Ten Thirty One Two

spoiler spoiler spoiler ? The Force Awakens Star Wars Episode VII

2015-11-14T18:10:00.002+00:00

This is a post about why I'm not going to go see The Force Awakens (TFA)
Why I'm not planning on seeing it at all.
Perhaps there are some things here you (the reader) may have thought of already.
Maybe you've thought of none of these (yet) but might think of sometime before, during, or after seeing it.

No, this isn't about the movie content itself. I don't know what that is, but of course anyone who's seen the past ones, has read any of the books that take place after the originals, or thinks through any of the plot lines or potentials or even any serials or drama already has a pretty good idea. (Perhaps the trailers tell the bulk of the story as they all seem to do these days.)

If there be spoilers about why somebody who's a fan doesn't want to see TFA, ideas that you've never considered and wouldn't have thought of if you hadn't read this, maybe you should think it's a big spoiler and skip it.

At first as things were leading up to wherever TFA is going, I was rather unsure how I felt about continuing the story of let's say The New Republic. How is current modern movie making going to treat this? Would it be like the originals (IV V VI) or the um effects-filled modern-ish-style too long (really, 6-9 hours of movie material?) and klunky prequels (I II III)? How would no George Lucas but JJ Abrams, with Disney, etc, be?

As time came closer to the release (in the wrong month one might say) I more and more felt like I didn't want to see something that would have been awesome in the mid '80s but that today might be just as disappointing as the prequels. I mean, if all you (people in general) can say is "Yes, but it's Star Wars!" what else can you say about three movies (or any of them).

Then I figured it out. Why I didn't want to not just not bother with opening day, but felt like I wanted to skip entirely. (Probably all of them, but certainly TFA) Why I felt ..... wrong about it all. (Hey, sometimes even I get boarded. And sometimes we do get a bad feeling about this.)

Why don't I want to see TFA.

Part of it is the status of Mark, Harrison and Carrie. Were they all in mind when the plot(s) were being developed, or an afterthought? Inserted into the stories (replacing stock character types ) as them (Luke, Han, Leia) only after the actors said yes, or part of the fabric of the story in roles only they as Heroes of the Republic could fill? Or really, did I want to know how the characters were planned or not when it came to the story. (Depending on the source material being from say books or from say fully new ideas.)

That's just a part though. Another part, remember the well done off and on romance between Han and Leia that developed, with much of it skipped over, and just this and that tossed in. Compare that to the heavy-handed overly ponderous and really bad way they horribly handled the entire "romance" in the prequels. It's even harder to ignore than Jar Jar and how feedback totally changed that character. I'm not sure I could even handle whatever they'll come up with either for the new characters, much less the old characters.

That's all also not the primary thing, just a consideration

Okay, again, you might want to stop reading if you don't already know where this is going.

When we last saw Luke, Han and Leia, they had nothing but potential. The future. Caught in time. Han and Leia a couple, Luke a full Jedi. Chewbacca, Lando, the droids and everyone else. All one big happy family, including our Force Ghosts (preferably to me, as they were like in the first theatric or first video tape version of VI.)

In the original story, then, we had a conclusion. After that, our imaginations of what might be. It ended and we remember how it ended. They were, and have been for the last thirty-ish years, there as they were. As we remember them.

No matter what else, it seems that TFA is going to ruin that memory. For those that have it at least. Of course, if you don't have it, perhaps it doesn't matter. Or maybe you've just recently watched the digital versions in order (I to VI) and would like it to remain how you remember it.

All I know that unless some time after it opens (days, weeks, months) everyone that sees it says it was awesome, I'll skip it, and the reviews, and the complaining.

May the Force be with you, always.

But TFA, no thanks.

A tale of two games - how to be customer hostile

2015-11-01T17:26:00.001+00:00

This deals with The Microsoft Store website for the United States (EN-US) and so games on it would be ones with the ESRB rating system. The information here does not universally hold true for other countries, languages or rating systems.

If you were selling things, and part of your system was broken in some small but potentially impactful way, would you want to be told about it? Know about it? Fix it? Or would you not give anyone any easy way to tell you, and then ignore attempts to let you know about it?

How's your website working, seems like a question somebody would want to be aware of, and repair if at fault. Even if by and large it all works splendidly for huge volumes of customers and is a sort of technical marvel. Or not.

As far as we can see from the outside, Microsoft has contracted Digital River to run the entirety of e-commerce for The Microsoft Store. That is, the microsoftstore website, That scope appears to include the "chat now" button (pre-sales reps via text) or calling the toll-free number on the webpage for questions and help. The outside (we do not have any sort of in-depth first-hand knowledge of the specifics) includes the text on the website about the hosting, informational postings (including FAQ pages) and text/voice communications with various of these aspects.

The end result here is that the microsoftstore website and communications avenues are not with Microsoft itself, but rather those contracting to and working on their behalf. You are not dealing with Microsoft itself. There appears very little (nothing) in the direct way to contact anyone with any power or responsibility when it comes to the microsoftstore website . That includes the lack of any direct feedback mechanism on the webpage, no direct email addresses to any named entity or representative, or communication methods to anyone other than the first line of contact (Tier 1, Level 1) . This includes via social media, as those who might answer such things are not part of the online store mechanism.

In general, the only way to contact anyone involved "directly" is via phone, and the only people answering the phone are reading out of a book that often will not cover the issue a caller might be interested in. That often times is nothing but an expanded web FAQ a caller might be able to read most or all of themselves. This lack of information also includes physically contacting a Microsoft Store, as they are not part of those running the website either. All in all, any other means outside of this by which one may believe they can ask about or find about about something wrong or problematic will only refer back to calling the people that can't deal with anything out of the ordinary.

This system is dysfunctional and of little help to those who might actually need it.

Such things might be of little surprise to anyone, and many are likely quite aware of getting the runaround from a multi-faceted decentralized conglomerate that often has parts of itself going haywire and off kilter (say, the way the Xbox One was originally "marketed") in any number of methods and manners.

As we've mentioned elsewhere at length here, two of the biggest games the end of this year are big deals.

Specifically, Fallout 4 and Halo 5 are the two games in this tale.

You might think that being of such import and so eagerly awaited by the gaming community, that everything would be proper and no customer would be trying to inform anyone of problems with their sale, be a potential issue large or small.

Yet, problems small though they were are exactly what happened with The Microsoft Store when trying to order physical copies of those two games online. Nothing insurmountable (or even there to intrude in one case) but wrong nonetheless. A wrongness that revolves around the ratings for the two games.

We aren't big fans of the ESRB. It's at best an annoyance to adults in general, and we happen to be of the opinion that the idea of moderating children in these sorts of ways is usually at best pointless. It should be all up to the parents, not a trade group or society. Still, how we feel about the group or their ratings (or the entire question of responsibility and maturity) isn't the issue -- the fact and reality of the practicality is that companies selling games set their behaviors according to the game's ESRB rating.

So how does microsoftstore handle the two games? Backwards.

First, Fallout 4. This game (just like the last one) is rated M. This means that according to the ESRB, it should be for those who are 17 or older. Effectively, it's a "will not be sold to those under 18 and parents take care if you get it" marking. If you walk into a store to get this, almost all retailers of this game will age verify any purchaser of Fallout 4 is over 17 via drivers license or the like. Online is trickier, as it can be expected that anyone buying such will be using a credit card or other method where you can't get the mechanism for purchase unless you're at least 18. (For those mechanisms that a parent can set up for those under 18, the adult is responsible for setting up restrictions online or by rules).

Whatever. How does the microsoftstore website handle the game? In no way. Anyone visiting the page can look at it and see the marketing materials and order it. Which leads one to believe they wrongly think the game is T. Either way, see for yourself. US Microsoft Store Website for Fallout 4

Second, Halo 5. This game (unlike the rest of the FPS in the series) is rated T. This means according to the ESRB, it should be for those who are 13 and older. Effectively, it's a "go ahead and buy this for your kid and let them play it alone it's okay" marking. If you walk into a store to get this, almost no retailer will even glance at somebody purchasing Halo 5.. Well maybe not if they were 6 and alone, the same way it would be odd if they were buying a bike and gave the clerk a hundred. Online is also trickier, for the same reason above, the payment method is rather its own age verification.

Whatever. How does the microsoftstore website handle this game? Before you can go to the page with the game or any of its marketing materials (which lie about on the Xbox website and youtube fully age unrestricted) or order it, you have to fill in that your age is 18 or over, or it blocks you. Yes, not 13 or over, 18. Which leads one to believe they wrongly think the game is M. Either way, see for yourself. US Microsoft Store Website for Halo 5

That's that then.

Forget for a minute about the at least somewhat pointlessness of age verification (age gates) online anyway. After all, it's not like an eight-year-old doesn't know to just fill in the year to the one on the bottom of the list (in this case you'd have a date of birth as 1 1 1905). It isn't as if you don't need a payment method that verifies your age anyway. So at best an age gate (whatever a game's rating) is superfluous, and indeed the first questions somebody might ask about seeing one here on this game might be "What, did you have a problem ordering?" or "Were you unable to pass the date of birth page?" Not "What's the point of an age gate for something you have to buy with a credit card?" or "Yeah, why would they have one for a T game and not an M game?"

The issue though isn't geting past the page, or age verifications themselves, or if you (as an adult or when logged in) need to be presented with one though, It's why would you ever try and age verify somebody for a T game but not for an M game. If one, why not the other? If you're going to bother, why not the one with the 17 and up "rating" and not the 13 and up "suggestion"?

Something's broken, and that something could conceivably hurt sales for the T game, and even if not, it just makes you look inept to be asking for an age for the one nobody in physical-land asks for. While leaving the one everyone in physical-land checks on alone.

Even more broken appears to be the lack of a system for finding somebody who might be able to fix it. Or really, even somebody that cares at all. Regardless of how silly it may or may not be for a customer to be concerned.

And so we call that customer hostile.

TLA and FLA, la la la la la

2015-10-29T22:05:00.002+00:00

There are a number of industry watchdog groups or industry ratings boards or even government agencies whose job is to censor others or self-censor itself. Ostensibly, the FCC ensures that broadcasts are in the public interest, the MPAA and ESRB ensures movies and video games are labeled as to content.

In the case of entities like the FCC, how they are now is in many ways quite unlike why they were created originally, but times change. Plus they are created by Congressional Act (47 U.S.C. §151 for the FCC) and so would be expected to morph and shift as government entities do, in line with the politics in effect when changes are made. That and the inherent manners that bureaucracy feeds off itself in such things.

Certainly, three-year-olds playing at recess can say anything they want, but the public interest songs on the radio need to be heavily censored for such words even at two-thirty in the morning, in case somebody's child may be listening to some gangster rap station on the radio at that time and have their young mind ruined by uncensored material. That by the way is sarcasm.

The original stated role of the FCC however is quite a bit more lofty in theory.

For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications, and for the purpose of securing a more effective execution of this policy by centralizing authority heretofore granted by law to several agencies and by granting additional authority with respect to interstate and foreign commerce in wire and radio communication, there is created a commission to be known as the “Federal Communications Commission”, which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this chapter.

That's all well and good, but that's just a TLA and governmentally created and operated. How about industry self-censors? Specifically, we'll focus on motion pictures and computer software.

The United States has a Bill of Rights, and firstmost within it is prohibition for the Federal Government to legislate religion, speech, press, assembly or petitioning of said Federal Government. The wording for the 1st is quite clear, although again in practice (further controlled by judicial interpretation of scope et al) just doesn't work as stated on the tin. Not any more and maybe never really. Still, let's go back to around 1790 and see the clarity and specificity without interference.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now one may argue that neither motion pictures or computer software is speech - and perhaps that's true. One may also argue that the people in 1790ish didn't mean anything by speech except at church pulpits, in the town square, and in written text, handbills, and newspapers; that if they had known about movies and computer games they certainly wouldn't have written anything protecting them. This second argument is of course bogus and nonsense, there's a reason the wording in the rules (Constitution and Bill of Rights) is both clear and non-specific (or if you wish vague and specific) so what they said would mean something then and also not wear out later. That it would set a precedent that could later be applied to similar concepts, much like chisel on stone is ink on paper is sound waves in grooves is spots in patterns on an LCD display is moving images is music. (Which of course music has been around for quite a while too and often has words with it.)

It's not just the words we have spelled out in the rules, the people that wrote all the material in the rules also wrote a very large amount of accompanying material. Far more exissts on the discussions and legal basis and later ramifications of having these things written just so. Purposely crafted as they ended up, rather than the many working copies that didn't make it out as written. The authors knew what they were trying to do and they wrote about it at length in general terms and to each other as they went along. They also were aware that many at the time and later would not know language well enough to get the nuances, but that they could only go so far as to make things work the way they should work even still. Modern people often seem to have this odd way of thinking of those from the past; either they were infallible super-geniuses to be held to higher standards than mere mortals, or they were idiots that had no idea of what the future might hold, possessing a severe lack of imagination. Neither of those is true. They just didn't have the same tech we do.

Be that as it all may, let's switch to now, or at least more recent.

The MPAA started out as a trade association in 1922 of the 8 most prominent studios (producing abou8t 3/4 of the movies at the time) for essentially economic purposes. Along the way, due to the hodgepodge of local laws affecting any violence or sexuality as existed in the US in the 1920s, and the often negative publicity the studios gathered from various place,the MPAA worked to standardize content. This was from the standpoint that if there was a certain standard (necessarily low) then localities wouldn't cut down films to the point where few moviegoers would to see the resulting work. The Production Code in the 30s was supported by the studios. Some stumbles followed (the Depression, World War II, various trends in the 40s and 50s and 60s) under the leadership of various men. Now, currently the self-censorship is more of a set of numbers/letters showing five grades (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) that lets people know what they can expect from a movie in case they are morally against something or don't want their children to see such things or don't want to see anything made for children. Only the last two ratings have an actual stated restriction on them; R is 'under 17 needs an adult along', NC-17 is 'nobody under 17'. The first three are more suggestions, although theaters are free to put more limits or less limits on this, and are also subject to a variety of reactions to such from either the MPAA or from consumers or activists. In the case of videos of these sold, retailers are free to set higher or lower limits as well. Either way, none of these ratings has any force of law behind them, but anyone releasing a public movie to be used under the MPAA in mainstream studio release in the US is economically and socially required to do so. Otherwise the film would be unrated, and many if not all corporate theaters would not show it. This (in the face of non-network broadcast and cable TV, and the Internet) has become less stringent and absolute as it was 5 to 20 years ago however. And as any such large group (a bureaucracy akin to a government organization in many ways, but with no force of law in and of itself) it has a life of its own.

Are film ratings by a single somewhat omni-powerful entity that is just an industry group a good thing? A bad thing? Does it not matter? If you're sitting in a theater watching interminable commercials for upcoming films, being in an R rated film and seeing previews themselves marked as all audiences, and hearing all about what the MPAA thinks is annoying to many. Yet it's what there is, and how it now works.

The ESRB is a largely different yet very similar sort of group. It never had to deal with the studio system or 1920s era morality and laws in a non-tech world, the threats to movies were never as large and widespread (recent) as the threats to games, and selling (games to individuals) isn't the same as showing (movies to the public). Otherwise, there's not too much different, in that some number of the seven full time raters in NYC sample a game from provided content forms, a render an opinion on the content of something, and so on. Thus the ESRB assigns ratings for a variety of purposes and reasons, mostly economic consumer-facing reasons. It's industry not government, self-regulatory and pervasive. The ESRB was created by the largest video game publishers (ESA) in 1994 in reaction to criticism and controversy over extreme violence (mostly) and sexual situations. Such as those things existed digitally in 1994 at least; which essentially pre-90s was in large part a non-issue, given how graphics and sound were on computers and the expense of such devices before the 90s. It wasn't until the fear of federal regulation arose in a large public noisy manner that the system went from here and there by some publishers to essentially everywhere by all of them.

The ratings start with the Rating Pending but as RP games aren't actually on sale, this doesn't really count. Then there are a bunch of letters/numbers that are essentially 'ages and up' appropriate content ; 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, 18 (EC, E, E10+, T, M, AO)

Many stores (physical or on the Internet) won't sell certain rated games to certain people, and largely do not carry unrated (non-ESRB rated) games. This isn't surprising given that most publishers are the ESRB, and don't produce them to begin with. Mostly (near universally) no major physical or digital distributions, retail or on gaming consoles, even produce AO games. This effectively removes the highest age rating from actually being one that exists.

None of these ratings have any "must" wording like R and NC-17 movies do though. They are all recommendations, yet ones that are followed by almost all legitimate retail sources of sales. This doesn't often form a problem in implementation, since just about no one lets their games get an AO rating (and most nobody will sell the very few that are) andd most sales methods filter ages to at or above 17 anyway. Stores such as Wal-Mart or Gamestop will ask for ID even for cash sales of M games (and if they feel like it even T or E10+ of course) and can or do require purchasers to be over 18 or even 21. Methods online using credit cards require some sort of identification of the cardholder; financial institutions generally have issues with providing cards to those who can't enter into contracts to pay back credit or who can't legally be a single owner of a savings account with a debit card.

Perhaps most telling in how things work. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (564 US 08-1448 2011) the US Supreme Court found (7-2 no less) that video games are protected speech. Only about one out of twenty mainstream games are rated M (and most of the other nineteen from E10+ and T) yet M rated games are a third of the highest selling and critically acclaimed. Yet still when underaged test purchasers attempt to purchase M rated games (such as those appearing questionable without subterfuge such as fake identification) only a few (one out of six or one out of eight) is able to do so; usually simply because of an error by a customer-facing employee on a procedural matter of retailer policy. Online, the entire issue of payment method is a built-in age restriction mechanism. Even before that on the demand side, there is also that the marketing of games rated T are not glamorized as to the potentially disturbing elements (like smoking cigarettes or saying heck to one's elders), and those rated M are focused only on appropriate demographics to begin with (those who are typical adults, rather than to monks and grade-school children ).

Is all this a good, bad, or indifferent thing? Why not all of them.

