I bought Darkstar One from gog.com because I was browsing the game list shouting out names of games to a co-worker when cam across Darkstar One he said “buy it it’s a game like Freelancer!”. So I forked over the money and commenced the huge 4.2 GB download.

Darkstar One is a shooter/RPG space simulator that resembles Freelancer in every way. It has a weird alien plot and a story line so obvious I knew how it would end after the opening cut scene.

However, the game play itself makes up for it faults.

Something about blowing random ships into another dimension with rockets while rolling and fighting of fighters is extremely satisfying. You can be a pirate, a merchant, a bounty hunter or a serial killer for all the game cares.

Why you would ever want to play this game in 1st person? You will find yourself press F4(to switch to 3rd person) when ever you start/load a new game.

The upgrade system is also a little wired as I found my self upgrading towards the indestructible plasma shield as quickly as possible and upgrading the ship to move faster and carry more turrets(auto aiming wonders). After that I just went on killing sprees as nothing in the universe could stop me.

The story is kind of weird too. I find myself confused during more of the missions and not knowing what was going on.

(Spoiler highlight to see it) Also, you don’t get the girl! In every medium of story telling, the hero always gets the girl!!!! Except the Zelda series(end spoiler).

In conclusion Darkstar One is weird but one of my favorite games of all time. It is available DRM free, it has amazing graphics, and being able to redirect power from weapons to shields is just so cool!

GO BUY IT!

]]> http://jakelis.com/?feed=rss2&p=132 0 http://jakelis.com/?p=115 http://jakelis.com/?p=115#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:33:08 +0000 jake2 http://jakelis.com/?p=115 Well, I saw one of the most beautiful pieces of art today. It wasn’t a painting, it wasn’t a photograph it was a movie. Avatar is a perfect piece of modern story telling. I head people ranting and raving about it and I thought “what the heck ill go see it”. O my goodness it is worth every penny of the $200 million it cost to create.

To see something that beautiful brought tears to my eyes. The 3d in Avatar is not that fake hand coming out at you 3d. It’s more like the 3d we see every day. Like your friends face or being shot at by the police kind of 3d.

The story telling was a bit new agey though… “They killed their planet!” and “there is no more green!” where prominently placed. I could have gone with a little less global warming crap but that’s just me.

Every one in that movie should get a boat load of awards and I hope it makes good money.

Now I hope James Cameron does the right thing and releases this DRM free on DVD. I know he never will but nerdy people like me with watch this movie over and over and it will became a geek staple like Star Wars. Go see Avatar in 3d!

Google is building a super monopoly of really good free products. This is very bad! Soon small programs like me will not be able to make products to compete with Google’s monopoly. Can you honestly find something you do on a computer that Google cant do? But enough rambling about the big G lets talk about Chrome OS!

I personally (wait for it) dislike (wait for it) cloud computing.(NO HE DIDN’T!) I dislike the idea of ALWAYS being online. Google is trying to move the market in that direction because that’s what all their products do, compute in the cloud.

I found Chrome OS to be dumb as it is JUST a web browser. I was hoping for some revolutionary interface or some revolutionary features but was disappointed. Lets start by saying it was slow for me in a VM but that is probably normal. I also found it to be unintuitive and confusing. At one point I wanted to see if I could change a setting and couldn’t figure out how or where to go to change it. How do you shut it down? It also rendered this website horribly. I HATE IT! (It does download file though….) I HATE IT SO SO MUCH!

If you are thinking about trying it about trying it, just fire up Google chrome on pc. It’s the same thing except you can do other stuff too. Google doesn’t realize consumers might spend 99% of their computer time online but that other 1% is so frustrating on Google chrome os it makes it unusable. It crashed more that Vista did. It is open source though so good job there.

Ubuntu netbook edition is a WAY better choice if you want to get a free netbook OS.

Google chrome os is just stupid.

I give it a thumbs down.

EDIT:

Apple bought Lala before google had time to close the deal.

So you can ignore that part of Google’s digital monopoly

I am a student who works a full time job as an IT Technician for a local business. I am not one of the snobby rich kinds who was given what ever I wanted whenever I wanted. I work hard from my early years to buy everything I own. I was in the process of switching my accounts over to BofA when I received a massive amount of fees due to an employees negligence. I never recovered the money and it is really hard for me to louse that much money. I explored all the options. I talked with: clerks, managers, customer support agents and regional managers and non of them where whiling to help me. The funny part about this whole ordeal is it wasn’t my fault!

WHAT THE H$LL BofA! WHY?! WHY do you feel the need to screw over a student who is going to community college?! Why do you have to be so selfish?! You just received BILLIONSSSSSS of dollars of tax payers money! THAT WASN’T ENOUGH? One of YOUR employees makes a mistake causing me days of grief and anxiety and somehow it is MY fault!

