Great device limited by your ISP

Pros: Easy to set up, Reliability, Video selection, Easy to use, Built in Wi-Fi, High quality picture, Compact, Great value

Cons: Want more video choices

Best Uses: Living room, Bedroom

Describe Yourself: Home entertainment enthusiast, Netflix fan

This is a GREAT product for streaming, but its biggest drawback is an issue not caused by Roku, but rather your ISP. I specifically bought it for use with Amazon Video and HBO Go. Amazon Video has been great, but I found out Comcast blocks HBO Go on Roku and Xbox. Of course I didn’t know this till after I already bought it.

So be aware of the limitations by your ISP, but other than that its a GREAT unit, and probably the best streaming box available.

(legalese)

This was posted by Sainta117 on the Bioware Social Network forums.  Things move pretty fast there, but I think it sums up the feelings of just why we are SO upset about Mass Effect 3’s endings, and I wanted to preserve this:

“I may have gone a little over the top here. It’s been a long day, and I’m a little punchy at the moment. Regardless, here goes. I started to write this for a blog on games at the university where I teach, but I thought it might mean more to people here.

Stories are important. Great storytellers throughout history, from Tolkien and Lewis back through the mists of time to Homer and the nameless authors of "Gilgamesh" and the "Tain Bo Cuailnge" have inspired people with tales of love, and sacrifice, and the strivings of heroes against the nihilistic forces of evil. These ideas transcend time and space, and are no less valid in a 21st century global society than they were in 10th century Europe, or Jerusalem in the year AD 32, or the rocky islands of Greece six centuries before. We all love modern epics, even as we cynically pretend they don’t mean anything. We laugh at people who memorize dialog from "The Lord of the Rings," or drop lines from "Star Wars," but deep down, we know that there is value and truth in these stories, and we feel the tug of their ideals and lessons at the very core of our being. As the movie was in the 20th century the medium of the epic, so now is the video game becoming the torchbearer of epic stories. They move and inspire us, even as we pretend they’re just expressions of commercial greed, or momentary entertainments to fill time. We may laugh, or smirk, but in the end we’re all changed, uplifted, *improved* by a good story, whether we care to admit it or not.

To me, the worst part of the endings isn’t the terrible plot holes, the uncharacteristically passive Shepard, or even the complete lack of closure provided by the final scenes. It was the utter betrayal of the most central and hopeful themes that ran through all of the other mass effect games.
In ME1, humanity stands at the end of a rocky childhood on the center of the galactic stage, prepared to take that first, breathless step into galactic prominence. Commander Shepard is the first human Spectre, the first sign that the older, more established peoples of the galaxy are prepared to admit humanity to a seat at the tables of power. And standing in opposition to him, and to humanity as a whole, is a ghost of the bitter past, a turian who hates humans, who is trapped in the old bitter rivalry of the first contact war, and who, it turns out, is ultimately the voice of submission, appeasement, and resignation in the face of the demands of the most profound embodiment of evil imaginable.

In order to defeat Saren, Shepard must assemble a team of all different races and attitudes. A sullen, bitter, jaded Krogan warlord, a brash impatient Turian cop, a brilliant, nerdy asari scientist, and a buoyant, perky, but terribly fragile Quarian teenager. Add to these the two faces of humanity, Kaiden, with his "aliens are jerks and saints, just like us" inclusiveness, and Ashley, who mistrusts all aliens on principle and is more like Saren than is strictly comfortable (a fact you can call her out on, incidentally). Everyone’s contributions and abilities are needed so succeed in this epic struggle, and under Shepard’s guidance these individuals all pull together, even in the face of fearsome challenge and terrible sacrifice, to triumph over an ancient, nihilistic evil. They must all dare to unite as one so that they can come to embody hope even in the darkest of hours. To stand together in the face of doubt and conspiracy and never, ever give up until they win through to inspiring victory.

