The good news: I've got a driver's license - fear me! Also, last Saturday I saw Rush at the Ampitheater at Clark County. It was an awesome show, and the first concert I ever attended. I'll be definitely catching them on their next tour (whenever that will be - probably in 2-5 years).

The bad news: I lost my job last Friday, so I'm looking for a new one (though having my license will make it easier for me to find a job.

The Ugly: I've started a little experiment. I want to (once I get an job again) start doing a podcast with audio commentaries for various movies, and that sort of thing, going for an amalgam of slightly informative, and snarky. Podeo commentaries, if you will. I did a test run commentary for Predator II, and, frankly, it didn't work out as well as I liked, as there wasn't as much material as I anticipated.

Anyway, since I'm unemployed, I haven't set up a Libsyn account yet. So, in the mean time, I've uploaded my test run on MegaUpload, and you can download it here.

I'm primarily looking for feedback regarding sound levels and background noise, that sort of thing. My next commentary will probably be at a lower bitrate, so it'll be a smaller file.

I'm looking forward with eager anticipation to your feedback.

I've got two more reviews up at Bureau42.com.
Voices of a Distant Star
and
FLCL

Enjoy (and post feedback, both here and there. Say, I should probably watch and review that show too.)

This is sort of a random creative thought.

In the past I've talked about this sort of mega-crossover fanfic I did in High School with a friend, involving the Anime Club I was part of. I'd considered, extremely strongly, re-starting it with my friends I made in college: Adam, TGU, and Admael, specifically. The big problem I ran into was starting the damn thing. My first though I had in mind was having the bad guy from the previous "Season" (which was in my senior year of High School") sending a Kaiju to earth near the College. As my new mech wasn't finished yet, and for one reason or another my previous model was unavailable, my thought was to take a page from everyone's favorite Sentai Tokusatsu show, use 4 smaller giant robots to try to take the kaiju down, and then when that didn't work, combine into a Gestalt Mech (basically a MegaZord), and then take the robot down in the grand tradition of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

But then I started thinking on the pitch and various other things, including things I wanted to do with the series later on down the road, when it hit me. I'd dropped one major bombshell at the end of the previous season, I had another one waiting on a delayed action fuse, and I hadn't considered the effects of the former bombshell at all, and I really needed to deal with that.

The bombshell being that at the end of the High School Arc, as I'm going to call it (sort of like the various arcs in Samurai Champloo or Rurani Kenshin) the Anime Club went public, in the sense that we publically revealed we'd been fighting this previously secret war with an evil intergalactic warlord, and we'd even asked the UN to send troops to help beat the BBEG (we'd even provide the transportation and equipment - we just needed people to use it.) Naturally, being this was a lame mega-crossover-fanfic-from-hell, the UN agreed to provide this aid - unanimously. Though, to be fair, it is a genre convention of Mecha Anime that the UN does in fact, posess a spine, and a rather nice one too.

The story concluded with the UN and a couple other friendly planets that had been introduced in previous seasons (including the planet from the Saber Marionette series) forming an "Federation of Planets".

So, now, not only has humanity, in the context of my fanfic, achieved interstellar space flight (without Time Dialation even), it has also encountered alien races and traveled to alien worlds, and allied with those worlds and formed a military/scientific organization for self-defense and exploration, and all of this is common knowledge on all of the worlds of this organization.

And that's the already dropped bombshell. The other one was going to involve the Multiverse concept I'd been working out, but will detail in a future posting.

But now I'm not so sure how I might work it. I'm strongly considering turning it into an "shared world" setting, like Thieves World, or how Known Space was originally intended to be, with authors (generally internet and real life friends) of my choosing (who are interested, of course).

Sorry for the long time between updates. I've got a new review online, this one of the anime series "Gunbuster". It's online at Bureau42.com. Enjoy, and maybe leave a comment or two.

Link To Article

( Full Text of Article )

I'll be frank. A free press is truly free when the government and private citizens gets out of its hair. As long as journalists don't lie, and there are ways to bring them down if they do lie, such as anti-slander and anti-libel laws, then the press is not free. This is a double-edged sword, as this leaves openings for "Yellow Journalism", and journalism with a radical (or reactionary) bias. However, it also allows for any wrongdoing on the part of the government or a private organization to be brought to light.

