Anthony: Piracy, and getting back into the swing of things.

It's been a while. Several months, in fact.
I've not had sufficient reason to yell, rant, rage, complain, bitch, whine, moan, grumble or even be slightly disgruntled, and certainly not over the internet.
Life has provided me with more than enough outlets for my rage, which has decreased, along with my spare time. But I'm going to take a break from actually being productive and give yelling about issues another shot. It's been a long, long while, so don't expect me to be in full form.

I want to talk about pirates. Not the sea sailing kind either. No, that was a terrible joke. Sorry.

I want to talk about pirates in the game industry. Not anywhere else, because that's not my area of expertise. Just gaming.

First off, I've got a great tip for 'em:
How about a great steaming dose of FUCK OFF YOU DUMB BASTARDS.
Yes, that sounds about right.

You can't justify it, unless you literally cannot obtain the game, such as if it isn't sold anymore, or at least not in your country. If you do pirate games, fuck you. You know why?

Because you're raping the industry. You pirate, and companies respond in three ways:
1: Amazingly large amounts of DRM.
2: Adding lots of features that you can't get, (multiplayer) and trimming the parts you can pirate (singleplayer)
3: Moving to other areas of gaming (multiplayer-only, MMO's, consoles)

The first one only ever affects legitimate buyers, since pirates just download a version without all that. So this just punishes legitimate buyers. It's got so bad *coughUbisoftyoufuckingcuntscough* that I've bought games, then dowloaded a pirated version just to avoid that shitty DRM. I sacrificed multiplayer, but that's fine. I'm not hugely into multiplayer, and it's worth it.

That neatly segways onto the second point, actually. Pirates can't often hack the multiplayer side of a game, because that required direct contact with the companies servers. So the singleplayer stuff is what gets pirated. Companies take away and/or limit the singleplayer side to discourage piracy, adding features to multiplayer, and fustrating people like me who wantto play a game WITHOUT an audience and/or interfering, testicle-less arsewipes interfering. Just saying.

And then, when all that happens, they move to consoles and browser games, decimating the PC singleplayer market. All because you greety little shits felt that the world owed you, and you were entitled to some free entertainment that someone worked their testicles off for over a year to produce and polish.

Someone MAKES these games. Someone ADVERTISES these games. Someone BUGTESTS these games. That's someones career. They love their job, making games. So when you pirate, you trample over that in shit-covered boots. And you leave your crusty footprints all over the rest of the industry, and other gamers.

Eventually, that crust builds up, and there are mountains of shoe-shit all over the industry, and they just pack up and move, depriving us ALL of entertianment, paid or not. So really, you've just fucked yourself in the arse as well, genius.

So how about you stop being such an entitled dickhead and just spend $30 on a game. If you really can't afford them when they're released, then fucking wait. You're not owed ANYTHING. Earn it, for fucks sakes.

It's so fucking infuriating when people claim piracy doesn't affect the industry becuase you don't take a physical copy. You're still depriving them of a sale, and you'd know and realize that if you ever stopped and thought about it. but you don't, and you get all self-righteous when someone DARES to complain that you steal hundreds of dollars of other peoples work every year.

I swear to god, if I ever meet one of you in the flesh, I'm going to get a physical copy of every single game you've ever pirated, grind them all up into a fine powder, and then make you SNORT ever single particle. Then I'm going to get the cases, and insert them, in a less than gentle way, into your anal sphincter. One by one.
Once that's done, I'll tie you to a pole and set you on fire, using the manuals of all of the games as fuel.

And once you're bleeding from several orifices and nicely toasty, I'll sit you down in a room with everyone who's careers you've shat all over, and lock the door.

I guarantee you, that will not be a meeting you'll enjoy.

Anthony: Life, Right?

This is an older post I found.

Life: What the fuck, right?

Or in other words:

What I’ve gleamed on the subject of life in my meagre 16 years.

Also known as:

Read it, or don’t, it’s up to you.



