The USS Quad Damage

Two articles on smh.com.au both semi related.

The first is about a fake video released years ago showing a man and a boy under fire in the middle east. Mohammed al-Durra footage may have been a hoax

And the next one is about a video and picture posted on some jihadist site which shows Washinton DC after a nuclear attack!!! Al-Qaeda urges use of WMD

So how are they related?

See the concept art for the next Fallout game.

Whats that right down the bottom? Thats right the picture which has been up since atleast September last year when I downloaded it along with some others.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain why I posted them both. However I will add insult to injury and point out that in the fallout universe a conflict between China and America results in a nuclear war. See Fallout (series) on Wikipedia.

I know it’s my second bit of link pimpin, but you must understand… it concerns pirates!

Linking is like the internet version of clapping

I live like a free spirit on the internets. I have nary a care for my privacy, and I publish a ton of stuff about myself on the internet—pictures, my thoughts, my friends, even the music I listen to. The downside is that anyone with a Google handy (and believe me, Microsoft… Yahoo…) can look me up and find out all sorts of stuff about me.

I try not to publish details, like names of friends (unless they don’t mind) or dates or places, but someone who wanted to steal my identity would have a fair bit of circumstantial evidence. It would also mean I don’t have much of a private life. I see this as a good thing for two reasons:

First, it means my identity needs to be stronger. All the way from financial institutions to the government all the way down to people I meet at parties. They should all need to be more convinced I am who I say I am as opposed to less. It’s kind of disconcerting that someone can socially engineer their way into, say, my mobile phone plan and change it arbitrarily simply by knowing my date of birth and my mother’s maiden name. Having more information like this readily available about a ton of people on the internet will make this less likely.

At parties, if someone is trying to pick up by claiming they’re a nobel peace prize winner, it means that “the ladies” will simply not believe them without some proof of identity, giving someone cute, honest, and slightly shy guys a chance (!!).

Secondly, I’m hoping it turns into social currency to have your life available on the internet. I’m hoping eventually that googling someone’s name and finding nothing will make them inherently untrustworthy. I have my life for all to see. You may not like it, but that dude who has no internet profile could be a mad cow rapist.

I know, does he rape mad cows or is he mad for non-cow-sodomic reasons and merely rapes ordinary cows. If he had a blog you could find out!

I’m mentioning this beause something interesting happened yesterday. My coach (who I’m going to call “boss” because the vibe of that is more relevant to others) found out about this nifty webnets called “facebook”, and decided to join. Now I’m wondering whether I should be more self-censoring when writing my material. Because of what I’ve written above, the answer is “no”. However, the problem is that my entire approach is under question here. This blog isn’t just readable by my immediate boss right now, but any prior and future bosses as well.

It like my world-view shaken, not stirred…

The Escapist has an article about how games are too easy nowadays. Kieron Gillen uses Lego Star Wars as an example. There’s only one problem.

Lego Star Wars is freaking hard. Depends on what you consider completion, but at the highest end, it’s really difficult. Getting through the “story mode” of the game is pretty trivial. There’s no chance of dying, and you, slowly but surely, just keep heading towards victory, plodding along until the storyline is complete. However, depending on who you are, when the story finishes is when the game truly begins.

You see, there are a bunch of things you to collect in the game (they’re.. lego pieces, and they hold no actual value to “the game”, they’re just cool-arse, and I expect there’s some reward if you collect it all). In order to collect everything you need a fair bit of skill. In fact, you need to play levels through multiple times, when you get more skills from further levels, in order to get all the little trinkets from the previous levels. There’s also the matter of finishing with “all the coins”. This basically means that you have to complete the level without being hit very often. This isn’t easy.

For a completionist, this is not a simple game to finish. Kieron argues that in order to sell, popular AAA games are becoming too easy, which makes it bad for hard core gamers. However, I feel that games are becoming multi-faceted, which allows them to be enjoyed by everyone.

Another good example of this is CoD4. It’s quite easy to complete even in hard mode, but after finishing the game you unlock more modes, like arcade mode where you have to finish the whole thing in one shot. The most difficult setting is also fairly difficult. The sky’s the limit as far as difficulty is concerned in CoD4, and almost all AAA titles have this sort of thing.

Kieron’s basically just got to realise that sometimes the music sounds like basic pop music, but underneath the surface is a sophisticated layer of heavy metal. Rock on sweet chariot¹.

¹ this makes no sense if you haven’t read the article.

I hearby offer my sincerest and deepest apology to former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and the rest of the Australian people for voting Labour at the last federal election and bagging out Mr Howard.

After careful consideration and having seen all the pointless and costly symbolism touted and performed by Mr Rudd and his government as achievements I have realised the error of my ways.

To the Liberal leadership. Please pull your heads out of your arses and form a viable alternative government asap so I can vote for you next election.