The face of video games in the future.

I don`t know how many of you care about this sort of thing. But I saw this video and it totally blew me away.

They have always talked about this kind of thing being available "one day" or "in the future" however they are now being mass produced.

Torrential Torrent Trouble

Scaaaary. I read the news... often. But I never knew that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had been suing individual people in America since 2003 for downloading and sharing copyrighted media. I always thought the lawsuits were against organizations like Kazaa, Limewire and bit torrent sites. But yeah, the RIAA launched over 35,000 such lawsuits between 2003-2008! I doubt all lawsuits are over, but according to one news source, the RIAA has changed gears from lawsuits against individuals, to making arrangements with ISPs in the U.S. to warn suspected pirate-customers to knock the shit off. (And then sue them if they don't). BUT according to other sources, that was all just bullshit and that they are indeed still suing people.

I just read a story about a Native American woman was sued by Capitol Records in 2007 for downloading 1,702 tracks on "Kazaa". Because it was a file SHARING program, they sued her for making these tracks available for distribution. Somewhere in the process, they decided to only sue her for 24 of those downloaded songs, but when the company won the lawsuit they were awarded damages of a whopping $9250 for each song, for a total of $222,000!

There was a retrial in June of 2009 because there was doubt that "making available" these tracks was sufficient cause to sue for infringement. Apparently it was, so in the 2009 retrial she lost again. BUT this time the court found her liable for $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92Million!!!!

In July (2009) she filed a motion asserting the statutory damage award was so disproportionate to actual damages as to be unconstitutional, and that the damages should be reduced to the minimum charge which is $750. a song, for a total of $18000, or just dropped entirely. Capitol insists that trial evidence showed that she "was distributing 1,702 sound recordings…to millions of other users". It seems like there has been no more news on this to date.

Scary shit. Yesterday, a friend said that there was a case in America in which a family was sued for $20M. ...that might take a while to pay off.

So, lets say somebody we know...without naming names...has over 18,000 songs in his HDD. At the rate per song that Ms. Thomas (the Native America gal) was sued for in her first trial -- $9250 a song -- that would come to $166.5M. But at the rate she was charged in the second case, that is 18,000 times $80,000 a song right? That equals $1.4 BILLION dollars. Fuck - an - A.

Note to torrent users: when you download you are automatically set to upload AS you download. This is to increase the download speed for everyone. So uploads take place not just when you are finished and become a "Seeder". Clearly uploading carries with it FAR worse penalties than simply downloading!

Have any more current info to share? Any FACTS you have on downloading from U.S. torrent sites from countries outside the U.S. would be cool too.

P.S. Techdirt.com has some pretty good articles. One article in particular is really good where the blogger slams Garth Brookes for claiming that the gov. is doing NOTHING about protecting musicians. Might want to check out this story.

Light People On Fire

Male
Female
Undecided

Uncertain of the applications for this but...

Aghast

I stumbled upon this website.
I am not a parent yet so perhaps I have no right to speak but this stuff shocked me.
This website is full of what you see bellow....

Shocking what some people think is funny or "safe"

The New Ride

Pretty sweet huh? Almost like new condition!. The oil was never changed, the chain was never adjusted or oiled since the showroom, the Air filter had never been cleaned, and the gas was bad from sitting for over 2 years-(I changed all that). Also, I added a front cargo rack that was a un-happy prototype I made (I wasn't happy with it, and made other's differently), but I happened to have it in a box of shit I shouldn't had moved with me, so I painted and used it.

And Yes that is Special K under the blanket and recycling bags of cans. Sad I know....things will change someday soon.

There is only one flaw on this bike, and it is blatantly pictured, can you find the flaw?

I am a Rock Star VIP at the U.S. Open

I had a surprise today at work, I was pushed in the middle of my down and was told to go to the "big guy's" office (the boss). I thought ---"O-shit what did I do"--- I was hoping for the best, but confidently went, (thinking I don't remember doing anything wrong)

He sat me down and I was ready, I was ready for anything he could throw at me.

He said "your a big motorcycle fan, can you use these?" I said "Im a big fan, yep thats me".... he then pushed four Supercross passes into my face, and not just any normal passes which cost 100 bucks each, V-I-freekin-P passes which I can't find a price for on their web site.

Here is the web site.............Im Going To SuperCross Baby!

He then told me to "cut out early and enjoy, I think these will get you a good seat, free booze, and food once your there"

A couple of days ago on Thursday we had a celebrity poker tournament event at the casino. The big prize was a 10.000 dollar seat into World Series of Poker next year. I had the day off and wasn't present for the event, but I know for a fact that James Stewart was there, and that is where he probably got the passes.

I am soooo... HAPPY!

And another sweet part, ((((we can walk there)))) tis only 3/4's of a mile away!

