A Series of Tubes

So Tesla released a cheaper car (the model S).  The original 100% electric Tesla Roadster sells for $100,000.  This new car sells for $50,000.  At half off the roadster it’s still not near my price range.  Oh when I get money, this is what I will get.  Of course there is the Mitsubishi iMiev.  It would sell, if it were for sale in the US, for $24,000.  It only gets 100 miles on a charge compared to the Telsa’s 300.  Electric car eye candy:

The 2009 Game Developers conference in San Fransisco ended 2 days ago.  Last year one of the big winners was World of Goo.  The developers decided to release their game without any DRM.  It’s about a year since the games release and since then the piracy rate for world of goo is 90% and the World of Go Publisher went bankrupt.  I’m not sure how linked those two events are since 2DBoy, the developers of world of goo , is still doing fine.  If I knew that my game was getting a 90% piracy rate I would probably jump on the DRM bandwagon, but surprisingly 2DBoy is sticking with and encouraging their original decision.  The argument made by 2DBoy is that DRM will get cracked and will only degrade the experience for paying customers while the pirates and thiefs wind up with a better game experience.

An important point to note is that the 90% of the people that didn’t buy the game are not lost sales since only a percentage of those pirates would have actually paid for the game if they couldn’t get an illegal copy.  Also once a DRM scheme is implemented there are lost sales due to a degraded game experience, so one should be able to calculate a direct cost benefit for implementing DRM.  If someone knows of an impartial and well researched article, one not written by a game company or someone with an axe to grind in the argument, let me know.  I’d like to see if the 90% piracy rate is a number that is found across the industry, how DRM schemes compare at increasing or decreasing sales, and if this number compares to the music industry.

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So there are some updates on things that I posted earlier:

Credo Mobile: When I told someone I had Credo Mobile instead of a huge telecom wireless phone plan this person said “I have Verizon because it has the best network”.  The thing is that wireless coverage is not a big issue in the places I go and I don’t care about it enough to get into a pissing contest over it.  What I do care about is this:  It turns out that Verizon wireless blocked a bunch of text messages on its network because they were pro choice text messages.  So Verizon may or may not have a better network, but they definitely censor your speech (later on Verizon would backpedal on this after it got a lot of bad press on it).  And just to bring things around full circle, Ivan Siedenberg, CEO of Verizon, made financial contributions to Ted Stevens who helped me name this blog.  Looking over his contribution list is interesting since he mainly supports Republicans but there are some Democrats on the list.

Yelp:  I’m still waiting to see what yelp does to respond to the updated criticiscm about extortion (see my updated yelp post).  I emailed them asking for a response (nothing yet) and their official blog still does not have any response.  The CEOs twitter page didn’t mention it last I checked (when the initial story broke he had a lot to say on his twitter page).

I recently bought Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book The Pluto Files.  I’m only a third or so through it (it’s not a long book), but it is a very entertaining read.  Most people will probably recognize Tyson as someone who frequents the Colbert Report and The Daily Show.  It is obvious why you would want him to appear on your show given how enthusiastic he is about his subject matter and his knowledge of it.  He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and became famous as one of the Astronomers leading the charge to demote Pluto from its Planet status.  I’d heard him interviewed on the topic of Pluto and on the topic of his previous book Death by Black Hole, but below is a video of his thoughts on religion and science.  Definitely worth a listen.

As a side note hulu has Carl Sagan’s Cosmos videos posted online.  I’ve only watched the first one but I plan on watching more.

I saw a posting where someone had this as a small picture next to what they posted. I want one (It’s Darwin):

He based his design off of the famous Shepard Fairey Obama poster.

I found the website of the creator and he sells TShirts with the above picture on it. Profits from the shirts go to the national center for science education.

I used to be a member of AT&T.  I recently switched to credo mobile which runs on the sprint network and works just as good as AT&T did.  I didn’t like how AT&T helped the government’s domestic spying program.  Also Colbert gives a good explanation of the history of AT&T:

(by the way.  I can’t find this clip on the comedy central site.  Viacom might have pulled the plug on this clip but I cannot confirm that)

Edit:  Ok now the youtube video is down and I can’t find a copy hosted elsewhere….Anyone know where to get this clip?  I found this one but it doesn’t have the line about AT&T being the terminator…you can blow it into peices but it will always just reform.

I currently am a member of AAA.  AAA is a large and impersonal organization but my main beef with them is their lobbying the US government for more roads and less public transportation.  If I don’t like something I have the will to stop supporting them financially (see AT&T above).  So I’ve decided to go with Better world Club instead. Click and Clack from Cartalk recommend them so I’ve decided to take the plunge and give them a shot. I’m mostly happy with credo (it was a big improvement from AT&T) so I have a feeling this will be better than AAA.

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