What with all these motivational books, self-help courses and very sad and lost people furiously contemplating the meaning of life in order to gain some sort of solace in their pitiful, scrabbling existence, I figured I’d take a shot at working out what several billion people and a few thousand-odd religions can’t really seem to agree on: Life, what’s it all about?



Well, I’ve certainly worked out something here, and that’s what all of these useless books and courses about helping yourself bloom into a veritable Greek God, complete with the sexiest abs on the planet, are all about. Well, mostly. They’re all centred around one thing: It’s YOU in control, and nobody else. Granted, they wrap their own rules, money-leeches and mystical teachings about inner peace around it, but I’ve got enough of these things stacked up in the loo (light entertainment and toilet paper all in one, bonus!) to realize that basically, that’s what they’re all about. Varying doctrines aside, they all try and get you to stop being such a subservient, hopeless chump who waits for their day to come like an abandoned dog waits for his owner. They tell you to be active, proactive, laxative, blah-active, and all those other exhausting words. They also tell you to worship the author and give them money, but we can put that aside as human nature.



So, part one: You’re in control, and nobody else. You can do whatever you want. Nothing except fear and physics will stop you. Damn gravity.





That’s pretty obvious in retrospect, but for some people, it takes a while to sink in. I’m not sure why, but I’ll wager it has something to do with conforming, and social norms. Go to school, go to high school, go to uni, get a job, get married, spawn lots of semi-identical little shits and watch them repeat everything you did, but with better technology. Also you can turn into your dad, and spout the exact same stuff he did at your kids when you were their age.



Blah.



You come into this world with bugger-all to distinguish yourself. You’re popped out of your mum, or not, in which case, congratulations, you’re already different. Otherwise, once you’ve been squeezed out, the only thing that differentiates you from the squealing brat ten beds down is the particular way in which you flail around. As the years go on, ideally, the gap between you and them in terms of distinguishing qualities would widen, unless you two intend to form some sort of hive mind. (please, don’t.)



However, things don’t always happen that way, as seen when you get lots of people trying to be different in the same way, a way prescribed by someone with lots more money than them, usually. Or not, I guess. And yes, sometimes, it could be a little bit depressing, realizing that not much at all of what you’re doing is original aside from that spectacular bowel movement three Tuesdays ago. On the other hand, why give a shit about that if you’re having a good time?



Thus, part two: Who gives a shit as long as you’re having a good time? If you’re happy, don’t screw with what isn’t broke.



It reminds me of those wonderful scale-based drawings that show you in relation to a bulding, then a skyscraper, then the moon, then the earth, then the sun, then the solar system, then out local space-cluster, then the galaxy, then our galactic cluster, and then a zoomed out shot showing that galactic cluster against a huge backdrop of other galactic clusters, and sometimes it’ll even extend out to your mom.



Makes you feel small, right? Sure, but that’s not something that bothers me. No, the universe is far bigger than I could comprehend. But I’m not trying to change any of that, am I? No other person is statistically any more important than me when measured against that, even if it did really matter. I’m just trying to have a good time. Its up to you to decide whatever you do with your life. If you find jamming horse needles in your eyes till you puke all over the overpriced whore you hired last night to be worth it, go ahead. If you want to go on a power trip and try and manipulate the lives of millions, be my guest. If you want to get stoned and listen to drippy, 'meaningful' bands all day, every day, sure, why not.



Whatever the fuck you want to do, it's up to you, and nobody else. it’s like a mathematical equation. Part one, You are in control + Part two, whatever makes you happy, makes you happy = Your life is for whatever you want it to be.



So, in other words, have some fucking fun, or not. You, and you alone, dictate what you do. If you want to go on, be similar to everyone else, and you enjoy that, then that’s what you want. If you want to be as different and difficult as you possibly can with no regard to anything or anyone, that’s all yours. As always, what you do with this information is ENTIRELY up to you.



That's my two cents on it, and I'm sure it's clearer than any of those fucking seminars. :P



TOO LONG DIDN’T READ: Life is what you make it.

Anthony: This Video Is Not Avaliable In Your Country

This is a repost of an older rant I found.

