Bush's War on Dissent

Bush and his administration is now out to "counter" all the anti-war sentiment that is now coursing through the political atmosphere. Unfortunatly, this is done through misrepresentation of dissenter's views and through attacks on dissents.
On the former, people who believe we should get out of Iraq don't think it would appease terrorists, nor think that would be the right route anyway. Heck, most Americans believe that the war in Iraq is seperate from the war on terrorism.

From what I have heard, most opposing the war believe one of two things: Iraq has pretty much fallen into a civil war-one which we shouldn't be in, or that, using a variation of Bush's own words, Iraq can't step up until we start to step down. On the latter, these people believe that the Iraqi government is using US troops as a crutch, and can't grow until they start to work on their own.
While I am among the people who believe we shouldn't have ever gone into Iraq, or at least the way in which we did. But I do believe that since we did go in, Iraq is now our responsibility. As of yet, I am not convinced that either former or latter cases for going out is true, and we shouldn't get out until either comes true (hopefully the latter rather then the former).

But what is worse are the attacks on dissent. Rather then going out and proving the case for Americans, the admininstration has time and again went out and basicly said "trust us to know what is best." For a time after 9/11, people believed that. But as their statements have become more and more false, as the Iraq and their supposed WMD program (much less actual WMD's) has shown, people have believed the administration less and less.
Yet, my words are probably not enough. So, instead I will use someone else's words who share the same view on these attacks on dissent, and in video form.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWI6kiENeDY

Back from PAX

Sorry to those who read (anyone?) this blog, I have been doing a few other things.
One of those things was the Penny Arcade Expo. I only went Saturday, but it was still a great experience.
One of the best comparisons that can be made is that PAX is Disneyland for gamers. No, it isn't nessisarily the best place on Earth. What it has is long lines for short experiences, yet it is still increadably fun.
The main downside is the lines, notably the lines for the freeplay rooms. The PC freeplay was more forgiving, since there was plenty of PC's, all loaded with assorted games, mostly FPS's. The console freeplay didn't have as many consoles, but more games, although you had to wait until the apropriate console opened up, thus making the line move slower.
One thing to keep in mind for next year's PAX is to go in a group. This is so then one person can get into a given line early (as all the panels' lines had hundreds of people lined up just a half-hour before it starts). Also, at the beginning of the day, the exhibit line parallels the preregistered's line. Have at least one person in that line, while the other people go in for swag or tournament sign-ups.
The only other bad part was the DS's. Yes, there was too many of them, at least too many in one space. The lag all the DS's created slowed Mario Kart DS and Tetris DS to a crawl, and made it near impossible to download a game. Hopefully, the larger venue for PAX '07 will disperse all the DS's a bit more.
The exhibit room was half demos, half sellers. There was some exclusive items there, like the new Penny Arcade book, but mostly stuff you could get outside PAX anyway.
On the demo's side, unfortunatly, no Wii and no Sony presence. I got to play Elite Beat Agents, Final Fantasy 3 (DS version) and Guitar Hero 2 (first time I played the game; I sucked at it). At the console freeplay, I played the fun, and crowd generating, game Dead Rising. It's not quite good enough to sell a 360 to me, but still a good incentive.
The panels were fun. Heck, just look at yesterday's Penny Arcade comic, as the heart and lampshade was not originally in it until the crowd requested it.
What made PAX work was not just the events, but the people around it. Everyone was friendly and attributed to the atmosphere. Even if you don't play very many games, you shouldn't be afraid of going to this event.
Overall, PAX was a great event, and one I'll be attending all three days next year.

Judge Throws Out Warrantless Wiretaps

Not too long ago, a federal judge has ruled that the warrantless wiretaps are unconstitutional (story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14393611/)

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This is entirely expected, as not only does the Constitution prohibit the government from wiretapping without a warrant, but the law that put together the secret FISA court specifically states that warrants are needed.
One line from the above article was interesting:

"The government argued that the program is well within the president's authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets."

I wonder if they know that "its lawful for secret reasons" is not a very good defense.

Sony Needs New Management

When I say Sony, I just don't mean the video games department, I mean the entirety of the company.
Recently, Dell announced a recall due to exploding (sometimes literally) batteries, which are made by Sony (story: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=2315126).
Earlier this week, Sony announced the first Blu-ray drive for PC-that doesn't play commercial disks (story: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=6589

).
Then you have the many terrible comments that video game department execs. have made after E3, basicly trying to defend the $500-600 (best chronicaled on the 1Up Yours podcast: http://1upyours.1up.com/).
Late last year, it was discovered that some SonyBMG-published albums had a badly-written rootkit/copy-protection, which is the worst commercial software blunder this side of Windows security.

This isn't just one department's problem, it is the entire corporation. The only thing that is saving Sony from going down the tubes (and not the one Ted Stevens described) is Spider-man 3. There has been some improvement with the new president of the video games department, but something has to change for the company as a whole. The amount of arogance and uncaring going into their products is doing more harm then good for them.

Lieberman’s "Hacked" Web Site

Joe Lieberman, who just lost his bid for being the Democratic representative for Congress, had his site fall off the map yesterday, the day of the election. He very publicly claimed that the site was hacked, blaiming an unknown Lamont supporter for the outage.
However, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos said on Countdown that Lieberman's Web site was on a bad server that also housed several other Web sites. Thus, the site likely couldn't handle any additional traffic that would happen anyway since it was the day of the election.
On the other hand, John C. Dvorak posted an article (here: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=6545 ) that the site simply wasn't paid for.

Both speculations go under the same problem for the site itself: they just didn't invest enough money to keep it alive.

What makes this worse is that either Lieberman doesn't understand how technology works, purposely lied to people in saying that a rogue Lamont supporter took the site down. The former is more likely, since I highly doubt that any politician would lie in a way that is easily fact-checkable (as written above). But this just doesn't well for someone who would have to vote on policies that would affect the Web as a whole. I certainly wouldn't vote for someone who doesn't understand what bandwidth is.

Blu-ray Vs. HD-DVD: Why Dual-Format Drives Are Necessary for Both

Everyone should know it by now, that having a HD format war is the worst thing either camp is doing right now. Heck, some have speculated that Microsoft, among others, only supports HD-DVD in an attempt to kill both, so then they become the leader in digital distribution.

Online distribution, in my opinion, can't work until computers are commonly connected, hopefully wirelessly, to televisions. I just doubt that computer screens is the prefered way to watch shows or movies. There is also the problem of DRM and/or proprietary formats, since there is no universal one for either just for watching videos online.

The main problem with the current format war is simply no one right now knows which will succeed, and thus won't put any money down until they know. Who wants to put down hundreds of dollars for a player that may or may not work in a few years? That is why no one recommends buying either a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player unless they have a burning hole in their pocket (and a HD set to go with it).
Whats worse is that there is no need for people to go to either camp right now. The only reason is to have a movie in HD. Yet, as I found on just the back covers of HD-DVD movies, only the movies themselves are being upgraded; not even the special features get the upgrade. So we have minimal upgrade in the visual quality of the movie, and no other new content or upgrades. Why go either of these formats?

The simple way for both sides to get a better chance of winning, rather then have both lose, is to have dual format players get onto the market. Rather then fight it out in the marketplace, where it is more likely that one or both will lose horribly, fight it out with the studios. I don't think people really care on if their movies are HD-DVD or Blu-ray if they know either one will work in the long run.
Having a dual-format player will do the one thing both sides need: getting their player into people's homes. As it is, most consumers will not go for a possibly dead format.