HSDEMONZ.com

Today was an interesting day. Weather was nice, somewhat overcast though but that made for a nice day outdoors. I hauled the wife, and kid down to the EX (Canadian National Exhibition) to enjoy a nice day outside on the kids midway.

Daughter loved it. A dozen or so rides on an all-day midway pass and she was in hog heaven. Speaking of hogs, she had a great time at the Petting Zoo that has been a staple at the event for as long as I can remember.

After a few hours of animals and rides we headed over to one of my favorite parts of the show each year, the Sports Building. Co-Sponsored by Xbox, Playstation, and the local Sports Channels we spent an hour being entertained by the BMX/Skateboard/Rollerblade punks doing their thing. I then got to meet a number of you over at the Xbox booth playing Forza and GHII. It was great meeting you guys and I’m sure a pleasure for you as well.

It’s always great going to an event like the Xbox Booth and talking to fans of Xbox-Scene and hearing people talk about their modding experiences both good and bad. It’s even more fun when I drop my alias into the conversation and then deal with the mixed reactions. Dealing with the ins and outs of a large web site each day is one thing but it’s nice to meet face to face with our membership.

I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to spend with you guys. It became pretty clear that the renta-geeks they had manning the booth were not thrilled that XS/HSD more or less hijacked it. I’ll tell you what was a pisser, neither the Xbox nor the Playstation booths highlighted anything new. They were little more than what you get at a BestBuy, a dozen or so machines at each running 6 month old games.

Lego fans will dig the last photo I took before we decided to call it a day at the CNE…

Er..

I’ll upload the photo later. Having technical difficulties

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/rant mode

I noticed a lot of you on my friend’s lists on LIVE have BioShock. I like the demo and vids I’ve seen. Just not sure I want to get involved with it. Despite what some think, I don’t grab every title. (While I could easily “download” a release I simply can’t be bother downloading pirate releases) If I don’t feel it’s worth buying it’s not worth downloading in my opinion, which was a big step I took years ago when I realized that myself and most people who “download” crap from Torrents, newsgroups, or whatever generally don’t play the material out, sometimes not even playing it much at all.

The whole “gotta get the latest release” craze might suite the young, or the broke. I’m at a point in my life that time can be at a premium, and I generally only play games I really like. I guess that’s where buying titles I play makes sense, as I do support the platform, and the developers. I don’t buy what I don’t like, and I don’t waste time downloading the shit either. Imagine the time I save not getting every release and burning them, play testing, labeling and making covers etc that some of you do for you pirate collections.

A while ago I wrote about how I tossed boxes of burned material out. I honestly don’t miss it one bit. I find that a lot of pirates who burn and sit on shit and collect it are pack rats generally. Most are disorganized, their rooms a mess, and have boxes of crap they never get around to playing out. While media is dead cheap, so many of you guys are grabbing and burning everything in sight. The money you guys could be saving if you’d be at least a bit more selective could pay for NEW video/audio equipment in a year time sometimes.

You go into the #fw channel on IRC on efnet and you’ll find guys who sit and eagerly await EVERY new release for the 360, and I’m sure every other console as well. I’m not gonna judge them on their piracy habits. I’ve been there and done that. But, having lived and done all that, and having had more PC’s and burners than most will ever have underwear I can honestly say that at some point you gotta stand back and wonder was it all worth it?

I sometimes wish I had spent half of what I had spent since the pre 1x CD burning days to now and put it away in a bank or term deposit. I’d have 3 new cars for sure by now just on that money alone, if not the interest. (more or less the same, best argument to stop Smokers from smoking in my opinion is the life long cost of the habit)

The personal time spent, and the money spent on the burning habits are my big concern for the scene and it’s underground. I’m a lot less concerned with the RIAA and other organizations and their quotes or millions and billions lost to piracy. While I have no doubt money is lost, they can in no way determine with a solid number what every gamer maker or movie house is losing due to piracy, so I wish they’d drop the bullshit numbers.

Telling a 15 year old that “Mega Corp” is gonna lose 15 million due to piracy when they had record profits in the billions isn’t gonna make15 year old Joe stop burning DVD-R versions of his download “300” movie or stop stop burning that copy of “BioShock” for his IExtremed 360. These arguments don’t make kids stop pirating. They see piracy as a way to get stuff they largely can’t afford. While they might be able to buy 2 titles a year, with their piracy tools and cheap media they now can grab 100 games per year and have money and blanks left over to pirate other media like movies. It’s hard to convince Joe with a money argument to stop piracy.

