam, and eventually break, which means that it’s best to buy them from the shop. All of the above makes for a uniquely desperate and makeshift style of combat compared to other first-person shooters.

Fire is often your best friend, but not when it’s raining or a mission takes you to a dense jungle.

If there’s one drawback to the combat, it’s that it tends to be a little too forgiving after the first few hours of the game. Your health is divided into several individually regenerative bars like Resistance: Fall of Man, but once it gets low, you can inject yourself with a syrette for added health (though if it’s really low, you’ll first need to perform a slick self-heal such as yanking bullet shells out of your leg or snapping a broken arm back into place). You can eventually upgrade the amount of ammo and health you have to further tip the odds in your favor, and even have a buddy rescue you whenever you die (though you need to keep an eye on him because he can be permanently killed in a scuffle). Most of the challenge arrives when you’re looking at your map in search of the next mission and then get surprised by a bunch of roadside bandits while you’re driving one of the game’s numerous run-down SUVs or river boats (which exist alongside hang-gliders, trucks, licensed Jeeps, and dune buggies as the types of vehicles you can operate). However, there are still very few moments when you don’t feel like an everyman caught in a nasty situation, and that sort of improvised payback is what makes Far Cry 2’s combat so engrossing.

Visually, Far Cry 2 is a stunner. Though not as technically amazing as the jungles of Crysis, Far Cry 2’s depiction of the sprawling African wilderness makes up for it with environmental diversity and intimidating scale. Several landscapes are represented here: dense forests, rolling plains, arid deserts, craggy badlands, and even shantytowns and hut villages. You’ll see trees swaying, the charred remains of a brush fire, and several forms of wildlife running around. It all looks incredible in the transitional period of the day-night cycle when the sun is falling or rising through the horizon and everything is cast in a warm glow. The game also sounds great, with tribal music accompanying you at all times, from a relaxing ambience in calm situations to a rapidly escalating roar of drums in battle. The voice acting during mission briefings feels strangely hurried (as if it’s some trick to squeeze more dialogue onto the disc), but that’s largely offset by excellent enemy banter during combat.

Adding to Far Cry 2’s value is the 16-person online multiplayer. The gameplay modes on display are nothing terribly special (you’ll see variations of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Territories), but the fighting captures a lot of the appeal of single-player, including vehicles, fire-based weaponry, and a great sense of scale in each map. But what sets the multiplayer apart is that you don’t need to settle for the included maps; each version of the game comes with a deep but intuitive map editor capable of letting you create everything from dense urban locales to sprawling forests. And downloading new maps is simply a matter of seeking out featured selections or hitting “download” when a Quick Match search lets you know that you don’t have that one yet. Such uninspired gameplay modes are certainly a letdown, but the map editor has great potential to inject loads of lasting appeal into Far Cry 2’s online component.

The map editor is easy to use, but capable of making great maps.

Although the original Far Cry was available only on the PC for the first year and a half of its existence, Far Cry 2 will see an expanded audience with the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions all available out of the gate. However, its roots are clearly on display when taking in the differences between the three platforms. Far Cry 2 looks best running on a PC, with clearer textures, better foliage, and less pop-in. The console versions also suffer from the occasional loading hitch when you’re driving into a highly populated city. Another key difference is that the PC version lets you save anywhere you want, whereas the 360 and PS3 games only let you use predefined save points. However, the latter difference isn’t quite as lopsided as the graphical disparity; saving anywhere gives you more room for experimentation in approaching your missions, but the console versions provide a more clearly defined sense of consequence that adds extra tension to the combat. You’ll definitely want to go with the PC version if you’ve got a system capable of approaching the hardware requirements, but the differences aren’t so great that you won’t have a blast with either console version (which are virtually indistinguishable from one another).

Overall, Far Cry 2 is a game in which you can quite literally get lost for hours at a time. But that feeling of exploration is precisely what makes the game so much fun; your creativity never feels stifled when approaching a mission, and the game’s overall structure of side tasks, friends, rewards, and upgrades is a diverse ecosystem rivaling the landscape itself. No matter whether you’re a PC fan whose played through the similarly structured Crysis or a console owner new to the world of open-ended first-person shooters, you won’t be disappointed by Far Cry 2.

By Shaun McInnis, GameSpot

Warrior of Light - Toshihiko Seki (Duo Maxwell(Gundam Wing), Rau Le Cruset(Gundam SEED), Iruka(Naruto))
Garland - Kenji Utsumi (Louis Armstrong(Full Metal Alchemist), Shenlong(Dragonball))
Firion - Hikaru Midorikawa (Heero Yuy(Gundam Wing), Zelgadis Greywords(Slayers))
Emperor - Kenyuu Horiuchi (Sencond Hokage(Naruto), Raiden(Metal Gear Solid))
Onion Knight - Jun Fukuyama (Lelouch Lamperouge(Code Geass), Craft Lawrence(Spice & Wolf))
Cloud of Darkness - Masako Ikeda (Gillian Hewley(Crisis Core), Nodoka Saotome(Ranma½))
Cecil Harvey - Shizuma Hodoshima (Hisashi Jonouchi(Boogiepop Phantom), Cecil Harvey(derp)(Final Fantasy IV))
Golbez - Takeshi Kaga (Kiriko(Blackjack), Souichirou Yagami(Live action Death Note))
Bartz Klauser - S?ichir? Hoshi (Gino Weinberg(Code Geass), Kira Yamato(Gundam SEED))
Exdeath - Tar? Ishida (Count Cagliostro(Lupin III - Castle of Cagliostro), Emperor Beld (record of Lodoss war))
Terra Branford - Yukari Fukui (Nono(Top wo Nerae 2!), Nia(Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann))
Kefka Palazzo - Shigeru Chiba (Megatron(Beast Wars), Raditz(Dragon Ball Z))
Cloud Strife - Takahiro Sakurai (Takashi Kamiyama (Chromartie High School), Suzaku Kururugi(Code Geass)
Sephiroth - Toshiyuki Morikawa (Tekkaman Blade(Tekkaman Blade), Kyosuke Nanbu(Super Robot Taisen Original Generation)
Squall Leonhart - Hideo Ishikawa (Itachi Uchiha(Naruto), Cait Sith(Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children)
Ultimecia - Atsuko Tanaka (Motoko Kusanagi(Ghost in the Shell), Caster(Fate/Stay night)
Zidane Tribal - Romi Paku (Edward Elric(Fullmetal Alchemist), Loran Cehack( ? Gundam))
Kuja - Akira Ishida (Athrun Zala(Gundam SEED), Gaara(Naruto))
Tidus - Masakazu Morita (Ichigo Kurosaki(Bleach))
Jecht - Masuo Amada (Manda(Naruto), Monev the Gale(Trigun))
Cosmos - Sumi Shimamoto (Princess Yanagi(Devil Hunter Yohko ), Nausicaä (Nausicaä and the valley of the wind)
Chaos - Norio Wakamoto (Cell(Dragonball Z), Alexander Anderson(Hellsing Ultimate)
Narrator - Bunta Sugawara

I’m very much looking forward to this game.