Now, in all fairness, as a member of the press (sort of - I wrote articles for my campus paper), the media does need to follow some limits of their own - theft, breaking & entering, and invasion of privacy are right out (and I'm looking at the Tabloids on the last regard). Also, I feel that any journalist which discloses the identity of an field operative for an intelligence organization (without his/her permission) is grossly in the wrong.

But all that aside, this law is bulldrek. As it says, if you video-tape an act of police brutality, you can be arrested. If you videotape a mob hit, you can be arrested. If Business A has a exec of Business B rubbed out, you tape the hit, you can be arrested. If you video tape a riot, you can be arrested. You begin to see the problems, yes?

This is generally a bad idea, and I'm really against it. Hopefully this law will get overturned in France. If not, well, that's one other country I wouldn't be moving to.

I came across this news article as I was going along the news page at Gamespot.com

Basically, the general gist of the article is that Square is going to make Serious Games, in addition to their usual stuff.

To my surprise, the response from Gamespot users in the comments is overwhelmingly negative. This shocked me, greatly.

To be clear, from what I understand, "Serious Games" aren't games with a serious plot, or games with mature themes, or games deliberately made to be Artistic.

In the industry (IIRC), Serious Games is practically a technical term, referring to games meant to address a social issue, such as disaster relief, or protecting refugees in Darfur, or similar situations. The key idea here is that a Serious Game does social commentary.

This does not mean that "Kuma/War" is a Serious Game either. Kuma/War is simply taking the Law & Order "Ripped Straight From The Headlines" approach to game design. There isn't anything wrong with that, necessarily - nor is there anything wrong with kind of games we have now.

However, by making Serious Games, and making good ones, and calling attention to them, you can build up the idea that Games are something to take seriously as a medium rather then just a genre.

The game industry needs it's Maus (which recounted his father's experiences during the Holocaust), it's Safe Area Gorazde (a piece by a journalist who recounted his experiences covering the war between Bosnia and Serbia during the early 90's). Those comics provided credibility and clout to the medium of comics and graphics novels. Serious Games can do the same thing for video games.

I've been watching Layer Cake today, and this movie really hit
the nail the head for why I'm really not hooked by the GTA games.
You're always at the bottom of the Layer Cake. You never really work
your way up the ladder.
Now, The Godfather: The Game, because of the game's story, as well as
the respect mechanic, as well as a few other things, handles this
better then the GTA games, IMHO. You start off at the bottom, but later
on in the game you become a better earner, and you move further and
further up the ladder. I haven't played all the way through "Scarface:
The Game", I really got the feel that you were moving up the ladder
there as well.
The Gangsters series of games also almost did this for me too. The
game's premise had you trying to basically work your gang up the ladder
and run the city. However, from various elements of the controls
(especially combat and watching the "work week") made the game really
frustrating for me.
Does anybody have any recommendations for Gangster games which, instead
of you being basically at the bottom of the proverbial layer cake for
the whole game, instead has you working your way up the ladder to the
top so, presumably, at the end of the game, you're the top boss and
running the city?

ECW Alumnus Mike Alfonso (who wrestled under the name of Mike Awesome) died last week Saturday in his Tampa Florida home. According to reports it was a suicide. He was 42 years old.

In memoriam of his death, the ring bell will sound 10 times.

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

*bing*

EDIT: I did a little digging and managed to find the lyrics to Mike Awesome's Entrance Music.

"Rising up from a land Armageddon
He's a modern-day gladiator
Six-foot-six, angry and mean
A living, breathing, war machine
Made his name in the rising sun
With tons of battles that he won
Time and time his hand was raised
As all his victims felt his rage

Awesome's what they say
All his victims feel the pain
Dropped with an Awesome Bomb
You go down and you never come up

Ice-cold blood with a heart of fire
His victim's doom his one desire
Challenge him, he'll send you home
With a crimson mask and broken bones
He's a force that can't be stopped
Awesome is rising to the top
Puts his body on the line
Now it's time for him to shine"

As you may be aware, I have a membership to Netflix. Well, because Mike Nelson did a commentary for it, I stuck "Halloween" in my queue, and I put the first "Friday the 13th" film in my queue for the hell of it.

Well, now NetFlix has been giving me recommendations for, say, "Saw", and "Hills Have Eyes". Now, generally I'm disinclined to watch these kind of movies, if only because in my mind's eye they're crap, even though I've never watched them or their like before, and previously had no plans to. Plus, I'm a little squemish as far as realistic blood goes, and I can't handle "Injury to the eye motif" stuff at all (so the Saw movies are right out). But what about the others? ("Hills Have Eyes", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") I know they're gruesome and violent, but are they actually, well, good? Or does the exploitative and violent aspects overwhelm any actual scariness of the films, and any emotional impact?

