worse than hitler » consumerism

consumerism

Archived Posts from this Category

Wed 7 May 2008

gta4 mini review

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

Everywhere you read how awesome the game is, from the game review sites to the New York Times. And they are right, it’s a very good game.

However, it’s not the best game evar. In fact, while I admit I’m not fully complete yet I think it’s already safe to say that GTA:Vice City and GTA: San Andreas are actually more fun to play.

The biggest mistake Rockstar made was to make the driving more realistic. Driving just about any car is a pain, with horrible acceleration and loose handling, it’s far too difficult to make controlled turns quickly. And driving a bike (what was one of the best parts of the GTA experience) is now virtually impossible, because once you get up to speed you’re highly likely to hit a car or other obstacle that sends Niko hurtling through the air to his death. Realistic sure, but lame!

My other complaint is that with this series they came “back to earth”, so to speak. I’m probably in the minority but I played GTA:SA to completion and really enjoyed its far-out storyline, with planes and alien technology and multiple-city landscape. The simpler one-city environment of Liberty City (while still quite large) feels constrained to me.

Don’t get me wrong… the city is incredible and breathtakingly beautiful. And they’ve added lots of depth and richness to the environment and the story. I love their in-game internet and television station and radio talk shows. The plotline and missions are still pretty darn great — one cutscene in particular made me laugh until it hurt.

I am having a great time with the game, but I want more. Bring on GTA4:Vice City! (or London, or whatever it will be) and make driving fun again!

Wed 7 May 2008

repeat after me, three times please

Posted by rt under tech , politics , open letters , consumerism , games

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[5] Comments

DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS
DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS

DON’T BUY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS

(and yes, this includes xbox… it may be “ok” for now but just imagine they control that market too)

Tue 8 Apr 2008

unboxing

Posted by rt under personal , consumerism , games

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[3] Comments

Unboxing the PS3 is an… interesting… experience. Scratch that, a better term would be frightening.

Where the Wii is all happy and friendly and small, the PS3 is giant and imposing and shiny and modern. I think a vechicle-based analogy would be Vespa vs Tank.

I recall a few years ago laughing that the US gov’t were blocking exports of PS2s to certain countries because of features they could be used for arms.. seemed ridiculous at the time. With the PS3 however, I’m kind of afraid if I hit the wrong button I’ll have started a game of Global Thermonuclear War.

The picture looks surprisingly nice on the RCA cables supplied… and when the HDMI cables arrive obviously it will be much better. Oh, and it will look even nicer when some games arrive. :-)

Sun 6 Apr 2008

bought a ps3 today

Posted by rt under consumerism , games

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[2] Comments

As you could probably tell from the previous post, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming launch of GTA IV later this month. Today I ordered a PS3 and pre-ordered the game so I’ll be ready for when that ships.

Based on the advice of some guy on the internets suspiciously named “steve”, I also bought Oblivion which will hopefully tide me over until GTA IV arrives.

Tue 1 Apr 2008

hard drives fail it

Posted by rt under personal , tech , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

No Comments

I’m sick and tired of hard drives failing on me. Losing data hurts way too much for a guy like me, so I finally decided to stop half-assing it and spend some money to do things properly.

On Monday I ordered a two-bay drive enclosure, and two 1T drives. I’m going to operate those in RAID mirror mode, so if either of them die I will still retain all of my precious data.

Mon 28 Jan 2008

amazon mp3 store

Posted by rt under personal , something that is awesome , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[6] Comments

Not even one month into 2008, and I’ve already spent more money on music this year than in all of 2007. The reason why? Amazon MP3 store has reasonably priced music without the crappy apple or microsoft DRM — which means I actually own the copies instead of just leasing them.

I suppose I should also give credit to Megs and Dave who introduced me to some new awesome bands (new to me, that is) that I am quite enjoying such as Ratatat and The Killers.

Now if only the tv/movie folks would get in line in this. I’d definitely consider a set-top box that worked with amazon unbox or netflix downloads for a decent price, which I suspect may happen in the year, but that’s only because I can tolerate leasing video because of it’s shorter shelf life.

Thu 18 Oct 2007

puzzles are fun

Posted by rt under personal , something that is awesome , consumerism , games , contest

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

1 Comment

At work, the following was passed to the email list with a $5 starbucks card as prize for the first person to get it right. Finally a chance for me to use my finely-tuned puzzle solving skills to use besides in job interviews.
> Diophantus was an algebraist who lived in Alexandria in the third
> century AD. Most of what is known about his life comes from an
> epigram about him (which has been slightly simplified.)
>
> His boyhood lasted a sixth of his life.
> His beard grew after another twelfth.
> He married after a seventh more and his son was born nine years later.
> When he died, he had been a father for half of his life.
> How long did he live?

Answer follows:

(more…)

Wed 10 Oct 2007

in rainbows

Posted by rt under personal , reviews , nostalgia , something that is awesome , open letters , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

1 Comment

In Rainbows is completely fantastic. Buy it now for the low-low price of whatever you feel like. It’s worth at least that much, I promise.

