Thunder Road

First things first: I am now the owner of bananatornado.com. That’s right. although there is nothing on my page, I got that name on lock-down. Whenever I decide what exactly Banana Tornado is, what it does, and where to get it, maybe I’ll decide to pay for some web hosting an throw something up there.

The Pirate Bay trial began last week, and some of the charges have been dropped already. I look at this case in a similar way that ended Napster. Napster shut down, and new P2P programs popped up in its place. There was BearShare, Grokster, LimeWire, Kazaa, the list goes on. It seems like with software like this (providing services that allow for illegal downloading, but don’t actually provide the files themselves) the result is always the same. Big names are involved in this case, the MPAA being one. I highly doubt this case will result in any real change with the Pirate Bay and it certinantly won’t have an effect on the use of torrents in general.

I had a chance to check out Second Life (Its an assignment for the class I’m in, I swear!) I’ve gotta say, pretty disappointed. I was not expecting much, but what I did find was nothing to get excited over. One annoyance is it seems like very few files are stored on your computer, so everything is rendered and loaded from their servers while you’re in the game. This results in lots of loading and lag. Aside from that, the only other people I found in the game were what can only be described as weirdos, rambling to each other and not making a whole lot of sense.

I understand the concept of Second Life, its pretty much a social networking tool. People, companies, organizations can pay and create their own little environments, hawk their products, whatever. What I don’t understand is what I’m supposed to be doing while I’m in Second Life. It’s not a game, its not an MMO. There are no quests, there are no goals, objectives, enemys, nothing. Its essetianly MySpace rendered in a 3D enviroment, which is something no one needs. I’ve spent time playing World of Warcraft, Tabula Rasa, Earth & Beyond, Guild Wars, and a variety of other MMORPGs and I really do enjoy these kind of games, although I never put in enough time to progress very far in them. These games have a point, a purpose. Second Life seems to be a socialization tool, and an excuse for companies to place ads in a virtual world. I’m not big on using MMOs to meet people, this seems creepy, and I’m certainly not interested in talking to strangers in Second Life either.

If we’re talking about free online games, let me direct everyone right here: Offroad Velociraptor Safari.

This week I came across a producer, Zomby. The album is, “Where Were  U in ’92?” and its good music for walking around campus at night, or running away from the undead.

Zomby – Tears in the Rain