d | djarum

There has been a lot of talk in the last several days about Ubisoft’s controversial decision to not release a version of the new Ghost Recon game on the PC. Their reason; piracy.

Ubisoft more than any other publisher in recent memory has tried to blame their poor sales of their PC games on piracy instead of the truth. They have released cruddy ports of lackluster games with draconian DRM. People aren’t buying your games because “they are just pirating them from the Pirate Bay”. People aren’t buying them because they are rubbish. When is the last time you have read anything about a Ubisoft title other than the silly DRM included? That’s right you haven’t.

Gabe Newell of Valve Software has basically said it best that if you make a quality product, give it a fair price and make it easily and simply available you don’t have a piracy problem nor a sales one. I don’t hear Bethesda, Activision or EA complaining about PC piracy effecting the sales of their latest games and all of their latest big titles have been available pirated either before or right at release.

Piracy is the boogyman excuse in the PC gaming world for the last several years, as if publishers just discovered the practice and that it hasn’t been going on since the beginning of computers. The real facts for it becoming such a hot topic now is that the large public companies whom publish terrible games need excuses for the shareholders why their awful games aren’t selling. The world of video games is still basing itself on the Hollywood movie model of production which in the modern game development world is quickly starting to run to the end of it’s course.

Where with Hollywood you can release a couple of bombs but a cheap movie that becomes a hit subsidizes the losses of the failures. With the ever rising costs of creating video games even a crappy shovelware title costs a great deal of money and manpower to create. It is not like the 8-bit days where a publisher like LJN could get a license, put 3 guys to make a game regardless of quality and shove it out the door in a couple of months and recoup the costs and then some. Even a terrible game, and this is according to Ubisoft themselves, $18.8m-$28.2m to create. This is not counting the marketing that is put behind it as well.

I think the best solution is this, publishers need to stop trying to over saturate the market with software. We all need to take a page from the book of developers like Blizzard, Valve, Nintendo and iD. Make a quality product, release it when it is done and support it post release without nickel and diming you without crazy DRM. Sure you might not have a new version of Call of the Battlefield Hero Creed every year. But, you will have a fanbase whom will be glad and eager to put down the cash for your title.

Gamers are pretty smart, crafty folk. We can smell a lemon.

Steve Jobs is dead. It still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I found out at work from a coworker and hoped it was a cruel joke.

Unlike many of the things you may read today about Steve’s passing I am not going to run through a list of accomplishments and talk about how he was a visionary. Instead I am going to talk about he directly effected me.

As most kids growing up in the 1980s, every school I went to was full of Apple IIs. The very first computer I touched was a Apple IIe and it changed my life. The foundations of all my computing skills came from those lowly Apple IIs, I learned to type on one, I learned how to program in BASIC on one. It started a love affair that has turned into a obsession at times.

The first computer I ever owned was a Macintosh Classic, from that I got online for the first time although it was not really what we consider the internet today. I learned HyperCard on that system. Also I started my first hacking adventures on that machine. I probably loved that computer more than any other in my life.

I didn’t own a cellphone until fairly recently, the iPhone really has changed my life in a million different ways. I really do feel lost without it.

Steve Jobs has influenced and changed everyone’s lives in so many ways. The 3D animated movies you watch, having access to a music store anywhere at any time, even that crappy Breakout Clone on your crappy 1952 cellphone is because of him.

We lost a great person today, one that perhaps comes once in a lifetime. I know the plans he had for the future are still in the works and we will continue to feel the effects from him for some time.

I just want to say, Thanks Steve for all you have given me.

I am not exactly sure when it happened but all of the sudden everyone want to be a nerd. I remember back when I was a kid being a “nerd” was not a thing you wanted to be associated with. I had to somewhat hide my love of video games, Indie music, computers and comic books from other people. I am thankfully very lucky in life that I had a group of friends who were equally as into the same interests as was and we didn’t look the part of social outcasts so we could blend in somewhat. Still I remember getting hassled and not getting dates with girls because I was a geek or a nerd.

Fast forward to now, as a single guy again and trying to ease my way back into the dating world in a new city I browse a few dating sites from time to time. Inevitably on almost every one of these girl’s profile they announce how they are a nerd for liking something not “cool”.

“I watch documentaries so I am kind of a nerd.”

“I play video games so I am a nerd.”

Listen I am all for “nerd culture” becoming more accepted in popular culture. You have to remember not too long ago comic books were thought to contribute to the delinquency of minors, Video Games made you murder people and Dungeons and Dragons made you worship Satan. So the fact that I can talk about the new issue of Captain America or World of Warcraft in public and not get dirty looks from people. But I feel the term has been co-opted by people to pretend they are not cool to be edgy.