What more recent horror films would you recommend?

For the record, I've seen The Exorcist, Scream and 28 Days Later, and the Alien & Predator films, and liked them. I didn't like the Dawn of the Dead remake that much, and I don't think I'd like Romero's films - because of the whole "Zombies are going to win anyway" and "The Zombies are more likable than the humans" tone. I also liked Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films.

Excellent, I am now out of the hole. I didn't even have to sell any of my gaming books either.

On the bad side, my PS2 is now out of commission. I'm going to have to either get a new one, or run some ethernet cable to hook up a PS3 to the internet and get one of those.

Last week Saturday was my 22nd birthday.

On an unrelated note.

So, I took part in the free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime that Amazon.com did. However, they did not tell me when the trial was coming to an end, and had it set up to auto renew (something which I thought I had turned off).

So, it came to an end, and I got billed their standard rate of $75 for another month.

I'm now (including overdraft charges) $175 overdrawn. I owe my dad $250 rent. If I don't pay my rent, we could end up without internet, telephone service, or power.

As I need the money now, I'm planning on getting my mom to drive me up to Powell's so I can sell all my RPG books.

I wasn't using them anyway.

So why does this make me feel so ill?

Happy fucking belated birthday to me. :...( *cries*

Well, Dwight Silverman of TechBlog has put his list of 15 Geek Movies You Must See.

Here's the list (and whether I've seen them or not):

1. Brazil - (Haven't seen it, but it's on my Netflix queue)
   
2. The Matrix (Seen it)
   
3. The Fifth Element (Seen it)
   
4. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (Seen it)
   
5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Seen it)
   
6. Serenity (Seen it)
   
7. Dark City
   
8. 12 Monkeys
   
9. Shaun of the Dead (Seen it)
   
10. Darkman (Seen it)
    
11. Army of Darkness (Seen it)
    
12. Wargames
    
13. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Seen it)
    
14. Office Space
    
15. Repo Man
    

10 out of 13, not bad!

I've got a review up of the direct to DVD animated film "Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms" at Bureau42.com.

In short: It's pretty good.

Recently, on the RPG.net forums, game designer Jared A. Sorensen (memento_mori) has been permabanned - meaning he can never come back to the forums. Frankly, I have no sympathy at all.

Why? Because of what he was permabanned for. Now, he had just come off of a 6-month ban for a stunt he and John Wick pulled to promote their new... gaming label I guess is the proper name (it's not really a publisher, as the majority of their publishing is Print On Demand books or PDFs). I can't access the forums at work, so I'm going by memory - but they basically did a fake news post on the news postings boards saying that Memento Mori Theatrix was closing, and then put a re-direct on the site for the Memento Mori Theatrix site leading to a webpage for a fake brewery called the Wicked Dead Brewing Company - which was later revealed to be the name of Wick and Sorensen's RPG label. Now, as John had, apparently (I wasn't a user of the boards at the time - or at least wasn't frequenting the forums), faked his death on the forums in the past, (and been temp-banned for it, once the ruse was discovered), this did not get a good reception and Wick and Sorensen were tempbanned for 6 months.

Now, coming off of this ban, Sorensen, whether in a fit of insanity, or out of protest for being tempbanned, or in protest of the tyranny of the concept of message board needing moderators, or whatever, he decided to pose as a moderator. He made a post ending with "My mod voice is black" (the default text color in the RPG.net forums is black) and threatened to ban a moderator. Here's his blog post on the ban.

Now, one of the things you Just Don't Do in forums in general, particularly moderated ones, is pose as a moderator, and especially pose as a moderator and threaten a moderator. To paraphrase somebody else's post on another forum, but this is equivalent to (on the Discworld) going to the top of a mountain in a thunder storm, hold up a copper flag pole, and scream "All Gods are bastards!" at the sky, at the top of your lungs. It doesn't matter what the mods did wrong, because there are other ways of stating your displeasure than as posing as a mod.

I admit, there hasn't been a huge outcry of support for Sorensen on the RPG.net forums, but some people have stated their displeasure with the ban, on Sorensen's blog entry. I haven't heard if any podcasters who have stated their dislike of the RPG.net forums in the past have chimed in. However, it still makes what Sorensen did an outrageously stupid thing to do, and I have no sympathy for his bannination at all.

