A photoshopped picture I did of President Obama holding the 'Peta approved' Katcha Bug product.

If you’re one that spends like 80 hours a day (despite that not being physically possible) watching videos online, you might have seen the infamous Obama fly swat video.

Despite Obama having awesome ninja skills taking care of that fly, apparently now PETA has a problem with him swatting them.  Vice President of PETA, Bruce Friedrich said “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt.  We’d prefer brushing flies away rather then killing them.”

Yesterday afternoon (June 17th 2009) PETA sent Obama over a Katcha Bug, a device that traps insects and allows your free them.  They hope that Obama will use this catcher should the occasion arise again.

All I can say is that this organization is fucking INSANE to ask for such oddball requests.  These guys must literally sit on their asses all day and think (to a point beyond rationality) about what can we do to infuriate people.  I mean seriously… They’re fucking FLIES… They spread around bacteria and disease.  Who the fuck cares the flies well-being?  What stupid shit.  I think somebody ought to release a swarm of flies inside the PETA offices and see what their true reaction would be.

What dumb fucks…

If you haven’t you didn’t see the video it’s here you go:

Source:

• ABC News Blog: PETA Says No More Fly-Killing, Sends Obama a Humane Fly Catcher

A developer (according to his forum rank) for the Matrix Online that goes by the name ‘Warlus’ on the Sony Online Forums made an announcement about The Matrix Online officially shutting down.

On the forums he had this to say:

In May 2004, I embarked upon a journey. I decided to take the red pill in a big way—I became the online community lead for The Matrix Online. Later that year, many of you joined me as you jacked in for the first time. It was a brand new world—a vision of online games that didn’t involve elves, spaceships, or dragons. We became part of the Matrix storyline; living our own adventures in the world painted by the movies.

It seems not so long ago I was jumping into Mara Central and going toe-to-toe with other devs at E3 2004. I had no idea this journey would take me to a whole different company, managing a major revision of the game, and my first producing gig. “Long, strange trip” doesn’t describe the half of it.

Now we’ve seen how far the rabbit hole goes and it’s time to wake up from that dream (or go back to sleep, depending how you look at it). On July 31, 2009, we will be jacking out for the last time. It’s a bittersweet moment for everyone involved with the game; as a player or as a developer.

It has been a good run. Where many games have fizzled out before or shortly after launch, by August we will have lived on in our home at SOE for more than 4 years. To this day, I have never worked with a community as dedicated as The Matrix Online community.

I’ll be at Fan Faire this year showing The Agency and hanging out with any redpills making the trip. The past couple years have been a blast, so I hope to see some of you there again..

The team will also be whipping up an end-of-the-world event. It won’t be quite the same as having over 100 developers in the game as Agents like when we ended beta, but we have 4 years of tricks up our sleeve. It’ll be a chance to revisit all the things that make MxO the memorable experience it is. And how could we pull the plug without crushing everyone’s RSI just one more time?

I have a lot of fond memories from my years working on MxO. We’ve had a good time in the Machines’ little playground and will be sad to see it end. I hope everyone enjoys the last few months of playing The Matrix Online.

See you on the other side.

Daniel “Walrus” Myers

The Matrix Online officially launched in North America on March 22nd 2005.  The game was originally developed by Monolith Productions, which six months later was bought by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).  The idea for The Matrix Online was to have in-game events where the employees would play Agents online.  After Sony bought the rights to the game, they ceased all in-game events and all that remained of the MMO left was a generic bland and boring MMO.

According to one former beta tester of the game, he said:

“It felt like a half-assed Anarchy Online set in The Matrix universe.   The mission system was identical for the most part, the abilities were less interesting and there wasn’t much diversity in the environments.  It did have a wonderful (but small) community, something I can really appreciate.  I wasn’t a fan of the game, but I feel kinda bad for the people who DO enjoy it.”

I can’t personally give any opinion about The Matrix Online as I never played it, because it was rare to read anything positive about the game.  The only related Matrix game I’ve played was “The Path of Neo” which I thought was god awful.

It’s always sad news when you hear about any online game shutting down.  Another MMO that died recently was Shadowbane, which finally shut down May 1st.

In-game screenshot of The Matrix Online

Sources:

• Sony Station Forums – “All Good Things Must End”
• Wikipedia – The Matrix Online

We're 4 out of 6 months before the end of the 1st half of this year, and we STILL don't know of the price of the product or an actual release date.

Not much news has surfaced since I first mentioned my interest in the Palm Pre back on February 20th.  Here we are 4 months later with 2 months to go, and we STILL don’t have a price or a set release date on it.

This fact alone is not only frustrating, but completely ridiculous.  What is the hold up?  When is it coming out?  Do you guys know of an expected price yet?  Both sides (Palm & Sprint) are playing dumb with “We don’t have a price or know when it’s coming out.” This is starting to piss off a lot of people (like me) who have been following this phone since its announcement at CES.  Apple at least had the courtesy of providing a release date when they announced their iPhone.

We expected Palm or Sprint to make an announcement at CTIA with some worthy news about the Pre.  All that was announced at CTIA were the plans you need to use the phone.  Basically an Everything Data phone or a Simply Everything plan.

