opinion

AniBlog Tourney Round 3 Voting Digest

June 10, 2010 by chikorita157

Since I didn’t do any reviews this round because I practically reviewed every blog in the tournament… here is a list I voted for:
Note: I vote for who I subscribed first… for blogs that I didn’t subscribe to, I use my best judgement

Sea Slugs! Anime Blog
Baka-Raptor
2-D Teleidoscope
chaostangent
Star Crossed Anime Blog
Canne’s Anime Review Blog
Major Arcana
Anime Instrumentality
Listless Ink
GAR GAR Stegosaurus
Fuzakenna!
Reverse Thieves
Kurogane’s Anime Blog
Mainichi Anime Yume
UNMEI KAIHEN
Atarashii Prelude

Followup should be coming up soon…

My reasoning on why I’m criticizing Girl’s Dead Monster

June 9, 2010 by chikorita157

There have been a lot of disagreement around my harsh criticism of Girl’s Dead Monster, a frictional band in Angel Beats and the singers, whatherface and LiSA. I am a critic, I have to point out what is good and what its not. This is what a critic does. You don’t have to agree with all my points because everyone have different opinions and tastes in music. This is not an attack on Angel Beats because I enjoy the show and like the story, I just don’t like the way the insert songs are heading.

Even Jun Maeda want to have the high school band feel, it does not work for me. I think he should took more time auditioning and pick out better talent that is not known that can actually sing. If Houkago Tea Time (also a high school band) can pull of a clean performance, why can’t Girl’s Dead Monster? I expect them to be just as good because if they sounded like they are novices, I wouldn’t think they would get many fans. Good talent is what make music sound good, and if you can’t sing, that isn’t good talent. It’s just like watching the first few episodes of American Idol. People think they have good singing talent but when they perform in front of the judge, most of the time, they will get a slap in the face because they sing horribly and have no talent. Same case here… LiSA and whatherface performance was less than impressive and it ruined my overall enjoyment. This is why all these songs are taken off my playlist because I can’t stand anymore of their talentless singing. If they audition to get a recording contract, I’m pretty sure they will get rejected. They got it lucky since they probably got pulled in, but in the real world, I don’t think they will survive with talent like that… It’s reality. Most companies that involve with singing will not hire people who lack talent, so you have to know that.

I’m writing this to respond to people who don’t agree with me. LiSA and marina aren’t horrible, but they just don’t fit the roles they are in by the talent they shown.

AT&T axing unlimited data plans will start the metered Internet future

June 5, 2010 by chikorita157

AT&T axing the unlimited plan with a 25 dollar plan with a very small cap (2 Gb) had caused many AT&T customers to become outraged and even some ditching AT&T all together to other providers like Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. I am against their decision even though I am grandfathered to the unlimited plan and I use quite a lot of bandwidth. 2 GB may be enough today, but with video streaming and video chats, this 2 GB won’t go that far. Even with wifi, its nearly impossible to stay connected to a hotspot when you are moving. With 4G coming, do you think these tiered internet service will go away?

Not a chance! It will get even worse with even smaller caps and higher overage costs. Also, Cable Internet and DSL is heading towards the same direction with Time Warner wanting metered Internet last winter. They revealed metered Internet plans in specific areas with outrageously small caps that caused subscribers to be outraged. Another thing is that Time Warner is the only service provided in the area and there was technically no alternative at all. Do you want a metered Internet future where you have to worry about how much videos you see on YouTube, downloading movies and music off legit site, streaming video and video conferencing, tasks that uses a lot of bandwidth… I think most don’t. Metered and tiered Internet stifles innovation and it will hurt businesses like Netflix, Voip providers, streaming video companies like Crunchyroll and others. The Internet should remain accessible as long people are paying a fair price. Not to mention, it doesn’t cost them anything to provide the bandwidth, so they are probably doing it to milk more of the customers on top of the high profits they are generating already.