Much like how every girl in college is “bisexual” everyone now is a “nerd”. While this is great for things like comic book movies and good television staying on the air I don’t see it changing the lives of the kids in school right now getting the shit knocked out of them and not getting dates. While that girl on the dating site talks about how nerdy she is for watching Doctor Who the 16 year old kid who plays Warhammer 40k on the weekend with his friends isn’t any more accepted to the captain of the football team.

Maybe it is time we start taking it back and calling out the fake nerds.

So after seeing the amazing set by the Arcade Fire this weekend at Coachella the main question on my mind was, “HOW THE HELL DID THOSE BALLS WORK?!”

A little bit of information came from someone who got one and ripped it apart for the sake of knowledge. Now today we have more information about them from the folks who did it along with learning that it is a part of a larger project. Very cool if you ask me.

So I was listening to Geektime on Sirius/XM last week where the hosts never had a compelling reason to jailbreak their iPhone/iPad. A caller tried to explain some but did a awful job. So, here I come to swoop in and do the job right.

First off a disclaimer: jailbreaking while legal does void your warranty with Apple. Know what you are getting into before jailbreaking your device and do your homework before hand. Redmondpie is a great resource for guides and Jailbreak Matrix will tell you if you can jailbreak your device. All Apps are on Cydia which is installed when you jailbreak and is the Jailbreak App Store.

Got all that? Good then here go…

1. BiteSMS

Lets face it, if you text at all on a iPhone you have grown to hate the native Text Messaging App. It is clunky, when you get a text you have to jump into the app to reply which is extremely annoying when you are doing something in another app, you are limited to a few text ringtones. I could go on and on forever. Apple has not done any work on the stock Text app since the release of the original iPhone and it shows. So what is the solution? BiteSMS. It has every feature you wished Apple would put into the native app and a bunch you never thought about but once you have it you never knew how you went without it for so long. If you need one feature to push you over the edge to use it here you go.

Never again will you have to leave a app to reply or compose a text. Heck, you don’t even need to unlock your phone to do it. It is my number one used app on my iPhone and has paid for itself tenfold.

Learn more about it at www.bitesms.com

2. GV Extensions for iPhone

Do you have a Google Voice account? Would you like to have your Google Voice SMS and Call Features work seamlessly with your iPhone?  Well here is your solution. Since Google introduced the Android your hope for a official solution is pretty much never going to happen. While there is now a official and several 3rd party Google Voice apps none of them are really user friendly, especially compared to using the service on a Android.

Now you are asking, what do they do and why should I want this or be excited? To quote the website “Phone GV Extension and SMS GV Extension are system extensions (NOT standalone apps) that seamlessly integrate Google Voice phone and messaging capabilities (phone: Direct Dial mode and Call Back mode; SMS: Send and Receive) to iPhone.” To dumb it down you can call using Google Voice using the native Phone app and send and receive SMS for free using the native Text Messaging app (or BiteSMS which takes over for the native app).

If you are a Google Voice user (and if you are not you are missing out) this makes your life a ton easier. I won’t go into all of the features of Google Voice but it is things you will most likely use and it is free. Being able to have unlimited texts for free is worth it alone. The only downside to using Google Voice for your text needs is the lack of MMS, but if you don’t need or use it you can save a ton of cash every month by dropping your texting service.

To learn more about the apps go here.

3. 3G Unrestrictor/My3G (Both of these programs do the same thing but each has different ways of doing it.)

You ever want to Facetime or Skype on 3G or need to download a larger app off the App Store while on 3G? Well here is your solution. It allows those things by tricking applications into believing they are on WiFi, even though they are on 3G or EDGE. It might not be a must have all the time but when you need it, it is a life saver. For the record I prefer 3G Unrestrictor but both work just as well.

4. MyWi or TetherMe

Up until a few months ago AT&T did not allow tethering on the iPhone at all and until even more recently there was not a official way to use the iPhone as a wifi hotspot. Well if you have a jailbroken iPhone you would have had these features for years now.

MyWi turns your iPhone into a wireless hotspot so you can use your wifi devices anywhere. It is a stand alone app that does not use the current native solution and works on all iPhones. TetherMe on the other hand enables the native tethering without having to pay your carrier to enable it. So if you have a iPhone 4 you can enable the native wifi hotspot.

I don’t have to tell you if you are a traveler how handy these apps are. I was recently in a hotel that charged 40 dollars a night for internet access. Spending 20 dollars one time is a lot better than swallowing obscene hotel prices.

Also for you wifi iPad owners both of these apps work great with your iPad, in fact MyWi has a addon that automatically connects your iPad to your iPhone when it needs the internet and shuts it back off when done.

I could honestly go on forever with fantastic Jailbreak apps and tweeks.

Lockinfo for making your lockscreen more than wallpaper and time.

Winterboard allow you to theme your phone to allow things like this.

LiveClock that animates the Clock app on the homescreen, Weathericon that puts live weather infomation on the Weather app and thousands more tweaks and apps.