Tue 25 Sep 2007

amazon mp3 store

Posted by rt under tech , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

1 Comment

I was quite excited when I woke up this morning to find that Amazon had launched their MP3 store. You can buy decent-quality songs or albums in delightfully non-DRM’d format for very reasonable prices.

I even found an album that I was interested in getting which was part of the labels they are currently offering on the store. When I clicked through to the details, they had an “also available on CD” link so I checked that out… and sure enough the CD price is actually cheaper. ($7.99 for the CD vs $8.99 for the MP3s)

I even have “free” 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime, so it would be kind of stupid for me to actually pay more money for less quality on this. But it seems like such a waste to order a CD with all that packaging for something I’m just going to file away on a shelf somewhere.

Thu 22 Mar 2007

gpl

Posted by rt under tech , politics , ideas , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[2] Comments

So the reason I really like the GPLv2 is exactly that it allows everybody to be selfish and not having to really believe in any other politics. We can all be selfish and do things that make sense for ourselves, and it really boils down to a very simple equation: “I will get more effort out of other people working on it too, than I have to give back.”

And yes, you can be a free-loader, and not do anything at all, but on the other hand, if you do that you don’t really “cost” anything to any of the people who truly help in development, and you also won’t actually get your specific needs looked at. So to get the most out of the whole process, you really do end up having to help with the process yourself.

That’s a kind of beauty, to me. People are encouraged to chip in and help, not because of some political agenda, or because they try to be “good people,” but simply because it helps themselves more than not chipping in and helping would. That’s what I would call “positive feedback!” — Linus Torvalds

I think “positive feedback” is a really lame term for the awesome effect he described. Instead I would describe this effect as “systemic self-enforcing behavioral incentives providing a socially net positive outcome”. It’s a rare effect, but totally awesome when harnessed — you don’t need a complicated bureaucracy or reliance on assuming people or organizations will play nice.

I’d like to see politicians and other organizational leaders to target this effect broadly across society as an alternative to traditional approaches. If by design the self-interested actions of various members can lead to co-operation and mutual benefit without need for heavy-handed central management or irrational hope for goodwill… that would be a huge win.

I have to admit… this effect is a large reason why I love free software.

Wed 7 Mar 2007

biggest problem ever

Posted by rt under personal , tech , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[5] Comments

You think you’ve got problems? Bah! I’ve got a huge problem, at least an order of magnitude bigger than any other problem which has ever existed since the beginning of time. Move over, African AIDS orphans, I’ll show you something to worry about!
I have a laptop at home, and it’s dying. The LCD hinge is totally shot, so I have to prop it up with velcro in order to be able to see anything. The sound doesn’t play at all because of motherboard damage, and the wireless PCMCIA card I use for networking is cracked (but still works most of the time).

Time for a new laptop then eh? Except, I have a spiffy nice laptop from work. It’s got piles of RAM, nice shiny wide screen and it generally works great (except for right now when it’s in repair). I generally use this one at home as my primary laptop because, well, it functions better.

So I don’t really need a new laptop because I can use my work one. The only case I’d need one would be if I get laid off — which I totally don’t expect but still that’s the only circumstance I’d really need a new laptop. And if I would get laid off, that means that I can’t be spending money on a laptop because I don’t have a job and will need to conserve money for essentials while job hunting.
So realistically, there are no scenarios in which I should buy a new laptop, even though I need one. Grumble.

Tue 26 Dec 2006

design

Posted by rt under consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[5] Comments

My wife got an iPod nano for xmas, 2nd generation (pink). I think it’s one of the most beautifully engineered products I have ever seen, in your hand it feels like it should be worth 5x the price. I don’t really need one for myself as I don’t listen to music much, but Apple has sure done a wonderful thing with those.

Tue 29 Aug 2006

oh. my. god.

Posted by rt under tech , something that is awesome , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[7] Comments

My new printer arrived, a Brother 2070n that I described earlier. I plugged it into the wall, and plugged it into my modem. Then I set up my computer to print to that IP address, and presto I was done. The time from when I opened the amazon.com box to when it was fully working to the point where I could print out a test page from my laptop wirelessly was about 5 minutes. I don’t even think that the crappy Canon inkjet I replaced would have even finished printing the first page in 5 minutes, plus there’s all the fiddling with USB cables and crap too.

The time from when I hit print to when I get a page printed at 600 dpi resolution is less than 10 seconds. Brother even ships packages for Debian Linux *that work* — you download, double click, and it’s installed all in under 30 seconds. No crappy proprietary software, just the driver and it integrates perfectly with the built in printing systems for Ubuntu. The future is now!
This printer cost me $109. Why the heck doesn’t everyone have one of these?

Sun 20 Aug 2006

consumerism update

Posted by rt under personal , consumerism

Is this AWESOME? [ \Y/ or N ]

[2] Comments

Our crappy Cannon inkjet was on the fritz again so I figured SCREW THIS CRAP. I went to staples and found a decent Brother LaserJet that looked decent. But of course before you buy a printer you have to make sure you can get cheap ink/toner so I googled it first. Up came an ad from Amazon advertising the more advanced model Brother LaserJet for the same price.

$109 for a compact networkworkable laser printer? Woo!

Specs: