Xbox One and PS4, New Consoles, Old Ideas

Tuesday, Microsoft revealed their new console to the public called the Xbox One. Although they did not give an official release date they did clue us all into some of it’s features, and in more than a few ways gamers are getting fucked.

When Microsoft released it’s first Xbox back in 2001, they wanted to compete with Sony’s Playstation 2, but gamers found that the Xbox was more of a problem than they had bargained for. For one, it was buggy as hell. Much like most Microsoft software of the day, the OS that ran on the Xbox first generation was prone to game freezes and the occasional kernel panic. Many modder’s who have examined the APIs noted their similarity to Windows 2000, and it was believed Microsoft had modified the OS to create a version just for the XBox.

Although the Xbox was a moderate success, the XBox 360 released in 2005 was a bona fide hit. Over the past eight years it has dominated the gaming console market, but with the announcement of Sony’s PS4, gamers wondered if Microsoft would be able to repeat their success with the XBox competing against the proposed PS4. Gamers wouldn’t have to wait very long, Microsoft immediately announced they were developing a new generation of XBox, and rumors aside today’s reveal tells us a lot about the direction Microsoft is heading in, and for the gamer—it’s a downward spiral.

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30 Years in Review: My Experience With The History of Violence in Video Games

For as long as I can remember playing video games, there has always been violence, whether it be inconsequential or direct, or merely abstract. In this article I will attempt to list some of the games I have played in my lifetime which I consider to be violent and explain the difference between mild or gratuitous violence, as well as attempt to get to the real issues in violence, specifically in video games and movies and the relation between what we see on our screens and what we see in real life.

Not that I ever hold back when I write anything, but this will contain many references to violent video games, movies, and other media, as well as depictions through video and images, so you are warned!

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Microsoft Skydrive: Bait and Switch By Policy? What You Need To Know, pt. 1

So recently I began unifying stuff between machines, as my health deteriorates and I need to spend more time laying in bed. This allows me to still try to get some work done on the computer while I’m in bed. One of the things I’ve been using are cloud storage accounts like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft Skydrive.

These online storage accounts are great because they provide a quick way to sync documents between computers without having to map drives or worry about network connections. You drag and drop, and you are ready to go, not to mention the data is stored in a secure, safe location you know will be there, in case anything happens to the computer.

So as I was saying, recently I was trying to unify my documents between my computers so I could use them anywhere, and I wanted to use Skydrive. Skydrive until recently has been rather useless, being only something that can be used while online, through the Microsoft live website interface. Before this I had been using Dropbox, and Google Drive which both offered integration into Windows, something Skydrive was lacking.

So I started uploading my documents to the Skydrive, all 1GB of them, when I realized it had been a while and I wanted to make sure my Microsoft account info was accurate. So I logged into my live account and proceeded to the Skydrive interface only to find something odd. My 25GB of free cloud storage was no longer 25GB, but it was now 7GB instead. This seemed really strange. I looked through the interface, and could find nothing about it. I looked through my email, and again nothing. I clicked through the upgrade options, and only found pay options to get something close to the 25GB.

I decided to email Microsoft, and this began an interesting thread of conversation. You won’t believe what they told me…

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Conservatism: An Example of What It’s Like to Always Be Wrong, or How The Conservatives Have Always Been on The Wrong Side of History.

When I was a kid I have this memory of being in a car with a friend’s grandparents. I remember the conversation between the husband and wife dipped into politics and I was asked how I felt about it. Without thinking, “I’m a Republican,” I stated. To this I received a look of what could only be described as “The Evil Eye” from the husband. He then proceeded to ask me why I would be a Republican, and how horrible the Republicans were, and so on and so forth. What the hell did I know? I was a kid. All the Republicans I heard about in history were great men, not the kind of men this guy was talking about.

The Republican Party I read about was the party of Lincoln, Grant, and Eisenhower. This guy kept telling me how Reagan and Bush (Sr.) had ruined everything. As I’ve gotten older, and wiser, I have learned just how right that man was, and how off the modern Republican Party is today, from what it used to be. In this article I will explore the conservative movement, how it has affected modern politics, but shows how it’s really the same old shit, and how it has always been on the wrong side of history. I will examine the history of conservatism and liberalism, as well as show why that being conservative is tantamount to being all the things that are wrong and always have been for society.

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(Guns don’t kill people…) But Without Them, You Look Pretty Silly Yelling Bang!

After the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut petitions circulated calling for gun control, something the President acted upon quickly. Appointing Joe Biden, the President asked for some common sense gun control laws, and ways to stop violence, and the ability for criminals and mental patients to not have access to them. He asked for quick action, and now congress has begun having congressional hearings on the subject.

Wayne LaPierre once said, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” It was an attempt to scare the general public into purchasing more firearms, equating violence with the person, rather than the tool. Unfortunately for all of us, it worked, and many people who had never been gun owners went out and purchased guns for the first time. There is a belief that guns are not the problem, and I hope in this article I can address that a little, give my thoughts as I have before, and try to address the real problems.

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The New Standard: Some Tips and Tricks of Web Design

I recently started helping build a website for a friend of mine, and I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about web design, HTML5 and CSS. As with all modern web browsers, HTML5 and CSS are the standard for markup language used on the web today. The best part about it is that with the new elements that have been added thing that you could only achieve with scripting before are pretty easily done just with using the language the way it is.

The Website I’ve been working on for reference. In case you are interested, check it out: The Hunter Supply Outlet

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