Normally it takes a few recommendations on something for me to take them to heart especially if I don’t know the people doing the recommending. You can find someone out there to recommend anything it seems and I had heard of Stephenson off and on over the past few years. Most of the anecdotes revolved around him and his “tech” type fictional stories. Normally I don’t read that type of fiction but finally Pete recommended Crtyptonomicon so I decided to pick it up.
The story takes place in 3 major phases, two of which take place during world war II and one that takes place in the present day. All three stories are related to the origin of the personal computer as well as where currency derives it’s value and how that could change in a digital age.. The basis of the book is a present day company attempting to set up a data haven in the Philippines to be safe from government intervention and all traffic being heavily encrypted. At the same time the other two threads take place in somewhat parallel during World War II. The characters in the two time periods are family relation usually grandfather-grandson/granddaughter though this doesn’t play much role in the story other than they are dealing with similar subject matter across the generations.
The book is in the same vein as the Da Vinci Code in that it uses actual history as the basis for a fictional story and mixes true historical facts along with those made up for the story. One of the books characters is Alan Turing who was heavily involved with breaking German Cryptography during World War II and is credited with being one of the fathers of modern computing. In regards to Turing and other true historical characters and events the issue is that it can be difficult to know what is true and what is for the sake of the story.
I would recommend this book but under the caveat of a few things. This book jumps around a lot in a Lord of the Rings style. The story consists of multiple interweaving tales and can sometimes leave a thread for long periods. This can drop you out of the story while you are hoping the story returns to one of the more interesting tales. Also, Stephenson has a tendency to venture into R rated territory from time to time and it feels very unnecessary. The sections rarely add value to the story and it feels a lot like an adolescent boy trying to write realistic stories about sex before he has any real experiences to base them on.
Cryptonomicon is an intriguing story for those interested in technology and currency. I have already begun reading Stephenson’s trilogy The Baroque Cycle and the books in that series continue along the same vein.
Have you ever been sitting around with your Mom and your Aunt and everyone has a beveridge? You go to pick up your glass of Pepsi and instead on accident pick up your mom’s ice tea. You take a drink and nearly throw up because you expected fizzy sweetness and instead get bland Iced Tea. That is how I am if you tell me what is for dinner and then change it. I get preprogrammed for meals and I don’t know why. You could tell me at noon that tonight we are going out for dry bologna sandwiches, no Mayo, no nuthin and then take me to my favorite restaurant. I would still be disappointed because I had been gearing up for bologna.
On a complete sidenote how did you pronounce bologna in your head when you read it? Did you say baloney? I did when I wrote it. Something has gone terribly wrong.
OR It seems the Gears of War weapon the Hammer of Dawn has been made a reality and is being used on innocent bystanders in Denver CO. Also if you haven’t seen google street view it is pretty impressive.
Today I pretty much rebuilt my computer because of of issues my motherboard was having with Vista. Now that I’m back up and running I am playing around with the new RDP and I just figured out something that was not intuitive so I figured I would throw a post up about it since I get so much info off random blog posts.
When you attempt to connect to a remote machine using the IP address with RDP it by default will assume the IP address is the domain and then you have to wait for it to time out to delete the domain name in the log in box and log in.
If you go back to the file and attempt to change the domain in the Edit menu for the RDP it looks like the domain has already been defaulted. However if you explicitly change the domain to DOMAIN\username instead of just username then the domain will change as well.
It’s not terribly intuitive and I figured if I spent that much time trying to figure it out then maybe I can save someone else a few minutes
In 1989 Fleer put out the infamous Billy Ripken card that had everyone looking for a card of a player that was just a step above Ozzie Canseco in notoriety. Error Cards, error stamps, error coins have always been a thing but it seemed like this woke up the baseball card industry to what could be a very powerful marketing tool. There have been a few notable cards the most valuable being last year’s 2006 Alex Gordon which can be found on ebay for 500ish dollars.. This card gained notoriety when MLB decided that in order for a player to have a baseball card they had to have played in a major league game. Topps removed all the players from their sets but “accidently” left a few cards of one of the most touted prospects in baseball. This caused a lot of publicity for the 06 Topps set.
