Oh, Jacky-boy. Can’t say I missed you. I thought the gaming community had heard the last of Jack Thompson. Afterall, he hadn’t made a peep since he got his jimmies rustled by a Half Life 2 mod in March last year. He even, surprisingly, kept quiet during the tragic Aurora Theater Shooting. But I guess he finally got bored of just yelling at kids to get off his lawn and decided to get in on the Conneticut Shooting hype train.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the news, earlier this week a man killed twenty-six people, including twenty children. This is a horrible tragedy and while there’s a lot of things I could say about the shooting and the reaction to it, I think it’s best I don’t say much about it. I’m keeping the focus on Jack Sparrow here. If you don’t know who Jack is (exposition, exposition, exposition!), he is a former lawyer and the most well-known crusader against video games. Not too long after the shooting, Jack-O-Lantern pulled his disgusting signature move of blaming tragedy on video games. He emailed Joystiq stating that “Blood is on YOUR hands”. I’m not surprised by this. He’s always pulling stunts like this. It’s about time we just give him his medicine and put him in a home.

He’s like this, except not as charming.

Jack Thompson is undeniably an attention whore and a troll. If you look at Jack Bauer’s track record, you’ll agree. There’s no way this is genuine. I refuse to believe that he honestly thinks that video games are to blame. The things that come out of this man’s mouth aren’t worth the gross old people candies he probably gives out on Halloween. Remember when I called him a former lawyer? The man was disbarred. Disbarred. That’s like a note saying “Yeah, don’t listen to this guy” signed by the lawyer factory. This needs to be the last time we let Jack and Daxter get any publicity. If anyone reading this writes on a video game website and is contacted by Jack Thompson, delete the email and do not report on it. This man’s purpose is to get in our faces and try to make us mad. He’s not worth it at all. Yes, we’ve had a lot of laughs making fun of him, but enough is enough. Let’s put Jack back in the box.

This weekend Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, spoke at the Y Combinator Startup School. It’s always a great idea for things like his. Zuckerberg made over a billion dollars from a company that started in his dorm room. One of the best ways to be successful is to learn from someone who’s been there. That said, one of his ideas kinda scared me.

Mark Zuckerberg said that in ten years, we’ll be sharing 1,000 times more. Yes. The guy who made Facebook thinks in ten years we’ll be doing a cartoonish amount of sharing on the internet. Just imagine what it takes to: people liveblogging every little thought fragment that comes in their head. People will have their heads buried in their phones nearly ever waking second. You could rob a bank and instead of anyone trying to stop you, everyone will be tweeting about the idiot in the ski mask cutting in line.

You really need to take some of the things that he says with a grain of salt. Remember when he said he wants middle schoolers on Facebook for “educational purposes“?  We all knew that was BS. He sounds like one of those teenage girls who tell their parents they need an iPad for school and just use it for Angry Birds. He’s just saying stuff like this because even though he has all the cash he’ll ever need, he’s still in it for the money. The only reason he pulled the education card is because “I want to sell your children to advertisers” is apparently not a classy thing to say.

I’m not saying he’s a bad person. The Social Network and many of his ex-colleagues have done that already. He has some good insights on entrepreneurship. You just have to remember to charge your BS detector before you leave home.

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The Late Night Gamer has a Tumblr! Follow it and I won’t hurt my hostages!

Well it’s about that time again. There’s new hardware in the wings and everyone wants to get their hands on a shiny new gadget. The iPhone 5 and Wii U have been announced months ago and now all that’s left is to sit back until they’re on shelves. But this isn’t good enough for some people. Some don’t have the patience to wait a few months. That’s why right now people are willing to spend $700 to get their hands on the Wii U. The starting bid for the iPhone 5 is $900. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture? Not just people, but adults, are paying for these. If you have $900 at any given moment, you should know better than spending it on something that is going to be hundreds of dollars cheaper in a couple months. It’s not like there’s any benefit in getting these early. Whatever they can do with the new iPhone that couldn’t be done before (which is nothing) can wait until it’s being sold for retail price. They just have to have it before everyone else; it’s like they’re the world’s most frivolous hipsters.

Well I had the iPhone 5 before it was popular and I see no contradiction in this statement.