And Kaze if you were here, you would be going with us....ya know.

My Top 10 Web Designs of Which There Are 8

I want to do more with my web design, and have been looking around the web for ideas. These are my favorite web designs right now. All have an element I want in my own blog, or is just something I think is extremely cool. All but a couple are "this cool" because they use flash, which I don't know how to use. My all-time fave was a site I saw a few years ago that used flash to show various theme rooms of a restaurant by mousing over a floor map of the restaurant. Very cool, but I don't know what the site name was.

Perhaps my favorite in this batch is the first one here to the left. I am a sucker for red-white-and-blue and Uncle Sam, and I know that a great many others are too. This is not just a culturally powerful image, but an intelligent ploy to get people to like your blog. It "is America" how can we hate it? Aesthetically speaking though, I love what the designer has done with the 3 part image (looks like one image) and how it embraces the text section. This bordering effect is something I may attempt to use.

In terms of innovation, www.dontclick.it is kicking some serious mouse-ass. This entire page is built so that you do not need a mouse, on the contrary, if you DO use it, the screen goes to white noise. Very interactive, it navigates much like a game. Somehow kinda reminds me of thx1138movie.com ...which, if you liked that movie, and you like cool websites, should check out some time.



Getting back to looks, biola.edu has a very artistic look I cannot resist, as well as some very sharp buttons. Ma.tt/ has a very odd URL and an even more odd look. Check out his evil mouse-over buttons. Tres-cool. Next, the blue here, Studygrandmaster.com, has some translucent mouse-over or maybe flash buttons at the top that I intend to check out for sure. I like the color play and though I am not big into blue, the look works. I am ignoring the silly cartoon thing, because it is bad-silly, not fun-silly. The light green page, Emotionslive.co.uk is just so simple that it works. Visually very calming, but piques my interest with the colors...and the legs. Very sharp, and should be...he is a professional web designer.

Geeksquad.com is nothing that I would want MY blog to be like...unless it were inverted and the screen was black...BUT the flash animation with the VW Bug doing a power-slide across the screen is very cool. I do like the way they have used a splash of tangerine-orange to offset the use of white and gray. Without it, the site would suck horribly, with the orange the site gets to be in my top 8.



Emilystrange.com is one of my old faves. The left side bar buttons are THE coolest around. (Mouse over the buttons for "Shop" and "Join" and "SOS". I got my background ideas from this site. Smaller screen resolutions only see the side and main sections, but people like me with big screens see some art to the right. Although, unfortunately, right now the art work is more like scribles... which is why Emily Strange.com is not higher on my list for now. Finally

Skype Smells like Spam

Have you been getting SPAM in Skype from "banks" (cough cough) or sex solicitations? I have been getting all kinds of funky chat requests, so I Googled Skype Spam and ended up in the Skype forum. TWENTY SIX pages of people bitching about the same thing. One funny man actually threatened Skype -- or the forum admins maybe? -- with, "Perhaps the NY attorney general would be interested in this failure on Skype's part." I was sooo tempted to reply "Do it dude. If you think you can get through, and that they would actually care." But I weighed the pleasure of typing that versus the probability of lack of intelligent response and gave up.

So, 26 pages of complaints and threats to quit Skype, and Admins yelling back "I am not Skype!"... "watch yer tone mister!" at 20 posts per page that is a pretty impressive amount of posts. At the end it APPEARS that a newer version for WINDOWS will cut down on unwanted solicitations, but ... I am in Linux, so I will still get them.

When searching for an image for this post, I noticed that this screen-shot of "Veronica Sexy" is the most common object seen when people complain about their Skype sex-spam. Although Veronica Sexy has not paid ME a visit, I get plenty of unwanted chat requests. This morning was a guy who just came right out and said, "Can you receive fund?"

The real trouble is, some people have Skype set to "allow chats/calls from only people I have allowed", which 1. Is just plain BAD use of grammar, and 2. the spammers can get through anyway. "Accept me please" was one plea I got, even with "shields up". Some people claim that spammers can actually put themselves in your contact list, and when trying to delete that contact, another name just appeared in its place. That is pretty scummy.

So what can we do?
1. Japan has a huge problem with spam phone calls and spam mail on cell phones. This is why people have email addresses like 10mo4_82 or y7ma7mo77to777. I never got any such calls because the name on my account is NOT Japanese... one benefit of living in a country that claims to be a single race country. So I would guess that having a weird name in Skype would make you less prey to spam. I think my new spelling "Qaxe Qaixaci" is pretty much impenitrable to spam...though in Skype I actually use my real name.
2. Allow calls from... only people I have allowed (even though it pains you to make use of horrible grammar)
3. Allow chats from... only people I have allowed ("Allow chat from people only I have allowed")
These seem to work against simple spam...but do not help save the English language.
4. If you REALLY don't want to deal with anybody new, go to "notifications" advanced view, find "incoming authorisation request" click on it, then remove checks on "play sound file" and "display pop-up notification" at the bottom there.

