Something that is grinding my gears

   This is going to be a short post because the topic is really so mind numbingly simple, and it bugs the living shit out of me that people refuse to fucking see it. Topic: Celebrities' nudes got hacked from the iCloud and distributed throughout the Internet, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kristen Dunst. There seems to be two camps of opinion on this issue.
    One: It's the celebs' fault that this happened.
    Two: The celebs didn't do anything wrong, and it's all the hackers fault.
    What I think of it: The hacker committed a huge crime, but, BUT, the celebs could've taken easy, god damn easy steps to make this significantly less likely to happen to them.
     The people in camp two will immediately and without question condemn me as a victim blamer, a women hater, a "privileged" male, etc, etc, all the usual feminist bullshit insults they sling around without even listening to what the other person has to say.
     But just fucking read what I wrote: A crime happened. The hackers committed a crime. <----- Okay?! It is not victim blaming to say that the celebs could've done a couple of things that would've prevented this. It's just like if a person walked down the street of a crime ridden neighborhood, waving handfuls of cash to people, saying "Wow, just look at how much MONEY I have!" If I was a police officer responding to that person getting robbed, I would say to him "Wow, you are a dumbass, what did you think was going to happen?! But, BUT, these robbers have committed a crime against you. You are a victim of robbery, and I will pursue them with all of my resources."
    This is just common sense. There are plenty of actions that can reduce the likelihood of a certain crime being committed against you. Our parents teach us this, teachers tell us this, the police tell us this, etc. Saying a simple concept of common sense is not victim blaming, nor is it denying a crime took place.    
      The concept of the Cloud is a horrible, terrible idea. To store sensitive, personal, or top secret information in the Cloud is just like wearing a T-shirt saying "Rob me." Hackers always can adapt faster than industry standards and defenses. You wonder why you hear of a massive credit card breach or the stealing of sensitive information more and more every day? You wonder why identity theft is rising and rising each year? Because more and more companies and organizations are storing their information in the Cloud because it is cheaper, completely forgoing the fact that it significantly more at risk to be stolen just to save a few bucks. Once again, people trade convenience for security in a heartbeat, then get all surprised when their personal information is stolen.
     Taking nude pictures of yourself is stupid, and quite frankly, narcissistic. Who the fuck are you gonna send them to? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Why the fuck would you do that? Just do it in front of them, that's what people have been doing for thousands of years and no one's had a god damn problem with it. Are you going to send them to a co-worker, classmate, etc? Even a dumber idea! Your morales are out the fucking god damn door! Taking nude pictures of yourself and posting them to a storage place that is so god damn easy to hack into is even more stupid.
    What the people in camp two want to do is to do whatever they want to do in life, whether it be taking nudes of themselves, getting shitfaced at a party, or showing thugs a bunch of money, and not face any consequences for their dangerous and risky actions. Sorry, the world is suddenly not going to rid itself of all criminals just to fit your happy "the whole world is sunshine and butterflies" outlook. Everyone has to take actions to defend themselves against criminals. Stating this basic fact of life is not victim blaming. Get that through your god damn heads. Take responsibility for your risky and stupid actions. Man the fuck up.
    Again, a reminder for the people in camp two, hacking peoples' information is illegal. IT IS A CRIME. The police should catch these criminals and bring them to justice. Nothing in those past three sentences contradicts the fact that the celebs did something really stupid.     
     

Why pay to play online games suck (and other subscription based cloud software)

     This post will be a bit different than normal. Usually I talk about politics but today I'm going to be talking about video games. Video games is another big interest of mine; I started playing them in 1st grade. They're a good stress reliever because it allows someone to completely detach themselves from this fucked up world for just a little bit, and focus on something fun.
      The traditional way of selling and playing video games has been like buying 99% of all other products: you pay for it upfront, a one time deal, and then it is yours forever. This is the way it has been ever since video games were able to be sold to customers and they could take it home. This happened from the 1980's to about the mid 2000's. That's when things started to change, slowly at first, but now, this new way of selling video games is becoming more and more prevalent, and analysts say that eventually, all video games will be sold in the way I'm about to describe. This is rather annoying for me, because this new way completely fucking sucks.
      This new way is that you pay per month to log onto a company's server online to play a game. You no longer have a physical copy of the game. You just have a subscription, a log-in that you use. This sucks for us, the customers, for a number of reasons.

