No Network Play?

The story goes like this. My buddy brought over his xbox so we could play 2 on 2 MW2. Not thinking anything of it we Plug his xbox into the living room tv and mine into my monitor in my room. We both get signed into the network and then into xbox live. I said to everyone, "hey let's do a local network match, it will have almost no ping and no lag". So the connections would make for a very even match. The options for multiplayer are either split screen, xbox live, or system link. Up until this point I was under the assumption that I could just set up a match via the network we were on, but no this is apparently impossible for this game to do. For fucks sake, star craft was capable of this and halo 3. Why is this not a feature that is standard on all multiplayer games now. It is really ridiculous. We ended up having to play across xbox live, which led to ping between systems. Why do some features always seem to get left behind?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

WWDC?

Some words on WWDC 2010. As I sit back and reflect on the keynote this past Monday, I begin to realize just how disappointed I am. Granted the new iPhone 4 looks fantastic, and the technology they added to this new phone is really quite impressive. However there are a few things I have on my mind that I think should have happened but did not.



10.7?
Apples next big cat should have made at least a Preview or a mention. This is the developers conference after all. In the past it has almost always been the event that apple uses to show a sneak peek of the new Mac os. I was a little disappointment their wasn't even a slide hinting at them working on it.

MobileMe?
I have recently posted about my opinions of the current MobileMe set of functions. So really all I have to say is that it is still way over priced for the limited functionality it gives it's prescribers. I really had hoped for any kind of iTunes streaming, cheaper price....really anything would have been nice.



AppleTV?
Apparently it is still a hobby, how unfortunate. Apple concedes victory to google.



Mac Pro?
From what I understand the new i7 chips would seriously upgrade the performance in those machines. I may be wrong, but they have not made a very big deal about their top of the line Mac in a while.


MacBook Air?
Still a joke of a product in my opinion, but it would have been nice to see something about it this year. It was quietly updated earlier this year, but it doesn't seem like that was enough. Even though I have had countless conversations with my cousin about how they should just remove that laptop all together, it is over priced and under powered.

Overall this years WWDC was all about the iOS and the new iPhone. I had just hoped for a lot more. However I always want a 4 hour keynote anyway, and they always keep it under 2. I just hope they quietly release some stuff over the next few months, or even have a special keynote for some of the stuff I mentioned. Either way this years WWDC was just meh. There is always next year.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Large Engineering Project Impossibility?

Nowadays I believe it is impossible to have a large engineering project commissioned. Some would argue that building a stadium, or a skyscraper would be considered a large engineering project, but I am talking more like the Hoover dam, the pyramids of Giza, the highway project in the 1950's and the transcontinental railroad. Those were true engineering projects and in the present I don't think that with all the regulation and union issues about, that it would be possible to start and finish such a large project without immense political whiplash or an incomparable amount of lawsuits.

Why it worked in the past...


Well frankly most of the worlds greatest projects were created using slave labor, or something very close to it. The pyramids were built by slaves who had no rights and did not see any kind of payment for building them. The amount that must have died during the long proccess of building all 138 pyramids must have been staggering.

The transcontinental railroad was built mostly by Irish and Asian immigrants. Whose working conditions would never pass in today's world. The rate at which they completed the project clearly means they worked well beyond the work day limit in today's world.


The Hoover dam was built as an economic boost for the depression, so men were eager to go to work on the project, 112 people died while building it. Something that would never be allowed to happen in the modern age. Even 1 death is a travesty nowadays, and would spread across news outlets like wildfire emphasizing how the project is doomed and how it was a terrible idea to begin with.


The 1950's interstate project is the most recent. Suggested by president Eisenhower It was immense, the goal was to connect the country in a way that was never before seen. much like the railroads in the 1800's the interstate was meant to enable travel to more places even easier. A trip that would take 30 days prior to the interstate now took two. Since it took place in modern times the conditions were quite good when compared to prior projects. However the price tag was a staggering 128 billion dollars. The pubs would have a cow if Obama wanted to spend that much money on a single engineering project.