The trouble is, people CAN just start chatting with you without you accepting them into your list, and for this you have to hit "block user" which, for people who get dozens if not hundreds of spam chats a day, not really a great option.

My issue with this is, how are people that I legitimately requested to "Skype me sometime" going to contact me to get me on their list with my shields up? I am awaiting a reply to that question on the Skype forum.

Newly Detected Ring Around Saturn

Space interests me quite bit. In today's BBC news there is a report of a newly discovered "E-ring" around Saturn that lies 8 MILLION miles from the planet -- 50 times the distance of the other rings. For the full story on the BBC website click on the image.

Cirque du Soleil Corteo

Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god

Cirque du Soleil Corteo.

This was one of the coolest things that I have seen in quite some time. I get really into movies at the theater, provided the movie is any good at all, but this has got to be the best there is in live entertainment. Better than any rock concert I have been to. Right now, Cirque du Soleil's Corteo is playing in Osaka. Tickets are $130 a person, and so it is an event I assumed we would not be going to. Yet Nami got discounted tickets from work, so we paid just $30 each...and somehow we got FRONT ROW SEATS!! I caught a ball that the main character kinda "mistakenly" kicked our way (part of the act) and at the end one of the muscle-bound acrobats reached down and shook Alex's hand.

For starters, these people know how to entertain. When they get close, they look right at you, smile, make faces and do funny things. It seems like they are doing it "just for me" even though they do it every night, for everybody. That is dedication.

Next, they perform some blindingly spectacular feats with their bodies. I am less impressed with what others can do than I used to be, but THESE people do all sorts of shit I am never going to try or learn to do. Rolling and spinning around while riding in giant steel loops was one of my favorites, but THROWING other people back and forth from a height was great too.

My absolute favorite is something I don't know what to call. A male and female duo doing acrobatics on a pair of straps/ribbons? Extremely cool. The man had the best physique ever. Not weight lifting muscles, real "work your ass off swinging around on these mofos" muscles. The WOMAN! Wow! She was so ripped, that she looked like she could throw a car. She put her ankle in the stirup, and the man held her other leg while the swung in a giant circle over the stage. This of course put her in straight splits. And he was doing his spell-binding calisthenics while she held on to him.

It was an excellent 2 hours while it lasted, though I wish I were going again tonight. I hear that Cirque du Soleil "Kooza" is coming to Seattle in a few months...

Posting to THIS blog via Email

Posting to a group blog like this, via EMAIL is pretty limited -- but it can be done. There are 3 issues which I think make this suck, but then again, I did not research this for my own use. I thought, "Maybe if I make posting by email available, we will get a couple more contributors" and so I tried posting via email myself.

1. There is only one way to email a post to a given blog, so no matter who you are, the post will be signed with the ID of THIS account. Since this is WiselyWeird the post will be signed with "Ol' Wisely" no matter if you are Ty, Bee, Candi or me. A half-ass remedy would be to change the account's display name to something like "Wisely Member" but again, it would be a mystery as to who posted...unless you sign your emailed post like I am going to do.

2. I don't like that I cannot send html code via mail and have it appear the way I sent it. Code like < becomes the characters &lt; and therefore something like <img style="width: 144px; height: 176px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FTgIyhkbOSc/Ssf3KaKv74I/AAAAAAAAA3Q/eG9h83xKzQI/s320/kazeangel-721665.jpg" border="1" /> will just become a string of words rather than an actual image.

3. We CAN post images via email, but they need to be attached to the email, and the text wrap around effect will be null and void. This means that any images attached to the mail will appear first, and text will follow. Thumbnail size is pretty big and is not adjustable. This does not jibe with my blogging habits, but it would be fine for those who don't intend to add images.

Peas
Kaze

I.E. is fussing with this blog.

OK guys, this is utterly obscene. Poor Ty is using a version of I.E. that makes both my personal blog page and this one, seriously deformed. Or deformated rather. I can GUESS that this is due to the way I have written by background text, but at any rate, Ty gets a FULL page of the moon background, then has to scroll down to get any kind of content! Here is an image of him scrolling down to get to the content. So. this is evil and evile too. A couple of you have I.E. too. Can you look at this page and kazekaizaki.blogspot.com as well to see if this problem occurs? I guess I.E. is on version 8 now? I am not sure which virgin I have...version I have, but this is a non-issue for me when I look.

Ty? How long has this been going on? Did you recently upgrade to IE8?

Edit: More obscenities

Mika loves me THIS much.