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Nov 11

How much have you spent on Computers & Gaming?

by Chris Billows in Mental Mischief 0 comments
I am a huge finance geek. Since 2001 I track all of my expenses with MS Money. Previous to that I kept the receipts of all of my computer and gaming purchases, perhaps for nostalgia. Anyways, I have a pretty decent estimate how much I have spent (including the earliest machines which were purchased for me) since I started gaming. > 1976-1979 ~$250 on Video Arcades and some Pinball > 1980-1983 ~$1000 on a Atari 2600 and 30+ cartridges > 1984-1985 ~$500 on a Timex Sinclair 2000; Tape Player (100+KB per tape side). I hated it when the tape wire would jiggle and the program would need to be reloaded from the start 😡 ; Spectrum ROM. I used to swap the ROMs to emulate the UK computer to play a bunch of excellent games which also was my first experience with emulation. > 1986-1988 ~$1000 on a Commodore 64C; Commodore 1541 Floppy Drive (170KB capacity). I remember renting computer games. Everyone copied them of course. 😳 > 1988-1992 ~$400 on a Raven PR-9101 9-Pin Dot Martix Printer. My first peripheral that made computers a business machine. > 1990-1992 ~$2000 on an Atari 1040 STe; 1MB SIMM RAM; 720KB Floppy […]

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Oct 18

Lesson Six in Using iTunes: Playlists

by Chris Billows in Hobby Heedings 0 comments
A powerful feature of iTunes is its ability to create custom playlists of your songs. You can create playlists of particular genres, years, and anything else you have listed in your tags. As I stated in Lesson Five, having information in your tags/comments section that relates to an artist’s city of origin or listing the names of? their earlier bands can all be searchable and thus become the basis of a playlist. I extensively use Playlists to create music lists to listen to. In a future post, I will list how I use playlists to queue music to rate and to organize my songs to further polish them. My playlists operate like an instrument that makes me feel just like a musician, fluidly allowing me to play great music. Here is an introduction to Playlists courtesy of Apple. But one of the most sophisticated playlists I have ever found is listed here. Check them out.

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Oct 10

Where Did The Game Go?

by Chris Billows in Mental Mischief 0 comments
I recall back in 1992, the first time I opened up my Wintel CPU Unit. I was stunned. The unit was so big, but on the inside it was so completely empty. I saw the hard drive, the motherboard, and the wires connecting everything, Yet where was the games I was playing? I expected to see the land of Illuria (the original Warlords game I was playing) inside the case. Of course, I intellectually knew that the game existed as ones and zeros on the hard drive, but it made me do a double-take. Everything we do on computers and consoles are those ones and zeros being quickly arranged in elaborate patterns. It is simply a series of electrical current that we are seeing on the screen – just like right now. It is truly amazing. 😆 I think that this amazement helped the Matrix movies give the impact they did. They portrayed the question of What is Reality? My experience was like an introduction to the Buddhist concept of Sunyata or Emptiness. When everything is not what we think it is, then why become upset when a game is lost or prideful when a game is won? 😉

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Oct 04

How To Evaluate Computer & Video Games As Art

by Chris Billows in Hobby Heedings 1 comments
In response to a couple of blog posts, Growing Up Games and Games vs Art, I feel compelled to respond with my own perspective about how to evaluate Computer Games as Art. Computer Games is a medium that is criticized for being immature and adolescent. Games are seen as being full of violence, escapism, and lacking any maturity. As an avid fan, investor in a computer games company, and an amateur philosopher, I wondered why do Computer Games get saddled with these labels. After some thinking, I feel that there are three related reasons: 1) Computer Games are relatively new form of entertainment and communication medium. 2) And because of #1, Computer Games possess its fair share of adolescent content. 3) And because of #2, Computer Games do not possess the sophisticated traits consistent with Art. So let’s start with the first reason. My read of 20th century history is that all new entertainment mediums start off being criticized for being frivolous. When Movies were first created, they were seen to be superfluous compared to theater. The first movies were not documentaries, but skin flicks that were used in various naughty arcades. Movies started off as pure bawdy entertainment, but […]

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Sep 16

Pirates And Their Sense of Entitlement

by Chris Billows in Business Beller 0 comments
It is truly stunning. Software developers are releasing games and applications on the iPhone platform for $0.99 and despite the low price their games are still pirated. Developers are finding evidence that 90% of their games are being played without being paid for. The same thing appears to be happening in the music, movie, and book industry as everything has become digitized. People expect their content to be free. But content creation is work, and for the most part people need to be paid for their work. Pirates disagree and feel completely entitled to use this content without paying for it. There are even political parties that articulate their position. They tell us that all copyrights and patents are harmful and that stealing from content creators is an act of freedom. Yes, playing a iPhone game that sells for only $0.99 without paying for it sure makes the world a freer place. Talk about self-deluded self-entitlement. Well, here is an article that completely destroys their position. PC Game Piracy Examined. Check it out. To me the solution is not to prevent piracy (which is impossible), but to punish it. The only way to change a deluded sense of entitlement is […]

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Jun 30

Curing the Diseases of Optimism and Pessimism

by Chris Billows in Spirit Speculations 3 comments
In relation to my previous post talking about understanding Human Nature as the centre of all general and political philosophy, I thought I would touch on two mindsets that plague us as much as ideology. The twin-opposites of Optimism and Pessimism. Optimism is about emotional states of being including hope, wishful thinking, and at its worse fairy-tale views of the world that its always getting better. Pessimism is its opposite, which includes hopelessness, despondency, and at its worse fatalism that the world is going to get worse. Both lead to paralysis since at their most extreme, the world is just fine as it if you are optimist so why worry about it, or its going to hell if you are pessimist and there is nothing that can be done about it. As soon as one accepts optimism or pessimism as their worldview, they shut themselves off from asking questions. I used to consider myself pessimistic and a cynic but after finally reading those definitions, I realized that this was not me. My blog is about asking questions, hopefully relevant and rational questions. My goal is to find solutions, not preach optimism or pessimism. I realized that I am a skeptic. […]
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