Pwnage on the cloud

Cloud computing is touted to be the next big thing. From Google Docs to Dropbox to Chrome OS, innovative applications are putting thousands of super powerful servers at the command of users like you and me. But non of these applications seemed that interesting. Granted, backing up to the cloud is one of the most failsafe ways to secure your data, but none of these things had that Ohmagawd effect. I was reading Gizmodo yesterday (sorry Jerry!) and I was hit with that effect thanks to this.

OnLive MicroConsole
(Image copyright Gawker media. Please don't sue me for unauthorised use!)

Think about it for a second. A game, rendered dynamically on the server, streamed to your home like a normal IPTV stream. Provided network latency is low (something that we really need to work towards in this country), your controller-strokes will be transmitted to some server in Palo Alto and the resultant scene in the video game rendered and retransmitted to your HDTV. It's like having a PS3 without having a PS3. And think about it, you don't have to worry about hardware upgrades, or buying expensive VGAs for the singular purpose of playing games anymore. The physics will be beyond awesome, the system requirements will always be met, and you don't have to deal with those pesky anti-piracy measures because there won't be any piracy anymore. If all the games run on servers, and no retail versions are ever released, there's obviously no way to pirate the games. It's a win-win situ whatever way you look at it. And imagine the amount of money spent on hardware that can be saved. You'll essentially be sharing a server with some dude in Bosnia, and while you sleep (due to the time difference) he'll be pwning away, and while he sleeps it'll be your turn. Playing multiplayer would be a breeze since inter-server connectivity is lightning fast (no need to worry about who's hosting and what his upload speed is anymore!)

And you know what the best part is? Servers hate Windows, because it is buggy, slow and expensive, where as Linux is stable, fast and free. The gaming servers will also need to run on Linux, which means... MORE GAMES FOR LINUX, YO! :D (side note: I discovered an open source clone of one of my favourite classic strategy games: Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It's called OpenTTD and it...is...AWEsome! A must have for any Linux user. There is a port for Windows too.)

All of that being said, I'm still not going to pay $99 a year to play games on my bullcrap internet connection. :P

A Day in the Life

Days when your internet access is limited are... strange! (to say the least) And since I've been downloading a 2GB file for the past two days my adventures across the tubes have been few and (waaay too) far between (not to mention painfully slow!). So I've been playing and trying to win this Crimson Skies mission, again and again and again... Everytime you shoot down all the planes you either get shot at the last minute or crash into a Zeppelin... woe! :(

And in the house is no longer a receptive place for life, all the junk that had accumulated during the last 16 years are being thrown out by the boatload, and yours truly feels like he might be the next to go! ;) The fact that I spilled half a bottle of Elephant House milk (yummy btw) in the car doesn't really help my fate either... My mom gave me the look after I started laughing at myself! :/

"The Look"

OK, my torrent's done downloading! I'm off to play some Sims 2 then... ;D (You see how I play the latest games na! Kinda like the dude here... lol)

Right then, going to finish this off by linking to this song I've been falling in love with... enjoy! :)

Shut the door
Cut the light
Davy won't be home tonight
You can wait till the dawn rolls in
You won't see our Davy... again!

P.S. Imagine the smell in the car in a coupla days! "you won't see our Davy again" indeed! lol ;)

Pokerface

I've developed a brand new addiction to playing poker on Facebook... which is kinda strange, because back when I was in school (during the last two years of A/Ls) everyone was playing Facebook poker in the computer labs and real poker in the classrooms during off periods, and I wasn't! :S I was more interested in playing Counter Strike in the labs (we'd switch to the easier-to-conceal-behind-your-work Deluxe Pool when the teacher started breathing down our necks!) and wandering about around the school during off periods... man, those days were fun! :D

St. Fallen shared a cool and lightweight application called Screamer Radio that enables you to listen to a wide range of webcasts from radio stations around the world... what I like most about it is the ability to save the tracks onto your hard drive, something that I used to do by manually going through my Firefox cache, but is now only one click away! so we're basically using legal radio webcasts to illegally download music... niiiiice! lol ;)

My favourite station on it at the moment is Radio Luxembourg, which is the descendant of a famous station situated in Luxembourg that used to broadcast rock music to the UK back in the day... something like the offshore pirate stations in the movie 'The Boat That Rocked' I watched sometime back. That movie was good! The soundtrack was awesome! I'd definitely recommend it for lovers of '60s music! :)

The World Through CS:

What happened 2 weeks ago:

What's going on now:

West tries to go anal on Sri Lanka

I, for one, am disgusted at the West's repeated attempts to poke their noses into Sri Lanka's internal issues. They should instead try to help maybe?

* promised myself that I won't go into politics in this blog when I started, but what's happening now just disgusts me to the point that it warrants a blog post... not that it'll make any difference I guess... :(