Deux Ex Machina...er, Human Revolution

Neo's long lost brother?

I know it's been a while since my last post (I blame Twitter, Google+, my daughter, etc.)...hopefully the upcoming revamp of Blogger will make it cool & 'locked in' with other streams of social commentary...

In any case, I recently completed Deus Ex Human Revolution, and completely agree with Todd Brakke's assessment (over at No High Scores) of the game in general and the third act/ending in particular.  Lots of potential squandered by a rushed, WTF end act.

As much as I enjoyed this game, and hope and wait for a possibly-improved sequel, there were some other nitpicks I had with it:

• Way too much running all over the damn place...I gave up on most of the side quests as I did not want to truck all the way back to the other side of whatever city I was in at the moment
• Way too easy to avoid enemy fire by simply hiding in a vent; I wiped out an entire room of baddies (and a turret) in the 'cell block' of one level just by hiding in a vent and picking them off one by one; you would think they might figure out how to crouch?  or at least chuck a grenade in the vent?
• The whole Megan storyline was very WTF; and not satisfying in its conclusion
• 100% of everything else Todd mentions, especially the lame final boss fight (which was super easy if you had the electricity-canceling body armor aug, BTW)

Again, overall, I liked this game quite a bit, and I generally like a game with stealth elements, as few and far between as these are nowadays.  (The last game I enjoyed this much was the last Splinter Cell since it had almost as much stealth-accessibility.)  I guess I'm completely all-in hoping and waiting for Thi4f, hoping it will recapture the series' former stealth/fun glory...

Oops, I Did It [Yet] Again!

From TechDirt comes an article about Best Buy trying to relaunch CinemaNow.  $4 for a digital download rental, and $15 for a digital download purchase.

I'm not quite sure how these companies just continue to not get it right.  It's been - what? - 10 years of this epic FAIL now?

Is it that hard to understand that people do not want to pay the same amount for a digital product as they do for a tangible, hold-it-in-your-hand product?  I for one will never pay the same amount of $$ I currently pay for a tangible DVD, CD, or BluRay for a stripped-down, less functional, DRM-laden digital-only copy of the same piece of media. 

Why would I?

Why would anyone in their right mind???

If they don't make a compelling business case to the consumer (read: 1/2 of the price of the physical media or less), people will NEVER take that deal.  Man, I'm nowhere near a Business major, and I understand those economics...

Why are April Fool's pranks the best ideas?

Witness:

• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1988
• The Dharma Alarm Clock
• The iCade for iPad

Random post-Oscar thoughts...

• Was I the only one who was not impressed with The Hurt Locker?  I suppose the good thing about it taking Best Pic is that Avatar didn't win it
• Avatar deserved Visual Effects and maybe one or two other technical awards, but - just like a film like Star Wars back in the day - doesn't merit Best Pic
• On the flip side, even my non-movie-fanatic wife asked, as Avatar took the Oscar for Art Direction: 'how can a computer-generated movie win for Art Direction?!?'; I nodded...then asked the same question when it took Cinematography; maybe we need some new 'technical' categories?
• Hooray for The Dude, Sandra B, and Christoph Waltz, but boo for a lot of snubbing of Inglourious Basterds - the best film of the year in my opinion
  
• And don't even get me started up again on the snubbing of Moon (Sam Rockwell especially) and (500) Days of Summer this year
• At least Star Trek got something, however minor...another one that should have been up for Best Pic
• As bad as the category has become, the music from Up definitely was the best Original Score that was nominated
• 'Steve Martin should just host himself'...my comments midway through; as much as I love Alec, Mr. Steve Martin is the best host we've had in the last decade, easily
• ...though Neil Patrick Harris should certainly get consideration next year!

Favorite Movies Revisited...But How Often?

It's been a loooong while since I've posted anything on this blog (I blame Twitter, Facebook, kids...the usual suspects), but as I read over this article over at Cinematical, it coalesced several thoughts that I've had recently when looking over my own DVD collection.

Just the other night, while I was re-watching Collateral for no particular reason other than it was on my 'haven't-seen-it-in-a-while-but-is-it-as-good-as-I-remember?' list (answer: No, though I did enjoy the barely-credited turn by Javier Bardem as the main 'baddy'), I went over to the DVD shelves and decided to start a couple new stacks: one stack of the films that I really enjoy and watch fairly often that I decided I want to re-buy on Blu-ray as soon as financially possible (e.g. Trainspotting, Pirates of the Caribbean I, Princess Bride), and one pile of DVD's that I need to re-watch either because they're old favorites that I haven't watched in a coon's age, or that I want to gut check just like I did with Collateral. Oh - I also jumped on the netbook to order a few more replacements on Blu-ray (thanks Amazon for continuing your Blu-ray pricing war!).