That's not to mention union issues, where to manufacture goods, housing transfer, and so on. The cost for something that big is too high in today's world. The regulation would restrict it so the length would be ridiculous and it would be political suicide if the project went awry in any way.

I think the closest thing to these examples would have to be the Burj Dubai tower. However even that was built using sub par working conditions.

Why we need one right now...
The reason I bring this up is because take the Hoover dam for instance. When it was commissioned in the 30's it was designed to create jobs and boost the economy. It worked, and it also created the largest hydroelectric facility on the planet powering most of nevada and southern california. The country could use the boost in it's economy with a project of that size. Unfortunately it will probably never happen.


Obama has said multiple times that he plans to redesign and re construct our crumbling infrastructure. This means redoing roads, electrical distribution, water, and much more. I have not seen any progress in my home town just yet, but he may have this on the back burner since now he has to deal with finishing healthcare, the oil spill, 2-3 wars, terrorist issues, and so on. Hopefully he gets to it because we need the jobs and we need the economic boost that would surely follow.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thermal Scope Reversion?

So in MW2, when using the thermal scope, why is it so hard to use on a snowy map? But is the best thing to use on afghan the desert level? When playing with thermal on derail the snow causes the thermal scope to have a white out effect but on afghan it is clear as day when looking at the terrain. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If this was a real thermal scope, on derail the snow would appear dark grey or black because it is so cold. But on afghan the terrain would light the thermal scope up like it was A Christmas tree. The game is backwards in that regard and is really frustrating to think about.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Google vs. Apple - The Battle for My Living Room?

GoogleTV is Google's entry into the living room. Let's see if google can dethrone apple from another area that they have..... wait a second, An area of media where apple doesn't have the upper hand already? This could get real interesting.

I am personally an apple fan. I also love technology. I think The fact that I love apple products so much is because that company seems to put more care into what they manufacture than any other company in the market. Everything is polished, and clean. The industry even holds each apple product as a comparison to what all other products strive to be like in their chosen field. For the last 12 years apple has been the leader for innovation in pretty much every division of technology that it touches.

However when apple released the AppleTV in 2007, it was being sold as a product to connect your living room to the large digital library people had been massing since the release of the iTunes store. The product didn't do so well for a lot of reasons. Mainly because it was not really all that compelling at it's price point. Plus iTunes didn't have any HD content to stream to a device that also could not display 1080P. So the device was immediately labeled as a "hobby". And apple has referred to it as such ever since. The device received an upgrade a little later boosting it's video output resolution and a view more things hardware and software wise, but the product remained mostly the same dull box.

With google releasing this new platform for their GoogleTV apple seriously needs to take those old AppleTV ideas out of storage and start realizing that in order gain control over the living room like they had hoped to do originally, they will need to seriously step their game up. The GTV platform is cool in a lot of ways. It puts the box after the cable box and by doing that allows for the device to aggregate all content available on cable and the Internet to make it all searchable and viewable. Also the fact that they are taking the extra step with it and putting it into new tv sets themselves is really cool for everyone.


I have an ATV right now in the living room. Personally I love what I can do with the device. Granted it is useless unless the owner either is loaded and can afford to purchase everything they want to watch or they steal all their content. I will not divulge which of those describes my situation. One thing they could add to the ATV would be an app store of some kind. What would be cool about this is they already have thousands of developers making thousands of apps for the iPhone and iPad. So if they opened up an app store for the ATV, I can guarantee it would be an over night success just like all of the other platforms they have. I can also see apple having some kind of video subscription service, allowing ATV owners to subscribe much like cable and be able to view all content in the store. Would be interesting, however I can just image the cow the networks would have over the slightest inclination to that idea. Plus they probably would force adds into the videos as well.

In closing since WWDC is only a week or so away, it will be very interesting to see what apple comes up with. I just really hope they update the ATV to compete with the GTV because if they do not then they are basically conceding victory over the living room to google and their new platform.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

360 down to 8?

