Thank god for the modern digital era where you do not own the things you buy. That operating system on your new laptop, not yours. That music you bought from itunes can only be used on itunes and you ipod. That new video game you bought can only be installed 3 times.

Its almost like companies went so far overboard on anti-piracy that the screwed everyone in the butt. But I guess if you can't get money from everyone you might as well make legit buyers pay for the same product multiple times.

So as I put Assassins Creed into my XBOX 360 I get an error that says (in multiple languages):

To play this disc, put it in an Xbox 360 console.

I think I may need to bring my 360 to a psycologist because it seems rather confused about what it is. I have tried asking it what it actually thinks it is, but it just responds with a funny fan noise. Hopefully this is an issue that my 360 can work out in therapy.

Gears of War did alot of little things right. One of these things was how they handled achievements. I like the idea that some of their achievements unlocked items, like pictures. I am not asking for anything big from companies, just a little recognition for things that I completed. I like the idea of getting gamer pics from difficult achievements, and possibly a theme for completing them all. Other items could include unique in-game items or skins. I think Oblivion could have done this with their horse armour. Overall, I would just like to see a little more thought put into achievements and any implications they may cause for games (no matter how minor).

For the past few days I have had the opportunity to do first hand field work at a superfund site.  While I have done laboratory work with samples an experiments from superfund sites, actually going out and seeing one has made me realize how bad some of them are.

For those not familiar with Superfund, it is a government program that spends your tax dollars and industry taxes to clean up environmental disasters left by companies.  Many of these sites are almost fully funded by the government due to the inability of the old owners to pay, inability to prove liability, or the inability to get money from the owners.

I knew the site that I was going to be working at was going to be bad, with all the high concentrations of creosote and other random chemicals that got left behind and dumped into the river.  It amazed me at how much money they have spent trying to clean up and contain the spill, putting in new soil, trying to regrow native plants, and how long they expected the cleanup to take (50 years).

The most amazing thing was that despite all this, no plants will grow.  They have spent many years and millions of dollars, but everything they plant, dies.  They have even put in irrigation systems, but none of the plants survive.  At the site, there is a retaining wall to contain most of the chemicals, and the concentrations in the wall are about 100 times that outside the wall, but even outside the wall nothing will grow.

You can even see were the plume of contaminants ended because everything outside of the plume is green, and everything inside is dead.  They have done studies on the fish and have found high leves of contaminants in them that probably originated from my site.

The goal of our research is to see if the microbial communities can be stimulated to increase degradation of the chemicals and decrease the amount of time and money to clean the site.  There are many metabolites present within some of the wells which suggests that it is highly possible.

I am just amazed that somebody could have willingly did this to the environment.  I can understand that at the time, most people did not know how harmful creosote and many of the other hazardous materials they were using were, but it was well know that some ammonia solutions were.  Alot of the known contaminants, at the time, were not dumped in the river, but just right next to it (dumping them in the river was illegal).  The ones they did not know about went straight into the river and have greatly damaged the wildlife, and probably half the people that drink from it (and there are alot of people that do).

Something that is interesting is that the company that created the site I did some field work at also has done this at other sites in other states as well.

The thing that bothers me the most, is that the harmful waste they knew about should have been treated, but laws did not mandate that when most of the waste was dumped.  Even without laws, people should still have atleast an ethical or moral obligation not to purposely try to screw over our planet.

Did not respond as of press time seems to be in almost every news statement issued by Gamespot that did not come directly from a developer.  It is rather annoying when the write this because it almost nullifies everything the wrote in their story, and you can basically say that to remove any liability from your statement.

While their did not respond as of press time is usually on something mundane, I do not think I have ever seen a followup to a news article that has ever said that.  In being a game site, there is really no reason for such a statement because it is very rare that anything ever said on a game site is mainstream enough to make it onto real news. 

I would rather much see their press team wait a day or so for a reply then write that seven word statement because chances are I would have never heard the "breaking news" anywhere else.  If by chance I did, it will probably be the same half written story that I could have heard anywhere. 

Journalism need to regain some integrity and remove half written statements.  They can either hold the story or remove the mundane statement that they did not get a response to and save it for another article if it really is that interesting.

Every article I read on new car development mentions hybrid vehicles.  Not all hybrids are the concern of this blog, just the ones that you plug into a wall socket.

Most American power comes from coal, a power source that is 30% efficient and produces a lot of environmental damage.  Coal mines tear the earth to pieces, and the burning of coal produces a lot of CO2 waste.  Since coal it only about 30% efficient, most of the energy produced by coal is wasted and roughly 70% of the pollution produced comes from something that did not even generate power.

The main selling point of these electric cars is that you can achieve over 100 miles per gallon, while producing virtually no CO2.  All this really does is trade pollution produced by gasoline to pollution produced by coal.  However, since you will never actually see that your electricity comes from coal, you can rest easy by telling yourself that your power came from wind or some other "environmentally friendly" power source.

I would be hard pressed to believe that plugging your car into an electric grid will really decrease any amount of pollution.  The only benefit I can see is that if you plug in your vehicle at work and essential run your car for free.  Next time you go and plug in your car, remember that most of that power comes from a very inefficient, high polluting source.

I do not believe that video games should replace life.  They should offer at most, an escape from life.  Rockstar's new table tennis game could signal a very disturbing trend in gaming, and that is the introduction of tasks that can easily be done in life.

Sports games are very unique in the industry, in the sense that you can go outside and accomplish them, at the very least, on any given weekend.  However, I can understand the use for games like Madden and NHL 2k6.  These sports, to be fully simulated and not just pickup games, require large groups of people and time.  Since football is an outdoor sport, there is also a weather factor.  As far as hockey goes, I live in an area where there nearest rink is a few hours away. 

Games like table tennis require little time, effort, and for a match, only one other person.  I would be hard pressed to find any place in the United States where there isn't a table within walking distance, let alone driving distance.  One of the great things about table tennis, is that you do not have to be great at it to have fun with it.  The other great thing is that, unless all your friends are superstars on the world circuit, it should be easy to find someone at your level of play.

If you have any interest in table tennis, I would implore you not to buy this game.  It can only support the downfall of gaming, and unless you want to be playing a game about controlling a person watching television in the near future, I would suggest you stear clear.