The central lesson of Mass Effect 1 is that Kaiden, whether he lives or dies, is right. The aliens of ME *are* just like us, more similar than not, and that when we all work together we can not only accomplish the impossible, but we can also find ourselves in the unexpected position of becoming emotionally attached to people who have mandibles and exoskeletons, or squids on their heads, or who consider a headbutt a normal part of conversation (no Scottish jokes, please). To me, one of the finest moments in my ME 1 playthrough was watching Liara and Shepard’s relationship blossom as they come to the realization that love and understanding can cross even the barriers between worlds and species effortlessly (incidentally, the fact that this scene drove the talking heads on Fox News absolutely nuts just made it clear to me how clear the theme of embracing "otherness" was here – since there’s clearly nothing Rupert Murdoch hates more than diversity, compassion, and inclusiveness).

Sprinkled in among these main themes are others, equally laudable – redemption, sacrifice, compassion, and mercy.

ME 2 is a bit darker in tone, but still repeats the same themes. Once again, Shepard is challenged to face off against the stark existential evil of the reapers, but is also challenged to confront the more insidious (and maybe necessary) evil of Cerberus. Once again, Shepard, whether paragon or renegade, is presented with the opportunity to unite a disparate band of aliens and humans, and once again is faced with some of humanity’s darker elements. The arrogance of ethnic supremecists, the despair of mental illness, the emotional weight of things done or left undone in the past. All of these themes are explored, if not always perfectly, then at least with sensitivity and hope. The most tangible sign of this is that in the end, if Shepard puts the needs of others above his or her own, if he or she goes the extra mile to engage with others and embody the principle that trouble shared is trouble halved, then even the most impossible suicide mission can be accomplished without undue sacrifice or loss. All the more subtle themes make their reappearance here, as well as a few new ones, but ultimately, underlying them all is the insidiously beautiful notion that if we reach out a hand (or talon) to those who are different than us, even to those who have been our enemies, that we can achieve greatness, unity, and victory, even against impossible odds.

Throughtout the vast majority of Mass Effect 3, we see these values reinforced and amplified once again. Bringing the Krogan, Salarians, and Turians together while righting old wrongs and paving the way for reconcilliation shows that if we can admit the mistakes of the past and earnestly agree to try to do better in the future, we can come together to form a whole greater than its individual parts. This is taken to its maximum possible extension when we see first the Quarians and Geth, and then Joker and EDI push through the most extreme and uncrossable divide in science fiction, that between synthetics and organics, humans and machines, to form new and beautiful, if fragile, partnerships (on a personal note, I had to choke down a sob or two when Legion gave up his life to give that future to all of them – and I’m not typically a movie-crier).
So here we are, standing at the culmination of three hundred hours of joy and tears, brought about through a profound exploration of the power of hope and inclusiveness in the unlikely form of a video game. We’re watching every race in the galaxy: humans, and turians, krogan and salarians, quarians and geth, and even the ageless, arrogant asari all come together in equal partnership to fearlessly face down an enemy of unimaginiable power and ancient evil, riding into a battle they cannot hope to win conventionally, prepared to fight and die for just the smallest hope of victory, fighting and dying to buy just the smallest chance that their friends and loved ones might escape utter and complete annhilation. And at the climax of that battle, we find ourselves confronted by the very avatar of intolerance, ruthlessness, cruelty, and arbitrary authority in the Starchild. And what does Bioware *force* us to do?

Bend our knee to it. We have to meekly accept the vile, unacceptable principle that there must always be winners and losers, that some battles are just too big to fight, some evils too powerful to defeat. That we must choose to bargain with the devil instead of spitting in his eye.
In other words, that everything Mass Effect has taught us is a lie. At the last moment, it strips of us of our unity, of our hope. It denies us the chance to pull together and win through to a glorious victory, or even to stand and die as free beings beside our brothers-in-arms. We must, it tells us, choose sides, at the last. We must become the monster we despise, or accept a hateful amalgamation with an evil and soulless foe, or sacrifice those who respect and count on us to achieve a broken and hollow victory.
And that, I believe, is what so many of us are *really* incensed about. Because we instinctively reject this insidious calumny as the end of the epic we’ve come to love. We reject the idea that we can’t all work together to achieve greatness. That we can’t stand together to become a whole and complete galaxy, greater than the sum of its parts and its petty daily grievances and indignities.

