"Offline?" What's That?

Man ever since +Google+ introduced the new Hangouts app, I've never seen so much whining about a paradigm that no longer is relevant.  People just can't seem to move on, get past it, and wake up to the year 2013!

What am I talking about?  The old "online/offline" thing.  Here's the situation: in Google Talk there was a little dot indicator to show you someone's status.  Green meant online, orange meant away, and red meant offline.  In Google Hangouts, the app that replaces Talk, that indicator is no longer there...and people are freaking the hell out.  If you doubt me, allow me to share a few choice comments I've snagged from the Google+ Discuss community and a few from the comments in the posts of the peanut butter powered CM of Hangouts, +Dori Storbeck:

• "I want to see who is online... not second guess if they are or not." 
• "On desktop at least we have "green" for online people, but yeah I'd hope that basic features like "green" and "orange" would be on mobile as well."
• "Any chance you can add the ability to change status (Busy/Online/Away) in Hangouts? There is a bug (maybe a feature?) where if I use Hangouts strictly, people who are using Gtalk view me as offline."
• "hate that my contacts are no longer grouped online. I used to see friends online and just say hello. Now I have to search for individuals. Not crazy about the Gtalk replacement."
• "I WANT to see who is online..  ...... I don't want to look in Gmail to see my list of people"
• "It does matter who's online and offline.  If i want to contact someone offline, I'll send them an sms.  Sometimes I go offline so I don't have to receive IM's.  I don't want to come back online with a bunch of IM's waiting for me."
• "I don't need to chat with people who are offline.  I don't want to see a long, convoluted list.  I just want to see those of my contacts who are online, plain and simple."

I could probably go on, but I think I've made my point.  Bottom line is that people don't want this to change, but here's the thing: the way we use the internet has changed enough so that this very simply doesn't matter anymore.  

Think back to when Instant Messaging first came about and really got pushed into the limelight.  E-mail was the best way of getting in contact with people that were far away, long distance calling was expensive, but with IM you could have a conversation with anyone on the globe if they used the same IM service you did and were in front of their computer.  That last bit was the most important; they had to be in front of their computer and they had to be online (remember that dial-up was the standard back then, and people usually only connected when they had to).  Back then, you needed an indicator telling you what their status was.

Now let's fast forward to today.  Broadband internet is the standard; our computers are always online.  We carry around internet connected phones that are more powerful than the computers we used when we first sent men to the freaking moon.  You can have a live video conversation with someone on the other side of the world and it costs you just as much as it would if you were in a video call with your next door neighbor - and that cost is normally free.  Quick question for you, dear readers: are you ever actually offline?  Think about it.  You might not be sitting at your computer 24/7, but I'm willing to wager that your lovely internet-connected smartphone isn't more than 10 feet away from you right now.  Hell, for the majority of you it's very likely either in arms reach or you're reading this very article on one right now.

Online/offline is a bygone product of an internet era that is over, and has been for a long time.  You don't need to know if a person has their cell phone in their hand before you send them a text message, so why in the world would it matter for an instant message?  The world has changed.  The way we use the internet has changed.  I'd suggest that you all change with it.

The Next Xbox - What I'd Like To See

Earlier this morning we broke the news on +Geeks of the Round that Microsoft would be revealing its 8th gen console next month on May 21st.  Rumors have been flying all over the damned place about it, getting particularly heated after Sony revealed some details on the upcoming PlayStation 4.

Some of the rumors are good, and others are freaking horrible.  I'm sure most of you have heard the one about requiring an internet connection to function, which would probably be the stupidest fucking thing they could ever do.  Seriously, they go that route and they may as well just hand over the 8th generation to Sony (who said very specifically that they would not be doing that).

We'll be getting some much-needed details soon enough, but for now I just wanted talk about some things I'd really like to see in the next Xbox (whatever they end up calling it).

• Less Hardware Issues - Let's face it; the 360 was a damned trainwreck when it launched back in 2005.  The Red Ring of Death is something that still plagues the system to this day, but not as badly as it was back then when it had a fucking insane 30% failure rate.  That seriously cannot happen again; people will be far less forgiving if the same thing happens two generations in a row.  Fix that shit!

• More Real Exclusives - Let's be real here: the 360 sucks at exclusives.  Don't get me wrong here; games like Alan Wake, Gears of War, and the Halo series are fantastic, but most of the 360's bread and butter has been multiplatform titles like Assassin's Creed and all the Call Of Duty games.  Meanwhile Sony has been taking risks and gave us awesome exclusives like inFamous, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, LittleBIGPlanet, Resistance, Killzone, White Knight Chronicles, God of War - the list goes on.  Microsoft needs to get on the ball and and get their game studios working on content that simply cannot be found anywhere else.  If your best games I can just as easily play on Sony's console or my PC, what the hell do I need your console for?

