A Series of Tubes

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Here are some images from my cell phone.  I’m cleaning it out:

I like to walk.  Just to get where I’m going, that is probably my preferred mode of transportation.  For this reason I hate LA:

Where did my sidewalk go?

Yes there is an apartment complex in LA called Crapi apartments:

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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 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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So I’ve been having problems with my roomba and I looked all over for a solution (Roombas are vacuuming robots if you didn’t already know).  I finally found the best and most comprehensive guide to solving problems with your roomba from this FAQ.  The FAQ was so comprehensive in fact that it also helped a lot with my friend’s marriage issues too.  It’s that good.

And just for fun, here is a video of a cat riding a roomba:

There is an article over at eastbayexpress.com about how Yelp is asking for money from restaurants to help them hide bad reviews.  In response to the article, the CEO of yelp responded on his blog about the incident and goes into detail about how the reporter did not do a good job of fact checking (apparently she did, see the update below).  The article has a bold claim against a popular website and is driving a lot of traffic to their own website (I had never been to eastbayexpress.com before and the article in question has been the #1 article on the website for some time).  Unfortunately the claim that it is extorting restaurants looks likely  is not proven (I guess it’s not totally unproven either) and in the end only servers to put into question eastbayexpress’s reporting.  They didn’t mention in their article that eastbayexpress owns and operates a competing service for restaurant reviews.  The damage done to yelp has already been done as the article is getting wide circulation due to being posted on sites such as slashdot.org.

Update:  I have had friends anecdotally tell me that yelp participates in extortion practices.  Eastbay express has follow up article, as pointed out by Dano in the comments and yelp has yet to respond.  I emailed yelp for a response just to see what they say (I kinda expect them to ignore me.  Maybe I’ll call them).  The initial claim appears to have some legs.  That kind of sucks since I like the idea of a community review site.  I just wish there was a trustworthy version.  The articles seem to have effected yelps own rating on it’s own site from an average of 4 stars down to 3 stars (click the image for a larger view):

East Bay Express also took the time to trash talk the Mercury New’s coverage of Yelp as well.  The only large competing service is yahoo local, and there is no guarantee that yahoo local will be any better considering that yahoo does not have the greatest track record in the morality department.  I guess I’ll start using yahoo local, but my brand loyalty to it is less than stellar.

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So Amazon recently released the kindle 2.  It is an ebook reader that allows you to download your books over a 3G connection (provided by sprint).  The interesting thing about it is that you can have a device that will automatically download the days news for you and have it ready in a convenient reader waiting for you on your kitchen table.  I spent some time looking into the device and below are my thoughts.

I would make a few changes to the kindle:

1)  I would make it spill proof and drop proof.  I’m not the most coordinated when I wake up so if I spill something on my newspaper it doesn’t matter much but if I spill something on a $400 ebook reader I tend to care a whole lot more.  This is not an unreasonable request considering the OLPC.

2) Price:  We’re in a recession/depression and at an electronic book for $360 + other expenses, in more detail below, is a bit much.

Raining on the Kindle 2’s parade: There are some problems with the Kindle.

I can go to a used bookstore and get a book for cheap and not worry about breaking it, losing it, having it stolen, or having the battery die.  There is not a lengthy EULA associated with the used book I just bought.  I will also know that amazon will not have a database of all of my reading material (including blogs, websites, newspaper and magazine subscriptions).  I cannot find a privacy policy that states that they will not sell this information or will not share this information with other corporations or with any governments.  I’m not allowed to modify the kindle, even if I know how to make it better and I share the information with everyone.

Unless you are using the wireless Internet connection on the kindle to buy stuff from amazon, then the kindle will send you a bill for the data other data. If the pricing is anything like the charges that most cell phones bill you for, and there is no reason to expect it to be different, then I would recommend never ever using the wireless abilities of the kindle…ever. Just to visit a blog or a popular website will cost you about $2 per website per month if you purchase that ability for the kindle.  So if you have a computer you can look at the website for free.  For every registered website that amazon decides that it wants to allow you to look at on your kindle, because amazon gets to decide what websites do not get access to on the kindle 2), you have to pay.  going to slashdot costs $2 a month, yet I can visit it for free on my computer or laptop or .  As if paying $360 up front to amazon wasn’t enough, now they want to ding you for even more money for things that should be free.

I guess if I were to include these problems into the how I would change the kindle it would be not to have my privacy violated and my rights stripped by a team of lawyers at amazon.com and not to get charged money to visit websites that I can view on a laptop for free, in color, faster, without amazon tracking me, and for many other reasons as well.  Actually if you are thinking of getting a kindle you should probably just get a good laptop instead since you can just go to the websites of various newspapers for free and get the same content.

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So apparently CNN’s headlines are so great and wonderful that now you can get them on a t-shirt.  Some of these t-shirts are quite infomative.  For example, I know that polls and pundits have had their say about the election but I feel that a certain demographic is missing…

You see if we were all naked cowboys then the election might have come out differently.  I’m pretty sure that prop 8 would have come out different.

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One of the things I found out today on the tubes is that Senator Ted Stevens, aka Mr. Tubes, was found guilty of 7 counts including making false statements on financial documents and lying about free home renovations from oil contractors.