The Gordon card seemed a fairly blatant attempt to create an error card for the increased demand but it doesn’t really hold a candle to what they did this year. One of those mischievous designers was supposedly playing around with photoshop and placed Mickey Mantle and George W. Bush in the 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card. They claim they left it in more or less on accident. It looks ridiculous and it cheapens the Topps brand which in this day of >$100 packs of cards is a serious concern. There are a lot of ways to market baseball cards and the sport of baseball but poor photoshop jobs aren’t one of them. The industry needs to focus lowering the supply of their product as a whole not just single error cards. The scarcity of the error card or the correction card is the allure of things like the Billy Ripken card. There were 3-4 correction cards that were released and each one is some what of a collectors item. There will of course continue to be error cards but passing off fake ones is going to take away one of the natural marketing tools the hobby has.
After signing an exclusive 3rd party deal with the mlb Take Two now enjoys being pretty much the only game in town. I was very happy with the MVP baseball series from EA but due to the exclusive deal I had to change allegiance. The big dilemma in sports games is do you go for perfect simulation or do you go for crazy action packed arcade. I had read an interview with a new project manager that came over from EA’s MVP team in which he said that mlb was not too happy with the previous version of the game with all it’s highlight plays and unfaithful reproduction of the game. I always prefer total simulation vs arcade and in that regard mlb 2k7 for the xbox 360 has done fairly well.
The key to any good baseball game is the hitter/pitcher matchup. Do change-ups really feel like they are slowed down and throw off your timing? Are you fooled by breaking balls with out them having looney tune esque unrealistic break? 2k7 comes through on the features and also adds an innovative touch they call the swing stick. In order to hit you have to first pull the right stick down to step and then either release it or push it up or to the sides to swing.
Unfortunately, the batter pitcher match up is the only really strong point of the game. The biggest problem is the game can be buggy. While playing a franchise the game would get caught in a loop where the play is over and the first baseman is holding the ball and just jog back and forth around 1st until you turned off the game.
Another issue is the difficulty settings and the frequency of HRs and hits. On the lower settings the user can hit 7-10 HRs in a game and on the higher the computer seems to hit a large number of pitching mistakes per game. The computer also has an uncanny knack for robbing HRs. One robbed HR per game is not uncommon. Part of this problem seems to be a smaller set of possible hits than what would be possible in the real world. HRs very often are just over the wall and hits are either directly in a gap or easily fieldable. The computer never comes close but can’t quite reach a ball.
The attention to detail at certain points can also be lacking. I have noticed a few issues with the Cubs such as Sean Marshall being a righty in the game but a lefty in real life. The bleachers in Wrigley Field have seatbacks and the variation of fans in the crowd is very low so much so if you are looking at fans you will see 7-10 people on the screen doing the exact same movements. I can only assume I am only catching the things with the Cubs because I know the team well enough to catch them and the same sort of thing exists on multiple if not every team.
A smaller issue is the lack of named prospects unless they have appeared in the major leagues. For instance Lastings Milledgeof the Mets, who spent some time in the majors last year exists in the game but Felix Pie the Cubs top prospect does not. Also there are unlockable teams such as the 89 A’s or the 55 Brooklyn Dodgers but the players have made up names. I can only assume both problems are because they aren’t in the players union but it still seems like there should be some way to work that out. I haven’t seen any online roster update ability either but since the season hasn’t started yet I am still holding out hope. I have seen sites online that will let you download roster files that if you have a third party attachment that allows you to save PC content to a memory card then you can get them to your 360. It would be nice to see Microsoft provide a way to transfer rosters and game saves from the internet.
Though I focused on the negatives the game is still playable and since it is pretty much the only game in town that is a good thing. Hopefully even though there is no competition they will still feel the need to aggressively keep the game updated and improve it. With a few updates and better quality control this could be a solid baseball franchise.
-Spring Training has started and I because of this I am pleased. Spring is always spotty when trying to get live coverage of the games but so far I am 2 for 2 with Gameday Audio. The quality has been fairly suspect though in today’s game.
