Nosce Te Ipsum

To whom it may concern,

I couldn’t be bothered to post anything these past weeks because I’ve been playing inFAMOUS on the PS3. And I’ve finished Final Fantasy XIII – finally!

Yeah, inFAMOUS rocks.

Keep in touch,

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Back after a week of hibernating. Here is this Saturday’s morning rant.

The evil TV wants you to think all sorts of things that I simply find are not true. I’ve given up actual TV some 5 to 7 years ago (not sure on the actual moment I stopped watching) so I am almost constantly disconnected from the “real world” and the news. The only news I usually care about are technology related and I get that from the web, sorry TV. However, I do have a flaw – I watch recorded TV shows – mainly drama and some comedy. I’ve enjoyed lots of shows over the years – in no particular order: Lost, 24, Supernatural, Smallville, The Simpsons, Dexter, Lie To Me, FRIENDS(yes, the best show ever made!), Joey(flawed spin-off, sorry Joe), Star Trek(all of them!), Burn Notice, Modern Family, Men of a Certain Age, United States of Tara, Weeds, Desperate Housewives, V, The 4400 and much more. Yeah, I’ve seen a LOT of shows. Some brilliant, some flawed and even bad. I watch them to escape from “the real life” so I am not surprised that what goes on in these shows has nothing to do with reality most of the time. So here are, based on my experience, the top 10 things that the evil TV wants you to believe are true.

1. You are or can be hero. Or at least you are person of great vision who can and will change the world. Most of the shows I watched over the years including 24 and Smallville are about people who constantly change or/and save the world. It’s a beautiful concept but it is also very FAKE. Unless you are the president of the USA or some Russian controlling have of the world’s gas reserves, your powers are somewhat limited. You see, in this world power is about money. Or is simply about political power which you get with, well, money – not necessarily yours. Of course, it occurs to me, that you could be some Greenpeace volunteer trying to save the whales, but nobody will really know what you did… And you will not really save or change the world.

2. If you want something bad enough, it will be yours. Let’s face it, we are limited. We can battle it all we want but in the end it will only brings us misery. I admit I like to think I can have it all. I think this is what they told us in school too. But you can’t. Mainly because between you and what you want are many other people who don’t want the same thing as you. Again, unless you are the president of the USA, yada yada. This is a depressing one.

3. It all happens for a reason/ Life has rules. There is karma. I love this concept but…it simply doesn’t apply. Of course, men have their laws intent on trying to keep at bay those who deliberately try to destroy other human beings. But these laws fail often enough. Well, not the laws themselves but the men who are supposed to enforce them. I think most things happen because of the chaos that humanity has built on this planet. The ecosystem had its perfection without us meddling everywhere. Maybe we are not of this planet? God knows. And He won’t tell.

4. Love can save you from a miserable existence. I won’t even comment on this one. See pretty much any TV show out there.

5. I was gonna bitch something about spies – but I realized they are pretty cool. But…not very real, either.

Yeah, I am dull and pessimistic today.

Later.

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Happy New Year everyone!

It’s time to give up the dreams of a prolonged vacation and get cracking.

I was thinking the other day that a lot of people overestimate the importance of an anti-virus program(let’s call it AV for short). Don’t get me wrong, security is extremely important, for many reasons, no matter who you are but AV software in my opinion is not as important. Let me explain.

You see, there was a time, back in the wild days of the Internet when horrible viruses like WIN32/CIH roamed free causing havoc on your PCs. I should know, I was infected twice and survived. That cheeky virus got distributed on magazine discs and even came preloaded with some IBM PCs. It was ridiculous. I got mine from a computer games magazine’s disc, from a movie file in .exe format. Now listen to me: those days are gone. The dude who wrote the infamous CIH is serving time in the big house back in China and won’t do it again . The windows operating system was much more frail back then. I myself wrote a simplistic VB program that upon running would erase your system.ini file(wow, no protection guys?) making your system unusable – it would no longer boot. But that was back in the 1990s. Things HAVE changed.

I remember attending a lecture with a Microsoft person who, like me, was not very fond of AV software (this was back when Windows XP SP2 was released). He said, and I agree, that a rather large amount of protection comes from simply keeping your OS up to date. Security flaws that malevolent people might exploit to get your sensible information via worms and such get patched all the time once they are discovered. So that’s one thing you can do to be safe – just turn on automatic updates(Windows 7 makes it even easier than any other Windows OS).

To avoid any confusion – I am not saying you don’t need an AV program. I am just saying you shouldn’t spend your money on one. You can get all the protection a sensible person needs from a free AV.