What. The. Fuck.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'net seems to be something that connects countries, (except North Korea) shares information between them, (except North Korea) promotes freedom of speech (except in North Korea) and is generally a pretty open place, and disregards the borders of countries (except North Korea).



I can post on forums, art sites, blogs, watch pornography, find funny pictures of bears, and whether I'm from america, australia, britan and not North Korea, I can see what I like. That's the beauty of the net.



Recently, there's been a slew of shit about freedom of speech (wikileaks) and monitoring content (ACTA), and that's to be expected. People liken it to the modernization and governmentalization (not a word) or the wild west, and while I disagree with that, there are similarities.



But I've got some smaller, more niggly issues with the internet right now. It's youtube.

It's not that I don't love it anymore, its just... what with all these UMG's and WMG's and VEVO's popping up and laying claim to music and content, It's getting fustrating.



I can almost understand them blocking music from other countries in other countries, but that kinda makes me feel like I'm in North Korea. What I cannot, in any way understand, or condone, is them blocking AUSTRALIAN born, made and grown music, in australia.



What the fuck.



I've been listening to hiphop, mainly Hilltop Hoods and such lately. THere's a lot of aussie hiphop out there. And more and more, it's being blocked in my country, which just so happens to be Ausrtralia.

Anyone care to explain this to me?



Didn't think so. Fuck goddamn shit pissbiscuits.

Stop blocking my goddamn music.

And stop being such copyright whores, the fair trades/use act covers a lot of videos' that you've censored.

Stop censoring, stop blocking, stop being a collosal whore and bending over to unreasonable demands from the music industry, Youtube.



At the very least, try to make it make sense.

Ass-Crafters

Minecraft is the new indie game going around. It's a game where you're a miner. You mine blocks. Its a blocky, randomly generaated world with lava and water and enemies and gold and all that epic stuff. There are even trees, and they grow.

It's still in Alpha, which is like pre-pre release, so most games aren't even announced to the public at this stage. Well, minecraft is both announced and out there, being played and bought (Half price in alphaa, three-fourths when it moves up to beta, and then full price at release) by many many people. It has about as much functionality as many normal, full priced games, and with a big haloween update coming up soon, which includes and ENTIRELY NEW FUCKING DIMENSION OF TITS AND LAVA AND AWESOME (okay, maybe not tits. But we can hope, right Notch?). Okay, so Notch, the guy who makes the game, does a lot of updating. New block type, new item, new whatevers, it's an update. He has Secret Friday updates, where he updates, hands out the files (every update after you buy the game is free) and leaves you to find the new whizz-bang. So yeah, he updates a lot.

He's also swedish, I think. But whutever.

Now this notchman puts a lot of his time into this game. He has an entire community of fans, a brilliant game, and wild ambitions. And now, he's releasing a mega-haloween-update. Its fucking huge, and it includes stuff that people have been begging for (or at least contemplating) for ages. He's nice enough to put it in. Well, it's not really nicety, it's simple economics. But the development process is really interactive, and the community plays a huge part in forming the game. In fact, I think at one point there was a guy from the forums that made a zombie-pigman texture, and its set to be included in the update.

This mega-update has put a halt to the slew of weekly mini updates for a month or so, because this shit is huge. And fair enough. I mean, he's condensing this all, bugtesting it and pouring away hours into this, just for you people, half of you that probably pirated that shit anyway. But he's not too concerned about piracy, because if you love the game, you love him and its only ten fucking dollars people.

Stopping updates for a while to release this update seems like a reasonable idea, and all of the mine-crafters, or mine-craftians, agree. Well, almost all of them.

Some of them are raging dicks. I shit you not, some people have a huge problem with this.

Some people were so annoyed they DDOSed (denial of serive attack) his servers and websites, making them completley useless for a while. Then they sent this message:

" Minecraft is currently experiencing a stimulation provided by us.

It's purpose is to send Notch a clear message of how the future of minecraft will turn out unless he gets to work, namely by influencing the amount of sales taking place, due to the attacks.

Start providing your customers with the updates that you promise them.

