Bayrunner.com BLOG

The Real Metal Gear More »

Tonight’s big Xbox 360-themed Cirque du Soleil performance will be co-hosted by iCarly’s Jennette McCurdy and MTV’s Sway Calloway. More »

This has been bothering me for some time: More »

I know of someone that does prison tatooos by melting ballpoint pens onto skin. He’s actually really good at it, it’s a shame he puts dicks in everything he does. More »

This article does a great job of explaining the impact of net neutrality on gaming. I’d like to add a few comments.

First, it’s important to note that the court decision is only about the F.C.C.’s current powers and does not reflect a position about net neutrality itself. Basically, the court is saying that if the F.C.C. wants to control behavior like Comcast’s then it needs to get permission from Congress first.

Second, although this isn’t *good* for net neutrality proponents (of which I’m one) it isn’t necessarily all that bad. This decision may spur Congress into action on reviewing F.C.C.’s mandate and explicitly giving them the power to regulate internet access to the extent that they already regulate all other electronic communications (radio, TV, satellite, cable). Once Congress acted then the F.C.C. would no longer have to expend so much energy in “proving” that they can regulate ISPs and instead could focus on their mandate.

Third, net neutrality is not as clearly defined by politics as some would have you believe. The F.C.C.’s action against Comcast was taken during the Bush presidency. The current administration has certainly ramped up their support of net neutrality but this is by no means a (R) v. (D) issue.

Personally, as a Comcast customer I have serious concerns about their business practices and am going to start investigating my options. They’ve already shown their willingness to treat data packets differently based on their perceived content or use. Although at this point we only know about their blocking of bittorrent traffic (which they vehemently denied), I have no confidence that they will stop there.

What would prevent Comcast from slowing down my Xbox 360 data to the point that I cannot stream a movie through Xbox Live? If Comcast is offering the same movie through their Pay-Per-View service wouldn’t it be to their benefit to degrade my internet speed to the point that I instead use Comcast’s PPV service?

Not only that but a 11GB movie from Xbox Live (“District 9″ was just over that size) counts toward my 250GB monthly limit with Comcast and imposes a limit on my movie viewing ability. If I instead used Comcast’s PPV service then it doesn’t count against my monthly limit. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

Comcast’s efforts to buy NBC Universal makes this a scarier proposition. Would anything prevent Comcast from making access to CNN online slower than NBC news online?

In a perfect world we could rely on ISPs to act appropriately and in the best interest of their customers but clearly we cannot; it’s not the fault of the regulators but instead the fault of those “bad” ISPs that made regulation a necessity in the first place. More »

Not this one. This one is the U.S. promotional poster for the big screen version of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It’s…boring! Russia, god bless ‘em, did a much better job.

Just look at it! We get the two leads, the dagger, and the backdrop in one fell swoop. The poster informs the views and lets them know a bit about the film. It’s a preview that doesn’t move.

The U.S. poster is just an image of a movie star. How dull!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time kicks up theaters this May and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina and Toby Kebbell. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Russian Poster for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [ComingSoon.net]

As you guys might know, an 8.8 degree earthquake hit my country (Chile) on Saturday at 3:35 a.m.

At that time I was with my GF, we had just finished watching some TBBT episodes and we went to bed at 3:25 approx. We were talking and laughing an then the eartquake struck the house, lights went off, I live in an 8th floor of a 14 story building and the oscillating movement was out of this world. I grabbed my gf and we went under the frame of the door waiting for the quake to stop, in the meantime the background sounds were like a thunderstorm, I could hear all my stuff falling into the floor and on the outside lights all over the sky, caused by electric failures.

When it stopped, I took my girlfriend and we went outside, I knocked the door of one of my neighbors to see if she was ok but no one answered, suddendly I felt it was raining! The pool on the last floor collapsed and the water was falling through some of the apartments and the walls of the building.

I had internet on my phone for about 5 minutes and it was slow as hell, not enough time to check the news or put a message online to tell everyone I was ok. No phones, no lights, nothing… It was a complete mess.

In the morning when the light came the devastation was not as much as one could imagine, some of my things were on the floor but it was nothing terrible, I just lost a cup that smashed into the floor.

At the moment I only have electricity, water and cellphone signal. The earth still moves from time to time (6.2 degrees today in the morning) and the cities are slowly recovering. But the destruction path was big, a tsunami hit some cities and the origin of the earthquake was in the Bio-Bio region (500 kms to the south of Santiago, where I live) where the richter scale pointed 9 and where I have some relatives I still haven’t heard a single word of.

But this proved something, our structural resilience as a country is amazing considering the energy liberated in the Haiti earthquake was 500 times weaker (seems like the richter scale is a logarithmic function) and the body count is going (sadly) on the 300+ and there aren’t major structural damages.

It was a terrible thing to live.

I actually reviewed the original for a publication a while ago and slammed it. It wasn’t just my opinion, in a sense, as I was worried I was being harsh so I got some friends and family to play it and they didn’t like it either.

A few months later, I was hit with a pretty serious case of depression and anxiety attacks that forced me to basically take some time out from everything to get better. Not actually being able to stand conventional video games, and seeing as I still had my review copy lying around, I decided to give Endless Ocean another try.

Suddenly, it just clicked. Maybe it was the state of mind I was in, but I just appreciated the relaxing nature of the game. The lack of pressure combined with the soothing voice of Hayley Westenra just clicked with me. It was a great way to remove that stress I was feeling at the time.