All you really need is an AV program with a nice up-to-date database of worms and other junk. In my opinion, the most you are going to get infected with is some worm or malware trying to email all your friends porn or some silly thing like that. They get detected instantly by any AV if you have it. Also, your Windows OS periodically runs the malicious software removal tool. As free AVs go, I use Microsoft Security Essentials and like it. I like it because it is not intrusive and scans the executable files I open – that’s all you really need.

I will repeat myself – the days of hardware destructive viruses are behind us. Also, just avoid dodgy download sites and you will never pick up a worm – it’s really that easy. Internet scam sites aren’t usually very clever and are easy to spot – just don’t download that creepy program that will allow you access to…well, you know.

I am not trying to discredit AV companies, I am just saying that I don’t agree with AV solutions that are overpriced and which are horribly intrusive all in the name of protecting you from the Evil Internet. The Internet is only as evil as you make it. Oh, and don’t get me started on secondary firewalls – your OS already has a firewall – how many damn firewalls do you need?

Feel free to tell me about your AV software experiences.

That is all. Be safe .

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If you still haven’t found the perfect Christmas gift for a gamer you care for here’s a really short and helpful list I compiled.

(Order is random, disregard the numbers)

1. God Of War Collection(PS3) – If they have one of the new slim PS3s that are not backwards compatible or have simply never played God Of War 1 & 2 on the PS2 this could be an awesome gift. God Of War was the game to have for the PS2 back in the day.
2. World of Warcraft Pet: Pandaren Monk – This might seem silly to you but if your friend is a WoW addict this is a great gift for the following reasons: instant delivery – you just e-mail them a code they can redeem from their battle.net account; 50% of the money is given to the Make-a-Wish Foundation; it’s a really cute pet . If you are looking to spend more, you can also get from the Blizzard store game cards or that expansion they still haven’t bought but want to. Or some crazy action-figure, t-shirt or whatever .
3. Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam – you can buy the actual game box or gift the game via Steam, Valve’s digital distribution system. If you also get it for yourself you can go online and start blasting zombies together. Zombies… will we ever grow tired of them? Guess not! . Oh, the game got great reviews so if your loved one is a zombie-maiming-and-shooting person, you’ll make them happy.
4. Microsoft Points – For Xbox 360 gamers . If you are at a loss you can just get them a redeemable code or an actual physical card with a code printed on it. Using the points you give them they can buy games, add-ons and more from the Xbox Live Marketplace.  Furthermore, Games For Windows Live lets you buy with points games & add-ons for the PC as well – and they have a few good games. Mind you, PC games are about 4000 MS points – which is a bit steep. MS is clearly gunning for Steam as a digital distribution platform for games with a universal currency, unlike Steam that uses a currency for each region, sometimes creating a disadvantage for EU users. There are a lot of sites that sell MS points cards – digital or physical – be careful however that they come in two flavors – EU and US which must match the target player’s gamertag locale. But even if it doesn’t they can create a new gamertag and redeem the code on that one. Games purchased from multiple gamertags on the same console are available to all users of the console – so no worries.
5. PSN points – Same deal as MS points but for PS3 owners.
6. Game Controllers – all gamers love game controllers (probably). Logitech and Saitek make some solid game controllers in my opinion. However, my default controller over the last 2 years has been the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller (which works on windows just fine) for which a lot of PC games have been optimized. There is a wired version and a wireless version, for the wireless version you need to get the receiver as well. I have both versions and love them but use the wireless one mostly for obvious reasons.
7. Amazon Gift Card – If you are really clueless, buy them an Amazon gift voucher – arrives by e-mail or actual mail depending on what you prefer.

That’s it, there a lot of other games out there you could buy but it’s up to you to really know what they might enjoy, I was just trying to assist you a bit. Hope this helps.

Merry Christmas everyone!

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I took a little time today to donate a small amount to Wikipedia. I don’t have to tell you what Wikipedia is and what it has done for us .

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It seems that in my “old age” my taste is beginning to change. Taste in games, movies and such. I remember when Modern Warfare first came out I was not even remotely interested. I am not big on war games or realistic modern combat games. I played Ghost Recon back in the day and dropped it after a few rounds. But now I played through both Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 and 2. I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on Hardened difficulty and actually succeeded. And yet I play Ninja Gaiden II and can’t help feel “rejected” by it when this would have been a dream game for me a few years back (when I couldn’t get my hands on it because I didn’t have a Xbox 360). Oh, and I am struggling more and more with GTA IV. I mean, I’ve been playing this game for over a year now and there’s no end in sight. But that is a different issue, I think I just got a bit bored with the GTA concept, I mean, yes it’s great when you first pick it up and see all that has changed in the GTA world since the last installment but somehow, GTA got a bit old, for me. Maybe I am growing up.

Well, who knows, change can be good.

Strange days are coming.

Good night, my blog.

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