This isn’t a new thing either. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was sold early for over $9000. Over $9000 is this many dollars. Someone actually payed that much to play the new Call of Duty game early. Let me tell you some things that you can buy with $9k:

• A year’s rent on a nice apartment
• 150 brand new video games
• 300 used video games
• Have a mercenary as a bodyguard for ９ days
• Give a needy family 69,120 meals (16 year’s worth)
• Hire a guy in a superhero costume for a half hour every day for three months

Yet somebody spent that money on Call of Duty. If any of you reading this are anxious to get your hands on the latest gadget, don’t get any bright ideas. Just wait like everyone else. Imagine that you’re getting paid to wait a couple weeks to not upgrade your phone. It’s really not that hard. Don’t be stupid. Please don’t. I have to lie down now, I still have a migraine from that guy buying MW3 for $9k.

Well I’ve been sitting on this little piece of news for a while and finally decided to write about it.  Right now there is a Kickstarter Project called Gaymercon, a video game convention for the LGBT community. It’s still raising funds and has reached over double its $25k goal. I’m all in for someone trying to start a new gaming convention, but I’m really not on board with their identifying as a gay convention. Before you call me a homophobe or a bigot I want you to hear me out. The purpose of a gaming convention is to unite people under gaming. Gaming (unlike midget hunting) is a hobby that doesn’t care who you are, where you came from, or what goes on in your bedroom. When you take something like that and separate it on basis of sexuality, you’re going in the wrong direction.

Some supporters are saying that it helps LGBT gamers meet each other. Imagine that I wanted to start an anime convention for black people.  Let’s call it AniNegro. I could say that it will help black anime fans meet other black anime fans. But why does it matter to me that my anime liking friends are black? Do I have a problem with anime fans who aren’t black? Are black people superior in my eyes? If you want to meet people who share your hobby, that’s great. But why does it matter that they’re LGBT? Now I would understand if it was the convention was for something where sexuality is relevant like marriage or counseling or even porn. The closest to sexuality being relevant to video games are when you choose who you want to screw in a BioWare game.

One of the points that they’re making is that it helps gay gamers feel safe from discrimination. This is from their pitch:

Unfortunately stereotypical bias among gamers does exist and it can make a hostile environment for minorities in the gaming community. Hang around an online game long enough and you’ll start hearing homophobic, racial, and misogynistic slurs slung around without a second thought.

I’ll admit this is true and any online gamer will vouch for it. But this has nothing to do with people being racist, homophobic or misogynistic and everything to do with the fact that people tend to be dicks behind a wall of anonymity. There is nothing you can do to change that. You can make real life as politically correct as you want but online gamers will still be assholes. I’ve also never heard of any hostility happening at gaming conventions. Let me remind you that at gaming conventions it’s perfectly normal (even expected) to see a few men in Sailor Moon costumes.

No. If you want to see fat male Sailor Scouts you’ll have to search it yourself.

Now I’m not saying don’t support Gaymercon. If you want to go, fine. Pick me up one of those cool GameBoy cartridge necklaces. It’s not hurting anyone, and it is a gaming convention, so I hope it does good. But I just don’t think that the LGBT theme is going to help anyone. If you want to contribute to Gaymercon there’s still five days left on the Kickstarter and they’ve still got pledge gifts left. What’s your take on Gaymercon? Let me know in the comments.

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The Late Night Gamer has a Tumblr! Hurry up and follow it before someone else does!

I’m sure that one way or another you’ve heard of Anonymous, especially in the last couple of years. Anyone can be a part of Anonymous and anyone can claim it, although the majority of Anonymous is, as Urban Dictionary puts it:

A lot of people praise Anonymous for their DDOS attacks and leaking the information of police and corporation employees. But are they really doing any good? When MegaUpload went down, Anonymous thought that it seemed right that so should the sites of the CIA, MPAA, RIAA, and others. But what did that do, really? I’m sure that there were some people mildly annoyed, but that really doesn’t help Kim Dotcom. It’s like egging an old person’s house while they’re on vacation and then the rain washes it off in a few hours.

As for the information leaking, sometimes they do just get who deserves it, but sometimes they just indiscriminately release the data of anyone they can get their hands on. They have invaded the privacy of way more average citizens than murderers and sleazy executives. This may be useless to ask, but how would you like it if your phone number, address, social security number and more were released to the public all in the name of some faceless organization/individual’s vague concept of justice? How many decent people with families have been harassed or even had their identities stolen by some self-righteous internet troll?

