Tuesday, February 1, 2011

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D Screenshots, Canada Starts Getting Usage-Based Internet Billing, Francis Ford Coppola Thinks Downloaders Are Right, How ESRB Ratings Are Made, Press For Truth Presents: The Nation's Deathbed

Hello everyone, it is Tuesday night and I have no interesting personal news to report for today. Although, I did receive my copy of Pokemon Green from Japan today and am ready to try and learn some Japanese through it! And now for today's news.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D Screenshots
http://www.nintendoeverything.com/59961/



You remember when Ocarina of Time came out right? Well, available when the Nintendo 3DS releases is a new, crisper version with 3D as well. The above screenshot is the version from the Nintendo 64, this picture below is the new and improved version. The textures and every shouldbe fun to play in and it will be interesting using the second screen as your inventory, no more C buttons!



Canada Gets First Dose Of Usage-Based Internet Billing
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/canada-gets-first-bitter-dose-of-metered-internet-billing.ars

Canadian Internet users aren't too happy with the metered Internet coming to the country. Many people have even took to Youtube like this teen aged girl. I'm sorry I find this video funny but she'd like us all to sign the petition at www.stopthemeter.ca.


Canadian ISPs are now publishing revised data plans and they aren't very lovely looks. An indie ISP, called TekSavvy based in Ontario sent an e-mail to their subscribers saying: "Like our customers, and Canadian Internet users everywhere, we are not happy with this new development." The Canadian
Radio-Telecommunications Commissions has approved the Usage-Based Billing for the popular carrier Bell in September. Competitive ISPs who try to get connections to customers, which connect with Bell, are also being metered by the company. Even though the CTRC gave ISPs a monthly discount of fifteen per cent (TekSavvy asked for fifty per cent), it is still going to change the way consumers use their Internet. Beginning on March 1st, the TekSavvy members of Ontario who had been subscrcibed to a 5Mbps plan now have a new usage cap of 25GB. This is "substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC's decision to impose usage based billing." Comcast in the United States has a data cap of 250GB, we are down ninety per cent and going over the 25GB cap the CRTC put the data overage rates at $1.90 Canadian dollars per gigabyte for most of the count and $2.35 for Quebec. TekSavvy users who are subscribed to the "High Speed Internet Premium" plan which is $31.95  now get 175GB less per month.  TekSavvy warned their customers that "extensive web surfing, sharing music, video streaming, downloading and playing games, online shopping and email" could put users over the 25GB cap and also what out about "power users that use multiple computers, smart phones, and game consoles at the same time." This is going to put the hurt on any family of three or higher at major risk of overage. If the father is working and a child is on a game like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, they will go over quick. The supposed good news for TekSavvy users is that they can now buy insurance", which is being defined as "a recurring subscription fee that provides you with additional monthly usage." The fee is $4.75 for Ontario which gives you an additional 40GB of data. There are also plans which are payments made in advance for extra data, being called "usage vault". Consumers can buy these vault data plans of $1.90/GB for up to 300GB in any month. TekSavvy consumers could purchase High Speed Internet Premium with a monthly base of 200GB for $31.95, now they get about half of that data (if they buy two units of insurance) at $41.45 a month. The picture at the bottom is a comparison of TekSavvy's old and new rates. This is what TekSavvy CEO, Rocky Gaudrault says about it all, "The ostensible, theoretical reason behind UBB is to conserve capacity, but that issue is very questionable. One certain result though, is that Bell will make much more profit on its Internet service, and discourage Canadians from watching TV and movies on the Internet instead of CTV, which Bell now owns." Many high-bandwidth business are fighting back and Netflix, for example have started publishing graphs for ISP performance in both the United States and Canada and they plan to update it monthly. Netflix even had words on this situation: "Wired ISPs have large fixed costs of building and maintaining their last mile network of residential cable and fiber. The ISPs' costs, however, to deliver a marginal gigabyte, which is about an hour of viewing, from one of our regional interchange points over their last mile wired network to the consumer is less than a penny, and falling, so there is no reason that pay-per-gigabyte is economically necessary. Moreover, at $1 per gigabyte over wired networks, it would be grossly overpriced."


Francis Ford Coppola Thinks Downloaders Are Right
http://gizmodo.com/5747656/francis-ford-coppola-maybe-the-downloaders-are-right

In an interview with The 99 Percent, director Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) took a stance that is shocking to entertainment. He thinks that maybe the students that download music and movies are right. Maybe artists should not get paid. This is what he told The 99 Percent in an interview: 'We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember
 that it's only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in
 the morning and write your script. This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money? In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to  travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you'd be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, "Try to  disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a  living and money." Because there are ways around it.' It might be easy for Coppola to say this bud what about the independent and small  companies?
How ESRB Ratings Are Made
http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1147009p1.html

Every video game sold on store shelves has a rating on the front and the back of the box. Most of us never stop to read about how the ratings are created. Here is an awesome info graphic breaking down the process.



That was it for today's blog every. I leave you with an independent documentary by Press for Truth that was just released for free of viewing on Youtube.




Press For Truth Presents: The Nation's Deathbed

The Nation's Deathbed is a documentary about the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership), the protest that occurred in Montebello Quebec in August of 2007 and how it all ties into the agenda for a North American Union.

This film reveals the true story of the horrific events and the now infamous agent provocateur incident that transpired in Montebello Quebec and it also explores the growing resistance movement to the NAU agenda. This is a must see for anyone who truly wants to be informed about the issues that we face as a nation.

Support the film makers by owning it on DVD:
http://pressfortruth.ca/dvd_dtls.php?rid=2

Originally released in 2008:
Produced by Dan Dicks
Directed by Steven Davies

For more information please visit:
http://pressfortruth.ca/

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