• Seriously, Don't Require Online - This has been the rumor that has been killing their momentum for pretty much every gamer who's looking forward to buying a next gen console (sorry Wii U, but you don't count).  There are still people in lots of places around the world, even here in the U.S., that don't have access to consistent high-speed internet.  I know soldiers that take their 360s with them when they're on deployment so that they can play some Madden when they're off duty.  By requiring the console to be online at all times, you've totally eliminated all of these people from wanting to own your console.  This is stupid.  Don't fucking do it.

• Larger Storage Format For Games - Back in the early 2000s, DVD was a perfectly acceptable storage format.  It was fairly large, scalable to a degree, and was enough for most games at the time.  By the end of the 6th generation we were starting to see games that came on two DVDs, so clearly something larger was needed.  Sony's answer to this was the Blu-Ray format used in the PS3, which had more than five times the storage of DVDs.  Microsoft's answer was...to do DVD again.  What the fuck were you thinking!? This idiotic move single-handedly held back multi-platform 7th gen games because developers were unable to take real advantage of Blu-Ray's storage capacity to avoid alienating 360 gamers.  Games that were two disks on the 360 quite easily fit onto one of PS3's Blu-Rays with room to spare!  Don't do this shit again, Microsoft.  Swallow your pride and put a damned Blu-Ray drive in your next console.

What do you all want to see in the next Xbox?  Let me know in the comments below and we'll find out details on what we can expect next month!

Yay For Google+ Comments!

Google Plus and the Blogger platform finally come together in the absolutely perfect way, not only easily allowing G+ accounts to comment on Blogger posts without those annoying Captcha things, but also putting any public post that links back to your blog post in the comments as well which allows you to monitor all conversations about your post in one place.

Fantastic idea!  Might actually start blogging a bit more often now...no promises though, so your best bet remains to follow me on Google+.

Best. Voicemail. Ever.

You all know how I do; you send 'em, I post 'em.  This is probably the most epic one ever.

Yet Another Weird Voicemail!

Judging from the phone number, this is a local.  Wrong number maybe?  But the message is pretty funny, at least to me.  Take a listen!

So confused.

So, last night this happened.

Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 10: "Salud" Thoughts

I posted this on Google+, and it was good so I decided to post it here as well.  What follows is a straight-up cut & paste.

Obviously, spoilers here. I'd normally wait a couple of days to do this, but this episode was just too good! I'm going to skip past the more boring storylines here and skip right to the good stuff. First, it was awesome to see Jesse take control like that in the Cartel's meth lab. That was badass. Gus once again shows how badass he is, murdering the entire Cartel and avenging the death of his friend from so long ago. Fighting the effects of the same poison that killed them, he still shouts to anyone that may still be in the house, basically saying, "Bring it!!!"

Freaking sweet.


All this speculation about Mike trying to shoot Jesse is all well and good (for the record, I think people are reading too deeply into it; this is Breaking Bad, not Lost), but there's a far more interesting question.

Jesse, right now, has the power to end all of this. The two people who wanted him and Walt dead at the end of the last season are, right now, alone with him in Mexico. Gus is fighting the effects of the same poison that he used to wipe out the Cartel, Mike is wounded from a GSW, and Jesse is armed.

He could kill both of them. Easily. So, rather than discuss three frames of last night's show, let's look at the far more interesting question here. Where do Jesse's loyalties lie? By killing them both, Jesse ends forever the threat of them killing Walt and avenges the death of Tomas, Andrea's little brother. However, he has more respect from them than he EVER got from Walt; it was impossible to miss the pride on the faces of Gus and Mike when Jesse asserted control and dominance at the Cartel meth lab. He's a valuable member of the team.

Walt cares about Jesse, we all know that. That fact hasn't stopped Walt from treating Jesse like a tool, though. From the beginning, Walt has used Jesse to get what he wants. If Walt wasn't so money hungry, Jesse would have never had to expand the territory in season two, and Combo would still be alive. Jesse got his ass royally kicked by both Tuco and Hank, both for Walt. Jesse killed. in cold blood, for Walt. Right after that, as Jesse was struggling with his emotional aftermath of that murder, Walt, with no thought of Jesse's emotional state whatsoever, demands that he kill again for Walt. And then gets increasingly pissed when Jesse hasn't done it yet! After Walt revealed that he had bugged Jesse's car with a GPS tracker and Jesse, in disbelief and shock, says, "After everything I've done for you," he EARNED that. He had the right to say that.

Next week, Jesse has a choice to make. The line is clearly drawn in the sand. Whose side is he on?

Thoughts?