Snitched from kradical

How many of the top 250 IMDB user-selected movies have you seen?

(X) The Godfather
( ) The Shawshank Redemption
(X) The Godfather: Part II
(X) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(X) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
( ) Casablanca
( ) Schindler's List
(X) Pulp Fiction
(X) Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Seven Samurai
Total so far: 7

(X) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(X) Star Wars
( ) Rear Window
(X) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(X) 12 Angry Men
(X) Raiders of the Lost Ark
( ) The Usual Suspects
( ) City of God
( ) Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(X) Goodfellas
Total so far: 13

(X) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(X) Psycho
( ) Citizen Kane
( ) Once Upon a Time in the West
( ) North By Northwest
( ) Memento
(X) The Silence of the Lambs
( ) Lawrence of Arabia
( ) It's a Wonderful Life
( ) Sunset Boulevard
Total so far: 16

( ) Amélie
( ) Fight Club
( ) American Beauty
(X) The Matrix
( ) Vertigo
(X) Apocalypse Now
( ) Taxi Driver
( ) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
( ) Se7en
( ) León
Total so far: 18

( ) Paths of Glory
( ) Chinatown
(X) To Kill a Mockingbird
( ) American History X
( ) The Third Man
( ) Downfall
( ) The Pianist
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(X) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
( ) M
Total so far: 21

(X) The Bridge on the River Kwai
(X) Spirited Away
(X) Alien
( ) Das Boot
(X) L.A. Confidential
( ) A Clockwork Orange
(X) The Maltese Falcon
( ) Requiem for a Dream
( ) Hotel Rwanda
( ) The Shining
Total so far: 26

( ) Double Indemnity
( ) Metropolis
(X) Reservoir Dogs
(X) Saving Private Ryan
( ) Rashomon
(X) Singin' in the Rain
(X) Sin City
( ) Raging Bull
( ) Modern Times
(X) Aliens
Total so far: 31

(X) The Manchurian Candidate
( ) Rebecca
( ) Some Like It Hot
( ) The Great Escape
( ) Pan's Labyrinth
( ) The Departed
( ) All About Eve
(X) 2001: A Space Odyssey
( ) Touch of Evil
( ) Amadeus
Total so far: 33

( ) Million Dollar Baby
( ) Life is Beautiful
( ) The Seventh Seal
( ) Forrest Gump
(X) Jaws
( ) The Sting
( ) Strangers on a Train
(X) Terminator 2: Judgment Day
(X) Batman Begins
( ) On the Waterfront
Total so far: 37

( ) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
( ) Braveheart
( ) The Elephant Man
(X) The Wizard of Oz
( ) Full Metal Jacket
(X) Kill Bill: Vol. 1
(X) Blade Runner
( ) The Apartment
(X) The Incredibles
( ) City Lights
Total so far: 40

( ) Cinema Paradiso
(X) The Big Sleep
(X) High Noon
( ) Notorious
(X) Ran
( ) Donnie Darko
(X) Fargo
(X) Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
( ) The Great Dictator
( ) Crash
Total so far: 45

(X) Once Upon a Time in America
( ) Finding Nemo
( ) Cool Hand Luke
(X) Princess Mononoke
(X) The Sixth Sense
( ) V for Vendetta
(X) Unforgiven
( ) The Wages of Fear
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
( ) Ben Hur
Total so far: 50

( ) Oldboy
( ) Back to the Future
( ) Annie Hall
(X) Kill Bill: Vol. 2
(X) Yojimbo
(X) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
( ) The Killing
( ) The Green Mile
( ) Life of Brian
(X) The Princess Bride
Total so far: 54

( ) The Deer Hunter
( ) Platoon
( ) The Graduate
( ) It Happened One Night
(X) For a Few Dollars More
(X) Gladiator
( ) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
( ) Nights of Cabiria
( ) Gandhi
( ) The African Queen
Total so far: 56

( ) Kind Hearts and Coronets
( ) Love's a Bitch
( ) The Bicycle Thief
( ) The Battle of Algiers
(X) The Adventures of Robin Hood [1938]
( ) Diabolique
(X) Toy Story 2
( ) 8 1/2
( ) Shadow of a Doubt
( ) Stand By Me
Total so far: 59

