Blackmoor Vituperative

As I am looking at the auditions for the second season of Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, a few of things have become apparent:

1) Most aspiring supers desperately need help with their costumes.

2) Most aspiring supers are doughy guys with guts bigger than mine.

3) Of the few aspiring female supers, most are doughy gals with guts bigger than mine.

4) Something about being near a wrestling ring makes people think they need to shout to be heard, even though they are speaking into a microphone.

5) A lot of people are unclear on the distinction between “super hero” and “renaissance fair volunteer” (huzzah!).

Here are my picks of the best from the auditions currently online. It’s hard picking good ones, because, well, most of them are just really, really bad (and not in a good way). Even these are just sort of okay, and not really good.

American Angel
Elementas
Fire Ant
Jetstream
Mama Voodoo and Wyld Cat
Midnight Wolf
Omnicron
Optimyst

I thought about listing a few of the worst, but I started to feel sorry for them, so you’ll have to find the bad ones on your own. Maybe I am getting soft-hearted in my old age.

Here’s some fun stuff:

PC World’s The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

Computer World’s Don’t Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops

The early onset of daylight saving time in the United States this year may have been for naught.

The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

“We haven’t seen any measurable impact,” said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation’s largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

(from ZDNet, Daylight saving shift fails to curb energy use)

Gee, what a surprise.

The problem with people is not just that that they are stupid. They are, but by itself that is not a large problem. The real problem is that people are stupid and that they want to force others to obey them. That’s where the real problems of a society come from: people having the power to force other people to do stupid things.

As for Daylight Saving Time, I like this analogy:

“It’s like cutting off 6 inches from the bottom of the blanket and sewing it on the top because your shoulders are exposed.”

Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.

The US Department of Homeland Security is insisting that Verisign hand over the master keys of the Internet.

If it succeeds, the US will be able to track DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec) all the way back to the servers that represent the name system’s root zone on the Internet.

Effectively it would mean that US spooks could snoop on anyone in the Worldwide wibble and place control of the Interweb tubes firmly in the paws of the US government.

(from The Inquirer, Homeland Security wants master key for the Internet)

Apple and EMI have agreed to come out with a “premium” music service that permits downloads of songs without the intrusion of the Digital Rights Mafia. As part of the deal, the cost per song will increase by 30%.

So let me get this straight. The record distributor saves a ton of cash because they are no longer chasing the DRM windmill, Apple saves money because they no longer have to regularly patch their software to keep up with people who find ways around the obnoxious DRM entanglements… and they are going to charge more for it.

I suppose in the long run, it’s a good thing. Once DRM is dead and buried, the law of the market will kick in and competition will force prices down. At least in theory. Unfortunately, the American music industry is currently dominated by the Big Four cartel, so the market pressure will have a hard time pushing prices down.

Bluetooth headsets are “bling” for boring people: tacky ornamentation that serves no purpose (if you aren’t on the phone, having the thing in your ear serves no purpose), and which only shows the people around you how little taste you have.

It’s the exact opposite of “fashion“.

Not that fashion is all that great a concept to begin with.

This is my final update on my evaluation of Star Wars Galaxies.

I have played a Jedi up to level 20, a spy up to around 10, and was working on another character when I ran into a peculiar error message. When attempting to create a character named “Siobhan”, I got an error message that said names of famous Star Wars characters and planets were not permitted.

Um… what the hell? Since when is the name “Siobhan” a Star Wars character or the name of a planet?

So I went on the Star Wars Galaxies forums and asked if this was a famous planet or character that I’d somehow never heard of. The answer was… ye gods, it’s just too ridiculous. Because the name filter won’t permit any name that has the letters H – A – N in it.

Ethan. Chani. Hannibal. Vaughan. Nathaniel. Siobhan. “…han…” is a very common series of letters in names. And none of those names are permitted? You’re kidding me, right? They weren’t kidding.

You know, there are so many, many things wrong with this game (I am not going to list them all, because it’s simply not worth the effort), but I have struggled through and persevered over the past couple of weeks because, by gosh, it’s Star Wars. I will go a long way and forgive a host of faults just to play in the Star Wars universe.

But this is the last straw. Any game with that level of obnoxious, overt stupidity built into it is simply not worth my time.

I really, really look forward Bioware’s game. Hell, at this point I am thinking about giving World Of Warcraft another try. I hadn’t played SWG yet when I evaluated WOW, and I think I may have been too harsh on it.

Another day, another security hole in Internet Explorer.

Are you listening yet? Switch to Firefox.

The phone call is about two things, first that Guild Wars, what NC Soft believes to be the second largest massively multiplayer online game around, is getting a final expansion and that the final expansion will prepare gamers for Guild Wars 2.

(from Kotaku, Guild Wars 2, GW Expansion Unveiled)

You know, from what I have seen of other MMOGs, and what I have seen of Guild Wars, I think the Guild Wars folks are doing a great job. I think it’s reasonable to expect that GW2 will be a great game.

Here’s some other news: I keep hearing rumours that Bioware might be working on a MMO for Knights Of The Old Republic (they are definitely working on a MMO, the rumour part is what that MMO might be). Now that would be a great game. Bioware combined an awesome story with a great user interface with KOTOR, and I am sure they would do a great job with a Knights Of The Old Republic MMO.

I’m not going to hold my breath, though.

An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission.

NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.

(from NASA, NASA – Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn)

Proof that the masters of Saturn are gamers.