So I'm playing the new super mario galaxy 2, and I am on a stage where I need to throw fire balls at some boxes so I can clean the area. It was a bonus stage. Anyway while I'm playing it I realized that nintendo seriously fucked up. In my left hand is the nun chuck, which is used for moving around and aiming the fireballs. I noticed that the nun chuck joystick is restricted to 8 degrees of actual movement due to the fact that the joystick is surrounded by an octagon. The reason this is frustrating should be obvious. I am going from 360 degrees of free 3 dimensional movement down to just 8. It is extremely restricting and frustrating.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Magazine Prices?

So reading on this ipad is amazing. However the price I have to pay is not. I really want to get popular science and time. But both cost $4.99 an issue. AN ISSUE. I mean come on. Give me a years subscription for 30 or something. $4.99 is way to expensive for a magazine issue in my opinion. I was really hoping to be able to read magazines and comics on this device, but now I find myself realizing just how poor I am, lol. Even comics are around 5 dollars. I guess this is how much these things would cost in the real world so it makes sense. However most magazines like popsci have a yearly subscription service for a drastically lower price then it would cost to purchase each in the store. I really hope they bring that kind of service to the app store, because then I will actualy start buying magazines. As for comics, I really want marvel to bring their online service price of $59.99 yearly price to view thousands of comics online. Why don't they bring that to the iPad? Clearly it is because people will buy the comics regardless. Overall the whole comic and magazine trend on the iPad is disappointing to me. Hopefully things change in the future.

Update: wired came out and said today that they would be releasing a subscription service in the fall. Let's hope the rest of the magazine companies follow their example.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Only The Best Pictures...

Some Thoughts on MobileMe

Now that I have an iPad, iPhone, and two macs I am realizing just how difficult it is to keep all of my data synced together and accurate across all the devices. For instance if I change a calendar date on my iPhone in order to get everything synced to that change, I need to sync my iPhone to my MacBook, then sync it to my iPad and then send the info to the iMac. It might not seem like a big deal, but over time it starts to get really monotonous having to sync and re-sync all these devices manually. This is where MobileMe comes into the picture, it automatically syncs data across all of my devices. Plus the find me feature for the iPhone is really cool. Almost is reason enough to get the service alone. The only bad thing is it cost $99 per year. Kind of a ridiculous price for convenience. I did have the service a while back because I was opted in for a cheaper rate for some reason by apple. So I had it for a year, and I did like it I just really had no use for it at the time. The only real big issue I remember having was the photo sync feature in iPhoto. It almost never worked and when it did it usually resulted in corruption of my files. Now this might be because my iPhoto is continually acting up( I think I may have corrupted a library file or something). But the online viewing experience was phenomenal. I used to put my college photos on the web so my family could view them. But overall I was happy with the service.

It just seems like MobileMe is kind a simple solution to some of the issues that arise while having multiple mobile apple products. It is a good attempt but the service needs to become way more extensive in order to compete with the new droid syncing and streaming services and the new Microsoft kin project. I have hope for the service improving in the future because since apple is selling more ipads then they are selling macs, I think this service is going to become extremely vital to their product line.

Speculation part: rumors have it that apple is planning on releasing a streaming function for iTunes. Now if they add this to MobileMe then that is reason enough for me to buy the service.

Update: i am just going to wait until WWDC to see if they improve the service. i am assuming they are going to since they pretty much need to in order to stay relevant. than i might buy it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad Blogging

Being my first blog post from my brand new iPad I am still getting used to this soft keyboard. It is actually very nice to use. One of my original peeves was the non tactile feeling and sound. Well with the clicking that I have turned on it actually satisfies the sound need. The feeling though is still kind of odd, but is something I have no problem getting used to. The keyboard is very spacious and I make very little mistakes. Since I don't actually use the standered way of typing on a regular keyboard. I usually just stare at the keys anyway, with the soft keyboard I am required to stare at the keyboard. So my typing speed has transferred. Also the auto correct works rather well. More reviews to come soon. I plan on blogging a lot more often now that I have an app that makes it so much easier.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad