Screw it, this site will only receive updates when I'm bored and feel like spell checking.

First of all, the website that I was going to host that new blog, which was going to really just be this blog on a different site was kinda ugly, and kind of hard to manage, so screw it. I'll do that once I hit it big, so keep plugging people! That is if you like what I write about, if not, tell me and I'll see what I can do,.

Second of all, I've been noticing lots of Gamestop in the news, and how they're reporting record profits this last quarter, and then I noticed this article, which interviews Dan DeMatteo, the CEO of GameStop, on game re-sales, and it got me thinking about the whole used games racket.

It really is true, that used-game sales are not good for a publisher or developer. They receive no profit from the sale, often very near to the retail value, despite the retailer buying said game for less then 50% retail value, and re-selling for more then 200% of that price. A prime example would be LittleBigPlanet, found here, for now at least, as the page rotates to change with what is popular. I can sell my copy(if I had one) for $25.00, seems like a good deal, doesn't it? Except the used price is $54.99, five dollars less then actual retail price. How can Gamestop NOT report record profits with sickening profit margins like that?

But, developers and publishers are making a strike at second-hand sales, with things such as Gears of War 2, where each new copy has a key you enter, to receive five maps for multiplayer, which they say they won't ever make for sale. I believe that this is an acceptable counter. I can pay five dollars for a new copy, which is the average price of a map pack, or five dollars less if I have no plans to ever play online. On the other end of the battle against used-game-sales, we have Nintendo bundling with the WiiSpeak peripheral, where the same thing happens. Buy new, get slip, put in a code and get the WiiSpeak channel. But as this isn't released, nobody knows if ALL Wii voice chat will have to be done through this or just for fun chatting. Nintendo has so much money, it isn't just burning a hole in their pockets, it is burning right through the floor, the building, and right to the center of the god damned Earth.

So are they worried that they might go bankrupt if this peripheral doesn't make it big? Or are they worried about losing even the tiniest bit to resellers? Either way, this is the wrong course of action, as they have said that they will never make the channel available. Now think about that for a second. There is a chance that if you don't buy this new, then you won't be able to use voice chat with your Wii, ever. Am I the only one who thinks that is so absolutely bat-shit insane? This is not optional maps, this is not a stupid re-skinned weapon. This is a base functionality that even systems of the previous generation supported. Would everybody enjoy it if you had to buy a brand new hard drive every time, because you have to feed a website a one-time use code to receive the driver? This will either not make any difference because no games will utilize it, or dash Gamestop's re-selling of the accessory except if someone happens to break it. But, is all of this right? Is re-selling games the right thing to do, because as stated in the earlier interview, he could have a point, that game re-sales are mostly from after the game's life is over, or the game is out of production.

So, as an argument FOR re-selling, the following:

• It's your property, do what you want with it with no regard for wishes of developer or publisher. You bought it, who are they to tell you what to do with it?

• Most used-sales are long after the game has died and been forgotten, not harming anybody as most of the staff has probably moved on.

• It supports Gamestop, being a country spanning company, they have many employees, all of which have families and need the income.

• Restrictions enacted by publisher/developer only hurt the consumer in the end, restricting the lending of games, sharing of games, or trading of games with friends or any other people.

But, against reselling:

• Hurts the developer and publisher, keeping money out of their hands, and keeping them from making another game. This can be equated to piracy you pay for, as both methods keep money away from the people who deserve it.

• Have you seen how much they resell those games for? You would be better to save it for twenty years for when it's a collector's item.

• You can keep the game, and enjoy any DLC that is released down the line, less so with console games though. Games such as Team Fortress 2 has had regular content updates at least bi-monthly, changing, tweaking, and adding things, keeping people in the game.

• Keep on coming back...you never know when you'll have a strange craving to go crawling back to a game you've already dedicated dozens of hours of your life to, and just want to give it another play through. I myself today suddenly felt like beating portal again, it being a vastly superior, resale resistant Steam game, I was able to fire it up in a matter of minutes and play.

So either way, decide on your own what you would rather do. Support the developer, buy new, and ensure they keep making games. Or support your local Gamestop, save some cash, maybe earn some cash selling a copy of your game.

Move along, nothing to see here.

This blog, as my last planned one, was about an article that I read.

Right here actually.

The article talks about a college that is standing up for its students. The college receives the infringement letters, and would normally forward them to the student body. This college is standing up to that system, requiring proof before sending it off to the student, to notify them of what they have been accused of. As I remember, lower school systems(junior high and the like) require that a student be told what they had done wrong, before they are suspended/expelled, and given a chance to make their statement and try and prove themselves innocent. A man is given a trial, no matter what crime he committed from fraud to speeding to murder. A man is to be read his rights before he is incarcerated, so should students attending a higher learning facility not have the same right? To have proof before being accused?