Some have suggested that the system is rather lopsided and confused with itself, given that a game like Halo 3 has the same rating as a game like Saint's Row 3. Then there's the entire genre of music/music edutainment/simulation rhythm games (Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DJ Hero, Band Fuse, Just Dance) that are all T, where any number of songs are either radio edits to begin with or have any the objectionable parts just not there. This is true for some lyrics even if they normally are on the radio every time they're played and the changes are a choice of the game producer or publisher and not required to receive a T rating. For illustrations of the latter, songs like Killing in the Name of are missing the end of the song in lieu of extensive editing because it would be M otherwise. On the other hand American Pie has the "good ole boys drinking and rye" and Number of the Beast is blank in the phrases of how nuclear war would affect even the most innocent. Both of the last songs are broadcast allowed, or at least they used to be. So when it comes to these games, if you are an adult and want uncensored songs there, forget it, even for the downloadable ones. That is, there is no M or nearly so material. Although in multiplayer, other players might be swearing as much as they want to, as the disclaimer notes. Just like when you were in kindergarten or college, or last night at the casino or concert. The song in the software, that is vastly different, at least before the fact. (And indeed online controls allow blocking anyone from interacting online, just in case such ruffians are about.)

Maybe this is just a case of people forgetting we all know all these words and concepts just as soon as we start realizing everything else, or maybe it's the idea that morality can be legislated and that hearing and seeing things warps ones minds. Although it's certain that learned behaviors are learned, and that humans are social animals. While likely nobody should be letting children into movies like Clockwork Orange or into events like the Republican National Convention or playing games like Grand Theft Auto IV there are ways to control such things, most of which currently work pretty well even if they are so far away from their original intent to be unrecognizable. Even if the benefit derived is inconsequential (to life on Earth) or only serves to make those overseeing such things feel as if they're doing something or to keep them out of trouble. Both perhaps.

Just remember though the next time you see some rating or another, that these things are somebody's opinion, but that they serve a purpose. Not that that purpose is always worthwhile, or that the mechanisms are always properly implemented.

Quentin Tarantino Movies

2015-10-03T19:26:00.002+00:00

I've commented on one of his movies so far at length, but what about the entire body of work?

Well, let's see. I think this is mostly it.

Love Birds in Bondage

Never heard of it before I saw it in the CV.

My Best Friend's Birthday

Also never heard of it before looking up the list.

Reservoir Dogs

I've seen this one. I just remember that it wasn't particularly interesting. I couldn't tell you anything except I guess some guy in a chair gets his ear cut or something.

Pulp Fiction

A lot of this I do remember, the only thing that stands out is that they killed poor Phil Lamar. Now, Tarantino is pretty good as the car cleaner murder guy I must say. Maybe that's sad it's the bright point. There was a shiny suitcase too. And some stupid dancing with Uma. Well, that's about it.

Four Rooms

Another unknown to me.

Jackie Brown

I heard this way okay, but haven't seen it. So I don't know.

Kill Bill 1

Saw it. Has Uma ever done anything good to great or above. As far as the lack of noteworthiness of The Bride... I guess it she was alright in it. Maybe it's rather pitful that I think she was good in some chick flick, as far as romantic comedies go. Wait, this is about KB1. It had David Caradine in it too. I think. Bad guy gangster, pluck the stone from the hand and such. Anyway. Rather forgettable. Given that I've forgotten it. Was an entire movie needed for setup? I don't know, probably not. Maybe QT was experimenting for later with Basterds. Maybe that's all he knows how to do, and how many times can you do it before you get tired and lazy and sloppy?

Kill Bill 2

Heard it was way better than the first one, but if it takes an entire movie to set up the action, maybe it's better I haven't seen it. I still remember that other overly long setup with too little in the way of results he did later in Basterds, so whatever about this one, maybe it's as aggravating.

Sin City

Dunno. Haven't seen it. Dark comic or something, everyone dies or something. Great idea? I guess. It isn't really all his movie right? Well if it's anything like Pulp Fiction, no big loss.

Grindhouse / Death Proof

His part of this was pretty good at, but rather senseless and meandering overall much of the time. I don't know what to say about the first part (slow than surprising maybe?) of it but the second part is... Odd. Rather like the Jackson/Travolta parts of Pulp Fiction in the way it felt. I don't know that entire movie (the other half not by him too) is just strange. Nothing I'd want to watch again though. Death Proof is probably entirely saved by Kurt Russell, that might be the answer to the question of how good or bad it is.

Inglourious Basterds

As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the worst movies ever made. You can read the first blog post if you want more.

Django Unchained

I heard this was pretty good, but so far nothing's made me get out and chance it. It has Jamie Foxx in it, and as good as he was in Ray, maybe that saves it (if the rest is anything like Inglrious Basterds.) Or maybe it's just an excuse to say nigger a lot in context about how fucked up slavery was and is. Either way, I'm rather partial to Dave Chappelle's version with the time-traveling pimp exacting revenge. No, I have no idea why I'm mixing a movie I haven't seen with a short sketch on a comedy show either.

The Hateful Eight

Will this break the pattern? I don't know. Will I see it? Maybe some day. Will it be like the rest of his movies so far? God, I hope not, or will hope not if I see it. Well, if it opens with a 45 minute scene about a gay psycho Nazi that already knows he's going to shoot everyone but one under the floorboards, it won't be a long watching I tell you what.

Now to some movies not by him or whatever.

Natural Born Killers

I don't know if I've heard anything, but it feels as though it really can't be much good. Maybe I'm wrong. Harrelson was good in Cheers sometimes.

From Dusk to Dawn

I liked this movie, and he plays a good psycho. Maybe he should stick to acting.

Of all the ones I've seen, this is the best film. Perhaps the only good one on the list. Given how I felt about Grindhouse itself, I can't really given credit all to Rodriguez, but maybe that one was an off day. Or maybe zombies and chicks with machinegun legs don't do anything for me. But kudos to the both of them (and of course Clooney and Chong and Keitel and Lewis)

True Romance

If only all his standoff scenes could be as good as this. Maybe I'm just misremembering it, or maybe I'm just somewhat of a fan of Christian Slater. I think QT also wrote the parts with Brad Pitt, but I don't remember anything much about the scene but that it was rather underwhelming even as a cameo or whatever it was supposed to be.

There you go.

If you like all these and more and any I've missed, that's fine. There are certain things some people like, no doubt of that. I just happen to feel the opposite way, and that's just as fine too.

It feels like five years ago all over again, again

2015-09-27T15:52:00.001+00:00

October 26, 2010

There are a lot of things that feel the same now as they did five years ago when Rock Band 3 released. Especially when it comes to Rock Band 4 for 'current gen' consoles. There's lots of self-created hype, with a lot of things just missing... Or this time, to some extent in some ways shown as wrong already. This time, we do have last time to compare it to. It might not be all that wonderful a feeling to anyone involved. Although in the world at large, and for new players in this sub-world, most people likely don't have any idea about any of this in the slightest. Perhaps it doesn't matter then except to a few.

I myself would like to see Harmonix succeed here, but they seem to be their own worst enemy sometimes. Plus no one person or any group of wishes is going to sell a large number of copies of anything, especially in the face of all the game and life competition. RB4 isn't even out yet, and they've already started talking about what great things they'll add with their first update in December. If the game was really ready to release we ponder, one might think these sorts of things with any high demand would already be present. They've also created a "street team" of 500 players (who host parties to play, and otherwise do a lot of things no casual player does, and certainly no non-gamer does) by bribing them with a free "band in a box" set to promote the game... promote it to people who already play it? Maybe that's a good demographic to target, to get sales and preorders going. Or maybe it just makes them look desperate a month before release.

We've already talked about their initial failure to provide a game-only preorder out of the gate, which reasons seem obvious already. Your old instruments won't work if they're not wireless. If certain information is correct, many users don't have wireless instruments at all, and those that do have some, they don't work because wireless instruments aren't as hardy or just don't have the longevity wired ones do. If you do have wireless instruments, you likely got them for RB3 one imagines, maybe those work.

On the other hand, there's a 'last-gen' console sitting here, and some total of 20 or so ish games that go with it. They all work with all the instruments. So if you want to fire up some tracks and watch the game highways, all those songs can be played right now. Nothing to buy, nothing to worry about for compatibility. Just older, sure. Not as much broadcast yourself on the old consoles as the new (at least not without specific extra external hardware) or a number of other things. But it all works, and it works now.

Last time, five years ago, we gave Harmonix the benefit of the doubt at what appeared to be a rather hit-or-miss marketing style, a lack of solid information, failures to answer most things about "later" and a half-hearted or lack of promotion of the most enticing and exciting features. All coupled with a shortage of peripherals. Not that we should blame anyone for not wanting to produce a large number of peripherals that might not sell. Yet when you produce them anyway even after the buzz fails to materialize, and you've cut the price of the game to $20, and MIDI guitars (Fender Strat guitar and controller or yourock or the mustang semi-guitar) are often essentially nowhere to be seen, and many people are only interested because they can hook up their edrums / vdrums / acoustic drums with MIDI triggers. I wonder how much Fender and Mad Catz and the parent companies ate on these peripherals anyway (mini wireless keyboard, standard plastic instruments).

Whatever actually happened last time? Last time, many of us chalked this all up to being sold by Viacom / MTV games, and the general stagnation of the game genre, and forces beyond game creator control. The market. The peripheral makers. The game publisher. The churn, and supposed publisher demands to release a game that pretty clearly wasn't itself fully ready (much less the peripherals), and a lack of demand such as show by Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock sales. That must be the reason for the situation, we said, cut them slack we justified.

And yet here five years later, there's a lot of the same, when it seems all choices are in the hands of Harmonix. Which very much makes it seem like they are their own problem. Although many of the constraints on what can be done are in the consoles, true, but inconsistencies between the Xbox 360 and One and PS 3 and 4 have been known (internally and externally in various ways) for quite a while. If you know the wired instruments (including the MIDI Pro Adapter) won't work, and you don't think they can or you don't plan to try or you'll look into it in a few months or years? Whose fault is that then.

So let's see what we have. Your old instruments have to be wireless (and if you have a One you need an adapter, which they've discounted even though you can't get one yet). None of your wired items will work, except the mic (but they've got a way better one now of course). There is no support for any of the "Pro Instruments" (guitars and keyboards). There's no support for any advanced drum kits without the MPA or if the set is compatible with the One or PS4 and how many of them that are compatible are there? Nobody much is saying. Maybe there's none to talk about.

There's other news all on Harmonix. The availability of whatever other hardware may or may not be available, that's next year. Support for whatever might be supported, that might get worked on later. Next year sometime maybe. They have little solid information, except we do have what happened last time.

It's almost sad, it's at least a little infuriating, it's seemingly business as usual. If most everyone that knows anything about it is doing what we are, it's a failure. When will anyone know? Maybe everyone knows already, but in a month, and in the three or so months after, the proof will out. By next year we'll know.

Wait 'till next year, it'll all be okay. Whichever way that is.

Misc.

2015-09-12T16:23:00.000+00:00

I hadn't decided what to write about next, so I figured why not a few paragraphs about some things that might not need an entire post each. I don't know if this needs to be done, but I felt like it. So about like usual.

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There's a recent bunch of stories about a clerk pushing back at the law you might have seen a bit of here and there. Not too surprising, just as a couple of Supreme Court justices said or suggested in Obergefell v. Hodges (PDF of actual decision) That there would be people that "fought back" in both legal and illegal ways, in some form of what might be refereed to as civil disobedience. See, The Court realizes that just because they decide something, not everyone is going to agree, not everyone is going to follow, and that they don't suddenly change social opinions developed over time in an instant. That even SCOTUS can't determine how people think or react, especially when they judicially change the definition of a social term. (As they also mention in the arguments and decision)

This is all rife with heavy strong honest opinion about what is right and what is fair and what is equal. It's unknown if anyone is in the wrong here, but there are plenty of things wrong with a lot of their methods. Strong opinions on personal matters that are nobody's business but the participants, but also have an impact of some sort on society. Social rules that societies make for themselves, ach, it gives me a headache..

The story is in general quite boring -- unless you yourself are on one of the two sides or are otherwise emotionally attached to the story and on which side. Or have taken the time to go to the place and demonstrate one way or another. However, one of the interesting things is watching "the sides" react to each other, where the intolerance and hyperbole and frenetic actions go both directions and none of those smack dab in the middle see it in themselves, probably. Good old American anger at what other people think and do when the ugly unfair idiots don't agree with the way somebody else sees it.

Of course, one thing that is true is that even with the decision by SCOTUS, the laws themselves in the various states and localities haven't yet been rewritten to take into account what was decided. The Court has spoken, the legislatures haven't yet reacted. It's going to take a while until nobody can fail to follow what was held: That the States must "...license a marriage between two people of the same sex and .... recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State." The fact is that the laws themselves don't yet by and large (well, universally nation-wide) reflect this interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Wait a few generations, it'll be fine.

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There's a person (some people) on YouTube making a lot of videos about (against? I can't quite decide) the game Destiny. I find it rather odd that they (the videos) exist as they do, with the content that they have. After all, if you are watching the vids, you likely have the game and have been playing it, which also likely means you'll continue playing and buying things for it, or you've decided on your own it's too much work and you're not going to continue. Too much work, as in grinding for materials, leveling up, improving weapons and armor. As in finding raid teams, strike teams, and so on. Or maybe you just play it and don't worry about such things, who's to say.

On the flip side of that, if you don't play Destiny or aren't a gamer, you likely have never seen the vids or didn't bother watching them because they were of no interest to you. The crux of the vids is something like that the content being sold (the DLC, DownLoadable Conent, extra material) costs money, and that the material has been on the disc already, or that all that's being added is fluff. Character dances, emotes, shading, capes, and so on. Certainly cosmetic things aren't important (stat-wise) , but are important in that people buy them. Important to seller and buyer even if not to those that are neither. Clever marketing might infinitely help sell but doesn't force the purchase of, things are worth what a willing buyer will pay, and so on. But for those familiar with the game, they know these things. For those not as familiar, they play and don't care enough to look into it or don't care enough to think about it, or just don't play to begin with.

The shorter version of the cause behind the effects is, as I understand it, a great number of the creative team (including key people and/or visionaries) left or were fired before the game came out. Before it was finished. And so much of what was supposed to be extra great about the game went away too. Or they simply overreached their capacities, regardless if that was due to the structure of Bungie or the demands of Activision or the timing of when the game needed to be released for economic purposes. One probably can't argue the commercials are awesome even if the gameplay itself isn't so much.

The vids are (to me) even more rambling than my own writing is, pretty similar between the vids and their content and context, and mostly don't have much of a point. They're set almost always against a backdrop of the game being played in Multiplayer, but without the gameplay being linked to what's being said, just a backdrop. I don't even know if they're stock or a montage of the best sessions, or if the gameplay is actual player against low level bots, or if somebody's purposely letting others dominate them along with flairful editing. Plus I've never been able to finish watching any of them, it just loses purpose and interest and I have played the game. I wouldn't imagine non-gamers would even bother glancing at them.

Anyway, if you haven't seen them and want to, just search on Bing or Yahoo or Google or whatever for something like youtube don't buy destiny or youtube destiny ripoff That will also find you text articles on the subject on the first page of results along with a smattering of these types of vids. Odds are though you've watched them or you don't care to. Still, the vids explain it all in ways nobody can, just if you look at them, be aware of what you are seeing is usually pretty slanted one way or the other. (There's some sort of agenda there.)

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Speaking of games, the rest of this year and next, depending on what schedules might get moved or not, is looking busy. Here's a short list (not necessarily in order though; and certainly not everying or equally as awaited). They represent a lot of material. Halo Guardians (Halo 5), Fallout 4, Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, Star Wars Battlefront, Fable Legends, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, The Division, Doom, Dishonored 2, Gears of War 4, Uncharted 4, Final Fantasy XV, Mirrors Edge Catalyst.

No, I'm not planning on playing all of them nor on release.

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A game I didn't mention is Rockband 4. This is the first redone "plastic instruments" game for this generation of consoles.

Yes, there is also Guitar Hero Live, but it uses a fully new controller and method of playing (a new thing to learn how to do) and has another way of getting new songs that's interesting looking. It's not vocals or drums or even as far as I know bass guitar. So not really so much a continuation but a new style.

As far as "RB4" though, when RB3 came out for the last generation of consoles, there were a lot of mistakes that I chalked up to the impending selling of everything by Viacom/MTV games and all that churn. For example the lack of promotion and availability of the pro instruments. Followed by the rapid price drop of the game itself

Well things started out badly for the new version too -- and Harmonix owns itself now. It feels much the same way it did before though. The word was the old ~~instruments~~ controllers would work, but the initial preorders were only for packages that included new controllers, you couldn't just preorder the game. You had to get a "guitar" or "drums/mic/guitar" with it. Well, okay, it's more like "sort of" or "pretty much" drums because you actually have to play them, but that's not the point, it's that you couldn't get just the game.

Well that's changed, you can get the game alone via preorder. With the PS4 that's it, but with the XB One, it costs more ($80 versus $60) because you need an adapter to use the old controllers. Which isn't exactly quite true, because what they mean (and which explains no game-only preorder) is wireless controllers.

That's great, not, because of all the things I have (including the MIDI adapter for the drums/guitar/keyboard) are wired. Except okay, there are two Guitar Hero wireless guitars (GH Aerosmith and World Tour) but of course they don't fully work. (The detachable necks don't last very long.) There's also the wireless GHWT drums, which I suppose is okay for those willing to settle for it, assuming that works. Even though it's not a mainstream more like a real set of drums set of drums. (Three pads and two cymbals in close proximity, and support for two bass pedals). For everyone with edrums/vdrums that use the MIDI adapter, and for those with IONS, and everyone with wired guitars, the word is that they're not supporting them at release. In general, that appears to be not quite true, as it doesn't seem "at release" is going to be changed to ever. No news is bad news. That is, if something's not happening, it's more likely it will never happen. Even if that's not the case, the odds are, especially if things go like they did last time. The only thing that might change that is that if any interest in the game is from those with real instruments (essentially drums only) and perhaps that's why there was the addition of game-only preorders and some other actions to generate some buzz. I'm imaging though the numbers aren't very good, but also wonder if the other numbers are enough to force anything to happen. That's all exceptionally vague. And if you don't play probably not understandable on an deep level.

Anyway, if you want to sing you're golden though, because all the existing wired mics (which are of course not controllers at all) are supported as is. Allegedly. Of course, the old mics don't have the new features (the new features that make the process smooth and more like singing I could suppose) just like the new guitar controller automatically adjusts the lag and is more reliable for launching double points.

All in all then, this is something to watch, because lots of people just aren't going to get the game if they can't use their still working existing controllers or if they can't use their drums. Will that matter? I don't think anyone knows, but I think Harmonix is quite worried they've focused on the wrong demographic and worried people will think they've been trying to hide that customer aspect.