Ok so you might now be saying ” Jake, you where just a unlucky person Bank of America is not normally like that.” WRONGGG!!

I actually forgave Bank of America and recommended a family member to join.(So I could get $50 dollars which by the way I have not yet received!) While my family member was opening the account the clerk gave me a catalog of cool card designs that I could pick from for FREE! I thought “cool” and asked her “I will only pick out a different design if the card numbers stay the same.” She inter reassured me that they would not change. So I picked out a cool design and left happy….. But not for LONG!

I received the card which by some weird reason was already activated. When I looked it over I saw that the card security number changed and the expiration date was different also. I immediately called BofA and asked them if I could keep my old card. They told me “NOPE!” and also told me that all card transactions for the old number would be denied! WHAT?! THEY SCREWED ME AGAIN! My phone, iTunes, Amazon, and direct two drive all had denied transactions. Again, this wasn’t my FAULT! Why are your employees so !@#$%^& STUPID? The person I recommended heard me ask the lady if my card would change. However, when I went back they intern told me I “misunderstood” and I was the one at fault.

If you don’t get the moral of this story go take up cliff jumping, because ,the moral should be as clear as day. DON’T OPEN A BANK OF AMERICA ACCOUNT! EVEN If THEY GIVE YOU BOAT LOADS OF CASH. STAY AWAY FROM THEM AS IF THEY HAD SWINE FLUE!

Below is a copy of the letter I sent to Bank of America over two months ago. I have yet to receive a response.

Dear Bank of America,

Ever since I opened my accounts at bank of America I have been immensely pleased with the customer service, technological advanced ATMs, services and branch locations. Recently this beautiful cloud has turned into a thunderstorm over my head.

On August twenty eighth a coworker who was leaving my company and I went to the local diner “MORRETTES”. We had a decent meal paid and left. The total of said meal was $12.45.Now at this point if anyone is reading this you would ask why I am writing to the board of directors for something minor.

Said $12.45 charge over drafted my checking accounts even though I had over a hundred dollars in saving. When I open my account I requested my Checking and saving be linked to prevent such an event from happening. However a human error somewhere along the line prevented this from accruing.

So as we once again come back to my story, this transaction and another transaction pushed my account ten dollars in the red. I noticed this irregularity that evening. I dumped some of my savings into my checking bringing it to approximately $90. When I checked my balance the 29th I saw a very unpleasant sight, my account was again in the red and I had no money to bring it back up. Bank of America charged me two $35 fees. Combine that with a $20 purchase I made the previous day and you have a problem. So I called Bank of America to see if this could be fixed. After a long conversation with a representative I decided I would use my one time “stuff happens” and received half of the fee back and I would just “forget” about the other one.

So little did I know that some other transactions were going to come in that I had no control of. Four transactions came in from previous purchases wiping out that thirty fife dollars bringing my account balance one again into the red. I do not know why these transactions took so long to hit my account but who can know. So today 09/03/2009 bank of America charged me three $35 dollar charges. This is a total of 5 charges totaling $175. This is almost 3 days of work for me. As a student money is tight and I cannot afford to lose this much money. I will have paid 17 times the amount I over drafted.

Do you think this is fair?

[end letter]

Always remember I cannot spell or write to save my life. The polished work you see here is spel checked and grammar is checked also.

I wanted to talk a little bit about GOG. GOG (Good old Games) is a site that sells old games for digital download.

Screen clipping taken: 11/8/2009, 6:20 PM

Some of the features GOG brags:

• Cheap titles
• Growing catalogue
• And best of all……. THEIR DRM FREEEEEEE!!!

  Everyone knows how much I hate DRM. DRMs give me nightmares (clever GOG pun) and make me want to hit things. However, I have dozens of posts that say how much I hate DRM so I will save you from another DRM rant.

  I just recently found GOG in my desperate attempt to find some DRM free media outlets and I bought Psychonauts because it has been recommended by every gamer I have ever met.

  The download process was simple and easy VIA their Adobe air application. They truly impressed me with their simple site and support. I wish they sold new games on this platform. I originally wondered if the game would work on Windows 7. To put you mind at ease, it works flawlessly.

  Psychonauts is one of the best games I have ever played and I am really glad I obtained it through GOG. Go give GOG a shot. http://gog.com

Needless to say it was the worst mistake I have made since signing up for Bank of America. SLOWWWWWWW is a understatement. I had to wait 5 minutes for the right click dialog box to come up. Props to Sony though, the Sony control center did registry scans and optimizations and got my boot time from 10 minutes to 2 and increased the speed around 150%. However, I ended up doing a clean install anyways.