We have roughly 83,000 bots available, and preserved for this seizure, we could if we wanted to keep this going for weeks, however we have decided to give it a week, and see whether or not your attitude, and commitment will change, we believe it will when money stops rolling in for the time being...

anyhow, no we're not from roblox, or any other minecraft clone, not to mention none of us have been around 4chan for years, and nor has any real 4channers for that matter, its all newfags now, and has been for quite a few years. Hurr we're a bunch of fags who don't understand economics, time management or game development"

Well, they said almost all of that, aside from everything after the "hurr", but it's true. Listen the the sheer arrogance of these arseholes. Read it.

Look ,if you have a problem with the man taking time of from regular uptates, TALK THE THE MAN. He'd be more than happy to let something slip your way, like sneak peeks or even little updates. He's a nice man, and if you were that desperate, he's help you out.

But if you think that attacking his website is going to solve anything, you're a fucktard. He is an indie game developer. He has a limited ammount of time. He can only work on one thing at a time and his work is giong to be two things: Work on the game, or work on the website and community.

If he needs to get shit running on his website, he can't work on the game. You are slowing the entire process down.

Also, lets take another look at that statement, "a simulation". It's not an accurate simulation at all, since most people are reasonable and can understand why he's not spoonfeeding you arseholes constand updates. HE HAS OTHER WORK TO DO. FUCK YOURSELF WITH A RAKE. People will still buy the game, and your righteous assholery solves nothing. At all.

Let him get back to doing what he loves, and we love. Take your primitive understanding of people, time management, economics and life in general, and shove it somewhere painful. You are not entitled to any of this shit, you didn't even pay the full price, and nothing either of these parties signed ever dicated that constant updates would be an all-prevelant reality. He's doing his best, and you are happily crushing his spirit. There is just so much wrong with this attack, I must dub you all Ass-Crafters. You craft ass.

Fuck you, ass crafters, and take your DDOS with you. Nobody loves you.

Heh, Ass-Crafters.

Anthony: Civic Duty

Haven't posted for a while, and the others have pretty much given up. We've got our exams, and life, and whatever the fuck we happen to be doing right now. I've been writing, which reminds me, I have an English assignment dues sometime next week. I might want to start that sometime.

But really, I've not got anything to yell about. I've expended most of my 'care' on things that direcly affect me, using it all up and leaving none to spare for the bizzare inctricacies that make up the rest of the human race, and certainly none for entertaining you lot.

Nevertheless, with only 2 blog posts in the same ammount of months, I feel I've got some sort of duty to get up here on my poor, dented soap box and rave a little, especialy since it's going to be the last for another little while. Maybe two weeks, maybe another month. Regardless, here's a post. It yells about some things I'm not even sure about as I type this, and it's probably going to veer all over the place like a drunk midget driving a semitrailer in the Russian countryside, mid-winter, carrying a load of freshly murdered nuns in a fifty-foot long trailer, while on fire. Also he's blind, and I'm just wasting time.

Lets see... stupid people. I've farmed that one a few times, but maybe I can squeeze a little bit more out of it? I mean, there are plenty of stupids out there. My old favourite breeding ground for the fucked-in-the-head, youtube, still never fails to deliver a great steaming heap of ignorance to my monitor every day, and with their new auto-update feature, I can see the undammed hatred and stupidity flow on in REAL TIME! Golly, how amazing.

Pretty much every single one of these comments could be sloved by making the writer do one of two things: Either do some fucking research, or take a step back, take a REAL fucking deep breath, and realize that it's the internet, and contrary to popular opinion, it's not serious bizness.

I'm not backing up on the reasearch idea though. It should be mandatory that people have to be even the SLIGHTEST bit informed about whatever they are typing. I'm all for freedom of speech, but when knee-jerk uninformed spam starts to flood the general medium, some sort of quality filter has to be imposed. I suggest a neat little feature that automaticaly googles the supject in question in a new tab whenver you try to post. I manage to do it, and it solves arguments just like that. five days, three pages and five-and-twenty buckets of hate, or just a simple few words searched into google. Whick is preferable?

It also gives you time to cool off, so that's both problems in one.
God, I'm a genius.