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One of my earlier posts was quite a bit a lot about vaping. I failed to mention that I have "eliquid" available. Cheap. These are 20 ml bottles, so double the size of the more commonly found 10 ml. They predominantly vegetable glycerin, so they're pretty thick; some prefer this, some don't. There's a choice of six water-based (no sugar, no oil, etc) flavors. Some of the flavors are more intense than others. The flavors are apple, menthol, cherry, vanilla, cocoa and champagne. Which is also pretty much the order of "how strong". The menthol is kind of more like minty and the champagne more like a tuity-fruity. But these are the flavors I use so they're the ones I have.

The ones with 0 are essentially 100% VG (the flavoring is absorbed, but you could say 90 VG 10 Flavor/water) and are $2.50 each.

The ones with 10 are essentially 80% VG and 20% PG (or 70VG/10FW/20PG) and are $3.00 each.

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What else is there. The start of some kind of election seems to be winding up I guess, but everying that's talking is pretty boring when they're not being annoying. I can't see voting for any of them, but I supposed someone will.

No, I like them

2015-08-16T16:56:00.003+00:00

Some might have gotten the impression that I don't like Episodes I to III - that is not the case. I like them just fine. Usually when I watch all six of them, I start in numerical order I to VI, true. After all, why not watch them chronologically, and why not save the best for last.

The first three (in numerical order), the second set of three (in when they were made and released), the prequel trilogy, Anakin's story, the not as good ones; however you want to put it. The thing about Ep. I II III is that they are Star Wars. That's reason enough to at least like them, they've got that something about them.

Sure, for I-III a lot of people really despise some of the characters, or hate some of the fully CGI aspects, or wonder how everyone could have been so naive, or whatever. They are said to be too too long, there's not enough plot development, the first one was far too done on purpose as a B-Movie, they waited too long to make them, they just weren't like the original trilogy. All true to some extent - but they're Star Wars! I certainly share the opinion I-III told a story we didn't necessarily need to know the details of, that Vader was way cooler as a villain we knew little or nothing about, and that the whole story could have been rather random and whatever in that the details didn't actually mean anything because they were all essentially unknowns.

Although on the other hand, knowing how this and that happened, and how these and those tied into other things, that's kinda cool. I don't mind Jar-Jar and at times thought it rather funny, although they really messed him over as it went on... Well of course Palpatine messed over everyone really badly (manipulating everyone with the dark side and instituting an evil empire). And as far as doing bad things, you don't get much worse than eliminating a number of younglings and force-choking out your spouse. (Well except until you help blow up an entire planet that is.) And really, when it comes to the real villain Sidious, if you're cloaking yourself from such as Yoda and Mace, they all worked pretty well given they didn't know who or what the threat was. It's difficult to be calm and to try and make decisions when nothing is clear. That all could be argued about for hours though, as I'm sure many pro and con websites and blogs and magazines have.

For that and other things, a lot of it comes down to how much slack somebody will or won't cut. Christensen and Portman had something impossible to try and live up to for example . I'm sure they did their best in the many constraints, but they simply are not Ford and Fisher. Beyond that, these weren't the same writers working in the same way, not the same creators working in a certain time and being a certain age. This just isn't the world of or the technology of the late '70s and early 80s. These weren't movies made that put science fiction back on the map, they were products of the movie-making and competition of the late '90s and early '00s They can only be what they are, and if one doesn't take allowances for it, there's only one real outcome we should expect. If you hope for more, it's easy to be more disappointed about what you get, and that makes some people bitter and angry. (And not in the way a Miss Manners review of tESB just doesn't get it at all to begin with.)

All in all though, when it comes to EPI-III, I thought the prequel was fine. There was a lot of great stuff in it. If we compare it to the originals, of course it comes up short. Whatever it was, there is a lot to like about this last set of movies, and then add onto it that it was Star Wars. That allows us to ignore a lot of things, as we have to do anyway with fiction set in another place and time. Do they have an aspect of nostalgia to them, a bit, but as we've gone on at length about, they can only have so much of it. Given what we know can't be there, it makes it a lot easier to accept it however little it can be. Because.

Why Star Wars Episode VII can't be even as good as Episode V

2015-04-18T20:53:00.001+00:00

There was some chatter recently at some point about how the next Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens is going to be not just as good as The Empire Strikes Back was. No, not just as good as - better than. That's essentially impossible.

Complicating this claim is who it might be it's being made about. Somebody who saw the original Star Wars in a theater on release year when they were ten? (Twenty? Forty?) The people that made the first movies IV-VI? (The people that made the last three I-III? Are making these three VII to IX?) Perhaps a twelve-year-old who first watched Episodes I-VI in order, numerical story-chronological order, just last year for the first time. Maybe an eighty-year-old who first watched IV-VI then I-III in release-chronological order just today for the first time. Somebody who started in on Episode I as an eighteen-year-old, saw I-III and who has never gone back and watched IV-VI. Somebody who hasn't ever seen any. Somebody who watched a random one, hated it, and didn't watch any more.

Instead is the claim not about who will think the newest one is better - but that on some sort of imagined objective basis, VII will just simply be a better movie than V was. Not how much it makes, as that isn't necessarily (and often isn't) a particularly good gauge of the quality, or what the fans think of it, or anything else. Such as that out of the existing six movies, Episode I is (in an absolute-dollars in-theaters box-office-take sense) the highest-grossing domestically - likely VII will take that over, no matter what, it being the first movie in a number of years. It's pretty certain this movie will indeed draw huge numbers of people for a while everywhere it's released, and make a lot of money. So, no, not what it earns. Better as in on some notional trusted qualified film expert opinion of movie quality, or what officially-sanctioned top-tier fans say about it, or using the sliding scale of motion picture merit system they secretly use at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Better in an absolute objective measurable sense that doesn't exist.

As far as better in the actual world to somebody or another though, to and for whom would it be better? That's a question. To be better, as in be superior in general overall on most any scale, and regardless of how that superiority is measured. (Say, gets the most votes on a majority of variables in random phone sampling of some number of questions of this movie compared to the the other one. However that would be done.) Let's say then that the claim is VII is better to those who also saw IV when it came out. Who has watched all six so far as they were released. Who has been a fan of (or even disliked or hated one or more of) the six movies that currently exist in public. Regardless if that person today forty-four (6 in 1977) or one-hundred-fifteen (78 in 1977).

A person that's seen all six movies so far in the order in which they were released around release, they will think Episode VII is better than Episode V.

Not likely.

Sure, always in motion is the future. How good or bad this new movie is "in everyone's opinion" and what it's better or worse than on some enjoyment meter, not a fact. If this newest Star Wars movie is better, after some comparative analysis or another of opinions, that's not a done deal yet at all. Since the movie isn't even out yet, it's not been established that it is fully without doubt impossible that it can or will be better. Better, to whatever extent something subjective can be superior or inferior to something else subjective, to somebody somewhere be that from one person to everyone currently in existence on this planet of ours in this galaxy so very near. Even to somebody that doesn't particularly enjoy science fiction or action or anything but nonfiction.

Here though are some of the reasons that at least highly suggest this claimed improvement can't be accomplished. Reasons to consider in examining the contentions that VII FA will be better or can't even be as good as V ESB was.

First what we might call a little background, somewhat about ESB and about SW the movie before it and about those after ESB in our galaxy timespace; RotJ, PM, AotC, RotS.   Episode V was a sequel after all. A sequel to Episode IV, which wasn't of course a sequel to anything, because Episodes I and II and III were all backrevs. To put it another way, the "prequel trilogy" was stories that really could have been about anything, as long as it ended eventually in something like the ways we already knew it ended.

So ESB was a sequel, and more so, it was a sequel in a time when sequels were almost without fail considered only a money-grubbing recipe for disaster. Sequels, a lack of creativity causing one to not come up with something new. A story drawn on too long to fit into a single motion picture. At least in the eyes of many in the industry, common logic was more along the lines that sequels were just tawdry. More to the point, assumed to be (and often ending up) as worse, inferior, not as good as the originals. At least for single stand-alone non-serialized material, which at the time before its success, SW wasn't. The movie itself at the time was a gamble, and story-wise, that ending is pretty solid regardless; good guys win, there's a ceremony, nothing to worry about.

After the success of SW though (which depending on metric, is still the second highest domestic-grossing inflation-adjusted movie of all time) we got a sequel. And what a sequel;   ESB was very much none of that "common logic". At the least even in hindsight. No, it was an improvement in a number of ways, while still retaining much of the charm of SW. Not everyone got it, any more than they got the first one. In 1983 though, how many people who wanted to see ESB walked out of the theater in the middle, or even how many left grumbling or talking about how they were disappointed? We might guess the chances are slim to none, and Slim left town.

Which pretty much dovetails into one of the first reasons VII almost certainly won't be better than V, even if it gets close to being as good. It's not a direct sequel to a story that captured the imagination of an entire generation. Episode VII isn't going to be what came before and then continued. It isn't Episode V about the people from Episode IV.

The adventures of Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, R2D2 and C-3PO. Our mysterious evil telekinetic magician in the black armor. Actors like Peter Cushing and Alec Guiness with the non-uber-famous-at-the-time others.... Well of course in ESB one of their characters is dead and the other is a ghost, but let's talk about SW then as more background to a sequel sorts of things that are pertinent here.

In May 1977 when Star Wars was released (that is, before it became Episode IV A New Hope) there was really nothing much at all like it on the big screen and maybe even otherwise. Science Fiction wasn't like that. There were by and large no special effects at the time that looked as real. Even now 35 years later, one might say the look has held up, it still looks real. Not real real certainly, but real in a way many other special effects of the time didn't even much hold up - even when they were current, much less decades later. In addition, Science Fiction at the time was not a thing (by and large) so there wasn't anything to compare it to. Especially when it came to movies, even more especially when those movies drew and drew and drew crowds. Drew big over a long period of time. The movie itself, 121 minutes where you don't even want to get up and miss a minute, engrossing in so many ways. Also where in large part, the special effects and the science fiction were unimportant. At least not at all the real point of the story.

Will VII be able to roll how things are today back to how they were in those times in the late 1970s and early 1980s in movies? Some hope so, it seems they'll be disappointed. December release date? Disney? 2015? Where's the movie that lead into this one, what sort of buzz is there about before? Not much except the buzz that this movie (and the next two) "must be better than" the last three movies? Sure, episodes I-III were telling a story we already knew, and they were movies that started in 1999 after a 16 year break. That last story we got ended 10 years ago - and it of course doesn't lead into this next movie and story. Rather, it lead into the first movie and story that predated it. We are getting a non-sequel and we are getting it thirty-two actual years after the fact (RotJ 1983).

Too, established cultural phenomenons now are not rising ones back then. Because when we talk about the first movie (that ESB was an extension of) we are talking about what was a new thing, not what we've been waiting 32 years to get back to. So we ask, what was it about what led into ESB. Sure, plainly, it was SW three years before it. That setup doesn't exist decades after release,  but it did 3 years after it came out. Us? We don't have anything from 2012 that leads into FA like SW in 1977 lead into ESB in 1980.

For SW / A New Hope / Episode IV we had such as mothers taking their teenage sons to the movie, not just once, but numbers of times. Few theaters showed it, you had to go someplace to see it. And then, wait in line, to buy tickets, to wait in line, to go see it. Then see it you did, after waiting for it and anticipating that for hours. On a gigantic screen with the new Dolby sound added in for extra benefit. So SW was amazing; new, unique. Even though it was Samurai, and Serial, and David against Goliath; it was unprecedented. Not just as a story, not just as movie-craft, but in who went to see it over and over again. We might suggest that it wasn't just some Science Fiction demographic that made it the top grossing movie of the time, it was society. It was a fully unexpectedly different target demographic that started it all.

Thus once the first established things,  ESB was more that what was before it. Better and the same. Informative, filled with tension, action-packed. Even clearer fancier special effects yet that still didn't steal the scene, another a science fiction backdrop that didn't punch you in the skull about how SCIFI it was. In an age before cell phones and the Internet, after (only?) 3 years of waiting for a sequel. Three years, and without much of a constant barrage of marketing and talk and such as we get now, or at least not in the same ways. Everyone got to see what was next for their plucky heroes. ESB at a time when George Lucas is still in his 30s (36 in 1980) and has the funds to do an updated deal. Without the years to dull everything creatively and without the time and fame to cause the performers to move away onward and upward. Compared to IV, V had a better look, faster pace, continuing with the interesting character development and adding new worlds. What's up with Vader, why does he want Luke so badly he'll stop at nothing. Dogfights in the asteroids. Escaping away with the rest of the trash. Love. Conflict. Camaraderie. Mentors. Rivals. Enemies. All both interpersonal and on a galactic scale.... Well, you certainly know what's in it.

From the start where the probes are being deployed, to the end where the hospital ship is flying off, it's our familiar friends from three years before, some new ones, all ending on a huge crescendo of a cliffhanger. In between, the subtext of the romance between Leia and Han, with and without wondering about Luke, who is off on new adventures alone weaved into old adventures with the rest. The jaw-dropping slap in the face super surprise about why the Emperor and Vader even care about young Skywalker. How do you follow up on the secret that was revealed there? How.

Now, what is there though? There the kids. How about a new program to restore order. Some old and new enemies and fears to upset the balance.    Whatever's been going on in The New Republic. The next generation of Jedi. Yeah, well. That's cool and everything. But most all the heroes and villains, most everyone's new. The players, old and new, their names are bigger. Perhaps not all of them, but maybe we remember them all from other things first. Certainly, the questions and expectations are vastly different. The question isn't what's going to happen to and between Luke, Han, Leia. The curiosity isn't about how much more awesome will Episode V be than Episode IV was. No, it's comparisons to the last trilogy, and what we're asking here, 1983 to 2015, how will the start of this third trilogy compare to the middle of the first trilogy.

What else. The budget and tech are 2014, does it look like everything else? Will it all be teal and orange now. Have we made the CGI look like anything other than CGI. Do the ships still fly right-side up.    Will we have other sets of comedy-relief like J-JB and Watto, both more covertly demeaning and far less entertaining than our 'droids ever were. Will we have almost infallible villains like Palpatine, heroes blasted into space like Mace, OMFG they killed Qui-Gon surprise, all coupled with villains so perplexingly inept they will let their enemy jump out of a tube and then just stare while they get cleaved in twain horizontally. Will there be greedy inscrutable space corporations. Will there be crazy names like Dooku and Tyranus, and why did they do that to poor Christopher Lee anyway. Why didn't we get more about the end of the Emperor's rein in spring 1986 Movies about after the second Death Star gets destroyed, why not a film somewhat akin to Zahn's The Thrawn Trilogy in 1991-1993. Why did we get Anakin's overly long origins (and a sad tale of a fall from grace due to the trickery of another) from 1999-2005. Or just that the Vader in IV to VI was much more interesting, leave it alone. None of those things we got in I-III existed before 1999, and one can easily suggest such additions and background information doesn't add to the mystique and sense of wonder, regardless if you're 8 or 80.

Those and more. Not just the questions about if Disney or not, Kathleen Kennedy or not, or if/how/when/why they're going to mess things up... Just because well that's what they do. How about Jeffrey Jacob Abrams, a lot might hinge on that. He's done a lot of good things, perhaps one might say some awesome ones. Although some of them have ended before their time properly (like Lost and Alias) and we could also ask well how involved was he day-to-day in any of the past projects, in the nitty gritty, giving the signature spin on things or not. (Unlike say where when Tim Burton is anywhere at all involved in something, you know without a doubt that it is going to look and feel and act and be exceedingly Burtonish.) The people in charge of Star Wars movies corporate-wise might have taken a lot of control here from those such as directors and costumers and artists apparently, such as removing the impact of some number of the helpers and cronies of those that are involved in actually creating the movies. Yes, all that control or lack thereof may or may not be a good thing, but it's something now that is still a mystery. Does it add, take away, or not matter? It's possible management might have ended up taking away good while adding not so good. Yet any such questions about JJ (or any others involved in directing and producing and artisticking) might all boil down to a simpler mix of flavors. A more distilled question that likely nobody can answer yet -- is the creative team for VII at least on par with the one with V in content, context, and implementation. Can the people doing things for VII be at least a similar fit as Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett, Richard Marquand and others were. Perhaps we might also ask similar things of the people on the business and managerial sides, and how that all might impact the creative aspects. Or ask if the new stars of this new story can compare to the first stars Hamill, Ford, Fisher. Jones, Prowse, Anderson. Guinness. That goes for even the people (and/or CGI) that are returning as well. Well, whatever the questions or answers, they aren't the same ones anyone much in the public would have been asking about V. Not the same at all, regardless of whatever went on behind the scenes back in the early 1980s. In retrospect, which we didn't have then to compare anything to anyway. At least nothing much to compare to to begin with, almost certainly not using media and communication methods that no longer exist in the ways they did then, using methods now that didn't at all exist then back then.

We might also go elsewhere movie-wise, content-wise, and ask if the recent Star Trek reboot movies were better than the past, TV or movie. Ask if anyone could at all make some claim this new everything was superior to the old universe. How does that sort of question potentially apply to VII versus V? Given that we're looking at some similar elements, and some exact ones, even if it's just movie-making parts in who and how, there's a correlation of some sort. Yet also very different. Here with Episode VII we are not rebooting, we are continuing with a new story that contains elements of the past ones, including some of the original actors/characters returning. There's no real comparison between things then it seems. Our three Heroes of the Galactic Republic are not too much like a time-traveling Vulcan science officer plopped into a situation with a time-traveling megalomaniac that has vastly supreme anger issues and a bunch of illogic, since he can you know travel in time but has forgotten that. With TFA, there's nothing like a reworked backstory to the established timeline of a 1960s television show and followup movies from 1979 to 1994 and after. No real comparison, but we could ask if Abram's vision for the new was as good as that of the old at least, maybe. How much influence is there though? Might any of those sorts of questions or answers apply here.... Likely not, although like the other questions, nobody much in the public will actually know that until potentially at least December 18th 2015. Probably not until later, over the days, weeks, months, years, after the first public showing of the entire movie to the entire public. Perhaps not until VIII, and maybe even not until a few years after IX.

Maybe the question of better just all ends up being one sort of a question instead. Can a 2015 first-of-three movie about new people set decades later top what was expected and looked forward to with the 1980 second-of-three movie continuing a specific story? Maybe the answer is one and simpler as well. Probably not unless they have actually figured out how to recreate nostalgia in the minds of the audience. Discovered how to replicate how we thought and reacted thirty-five years ago to a sequel to a new and the unique thing in the world of the late 70s and early 80s.