1. The cost of subscription based software will rapidly become more expensive than buying a physical copy, starting in just the first few months of owning the software. For example, let's say I bought Hellgate London in 2008 for $50. That's all it would cost me to play that game till the day I die. Now, let's look at the second example, where I would pay $10 a month to play Hellgate London online, through the company's servers. In just half a year, it would be more expensive for me to subscribe to that game versus if I had paid a one time price to have a physical copy of it. Fast forward to November of 2013. In the first example, guess how much money I've spent on Hellgate London? That's right, still $50. But how much would I have paid in the second example? A whooping $900.  For one fucking game. That is absolutely mind-boggling how expensive it would be, in addition to how mind-boggling it is that band-wagoning swag fags think this subscription based software is cool and hip and so much better than the "old way."
2. If you want to avoid paying that astronomical amount as described above, you have to constantly subscribe and un-subscribe to all your video games, based on the ones you're only currently playing at the moment. Let's say you only play 2 video games at a time. So you subscribe to those two for a while, then once you beat the game or tired of playing it, you have to unsubscribe to those 2 games, (to avoid being charged monthly for a game you don't even play), and then subscribe to 2 new video games. What if one of your friends comes over and wants to play a game you're not currently subscribing to? "Oh sorry man, can't play that one, I'm not subscribing to it at the moment."
3. If your internet goes out, bam, there goes your game. This is critical for people with shitty internet, like me. (Xfinity is ripping my landlord off like a motherfucker. She's paying for 55 mbps and I'm sitting on the fucking computer and can clearly see I'm only getting 5 mbps). Meanwhile, I'm having a blast fighting sand monsters in Prince of Persia, while you're sitting on your ass, not being able to play any of your games, because your internet went out. 
4. If the company goes under and gets rid of it's servers, then bam, there goes your game. I play a few games, like Hellgate London and Titan Quest, whose companies who made them no longer exist because they went out of business. Guess what, I'm still having a blast playing those games. But if you subscribed to one of these games online, then you lost your game. Sucks for you.       

 

     And this just doesn't go for video games, it applies to other online subscription software that lets you access it in the cloud, such as Microsoft Office 365. Let's say you and 3 other friends decide to get Microsoft 365 for the 4 years you guys are going to be in college. That's $100 per person, if you get the best plan geared towards students. (Some other plans for students are $130 per person, and they only allow you to have Office 365 on one device.)
      But let's say you and your 3 friends are smart and get the actual CD for Microsoft Office 2013. Guess how much that costs each of you? $13.75. I know critics of this idea will say "But the box software of Office 2013 will only let you put it on one computer!" To which I reply "Then install it without internet access and never register it. That way, Microsoft will never know how many times you've installed it!" It's a simple and easy way to save money. My siblings and I did this with Office 2010. We've had it installed on 5 different computers, all for way less than if we did Microsoft 365.
     In conclusion, this is very troubling for gamers like me, because if all video games start to be sold like this, then I'll simply not buy anymore new video games, and I'll just continue to play old video games. I refuse to go through all that BS just to have a little fun. If I spend my hard earned money to buy a game, then I better damn as well be able to play it when I want, how I want, and install it on as many systems as I want to. Combine this problem with the fact that the quality of storyline, gameplay, and the music of video games on a whole has substantially gotten pathetically worse since about 2008, (Skyrim is the one exception, and the only game since 2008 that I'd consider to be one of my favorite games), and we could possibly have the death of the video game industry as we know it.