Thomas Friedman gets Headshotted

It would seem Thomas Friedman took a pie to the face at Brown University during Earth Day recently.

He was there to harp about how corporations can lead the charge against global warming. A few students calling themselves "Greenwash Guerrillas" didn't like the fact he was a proponent of corporate greenwashing and threw two pies aiming for his head.

Aside from the fact Tom has a raging boner for corporate globalization, I agree with many of Thomas Friedmans thoughts and ideas in his books The World is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, both of which I have read. However, I do not think that corporations will EVER lead the charge for climate change. It is really quite simple, they are motivated by profit and America runs on capitalism; being environmental is generally not good for business because it means spending more $$ while forcing thinner margins.

Making people think you are environmentally conscious or "green", is great for business. This is where greenwashing comes in.



Here is the official statement from the Greenwash Guerrillas

"Providence, RI - April 23, 2008 - On Earth Day, we pied Thomas Friedman at the start of his keynote speech: "Green is the New Red White and Blue."
The goal was not simply to disrupt his talk and stain his ego, but to disrupt and expose all that he stands for and the university's corporate greenwashing of its image. In the spirit of true debate and free speech: We hereby challenge Thomas Friedman and all other green capitalists to a duel. This duel is about the debate over the future of life on this planet, and the ways in which corporate powers have hijacked this debate to make it the realm of "experts", policymakers, and consumers buying an array of "green" products. In exposing what Friedman supports, we open this debate to the public by questioning certain key elements. Carbon Trading and Carbon Markets, enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol and the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007, is the foundation behind green capitalism. In privatizing the atmosphere, the earth's carbon cycling capacity is handed over as property to the same corporate criminals that caused the problem.

"Biofuels," the much-touted alternative to oil, not only increase petroleum dependence, but are themselves a global humanitarian and environmental disaster in the making. Biofuels come at the expense of land for food, and from Indonesia to Columbia, traditional populations are being forced off their land for destructive plantations that are dependent on toxic chemicals, biotech seeds, and large petroleum-burning machinery. The list of false solutions goes on, while the planetary clock is ticking. If there are to be truly real solutions to the many problems we face, it will come out of transformative social movements and not corporate boardrooms. For these reasons, we challenge Thomas Friedman and all other green capitalists to a duel, in which we will continue to expose their shams while pointing towards the social movements that are already creating solutions and transforming society towards a liveable, healthy, and non-corporate future. For information:

http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/category/false-solutions-campaign/ Contact: greenwashguerrillas@gmail.com"

BOOM HEADSHOT!

Western Digital 300gb Velociraptor Drive Released

All you need to know is it's called the "Velociraptor VR150" and it is faster then the previous 150gb Raptor X drive.

MacBook Air – Paying more for less

The world’s thinnest notebook. Revolutionary. One of a kind. These are just a few of the terms used to describe the new MacBook Air from Apple. How revolutionary is it though? Like everything Apple releases, it’s difficult to tell if one of their new products is truly is revolutionary or just another arbitrary electronic. Indeed the Air is the world’s thinnest notebook, but is it worthy of the attention it’s receiving let alone the $1,800 asking price? Do you need to upgrade from your existing laptop to the “Air”?

Let’s begin with what the Air’s strengths. The laptop weighs three pounds and at its thickest, is well under an inch in girth. It will wirelessly connect to any 802.11 A/B/G and N networks. The N standard has yet to become official, but the Air will support prerelease dubbed “Draft N”. The multi touch technology found in Apple’s iPhone’s has now been incorporated into Air’s “trackpad” or touchpad used in place of a mouse. This enables the zooming in and out along with the rotating of photos and text in specific Apple applications.

The Air does not include an optical drive nor an Ethernet port for wired internet. The reasoning behind the exclusion of an optical drive is the Air's ability to wirelessly connect to another Mac or PC and use that computers optical drive. You insert a disc in the neighboring computer and connect the Air to that computer wirelessly. You can then run the disc on the Air streaming it off the neighboring computer. This is pretty incredible but without a neighboring computer you have control over, you’re out of luck if you need a disc drive.

Now for where Apple cut corners. The lack of an Ethernet port on the Air will undoubtedly be an annoyance for many without wireless routers. The Macbook Air contains a Core 2 Duo Processor which was specifically redesigned for the Macbook Air, reducing the chips size by 60 percent. This results in a lowered clock speed and ultimately a decrease in performance. The largest hard drive offered for the notebook is 80gb. The 160gb iPod offers twice the storage space of the Air...

The Air has only one USB port. With everything the notebook doesn’t include you‘re going to have to carry around quite a few accessories, most of which will plug in through USB.
On the air however, you will only be allowed to use them one at a time. If you want to buy an optical drive for the notebook, it will cost you $99 coming from Apple. This is somewhat ridiculous when you can buy a great optical drive that will burn, rewrite and read DVD and CD’s for around $30. You’re paying a $69 premium to have the official Apple drive. As well you may need wired internet which will cost you $30 from Apple and will likely plug in through USB. The included webcam doesn’t have a microphone to go along with it so you will likely need to get a microphone to plug in through USB for Skype conversations.

