The Picture of Debt

Graphics are from USA Today.

StarCraft 2

Alright, my group is moving on to StarCraft 2 as THE game to play this summer. Who's in? We play every Friday night from 9 p.m. to midnight Pacific Standard Time.

Of course, many of us also play every single night to get ready for Friday night's bash, but that's a different story.

Spy Network inside a Game

Get this. EVE Online, a space-based computer game in which a maximum of 50,000 real life people play simultaneously, is so realistic that there are spy networks inside the game!

Players come together to form corporations, and these corporations join alliances that help each other. Since killing each other's virtual characters are allowed, the turf wars can get nasty. One such corporation, called the GoonSwarm, has the most effect spy network in the game. They used it to take down one of their rivals.

In their first assault, hundreds of spaceships gathered to assault their rival's star base. To their dismay, their rival warped in one of the first Titan-class starships. The Doomsday super weapon by the Lotka Volterra Titan destroyed nearly all of the invaders in one blast. The intelligence network didn't even know that Lotka Volterra had a Titan.

GoonSwarm recovered, fought back by sending in 500 more ships, and destroyed Lotka Volterra from the inside. What the upper echelon of Lotka Volterra did not realize was that their ranks were already infiltrated by numerous spies. Although the spies could not gain access to the inner cabal within Lotka Volterra that held knowledge of the Titan, the spies did control several star bases.

Knowledge is power, as GoonSwarm's spies sowed disinformation, confusion, and outright betrayal. In the epic battle to follow, the spies discovered the location of the incubator that was building another Titan. The shipyard had enough fuel to withstand only a 24 hour siege. Around 400 to 600 ships attacked in a coordinated time frame. At the same time, Lotka Volterra had 300 ships defending the new DeathStar.

There were so many ships in the same region of space that the real life server of EVE Online started to crash. 1000 ships firing all of their weapons, flying, coordinating, and dying created even more pieces of debris. The computer couldn't handle it. By the end of it all, the incubating Titan was destroyed.

What won the fight was more than guns. It was won by a spy network that knew where to strike. This stuff reads like a novel!

For the story, go here: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=527


This story happened in 2007. What stories will be written this year?

Fewer Pictures Too

Along with fewer web log entries, I have noticed that there are few picture postings on photo websites as well. I know that several Smugmug photo galleries from my friends have not been updated in the last 6 months, and a few have been outright canceled. There was a burst from 2003 to 2007 when the digital single lens reflex cameras caused a flurry of activity. However, it feels like it has been shrinking every since.

I wonder if this is a general theme towards fewer users creating user-generated content. I realize that the mass media tells us that user-generated content is all the rage. However, I believe it is more nuanced than that. The volume of the material is certainly going up, but it is being done by fewer and fewer skilled amateurs.

As I have noted, most people are migrating toward shorter thoughts (e.g. Facebook updates) instead of fuller, longer well-thought-out journal entries. The same thing appears to be happening to photographs. Most pictures are people-focused, event-triggered shots (e.g. birthday party, vacation) rather than capturing a moment, a landscape, a thought, a pattern, a reflection.

I want to stretch a bit and predict that the role of editor is returning. An editor is someone who sorts through a mountain of information and presents us with a deck of material that he or she feels is the most relevant. Now, this editorship is not going to be like the role of newspaper, magazine, and TV editors we have today, but I also believe we have passed the time where we drink straight from the hose of unfiltered news and user content.

Woot, woot

The one-deal-a-day website Woot is being acquired by Amazon, according to CNN. Will we get better deals now from Woot? Who knows?

Today's deal was the brand new Apple iPod Nano.

Woot!

Stacraft II Frenzy

Tom's Hardware reports that Korean Air is painting a 747 and a 737 with StarCraft 2 logo. Ah, the benefits of being a South Korean gamer.

What is More American Than Playing Games on the Fourth?

Nothing!

Hurry, Steam is having sales until July 4th. Whoohooo to PC and Mac computer players.

Out of Bags

We are trying to be good here in our household, so good that we ran out of regular paper bags. We use our own bags for grocery shopping, and use the brown paper bags to collect recyclables. When the recycables bags get too dirty or torn, we recycle the bag along with the rest of the contents.

Well, we are out of bags, so ironically we have to open pristine plastic bags to house our recyclables now. It's totally backwards. I have to remind myself to ask for paper bags the next time I'm at the super market.

Games on Steam

Here are today's games being tracked by Steam. The game my group is spending most of our time on (Battlefield: Bad Company 2) doesn't even rank in the top 10. It is ranked even lower than the old game Counter-Strike. The staying power of Counter Strike is shocking.

Why Are Planes White?

Picture taken from FlightBlogger.

Why are the airplanes of the world painted mostly white? It turns out that dark colors (red, black, etc.) require a lot of heavy pigments, adding weight to the plane. Weight is a top concern to the airline companies of the world. So the reason that planes are painted white is that the planes are lighter when they are white.