The RIAA has had a history of falsely accusing many, MANY people of copyright infringement. A little old lady who has no chance or clue as to what is happening? The RIAA is a bully of the world of law, throwing threats of lawsuits in every direction that anybody uses a song in any form. A mother uploads a video of her son dancing to a Prince song, and the video is taken down without a second question? No chance to defend yourself, not a shred of proof provided, but with a juggernaut like youtube, they are unable to police the content themselves, so they simply remove anything that is marked offensive enough times, or there is a copyright violation allegation. Not proof, allegation, accusation, made against the video, and it is removed without a chance to defend, make your case, but as content gets bigger and more expansive, it will be up to the user base to report a video as offensive or inappropriate. Yet with the RIAA, a single threat is enough to get it removed, where as it takes the community to get a genuinely offensive video removed.

Who is policing this group? It is just a hop, skip and a jump if not less before they, with their indomitable team of lawyers are able to attack any and all who lash out at them. The pseudo-religion Scientology follows the same practices, and even teaches in their religious text to lash out two fold at any and all attackers. The companies that they contract to acquire the "proof" have already been proven to have done more then their fair share of shady dealings with leaked emails from their internal offices. I recall reading a recent a recent article on The Onion which lampoons the RIAA's futile attempts to stem the almost ludicrous spread of file sharing. In the UK, a mechanics garage is being sued because a mechanic had his music loud enough, that passerby's were able to hear the radio. How far is it from a dystopian future in which all content and media must be watched in the privacy of your home, and a certain volume level? With the signing of the PRO-IP act, they now have an official in government office who they will practically have under their thumb, and is in office due to their incessant lobbying. Granted, this is how most things get done, with special interest groups and the like, but an entire new position, with an unknown restriction on power that they'll be able to enact? The future looks bleak for the sharing of ideas and content, even moving into the territory of open-source software such that of Vuze, which recently came under fire for "facilitating copyright infringement", the same bid that is made against many a torrent web sites and search engines.

Should that which displays the content be attacked for the content and sharing? Is the manufacturer of my TV going to be sued into oblivion because it is possible to watch a pirated movie on it? Is Firefox, Google and yahoo going to be forced to remove any and all results when searching for content, even of the legal variety because the RIAA doesn't agree with it? Because Google doesn't have the rights to comedy central, they can't display their page? HDMI is a step in the right direction for the streamlining of connections and universality, but two steps backwards for the implementation of legal content. A friend of mine's father has an HDTV he bought a few years ago, and it does not have an HDMI port, but more then it's fair share of component ports. Is he trying to pirate blu-ray movies? Of course not, he just wants to watch movies and have them look magnificent, but due to the content restrictive nature of blu-ray and it's reliance on HDMI as a means of copy-protection, he won't ever be able to watch every movie he wishes to in full HD. But, because of a sad attempt to, once against stem the spreading of content, people caught in the crossfire suffer.

Times change. This is the one thing, all through history has never changed. What is today, will always be tomorrow. Seventy years ago, what was once unheard of, a black man drinking from the same water fountain as a white man is the norm today. A woman wearing pants would have seen her shamed if not arrested two-hundred years ago. Graffiti artists of the 80's, which were once sought after for major counts of vandalism soon was realized not as the norm, but as a group so large that it was un-policeable, and even is being used for promotional purposes even today. What is piracy today, a fast, efficient, and eco-friendly way to get content, will be the norm of tomorrow. The Pirate Bay, a vastly popular piracy website, hosting all sorts of content has become a one-stop shop web-site for pirates wishing to use any sorts of content recently broke twenty-five million peers. That is twenty-five million consecutive people using their tracker at once. The content they provide ranges from anything from the latest map of DotA, the newest DVD release, an early leak of a CD, or pornography.

Why have content creators and distributors not moved to a system such as this? Host the file on a few of their local servers, provide a torrent file, and get the files out there. The people provide the bandwidth between each other, sending pieces of the file all around to whoever needs it. This method has little to no distribution cost, no non-biodegradable plastic packaging, no annoying wrapper. Provide it on a web-site that is ad-supported, require their proprietary bit torrent software with minor banner ads, sit back, and let people have what they want. Include a premium benefit of using their software, their tracker and web-site. Anything from a clean efficient UI, to a guaranteed speed for each person, and best of all, the ability to download content that you would have gotten any way, but with the knowledge that it is free.

One of my personal favorite TV shows, Heroes had a first season run with an average of 14.3 million viewers. That is just for an individual show, on at a fixed time weekly, spread out over weeks. Just IMAGINE the sickening numbers TV shows would see if their entirety was hosted on bit torrent. If I remember, most TV shows had around ten-thousand people with the completed file for the last episode of Heroes I checked, and that was weeks after it aired, without keeping track of completed downloads. A person can download the first episode even if it has been distributed for months or years, become hooked, and continue returning for the rest till the recent and follow it weekly as soon as it is uploaded.

Content that is currently hosted online, such as ABC's streaming of Heroes behaves much like traditional content, shoe-horned onto the internet. There are commercials you are required to watch, you are unable to save the content, you are required an internet connection, and in general feel very restrictive in addition to being low quality visually, due to the streaming nature. With a torrent file, there is no need for streaming, the only limiter is the hardware, between if the PC is able to run the video at a certain bit-rate, and if the hard drive has enough space.