-I picked up MLB 2K7 last night. I have only played 1 game so far and the learning curve is a little sharp so I won’t review it yet but I will say they have Sean Marshall as a right hander so they are not off on a good foot.
-Digg.com is a social news site that I frequent and they have a video section. If you are looking for a list of funny or interesting videos here is a list of videos that I have “dugg”
I asked for this book for Christmas after seeing Efraim Halevy as a guest on the Daily Show. Halevy is a former head of the Mossad and various other diplomatic positions in the Mossad and the Israeli government. I got the book with the idea that it was a collection of tales of cloak and dagger operations from what is considered by many to be the most competent intelligence service in the world. I have been interested in the subject ever since hearing about Operation Wrath of God which is supposedly the program Israel undertook in retribution for the attack on their athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. In hindsight this is ridiculous since recounting anything of that nature while he and others are still alive would be irresponsible not only to the Mossad but to the individuals who were and are a part of it. What it is a very in depth look at relations between Israel and the Arab world over the last 30+ years but with a particular focus on the 2 Gulf Wars and post 9/11.
Halevy talks in depth with the nature of peace treaties between Israel and Jordan, the ongoing issues of the Palestinians and the occupied territories and other issues that have affected Israel. The title rather than referring to covert operations actually refers to Halevy being the unseen man who was negotiating treaties behind the scenes. These treaties would then be signed by the diplomatic leaders of Israel and Arab nations would sign usually in the presence of U.S. In some instances the Israeli Prime Minister would not even know the contents of the treaty he was signing or would only find out just before.
The most relevant portions are those dealing with the current state of terrorism and the war in Iraq. Halevy takes some fairly scary viewpoints that intelligence services can not always be restrained by laws to be effective and states this to people in the American government from which his is rebuked as these would be the actions of a totalitarian government. The point is also made that the primary service for countering terrorism inside the U.S. is the FBI and it is their goal to build a case to prosecute terrorists in court rather than the stop them from carrying out their objectives. He states that the UI.S. is the only nation in the world where a single service is tasked with both those objectives.
Criticism of the American system from such a respected Intelligence service should be taken seriously since they have been dealing with these problems far longer than we have. It can’t be ignored though that the perpetrators of these crimes are major idealogical enemies of Israel and their demise would certainly be in the interest of the Mossad and Israel. Also, in the U.S. there are certain standards that we have lived by for over 200 years and we firmly believe in a persons right to trial and allowing military services to act outside the bounds of law is a dangerous area.
This book is very dry and I would not recommend it unless you have an interest in the subject matter already. There is a little talk about failed operations that made the papers but no real details so I felt the title was a little intentionally misleading. The discussion of the Iraq war and the role of the United States in the Middle East is also a strong topic that is worth reading the book for.
Next up is either The Divine Comedy or the book which the movie Munich is based on called Vengeance by George Jonas.
Sometimes I miss playing music live and this video is exactly why. The way these guys start this song/show makes me want to be 18 and playing again. It’s the Refused by the way.
Normally it takes a few recommendations on something for me to take them to heart especially if I don’t know the people doing the recommending. You can find someone out there to recommend anything it seems and I had heard of Stephenson off and on over the past few years. Most of the anecdotes revolved around him and his “tech” type fictional stories. Normally I don’t read that type of fiction but finally Pete recommended Crtyptonomicon so I decided to pick it up.
After signing an exclusive 3rd party deal with the mlb Take Two now enjoys being pretty much the only game in town. I was very happy with the MVP baseball series from EA but due to the exclusive deal I had to change allegiance. The big dilemma in sports games is do you go for perfect simulation or do you go for crazy action packed arcade. I had read an interview with a new project manager that came over from EA’s MVP team in which he said that mlb was not too happy with the previous version of the game with all it’s highlight plays and unfaithful reproduction of the game. I always prefer total simulation vs arcade and in that regard mlb 2k7 for the xbox 360 has done fairly well. 
I asked for this book for Christmas after seeing Efraim Halevy as a guest on the Daily Show. Halevy is a former head of the 
