The Geek Pub » Internet http://www.thegeekpub.com Drink Beer and Geek Out Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:34:34 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Future Dude explains the Future http://www.thegeekpub.com/1136/future-dude-explains-the-future/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/1136/future-dude-explains-the-future/#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:16:26 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=1136 Did you ever wonder what the future was going to be like.  So many times we all thought we just knew for sure.  Future Dude shows us the truth!

Man 1: So you’re saying people will “tweet” what they’re eating for breakfast?

Man 2: and “upload” pictures of their breakfasts to a “facebook”?

Man 3: No offense Future Man, but is everyone in your time retarded?

Man 4: and other people will look at the breakfasts and make comments?

Future Dude: Sorry to burst your bubble dudes, but you asked.  Yes.  That’s the future.

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/1136/future-dude-explains-the-future/feed/ 0 It’s OK to steal my software http://www.thegeekpub.com/1118/its-ok-to-steal-my-software/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/1118/its-ok-to-steal-my-software/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:41:21 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=1118 “Sometimes it’s OK to steal my software.” says Jeff Vogul and independent software developer and game designer.  Jeff founded Spiderweb Software in 1994 and has written several games, including The Exile, Geneforge, and Avernum series and Nethergate: Resurrection.

So what gives?  Why would a software developer be OK with users stealing his software?  It turns our Jeff has discovered there are some benefits to people pirating his software.  In fact many software companies know that piracy is key to why they are #1, even though they would never admit it (right Bill?).

I admit to being a little bit nervous about writing this. The sad truth is that, these days, it is so easy to pirate single-player PC games that most gamers only have to pay for them if they want to pay for them.

You see, when people pirate a game, more people get to play it.  And when more people get to play it, that would never have purchased it (or played it) if they had to buy it, you sell more copies.

Now interestingly enough, that’s not why Jeff Vogul thinks its sometimes OK to pirate his games, even though I assure you he knows this is true.  Jeff talks a while in his blog about children in third world countries who can not afford to pay him the $25 US Dollars that his game costs.  He even get’s emails from these children begging for a free key.

When I get one of these message, what I want to respond is, “PIRATE MY STUPID GAME!!!” I mean, seriously, the time used drafting that e-mail would have been much more profitably spent figuring out how BitTorrent works.

But Jeff says the piracy by these children in these foreign countries helps him by helping to give his life meaning.  He wants to bring joy to the people who experience and play his games and feel like ultimately he made a difference in people’s lives.  Even if they stole from him.  Head over and check out Jeff’s blog for the rest of the story.

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/1118/its-ok-to-steal-my-software/feed/ 0 Super Mario Curb http://www.thegeekpub.com/1006/super-mario-curb/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/1006/super-mario-curb/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:15:29 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=1006 This incredible video was made by Andreas Heikaus as part of his thesis.  He recreates the entire Nintendo NES Super Mario Brothers on the curb of a street!

Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.

“This video was part of my Bachelor thesis at the University of Applied science and art Hannover. The Super Mario Bros. game, released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, is not longer bound to the television size and get interactive with a new environment. The emphasis of my thesis is on the matchmoving work. It is the process of matching CG elements into live-action footage.”

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/1006/super-mario-curb/feed/ 1 Letter to Microsoft http://www.thegeekpub.com/992/letter-to-microsoft/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/992/letter-to-microsoft/#comments Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:34:17 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=992 Recently, a good and long time friend of mine wrote a letter to Microsoft and posted it on his FaceBook account.  I couldn’t help but share this letter with you.

“Dear Microsoft,

I really appreciate that your technology has fed my family and given me a great career over the past 13 years. However, lately our relationship has been lackluster at best. Let me explain:

• Windows Vista sucked. Enough said.
• The X-Box 360 sucked. I have to pay a monthly fee for online service unlike ps3 and Wii, and I got Red Ring of Death twice.
• Your Zune software sucks. The device is fine, but the software is incredibly slow, bugs are never fixed and i can’t use any other software to synch my Zune. It goes and renames files without my permission.
• Windows 7 is better, but not near as innovative as Mac OS X. The control panel is a freaking maze compared to XP or Mac.
• Your development tools such as Visual Studio are slow and kludgy and not nearly as innovative as Ruby on Rails. That sucks.
• Your licensing sucks. I spent 2 hours on the phone yesterday talking to your employees about licensing which SUCKED because they seemed as clueless as the rest of us. We’re having to do a $2000+ upgrade to serve one client. If were were not already MSDN subscribers, it would have cost us $7000+

Thanks for the memories, but I fear our relationship is almost over.

-Craig”

Let me explain.  For the over 25 years that I have known Craig, the last 15 or so he has been a developer for a living.  Specifically a pro-Microsoft developer.  During those last 15 years, I shared many of Craig’s beliefs about Microsoft “just getting it,” and Microsoft being better.  About 6 years ago… I started to question.  I started becoming interested in Linux, Macintosh and other alternative platforms such as BeOS.  And then I did it.  I switched to Mac.