If you think that Verizon is not going to do the same to the smartphone data plans like AT&T, you are dead wrong. They will and others will follow because you know they are greedy. FCC needs to regulate them to stop these companies from pushing anticompetitive practices that milk the customers with high overage bills. Cell phone providers are already charging outrageous fees for texting that cost them nearly nothing and voice, so why they should further milk the customers with ripoff data plans. It’s true that light users will benefit from it, but habits can change when technological changes occur. If so, get ready to pay extra for your already expensive phone bill.

Also, they need more competition, more competition means that if the Internet company for example forces a metered Internet plans on all the customers, a competitor can come in that provides unlimited Internet plans and take the customers away from the other company. As a result, they won’t put in place these plans. Competition prevents this and I’m sure cable, telecom and cell phone providers could use a bit more competition.

No Comments in any Posts = Wimp

May 22, 2010 by chikorita157

I came across a few anime blogs that don’t allow commenting st all. What are they afraid of? Comments that they don’t agree with? Come on… Get real. If you don’t allow comments, it just proves that you can’t take criticism and therefore, you are a wimp.

Leave Tachibana Kanade ALONE!

May 4, 2010 by chikorita157

Leave Tachibana Kanade ALONE! Now she is suffering because of what you did Yuri! All she was doing is her job as the student council president… She never done anything bad but Yuri you think she was bad. Kanade is innocent. She was just doing her job and wasn’t responsible for the disappearance of people. It’s all your fault Yuri that she was kicked out of student council because the SSS thought it was funny to mess around with her exam papers. Now she is all depressed now and even her favorite meal, Mapo Doufu is taken away from her too… All I can blame is you Yuri and her dislike towards Kanade and her being kicked out of student council… Kanade is human you know!!!! Kanade will alway be better than you, Yuri!!

If you have a problem with Kanade, you have to go through me first! So leave Tachibana Kanade Alone!

*hugs Tenshi warmly*

Note: This is a obvious parody of Leave Britney Alone.

On Steve Job's Open Letter on Adobe Flash

April 29, 2010 by chikorita157

Read Here: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Although I don’t worship Apple or think that Steve Jobs is always right with the closed system on the iPhone that I need to Jailbreak just so I can load whatever apps I want, he does bring up a good point about Flash. Flash is becoming redundant in the web. Why? There are better solutions out there. People used to use Flash just to get drop down menus, but now that can be achieved with Javascript and CSS, there is no need to use Flash. H264 video plays better on HTML5 than Flash on Mac OS X considering how much Adobe neglected the Flash Player for so long. This have been the same case with Flash on Linux, working like a pile of shit while the Windows version work like it should. Not everyone wants to use Windows as their OS of choice and people want a alternative. Shoving all the improvements over for the Windows version of Flash is alienating other users to have a properly functioning Flash player. Because of the instability and performance problem, I had to install Click2Flash to prevent Flash from loading. It also allowed me to play youtube videos without needing to use Flash.

I can’t say that Apple’s App Store is a closed system, but despite Flash can be used on any platform, it is still a closed system. You can’t use other programs to make Flash movies, only the program Adobe provides developers and once developers use it, they lock the developers in, with no other alternative to use if they decide they want to use something else. HTML5, Javascript, CSS, Webkit is open… Flash isn’t despite what Adobe says. If they open sourced Flash, then it would be a different story, but that isn’t the case.

Flash is the past… not the future. Now more and more websites are switching to HTML5 for video or building native apps to play these videos without Flash. Flash is pointless on a touch screen phone because Flash is designed for a mouse and keyboard. Also, it will cause further instability because of Adobe’s track record and suck up all the battery life because of those Flash ads.

Adobe needs to give up on exerting the power for Flash. Flash is antiqued technology that needs to go. The web will be better off without Flash…

Anime is dead? BULLSHIT!