I’m all better now, but with a renewed perspective on life I really look forward to this game. The only concern I have now is the music. Perhaps a bit of expansion on this? Otherwise, thanks for the review, Stephen.

Ron (can I call you Ron? You can call me Dan. Nice to meet you!) as a gamer and a parent myself, I have to agree with you that violence in video games is glorified, but it also glorified in movies, comic books, and animation. Then again, sex is also glorified in these businesses. It is a business though, and glorified violence and glorified sex sells. Movies with crazy special effects like Star Wars, Star Trek, Avatar… They sell. Or glorified martial arts movies these days with people flying around. Glorified entertainment of any kind is a seller, it is what captivates the audience.

I do agree with studies that link kids playing violent video games to the very same kids acting out. Me and mom aren’t together, and she lets the kids (8 and 9), play Gears of War. My son (8) has this belief that to resolve things in life, you just “kill” the opposition. Honestly, that scares me, and with good reason these days. When he’s with me almost every weekend, I don’t allow him to play violent games. I do speak up and explain “killing” is NOT how you resolve things. He was suspended from riding the bus twice back to back for beating kids up on the bus recently. First time was in direct control of the response. I grounded him for a day after talking to him about it. The day he got back on the bus, he did it again. Mom in control this time grounded him for a week. Hopefully he got the point about what is acceptable in games and what is acceptable in real life.

However, where pornography is concerned (and I honestly have no interest in videos, I find them more humorous and silly), I can’t say I’d rather they were watching porn. Granted, you did say “sex”, not “porn” in the above. Which porn and sex while very much related, are also very different things. Porn doesn’t go out if it’s way to point out to practice safe sex, the risks involved from STDs, pregnancy, to a video being uploaded to the internet, or pictures to a cellphone.

Yeah, I fully agree sex is natural and wonderful, and there’s alot of hipocracy in how it’s viewed in society. However, to say mainstream media runs from it? What decade are we talking about? TV commecials about viagra, cialis, enzyte, etc all over the TV. Hell, I was watching TV one night, and no joke, saw a commerical on a major TV station for a vibrator for women. As far back as I remember, late night TV had commecials for 800 and 900 numbers for phone sex. Since when in recent history do we shy away from it? Heck, we had a TV series call “Sex and The City.”

Worse than porn though, Japanese animated porn… Hentai. I have a massive collection of hentai actually. People complaining here that porn depicts this all screwed up needs to sit down and watch some hentai. Some of the most disturbing things I’ve seen are in hentai. I’ve never seen porn on HBO, or Cinemax that portrayed girls being raped in the worst ways imaginable then they end up liking the guy that did it, and help him rape other girls. You’ll see that in plenty of hentai though! I’ll leave it at that though, as there are crazy people out there who are trying to ban hentai and hentai games from being imported from Japan, and blame games like Rapelay on violent crimes. Riiiight. It’s always the games (never the parents in control of what their kids do).

In the end, it’s about the context in which that which is being viewed is portrayed. A simple love/sex scene in a movie I do believe is far less harmless in comparison to say, Modern Warfare 2.

If we’re talking about say… Two famous movies for their content.. Natural Born Killers vs Showgirls… I might honestly go with Showgirls. Both movies have a purpose, and executes them quite well in ways. However, I’d say Showgirls is the lesser of the evils because it doesn’t follow a path of “this is acceptable and this is OK.” Infact, I would almost see it as “here’s why you don’t wanna grow up to be a stripper or a Vegas dancer!” Still, they will see neither, and I don’t own either one. If it was say Friday The 13th vs a movie with you, Ron… It’s Friday The 13th.

However, as people do note, violence is in our human nature… As far as as history records, there has always been sex, and there has always been violence. It’s almost as if we cannot have one without the other.

Here we are, apparently civilized, and still in Iraq (I don’t understand)… Still in Afghanistan (I fully understand). Kids get out of high school, join the military, a few months later they are grunts on the frontlines, ready to kill and be killed. Some enjoy the bloodshed, some don’t. Military orders that are given that knowingly result in civilian deaths. We try to deny it happens though. We get involved in proxy wars that have gone in for centuries, and in so many cases for what? We then turn these wars into Friday night entertainment by making a movie about it, or a mini series about it. I mention this because I saw Black Hawk Down was on TV last night. Great movie imo, but I also force myself to remember such events really did happen. George Romero recently made a movie about how people are fascinated by violence, and compelled to look at it, document it, etc. Violence is natural, it is just repressed because it is not acceptable by civilized society and laws.

So Ron, I mostly agree with you, but it also comes down to the context of the content being viewed, and the maturity level of those viewing it. And in either case of sex or violence, should parents for whatever reason allow their kids to view it in ANY context, it should be without question the responsibility of the parent to explain what acceptable and not acceptable in the real world. As for kids getting into the stuff without parents knowing, then those parents need to take more precautions and steps to ensure they can’t do that. Most parents I think are too lazy to give a damn.

Ron, if you’re still reading, thanks for taking the time to read one of my excessive internet posts! I have written far more than I intended. I do have to say though, I was recently talking about you. In particular about how we live in a world where if you drop your pants and whip it out, you get paid. If I did that, people would run away screaming, and I’d be arrested. Seriously… I don’t get it!

~ Dan