Craig liked my Mac, but still found Microsoft to be the superior platform.  We talked all the time and slowly I started seeing Craig’s opinion change… until today when I saw this on FaceBook.  His transition from the DarkSide is almost complete!

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/992/letter-to-microsoft/feed/ 19 Big Bang Stop Motion http://www.thegeekpub.com/987/big-bang-stop-motion/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/987/big-bang-stop-motion/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:46:59 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=987 This awesome stop motion video of the Big Bang is incredible.  The amount of time these guys must have spent!

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

“BIG BANG BIG BOOM:
an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life … and how it could probably end.

direction and animation by BLU

http://www.blublu.org

production and distribution by ARTSH.it

http://www.artsh.it

sountrack by ANDREA MARTIGNONI

many thanks to (in random order):
xm24 bologna, csoa mezzacanaja, ericailcane, robert rebotti, andrea bagni, paper resistance, studiocromie, rifrazioni festival, sasso passo, sibe, festival de cine experimental de maldonado (uruguay), gianluigi toccafondo, orilo, maria de brea, bs as stencil, run don’t walk, franco fasoli, modo infoshop, pietro and icone festival, doma, cesare romani, popup festival and all the blu’s family

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/987/big-bang-stop-motion/feed/ 0 Paypal hates OpenCamp http://www.thegeekpub.com/949/paypal-hates-opencamp/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/949/paypal-hates-opencamp/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:33:26 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=949 What I’m about to tell you will blow your mind.  Paypal hates OpenCamp.  In fact, Paypal hates it’s customers in general, or so it seems.  Being a long time Paypal customer I have had many run ins over the years with them.  Sometimes personally, and sometimes when helping a customer.

PayPal hates OpenCamp

OpenCamp organizer John Pozadzides posted on his blog at OpenCamp today that Paypal had put restrictions on his Paypal account.  The story goes that PayPal considers events and event organizers to be risky business.  John got a call from “Kathleen” at Paypal, an anonymous person with no last name and no email (a typical Paypal retarded process). Kathleen NoLastName told John that “[PayPal would] rather close an account than have to eat a couple hundred dollars in disputed charges”.

John feels like one of two things is going on:

  1. Someone at PayPal is purposely targeting OpenCamp for some unknown reason. A concept which may be hypothetically possible, but which I find unlikely.
  2. PayPal HATES event organizers. They have decided as a corporation that they do not want to work with organizers of any kind of event, and they are actively working to try to make those people’s lives hell.

I tend to agree with the second option.  PayPal wants to make being an event organizer dislike PayPal so much that they go elsewhere.

PayPal hates its Customers

While I wish this was just a problem for OpenCamp, the truth is that Paypal hates all of its customers.  I had really hoped that when PayPal was purchased by ebay that things would changed.  However, it seems PayPal has gotten worse.  In 2001 I was running a web hosting company.  I used PayPal to bill my customers.  One of my customers was running an “adult website”.  Somehow by billing my customer’s PayPal account, mine was associated with being in a “bad neighborhood” and when his account was closed, my funds were locked.  It took me almost six months of emails, phone calls and finally a letter from an attorney to get my funds released.

PayPal could have easily looked at my case and said “Oops.  We made a mistake.  This guy is not associated with this other guy, and he’s not using his PayPal account to sell “adult materials.”  Rather they insisted on persecuting me like a criminal of the system.  When my attorney threatened a suit, the giggy was up and my account was restored.  But why?  Why did it take that measure?  PayPal hates its customers.

Helping Out

If you’d like to help out, please post this or the original article over at OpenCamp to FaceBook, Digg, Twitter, etc!

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/949/paypal-hates-opencamp/feed/ 0 Search Engines of 1990 http://www.thegeekpub.com/870/search-engines-of-1990/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/870/search-engines-of-1990/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:58:39 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=870 In the 1990s, search engines were vastly different and they’ve been evolving rapidly ever since.  Here’s a quick humor filled reminder of where we used to be, and what the future may hold for search engines!

