Rowan’s Website

I did some digging, for Blandable’s sake, and I found some interesting information regarding the quality of Rowan’s website. I have a friend who came into frequent contact with Rowan’s web design team and he told me a whole mess of people had a say on how the site was to be designed. Evidently they couldn’t agree on much which is why the site is like it is. He went on to explain that maybe 4-5 of them have actual experience and skills with website creation and nobody listened to them.

I’ll add more info as I find it.

Wenger reading response

Yea a little late but I’ve been really busy the past week.

I basically had the same thoughts that everyone had in class, it was confusing and it was obviously intended for someone in management. If you look at the back of the cover, the quotes people said about the book are even geared towards management.

I just didn’t like it, at all.

An interesting article about the dumbness of Americans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901_pf.html

The “About Me” readings

A tad late but better late than never.

As I brought up in class, the reading really reminded me of that movie Network. It’s about a newscaster named Howard Beale, also known as the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves, and his rantings about television, the media and life itself. Similar to About Me, the film painted a picture of “truth” and our acceptance of it. He talks about large corporations taking over news networks and truth becomes a relative term since they can show whatever they feel like.

This film came out in the 70’s but paints a clearer picture today than it did back then.

Here are two videos of the best diatribes of the film and are still famous even today.

and this one.

The Movie Format War: Blu-ray disc wins

Will appear in the Whit on February 21, 2008.

As if the console wars weren’t bad enough a separate conflict has been waged for several years in the trenches of electronic stores between the Blu-ray and HD DVD movie formats. What was once a battle of epic proportions between the two has turned into nothing short of a complete slaughter.

Toshiba’s HD DVD format has taken hit after hit since the 2008 began starting with Warner Brothers Pictures going Blu-ray exclusive and its sister company, New Line Cinema, quickly following several weeks later. Universal Studios, according to Variety magazine, is supporting both formats rather than HD DVD exclusively. Paramount is continuing to back HD DVD but the option to go Blu-ray exclusive is available to them due to the Warner Bros. switch. All of this happened in January alone.

The month of February has wrought even more disaster for the HD DVD format with Best Buy and Netflix joining the Blu-ray camp. Like Universal, Best Buy will support both formats but will predominately market and recommend Blu-ray discs and players to its customers. Netflix on the other hand will make the switch to begin phasing out HD DVD by the end of 2008. Unlike the other companies it has joined forces with, Netflix will not have as much of an impact on this whole fiasco since their business is based on buyers who have already made the decision of which format to follow.

Not helping HD DVD’s case is the fact that Sony’s PlayStation 3 comes with a built-in Blu-ray player while Microsoft’s Xbox 360 requires a $129.99 HD DVD player to even play the discs.

On February 15 it was announced on Walmart’s official blog, www.checkoutblog.com, that they will be going Blu-ray exclusive. Susan Chronister, author of the Gaming, General, and Movies section of the blog posted the announcement. “…following the news from Best Buy and Netflix, everyone’s asking ‘what about Wal-Mart?’ Ok, so are you ready…Wal-Mart is going Blu,” she said, “…by June Wal-Mart will only be carrying BluRay movies and hardware machines, and of course standard def movies, DVD players, and up convert players.”

Hot off the heels of the Walmart announcement, The Hollywood Reporter is citing “reliable industry sources” who say that Toshiba is dropping its own format, pretty much ending the whole format conflict. While Jodi Sally, the vice president of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products, swears up and down that no official decision has been made, she hints that something is in the works. “Given the market developments in the past month,” she said, “Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players.” If you remember, Toshiba slashed their prices of HD DVD players by as much as 50% on Jan 15.

The final nail in the coffin for HD DVD came on February 19 when Toshiba finally decided to drop its own format, despite Sally’s response to The Hollywood Reporter claiming otherwise.

Well, the HD DVD format has met its end after a long and brutal conflict. Sony has bided their time since the Betamax failure and has finally become top spot with Blue-ray. So what happens now if you’ve already purchased an HD DVD player? You’re pretty much up the creek without a paddle. Although some companies like Best Buy and Netflix will continue to sell HD DVD movies, you’re better off saving your money for a Blu-ray player or PlayStation 3. HD DVD’s demise has arrived.

Observing the observations of the observer

I just started doing some of the preliminary work for the Learning Record and it feels a bit weird cataloging my thoughts and reactions to course material and work. It sort of feels like a diary or something. I wonder how many we’re supposed to have by the end of the semester.

My response to the Neilson & Loranger readings.

I found the readings to be quite interesting and informative although I already knew most of the information because of my previous knowledge and experience with the internet. I particularly enjoyed the chapter that discussed all of the problems which have continued to prosper despite the fact that the internet has greatly evolved as the years went on. You’d think people would have the knowledge to fix some of these issues no?