I certainly hope that all these people are able to somehow recreate either the magic we remember, or even just that we think we remember. Whatever mindset we all go into this with, and regardless of box-office, I do hope that. I just don't think they can. Yet perhaps I'm like Tarkin in the opposite, and I vastly underestimate their chances.

Pyramids

2015-04-04T20:15:00.003+00:00

There are pyramids of all shapes and sizes all over the world. We're going to write about some of them here, the most famous of them (we in the West might say).

In a country currently known as Egypt (Ararb Republic of Egypt, Gomhoreyyet Maṣr el-ʿArabeyya) there are a number of pyramids, depending on how you count them, some hundred and fifty of them. The oldest (as far as we know) are in Saqqara, with the Pyramid of Djoser estimated as currently being about 4,600 years old. We'll focus on the pyramids in Giza though.

The three largest pyramids (The Great Pyramids) in the Giza Necropolis are Khufu's (Great Pyramid of Giza) Khafre's (sometimes Sphinx Temple) and Menkaure's (the smallest of the three).

Why, well "Cheops Pyramid on Egypt's Giza Plateau" is the last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the World, after all, and the three making up The Great Pyramids rather go together.

Just to note before we start. These are mostly just some thoughts, not always some sort of outline. Also, a number of the comments below are not necessarily meant to only specifically apply to The Great Pyramids, or even to only pyramids found in Egypt.

In considering The Great Pyramids, the only logical reasonable discussion involves attributing the motivations, planning, organizing and construction to humans. To the indigenous peoples of the Earth working in groups over some number of decades or perhaps even centuries; over some number of generations.

As far as the technology, the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations (and later the Greeks) had some sort of what we could call "advanced engineering" capacity. That's say as far back as 4,000 years ago, and before. As has been said too, multi-story palaces are their own proof.

When it comes to the blocks used to make these pyramids (The Great Pyramids) they were heavy. We might say they ranged in weight from 5,000 to 160,000 pounds, or 2.5 to 80 tons. Certainly it's possible though (as it has been demonstrated by their existence) to make and move some large numbers of large stone blocks even in conditions not exactly conducive to doing such. Given the time and the inclination, what couldn't be done?

Now, there are a number of later more recent pyramids in Egypt and elsewhere (that are more clear in their construction in many cases) that have essentially fallen apart from the mere passage of time. However, the Great Pyramids have not. (Hardier than that even. One anecdote is that in the late 1100s AD when Saladin's son Al-Aziz Uthman attempted to have Menkaure's torn down, the results of the effort over a few months were naught more than a big gash on the north face of the structure.) That The Great Pyramids still exist largely intact only tends to show that whatever they knew in 2,000 or 3,000 BC it was enough to build something that wasn't going to fall apart.

How were the blocks moved though? A lot of people dragging them over sand that had been partially solidified by others pouring large amounts of water on the ground. (We don't need to make up large magical heat machines turning the sand to glass, although it's certainly more preferable to the imagination for some.) Another way, having a cradle of some sort to make the resulting block/cradle combination rollable, along with watered sand, a few dozen people (or a few dozen thousands overall) and a lot of time. We can only guess based upon what some say and what some have found in the way of equipment. It's difficult to say exactly, because while enormous stone structures do last thousands of years, the mechanisms and tools and visible results of the methods don't last anywhere near that long.

One curiosity of The Great Pyramids (the three largest) are laid out in ways on the ground that are quite perplexing. And awesomely interesting. Not only are they each (like many other pyramids) aligned to cardinal directions with an almost eerie accuracy, but the three taken together as a whole seem to mimic various aspects of various constellations as might have been seen theoretically as far back as some twelve thousand years ago. (10,500 BC if we consider something like Orion's Belt) . However, some of these ideas and opinions rely upon looking at The Pyramids from below or above, we might say mirroring or flipped. It's all guesswork though, such as the idea there is a panleonian lost civilization in there somewhere. Or that these pyramids are mostly just large books detailing a great deal of mathematical information.

At the least curious, in that we also have the shafts in Khufu's and some of the ideas about them and how they might be "pointing" at aspects of Ursa Minor and Sirius and so on. What some find more interesting though, are the "doors" within, that are essentially unseeable and unreachable. (The ones in the Queen's Chamber were bricked up until 1872 when they were found - guessed at and located by what likely amount to sheer luck.) The shafts have been reached recently though, by using robots and fibre-optic cable, items are nothing anyone had prior to their first uses starting in the early 1990s.

Moreso, these four shafts (hidden unnoticeable closed shafts we might say) are not in any pyramid before or after. And the two lower shafts appear to only go nowhere. Polished limestone of the exterior type fitted with copper at the ends 20 feet from the outside. So on and so forth.

Even more to the point about the shafts. Or at least the lower ones. Sometimes they're called air shafts, but as we've said not just closed inside they're not open outside. Short of some pneumatic acrobatics, or something else we don't know, that's unclear. Even if we go thinking about symbolism or start poking around in religious beliefs circa 3,000 BC and thereabouts. Or by making up magic, or proposing technology that would be impossible to have on this planet even a few decades ago, much less a few thousand or tens of thousands. (The religious answer, with or without The Book of the Dead, appears the only logical one, but there you go attributing modern ideas to the ancients.) For the upper smaller shafts, that might be another set of odder questions, even if they do go outside.

Perhaps it's akin to what we say about the moon landings in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the simple easy true answer is that we had the technology to do it, but not the technology to fake it. Not a very sexy answer though.

Rather than what the shafts are or how they work or why there were put there? What is even more interesting potentially are the questions revolving around the practicality of inserting these shafts, however straight (or curving around other areas internal to Khufu's) or closed off anything is or isn't. We also skip across the question and problem of actually getting all these stones that comprise The Great Pyramids into place, via whatever ramps or such we might suggest were used in some manner somehow. (Actually, we're not even going to cover any of the varied guesses and hypotheses on how the building blocks of these pyramids got into their final places and actually created pyramids.)

When it comes to the shafts themselves, how does one pre-plan and pre-build the components of the shafts (the spaces or channels without material in them) on all the blocks - and in the proper positions and order in the blocks - before putting the multi-ton blocks in place? Who could even do so today even? An easier answer might be that the "missing materials" that creates the shafts were removed after the blocks were in place. That the blocks were put in whole, and during the placing process before moving on to more blocks being placed, channels were cut. Which is rather just another set of questions to answer of how that was done; but it seems a more reasonable (simpler) answer than the shafts being "dug" before the blocks were put in place. Which probably means it's not true Another even simpler answer is that all you need are two things. A flat block (the floor) and on top of it another block that has a groove or channel cut into the middle of it. Say, a roughly 7 in x 7 in (or 5 to 9 inches as they vary) counter-sunk square space going along the center of one long set of blocks. Air, light, water, energy, spirit. Religion and random. (There are also questions about why both north and south and upper and lower that get piled on after that.)

Either way (whichever way) The Great Pyramids are an engineering wonder, each a project of such magnitude that even today we'd be hard-pressed to accomplish, even with all our technology and machinery. Once we start considering these shafts in one of the pyramids though, that already difficult project becomes an order of magnitude (at least!) larger. One might even call such additions an engineering nightmare, no matter how they were actually planned and carried out or for what reasons. That there are shafts in one pyramid, and that there are doors in two of these shafts, and that the "doors" at the ends in both north and south shafts from the Queen's Chamber are equally distant from each other. That just all makes it more and more seem like somebody was trying to say something to somebody. At least in hindsight in the modern way and time.

What this all means, and to whom it might have been meant, that's all just another mystery here out of an almost infinite number of them.

Miley Cyrus??

2015-04-01T04:15:00.000+00:00

Just recently, well recently enough, Miley Cyrus has been creating quite a stir with her racy and outrageous behavior, some might say.    Really. Is that right. Is that so. Ha!    Maybe.

One might ask; who exactly is Miley Cyrus?   Or better yet, what is she.   She's an actress.   A singer.   A child-star grown up. The daughter of a singer.    She's all those things.   Perhaps it's simplest to say she's an entertainer. A star.    So she runs on publicity to some extent.   But above all, whatever it is the public sees, that's an image. Does it reflect reality?   I don't know; you tell me.

To sort of switch gears for a second, take Robert Downey Jr.as an example   He is not Tony Stark and he is not Iron Man, and he's neither any more than he is Charlie Chaplin.   He's not Kirk Lazarus and Lincoln Osiris either.    So Miley Cyrus isn't Hannah Montana, and that's pretty much the point to that one there.

Yet to some extent, in the mind's eye and otherwise, they are all those people as well, having projected them to others. People, many people think of them that way. Now, were those just jobs to them, temporary things to be forgotten. Most certainly. Yet also, doesn't any of what they became, even in pretending to be, become part of them as well to some extent?

Even if they spend most of the rest of their lives trying to act as though the roles, and the public's perception of such roles, never existed.

All you never wanted to know about vaping

2014-10-22T00:42:00.000+00:00

I'm somewhat an earlyish adopter here. That is, beginning back in 2010 before everything found its way into grocery and convenience stores. That is, before there were physical stores specializing in vaping supplies, back when only a few Internet companies were actually located in the US. The time when users often had to get everything from the source areas of China. (Even though the original concept was created in the US, the recent methods were pioneered in China.)

Certainly, as far as anyone knows, none of this history and experience necessarily means anything, in the sense of how qualified I am to discuss vaping. However, in my defense, I'd say there's enough experience there to be at least somewhat qualified to offer some information and opinion on the subject. Information derived at least partially from those experiences and other experiences like them. Thus I have at least some first-hand idea of what I'm writing about.

At the simplest, vaping is just inhaling some sort of atomized/vaporized/heated material or liquid. In our sense of vaping, vaporizing a particular liquid mix. There is a heater (a coil made of resistive wire that electrically is put through) and a carrier liquid that is flavored and that much of the time also contains nicotine. The entire device doing the heating is often called an electronic cigarette. Many times it is not electronic (just electrical) and is not a cigarette (because nobody is lighting dried vegetable matter on fire). Yes, if the process is controlled by circuitry other than just the heater that's pretty much electronic, and often the device itself on purpose resembles a cigarette, and performs much the same function. An airplane is still not a bird. Either way though, quibbling about these recently invented terms of e-this and e-that (terms that are perhaps not quite always correct) might not be quibbling worth carrying out. So we'll just point out that the terms might not be exactly explanatorily descriptive per definition specifically.

One might believe that as somebody who'd been vaping for a number of years, I'd be claiming that vaping is factually all sorts of things compared to smoking. Proven to be not as inconvenient and damaging to self and others, less expensive, and safer. Not at all. I'm saying maybe yes, sometimes. True, in some cases with certain qualifiers. Depending.

Anyone telling you that vaping is cheaper, better, faster, smarter, safer, healthier? Either they don't vape and don't know, or they're just making things up. Yet the same goes for anyone telling you that vaping is more expensive, worse, slower, dumber, more dangerous, unhealthy. By and large, none of these things are facts and you should be wary of anyone suggesting they are.

What is vaping then?

What vaping is, that depends. Mainly, it's another way to get nicotine. Unless there's no nicotine in it. It's cooler and more sophisticated than lighting dry leaves on fire. Unless it just makes you look like a trendy fool, even if you're not actually, and probably even more so if you really are. It's a way to quit smoking. Unless you just replace smoking with it. Healthier? Maybe, maybe not.    If you overdo it, maybe it's worse than smoking. If you're a sloppy jerk, you'll probably still be one, only you can't flick ashes on people or toss the remaining part you didn't smoke on the ground... Although certainly somebody could do things that are essentially equivalent to flicking ashes or breathing in faces. At some point then, anything one might say about either tobacco or about nicotine can easily be true in somewhat the same ways as anything else can be.

Sometimes vaping is less expensive, but other times it isn't, especially if trying out or collecting a number of vaping devices (the power sources and the atomizing components both) or when using various brands of liquids and flavors. That's personal preference though, how much one might or might not spend, using vaping as a replacement for smoking versus making it a hobby. Just like some people buy expensive brands of cigars and humidors and build rooms just for it. (Yes, swilling down brandy is optional with either of them.)

When it concerns other matters, many are less clear as to what vaping might be as compared to smoking. These differences are at times visibly obvious, at least when viewed with somewhat of an objective eye. For example. Atomized food additives, flavoring, (and liquid nicotine) inhaled and then exhaled is not the same thing as igniting dried tobacco and other materials inside thin paper inhaled and then exhaled. A cloud of vapor is less bothersome and second-handy than a cloud of tobacco. Unless others take offense simply to either the behavior itself or to any intrusion no matter how small, vaping is clearly not smoking.

Still, when it comes to "safety" especially, much is lacking. There are not decades of material establishing that inhaling heated PG or VG, flavor (and nicotine) is safe. Or not. Yes, we might expect more long-term safety for the user and others with something where all the cancer-causing by-products of historic common tobacco burning and inhaling are removed. Yes, we can also point out there is no conclusive scientific evidence (using actual repeatable peer-reviewed objective science) that "second-hand smoke" is dangerous. We might argue that nicotine liquid solution inhalation isn't chemically all that different than liquid caffeine solution ingestion, but we won't because really it's not. Still, whatever else, that e-cigs and e-liquid are safer than cigarettes/pipes/cigars/snuff/chaw is no fact. Is being in a small room and having your eyes irritated by atomized VG any different than breathing in the exhalation of thirty smokers in an airplane cabin during a fourteen hour flight, not really. Which is to say, second-hand is some casual and infrequent sort of being nearby, but the environment over time can make it a case where it's actually first-hand.

Since often an e-liquid has nicotine though, we can broaden the subject to what does nicotine do to you if you don't have the tobacco part of it. We can then ask, what do gums / patches / lozenges / liquids - that have nicotine in them - do to a person over decades and decades. So that goes for inhaling it, heated or otherwise as much as does putting it on the skin or chewing it and so on. Does nicotine in a mist into the lungs do different things than going through the skin on your arm or in your mouth? I'm guessing the answer to that at this point is that nobody knows. But they do sell all sorts of other things with nicotine for your bloodstream at the store, and we know how dangerous some are. We can also say that everything suggests the danger with those things is mostly not because of the nicotine but because of the delivery mechanism.

Some have argued that children will want to try some bubblegum or strawberry flavor, but nobody responsible is going to let children vape something (nicotine or not) any more than they'd give them a pipe or a bottle of tequila. Well, not these days anyway. That's a different subject though, and in any case stores sell vaping materials just like they do tobacco products. Locked up, in the back, adults only. Let's stop short at going off the deep end and comparing comparing e-cigs to booze, pornography and gambling using playing cards. We might though suggest the "kids might get it" argument as either a strawman or just a stupid sort of grandstanding. It's akin to suggesting that since some people drive into walls or skydive without parachutes, we have great reasons to ban driving and skydiving.

Materials for ecigs etc

A number of considerations exist in the materials used. Here are some of them in an overview; if anyone reading this is desiring to go a DIY route much more research will be required. Either way, it should give a better idea of some of the details.

The batteries that heat the coils are often or usually lithium rechargeables. Many batteries themselves have circuitry that prevents overcharging or short-circuits. These can be in sealed cases or as loose batteries put into mechanical or electronic mods. If a mod is mechanical, the battery needs to be protected. Electronic mods may have this requirement built in.

The heating materials are often coils made of nichrome wire, perhaps we can say comparable to what might be in a space-heater. The wire has varying sizes or resistance to create varying amounts of heat on some scale of size. There are also ceramic and others types of elements to heat the liquids.

There are cartridges to hold liquid and atomizers to heat liquid, and there are cartomizers that are both together. Some newer designs of the cartridges are tanks that fill with liquid, and some cartomizers are tanks with an atomizer. The concepts are essentially similar, a single piece combining both and two (potentially more) that are separate pieces.

There are also drippers where the bottle with the liquid functions as the cartridge and more liquid is dropped directly on the coils (or some wicking going through the coils) as more liquid is needed. Many times (such as if the coils are exposed, such as a top-feeding rebuildable system) it's possible to drip onto any set of coils by removing a tank, cartridge or top or directly through a mouthpiece.

In many non-dripping cartridge/atomizer and cartomizer designs, the liquid going through coils being heated is delivered by a wick made of stainless mesh sometimes, but usually the material holding or feeding the liquid is made of cotton or of silica thread. Depending on the heater and setup, the feeding material needs various properties that are high-temperature and non-conductive by and large.

The liquids themselves are usually mostly PG, VG or a PG/VG blend. Often times there is also water, but that's tricky because PG and VG are water soluble miscible hygroscopic. Generally, when in use in ecigs, VG produces more vapor (clouds of vapor) and PG creates a stronger feeling when inhaling (throat hit). Also since VG is thicker, it can cause issues in feeding it through a wick and coil, especially when the eliquid is cold. That's largely dependent upon the feeding mechanism and a number of other factors perhaps too esoteric to cover here. Many find that PG dries their mouths more than VG does, but that difference might be more subjective and dependent upon the degree of vaporization, the flavorings, and the nicotine strength. Especially at higher nicotine levels.

Flavors are many and varied. There is tobacco flavored (often with a large component of vanilla flavor), fruit or herb flavored, or a mix of flavors tobacco and other. Some flavors are artificial and some are natural, not all flavor types are used because of taste when atomized or other considerations related to inhalation.    Since the flavors are a smaller part of the entirety, they are concentrated to some extent. Flavors normally do not contain any sugar, as heating/melting/burning sugar will clog things up at the least, and PG and VG are sweet anyway. Some flavors are oil-based and hard to mix with the other ingredients, so at times contain alcohol. Other flavors just normally are made with alcohol to some or large extent - check out the flavoring section at the grocery store in the baking isle for real-world examples. In ecig usage however, the alcohol in such flavorings that contain it should mostly be burned off upon heating and not be intoxicating even if attempting to do so.

The Nicotine part of it

Regardless of how we slice it, there's no real direct comparison of eliquid nicotine strengths to the nominal quoted nicotine levels in cigarettes. That's partly because absorption of nicotine via eliquid is as difficult to measure as absorption via smoking. Another is that many people vape without nicotine, or do so at very low levels.

Whatever you might think personally about being around exhaled PG or VG is another matter. Even whatever worries you may have abut that food sweetener that's 90% PG or that cough syrup that's 90% VG, there's only one potential ingredient in eliquid that is anything to directly consider as anything dangerous.    After all, you might be bathing with a bar of 80% VG being on your skin, or washing your hair with 50% PG.

