Monthly Archives: September 2007

This is the first time I saw this quotation.

“We do not believe that it is putting it too strongly to suggest that Christians come to worship with the same attitude and demeanor they take to a funeral service for a professing Christian.”

Edit: Since this isn’t exactly a matter of Reformed dogma, let me put this more diplomatically.  I don’t think this statement is an accurate description of the attitude and demeanor God wants in worship.

I apologize for being a little bit more blunt and edgy on this.  But even though I’ve tried to really control my exposure, the tenor of certain communications by certain parties has made the temptation to shoot back rather overpowering (at least temporarily).

The fact is there are almost as many different views of Reformed worship as there are Reformed pastors.  I live peaceably with all sorts of positions I disagree with held by brothers in the ministry I respect, so I shouldn’t have reacted any differently above.  But I still think it is quite wrong.  To get an idea why start here.

Apple sued to get iPhone justice

I’ll never forget that terrifying night. I was just sitting at home, minding my own business, when Steve Jobs and a platoon of AT&T thugs burst through my front door.

“YOU are getting an iPhone right now, on launch day, and you’re going to have to sign a contract indicating that you’ll use it for TWO YEARS! BWA HA HA HA HA,” said the Steve, wringing his hands in evil glee.

The AT&T thugs manhandled me into a waiting unmarked black van and took me down to the Apple Store at The Grove in West Hollywood. Hovering helicopters and troops with vicious, snarling dogs kept the damned in line as we waited, huddled in fear, knowing our only choices were to sign the two year contract or be put up against the back wall of the Apple Store and shot. [READ THE WHOLE THING]

The plaintiff is also suing over the price drop.

hat tip

Halo too

Ever since my iMac bricked I’ve been jonesing to go online and play. We have a new PC now (Yah, with Vista. It came installed. I didn’t have much choice. And it was half the price of replacing the iMac–which has been such a great experience except, you know, the logic board frying twice in three years). So I downloaded the demo.

Weird.

First reaction: what’s with all that blood? By the time you take the beach (the demo gives you “The Silent Cartographer”) you’ve pretty much spray-painted quite a number of patches of sand red and blue or purple. Not quite the game I would be encouraging the kiddies to play (I didn’t know about the flood until it was too late).

It is possible that the iMac version had these features but gave me a less processor-intensive version. The PC gives me lights that the Mac version normally missed, so maybe the blood is another level of detail (the powerpc iMac had a single core processor and 256k ram; I’m no using AMD dual-core with a gig of ram but it still has problems which I assume is the fault of Vista bloatware).

Blood is not the only difference. The colors are more… deep? Garish? It works sometimes. The warthog looks a lot more jeep-like close up, gritty or something. But the red and blue armor of multi-player looks like it produced by crayons and a lot of force.

I’ll get used to it.

I’ve linked the PC version of Halo 2, but I can’t really recommend it. They now “offer” a month of free internet play. Isn’t that generous? A whole month for what, if you buy Halo 1 is perpetually free.

On the other hand, I played about ten minutes of Halo 2 recently on the Xbox. Thumbsticks are of the devil! I hate them. I want to aim with my whole arm.

Still, if I buy Halo 2 for the boys new Xbox, I have a lot more certainty regarding play quality (isn’t that weird?). So I’ll probably go with it now that internet play is no longer free.

FWIW, here’s my earlier game review.

Illegal movie downloading on the internet

I think that the motion picture industry is right to be worried about this. But when they act like the people who download movies are taking money out of their pockets, they are simply wrong.

The only way that is true is if and only if, every decision to download a movie is also a decision to not view the movie through other means.

And that is just nonsense. People would rather they could afford Satellite TV and Tivo. The numbers who are deciding not to purchase DVDs in preference to making illegal downloads has got to be marginal.

Who is really getting hurt by what is so easy to download? Probably the local networks. They are the ones who are losing viewers, I would guess.

Like I said at the beginning. The motion picture industry needs to make sure they are not losing their investments. But the claims I see seem to use a model that cannot be true. If I owned a local TV station though, I would be really upset about how easily more sought after content can be acquired.