Search Engine Which was… But now it’s… Which is… Which is a shame
because…		 In the future it will…
MSN Used sheerly out of convenience when every-one still used hotmail. BING Rumored to be replacing Google as the iPhone’s default search engine. Steve Jobs has screwed Apple consumers enough this year already. Not be iPad compatible.
Infoseek The Nerdy choice of engines back in the 90′s. GO.COM, which is apparently “Powered by Yahoo” Completely Fucking Redundant. It’s only around because for some fucking reason, Disney owns it. Be offered in 3D.
Ask Jeeves Before we realized searching in full sentences was useless. ASK.COM The exact same minus Jeeves. No other search engine had a mascot, let alone an English butler. Attempted to bring back Jeeves in a progressive manner as Javiero, a flam boyant hispanic butler.
Yahoo Marketed with that great “Yahoooo” jingle. A goddamn clusterfuck of a webpage. Just like every other “one-stop” megafuck sites these days. It looks like it was made in the 90s using their own geocities. Take ten minutes to find the search bar,
HotBot One of the original big search engines, despite having one of the ugliest logos of them all. Just a choice to search using one of the other three search engines. Mind-fuckingly useless. Those three search engines are MSN, Yahoo, and goddman lycos. Still have the same shittly logo.
Altavista Pretty unmemorable. Even more unmemorable. Not very surprising. It’s actually a decent search engine. Have a resurgence when “retro-searching” comes into style.

Via: MadAtoms

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/870/search-engines-of-1990/feed/ 0 What happened to GeekBrief TV? http://www.thegeekpub.com/854/what-happened-to-geekbrief-tv/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/854/what-happened-to-geekbrief-tv/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 04:19:10 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=854 Many of us tuned in this weekend to to see our favorite podcast GeekBrief TV with Cali Lewis (aka Luria Petrucci).  However, we were surprised when it was missing altogether and later pointed to a new show on Revision3 called GeekBeat TV.  What happened to GeekBrief?

A little background.  GeekBrief was created by Luria and her husband Neal Campbell while they were living in a self-storage facility as the live-on-site-managers of said complex.  They were looking for a way to launch an Internet career.  GeekBrief was their invention.  Luria and Neal decided on the stage name for their host would be Cali Lewis, based on a character in a book that Neal had written.  Working at their day jobs and producing GeekBrief at night they produced the show for exactly 5 months when they were able to quit their jobs and produce the show full time through their new partner Podshow.  Podshow later became Mevio.  The show became wildly popular amongst geeks and the technology community.

Skip forward to January of 2010.  For reasons unknown at the time, Luria and Neal separate with Luria moving out of their home.  Luria and Neal continue to publish GeekBrief cooperatively for some period of time until Luria allegedly hires her own editor.  On April 13th, 2010 Luria announced on her blog that she and Neal were in the process of a divorce.

Following this announcement a slew of Internet media sites begin reporting on their divorce.  Some in a good light, and some not so good.  Neal Campbell quickly posted a response on his blog:

“I was blessed to be married to Luria for eleven years. She left home in January and just announced on her blog that she is divorcing me. We’ve continued to produce GeekBrief.TV together and I’ve tried everything I could to save the marriage. She wants something different and I wish her peace and joy. I loved her because of her kindness and she has continued to be kind to me throughout this transition.”

However, these words of kindness were short lived as.  While Cali has remained mostly silent about this situation, Neal has continued to post on his blog about in varying amount of detail and with varying extremes of emotional outcries.  Today several comments were posted on his blog about Neal pursuing Luria as her youth minister at the age of 12 to 15 while he was in his twenties (or thirties, it wasn’t clear).  We won’t go into the details as that’s each of their personal business.  These comments appear to have resulted in Neal pulling his blog offline with the following message being left:

“My mentor suggested I stay away from the Internet while I’m healing. I think it’s good advice.”

Cali posted a final GeekBrief TV episode simply saying “sometimes our differences just can’t be resolved” referring to what is believed to be both her relationship with Neal, and her relationship with their partner Mevio.  Cali has apparently signed a new agreement with Revision3 with a new show known as GeekBeat TV leaving Neal with ownership or at least part ownership of the now defunct GeekBrief TV.  Again with Cali being silent on the issue, and Neal blogging about “theft of [his] creative property.”

Divorce is hard.  Divorce is even harder when your spouse is your business partner.  Whatever happens next we wish them both happiness, and success in their new lives and careers and we thank you both from the bottom of our hearts for the 4 years of GeekBrief.TV that we we loved!

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/854/what-happened-to-geekbrief-tv/feed/ 5 What it’s like to Own Apple Products http://www.thegeekpub.com/837/what-its-like-to-own-apple-products/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/837/what-its-like-to-own-apple-products/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:26:46 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=837 The Oatmeal is at it again with a new comic called What it’s like to own an Apple Product.

I never ever ever buy Apple stuff. ;-)

To see the original visit The Oatmeal!

]]> http://www.thegeekpub.com/837/what-its-like-to-own-apple-products/feed/ 0 Mac vs. PC http://www.thegeekpub.com/945/mac-vs-pc/ http://www.thegeekpub.com/945/mac-vs-pc/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:46:54 +0000 The Big Geek http://www.thegeekpub.com/?p=945 Mac vs. PC

Bill Gates: I prefer PC’s over Mac’s because there’s a lot more software available for Windows.

Steve Jobs: So long as you include anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.

It just doesn’t get much truer than that boys!

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