Like caffeine and alcohol and a number of other things natural or artificial (including food and medicine) concentrated nicotine is a form a poison and thus can be dangerous. This is true in tobacco (the plants in nature and the dried leaves used in creating tobacco products) and in the derivatives of tobacco; patches, gums, lozenges, liquids. Nicotine sold for eliquid use in mixing (not for vaping) is normally not full strength, it is mixed with PG or VG as a carrier. Thus we end up with something where nicotine is by far the minority ingredient.

Typical eliquids for use (to vape) are quoted in strength as being some value such as 10 mg (per ml) or 10% or just 10. They are all exact except the percentage is 10 times larger; it is 1%. As a scale of vaping-ready nicotine strengths, 0 to 36 covers the lowest to the highest most people would potentially actually vape. On that scale of 0 to 36 (0 to 3.6%), 0 is "nonic", lower strengths are on the order of 4-8, higher strengths as 12-18 and very high as 24-36 (Some would suggest that 24-36 are too high to vape though, and indeed many commercial liquids do not have any strength above 18.)

Even if we consider 24-36 as mixing strength only and going beyond normal usage, there are obviously even higher levels than 2.4 or 3.6 percent nicotine. At the high end is obviously pure nicotine at 100%. At 100%, that's mask and gloves and industrial precautions. Pure nicotine liquid is one thousand milligrams per milliliter. Thus 99% nicotine is 990mg/ml, 25% nicotine is 250mg/ml, and 10% nicotine is 100mg/ml. In absolute terms then, the "highest vaping strength" of 36mg/ml is 3.6% and a somewhat high of 18 is 1.8% nicotine Even many hardcore longterm vapers might find themselves unable to enjoy vaping 18 much less over 18.

Nicotine at strengths beyond those pre-mixed and for vaping

Let's start out here simpler, because it gets rather wordy ranty confusing later as I poorly attempt to balance two things. One, that "normal strength" nicotine liquids are not usually dangerous in most situations.   But like a boiling pan of water, or an iceberg, it nicotine liquid often requires at least a bit of caution. Two, that "high strength" and "mixing strength" and "pure nicotine" have various degrees of caution. Just like bleach for sanitizing a countertop (say 4% sodium hypochlorite solute mixed 1 part to 100 parts water) isn't isn't laundry strength isn't the concentrated chlorine that goes into a swimming pool. A stopped care is more like one going 1/2 mile an hour than it is like one going 80.

So the short of that scale is that getting some 10 or 18 eliquid on some of your skin isn't a big deal, but you should wash it off sooner rather than later because you might rub your eyes.   Shake hands with somebody.    Once you go above a normal strength though, it's more important to be more and more careful to match how strong a chemical is. Because remember, almost everything is a poison at some point on the curve.

For mixing purposes the strengths of nicotine can vary greatly. That is because like with flavorings (usually from 2 to 25 percent of the mix) the PG/VG (water) itself takes up the most of the solution. Mixing strength nicotine must balance the need for a stronger amount to be mixed down with how safe it is to generally handle. Thus it's often either 48 or 100, that is, 4.8% to 10% nicotine. This is far safer to handle when mixing than anything higher is. To stress it once again, nothing much above 18 is very vapable, and anything in mixing range is going to be unflavored. We don't want any eliquid with nicotine on any appreciably large area of our or anyone else's skin for any lengthy period of time, be that because of absorption itself or later rubbing the eyes after it gets on they fingers. That is obviously far more important at the higher levels found is mixable strengths. For example, I personally wouldn't worry much about a small amount of 10 ml or even 18 ml getting on my skin for a few seconds or minutes. For vaping, 48 or 100 can't be vaped as is any more than 185 proof grain alcohol is drinkable as-is, regardless that a shot at 80 or even 120 proof is achievable. Not that it's good, but it's not like saying maybe you can get by with a puff or two of that angel dust or that falling 10 feet is no big deal compared to falling 250.

---psa---

Which sorry we're not done, and no, all that is not exactly true. I mean, it's far less dangerous to take a single 1.5 oz shot of 185 proof grain alcohol (not so good idea to really bad idea) than it is to drink a liter (Darwin Award).   Same goes for getting 10mg/ml on your fingers and then washing it off a short time later versus pouring 100mg/ml nictotine on your legs and then going to sleep a few hours.

Let's not leave it at that though, just to be very clear about it some more. You are not all that wise if you take a shot of Everclear, but you are suicidal if you drink an entire 750ml bottle. Likewise you are being pretty unwise if you get vaping-strength eliquid on your skin and don't wash it off fairly quickly, but you are being suicidal if you rub mixing-strength nicotine liquid on your skin and leave it there uncaring. Not that those things are exactly the same. But it's like a set of knives, they're not dangerous if you don't do silly things like juggle them. It's not any more unsafe than stove burners or wall outlets are, as long as you don't misuse them.

To add to that even more though, don't leave any amount of eliquid with nicotine in it lying around where anyone can get to it and get it on their skin, in their eyes, into their mouth or other external opening into the body such as ears and eye-sockets. It's like if you have a cup of coffee -- drink it. Just don't leave that jar of concentrated caffeine open on the shelf where it can get knocked over onto somebody or into the sugar jar.

Other helpful hints. Don't store propane tanks in your vehicle's engine compartment, don't jump off the roof (none of that pile of leaves, trampoline or cape is going to help), don't feed your dog chocolate, don't try and lower the cat into the full bathtub, don't pour a bucket of 91% rubbing-alcohol on a lit grill, don't dangle your child over a dingo pit or hotel railing, don't drive through downtown at one fifty mph, don't jam knitting needles into your ears, don't cut your head off with a chainsaw.

---psa---

So, to yet again once more reiterate again redundantly, we especially do not want 48 or above eliquid on the skin at all ever, even less than we want to take a bath in high-poof grain alcohol or drink it without mixing it with cola and some lime. No terrible idea is more or less dangerous if you do it wrong and do it stupid. Although there is a difference between these things. You can buy a bottle of almost pure alcohol in just about any liquor store or from most any couple of guys with a still. But you're not going to hardly find even 24 liquid to vape, 36 is more difficult, and you are going to have to find a specialty shop catering to DIY to get 48 or 100. Then even if a specialty shop has it, they are going to ask if you' know what you're doing before they sell it to you. (If you read a story about a tragedy with eliquid, it was somebody having 48 or above that didn't know what they were doing at all.)

Waste

That's a consideration too. In the earlier days, and even now with many of the disposables or low-end rechargeables, the situation is like with smokers. Some people are just pigs. They might easily just blow vape in your face, and so too might they just toss a used battery on the ground, or throw it into a garbage disposal or fireplace.) One of the most used replaceable and one-time use retail styles of cartomizers is an 808D style. If not a tank style, they're very often metal. Many of the other cartomizers or atomizers are also all or largely metal, such as the 901 or 510. Even some of the plastic-based cartomizers have metal threads. Most have metal somewhere, but now as in the early days the 808D cartomizers are prevalent and metal. Unlike the specialty rebuildables, they don't get reused for long periods of time. So while both are not biodegradable, one gets tossed a lot more often. We might easily debate how much the planet or a river cares about a bunch of plastic k-cups or a bunch of little cylinders of metal lying around. But if you throw either on the ground they're still there and it's sloppy and ugly and messy. With a metal cartomizer though, it can also get stuck in a tire or your foot. Perhaps you're talking a nice walk on the beach, and ouch that hurt look what someone left for you. Okay, so the point there is there's a difference between an ugly butt and something that will pop your tire. Still, that is not because there's anything wrong with the item; it's because of what a person does with it that's the problem.

In this, materials to vape with aren't any different than glass grapefruit juice bottles or tin cans full of pineapple.

All in all

There's a lot of missing information and a lot of misinformation about this entire subject. Rule of thumb or common sense or logic suggests that vaping isn't the same as smoking in a great deal of ways. There's no dried crushed leaf (and usually "other materials") that are filled with carcinogens with vaping. Yet still, we do not have a lot of data on what inhaling vaporized PG/VG/Water/Flavor/Nicotine (in whatever mix) does. Just that it isn't what we know about the other. If the nicotine in ecigs is the same amount into the body as cigs, it's non issue as the effects are the same for either, nicotine-wise.   Burning leaves seems as if it would probably be worse to inhale than a food additive/sweetener/etc.   Any commercial flavoring used in an eliquid is edible, so again it's back to the question of heating/inhaling.

There are some studies (okay maybe an old one or few that have been largely discounted) about the effects of heating eliquid. Still referenced from time to time, but they were tests of amounts and temperatures that are not anything anyone actually would vape.   That nobody vapes. The tests for the studies also mostly used power levels and elements that are not in most commercial sorts of system, which such systems have timers that shut off voltage after a few seconds anyway.   Such temperatures would creating a vape that would taste so horrible nobody would ever hit the notional amounts "vaped" in the test -- because they would immediately stop, gagging, and wonder what was horribly wrong with their equipment.   Like lighting the filter on a cigarette on fire. Is it possible to create a 50 watt vaping element system that feeds little to no liquid and has no shutoff?   Sure, just like it's possible to buy a carton of cigarettes and throw them into a blast furnace, or like it's possible to strap a rocket on your car and cause a giant explosion.   They aren't really any good for studies about normal use though.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Some of the chemical formulations used in the post are

VG : Vegetable Glycerin : Glycerol : propane-1,2,3-triol
Ingredient in many food and beverages; sweetener, filler, thickening agent
Ingredient in cough syrups, toothpaste, mouthwash, skin care products and soaps
Smoothener, lubricant and humectant in medical, pharmaceutical and personal care medicines and preparations

PG : Propylene glycol : Propane-1,2-diol
Liquid sweetener, ice cream, coffee drinks, soda.
Pharmaceutical and personal care vaporizers and liquids
Solvent for oral, injectable and topical pharmaceuticals

Nootropics
Nicotine: (S)-3-[1-Methylpyrrolidin-2-yl]pyridine
Caffeine: 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione

Neurotoxic physchoactive
Grain alcohol: Ethanol CH
3CH
2OH

That's racist!!!

2014-04-01T16:20:00.000+00:00

Just to be clear about this, it's not really about anything in particular, other than an observation about some language-related matters. That is the misuse and abuse of words.

What is racism? In the sense of being a noun, it means

A belief that members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race - especially so as to distinguish that race as being inferior or superior to another race or races.

Which brings up another question, what is race?

A social concept, where a group of people share similar distinct physical characteristics.

Which leaves us pretty much nowhere, because how can one set of similar distinct physical characteristics be inferior or superior to some other set of similar distinct physical characteristics? If some group has longer legs and another larger lungs. If some group has curly hair and another straight. Why would being of some color or shade (yellow, brown, white, black, red, pink, dark, light) or from some area (continent, section, place; Caucasian, Asian, African, Scandinavian, Pacific Island, Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica) make one of those better or worse than another. No, some grouping of arbitrary criteria isn't any more or less superior or inferior to another grouping of arbitrary criteria.

If we take some endeavor (say, NASCAR driving) and then look at who is doing the bulk of it to create a group with a name describing in some way its members (say, Rednecks) we might be able to then suggest the reason rednecks are NASCAR drivers is because they're superior at it, and other groups with less people doing that endeavor are inferior at it. Yet there are other types of competitive sports involving vehicles, so how about F1 drivers, we can make the same sort of statement, suggesting that Europeans are superior at that because numbers of participants. But then we're down whining about which sort of driving is better or worse, and if there are other endeavors where the two groups are equally good or bad and not superior or inferior comparatively to each other. Or even asking if being able to "drive cars fast" is important to argue about. The whole idea is as stupid as this paragraph.

Race is an entirely ridiculous concept to begin with. Your skin color or the size of your face or the length of your nose or the shape of your brain doesn't do anything except perhaps at best make you personally (in that trait) better or worse at doing something. Say, if you live where the air is thin, and your lungs are bigger, you probably have an advantage at running that somebody who is from where the air is thick and has smaller lungs; unless they are better practiced at running, or have stronger legs, or more endurance just because they do. Or they have an affinity at building tables made of wood and you don't.

In common usage though, what we might refer to as a race is actually more to the point an ethnicity or a nationality.

But by the heading of race, and being superior to another race (say, by shade, that as a whole, brown people are better than pink people) it's quite possible people (who are brown) living on the US side of a town are superior to people (who are pink) living on the Canadian side of a town Again, ridiculous even in concept.

Now, let's say that some people live in New Mexico on the southern border of that state. Say also that some people (who some are otherwise exactly the same and who some are instead vastly different) live in Chihuahua on the northern border of that state. If the people in Chihuahua are against the people in New Mexico immigrating (either legally or illegally) then how can that be racist, or even racially motivated? It might be nationalistic, or it might be ethnic, or it could be political. But racist?

Yes, of course, some of the people could have racial reasons for not wanting anyone from the other side of the border coming over. In the end result though, the social matters between the two groups is about location, and about residency, not about anything else when it comes to the big picture.

It's like suggesting that the two sides of Punjab (state versus province) are racially separated, when it's far more likely the differences are at best religious and political.

But you know what, I hate people who are older than I am.

How racist is that!

Powerful thoughts

2013-11-12T21:10:00.000+00:00

While nuclear power should never be a first choice, due to the many dangers (in operation, the costs involved, and the waste material produced) it can be a viable alternative. That is, nuclear power is not something to 'direct away from' a priori, but an option. Another topic of discussion in producing the energy that more than seven billion fellow travelers on this planet require now and will require in the future.

Take for example France, the largest exporter of power derived from nuclear sources. The country has some 58 nuclear power plants, which produce about 70-80% of the electrical power in that country, or put in another way, about 40% or so of its total power consumption, versus about 10% in the United States.

The population density in France is more than 300% of that in the US (2004, that was 110 people versus 31 people, per square kilometer) so France's solutions would not be the solutions for the United States, especially given the existing natural resources in each respective country based upon the area of the nation. But still, dismissing one particular solution over another out of hand (without a through investigation of the pros and cons, costs and benefits, and risks and rewards) is not necessarily a logical manner of determining the best choices overall. Life is full of dangers regardless of their source, either way. Even if not planning on using such, one must understand all the factors relating to the issues in specific circumstances, so as to come to a reasonable conclusion based upon those specific factors.

As far as conventional fuel sources go, there are a number of issues involved, bypassing even the question of nuclear energy. With conventional sources, hopefully (perhaps expectedly) research and development (as well as economic pressures and the like) will result in cleaner coal-fired power plants, although that still does leave the question of mining the coal, and its availability. Sources of methane give the impression that there is basically a limitless supply, although some debate still exists on the subject. New discoveries of oil, and the quantities of it available from shale (and the economic pressures and advances in technology) make it also a resource that should far exceed the expectations of its continued availability. So on multiple fronts, the use of conventional fuels does not seem to be going away any time soon, regardless of what using them means on an environmental front one way or the other. We must deal with what is, not what we want it to be.

So to get to the "alternative renewable sources" other than nuclear.

Hydro-based power is currently responsible for much of both the base and peak contribution to non-fossil fuel energy sources, but there is a limit to how much energy water can produce, which depends upon the location and the systems to produce it more so than we can directly control the water itself upon demand.

Wind-based power may contribute more and more, but there is a limit to both the efficiency and costs of wind turbines, as well as a limit to where we can put them and how many we can put there. There are also other ramifications such as aesthetic and wildlife concerns.

Solar-based power is also promising, with recent thin film and clear cell technologies that will spread out emplacement and efficiency. After taking into consideration life cycle and maintenance considerations of course. This seems the most promising of the alternative fuels.

Hydrogen-based power can also be an answer. Creating hydrogen fuel and stations in various areas with the population density or pollution concerns to make it practically or economically viable can be part of the answer.

Biofuels are also a possibility, but they have their own trip-wires, such as over the cycle, it seems that adding and removing the vegetation would lower the amount of greenhouse gases they can sink far more than the benefits of replacing petroleum provide. Although there is some indication that food sources may be impacted by using agriculture to produced fuel instead, this is probably a red-herring, perhaps; the source versus sink issue is a far larger concern.

In most of the above cases, the issue is also of storage. What battery technologies are here now, and what are on the horizon, to store the created energy that can't be fed back into the grid?

This all leads to the question. In the face of scarce resources, how do we best manage them for both the planet and humanity? What possible unintended consequences do we face now and in the future? Is humanity actually able to control what the weather and climate do? Are the same technological advances that allowed over seven billion of us to be alive able to reduce or remove whatever affect we have upon the planet, given the uncertainties that exist?

Regardless, when it comes down to the end of the trail on this subject, humans and their actions producing energy by the use of fuels and the way we shape the surface of our habitat is an issue that needs to be wisely managed and planned for in the future, and only by an honest assessment of all possibilities and their consequences can we reach a reasonable answer that will not cause other problems that we didn't expect.

SCOTUS opens door for federal recognition of same-sex marriages

2013-06-27T17:42:00.000+00:00

The federal definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman appears to be unconstitutional, with the expected sort of 5-4 split that essentially says it's an issue with no clear answer.

Not unexpected, given the number of states that provide for same-sex marriage, the military no longer excluding people based upon their sexual identification, and the general acceptance in popular culture of gay (male homosexual) and lesbian (female homosexual) characters in most forms of media and entertainment.

There's a set of train tracks, and the train isn't levitating or going off the rails or suddenly stopping against its own inertia.

So now the legal doors are open to recognizing same-sex marriages at the federal level. Is anyone really surprised? The times, they are a-changin'.

Done deal for the time being. Which would be good if everyone would just shut up about it, but they won't. Another fact of life.

The irksome thing is still how media outlets (from far left to far right and everything in the middle) still frequently insist on wrongly and incorrectly and against both logic and grammar calling this gay marriage. Where is the legal language specifying any such thing as the sexuality of the participants?

When in a "traditional" and "normal" and "standard" historical definition of marriage in most of the western world for most of the last few centuries, marriage was one man and one woman. Well this is 2013, some say. And indeed, it is 2013.

When in that sort of marriage though.... Well let's say right now it's forty years ago in 1973. When one man and one woman went to get a marriage license, they variously had to show or prove in some way or ways that they weren't closely related, they were "of sound mind and sound body", they weren't already married, and so on. You'll notice in that list, and if you took a look at the laws in various states and locales in the US at the time you'd also see a clear lack of a number of other things required or even mentioned. Fertility or lack thereof, plans on offspring or domicile choices, economic divisions, home and professional work splits. Political parties, religion, social outlook, environmental thoughts, memberships in political and social organizations.

None of that's there.