( ) The Night of the Hunter
( ) Brief Encounter
( ) Run Lola Run
( ) The Wild Bunch
( ) The General
(X) Die Hard
( ) Harvey
( ) Children of Men
( ) The Conversation
( ) Wild Strawberries
Total so far: 61

( ) Dog Day Afternoon
(X) Patton
(X) Duck Soup
( ) Glory
( ) Nosferatu
(X) The Day the Earth Stood Still
( ) Gone with the Wind
( ) Groundhog Day
(X) Hero
( ) Spartacus
Total so far: 65

( ) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
( ) The Gold Rush
( ) Trainspotting
( ) Finding Neverland
(X) Toy Story
(X) The Grapes of Wrath
(X) The Exorcist
( ) Magnolia
(X) Heat
(X) Mystic River
Total so far: 70

( ) The Big Lebowski
(X) A Christmas Story
( ) Twelve Monkeys
( ) King Kong [1933]
( ) The Prestige
( ) The Philadelphia Story
(X) Shrek
( ) Beauty and the Beast [1946]
( ) Cinderella Man
( ) Big Fish
Total so far: 72

( ) Before Sunset
( ) Ed Wood
( ) Judgment at Nuremburg
( ) The Hustler
( ) Snatch.
(X) The Terminator
( ) The Best Years of Our Lives
( ) The Lady Vanishes
(X) Bride of Frankenstein
( ) Walk the Line
Total so far: 74

( ) Grave of the Fireflies
( ) Out of the Past
( ) In the Heat of the Night
( ) Stalag 17
( ) Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
( ) Witness for the Prosecution
( ) Sleuth
( ) Little Miss Sunshine
( ) Bonnie and Clyde
(X) The Thing
Total so far: 75

(X) Young Frankenstein
( ) Talk To Her
( ) Rosemary's Baby
( ) Manhattan
(X) Scarface
( ) Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
(X) Frankenstein
( ) The Straight Story
(X) Arsenic and Old Lace
( ) Anatomy of a Murder
Total so far: 80

( ) Sling Blade
(X) High and Low
( ) Rififi
( ) All Quiet on the Western Front
( ) Throne of Blood
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
(X) Monsters, Inc.
( ) Roman Holiday
(X) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
( ) The Lost Weekend
Total so far: 84

( ) The Four Hundred Blows
( ) Doctor Zhivago
( ) The Searchers
( ) Bringing Up Baby
( ) United 93
( ) A Streetcar Named Desire
( ) Planet of the Apes [1968]
( ) The Lives of Others
( ) Come and See
( ) Sweet Smell of Success
Total so far: 84

( ) Brazil
( ) Stalker
( ) Infernal Affairs
( ) The Ox-Bow Incident
( ) Great Expectations [1946]
( ) Dial M for Murder
( ) Umberto D.
(X) Inherit the Wind
( ) In Cold Blood
( ) Mulholland Drive
Grand total: 84

So, out of 250 films which the users of IMDB consider to be some of the greatest of all time, I've seen 84.

In short, I suck.

EDIT: Not only do I suck, I got my math wrong - and that was basic addition too.

As a general rule, I have a small list of countries that I'd consider moving to if, say, the Constitution Party's candidate was elected President, of if a draft was approved, or if the **AA managed to buy majority control of the House & Senate and got a law passed that we technically don't own any of the books, DVDs, music, and whatever we have in our houses (at least as far as usage rights are concerned).

Well, Europe just got lopped off my list, after I read this story which happened last week, which I somehow missed.

(Article from Deutsche Welle news)

In short, after all the legislation that has been pushed in Germany after two allegedly video-game related murders (one a shooting at a high school by a youth who played a lot of Counterstrike, and another two teenagers who called themselves "Sephiroth" and "Reno" after the characters from Final Fantasy VII, and committed a series of murders and kidnappings), a growing number of people within the German government are calling for EU wide anti-video game legislation.

Well, I'd already cut England off the list due to the pervasive surveillance cameras, high gas prices (in comparison to US gas prices), the poor conversion rate and other things.

France had been cut off of the list because of the pervasive poor bureaucracy (the fact that they, by all accounts, learned nothing from the race riots in Paris housing projects, which are generally inhabited by poor, unemployed Muslim immigrants) - and the fact that it's incredibly hard to fire somebody from a job, even if they're a poor employee, and myriad other related issues.

Greece had been cut off the list due their de facto ban (which still stands, by the way) on internet cafes and video game arcades.