Many of the people buying this notebook will be people who travel a lot and need internet access, even when there is no wifi available. The adapters to give you internet outside of wifi will be yet another dongle plugged in through USB, some of which won’t fit due to the discrete placement of the USB port on the Air. That’s a lot of accesories for one USB port.

I must say the Air is a typical Apple creation in a very good and a very bad way. Apple includes features such as an automatic backlighting keyboard and multi touch technology but leaves out 3G network chips and “duh” features like more than one USB port. In short Apple is very good at making incredibly attractive electronics with some revolutionary features, but leaves out many obvious functions even the most basic users would find nice to have. You gotta give Apple credit for creating the world’s thinnest notebook, at the same time though you gotta laugh at them for leaving out so many obvious must haves.

Priate Bay opens up "uncensored" blogging service

After hearing about blogging sites such as Wordpres deleting accounts that posted links to copyrighted materials, The Pirate Bay has started up its own "uncensored" blogging service called Baywords. They will fully support free speech and will not take down any post unless it violates Swedish law. NOT US law however : )

i love the piratebay admins

Demonoid back 0nline!

This is a few days late and I apologize, but I still thought it worthy of posting.

After being shut down by the RIAA multiple times in more then one country, it seems Demonoid - The invite only very popular torrent site is back online. Demonoid was very well known for its extremely thorough torrents and close knit community. Glad to see em back : )

Surfer dude develops a theory of everything to compete with String theory

Interesting Articles on Pro Gaming

After doing some research into professional gaming I found some rather interesting articles on the topic.

• This article does a really good job critically analyzing professional gaming in its entirety.
• On GGL they did a very interesting number crunch of professional gaming. It seems Fatal1ty is receiving $2 for every one of his soundcards sold. Personally I would say he is getting screwed but I don't know much about it.
• An article by the San Francisco chronicle on the gaming scene in Korea. hint: It's a shit ton more legitimate then it is in America.
  

In other news, I highly recommend you checkout this collection of every Pixar animation ever created, all in 720 HD : ) Call me a boyo but I find them very entertaining.

Playing Out of the Closet

‘I am not wasting my life! I promise an opportunity will arise and something good will come of this!’ This is what I told my mom throughout high school as I “wasted” hours of my life playing competitive video games online. Jesus, I still feel like I’m coming out of the closet every time I bring up my favorite past time to somebody who doesn’t know I game. All I’m ever told when playing is “Why don’t you go outside?”, “You nerd”, “Haha, I wouldn’t tell people about that”. Am I such a freak to view my gaming hobby as a legitimate sport?

I am part of a team (clan). The sport we play is Team Fortress 2. The field we play on is the PC. My team runs practices organized by a team captain who calls the shots. Everybody on the team constantly works together towards a common goal. We scrimmage against other teams testing different strategies and mechanics in our gameplay, constantly improving ourselves and preparing for our upcoming games (matches).

We form pickup games or “pugs” when we don’t have enough of our members around and play with a few random friends outside our clan. Often times in pugs, teams are picked in the very same manner as a group of kids lining up along a fence on the baseball diamond with captains picking teams.

These are all characteristics and qualities of a legitimate sport that not surprisingly, are shared among E-Sports as well. In fact much of the terminology used remains unchanged.

Some people will go outside to shoot the basketball around by themselves for fun. This would be the equivalent of a player joining a public server and doing what is called “pubbing” (derived from public server) for fun. Actually no I am wrong; pubbing is much more social then one person shooting a basketball around because they are playing against and alongside other, real people.

I understand that when somebody sees me sitting at my computer they don’t know if I am watching youtube videos, looking up random websites, playing flash games, or competing against the best players in the game for a top tier league. They cannot see past what immediately meets their eyes; me, physically in a room, sitting at my computer, with the lights off. They don’t see the people I am playing against, they don’t see the people I am voice chatting with. They don’t see my team playing alongside me developing cohesion and teamwork required by any team.

I really see no difference between a group of friends shooting the shit on Ventrilo (a live voice chat or voip software) and a group of friends hanging out in someone’s living room. The social gratification gained from both are identical.

Call it strange but before a LAN (a buncha people playing video games against each other in a warehouse) this past weekend, I had not met many of the players in my clan. I‘d hung out, strategized, talked, played alongside and won with them over the past few months. I spent more time with them online then most of the people I know in real life (rl). Despite the fact I had never met them, I consider them to be among some of my best friends. After meeting them for the first time at the lan, this bond was only solidified.

It helps to be good friends if we want to play well together. The teamwork must be cohesive and the gameplay efficient. Again, this is common among ‘real life’ sports teams.

I am not going to deny it, playing these games with my team brings great meaning to my life. The same way running a marathon will catalyze a revelation in a runner’s life, or making it to the super bowl will make a grown man cry. While I can’t say I have cried after winning a tournament, the elation I feel after playing a great match alongside my teamates at a lan is unsurpassed by much of anything else.

I am very competitive so if we win it will likely affect my mood the rest of the day, the same way the weather affects people’s moods. This could easily be held true for a player of any real life sport so long as he takes it seriously.