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Anonymous does good things from time to time, but the bad and the useless outweigh it. Until they can use their resources for something with a little bit more substance, I think it’s an overall waste of time.

What’s your opinion on this? Leave a comment.

Well another E3 has come and gone, and I have to be honest: I didn’t really care. The majority of the news flooding my Google Reader were about sequels that we either knew were coming by tradition (“Durr, they’re making another Call of Duty game? I had no idea!) or more sequels that have been getting exposure for years (the Tomb Raider reboot, Halo 4, Batman Arkham City). This is the first time since learning about E3 that I’m really disappointed in it. I could go on about the state of creativity in AAA game development, but that’s not what this article is about. I’m sure that next year will have better games, so I want to talk about the future: getting a bigger piece of the E3 experience at home.

Let me give you a quick rundown on what E3 is. It is a huge, three day video game convention where publishers and developers unveil their upcoming products and projects. It is open to the public as well as the media, but seeing as it’s always held in California and the staggering amount of basement dwellers who play video games, a lot of people miss out. Sure, you can watch the press conferences and gameplay previews online, but it’s so far away from actually being there. You’re not interacting, you’re being communicated to. I think that people will get a lot more excited about E3 if they could feel like they’re at the convention from the comfort of their own homes. What if all the major consoles, plus PC, could see conferences live? What if we could get to play some of the demos that only the media and some lucky conventioneers get to play? Think of panels with an exclusively online audience. All of this with chat rooms dedicated to discussing this live.

It’s a beautiful thought. I wonder if other people are having the same idea right now. Nah, they’re probably busy stewing over the Wii U. I know I am.

I have never needed an "Abandon Thread" GIF more in my life.

Well this is a sad story which I regretfully find hilarious (don’t judge me, I already feel bad). If you’ve spent far too much time on the internet (like myself) then you have seen the “I Can Count to Potato” meme before. The most iconic facet of the meme was an Advice Dog image macro of a little girl with Down Syndrome. The little girl’s name is Heidi Crowter, and she and her family are not happy with what they’ve found. This is wrong because this innocent girl has been made fun of all over the internet. I’m not innocent, I’m still laughing. But that’s not the worst of it. The saddest part is how the family dealt with it. Take a look at the BBC story about it.

99% of the time, nothing good comes from mixing internet culture with the outside world. Like most internet memes, it ran its course fairly quickly and was rarely spotted online aftweward. But recently the family has made one of the biggest mistakes possible: they got involved with trolling. As you can see here, the interest in the meme has skyrocketed taken a cocktail of steroids and meth amphetamines. All they did was bring attention to it and hurt Heidi even more. Thanks to the combination of the age of the picture and how quickly people lose interest in memes, she might have been able to go her whole life without knowing about this or anyone knowing it was her on those templates. But no, it’s too late now. Now more people than ever are making fun of her. Judging by the fact that the parents were hiding this, I don’t think Heidi’s friends at school knew about it. I’m sure they do now.

I also want to touch on the BBC’s “reporting”. They have no idea that this is bigger than Facebook. If they had taken 5 minutes to search the web after seeing the pages, they would have had a much better perception of the story. But since they are  lazy and know nothing about the internet, there was no mention of FunnyJunk, 4Chan, or even Know Your Meme. These people should be ashamed of themselves. The research would have taken two hours, tops.

If the Crowt family is reading this, I offer an apology and a piece of advice. On behalf of the internet, I apologize for turning Heidi into a joke. But in these types of situations, doing nothing accomplishes the most.

I don’t even have to tell you what day it is. When we were kids this holiday was all about whoopie cushions and kick me signs. April Fool’s used to be about trolling people. But then the internet happened. Mass trolling is an everyday occurrence on the net. In this kind of environment, April Fool’s turns into just another day. But just like it did with everything else, the internet turned it into its own thing.

Think about all the pranks played today. Generally, they weren’t saying “Haha fooled you!” as much as they’re saying “Wouldn’t it be funny/cool if…”. If a website couldn’t do that, they probably didn’t even do anything. It makes sense that things went in this direction. The internet is the world’s largest collection of information. It’s pretty hard to be fooled. Everyone would just be annoyed by whatever people came up with. I guess people react better to the crazy “what if” theme. Today Ubuntu announced Ubuntu Eyewear. Mountain Dew came up with a new flavor. But the winner definitely goes to Cartoon Network. They revived Toonami out of the blue on Adult Swim. They did a little of both on that one. I still don’t know what to believe about that.