And that is what the "Retake Mass Effect" movement is really about, in my opinion, whether we articulate it or not. We are following the example Shepard sets. We are standing together in the face of a great philosophy that has been perverted to cynicism and division, and saying, "Dammit, give us back our hope."
Yes, it’s a game. But more than that, Shepard’s story is a modern epic, no less valid in its time than the stories of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Cuchillain, or Beowulf. Its themes are both laudable and universal, and worthy of note and remembrance. Bioware has failed at the final clinch, fallen in the final turn. But the responsibility for seeing this through was never really just their burden to bear. It falls to us to insist that they finish their masterpiece, that they remain true to themselves. It falls to us to hold the line, to make them see that they owe it to us, and to themselves, to give this epic the ending it deserves.”

Hold The Line.

Spoilers ahoy for Mass Effect 3:

So I completed Mass Effect 3 yesterday.  I said to myself the whole game “people hated ME2 also, and I loved that game.  It’s just the internet hate machine in full effect again, it can’t be that bad.”

Then I got to the white platform.  In 5 minutes, they manage to ruin not just 1 game, but 3 console games, 1 ipad game, 1 ipad app, 4 novels, and at least 3 comic series as well as more upcoming comics yet to be released and an Anime still being made.

With the ending we were given, NONE of that other material matters.  The multiplayer doesn’t matter, your choices don’t matter, the fact that the races of the galaxy were ever here doesn’t matter.  With a deus ex machina twist and a producer who wants to be M. Night Shymalyan they managed to make every character interaction and choice we made meaningless.

As I stood on that platform, being forced to make a choice by the AI that created the Reapers I wondered why I was listening to this little star kid anyway.  I spent 3 games fighting against pre-destiny and the destruction of civilization.   At the last minute I’m told that contrary to everything I’ve just achieved, I have to make a choice that will destroy everything one way or the other.  ALL choices cause the destruction of the Relay network, setting back galactic civilization 200k years, as well as destroying over 65 billion people. 

So I’m looking at this, wondering why Shepard would even listen to this kid.  Why at the last minute, would Shepard look at the being who created the Reapers, who is offering only Reaper approved options, and be all

NO.  Dammit NO.  There’s a dozen other gaping plot holes in this that have already been addressed else where, but it’s left me feeling as though I was a complete tool for investing as much time and money into this franchise as I have.

I bought a bunch of Spectre packs in multiplayer.  I bought lithographs, hoodies, tshirts, action figures, books, comics, ipad apps.  And they just made me feel like rather than having experiences that added to the lore of the universe, instead I just flushed my money down the toilet.

So as until Sunday I was set to spend more money on bioware, I would like to give a short list of things I WON’T be giving them money for:

Razer keyboard and mouse and mousepad
New Comics
New Books
Anime
Movie
Statues
Apparel
Any other Accessories
New Art

So yeah Bioware, you just lost A LOT of money just from me.  All for this…
A TWIST!

Good job flushing a franchise down the toilet.  The worst part is not only have you killed Mass Effect as a possible franchise for long into the future, you’ve ruined any trust built up in Bioware, and we’ll all be far less trusting of ANY developer making big claims about story in the future.  So not only have you ruined it for you, you’ve ruined it for everyone else too.

Man, fuck you Bioware.

Look! We’re on the news!

So we recently setup a new Win2k8 R2 print server to replace our aging 2k3 server, and I needed a way to easily switch a whole bunch of users over to the printer mappings on the new server.  After some digging, I came up with this method of switching everyone over at login with Powershell:

<#

.SYNOPSIS
This is a Powershell script to remove the old <printserver> printers and replace them with Printers mapped to <newprintserver>

.DESCRIPTION
This script will run at logon, and accomplish the following tasks:
1) Sets ErrorAction to Silently Continue to hide any red errors if a printer connection doesn’t exist
2) Gets the machines list of installed printers and passes it to the $localprinters variable
3) Searches the $localprinters variable for the printer names and declares them
4) Tests each variable for existence, and if it exists removes the old <printserver> version and installs the <newprintserver> version
5) Checks what the original default printer was, and if it was a <printserver> one changes it to the new <newprintserver> version

.NOTES
This script is fairly easy to modify and tailor to a different site by modifying the what is searched for via -pattern, and adjusting the printer connections in each test case.