If there is one thing that history, movies, TV shows and literature, is that sometimes those that go against the grain are sometimes right. Star Wars, 1984, V for Vendetta, the Revolutionary War, all show instances of mostly fictional groups rebelling against the larger group that believes themselves to be in the right. Whether it is the tyrannical British government, the Galactic Empire, or the monarchy of old Brittan, they are all bodies that believe they are right, eventually are overthrown and replaced.

And so I ask, how long until the RIAA, MPAA and the rest are rearranged, disolved or even regulated? Piracy is strong, at least twenty-five million strong, and dominates an estimated one-third of the internet. There is no stopping what is, today, called piracy any more then we could stop the sun rising, the rain raining, or the cake being a lie.

Is that one of them Playstations you kids play?

So I got a PS3 today from a buuuddy, just loaned. So far, it's been a pretty painless experience. I have a little previous experience with PS3, but that can hardly be considered tapping even the tiniest bit of its functionality.

Things I don't hate

• Free shit. There is TONS of free shit that I've become accustomed to paying for with XBL. I don't know if it's from previous ownership, but I make a PSN ID (DeathCowZ), pick an icon from a pretty good sized list, varying from different games, all the way to the yellow turd, just so I can wonder why it's even an option. If somebody adds me, you'll see what I mean. What's even more strange, it comes in two other colors(green and another I forget).

• Something else that is pretty amazing, is the PSN Store. In a matter of about 10 seconds, I can pop into the store, and find a specific game. Thanks to an intelligently divided array of categories to search through, it's super quick and easy to visually scan through all of the items available. Little to no caching of images and pages. A welcome change from my 360 stopping, caching, then loading a little, and then the image, slowly eating away my valuable time.

• The customization comes off as simple and friendly, but at the same time a little too...restrictive. I can pick from a wide array of different themes from any number of games, and not only does this changes my background, it changes my icons, the colors and the sounds. But at the same time, it doesn't let me change my background independent of my icon and sound set. There might be a way around this, I'll continue to tinker.

• The overall streamlined feel of it is something I'm very fond of. From a glance at my XMB thing, I can see some demos download, I can see what time it is, some random facts scrolling, what date it is, very nifty. Then again, every other console does that with at least a button press, and a return to home screen at the most. The life with Playstation, which is as I though, the Wii's weather channel and news channel on the same page, but still a nifty feature. The UI feels very...Apple. Very user-friendly, but still with a good number of options for any amount of tweaking and changing of settings.

Playstation! More like Grillstation!

Things I'm not totally in love with:

• Game installs, really? I'm not on my pc. So when playing a demo of a game, there is no 2X blu-ray drive slowing it down, so why do I need to install it when the data is already on my drive? As for normal games, I understand that it is a necessary evil, till the next round of PS3 systems have faster blu-ray drives. It really doesn't bother me too much, but seems unnessecarry.
  

• The totally random disconnection from PSN. Not sure if it's just me, but as I remember my other buddy with a PS3 had this problem often himself. We chalked it up to the resident router being possessed by the spirits of over-marketing to gamers, but my good 'ol fashioned linksys WRT54G is giving me the same problem. Only a couple of times, but I hope it doesn't happen again.

• The physical dimensions of it, they're kinda confusing. It's almost like they took what would have made a perfect design, and then threw a few kitchen knives at it, lopping off random parts. The curve that it has on the top makes it practically impossible for me to put anything on top of it without fearing spill-age or toppling; one thing that also annoyed me about the 360 with it's strange concave build. It was tolerable, as anything that was knocked over just rolled to the center...for the most part.
  

• The same controller design. Really Sony? The EXACT same layout? Well, not exact, but outside of the PS button, some new lettering, and very slightly raised start and select buttons to make room for said PS button, it's the same as the dual-shock 2 that I've had for five years. Well, minus the wear and major tear that old beast has seen. There is nothing wrong with following a formula, but a little change or innovation would have been nice. Sixaxis doesn't count, since I have yet to play a game that supports it in any way.
  

• Trophies and how they are too little, too late. This is one of the biggest blunders that Sony has done with their otherwise magnificent console. Not the inclusion, but how late they are to the party, without ANY standardization. Does every game have a platinum trophy? How many bronze trophies can one game have? Does a platinum trophy have to be a "get all the other" unlock? Without a set of guidelines, there with a maximum, a minimum, and rules to follow, there is no way to quantitativly say "I have completed these two games and all of the goals that it set forth for me." and to compare that to any other piece of software for the system.

Overall, I've never had a problem with the PS3, I just didn't see that much appeal in it. Game for game, you can't beat the variety and number of games that you can only find on 360, while a few more independent and indie games have flourished on PS3(see flOw, everyday shooter) there haven't been enough major exclusives to warrant me even considering one. And still, there are only a literal handful of games I'd like to play, about 1/2 of them are download-only games. And lacking ownership of the system myself, I don't think I'll be getting them. The PS3 has potential, with God of War 3, the Team Ico game, and whatever few previous Sony exclusives that are still exclusives are left, could just push it over the "It's pretty ok..." to the "I NEED ONE".

Retail Games Played: Burnout Paradise for about three hours, MGS4 for about seven hours. Tinkered with the UI/PS Store to the extent that I'm content with it..

Pic taken from Gizmodo, please don't sue me!