Overstock.com
I’d heard bad things about them, however they were professional and I had no problems with them. I even had to call tech support for a mistake I made and they handled it well.
Dead Rising Text
Dead rising is not designed for anything less than an HDTV. We are currently using a projector that is not HD, and it is still difficult to read the text. This is unforgivable. Game developers should be required to test their system on smaller tvs. Games should always be at least playable on 32 inch standard, in this generation.
Disc Read Errors
I occasionally get disk read errors while loading a new zone in the game. I don’t think my 360 is refurbished, or from the first generation of 360s. It should not give a disk read error while playing dead rising. I am not sure the cause, however, it’s aggrivating. Some demo games seem to freeze while trying to load, additionally. I’ve heard many things:

• Using a memory card instead of your hard drive may help
• Buying a core 360 instead of premium and getting a separate hard drive may help
• Putting your box vertical may help
• Buying an intercooler may help

I have tilted it vertical and that seems to have reduced but not eliminated disk read errors. I may try buying an intercooler or a memory card, I have not decided which yet.

Xbox Live
The one thing that strikes me about the xbox 360 is the power of it live service. It’s well integrated and useful.

Overall I’m happy with the purchase, but there are several aggrivating factors that impede some of the fun in dead rising. The game itself is a lot of fun, however.

Random Link: Grouphug.us

Random Link:
There’s an online version of the game “eat poop you cat”.
Here’s the rules:

I make a sentence
You draw it
Someone else describes your drawing
Someone else draws that description
This continues for a while
The resulting, often hilarious, sets of drawings, are examples of differences in people’s understanding of symbols. Oftentimes, bad drawings only have the effect of making a set even better, through these misunderstandings.

Edit: Here’s one I contributed to.
Update: Here’s another one, I’ve done 7 images on it.

Random Link:   Kill.us: Shouldn’t this be dontkill.us?

Perhaps saved gaming is a bit strong, rather, maintained profits due to gaming:

I was looking to upgrade my computer in order to play several next gen games. Then I looked at the PC next gen games list, and the xbox 360. I realized that very few triple A exclusive games were coming out for the PC soon by comparison.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love using a mouse to play games. But there were benefits to a console. The cost of the machine is less, the ability to play with others easily is also nice.

That’s when I realized it: People historically had two reasons to buy a new PC: (1) For general usability, to make your machine faster for work and life reasons. (2) Games.

After Vista, the incentive to upgrade a computer will be diminished. It will be good enough for general usability for most people. In increasing product quality, they’ve decreased the consumer need for upgrades.

PC gamers have always needed faster hardware for games, but with less incentive to make their computer run faster for general usability, they look at alternatives. That’s why microsoft moved into console gaming, anticipating this alternative market.

Therefore, the XBOX 360 effectively splits what was PC gaming from general PC use.

Random Link: I found my deal thanks to sites like this

Apparently, Los Angeles has it’s own top level domain name, I noticed this while searching for a website hosted in los angeles to ping for a networking course. You can register yours for the low price of $40.00. Yikes.

Now I’m just wondering what kinds of words will be spelt from this, like del.icio.us.

Random Link: Mythbusters LockBusters

I’m reading a cybersecurity book which mentions that after several lawsuits related to pornography laws, legally you are able to request filters be removed from a public library computer to allow you to look at porn. That is hilarious, I wonder if it is true and if anyone’s done it.
That’s one way to stick it to the man, and yourself.

Random Link: I added a new background to my deviant art page. It’s sort of abstract.

I would just like to add my thoughts to the previous rant; while I will focus on micropayments in general.   The marketing department for a single company isn’t stupid, what they are charging maximizes profits, but does not sell to the most people.   Unless their calculations are correct, if they charge lower, they begin to lose profits.

This applies to companies like Bethesda, who charged for adding armor to your horse in Oblivion.

Micropayments push consumers away from a product though.   They are generally seen as hidden fees by the consumer.   The scary part is when developers start releasing micropayments to unbalance a game.   This should be banned.   Basically, a developer has the ability to make other players better than you at a game.   This makes the game no longer fun for you, rendering yourpurchase wasted.

Unlike Magic The Gathering, it isn’t implied these later micropayments will be released and that they may ruin your online experience.   This has already started to happen in chromehounds.   This is why I am afraid of buying an xbox360, and this is why if I did, I wouldn’t buy chromehounds.

This feeling of distrust is real, but it isn’t reflected in marketing’s planning, yet it affects the profit variables marketing’s planning is trying to control, and that is the problem with profit maximizing without regard to public trust.