As we've discussed before, there is also nothing there about the sexual ideas, thoughts, behaviors, practices, orientations, proclivities, activities of the two people. No check for kinks, fetishes, desires, habits. Nobody asks if either or both likes wearing the clothing of the opposite, gender-identifies with their biological sex or not, or anything of the sort.

So when 'a man and a woman' went to get married back then. There was no 'one man and five women' or 'woman and boy' or 'two men' or 'two bisexuals' or 'brother and sister' or 'hermaphrodite and transvestite' or 'transgender and transssexual'. That's our first thing. Calling the current changes "gay marriage" at least implicitly precludes and discriminates all those other groupings. If you're fighting for inclusiveness, limiting marriage to "gay" is just as exclusionary and elitist and limiting it to "straight" or anything else.

Aside from both "straight" and "gay" being incorrect in the first place.

There was nothing in 1973 stopping a homosexual woman and a homosexual man from marrying each other. (Unless they were unable to enter into contracts, too closely related, already married, etc.) Why? The laws did not, as they do not now, discriminate against gender or sexuality. Or indeed any number of other things that the laws simply did not cover at all. It was not asked if the one man and one woman were straight, thought of themselves as their biological sex, was Jewish or Satanist, were going to have children, wore appropriate clothing, listened to Top 40 AM radio. That was simply marriage. Or if you wish, opposite-sex not-related legal-age single-couple mental-competent un-diseased marriage.

Opposite-sex and straight are not synonymous.

Because biological sex is not sexuality, no opposite-sex marriage has to be straight (non-gay) marriage. Any more than in an opposite-sex marriage do the two participants (for now) have to portray the "expected and appropriate" gender roles. In an opposite-sex marriage, the man could stay home and take care of the house (and children, should there be any) while the woman went out and earned the income. And when she returned home from work, they could both be way into B&D or S&M (or BDSM even) with he the dom and she the sub. Or the other way around. Many other things. Swingers with multiple partners. Both totally gay, going out to their own same-sex worlds at night. Nothing precluded any of that. (Although the behaviors may indeed have been illegal.)

Likewise, same-sex and gay are not synonymous.

Yet why do so many persist in calling it gay marriage when neither of the participants needs to be gay at all in a same-sex relationship, any more than either of the participants in an opposite-sex marriage needs to be straight.

They persist because calling it gay marriage possibly because it makes the term bring up certain images. Controls the dialog. Limits who wants to get married (the definition of marriage here still being a very exclusionary specific "two sane unrelated adults") because of what everyone perceives a marriage is supposed to be. Perhaps even it's just so non-gay same-sex people won't try and horn in on the action. Don't believe it? It's hardly a new or unique idea. For example, Boson Legal covered the subject to various extents and directions five years ago back in 2008.

Maybe it's so the other very obvious issues can be sidestepped. Legal, relationship, economic issues. For example, many men and women get married to gather citizenship for them or their offspring. To avoid testifying against each other in court. To get tax benefits and advantages. Rights of survivorship or ability to perform legal actions without powers of attorney.

Because in fact, there is no requirement people getting married love each other either. No requirement they have sex with each other too. Even the idea of romantic love, or marriage for love, is a recent idea socially. Either way though, those things are not and really haven't ever been part of the requirements for marriage. Why would same-sex be any different than opposite-sex? It isn't. Love, sex, children, not requirements to be married. Now what, hmmmm?

Case in point of what's being ignored and marginalized and not dealt with in constantly referring to it incorrectly as gay marriage.

Take two women who are not gay/lesbian/homosexual/LGBT. The same works for two men, but socially, women are less likely to feel uncomfortable or stigmatized by entering into a same-sex relationship when they are straight. That is, currently it is more likely for two straight women to enter into a same-sex marriage. Which the way things are going, there will at some point be just marriage but with a set of rules that doesn't specify the biological sex of the participants, but we aren't there yet.

But we clearly can (and will and already have) two people of the same biological sex who are not homosexual and who are not in love and who won't have physical sex. Getting married for whatever reason they want -- why would anyone possibly be correct in calling same-sex marriage gay marriage. It's never any more correct than calling opposite-sex marriage straight marriage. Even if it almost always works out that way or almost never works out that way. They're neither synonymous.

Let's take some same-sex couple and this idea further. Just as it would be for the reciprocal, any two woman (be they straight or gay or some mix, in love or indifferent or despising each other) can't have children through any inherent biological natural process either. So now we no longer have any reason whatsoever in the slightest to preclude even the closest of relatives from marrying.

Why, without genetics as an issue, is there any possible reason to preclude same-sex marriages of mothers and daughters? Grandfathers and fathers? Sisters, brothers, cousins. There isn't any genetic reasons, and what are the cultural ones that are any different than same-sex love both mental and physical.

So yes you may say that sisters marrying, even though they're straight (and even if they weren't they can't have children still anyway) is unnatural, wrong, disgusting. You may think that, but that doesn't make you correct, or even qualified to comment on what other people do. Objectively It's no more and no less any better or worse than than a transgendered transvestite hermaphrodite masochist pederast bisexual marrying a horse would be. No more or less than homosexuals or polygamists. It's all in the mind. It's all a social construct. It's all an opinion and not some natural law.

Even if it was all "natural law" there aren't many things nature deems illegal. It's not just homosexual or cross-gender or alpha behaviors in a social construct. Many animals (including humans) are variously cannibals and serial killers and mass murderers. They murder each other or their own children or the children of others. Violent tendencies, randomly killing anything they see. Carnivore predators. Or even the gentle fun-loving polar bear Natural law is far more forgiving of all sorts of actions than human law is. (Or we could indulge ourselves in non-directly-comparable flights of fancy. Such as, what stops two sibling or ascendant/descendant non-humans, birds or insects or dogs or cats, from getting the equivalent of married?)

Others may suggest that it's against the law and will of God. Well as soon as He comes down and clarifies a great number of subjects and inconsistencies and no longer applicable things from 1800+ years ago? It's not quite as clear as it needs to be. So until then, we'll just go ahead and skip that entire circular unprovable rather unsolvable argument here. For the time being, it's really not all that directly applicable -- not for everyone equally and universally.

-------------

So while SCOTUS has just narrowly said in their infinite wisdom that federally defining marriage as man+woman is against some esoteric highly-subjective section or another of the Constitution as established through recent precedent. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right against unreasonable search and seizure. Inter-state commerce. Or whatever it is they've done and however it is they've done it.

The door is now open to federally recognizing the marriage status of two people regardless of the biological sex of the participants. What is next to come? Probably something.

Just stop calling it what it's not. It's not gay or straight or both inherently or by definition linguistically. What it is is two people (subject to certain other objectively arbitrary limitations) in a legal contract called marriage.

The curiousness of time slipping

2013-06-13T04:00:00.000+00:00

If not apparent from the last discombobulated rant, we're still in the middle of watching Revolution. Well not the middle, finishing with 15 of 20. So while everyone who watched one week at a time has the story, we don't. It will be interesting to see how the guesses work out, but with how things are going, we don't guess much since it can be yanked any which way at this point. Still, it's interesting. Slow, although not slow-paced, with so much going on. But we're kind of ready for the main story to be over, so if we learn anything in the meantime, no big deal. Still, not purposely going out of our way to learn any more than what's in the show.

One thing that springs to mind about this, is rather than having one show to watch and then a week to think about things in it (or forget about things in it) instead, watching two or five at a time compresses things. Maybe it compresses them into something that maybe makes how the overall comes across less believable, more contrived, and aggravating than it would be otherwise.

Whichever, that is a question, which is difficult to answer. How do you imagine watching something once a week, when you've been watching multiple episodes a day multiple days in a row? You really can't.

Yes, more spoilers here. Which to most people probably wouldn't be spoilers, just to us or somebody doing the same and earlier on in the watching process. Or not having watched at all. (We can summarize the main points pretty easily, it's the interactions and whose turn is it next to die in some stupid way.)

Now some things happened in episode 15 (and 14 and around there, it blurs when you see two to six in a day) that depending on how you look at it are worse mistakes and errors in judgment and crazy actions and what have you. We learn that indeed Monroe is both crazy and opportunistic (for reals) but also that he's still human-ish to some extent. Trying to nuke another "country" next to them, home town population locked in the basement of a burning building to draw out Miles, only caring about the old flame once she says he's got a kid. Well, Emma says son. We find out that Rachael was right (Tom will escape, it's their only chance to kill him, bye bye padre). See that Jason is a true rebel. Watch Tom getting the hell out of the Monroe Republic and away from the other psycho. We learn more of the tower and the nanobots. And so on.

Yet we've still got the fortuitous and the random. In clubs and diamonds. It's like there's a couple of sets of cups, one with characters and one with messed up things to happen. They throw two ping-pong balls, one each into a set of cups. And voilà, what horrible thing happens to a character, or what terrible thing does a character do. Which depending on if the character is a main and required character or not. Unless they decide somebody's got to go.

Which sometimes is well planned about though, or doesn't happen. We can pretty much tell, although if you're just watching, there's not much time to think very far ahead.

So Aaron, as expected, happens upon Priscilla. That's handled pretty well, he essentially (but not fully) redeems himself, and we find out what happened to her. Rachel is more focused and less cray cray as the two go to the tower. Nobody dies during the situation (unless they killed the bounty hunter) so all's well that ends well. Although I suppose it's more poignant if nobody dies.

Then there's later. The two guys burning. Of course it's your friend Jane the techno-wizard, has to be. Rachel, why so surprised. Rachel in asking for help to turn the power back on makes none of the arguments you want her to make or expect her to make. How Monroe "only" having power is going to make things worse, what he did to the rebel camps and the other scientists (skip that one part though) and how Randall and them are going to make it worse. The nukes. Slave labor. No, it's the (LUCKILY ENOUGH) other one overhearing the conversation and happening to agree with Rachel. Um, duh? Although that did a lot to explain why Danny had to die. We no longer have to worry that Rachel might have a change of heart to save Danny, he's already dead and it's all theoretical. At least we find out a reason to want to keep the power off. (Keep the pervasive all-present nanobots eating electricity.)

Let's see, Miles kills the protégé, they disarm the nuke but keep the fissionable material. Surprising the president didn't push that one, but I suppose Miles is of more use as an arm of violence to her than some radioactivity is. We learn of the past history (somewhat) of Miles and Kelly, and also of Miles and Rachel. That last one, so does Charlie, leading to a bit of a block between her and Miles. (Miles just says he hurts people, so far that's all he's said about what he did to Rachel...)

But back to things. Monroe knows how dangerous Miles is, in charge of troops, so plans a trap. Kidnaps all the people of their home town, including the ex-finance and ex-lover of Miles and Monroe, respectively, yeah, I know. Sends word to Miles, who goes alone. (Yes of course the others find out from the courier where.) You wonder how they'll get out of the guarded (well, sort of) burning building, but they do via help, but of course nothing's that simple. Monroe has Emma their ex (one imagines at this point, Miles is unaware) at gunpoint. Where as soon as Monroe finds out they have a baby, he goes all soft and curious. Which of course she won't say where it is, just that it's "not here". Yet, which was a bit of a surprise, the rep watching our heroes shoots her. Does Dixon shoot at Monroe himself (who's not really holding Emma all that well) a few times? Shoot her a few times? No, once, and he's all proud like he did something other than kill Emma. And Dixon is right near Miles, who shoots Dixon directly, not missing, a few times, until dead. Well yeah, Miles said he would. (It's unclear if Charlie had taken the shot as she said later she would have, if the same thing would have happened to her... No, at this time, of course not. Maybe later, once she finds out what Miles did to Rachel. Who knows.) Monroe, still not knowing where his kid is, obviously, wait for it, gets away.

Monroe probably thinks Miles shot her, Miles is POd Monroe tried to burn up everyone in town, Charlie wants to know what Miles did to her mom, and the game has changed yet again.

Back in the Georgia Federation. 'He's given us lots of information.' Well that must be where Tom went. Okay. 'Somebody's got to replace Dixon somebody who can handle Miles.' NO, WTF, BBQ. Geez, what an amateur hour we got here. (Hint to writers; really?)

I'm sure that will be wonderful, Tom and Miles working together. But the bigger question is Rachel and Aaron and Randall and the tower. We might remember that Grace is working on getting the elevator going, down or up or both to the 12th floor. To do what? Turn on something, totally destroy it all? Will she succeed, and when.

For the future, we might imagine the show more interesting if everyone has power. Knowing these clowns, crushing that idea seems more likely. Yet we're running out of pendants, okay, the insides of them. The USB memory with the software that kills or whatever the nanobots before they can eat the electricity the insides produce. (Although maybe they can make more of the innards...) As supposedly there's twelve total and so far Rachel's melted four of them we have seen if I remember correctly. We don't know what happened to the one on the nuke, but Randall (who has one on his neck) can track them, remember. So there's that. The number of pendants, the tracking of what there is. Making more innards. The power, and amplifiers which they seem to make very quickly. There's the six pendants besides the four insides that Rachel melted, the nuke one and Randall's one. One imagines we could get a pendant to the Georgia Republic folks, but the tracking.... Did Jane have one, or more than one? Of course she'll be invulnerable, unfindable, or is she? Maybe she has some other form of them Randall can't track. Or another bargaining chip when Rachel gets to the tower.

I'm imagining that Rachel gets to the tower, too late (or just barely too late) and Grace gets Randall to where he either becomes unstoppable (at least apparently; a potential big cliffhanger) or where he destroys the ability to turn it back on (he seems to want a world with no power but for the few, which means low scale and including him). Which is it, powerful or powerless? Or is it something else. Perhaps not even involving Randall or the tower. Maybe Aaron and Rachel turn out to have been lovers at one time, and Aaron has decided he wants the power for himself. Or if Randall hates war and senseless slaughter and violent people with power, why be honest with Monroe about his plans. See?

Whatever it is, right now the possibilities are seemingly endless. Sure, perhaps the clues so far haven't been parsed correctly by us. How could we tell though? Something about the device that was in Danny, Randall's motives, how Jane and her life partner really feel or who gets to them potentially, how Monroe is feeling about what to do to Miles next, another character. Then what next anyway. Randall, maybe next time whoever is Charlie (or even her, she could easily show up in the next five episodes at any time, weeks or months skipped ahead to) maybe that Charlie won't shoot at Randall's feet. Maybe at the tower, maybe Aaron grabs him and they both fall into the power source. There's always not paying attention and walking into an open empty elevator shaft, or being pushed in by Grace. Slipping on a banana peel.

Just like we could ask, when and if does Randall (or for that matter, Rachel, or Aaron, or some long lost friend or son or daughter or new character) become expendable, no longer prime, sacrificed to the gods of the plot, victim of the whims of the writers and producers. We would imagine that only Charlie and Miles are safe here, Tom and Bass are maybe too, but you never know. I don't remember ever an entire cast being replaced at once or through a season, but who knows. And things here, well this is only the first season.

Maybe it only depends on where which ping-pong balls fall into what cups.

You say you want a Revolution, well.... Not really.

2013-06-12T15:42:00.000+00:00

The NBC television show Revolution. We finally got around to watching it, and the story starts out with both a bang and a whimper. Sort of like watching it.

Make no mistake, the story is quite interesting. An "enough to keep watching the show" sort of interesting. However, this show has some major problems. Perhaps you've noticed them. Perhaps they've upset you as well.

We'll get into all that after the fold. There will be spoilers.

So here's a mandatory. *Spoiler Alert * There.

The writing isn't bad. Well, overall, usually. The dialog pretty good, the characters are somewhat compelling, the story intriguing. Buddies, with the mean one (or at least the driving force, the instigator) suddenly realizing what they've put in place is just simply wrong, the cure worse than the disease. One trying to stop the madness. Unable at the time to kill his best friend (well really not so much) to the detriment of humanity. And to the detriment of his new friends and to his acquaintances, not just casual passers-by. All against a backdrop of post-apocalyptic survival, in a world that's been without any power at all for 15 or so years.

A planet-wide technology dampening field, or something with that effect essentially. Not even batteries work any more, nor do engines because of the spark. No electricity works. Nobody really explains why compression engines don't work though, perhaps that's foretelling what things will be like in the series, since steam engines do work. Half a dozen of one, six of the other.

The plot isn't bad either, but there are some holes in it. With the writers punching in more and larger ones in as we go along. Too, a number of the behaviors and actions of the participants are, even taking into account a world fallen apart, perplexing at best, vexing at worst.

It starts out this way too, but the first time or two you maybe can't see the trend that really isn't there yet. Depending on if you're paying that much attention; there's some pretty good diversions going on as we begin.    Yes, we all expect the heroes of the story to be at least somewhat indestructible, to overcome the surprising setbacks and obstacles. But what slowly (or quickly, depending on what you're paying how much attention to when) dawns on you is the main characters are fairly invincible. The usual sort of action hero thing, running unscathed through the machinegun fire. Invincible until the writers decide that a character will no longer be a main character that is. Or in other words, until the writers kill the character off. This is one of the main problems with the show, the characters don't 100% of the time do things because of what's happening and internal consistency. No, the characters often do things because the writers make the characters do them.

In retrospect, it was quite obvious that after the somewhat puny asthmatic son with a crossbow stands up to the jack-booted thugs with pistols and muskets. Somebody was going to die, and that somebody was the father. Of course he would, we need the kids out alone on a quest. It's only the first time this happens, but not the last. Sooner or later, depending, it is quite annoying and very unrealistic. Maddening even. Two, four, eight, twelve episodes. Maybe it'll take you until things start flying, maybe even later, who knows. It's almost guaranteed to happen though.

What does an insane violent man who has randomly just killed people for looking at him wrong, or even for no reason, do with a woman he no longer has use for? Why, of course, nothing! How about a different violent insane man who has in his grasp a rebel and a criminal and her sister? Why of course, he lets them go, after all, he promised.       Now we too could ask for what reason, but that's pretty clear. We need these women for the plot, so they live.

When the son Danny gives his sister Charlie essentially a "I might as well say goodbye now, because I'm toast." speech, we feel the icy hands of the writers pulling the puppet strings. Sure, we just spent the bulk of the story so far trying to get him back, where you never get the feeling anything fatal will happen to him, and of course nothing does. But hey, time for a little dramatic effect, and of course the set up for some new secret, another gizmo.    So Danny plays the hero.

Usually while others who are main characters are trying to escape, a number of men with automatic rifles can't hit somebody straight in front of them, people that they appear to be trying to kill. Lots of sparks, lots of rifles not accurate at pistol range. As long as it's our heroes, we've got Stormtrooper aim all the way. Pretty typical.    But when it's a crashing helicopter, random shots from the thing take Danny right out. Certainly; he's no longer essential, and aim, even randomly, gets normal. Pretty powerful bullets too, they blast holes right through him. (Although hint to the people making the show; if you're going to do slo-mo raking across shots, make the pack far less obvious. Put the guy in a jacket, edit it more smoothly, CGI it, whatever.)

Who knows what the writers were thinking here with this in-your-face obviousness and puppetry. Maybe they were thinking that we wouldn't notice how bogus this was?    Perhaps we're supposed to consider that this makes up for all the times Miles and his two swords have taken out ten or twenty guys, some with muskets, with nary a scratch on himself, okay, maybe a nick and scratch here and there. (Note to writers: It does not make up for it.) One thing we do know, is the answer to the question "Why did this happen." That answer is along the lines of "Because the writers wanted it to." or "Because that's part of the plot and provides some drama." and so on. Artificial convenient drama by lazy scripts that kick the stuffing out of the willful suspension of disbelief, but hey. Although I believe out west they call this sort of thing "fucking bullshit".

Yes, the mother Rachel. You know, the whoa, she was the one who shot the guy who threatened the daughter and was taking the supplies, surprise. Oh, yeah, right, she's not dead, of course not, surprise. She's as obvious walking up to the corpse of Danny she's there for something. Another gift from the writers.

Just as it's obvious that when the band rescues Nora's sister Mia it's far too easy a rescue. Boom bang, even the über-competent psychopathic torturer is gone from the scene. Gee, do you think she's a mole? Which they handle with little skill; we know something is going to happen once they switch back to the two after all the tearful goodbyes. See, if Nora is not coming back, no need to show them conversing as they walk off for Texas to find the dad Mia says is still alive.

Back to the mother though. She's supposedly this genius, yet who can't design and build a bomb that looks like the amplifier she's supposed to be building. Who can't cave Monroe's skull in when it's just him and her, any number of times she has the opportunity. Hey, her daughter knocks out an Irish gang boss with a tea kettle and almost plunges a knife into him, him "surprisingly" being saved at the last minute by Miles. And mom kills, by herself, the man who's the only troop that ever scared Miles.

Now see, maybe Monroe is too much of a badass. But she's capable of it. When things get rough, mom is perfectly capable of shoving a screwdriver into the heart of an ex-colleague. Why not Monroe the evil power mad lunatic? Maybe we shouldn't blame her, the mass-murder Miles can't bring himself to blast apart the man that will soon order everyone to kill Miles. Or actually, will soon order the militia to slaughter every rebel with his helicopters. Who knew what he'd do with the choppers on the roof if he got power. Getting power, that would be impossible. Well except, you know. (And gee, that was lucky they were all standing up in that headquarters, wasn't it.) No, if Miles couldn't shoot Monroe, how could Rachel stab Monroe instead of stabbing the scientist that she herself put in the situation he's in. Hey, she didn't know, cut her some slack.

Nora gets stabbed in the stomach, she's not indestructible totally, but don't worry; it's not hit anything important. Um, okay... But the wound gets infected. Wait, I know this insane heroin dealer (don't worry, it's legal) who has a doctor; what could go wrong. Although we do learn a 50/50 chance to live is not at all hurt by mainlining some adrenaline. Sure, it flows better when you're watching it, well unless you think about it later. (Note to writers; people think about these sorts of things in aggregate later.) It sure was convenient that guy knew his way through the subway, you know, the one who talked them into listening to Mile.

Oh, and by the way, when there's this ultra-dangerous indestructible locket with software on a USB stick that somehow wipes out the electricity-eating nanobots around it, that can be tracked by the mastermind and source of the apocalypse. So dangerous, Charlie tells Rachel to just let them all be killed rather than help amplify it. What does Rachel do when she's got the chance to take it with her, or even booby-trap the device. Of course, she leaves it all there. So Monroe can power the helicopters that kill all these rebels including, it turns out, her son. Who to blame for the destruction and death? Why of course, the writers. Not Rachel; nobody would really be that stupid unless somebody else made them. (There's a lot of that in the show with the characters, and you all know how life imitates art.)

For that matter, what does Charlie do when she's got the opportunity to kill Randall? Kill him, if not take his locket and a Humvee with amplifier, etc. Maybe more than killing him is too dangerous, but we don't even get that. But instead of killing him, the guy that just kidnapped the mother she just rescued, Charlie shoots at his feet and they all run off. Did Charlie suddenly turn retarded or something? Just like her mom and the amplifier and necklace I guess.

Not everything is so obvious or so stupid. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be deus ex machina and what have you going on. Yes, Charlie is in a death trap, a chair with a crossbow tied to the door aimed at her head, and they're coming to open the door. They sure have a lot of loose bolts in the world here, and she barely gets out of the way. It was even a bit nerve wracking.

Then on the other hand you've got Maggie. Although that does set up for Charlie to get taken by the guy with the attack dogs, it was actually fairly random (that is, essentially believable) not foretold and a bit of a surprise she gets stabbed in the leg. Even more so that it hits badly. Then she does rather miraculously get stitched up. Sadly though, she's lost too much blood. Even if she hadn't, that sort of thing is very likely to very badly get infected, far worse than Nora does later. So that's all pretty much on the up and up. Although I still did at least get the impression they could have decided to let her live, it was only a small impression, and not a huge smoking crater hundreds of feet deep and yards wide. It felt like a random tragic unforetold event. It didn't feel like a plot point.

Unlike everyone standing up in front of the window when the chopper that shouldn't have been powered arrived. Come to think of it, the leader should have known exactly what he was hearing, even if he had no idea why. Yet it takes him until "too late" to realize it. We digress though.

Now, this realism with what happens to Maggie sounds all fine and dandy, and nothing to be upset about. Well except they've chosen this time to get real by getting rid of what was probably the nicest most realistic character. Sure in real life bad things happen to good people. Also sure that it smacks of an attempt to show they can be impromptu and not obvious. The problem there is, we already know they often are yanking ropes. So it makes one at least wonder if this wasn't just a diversion, or maybe just a case of the actress having to leave the show and getting written out.

Which is perhaps the real problem. We don't know why they're doing what they do, these writers. Or to be fair, what is probably the producers and scripting people and authors telling the writers to do it this way. So maybe not why, or always when and in what way, but usually that the creative team overall is up to something. Which rather demolishes the fourth wall, and maybe the third and the fifth for all we know.

The question is; will the story and characters continue to be so interesting as to make most viewers ignore all the rest? Or will it in the second season be like ABC's Revenge was in the second season. To the point where the nonsense makes you wonder if you'll even go back for the story, or just read a summary, or even stop bothering with the making up of characters and resolutions on the spot and just stop.

Some shows (like NBC's Grimm for example) learn from their first season mistakes. They do things like clear up the boring, liven up the pace, remove the unbelievable (in context), make the characters more real, and so on. Other shows don't learn in their second, or third, or ever. Sometimes it doesn't even matter, and people keep watching it in spite of the same mistakes for any number of other reasons. One question is, will Revolution be like that? If not, and it matters, another question is, will Revolution figure out how to be smooth and seamless. Or will it continue to trundle down the BS road until the viewers can't take it any more.

Carrot on a stick.

2013-05-25T20:34:00.003+00:00

Do you offer the carrot, or do you use the stick? Well, if you have a carrot on a stick, you can do either or both. Neither is probably always an option as well.

One problem there is what if they don't like carrots. Add to that, what if they aren't bothered by the stick?

It's more like rock and a hard place but that's so overused and exceedingly trite. Just typing it makes me feel like I do when I hear the sounds of the current Xbox 360 (which everyone calls the 360 of course). I mean, it's all fine to be childish or proud of a Wii or prancy-dancy uber-queen-style gay or ultra-feminine all 1950s-like or a fan of the overly dulcet or a product of the times in general, however you want to put it. Somebody has to watch reality TV shows or there wouldn't be so many of them, QED and quid pro quo.    Yet not everyone appreciates trying to be converted to a certain point of view, especially those who already are.

Obviously even that mild sort of thing is sure to bring disapproval or even anger, but like what much of the rest of this talk is about, those are all the sorts of things we'll discuss. Ideas, personal preferences and how we react to things. Examples are wonderful things, sometimes.

The recent reveal of the XBox One was..... curious. Maybe. Which like calling the first the Xbox, the second the 360, this one just flows with XB-One or more concise, xbone, however you pronounce it. We might ask, is there anyone really thinking here about what fans and detractors might say about the name, or is that all part of some plan. Does anyone cut Microsoft any slack for a reboot?    That all rather misses the point, even though it is an interesting question. Who's in charge here, is somebody at the wheel. Does anyone even know where they're sailing to.

There are other fish to fry besides the names of things. The Reveal, for those who bothered watching it? Well that's an issue right there. When you already have an idea one team is going to smash another one, you might just not watch the glorious but somewhat disturbing spectacle of the mismatch (if it's your team winning) or the ignoble defeat (if it's your team losing) and just take a gander at the score by halves or the final score after the fact. Which is a cute idea, what if instead of getting a football game, you got a talent content. Then there's always the people that do other things during commercials and halftime or stretches, or don't even care about sports.

But we digress. The Reveal spent at least half the time on the Entertainment (non-game-entertainment) side of things. Which isn't surprising given how the ads in the week or two before it lead up to it. And even less surprising watching the "Kinect drive" or how the dashboard layout, content, color scheme and sound scheme have been playing out in the last year or so. The deals with Verizon and Comcast and ESPN and Netflix. Or the addition of a web browser, something that seemed impossible two or three years ago. That The Reveal was rather Apple-like, they are the biggest company of that type these days, and it's not because of their attitude or their computers, right?

The short of it though is that this was annoying and aggravating but not a surprise. It's a logical progression, and it's actually already been happening. So let's talk about some of those things, many of which the concepts apply to many of the others as well. Think big-picture.

1. The Kinect is a cool gadget, a gimmick of sorts, but it does a lot of things well. Interactive content for children, sports and exercise, dancing, curious touch screen games brought to life. Futuristic video phone ove IP! But for the games, some are more painful than others. And a number they've just given away. Drawn people in, proven their concept. The possibilities are there with the current Kinect, which I suppose we could call an experiement, and an experiment that succeeded. Sure, some games are painful. Sure, sometimes when trying to select things on screen -- even with good light and proper space -- gives a queezy icky sort of feeling as things jump around while you try and hold your hands steady so it recognizes somebody's holding their hand there. Picking up the controller to more quickly easily friendly move around the screen rather defeats the purpose. Even still, not everyone has a Kinect, even at whatever price cut they took to offer it at $150. So nobody can count on a Kinect being there when they develop a "normal" game or app, even when it might benefit greatly from having body and voice recognition et al.

So, what if the Kinect was more stable, with better resolution. What if it had more awareness of who was who and where every part of everyone was. What if everyone had a Kinect, and game and app developers and content providers could count on it being there. That is pretty good thing. Great even. If.

The issue though relates to what we started on. What about the kickback, the bad feelings, the impression you're being force-fed the device. Well, we don't know how that will impact who, but we'd imagine that Microsoft has thought of that. Have they actually though? And in the correct way with the correct questions, answers and decisions.

There's another aspect to that of course -- it's still a few months before the XB One comes out. Five, six, more. A lot can happen. There is room to maneuver. There is E3 coming up. (Although we wouldn't expect that anything they do at E3 is really going to wipe anything much that's "on the bad side" out, E3 goings on won't address all the important considerations or solve the major problems.) There's also that Sony hasn't really gone into detail yet. What they do (will do) and how they put it will make a difference as well. They don't seem to be going about it the right way in the present, but when it's all said and done, it might turn out that hindsight is the man in the skinny jeans doing parkour.

2. Content, convergence, multitasking, games, et al. There were a number of millions who got the Xbox or the 360, to play games. That's the core, but recently 360 sales have picked up in a number of areas of the world. Specifically North America at least. Gamers alone are not responsible for that, unless you count the new style of gamers, who might just want to switch from game to browser to app to game. In some style the xbone is going to do some of that. Lots of people (many of them the new millions) are going to want that functionality.

The question is will that be enough soon enough to make an impact. How many are going to jump on the xbone (or the psfour for that matter) when they come out? Perhaps the Wii versus WiiU might tell that story, partly, maybe. But most people might agree there's not really much of a way to compare the threesixty to the psthree to the we, at least not directly, or meaningfully. Just glancing at the top sellers on each might answer that question of comparison. So we probably have to wait until say November 2013, or maybe even this time in 2014 to get any sort of an answer on what happens with the Xbox One and the PS4 and the sales of them and their games.

3. The state of the gaming environment. This is the big one.

Not all gamers are on consoles. Nor will they be. Computers (essentially, Personal Computers running Windows) have better hardware. At a cost of course, but for graphics and CPU and RAM performance, none of the consoles can compete at all. Number of monitors possible, resolutions.    Even on the network side of things. Then there's mouse and keyboard, which many would say are far superior in all ways to controllers, which with adapters, you can use any of them from any console on a computer too. That's even when a game is made to work on a controller. Although when it comes to computers, there are a number of people who dislike Valve and Steam as much as they dislike Microsoft or Sony and their products and methods. A wash in terms of a lot of things.

Then there's the phones, really smartphones, which we might as well call handheld computers. Which people seem to do very little actual calling on.    Same goes in a lot of ways for tablets, which some of the smartphones are small tablets. Games a plenty. There is much competition out there, how does somebody cope?

Used games, that's another. It's not just those who don't buy games when they come out, which in practice "all cost $60". Aside from season passes, DLC, multiplayer unlock codes, and the like, nobody publishing or distributing games makes anything from the used ones. Of course, nobody makes anything if nobody buys the games ever either, or doesn't even get your console in the first place. How is that fixed? With a computer and digital delivery, you can have sales if they don't sell well, and you can sell them for years, there's no money there either. Who wants to pay $60 for digital if the physical costs the same? These are issues to work out, and there's no easy answer.

But what if the physical is just a method of distribution, with the licensing and purchasing all done for the software rather than for the media? How does that help or hurt in the drive to compete with computers, desktop, laptop, tablet, handheld. What does the pricing structure look like.

There's also that game installation to hard drive bit and such. With 30 gig games, 500 gig isn't much, so for those who often are playing off and on 5 to 20 games at a time, that's kind of an idea they've dropped the ball on, maybe. Something to consider.

Yet what about the choices? If the xbone and psfour as the two choices, and if they both do things the same way, does that help or hurt things versus all the rest out there. Does the way they do things drive people further to weyou, non-consoles, and so on? Gamers are gamers it's true, but many people are not gamers. Probably most people are not. (Out of every 10 or 100 random people, how many would say they are hardcore gamers.)    So maybe the question isn't even how you appeal to them (as appears the track Sony is more taking with their hardware and more pure gaming sort of console, if you will) but how you engage everyone in all the demographics in a household (as appears the track Microsoft is taking with their hardware and more non-game type of entertainment focused console, if you will). Maybe the question is who has the money or who makes the buying decisions.

4. Backwards compatibility. How do you make a new console with seven years worth of technology improvements play things made for a $200 or $300 console? The easy answer is, you don't. The simple solution is for those with the current console is to keep it, and play their games for it on it. Seems both Sony and Microsoft have decided that, and what else can you say. A question about that is, how long after the new consoles come out will there be new games and support for the 360 or the PS3? Another for the xbone in particular is can you feed that signal from the 360 in like you can with a cable box. How about the psfour? We might imagine that for as many existing consoles are out there, they'll be available and playable and replaceable for quite a long time, and there are many many many current or used games that somebody could just keep buying. Not everyone is going to have the desire or the funds to get a new $400 or $500 console anyway, and there's always those "other computers" to play games on.

5. Achievements. This is pretty particular to the 360/One (although there are trophies for the 3/4 as well).    When it comes to that, adding a bunch of fluff is the same as adding a bunch of new ways to add to your gamerscore. Does that "weaken" the impact of those who have all of theirs from gaming? We could suggest that with GFW, Windows 8, Windows Phone, as well as normal titles and arcade games, that's already happened. Toss in the number of games that are "easy 1000". And that except to the most ardent fan (if you prefer, illogical psychotic) most buyers and potential buyers in most ways only give three things about them; jack, doodly, and squat.

It's not a question if anyone is going to be upset and angry and feeling betrayed about them, as they should. The question is what does it mean overall big picture. Hey, you can always break it down by real games you really play, rather than how you managed to get 1000 points by visiting the grocery store, playing King Kong, 2K6 Baseball and Avatar The Last Airbender. Or by doing a bunch of tricks to actually hit 1000 on Final Fantasy XI, Rumble Roses XX, Chromehounds, Battlefield: Bad Company, Lost Planet 2, Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero Van Halen, Beatles Rockband, Lego Rockband, and Max Payne 3.

6. Live Gold. (Or PlayStationPlus if you wish to compare.) For an Xbox of some sort, nothing much is going to change there probably, perhaps. For $40 a year (or thereabouts, if it doesn't change) players get access to the network, the apps, discounts, freebies.    This kind of ties in with the Bing and Rewards ways to add MSP, if that stays around. Some of this some of that, not really a consideration in a lot of ways -- at least not compared to the rest.

7. The Cloud. Calling random computers out there holding some data "The Cloud" is perhaps the most meaningless sort of vapid silly thing. Oooh, data storage that lives on another computer of some sort that you can get to remotely, wow. 64 Gig flash drives aren't always supported on a device, no. So yes, sure, it's convenient often to box or skydrive things from your "phone" or to have persistent data out there on a server someplace from your gaming console (entertainment command center). Just like it's convenient to have gigs of email space, or even better, support for emailing large multi-gig files. The Cloud!!!! Such functionality has been needed for a while, but it's hardly make or break, or even much of a differentiator necessarily. Just like downloading files to local storage or what have you.

-----------------

There's probably a lot more out there, and a lot more to discuss for some. For others, it all boils down to one thing, do they spend a few hundred dollars in a few months on a new console, or don't they. The consoles not yet out will end up how they end up. They' have what they have, and not have what they don't.

Consumer feedback might change some things policy and hardware and the like. It will almost certainly change some of the focus and some of the message over the next few months, but there is a real world reality to deal with in all of this beyond what we each might want or need or appreciate.

In the end, all that counts as sales versus your rivals, regardless if that is on a horizontal or vertical. Or actually, both.

Just like a carrot on a stick.

How Microsoft might royally bufu themselves with their new console (and not in a good way)

2013-05-19T19:36:00.003+00:00

Some of these will be an instant issue, others might add up together. But they're all really bad ideas.