I think though, for at least some people, if we can show them what their piracy habits are really costing them in the long run then maybe you can reach some of them. You got to reach them young though. Once you get to my age and you have these incredible tools at your disposal it’s hard to turn away from the ease of access to this stuff.

I’m walking through Best Buy today, and looking at the movies on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray. I don’t own BlueRay or HD-DVD players, but I look the media over regardless in the hopes of something getting released that makes me want to buy 2 things, a HiDef player, and a 1080p LCD or Plasma TV to play them on. So far, nothing. However, looking over this week’s releases I see a few that at least on DVD are tempting. I pick them up, look them over and consider the purchase. I then weigh it on my mind how good these are or aren’t.

Then, the devil on my left shoulder reminds me that I have cable internet, some of the fastest in Canada. Same devil reminds me that I also have an old newsgroup server account. I can easily grab every one of those releases I had in my hand in DVD 5 or better format.

Well, I’m at home now and realize while all I have to do is click on Newsleecher and I’m 20 minutes away from watching one of those DVD’s.

I also release that while it’s “free” to me it simply wasn’t worth buying in the first place. So why bother downloading it?!?

That’s pretty much where I’m at these days. I have DVD players and Modded XBOX’s , 360’s, Wii’s to watch movies and play games on that I could download the world and pay nothing. Problem is, so little of what’s out there is worth my time to download.

Like most husbands and fathers, I have to consider the family expenses and I have a budget to play with. Until the end of the year I figure I’ll have funds to freely buy 5-6 titles for the 360, and maybe 2 for the Wii if I so choose. Setting a budget is a good first step to this video game habit. Even the pack rat in me could never justify having every title. So much of it is simply unplayable and incomplete garbage.

How many times have we read reviews where a game is shipped and it’s clearly unfinished? From slight but clear graphic glitches to levels that can’t actually be finished, or save game points that lock a game up completely? I say it defiantly day in and day out that if you wouldn’t pay for it.. don’t waste your time downloading it.

XS is something I’ve been involved with since 2001, and a cornerstone of our beliefs is that we want and encourage everyone to learn and discuss methods to backup your investments. We aren’t trying to encourage people to pirate. We definitely aren’t trying to encourage people to go the further step of pirating for money, making mass duplicates for sale. (a la some of the recent idiots who were raided)

We’ll always be accused of duplicity or at least being hypocritical. That’s fine. That’s the line in the sand we drew for a number of reasons. Some to keep Xbox-Scene.com and PS3Scene.com afloat. Some to make life easier for those that have the chores of maintaining some semblance of balance and order to the forums. Few sites.. and few people who visit our site know what it’s like to operate and maintain a site the size of XS, with the expectations that people put on us. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone to be honest.

This fall will mark the 7^th year we’ve been doing this XS thing. 2 years ago we half considered ending it and moving on but the scene continued to grow, expand and flourish. That is a testament to the way we do things, to our staff, and to the membership the comes and goes as new blood comes in and old leave for new interests and greener pastures.

This somehow became an anti-piracy post instead of a general human interest post. My bad.

P.S. Step over to Thoughthead.com and expand your mind. He blogs more often and with less drivel.

Peace.

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Details

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Ok. I just heard this from a trusted source. While I rarely consider a PC version of a game over a console version, especially a tight 360 version I did give some consideration to the PC version of Bioshock. As a whole I’m undecided on Bioshock, but I did have some initial leanings towards the PC version is I wouldn’t mind some higher ends visuals.

Then I heard about the limited installs. I was told 2 installs. WTF.

Googling the subject I came across the Wikipedia entry for Bioshock that said the dev bumped it to 5. Is this where PC gaming is heading? People fucking with us when we buy the product?

SecurROM will NOT stop the piracy of this game. It doesn’t on any other.

I guarantee it.

This game is probably already listed on every NZB listing site on the web.

Dumb fucking devs.

UPDATED: Engadget.com Rootkit.

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Seems like we’ve raced right through this one this year. My kid turned 3 this year, my nephew turned 4 and I hit my 5^th Wedding Anniversary without a shooting or a divorce. Good times.

I’m looking to redecorate my daughter’s room. Why is it that no matter how much square footage you have it never seems to be enough? The plan was to get he a new Twin bed to replace the children’s bed she’s had since got out of her crib. Considered some Bunch type options that would accommodate a desk or storage under the bed, but I think we’ve settled on a normal bed frame that she can keep well into her teens.

Blew off a planned trip to the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) today on account of rain. No biggie. We’ll do it tomorrow, or at worse next weekend.

shazam!

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