See you next week. Until then, happy trolling.

XKCD

Am I the only one who likes to listen to old people talk about technology because I find it funny? I’m no computer science student, but compared to most 40-somethings I know, I might as well be. I find it entertaining to listen to them discuss something with the naïveté as a third grader discussing politics. They don’t know that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I think one of the most common subjects is X vs. Y (Windows vs. Mac, iPads vs. netbooks, etc.). Without knowing more than what the commercials on TV tell them, they claim that X is the best thing out there. But I’ve had laughs. It’s time I tell the truth. You’re all wrong. At this point in time, what is better is almost entirely up to personal preference. “Better” is subjective.

One of the things I love to do with my geek’s knowledge of tech is to put Apple fanboys and fangirls in their place. They’re so personally invested in these products that won’t even listen to anything not suggesting that their Macbook Pro was personally kissed by God. If you know your stuff then you know that if you’re not going to make good use of Mac OS’s multimedia software, then you payed a huge markup on hardware because it looks pretty. “Macs don’t get viruses”, that’s what they’ll tell us. Yes, your Mac can get a virus. It’s not as likely as on Windows but it can still happen. With a free antivirus and some common sense, you can pretty much avoid a virus on Windows. If your computer slows to a crawl and gets a virus every time you get a PC, it’s because YOU ARE BAD AT COMPUTERS. There is really nothing a Mac can do that a PC can’t. You don’t know that. You only got a Mac because it’s simple.

I would recommend Ubuntu, but we all know how that would turn out.

Now I’m not picking on Apple products or the people who use them. I’m just making a point. Windows, Mac OS, and a few dozen Linux distros have everything to meet anyone’s needs (except for PC gamers). Even still, you can even go with the old “porque no los dos” philosophy. Currently I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. Now go, spread this wisdom…

or you can keep laughing at old people. Forget what I said, that never stops being funny.

“THE PIRATES ARE DESTROYING OUR ECONOMY!! WE’RE ALL POOR BECAUSE OF ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING!!” Am I the only one sick of hearing this? The RIAA, the MPAA, game publishers, and everyone else are exaggerating the consequences of people taking in media without paying for it. I personally believe that illegal downloading and stealing are not synonymous. If you download a movie, you’re giving the studio the exact same amount of money as you are when you legally borrow it from a friend or buy it used. Even if you don’t lose any sleep after torrenting the entire Malcolm in the Middle series, there should be some guidelines that we should follow.

Don’t be greedy.

Pirating music is easy. Really easy. When you realize this you will have the urge to fill your hard drive with enough anime to make even a weeaboo blush. Resist this urge. It’s not cool to keep downloading movies when you have gigabytes of unwatched films. Everything in moderation, my friends.

Use legal alternatives as a first resort.

I love The Middle, but it only comes on once a week, and I’m almost never near a TV when it’s on. I watch it every week but I’ve never pirated it. I watch it on Hulu. Hulu is an excellent free streaming service. It’s so good that if they have a show, there’s no reason for me to go torrenting. In between Pandora and Spotify, you should have just about all your music needs satisfied. That’s right. You can stop downloading the Reel Big Fish discography.

YES MASTER

Give back.

Every once in a while, pre-order a video game. Go to the movie theater. Attend a concert and buy a T-shirt. It’s okay, little ones because there’s no shame in paying for it. The only reason these companies aren’t going under because of all of this pirating is because a lot of people are actually paying for it. Loosen the grip on your wallet and be one of those people from time to time. Also, when you do download, keep a good ratio. Nobody likes a leech, kid.

The older the better.

The less money someone is potentially making from something, the more acceptable it is for you to pirate it. I’m sure Nintendo couldn’t care less if you download a Pokemon Red ROM. I’ve read plenty of articles about playing old games on emulators but I’ve never once seen a legal disclaimer in any of them. So go ahead, download Night of the Living Dead. The studios can’t hear you over their money.

Well, I hope that I brought some order to the world of internet piracy. Maybe if we all followed these rules the corporations would back off…

I’m sorry, I can’t say that with a straight face.