Even though the internet is a treasure trove of knowledge, it still has many, many problems associated with it which quite a few talked about in their blogs and during class. The biggest beef I have with the internet is something simple but can be quite dangerous to computer and personal security; javascripts. For those unfamilar with javascripts, they are used by nearly every website to help with menus, advertisements and other website functions. However, the one thing that they also do, which many other people do not know about is that they can download software onto your computer without the user’s knowledge. People labeled this software as spyware but it isn’t just advertisements and popups. Many of these programs that are downloaded can be viruses, keyloggers and phishing software.

Keyloggers can be very dangerous to security since they will record the username and password that is inputed into a variety of websites that the user visits. It can be something as simple as a forum or blog and something of greater importance like a bank account. I’ve had plenty of bad experiences in the past with javascripts so I have done all I can to combat them and prevent them from running and downloading software onto my computer.

Here are a few easy ways that you can prevent javascripts from running or selecting specific javascripts that you want to run which help a specific website function.

1. Get Firefox
2. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:1
3. At the top of the screen, you will see Search – type in Noscript
4. Installation is easy and automatic
5. Select which javascripts you want running on various websites

Here are a few pictures I took to show what it can do. They will screw up if put into this post.
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c351/TheInsaneDump000/Noscriptpic1.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c351/TheInsaneDump000/Noscriptpic2.jpg

Spore Slated for a Release Before the Holidays. It’s About Time.

Will appear in The Whit on February 7, 2008.

The heavily anticipated title from the mind of Will Wright, the designer behind the critically acclaimed SimCity and The Sims series, has finally been slated for sometime before the holidays. In a recent interview with Gamespot, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello talks about Spore’s release, “We will tell you it’s going to be before the holidays. This is one of the titles we pay enormous attention to for all of the obvious reasons, and we’re very, very bullish.”

If you are unfamiliar with Spore, it is a multi-platform god game developed by Maxis and published by EA where the player can create their very own species from scratch. You start your race at the cellular level and eventually end at the space phase, giving players the opportunity to invade other worlds or co-exist peacefully with them. You can even take your race online and battle it out with other players to see if your race deserves to rule the galaxy.

Thanks to Spore’s unique creature editor, there are unlimited possibilities when giving your race a physical appearance and not a single one will be the same. The editor is so intuitive that it will mathematically calculate how a creature with four legs or even 18 will walk and how it will fight if it has claws, teeth or 50 arms. Once your creature is created, you let it loose and see how it fares against the other computer-generated races on the planet.

Depending on how well your creature does initially, it will begin to enter different phases. In the tribal phase you lose control of the single creature but now control an entire tribe of them. The player also gets to design how the buildings of the tribe will look resulting in even funkier creations. Once the tribe reaches a population of 20, it will enter the civilization phase. This phase is just as it sounds, the player will control entire cities and the objective here is to gain control of the entire planet either through diplomacy or all-out war. In this phase, players can construct many varieties of vehicles such as cars, planes, boats and tanks.

Once world domination is achieved, your race sets their eye or eyes on space as they gain the ability to construct UFOs. This is where the fun takes off even further. You can abduct other races to experiment on them and terraform planets by shooting ice comets to create water or cause volcanoes erupt to create an atmosphere. The most interesting thing you can do here is pump a planet full of carbon dioxide to observe the Greenhouse effect turning a livable planet into an inhospitable wasteland.

Despite the fact that Spore hasn’t even been released yet, it has already won numerous awards. In 2005 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3, Spore won Best of Show, Best Original Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game. At E3 2006 it was awarded yet again for Best PC Game, Best Original Game and Best Simulation Game.

Sadly, Spore has been continuously pushed back and many potential players feel that it is vaporware at this point similar to Duke Nukem Forever. It’s nice that EA’s CEO has finally decided to chime in and give Spore a release date. While not completely set in stone as usual, here’s hoping that we will see this wonderful and original game in time for Christmas.

A little about myself and the purpose this blog serves

Currently I am pursuing my Masters in writing and journalism at Rowan University. I write the bi-weekly gaming & technology column for the school’s newspaper called The Whit while writing freelance game reviews on the side. While still only a fledgling game reviewer, I hope that one day it’ll be my profession.

This blog serves two purposes: to cover and discuss newsworthy events in the industry and to fulfill a requirement for one of my classes. The writing that is labeled as School Related will typically not deal with the gaming industry but are just assignments for class and can be ignored by the general public. Anything else is game.

Thanks for reading.

Learning Record Questions

1. When should we start adding things to the Learning Record?

2. Is this the equivalent of a final?

3. Will other students look at it as was mentioned?

4. Will the teacher spend a day of class looking at updated Learning Records?

5. On average, how much is required to add to it?