If this has not convinced you to at least try out jailbreaking your device than perhaps you don’t use your device as much as I do. Go ahead and try it, if you don’t like it you just have to restore your phone back to normal and there is no trace of the jailbreak ever again.

The sudden and unexpected demise of the White Stripes came as a shock to many people. The rumor mill was that they were to make a new record and do some shows this summer. While we do not know what caused the split, we can start to see some of the fallout from it.

Today we saw the release of the Bonnaroo Lineup and with the leak of the Lollapalooza headliners last week. The reaction to the headliners have been mixed to say the least. What is very interesting about them both is that they both seem to lack a big name at the top of the bill, a anchor. Could have the White Stripes been signed on to be at one or both and then backed out at the last minute? After the sudden cancellation of last White Stripes tour and several year hiatus it would have been a huge booking. But sadly we may never know the truth as the White Stripes camp is notoriously tight lipped and I doubt C3 and WMA would want to talk about being burned.

The wonderful Tom Brevoort Executive Editor at Marvel just asked some interesting questions on Twitter just now.

What could Marvel be doing better? Where are we dropping the ball?

Along those same lines, I feel a real ebb in the overall enthusiasm of the readers, not just Marvel’s. So what’s got you down on comics?

I will totally be that guy right now and give a non-140 character response. Yes, I am a dork. You shall deal with it imaginary people in my head!

Overall I want to preface my ramblings with this; I am extremely happy with 99% of Marvel’s output currently. I think they have been putting out some of the most entertaining and compelling comics around right now. Also, they have the best writers in the entire industry making their characters and books interesting and revitalized in a way they have not been in decades.

That being said one of the few problems is that as Johnathan Hickman, writer of the absolutely fantastic S.H.E.I.L.D, Secret Warriors and Fantastic Four, has said there are so many big names in the room that they kind of suck some of the air out. While he was talking more about the big talent writers on staff, it is also true about the books being published. We have four Avengers books, two Hulk books, soon to be two Captain America books, etc all being made right now. Hell, we have FOUR fucking Deadpool books right now.

The problem I feel is that while the sales for these books maybe higher than lets say a Iron Fist or Ghost Rider, I think that having multiple books out for popular characters is actually doing more to hurt books like those. I know as a reader I have limited funds to buy books a month, as do most folks. It is not a hard choice to make between a higher profile book like a Avengers title and a Atlas book, especially when the Avengers book is tied directly into the overall focus/event in the Universe at the time.

Perhaps a solution is to bring back a digest series ala Marvel Comics Presents again. Except instead of filling it with lackluster creators and bland to bad stories make it a enticing title to both creators and buyers. Have it as the title where every creative team can take whatever character they want to do a story with but a series can’t be supported can go. Fill it up with your top talent, and it is a perfect place to put people who do fantastic work, have great sales but are extremely slow as you can wait to put their work in until it is finished. Make it Giant-Sized (40+ Pages) and at five bucks it would be a bargain. You can use it as a way to entice people to want to work at Marvel. You have a idea for a Paste Pot Pete and D-Man story? This is where you can do it.

As for comics in general I think most of my concerns are towards the future. Namely, online and future readership.

Marvel has by far the best online presence of all the major publishers. That being said there are room for improvement there; namely price and availability. I think that not releasing things day and date online is costing sales. And as more people have devices to read comics digitally you are going to be costing yourselves more and more sales. I think moving to a day and date release for all books would be in your best interest in the near future. Those who are collectors are going to be going to the shops on Wednesday anyway. You are not going to lose any ground there. What you will see is more people being involved in comics if they are not weeks or months behind online. Which in term is good for the entire industry.

On that same token I think that lowering prices digitally of books would also increase sales. New stuff at two bucks and older stuff at fifty cents sounds like a winner to me. The current prices are not as compelling as either a snap buy or a serious reader. When you can go to your local shop and pick up 99% of the stuff for under a buck, $1.99 doesn’t sound like a good deal. You can buy Angry Birds for .99 cents or a song on iTunes for less and gives you more for the money. Also consider pricing stuff in bundles online ala albums. “Infinity Gauntlet Saga” (All the Infinity Gauntlet books and tie ins) for ten bucks is a hell of a deal. Perhaps doing some creator commentaries for books as well as a added bonus would be nice.

Now with the future readers. It is not really talked about but the bulk of US comic readership is in their late 20s-early 40s, basically the kids that grew up in the last heyday, of the 80s and early 90s. We grew up and now have the money to afford $3.00+ books for 22 pages on Wednesday. Sadly the kids these days are no interested in it. Why? Well a couple of reasons. First is the 900 pound gorilla called Manga. I have a niece that we take to the comic shop every so often to pick something out. While her father and I try to get her to buy something like Spider-Man or X-Men she ultimately buys some sort of manga. Why? It is easy, for the same price as a issue of Avengers she can get a issue of Shonen Jump which has a ton of stories in it and is the size of a Sears catalog when we were kids.