Now before you Mac fan boys say ” OS X FTW w00t!” let me just say…. Its ok Microsoft, I understand. Upgrading a operation system is really really hard. So if you cant master it, next time don’t include that option.

Now the Mac ripping; So Mac OS X runs on Unix right? Unix is really really powerful and is also….. OPEN SOURCE! Now I will go out on a limb here and say I will go buy a Mac when Apple does the following:

1. Makes OS X open source (Required)
2. Stop ripping on pc(see foot rant)
3. 3 Makes iTunes TV shows DRM FREE(optional).

   Now apple, NO ONE LIKES A TATTLE TAIL!! Stop running around whining “LOOK WHAT PC DID!” Instead make commercials like you did for the iPhone, showing the raw power of OS X. Or maybe you are just compensating for something.

   My thoughts on this topic, Windows 7 is a great operation system but…… Linux(Open source) FTW!

A few months ago I ran into a problem. My computer wasn’t powerful enough to continue working on some of my projects. So I decided to look for a new laptop.

My criteria:

• Smaller than 16

My old laptop was an hp dv6000 and it was 17”. I always was weary of carrying it around because of its size and weight.

• Not a Dell

Don’t get me wrong, Dell makes good laptops….BUT…. there support sucks.

Something about not having a complete restore disk, crappy design and horrible support made me look else ware.

• >$1500 and not a Mac

This may make some of you angry but…. I am a programmer and if I bought a Mac I would just install windows on it. That completely defeats the point of a Mac.

Macs are beautiful laptops and a great for regular consumers, however I felt that is wasn’t the right computer for me.

• (optional) Metal case

After saying I didn’t want a Mac… I really want a Mac like pc with the keyboard design and the metal case.

My choice:

I chose a Sony SR because it met all of my criteria and was offering a free windows 7 upgrade.

The computer cost me about $1300 (about the price of a Mac) and I love it.

The exact model is “Sony VGN-SR420J”

My thoughts about my choice:

Well I originally wasn’t happy with my choice because Sony was a moron.

I ordered my laptop 7/2/09 19:30 just after I placed the order I decided I may want a FW instead.

(7/2/09 20:00) So I call Sony and get this response:

(Rep)Hello thank you for calling Sony style this is (Name). How may I help you?

(Me)Hi I am calling to cancel an order I placed 30 minutes ago.

(Rep) I am sorry to hear that! May I ask why?

(Me) I thing I may want a Sony FW instead of a SR.

(Rep) Oh, Ok one second….. May I place you on hold for two minutes to talk to my supervisor?

(Me) Sure.

Two minutes later.

(Rep)Mr. Liscom?

(Me) Yes?

(Rep) I have placed a request to cancel you order. You should receive a response in 24 hours.

(Me) Thank You!

(Rep) Is there anything else I can help you with today?

(Me) No I don’t think so.

(Rep) then have a nice day!

So after reading that you would assume my order was canceled right?

WRONG!!!

Sony has no record of this phone call. (They say)

So I wait 2 days and call back!

They told me that my order had hit the shipping center and could not be canceled.

Then they told me once I received the laptop just send it back.

Ok fine whatever.

One week later check my order status…..

It still has not left the shipping center…..

Great…. So I call Sony Again…… and got the same answer as before.

Then something happened one week later….. I got the laptop!!!
THEN SONY GAVE ME MY MONEY BACK!!!

So I had the laptop and the money not able to do anything with ether

So I call Sony…. and talk to a billing rep….. and he threatens me with fees….because it’s my fault they gave the money back.

So let me get this straight Sony, I tell you made a $1300 mistake IN my favor and you don’t even thank me but instead threatened me.

At this point in time I haven’t even opened the computer yet.

So I wait another 5 days and call again.

As soon as I got off the phone they charged me.

So I decided to keep the overpriced laptop because it wasn’t worth my time sending it back!

Now all you people on the internet can know how Sony treats there customers.

I will post pics of the laptop later.

Funny thing is….I love the laptop

Update:

Since this is the only page anyone visits on my site I might as well update it.

I really love my laptop. Besides that billing problem when I first bought the laptop it has been the best computer I have ever owned.

I do have some problems with it though.

I am unable to run dual external monitors even though I bought a docking station. My card supports it but Sony doesn’t. So I had to buy a USB to DVI adapter and it is supposed to come today. Ill review it for ya’ll.

Overall Sony is an excellent brand and I have and will recommend it highly to friends. I convinced my dad to buy a Sony CW and I may review that also. Sony FTW!

Please leave a comment if you have a question. (Please note they have to be approved so you can post a direct question to me through the comment system)

My windows 7 rant