Germany went off the list when they were proposing domestic laws along the lines of the one I'm bitching about.

Russia had been cut off the list due to the pervasive corruption, as well as several other Eastern European countries.

But Spain was still on the list (I have a passing knowledge of Spanish, enough to work as the building blocks to become more fluent), Italy was still on the list, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium were still on the list. If this passes, all of Europe is going off the list, which I consider to be a damn shame.

Switzerland is still there though! ;-)

I must confess I haven't been very good about keeping track of all the games I've completed, but I've got one more game that I've completed story mode on (and unlocked everything on): "Def Jam: Fight for NY"

I must admit I'd beaten story mode a few years ago, but I hadn't unlocked all the fighters. Now that is done, I'm finally going to put the game aside (again), and play other stuff... until I can find someone else to play against.

On an semi-related note, I'm kind of wishing there was a PSP emulator for the PC. I'd like to play through story mode for the PSP version of the game, which has a completely different story (and is a prequel for Def Jam: Vendetta. However, I don't want to shell out the cash for a PSP as well, and unfortunately EA has no plans to port the game to the X-Box, or PS2.

Turkish-Armenian journalist and critic of the Armenian Genocide shot dead outside his offices from CBS News.

Here's the short version:
A Turkish-Armenian journalist who was put on trial multiple times for speaking out the Armenian Genocide was killed outside his newspaper's offices from two gunshots to the head.

Now, does this sound like a hit to anybody else but me? Like, maybe, the Turkish government (or a faction within the Turkish government) had him clipped because he just wouldn't shut up about the Armenian Genocide and wouldn't leave the country?

On the latest episode of Security Now, they were talking about the HD-DVD DRM crap built into Vista, and how Macs might not have these problems when they get HD-DVD drives.

Well, frankly, that's all great, and I won't upgrade to Vista then. That's not going to get me to switch to the Mac though. However, here's what will:

1) I need to be able to "roll-my-own" computer, legally. From what I understand you are not allowed to do this. You can buy a copy of the OS off the shelf, but you can only install it on a computer you purchased from Apple (in part because these are upgrade copies, not home copies). One of the things I like about computing is building (and upgrading) my own computer. In part because this means that I'm in control of every part that goes into the thing. Also because I can upgrade my computer without having to buy a whole new one (which is, in turn, enviromentally friendly).

2) I need to be able to play my games under the Mac OS without having to buy them again. I've got several hundred (if not thousand) dollars worth of games, and I'd rather not have to buy them all over again just to run them under Mac OS. If I can do this without having to use virtualization software (like Paralells) then that's even better. I'm on a budget here, I can't afford to buy all my software again.

3) Tangentially related: If I'm going to get the iTv, it needs to support (or I need to be able to hack it so it will support) Divx, Xvid, amd MKV formats. I get a lot of fansubs, and those are the dominant codecs.

After reading the Dork Tower comic before the present one (which can be viewed here), I came to a realization. There are a lot of so-called "Geek Holy Wars".

Just a selection of a few that come to mind:

• LARP vs. Ren Faire vs. SCA


• Live Steel vs. SCA


• PnP RPG vs. MMO vs. LARP


• Star Wars vs. Star Trek vs. Firefly.


• Star Trek vs. Babylon 5


• Old Battlestar Galactica vs. New Battlestar Galactica


• Hard SF vs. Space Opera (because there is, I have observed, a growing vocal group who does not consider Space Opera to be SF).


• PC vs. Consoles


• Computer/Video games vs. Tabletop Games


• Indy Games vs. Mainstream Games


• Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux


• Old-School Otaku ("Hipsters") vs. New-School Otaku ("Narutards", whether or not they like Naruto)

Frankly, there are so-many "Geek Holy Wars" that, frankly, I'm starting to think that "Holy Wars" is the wrong term. Rather, I believe that the more appropriate term is "Geek Balkanization". More and more vocal groups of geeks are starting to take an "Us or them" mindset, with those geeks who don't hold that mindset being caught in the middle. Nobody seems to get along with anybody else.

There's a lot more I could say on the topic, but those thoughts aren't quite organized yet, and, frankly, It'd ultimatly lead to a "Can't We All Just Get Along?" rant/whine, and that would probably be counter-productive.

So, I hereby propose, for the reason stated above, that we replace the term "Geek Holy Wars" with "Geek Balkanization".