What I do is a sport and that is incontrovertible. You can play games professionally just like any other sport. Just talk to Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel who has amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars dominating E-Sports tournaments. People laugh when I tell them I won my iphone at a video game tournament but this is reality ladies and gentlemen.

“Wasting my life” or “hanging out with friends”, however you choose to view it, the time spent at my computer playing with these friends of mine have been some of the best times of my life.

More pictures of me and my team can be found here

Legend of Zelda- The Movie?

It seems link is making it onto the big screen.

The trailer looked interesting, from what I can see a lot of really good stuff and some bad stuff. For one the character who plays link looks 100% NOT like the character in the game. The special effects look pretty good, but the hairy guy who is battling him with the sword looks kinda cheesy. As well, I don't know how they are going to cram the storyline into a 2 hour movie. They should probably do a 3 part series similar to the lord of the rings, that'd appease the fans a great deal more. Especially when fans are prooooobably going to be the VAST majority of the consumers going to see the movie.

I can only hope its as good as Doom
@_@

Totally out of context, but this shit is epic win

Nvidia 9800gtx Released

The first benchmarks ever released
Nice pictures along with some vague benches
Newegg's selection

Crysis still wont run @ 60fps tho, roff.

Hackers Stage International Protest Against Scientology

Anonymous, the group of unknown hackers who declared war on scientology recently, showed up at Scientology establishments across the world this past March 15^th to protest. Wearing Guy Fawkes masks made popular by the movie V for Vendetta, they picketed outside Scientology self improvement centers spreading the “truth” about scientology.

Anonymous declared war against Scientology over YouTube on January 21. Their motivation derived from the fact that the church was attempting to censor the internet.

An internal church video of Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology surfaced a few months ago on the popular website Gawker. After everybody and their mom clicked in to view it, the church went nuts and started sending out litigation letters to the websites circulating the video, demanding they take it down. Some complied (Google- well duh, Google even complies with Chinese censorship policy, why wouldn’t they cooperate with scientology), and some didn’t (Gawker).

This censorship attempt was essentially the straw that broke the camels back for Anonymous. After going public with their declaration of war, they began committing multiple acts of online and offline terrorism aimed at the church. Their terrorist tactics include bomb threats, mailing fake anthrax, black faxing and flooding the church’s voice mails with death threats.

While all of these attacks were underway, the group began organizing protests. The second of these protests was the one I attended on March 15^th, which incidentally happens to be just two days after the birthday of scientology’s creator: L. Ron Hubbard. The protest was held despite scientology’s efforts within the legal system to prevent it. The reason the legal system failed scientology? They couldn’t identify any of the individuals in Anonymous, go figure.

I attended the March 15^th protest in San Francisco and was met by police officers and more than a few Guy Fawkes’s. After being given multiple handouts, I started taking pictures. I noticed the entrance to the ‘church’ had an enormous gate in front of it that seemed less ornamental then it did secure; this was where the police were doing their best to look important. I found it odd a religion would gate their entrances in such an up front, hostile fashion. I mean they are a religion, right?

One of the more sonorous “Anons” was speaking through a loudspeaker reading off information regarding the documented deaths and names of the alleged victims of the church. Despite his apparent dominance within the group, he was not wearing any sort of disguise or mask at all. He had his entire head shaven except for a small crop on the back that spelled out “SP”.

An SP or Suppressive Person is a label applied by the church to its greatest enemies according to their “Fair Game Policy”. This would be anybody who speaks out against the church, including government organizations.

The protesters were very organized. They kept one another in check only referring to eachother as “Anon” and “Anonymous”. They made damn sure they didn’t even J-walk as to avoid any run ins with the coppers standing nearby.

The given handouts weren’t so much outlining claims and allegations against the church as stating policies and facts within and surrounding scientology. They encourage the reader to inquire as to why everyone is wearing masks and why the protest is being held. They guide you to informative websites or at times simply tell you to Google the following terms if you are at all skeptical.

The church has not been ignoring these SP groups either. They’ve launched a completely redesigned website, rife with boatloads of brand new propaganda videos about the “Youth for Human Rights” campaign. This campaign is basically the means through which scientology is actively slithering their way into our children’s classrooms all the while fronting as a human rights organization.

Is it not strange that all of a sudden scientology feels the need to distribute videos stating how fair and supportive they are of human rights? It is not coincidental this is happening right around the time Anonymous is publishing information completely contradicting their bullshit. If the church is innocent then why go on the defensive?

To become a “member” of this “human rights” group, you have to pay $40 a month. What exactly does the organization do you may ask? They release ‘‘information’’ about human rights and make emotional porn videos that seem oddly similar to political ads. They do nothing to actually help human rights across the world, they but only preach. Thanks for the offer, but I will save my $40. Besides since when was there such a thing as a “non-profit corporation”? Can you say oxymoron? Damn, I need call my broker before they go public.

There is another Anonymous protest being held in April and if the turnouts continue to increase at the rates they have been, expect gridlocked traffic through 701 Montgomery St.

You can check out all of the pictures I took at the protest here.

My previous article introducing this topic can be found here.

A previous blog post containing information about the war.