1. Always requiring an Internet connection.

This one is just stupid. It's been tried before and it's an unmitigated disaster. Even if it had never been tried, it's idiotic. Would we expect this from a company that is tying together all their OS products so brilliantly? Hopefully not.

2. Blocking out used games.

Not every title is a buy when it comes out or buy new, and plenty of money is made by selling online passes, map packs, song and dance downloads. Sometimes people buy consoles and sign up for Live because they trade games. Also, there are a number of companies that rent out games. So attempting to alienate vast numbers far more than their horrible sounds already do, that's just plain extra retarded. As in backwards and slow and low-IQ. Like a spark firing at the wrong time retarded.

3. Getting rid of Micro Soft Points.

They could replace it somehow, maybe, but getting rid of them totally in every way is probably not such a great idea.

4. Making the console sounds and colors even more fru-fru and Wii-like.

That's pretty self explanatory, but for those that really love the Wii and Wii games (Hello, it's Mario!!!!) they have a Wii already most certainly. Even if they're trying to convert people into dropping their current careers and becoming interior decorators, it's just a doomed idea.

Yes, I have a Wii. Yes, I've played a couple of games on it. No, it's in a box somewhere not even hooked up. No, my habits in various lifestyle areas are not applicable here.

5. Resetting achievements.
6. Not counting old achievements.
7. Doing away with achievements.

Messing around with people's Gamer Score is a sure-fire way to tank things. Removing the reasons people buy a great number of games only for that reason ("the cheevos" is beyond the most moronic thing anyone could possibly ever do. It's counter-productive, and antagonistic. Customer no-support. The definition of consumer unfriendly. Hostile.

Although it seems that would be impossible, as it would require everyone working at Microsoft to become brain-dead, or at least to forget everything they've learned since they introduced GS. Since we know they've put in achievements and tied it all in with Windows 8 on PC, tablet and phone, how could they possibly make such a move?

8. Requiring a Kinect.
9. Putting more ads on the dashboard.

Both of those are seemingly non-sensical, but maybe they could make it work, somehow. Probably not.

10. I don't have a ten here either. Perhaps later.

So, anything else we can think of? A number of people dislike or hate Microsoft as it is, so what would push you over the edge if you haven't already been by just the rumors?

Addendum: 360 Game sales et al

2013-05-18T16:08:00.000+00:00

To put all that game sales stuff in perspective, let's look at the worldwide sales figures for the overall best selling games for the Xbox 360 that went over four million sales.

Game - Year - World sales millions

Kinect Adventures! 2010 20.04
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 2011 14.93
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2010 13.94
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 2009 13.02
Call of Duty: Black Ops II 2012 9 12.20
Halo 3 2007 11.77
Grand Theft Auto IV 10.25
Halo: Reach 2010 9.43
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 8.89
Halo 4 2012 8.24

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2011 7.20
Call of Duty: World at War 2008 6.93
Battlefield 3 6.81
Gears of War 2 2008 6.62
Halo 3: ODST 2009 6.15
Gears of War 2006 6.00
Gears of War 3 2011 5.88
Kinect Sports 2010 5.59
Red Dead Redemption 2010 5.53
Forza Motorsport 3 2009 5.37

Assassin's Creed 2007 5.29
Assassin's Creed II 2009 5.10
Fable III 2010 4.92
FIFA Soccer 13 2012 4.65
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 2010 4.52
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 2007 4.39
Assassin's Creed III 2012 4.29
Fable II 2008 4.12
FIFA Soccer 12 2011 4.08
Fallout 3 2008 4.05

Forza Motorsport 2 2007 4.00

This is a "top 30" list, because the first title comes with new sales of a Kinect. So any fan of any genre (even those who, say, bought a Kinect just to give voice commands in Mass Effect 3) "bought" a copy of Kinect Adventures when they got the sensor. That figure likely also includes console sales of any of the Xbox 360 + Kinect bundles.

What this tells us is that historically, people who play games on this particular console, do so to large extent for games like those genres listed above.

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If you just want to go with the sales figures for North America all consoles, in November 2012 "Amazon online sales data" (for week 45 it was said) looked like this:

1. Halo 4 (Xbox 360)
2. Assassin’s Creed III (Xbox 360)
3. Just Dance 4 (Wii)
4. Assassin’s Creed III (PS3)
5. FIFA Soccer 13 (PS3)
6. New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS)
7. Madden NFL 13 (Xbox 360)
8. Pokémon Black Version 2 (DS/3DS)
9. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360)
10. FIFA Soccer 13 (Xbox 360)

Which might also give us a clue as to what kinds of games might go with what kinds of consoles, at least in NA.

Why people buy the Xbox 360

2013-05-18T15:33:00.000+00:00

This isn't a scientific study. It's not even based much upon sales figures and not at all on those self-serving surveys. So this is rather mostly a non-empirical, rule of thumb off the cuff sort of story, with anecdote and "common sense" perhaps. These aren't necessarily in order either; although the first one is the most important.

1. There are a number of recent things that have certainly or likely broadened the appeal of the Xbox 360 to large extent, but primarily it's a gaming device. So people buy it to play games upon it. The number of people who have a 360 is the biggest reason people buy more, which feeds on itself. But games is the main reason to get one

What sort of games we ask? Well there's a lot of them, but if the big sellers are the main reason, it's for those sorts of games then. Sort of a QED, sort of a tautology. To dip though into some random reports of dubious veracity then. The top 10 best sellers of 2011 say, that starts with what's to large extent First Person shooters. Ones with numbers in the titles, as really all of them are. Three being the most prevalent, trivially speaking.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Battlefield 3

In the case of what's affectionately known as Skyrim, it's a first or third person fantasy role playing game, but you do shoot things; magically, shoutingly and with bows. It's also (for the voice commands) "Kinect enabled". Which brings us to the rest of the list, being as the next two are actual Kinect titles.

Kinect Sports Season 2
Just Dance 3

Followed out by mostly more shooters, first person and otherwise.

Halo 3 (Allegedly)
Gears of War 3
Saint's Row The Third (we see what you did there)
Fifa 12 (our only sports sim)
Batman: Arkham City (technically, more like "Batman Arkham 2", but who's counting)

2. That leads us to Kinect. Figure and voice recognition, sports, edutainment, exercise, video chat and conferencing, game and AV control, and so on. Kinect certainly hasn't hurt console sales. Although it is as much a cool factor, a kids draw (think, interactive Sesame Street) and a user interface as it is anything else. But only the Xbox 360 has it (aside from some hackers here and there, as they say) and it's a reason to get a 360.

3. Multiplayer. Part of the recent surge in console sales is weight; the more people playing multiplayer on a platform, the more reason there is for others to join in. (It's also a big part of why the Call of Duty franchise is so big.)

3. Another part to that, perhaps the same thing, maybe another subject. The multiplayer aspect goes along with the chat and party features of the 360, and the other way around. Those are reasons to get a 360 versus one of the alternatives, a different console or a computer. It's fairly seamless and easy to "chat and party" as long as your friends (or new ones) are along for the ride.

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For both of those, yes, it requires a "gold membership" of Live to use, but that's also needed to use IE , and so do many of the music/video/news/streaming features. But at discount that "Gold Live" is $40 a year or so, you get a network (speed, stability, uptime) that goes along with the price, and there are enough deals and freebies over a year where it ends up costing little or nothing in absolute terms.

This aspect of paying for access is also a reason people don't buy a 360, but we're not talking about that here right now.

4. Apps and such. The addition of Internet Explorer (slow and HTML5 video/audio only really) might not mean much, unless you've got a keyboard and mouse and don't mind waiting and having no flash etc. IE also replaced the Twitter and Facebook apps, which are also not much to speak of either. But the addition of things like Netflix, Vudu, MLB, UFC, ESPN, even though most are just front-ends to services you already have to have from the respective providers. There are also free (to some extent, pay for premium, watch and listen to advertising, etc) audio and video streaming apps though, Crackle, Last and so on. Along with Xbox Video and Xbox Music (which used to be called Zune) for those who want to digitally rent or buy (regardless of cost, because of ease). And a few more things. Overall then, this in its entirety makes it a reason to buy, or at the least adds to the reason. Of course, the 360 is also a DVD player, but even with a specific "regular" remote, that's not much of a reason to buy a 360 in and of itself. Some $200 or $300 for a clunky big limited DVD player, not so much of a draw. There are other pros and cons too......

However taken in total, all of these coordinated entertainment viewing options, plus and minus, offer a number of people a reason to consolidate things on one platform.

5. Integration with other things that are all windowy-like. Although for some, this item here is a reason to get the other things rather than a reason to get a 360. But with the rolling in of similar interfaces and cross-platform logins and user data and other things, there's Windows 8 (the OS) and Windows Phone (7 and 7.5 and 8). Throw in a tablet here, a laptop there, roll it back into the infrastructure, and as the French say, boom.

6. Sound and visual schemes. They've taken the wussiest and most wretched looks and sounds from the Wii say for example, and made everything look and sound like those sorts of things. It likely brings over some fair number of buyers (or pushes them in), while the gamers just turn off the sounds (except for some apps that think it's fun to play the sounds too) and don't pay much attention to the colors. Well, actually, the gamers are probably too busy actually playing games to worry about how things pander to the sorts of people that buy those other things. All in all, it's probably a net-sum gain, one might guess.

7. Microsoft points MSP. A convenient way to consolidate funds to get games on demand (overpriced usually, and with no physical media ever, but something that appeals so some people), Downloadable content DLC (addins for games, songs and dances for such games, etc), share funds in a family. Plus some of the other things (Xbox Rewards, Bing Search) let consumers get MSP for doing other things.

8. Achievements. A big part of the total, a meaningless number of great import. It gives goals, reasons, something to count. How many of the total (1000, 200, whatever) did you get out of the game? Did you fully complete it, do you have a reason to replay it. Not that it's needed, people play CoD multiplayer even without it, others don't care. On the other hand, there are whole web sites just for them, such as this one and this one.

9. Hardware and software lock in. If you game on the PC, and you play the newest games, and you want all the graphics and speed the games have to offer, you are going to be spending a lot of money frequently. Say you've got a PC that's 2 years old and has a graphics card that cost $150 at the time. What games are you going to play now that are new and this gen? How about 5 or 7 years old. Plus the whole PC support thing. Do PC break and need to be replaced as much as the older Xbox that red ringed do? Probably not, but the out-of-date PC will have to be upgraded or replaced.

The side benefit is greater graphic resolution and such possible on a PC, for those who spend $500 not really, and how many people buy $1000 or $3000 PC every year or two. Maybe that's overstating things and making it seem a bigger deal than it is. But much has been done on a hardware platform that has stayed stable and has requirements. The software is optimized in ways it can't be on a wide variety of uncontrolled hardware. Even more so, hardware that changes from month to month. (Check the stats of a $350 video card from five years ago versus one from right now for example. Which may we remind you please, is about the cost of a console with hard drive and a year of Live Gold.)

Which that uncontrolled/controlled thing is the second part. Cheaters, hackers, viruses, spyware on a console. That goes for any console, but remember this is also a paid network. How much, if anything, they actually spend on the network is another question, but there's no doubt they have teams watching for those people who abuse or take advantage of the system. Maybe some don't like that control, or who's doing it, but most console buyers probably don't, regardless of what they think of Microsoft Or Microsoft versus Sony versus Nintendo, for that matter. Or even Valve and Steam on the other side of things. Punkbuster, sure. Xfire, of course. And nothing here is meant to suggest PC gaming is worse or better, or that it isn't much bigger or much smaller overall just that these are factors. It's also not meant to suggest the superiority of the mouse/keyboard (for most games) is in question. :smiley:

10. I'm sure there's a ten here somewhere, maybe later.

So there you have it. The main reasons that people buy Xbox 360s, which primarily is for gaming purposes. Or at least that's probably where all the money is. Some 12% of sales of all games is almost certainly a bigger chunk than the number of people using the cable apps to watch cable TV on an Xbox 360 or how many people are browsing the web with a controller in a single-use full-screen program on a console.

Lightwave Saber Bass Optical Pickup System controls

2013-05-12T19:18:00.000+00:00

The dials and iceTone switch explained pseudo-simply.

There are five knobs and a switch on a standard Lightwave Saber Bass, such as this one. Here's what the controls do.

Switch. Switch controls warmness and coolness, somewhat akin to what a neck/bridge pickup switch does. When up (towards the neck/top) this gives a "warm" tone. When down (towards the bridge/bottom) this gives a "cool" tone. "switched-in EQ that applies an upward-tilted frequency response curve"

First/top knob. Master volume. Controls optics and iceTone volume both. All the way clockwise (right) is the loudest and all the way counter-clockwise (left) is the quietest.

Second knob. Bass volume (boost/cut). In the center is 0 dB. Roughly 300 Hz knee. All the way right (clockwise) is four times more bass (+12 dB) and all the way left (counter-clockwise) is four times less bass (-12 dB)

Third knob. Mids volume (boost/cut). Same as the second knob, cw +12 dB ccw -12 dB. Frequency depends upon fourth knob position (varying Q).

Fourth knob. Controls the mids range of the third knob. Left/ccw is 200 Hz and right/cw is 1 KHz. Narrower in the lower frequencies and broader in the higher frequencies.

Fifth/bottom knob. Controls iceTone. HFE blending. . All the way left/ccw is off. Going right/cw adds percussive and high end presence and crispness. "blends in the high frequency enhancement built into each individual string saddle"

The economics of it all

2013-05-07T07:23:00.000+00:00

Without getting too very much bogged down in the details, let's see what's going on with some tech stuff.

On an auction (supposedly) site where you can buy things outright with ease, case in point. Special offers, advertised on the main pages.

iPad Mini 16G 7.9" screen : $300
Android 8G 10.1" screen: $120

Of course you can't really compare them; one is very well put together and stylish, and the other is an entry level with a resistive touchscreen. Still, if you just have to have a tablet, well.

How about phones? Same place.

iPhone 4 16G $185
Droid Incredible $65

There's all sorts of factors that go into buying tech of course. Sure, you can build a computer at home that is exactly what you want, for less than anyone sells the equivalent. But how about an OS, and tech support, and the entire infrastructure built around name-branding.

I might just delete this post, it's stupid.

Interesting, because speed seems to be gathering.

2013-04-22T18:37:00.002+00:00

Well, since last post, Google Fiber has announced a pretty large number of new neighborhoods in Kansas City KS/Kansas City MO, as well as a new city. They're going into Provo UT. In fact, essentially are there in Provo UT. They're taking over the existing city fiber network, which they'll finish out.

We'll see at this end of this year how things are going in Kansas City, and during next year sometime what happens in Austin, and how things go in Provo during all that.

Really the only lesson here is that none of this is going to be instant or particularly widespread. That calling this something like "just around the corner" in any of the three cities is rather premature, depending on which city it is. Even in the farthest along places, it's not dominating or everywhere. Being where Google Fiber is seems more a matter of luck. Either way, it's not a thing that most people should be expecting to happen to them or soon.

Most people essentially being everyone that is not already pretty clearly in the path of pretty certain plans in those three cities.

Give it a few years.

The wishful thinking of you actually getting Google Fiber (or any fiber) in the next few decades. Unless you already have it, or a few other cases

2013-04-17T11:26:00.000+00:00

Right now, there are plans for one other city to get Google Fiber, besides the one that has it. The next city, starting out sometime next year, beginning in some place or another in that city. That should come out sometime within the next year or year and a half until they actually start working on it.

Be that as proof of concept, experiment, publicity campaign, propaganda, fire under the staid interests of cable and phone and their non-competitive strangle-holds. Potentially ignoring dark fiber and right of way and other fiber and cable and copper and PSTN and POTS and Satellite providers. Not particularly important on the results side, just certainly a big deal on the implementation side of things.

But for now, forget about all that. What (where) Google Fiber is? Kansas City. Both of them.

Oh, wow, but hey that's a whole big city, two cities, suburbs, lots of installs, right? Yes, regardless of the sweetheart deals or what have you (that's just how it works) there is that -- it's someplace. And it's now.

Yet what if you don't live in Kansas City?

Well, for that matter, what if you do.

Starting last year (2012) there was pretty much two (count 'em, two) neighborhoods someplace or another in Kansas City up and running big-time, bells and whistles. Or whatever. I'm sure that's all prominently displayed and mapped out all over the place on the Google Fiber website. You can absolutely easily find all sorts of information there, certainly. Not just the past, and with the pace accelerating in both time and scope and size and intensity.

Where is it going? The plans for what's already gone by, the Jan 2013 to Mar 2013 time-frame. Huge areas of Kansas City, all fibered up, with many thousands of happy customers. In a total honest, open fair way, no doubt.

Instead of just guessing, let's take a look at a map, shall we?

Or to see things a bit bigger towards the middle of that.

Hello, first quarter 2013!!!!

Just kidding of course. This is a pretty big deal, and it's exciting. This is going to grow and be better. You can find that map of these next five neighborhoods (Piper Schools, Delaware Ridge, Painted Hills, Open Door, Arrowhead) over at their Google Fiber Blog. (Those above pics are there too, considerably more zoomed in though I believe.) Those Jan-Mar first-quarter dates are the dates where plans had to be chosen, depending upon the neighborhood.

That's not that's necessarily when they started work on any of the installs in the neighborhoods, but the deadline for residents to sign up. Big ad blitz there probably, besides the champions or whatever we'd call them working at it to make it a reality. Who knows what else. Downplaying the slowness while upplaying the potential, the dream, the future.

At any time within the next year or two, even in the city where the work has already started (should you live there) the odds are though that you aren't where they're putting it in. And likely, we'd guess, those areas already have access to one or more of the available fiber services (FIOS, UVERSE, ETC) around. Maybe not though, and certainly if so, more expensive.

We'll see how it goes, but if you hear talk of how Google Fiber is in your city or going to be in your city, or how this will create competition where you are, or how this will revolutionize Internet connectivity and speed? Take it with a grain of salt. (It's easy, just like what you did with Y2K and 2012)

This isn't to say that Google Fiber is a waste of time, or bad, because it's neither of those things. Very useful and good. A lot should be learned from the experiment, and what will be learned is not just how can you spend billions of dollars on a few neighborhoods in Kansas City and Austin over the next 2-5 (or even 25) years.

Plus that, given that up until now what's been done on a large open publicized scale has been just about nothing, Google is to be commended on their experiment.

Just we shouldn't be thinking any of us are going to get it ourselves any time soon. (Unless you're in one of those seven neighborhoods in Kansas City, then, nevermind, you will be getting it soon. Maybe. As far as I know.)