Challenge the World: RIP Steve Jobs

Hello and Welcome to Tea ‘n History, with your Hostess, Felicia Angel.

 

My first home computer was an Apple. It was old, had AOL 1.1.2 on it last I checked, and was used by my sister and I to play MYST, Mario Teaches Typing, and maybe some of the 8-Bit games that my dad liked, which were Risk and Galactic Empire. When he got us a PC to use for our homework and play time, the Mac became my dad’s toy for Sundays, where marathon runs of Risk and Galactic Empire were common.

About 5 years ago, the Mac finally died. My dad was not happy, and it took him until about a year ago to get a new computer, another Mac.

In general, my dad enjoyed Macs, and I could understand why. Because I had little money when I got my first computer, I have been getting a succession of PCs, both desktop and laptop, which either last a good while depending on how well you care for them, but almost always end up with some sort of a virus or dying if I haven’t gotten them plugged into a wall socket.

One of the first iPods I got, however, I gave to my sister. It still works, and she is still using it. My dad’s Mac doesn’t always have the same problems mine did, and seeing the new Windows mode where the stuff was on the bottom screen (same as the Mac my dad got a year before the Window’s version came out)…it’s safe to say that Mac innovates fairly well, and when I have the money and this computer dies…it’ll probably be replaced by a Mac.

 

Earlier this week, Apple announced that Steve Jobs had died. Those who were Apple Geeks, or at least knew him marginally from all the presentations of the iPod, iPodTouch, iPhone, and iPad, soon learned more about him and his influence on Apple. He’d been the first to show off Apple II, a home computer. He’d been able to get the Apple marketed as a computer for everyone, leaving it the first to have those icons you click on to get to a file, rather then writing in the code for it. Yes, all your clickable icons…that’s a Mac idea.

However, sales slumps and problems lead to him leaving Apple, during which he created the first home computer to be a server for Web, bought Pixar (then The Graphics Group) from LucasFilms and helped get a deal between them and Disney for some computer-based films, starting with Toy Story in 1995. When Disney bought Pixar, Jobs was then the largest shareholder of Disney stock, beating out even Disney’s own family, and helped with getting some of the other computer animated projects.

When Jobs returned to Apple, who had bought his NeXT computer (the first web server), he returned and soon the Mac OS X was created, as well as…well…ok, I remember this and I love it so…

I want one of those so badly….

By now, we all know that he’s gotten famous for being the one who shows off the new shiny item – the iPod, iTunes (which was based off Napster), and all the others. Wiki announces he has about 338 US Patents, and in general he seemed a likable guy. A few have mentioned he was a terror to work with, but I will admit to have a few terrors as supervisors, and despite that, they were good people to work with. Not all, but most, and they mostly just demanded excellence, or at least your best. Many have compared him to Edison, Ford, and other manufacturing geniuses of the past, with just as many pointing out that it felt too early for him to leave, that there was still new ideas to be had. A whole university was started to study his sales ideas. The generation that grew up with early home computers and remembered 8-bit games and floppy disks have a great deal of technology that he helped pioneer. Even without knowing him, many mourn his passing. Apple helped change and challenge the world. Jobs’ ideas gave us computer-animated films going up for best picture (and getting shafted by the creation of best animated picture…*grumble*). If not for Pixar and Toy Story, we wouldn’t have Shrek and Dreamworks. If not for Apple creating computers for everyone, how long would it take PCs to make that leap? Apple helped revolutionize touchscreens and tablets, computers with no towers (which HP is only just getting to) and a whole variety of others.

 

My first computer was a Mac. I got it when I was young, back when the internet’s main use was porn, science, and maybe a few downloads. It died 5 years go. My second iPod, a older generation Mini, is still used by my sister after dealing with the wear and tear of Navy life. I have dropped my current iPod a few times and it still works. Before I could afford Microsoft Office, I used OpenDoc, something Jobs helped create. I cried through all three parts of Toy Story.

The world has lost a great person. And I’m only one of a billion others who obviously thinks so. Rest in Peace, Mr. Jobs. You’ve changed our world.

Random Thoughts: The Power of the Unspoilable

Hello and welcome to Tea ‘n History, with your hostess, Felicia Angel.