There have been several rumor dates floating around.  A while back people predicted that the phone would be out my March 1st since Sprint traditionally releases their phones on a Sunday.  Then April 15th (tax day) for whatever reason, then April 30th.  PreCentral.net thinks the release date will be May 17th, but now are having second thoughts about that.  As days wane on towards June 30th, I’m thinking we’re going to see it released the last week of June.

I can’t help but think at this point that maybe they’re laughing or mocking us?  I’ve been reading some of Palm’s posts on their official blog and on their official Twitter profile and some of their responses to the community have been kinda dumb.

Just recently Palm showed the Pre to Molly McAleer, some chick who does her own show called The Molls Show.  I’m guess that Palm showed her the phone to get her to advertise it?  Despite Molly looking kinda cute, ultimately the video she did was pointless… I’ll do you a favor and save you 2 minutes of your life: She reveals to the world in an emo sort of way that she “secretly” has a crush on the Pre.

The only thing that’s worthy of  news since February 20th is that the Palm Pre will support emulation for the old Palm O/S applications.  If I were to make an educated guess, it’s to at least let those that still use the old Palm devices the ability to use them while uring the developers of those old applications to port their software over to Web O/S.

As I’m writing this, PreCentral.net has confirmed with their sources that UPS is shipping back the finalized phones from China to the U.S.  Apparently these phones have the final ROM flash loaded on so they’re ready to be sold at launch.  The question is WHEN?  And how much?

It’s hard to say if Sprint and Palm are trying to keep the hype with the Pre going.  Sprint launched an ad campaign on the phone, ads have been found on Facebook, the homepage of CNN.com and other popular websites, but the ads don’t reveal anything about the price or a release date.  How can you advertise something without including a price?   Just showing pictures of a phone with stupid slogans like “The new Palm Pre Only from Sprint.  And only on the Now Network” doesn’t tell any of us anything we’d like to know.

Update: PreCentral.net officially killed of May 17th, they’re guessing the release date will be June 7th.

With the recent outbreak of this Swine Flu it’d be a good idea to see a visual of where the Swine Flu is spreading. So far at least 20 people in Mexico have died from the H1N1 Swine Flu.  In the U.S. there are confirmed cases of people that are infected with it, but nobody has yet died from it.

Here’s a marker legend for the map below:

• Pink markers are suspect
• Purple markers are confirmed
• Those markers with a dot represent the individual(s) are still alive
• Yellow markers are negative

This map automatically updates to reflect upon any new cases of the Swine Flu.  Keep in mind – the pink markers are suspect, meaning the flu these people have is still being determined.  The purple markers without dots are those that have actually died from the H1N1 Swine Flu… THOSE markers are cause for concern.

Update: It looks like the death toll in Mexico has now surpassed 150 deaths.

Brian Bowman, the Director of Public Affairs for the city of Wilson, N.C., which runs the service, is fighting to keep state government from killing the competition in the area.

Lets say you lived in a city where they directly offered you a service where you could purchase 10/10Mbps internet, 81 TV channel and phone service.  Then you’d have a competitor like Time Warner offer a similar package but with fewer channels (not including Cartoon Network, Disney, The Science Channel, ESPNU, ESPN, or ESPN classic) and a lower upload speed for your internet.

The city offers their package (called Greenlight) for $99/month, and Time Warner offers theirs for $137.95/month.

Obviously any rational person is going to flock towards the $99 package the city offers.  Well Time Warner instead of trying to release a more competitive package against the city, has decided to lobby to get the state government to pass legislation to try and destroy its competition.  The sad thing is Time Warner may just get their wish.

North Carolina’s State Senate proposed Senate bill 1004 & House Bill 1252 that would prevent local services from getting funding under the broadband portion of the national stimulus bill, but attempt to cripple or ban the local service all together.

In the city of Wilson, Brian Bowman is the Director of Public Affairs.  He recently launched a blog and said:

I have a 10Mbps up/down connection at my house.  Can’t get half that from the cable company.  I buy it directly from the city of Wilson.  After less then a year of residential service, almost 3,000 Wilson citizens are subscribing to Wilson’s fiber optic network.  Local businesses in town can get speeds up to 1Gbps.

If the cable & phone companies really want a level playing field, they’d open their books like like we do in the spirit of open meetings and open records law.  They don’t want a level playing field, they just want to be the only team on the field.

Bottom line – these companies are using your state lawmakers to protect monopolies.  It was wrong in 2007 when a similar bill died in the house and it’s wrong today.

According to a local newspaper, the City of Wilson initially approached Time Warner with a request for faster internet service for their residents, and the company refused, as it would cut into their profits.  So the city took it upon themselves to build their own network and sell the service to its citizens at a fraction of the cost.

I have to wonder how lawmakers can legally get away with trying to pass bills like these when they clearly seem anti-competitive.  The only way to prevent this type of thing from happening is to recall these corrupt people as clearly they don’t hold any interest for their people.  The two senators sponsoring Senate bill 1004 are David W. Hoyle & Debbie A. Clary.  Their contact information can be found by simply clicking on their names.  For the house version of this bill, there are far too many people sponsoring this bill, just click on the House Bill 1252 link and look at the sponsors.

Seriously this type crap makes me sick…  If you’re a resident of North Carolina, contact your House & Senate members and voice your disapproval.

Sources:

• Daily Tech – Time Warner, Embarq Fight to Outlaw 100 Mbps Community Broadband in Wilson, NC
• Save NC Broadband.com
• Indyweek – June 2008: Mighty, mighty broadband