Anyways, the article talks about hesitating and putting off watching our favorite movies for whatever reasons, and I do this as well. I'm in agreement with at least one commenter on that article in that I watch my 'Top 10' movies very infrequently...maybe once every year or two (or three). And there are definitely times when I fully intend to watch one of those favorites, but change my mind at the last minute and choose a...let's say 'not Top 10' alternative. I have asked myself: do I not like these films as much now as I used to? Has the tarnish worn off on some of these? Perhaps. Some of my old favorites certainly don't hold up with age for me (I'm looking at you, original Star Wars Trilogy)...while others definitely do (Indiana Jones Trilogy, you're in the clear). So that does explain some of it.

But to be honest, some of it is my ongoing HD snobbery - I just don't want to watch the smeared out 480p of resolution after seeing some really great new HD transfers with 1080p and amazing lossless sound (Batman Begins, Master and Commander, etc.). So that also explains some of it...I suppose we'll verify that for sure once a lot more of these favorites are re-released on Bluray. (hurry up, studios...and get with the program of quantity > cost per unit and lower your *$%@ MSRPs already, m'kay?)

The other interesting possibility brought up by one commenter is that maybe we 'get' all we need to 'get' out of a favorite movie after several viewings, and after that, we just don't get as much out of them. This sort of resonates with me, as I often love that second viewing just as much as the first one, but after the third, fourth, or fifth viewing, I'm satisfied with that one and can safely put it on the shelf until I get the hunger for it once again...which could be years later.

On a side note, I find myself watching only certain scenes of most rewatched films these days - even my favorites. Maybe it is due to having less free time now that we have a daughter, maybe just my old age and waning attention span. But the nice thing is that I can get through most rewatched films in about an hour or so these days - skipping the parts that are slower or that I don't like in favor of the fast-paced or otherwise memorable scenes. Is this just plain wrong? Sacrilegious? I don't know...but it gets me through more movies these days than I could fully watch in the same amount of time...and that is a good thing to me.

Oops...sorry...I have to jump over to Amazon and buy up another batch of Blu-ray 'replacements'...just don't tell the Mrs., m'kay?

Welcome to U.S. Government 2.0

We're off to a great start - at least technologically speaking - with the new Obama administration. Just check out the fresh new whitehouse.gov site. There are even several RSS feeds available (!). ...and it validates XHTML Transitional 1.0! (Now that is a geeky statement...)

News is also coming in that the robots.txt file on the new site is much less restrictive than it was previously (2400+ lines of 'disallows' vs. 1!). (Geeky statement #2...)

Finally, President Obama (ahhh...it really feels great to type that!) has taken over the @whitehouse Twitter account, so go follow it right now!

Now this is what I call 'change Hiro would believe in'! :)

The Concept of 'Real-Time' on the Web

My first job out of college was a computer engineering gig, programming in C on an OS/2 platform (yikes!). But the real key characteristic that made things interesting was the fact that the application consisted of a real-time monitoring piece - temperatures within a hot steel casting machine were updated once per second (not the fastest 'real-time', but still...) and monitored for patterns which would indicate trouble with a capital 'T'.

Fast forward 15 years or so (man, I'm feeling old now), and the meme of a 'real-time web' is now making the rounds. There are some inherent challenges with this concept - mainly due to the fact that HTTP is the basis of most of the web's transactions, and HTTP is clearly a request/response protocol. So the big challenge these days seems to be this: how do we effectively and efficiently get real-time updates or notifications via this platform?

RSS was a precursor to the eventual solution, I think. RSS allows a web application to effectively 'monitor' changes on any other web application (yes, that is what it boils down to in a programmatic sense), and that is a good start. But it kind of falls apart when you scale it up by an order of magnitude.

XMPP seems like the next good attempt at a 'real-time web' technology, and I'm keeping my eye on it as it develops...until someone comes up with the next big solution, at least.

Quote of the Day

"‘That’ll do’ won’t do. ‘That’s good enough’ is never good enough."
- Stephen Fry

Frack John McCain?

You know, for the past several weeks, I've been noodling around with the idea of compiling all of the FACTS about John McCain's negative traits in one easily-browsable list. Unfortunately, I never got around to actually doing it...though I did have several very good links saved up.

It is awesome to see, then, that someone else had the same idea and did all of the legwork for me.

F**k John McCain

Unfortunate that it carries such an angry tone (it sounds like it was written by someone in the McCain-Palin camp, actually, with all of the latent anger spewing all over it), and unfortunate that it has such a NSFW URL, but damn if it doesn't sum things up. FACTS, my friends, FACTS.

Hopefully this will be the last divergence into the political space for this blog...unless things go horribly, horribly wrong on November 4th.

FACT: Obama is NOT the most liberal Senator

I always knew that this was a lie from the Republicans and their 'Faux' News buddies, but here is the proof:

Liberal interest groups' ratings for Senators

Have they told even one truth in this whole campaign???