Random Link: The Best Comic in the Universe

Update: Kotaku took down the link to their “live updating” and posted an apology
The Wii liveblogging has begun, wait, no it hasn’t, because apparently blog sites can’t tell the difference between a live feed and a feed made in June. This sort of inaccuracy is understandable; I don’t speak Japan, so for me to blog about it, it would require a filtering through a Japanese website. It does bring into question the journalistic accuracy of most blog posts though.

Joystiq also posted some comments from a Gearbox staff, discussing the graphical power of the Wii, and how it is essentially an updated gamecube with a cool controller. This was obvious, but it seems the general public believes the Wii has perhaps more graphics power than it truly has.

I would really like to see companies toss out their current model of game design for the wii. Many companies are just trying to adjust their games to require hand flicks while playing on the Wii. The Wii motion sensor can be more than just a crappy gestures systems, it can be a pointer on the screen to select options, therefore it should have RTS games. It could have a sidescroller where the angle of the controller selects the angle the player is shooting at.

Random Link: Fantasy World News Generator

Digg has announced some changes recently to it’s website. I’ve been thinking about one issue that may exist on digg: Self Promotions, Links are promoted sometimes promoted by its developers, or by its supporters, yet many times the majority of digg users don’t care about it enough for it to be on frontpage.
An example might be if a software was created by an open source team, they all promote it to the front page, there might be 20 developers, but their software may not do anything that digg users really even digg. Another example is how a hardware site may commonly post stories to digg that get supported by different digg users each link, yet the general populace may not really care much about that story, or that story may not be as high quality as another digg story.

This isn’t spam in the traditional sense, but it boils down to being less ideal frontpage results for digg. I have two suggestions that may help digg.

The first one is to allow items to hit the frontpage, and fall off it, to say, a “backpage” if they don’t get a comparable rate of diggs while on the frontpage as they did before being on it. Let’s say we have two digg stories, if both reach the front page at the same rate, and both reach it quickly, then one doesn’t get many diggs once on the frontpage, that one was probably self promoted, and doesn’t belong on the frontpage as much.

The second suggestion is an idea I call “edgg”. (Not to be confused with any digg clones) It’d be nice if people could link any digg post with other digg posts. Users could see the links on the right panel on the comment page. Users could support a “edgg”, making it stronger, or could unlink a “edgg”, making it weaker. This would provide a mechanism for “followup” digg posts, and “same post, but with direct link to blog” digg posts to be powerful. There would, however, be issues with people spamming old digg posts that nobody will unlink, so a time limit would be needed for “edgg”.

Oh yeah, and, as a sort of irony in self-promotion:
Random Link: Digg post for this Blog

I play a lot of video games and love mods for games. There is a game coming out called Portal using the half life 2 engine; it looks really cool. Unfortunately, some mod makers took it upon themselves to work on a game mod for half life 2 called ExcitE which is basically the same thing, only without the puzzles, and with multiplayer.

The problem is, valve hinted at the possibility of later working on portal multiplayer. It is now less profitable because a less quality mod was made mimicing it, but for free. There is less incentive for them to make it. Will they work on it? Maybe, but I have a feeling the public outcry for multiplayer portal will be diminished if each time a person yells “we want portal multiplayer” someone replies “we have it, check out this mod.”

This mod team could have, instead of jumping on the backs of good ideas, come up with their own interesting ideas. I feel like half-life 2 doesn’t have enough simple fun mods. I probably would have played it. I won’t now.

Random Link: Pixel Town

I find it troubling how few people truly understand the nature of efficient teaching.

One thing I think professors have most trouble with is how to give information that is essentially a simple and basic list. Teachers and Professors spend too much time explaining why things are for things that are obvious or known required knowledge for the course. All that is needed for those pieces of knowledge is simple listing. This is sort of like how at the beginning of a show with continuity they will recap major storylines; these mentions should act as a refresher to old knowledge.

In a networking course, it is inherent that a “point-to-point connection” is based on two points, connected. Please don’t spend too much time on the differences between a WAN and a LAN, just say how they are different and move on. In an openGL or DirectX graphics programming course, it is not neccessary to explain the differences between a line and point, or why a sphere can be represented by two points. You may state that one point represents the center, and one the radus of the sphere, but no further explaination is required for understanding, no examples or slide diagrams should be needed for a college level course. If a student has questions, pass out a diagram on a sheet of paper, they can read it while you speak. I even had a college public speaking class where the professor defined the word fact. The book for the class not only defined fact, but the word “definition”. Thanks.

We need to work on the efficiency of learning. The people who train professors to teach need to explain to teachers which things do not need to be elaborated on, and which things are difficult to understand. They’d probably over elaborate and give too many examples though. Teachers wouldn’t listen and the cycle could never begin. D’oh.

Random Link: How to Shuffle and Cut a Deck of Cards One Handed