I'm not really sure anyone checks their posts, either, what with all the spelgin mistkaes and the incorrect gramatical sentences, the terrible bad phrasing and the general shoddiness of the sentences formed, you can TELL nobody checkes their psots.

THat should be a new feature: One that reads your comment back to you, giving you a chance to realize how fucking retarded that just was. Ideally, it would also have a keyword and phrase based stupid-o-meter, and it would fatally eletrocute you if your score fell bellow "cuttlefish". It's not hard to be coherent, people. If a small, fleshy sea-animal is doing it better than you, well. All I can say is; Gather up the shotguns, it's cullin' time.

But I've said this all before. It's getting old. We KNOW people are stupid. What else is there? Politics? No, that's jsut stupid people with power. Rights? Equality? Religion? They're all just a matter of differing viewpoints, and there's enough yelling and debate about that already.

Education? Okay.

I hate the shit. It's not organized properly, it fustrates and confines me.

Thats about it.


...


Fuck.



Waaait.... Illegal products? No, that's Alexes job, because it requres research, and despide my advocacy of said activity, I refuse to take part.

Trends and the public opinion? James. And he's off being crickety or some shit.

Global warming? Censorship? How I;m a misunderstood genius?

Fuck this shiiiit. Just read through the archives, laugh, don't take too much of it seriously, and have some fun.

Anthony: Not dead.

Neither am I really in a blogging mood.
STFU.

Anthony: Right to be Disgruntled

Fuck you and your first-world problems. Kids are starving, entire religions persecuted and families living on grains of rice, but oh no, your cellphone won't charge, or your parents insist you spend time actually preparing for exams, or god forbid, get a job.

So fuck you guys, stop being so selfish, don't take everything for granted. Right?

No.

Screw that. I live in a first-world country, I have first world privliges, and I'm not just going to give any of this up so you people can feel better about trying to help others.
What the hell do you people get off on, telling everyone they need to be greatfull for everything? Sure, it's great to be free and rich, and goddamn, we have so much more than so many other people. You think I don't know that? You think I'm not aware of the millions that live terrible lives? You think I don't appreciate what I have?

I do. Immensely. But I'll be dammned if I'm going to spend my every waking moment either in active praise and appreciation of the fact, or sitting around feeling guilty for it. No, I'm going to be out using it. That's what it's there for. Funny that.

How do you want me to display my praise and amazement at modern technology? Pray to the kettle? Have a freakout every time I see a computer? Seizure at toasters?
They were invented. They're useful. Now stop using them as guilt-leverage, or I swear by whatever god happens to be the most convenient at the time, I will shove the nearest appliance inside an orifice of yours where it just shouldn't go, and we'll see how much you appreciate its existance then, shall we?

Same goes for feeling miserable.
I hate people who pull the "oh some people have it worse" card. So fucking what if that guy has no legs? Does that somehow stop me from being able to feel misery?
If shit breaks, I'm going to complain because it violates my standard of living. Yes, it's not great, good or even acceptable that some people will never even hear of half the things I have that exist to simply make my life that little bit easier.

But if they break, or I have a bad day, for the love of satan just let me be. I don't want to hear about how some people have no organs, eyes or limbs and can still be happy. Is that shit supposed to make me feel better? Or just guilty for not being crippled?

Either way, it's not working. It's just making me angry and sad. Angry at the stupidity of the people who use this as personal leverage against me, and sad at the fact that other people haven't shot aforementioned people.

Once again, the same goes for ambition. I will strive for perfection, happiness or at least a comfy seat and decent movie, because I can. Sure, that guy strives to overcome a crippling disease, but do I happen to be him? Am I responsible for him?
No. Then in what way does the existance of him and his disease stop me from trying to get further in life?

It's not that I don't care about other peoples problems, it's that I care more about myself than them. There's no way that their inconvenience with major life barriers is going to stop me from grumbling at the slow startup time of my epic computer. We just have different standards of living, different things to complain about and different things to do. So let me do my shit and spend the time you would have spent being righteous at me, helping them.

Or you could just be a complete twat. You know, you've already got that down quite well.