April 26, 2010 by chikorita157

As always, lets shove the blame as Fansubs always… and this article from Eric P. Sherman, President & CEO, Bang Zoom! Entertainment just proves that. This is what he said:

Unless YOU change. Right now. Stop stealing. If you have committed theft, robbery, shop-lifting, or just “downloading some stuff through torrent reactor,” then just stop doing it — now. You probably wouldn’t go into a supermarket and put a package of swiss cheese under your shirt and walk out without paying. Nor would you walk into Best Buy and try to walk out with Guitar Hero, bypassing the cash register. Why? Is it because you might get caught? Or are there other issues, such as standards of morality, that dictate how you live your life.

Excuse me? I buy my anime on series I like and also licensed series I want to see (and this is evident proof of it). Oh lets accuse the fansubbers who fansub all the anime that fans watch and if they like it, they go out and support the series by buying it. I think Eric’s got the mindset put in the gutter and blaming it on fansubs.

The issue is that Crunchyroll in my opinion is not a viable option as it is region locked, you can’t view the show offline and the subs are poor quality. Not only that, singles are going way out of style because they are unaffordable and people are waiting for the full boxset that would be affordable. Don’t blame it on stealing because technically downloading a fansub does not equate to any generated revenue as it was never made. Also, just recently, the US Government revealed that the estimated costs on piracy were fake, so it just proved another point I made earlier. Eric, you need to stop blaming piracy and start doing something to make Anime more available without resorting to streams that take away freedom such as selling DRM-free Anime Titles at DVD quality online for half the price of the DVD or something. How about improving the quality of the subs?

Also, do you know it is a recession going on as well? Well, lets blame it on fansubs because people can’t afford Anime because they recently lost their job or something. This is stupid…

Until you come up with a viable solution to the problem than just blaming it on fansubs, I will just ignore you and pretend that you are making a fool of yourself.

Is Microsoft Dot Net really that bad as people put it?

April 19, 2010 by chikorita157

The answer is no. I have used Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to build a Melative Scrobbler for Windows users in Visual Basic… The result… It took 2 1/2 days estimated to make a fully functional scrobbler that included music and anime detection and with Visual Basic 2008, it was pretty simple since the syntax is similar to RealBasic and I have used it back in 2006 when I was developing stuff on the same platform, except with a older version of Visual Studio.

The problem lies with people spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about Microsoft .NET. MAL Updater go so far and bashing it saying it uses too much memory and requires a user to install a 30 MB .NET Framework on the computer. However, it is not a big drawback at all. Here are some common FUD spread about .NET.

.NET Uses too much memory! – This is bullshit on top of the gun. With my written application, MelScrobble, it only used around 8 MB – 11 MB on Windows 7, as much used in MAL Lite and also Melative Library, both programs that are not written in .NET, but in RealBasic 2009 which uses native code. Keep in mind that the memory shown in the Task Manager is not the actual memory used in the program since the newer versions of Windows preallocate the memory so that the program will run faster on the fly, just like in Mac OS X and Linux does with memory allocation.
.NET is bloated and requires one to install a huge .NET framework: Also, another fear tactic used by anti-DOT NET users and is hardly a issue these days. Vista Service Pack 2 and 7 comes with .NET 3.5 preinstalled. The only people that are complaining are the Windows XP users… so just install it… Other programs are going to use it anyways.
.NET is SLOW and Shitty: No it’s not… It runs just as fast for general purpose application. If you are writing a program that requires native code, you would be using C++ or C, not C# and VB.NET. It is hardly an issue since most people have fast computers and have 2-4 GB memory standard on their computers.
Lastly, you aren’t developing programs, I am. You shouldn’t dictate to me what I should use or not.

Dot NET is a powerful platform and can also be used in Mono as well, meaning you can use it on Mac OS X, Linux, you name it… not just Windows… so I don’t see what is the fuss with Dot NET…. Not convinced still, I will write MelScrobble in Delphi 7 to prove a point, but believe me… it is not going to be any different from the one written in Visual Basic 2008.