seanvail99

Lots to look forward to in the next couple of days. Wings and Coyotes should be interesting tonight although I could see the game being a blowout in either team's favor. This series has been really tough to predict but I would love to see Phoenix move on. I'm certainly pulling for Coyote Taylor Pyatt who lost his fiancee in a car crash last year and has battled through a lot of adversity to play quite well this season. 
 
Wednesday night is my Canadiens in game 7 versus the Capitals and that game should be a doozy. I'd love to see Montreal pull off the upset but these games have been so competitive all series that I'm just looking forward to taking it in. 

I could really use the help. Thanks in advance!

If you're down with something a little different, Fringe is totally awesome. Not quite in the same category as Star Trek but I love it and there's not too much to catch up on. 

We all like games and have amazing experiences playing them. Who gives a shit. Nobody should need Roger Ebert's approval to validate their entertainment form of choice.

Bold BBQ Doritos and Ketchup chips are right up there. 

I play hockey during the winter and golf during the summer. I played football in high school and now coach minor football for kids 7-9.  I'm not a phenomenal athlete by any stretch of the imagination but I consider myself reasonably athletic. 

@shaun832 - While I'm not surprised, that's crazy. Good example of how different the value perception really is around the world. 
 
I want to point out that I understand that users who download everything they can pirate on the internet put a strain on ISPs, but I hate that pirating of digital content punishes those who purchase legitimate content. I personally don't understand exactly how ISPs are technically affected by high usage, but surely the greater quantity of data being downloaded by users creates a greater stress on their infrastructure and increases their costs. Having said that, if we really want to move forward with digital content, there needs to be a way around this. How exactly? I have no idea, but there are technical people far smarter than I that need to innovate to help get this market in order.

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m motivated to post this blog because of the quest system. I’m not proud to say that, but these are the facts. 

From following Ryan Davis on twitter I have been really interested to hear his comments regarding Comcast’s Internet usage caps. Ryan was expressing concerns about a 250 GB cap limiting his Internet experience. I understand that when you have unlimited usage and all of a sudden your provider imposes a cap, you’re going to be upset. Nobody likes having a service that is taken away or scaled back. Ever. But it did kind of make me chuckle when I considered it from a different perspective.

Although I'm not an expert in global bandwidth charges, I really believe that many users outside of the United States have a rather different set of expectations for their high-speed internet. Even in Canada, we have had much greater restrictions in my experience.

I had been using a 1 Mbps connection for years through Rogers (the major cable/internet/mobile provider here in Canada). Now this was never the fastest package they offered, but it always suited my needs and for 35 bucks a month I could deal. Now I don’t remember the exact moment, but at some point a 60 GB download cap was put in place for the package. I dealt with this for the most part, with small overages from time to time. But as the years passed and more and more content became available online, this cap became a larger concern.

Rogers then proceeds to “adjust their product offerings” and takes the speed from 1 to 3 Mbps on my package. Bonus right? Well, not when they also brought a usage cap decrease from 60GB to 25GB. Yeah, 25 gigabytes. Totally unacceptable you say? You’re damn right.

After some strategic retention department phone calls, I was able to upgrade to a 10Mbps 95 GB usage cap package for nearly the same price (normally this is a $60/month package). This 95 GB is still nowhere near the 250 GB cap in place from Comcast.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that outside of the USA, bandwidth is a major issue. It’s just not always available at the speeds, quantity and value that many are accustomed to. This is very important to consider whenever you start talking about digital distribution of content. Often when the subject of digital vs. retail copies of games or music comes up, the issues that are talked about are issues with DRM or the satisfaction of having a physical thing on your shelf in your collection (although I agree that these are both legitimate concerns).  

When the digital pipeline is being throttled so badly that it affects how you are using the internet, there is a major problem. No end user should have to look at their “account usage to date” when they make a decision about what they will visit, stream or download online. Until this problem is fixed for the wider global audience, there will be a major obstacle in the widespread adoption of digital content. 

I’d be interested to hear perspectives from other users, especially as it relates to your local options. Thanks for checking in.

I’ve been thinking about the whole idea of Valve bringing Steam to Mac for a while and I think we could look back on this as a very significant event in the years to come. 

First of all, I think it’s important to get some background on my perspective because fanboys can easily spin this type of talk out of control in a hurry. I grew up playing PC games starting with a 386 machine. Shareware games like Crystal Caves, Lost Vikings, and Jazz Jackrabbit are how I started out in gaming. I had a few upgrades along the way and I was really exclusively a PC gamer until I purchased a Playstation right at the ends of it’s life. I’m definitely happy working with PCs and have no problems using them whatsoever.

This past fall I purchased laptop for Teacher’s College and decided to go with a 13” Macbook Pro because I fell in love with the form factor, relatively good performance and battery performance. I would have been happy going with a PC but could never find something I was totally happy with. At the end of the day, whether it’s a Windows or Mac OSX machine, I’m fine either way. 

So on to the topic…

I’ve been drawn back in to PC gaming and the lure of building a machine and enjoying some good old mouse and keyboard action. Better judgment has prevailed and I’ve decided that for both practical and financial reasons I just don’t need to build a desktop PC. Still, browsing through the Steam catalogue, I find it hard to resist some of the older games I really love like KOTOR, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life.

Also, Valve is incredibly smart. They know computer gaming better than any other developer/publisher out there. They know how to create games that suck people in and keep them hooked. If I had to trust any developer across any platform with a project, Valve would be in my top two picks (the other being Blizzard, who also support Mac gaming...).

Here’s where PC fanboys could get irritated. The apple market is growing, like it or not. Like crazy. All you need to do is walk around a college or university campus library and look around. You’ll see young people with macbooks, iPods and iPhones everywhere. Younger people are in to Macs and Apple’s various iterations of their products will continue to keep these people sucked in. Many of these users are more casual computer users. They love their Mac and they are scared of PCs because they’ve had bad experiences with viruses, spyware or other problems (usually caused by their own ignorance).  These people like to play games on their iPhones, there’s no reason they wouldn’t play games on their Macbooks.

I think the real clincher for this whole venture could be how apple chooses to support Steam. Joystiq’s recent interview with John Cook from Valve confirmed that they have been working with Apple on the Steam for Mac project. If Apple continues their support in the launch and support of Steam for Mac, they could help to bridge the gap between Mac users and Valve’s game offerings. Apple’s marketing and PR is a powerful machine that has a huge impact on their users.

Very curious to hear how you feel about this topic and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for checking in.