As a kid it is not hard to make the choice of more for your money. Kids don’t care about glossy paper and state of the art coloring. They just want some fun stories and a good value. So, instead of doing the same thing of making “kid friendly” books that haven’t worked for the last two decades how about you use the manga publishers ideas to your advantage? Print old stories with perhaps one new series, in black and white, on cheap paper and sell it for five bucks? Imagine a kid seeing a book with Spider-Man, the Avengers, Iron Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men all in it for five bucks? As a added bonus you are giving the kid a history lesson in the Marvel universe at the same time. You already have the material, it is another way to make money on the work and you are bringing new readers in.

That is ultimately what we all want. For the characters we love to continue to be loved far beyond when we are dead.

This maybe one of the most difficult records that I have ever had to give my professional opinion on. Far is much more than just a band to me, as it is for a lot of people. Those records got me through a lot of difficult times in my life as they did many others. In the years since Far ceased to be a unit I have formed relationships with the members of the band, listened to the records good and bad and been to the shows, good or bad. Never once did I ever think I would ever get to hear them play together again, let alone a new record.

Over a decade later I get the record I never thought I would get. You are wondering what it is like. It reminds me a lot of Tin Cans frankly. Jonah has plenty of sing along choruses which reminds me a bit of the New End Original material, “If You Cared Enough” is a major example of this. Thankfully there is some songs that sound absolutely like that came out of 199x, “Deafening”, “When I Could See” and perhaps my favorite song from the album “Better Surrender”. Plenty of sing/scream from Jonah which has been sorely lacking in any of his work in the last decade along with the unique guitar work from Shaun.

My only real complaint is that Shaun Lopez perhaps overproduced the album. There is overdubs galore that kind of overshadows Jonah’s voice, along with some things just sounding to “clean” where it should be “dirty”. “Dear Enemy” which is a fantastic song loses some of it’s glow from the heaps of digital tricks put over it.

Don’t let the production quips get you down, this is still a fantastic record that has a rightful place right next to the other Far records. Go buy it when it comes out on May 25th, preferably from a independent record store or from www.thebandfar.com.

Things Required:

Snow Leopard Install Disc
Windows 7 x64 (32 Bit WILL NOT WORK!)

1. Boot into the Snow Leopard installer. I used GigabyteOSX but I understand Empire EFI is pretty nice also.

2. Partition your Hard Drive in a GPT partition table. I only made 2 partitions, 1 HFS+ Journaled for OSX and another FAT for Windows.

3. Install Snow Leopard, I am pretty sure that is pretty self explanatory. Find a guide or method that works for you. Make sure you get Chameleon installed and working.

4. Reboot and boot from the Windows 7 DVD, install Windows 7.

5. After Windows 7 is installed, after your reboot, Windows will be the only OS bootable. To fix this:

- Open startmenu and in search type “cmd”
- type “diskpart”
- type “list disk”
- type “select disk X”, where X is the HDD number where Windows and OSX are installed
- type “list partition”
- type “select partition X”, where X is the number of EFI partition
- type “active”
- type “exit”
- reboot Windows

6. Now you should be able to get back into OSX. You may need to use your boot media again. Once in OSX reinstall Chameleon bootloader. Restart afterward to make sure it is working.

7. Insert your Windows 7 DVD and go to the “Repair my Computer” section, then select “Command Prompt”. Now, once cmd appears, type this command:
- type “diskpart”
- type “list disk”
- type “select disk X”, where X is the HDD number where Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are installed
- type “list partition”
- type “select partition X”, where X is the number of Windows 7 partition
- type “active”
- type “exit”
- reboot

8. Boot your Windows 7 DVD again, go into the “Repair my Computer” again, but instead it comes up with a “Repair and Restart” automatically. Select this and in a few moments it will reboot.

9. Now Windows 7 will boot again. Once you are into Windows 7 again do this steps:

- Open startmenu and in search type “cmd”
- type “diskpart”
- type “list disk”
- type “select disk X”, where X is the HDD number where Windows 7 and snow Leopard are installed
- type “list partition”
- type “select partition X”, where X is the number of the EFI partition.
- type “active”
- type “exit”
- reboot once again

and…

NOW CHAMELEON SHOULD BOOT SNOW LEOPARD AND WINDOWS!

(To boot Windows just hit down or F8 and select your drive.)

Notes: It sounds much harder than it actually is. It was hours and hours of trying to figure it out but now I got it figured out it takes about 10 minutes total, most of it waiting for shit to boot. This is MUCH easier than dealing with BCD or other bootloader crap. And, as a bonus should work with anything else you throw at it.

Straight from the source or someone impersonating the source.

Justice – Beginning of the end