.LINK
http://www.blueglowy.com

#>
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"

$localprinters = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Printer -ComputerName ${env:computername}

$defaultprt = Get-WMIObject -class Win32_Printer -computer ${env:computername} -Filter Default=True | Select Name,Default

$test = Select-String -inputObject $localprinters -pattern "<printer1>" -quiet
$test2 = Select-String -inputObject $localprinters -pattern "<printer2>" -quiet
$test3 = Select-String -inputObject $localprinters -pattern "<printer3>" -quiet
$test4 = Select-String -inputObject $localprinters -pattern "<printer4>" -quiet

$prt1 = Select-String -inputObject $defaultprt -pattern "<printer1>" -quiet
$prt2 = Select-String -inputObject $defaultprt -pattern "<printer2>" -quiet
$prt3 = Select-String -inputObject $defaultprt -pattern "<printer3>" -quiet
$prt4 = Select-String -inputObject $defaultprt -pattern "<printer4>" -quiet

if ($test -eq "True") {(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).RemovePrinterConnection("\\<printserver>\<printer1>")
    (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).AddWindowsPrinterConnection("\\<newprintserver>\<printer1>")}
    else {""}
   
if ($test2 -eq "True") {(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).RemovePrinterConnection("\\<printserver>\<printer2>")
    (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).AddWindowsPrinterConnection("\\<newprintserver>\<printer2>")}
    else {""}
   
if ($test3 -eq "True") {(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).RemovePrinterConnection("\\<printserver>\<printer3>")
    (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).AddWindowsPrinterConnection("\\<newprintserver>\<printer3>")}
    else {""}
   
if ($test4 -eq "True") {(New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).RemovePrinterConnection("\\<printserver>\<printer4>")
    (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Network).AddWindowsPrinterConnection("\\<newprintserver>\<printer4> PCL5")}
    else {""}

#Check for default printer and reset it to users original choice if printer was removed
if ($prt1 -eq "True") {($Printer = Get-WmiObject win32_printer  | where {$_.name -match "<printer1>"})}
    Elseif ($prt2 -eq "True") {($Printer = Get-WmiObject win32_printer  | where {$_.name -match "<printer2>"})}
        Elseif ($prt3 -eq "True") {($Printer = Get-WmiObject win32_printer  | where {$_.name -match "<printer3>"})}
            Elseif ($prt4 -eq "True") {($Printer = Get-WmiObject win32_printer  | where {$_.name -match "<printer4> PCL5"})}
                Else {$Printer = ""}

$Printer.SetDefaultPrinter()
       
Printer Check Complete

Please to be enjoying

ME2 action figure 4 pack.

Liar Vox

and here’s a video of me mucking about playing it

So i like a good consumer I updated my itunes to 9.2 today, and after it completed, 88 files are missing, 564 tv shows are showing as unplayed, and some of my music is now gone.  Thankfully the music had already been copied over to my Zune library, but the problem is that I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED. Its just gone.

Frankly though, my greater concern is the fact that even if I want to move to a computer’s product, like oh say….Zune, I can’t take my media with me.  Due to drm and failure to adhere to standards, Apple has assured that I will forever have to use this apple TV they don’t really want to support to view the files.  The container Apple uses for MP4 is an M4V with AC3 passthru, which is an unsupported hack to the MP4 codec container, therefore most other software won’t read it.  Combined with the DRM, you are locked forever into using this thing, no matter how laggy and crappy it is, since Apple doesn’t wanna actually upgrade the device. 

The lesson I’ve learned here is this, if you want interoperability and you want to insure your investment in media isn’t destroyed by a shitty software update….PIRATE. 

And they wonder why they can’t beat piracy?