A talk earlier this week got me to realize that there are some things that you just can’t spoil, and not from lack of trying. See, in order to explain some concept, my mind decided to use Portal to do it. Granted, there was science involved, but then a fact came up during more of it: the fact, actually, that I’ve never played Portal.

Some of you may wonder how that happens. It happens when I’ve not been big on games and thought my computer couldn’t handle it is how, but right now I do have it but the fact that I’m in college and don’t like to have three games going on at once. However, the point is moot – I know the twist ending to Portal. I know what’s it’s about. I’ve heard Cave Johnson’s rant on ways to make exploding lemons, even if that’s in Portal 2. Sad to say, there are some things that are just spoiled because so many know about them.

Portal is just one. How many don’t know the twist to Darth Vader’s relationship with Luke Skywalker? Or can’t guess at some endings if they know it’s Shakespearean and tragic, especially some of his over-done ones like Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?

What, then, is Rosebud?

As many items seem to gain prominence in our culture, it also becomes very hard to put up a Spoiler warning when you realize so much of it is just so ingrained that really, all you can do is watch, read, or play the media to get the full effect. That doesn’t mean you’ll not know the ending to it, or the big twist, but sometimes it’s worth it. Knowing something doesn’t stop you from being amazed at a good movie or story. Misquoting anything doesn’t stop the book from being interesting, or from a soliloquy from being more powerful to some people. Knowing there’s no cake or ten castles before the Princess doesn’t stop it from being satisfying when you’re able to finish the game or even beat a boss you haven’t been able to before.

So yes, that’s my random thought for today. Knowing the ending doesn’t stop something from being interesting often, and it doesn’t stop the pleasure that often comes from viewing, reading, or playing. So don’t let that bother you if you decide to start something.
For now, I’m off to watch another movie I know the ending to…because I can.

Stranger then Fiction: Atlas Shrugged, Bioshock, and Reality

Hello and welcome to Tea ‘n History, with your hostess, Felicia Angel.

Now, I will admit to being a fan of Keith Olbermann, who is a semi-far left journalist and sports journalist who is now on Al Gore’s Current TV, still keeping the old MSNBC show name of “Countdown”. Granted, I got into the show when I came home, and I don’t always agree with everything he says, but it can be fun to watch.

A number of weeks ago (August 17th), Olbermann reported on his “Worst Persons” segment about PayPal founder Peter Thiel and his donation of $1.25 billion to a group called the Seasteading Institute, a group who promote “the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities” and “enabling innovations with new political and social systems”.

Being a minor-gamer, the first time I heard of seasteading, I thought of a game known as Bioshock. Trust me, this leads into a long circle of logic that, sadly, Olbermann didn’t see…though considering he’s only a year or so on Twitter, I’d say he probably hasn’t heard of the game.

First, we’ll deal with where the idea of Bioshock comes from, for those who don’t know, which is a book known as Atlas Shrugged. Written by Ayn Rand and considered her opus, as well as debated on if it’s a good book or not (I’m reading it currently, and am in the ‘meh’ category), Atlas Shrugged deals with a universe where many of the top innovators and thinkers, as well as the few capitalists as we think of them (be it for good or ill) are either disappearing, attempting to keep their creativity afloat, or just giving up. With the loss of jobs from disappearances of both employers and, sadly, their loss of actual places to work. The main focus is on a woman named Dagney Taggert, one of two children who inherited Taggert Railways, and who is perhaps the only competent person in the entire book (in my opinion, and I’m a bit biased). Dagney is helped by another industrialist, Rearden, who’s created a new type of metal that she wants for her railroad but, due to various attempts to make things “better for the community”, though it’s apparent this is only for a few people, both go on the defensive. Throughout the novel is a sort of mystery over a man named John Galt, the phrase “Who is John Galt?” now becoming a sort of meme that indicates people are uncertain what’s right or wrong  or even what’s best for them.

The main point of the book is a 60-page monologue (that I haven’t gotten to but I hear it’s about that long) on a philosophy created by Rand called “Objectivism”, which states that “human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)), as well as promoting the pursuit of only your own happiness and a laissez faire capitalism. For those who don’t know what laissez faire capitalism is, picture your job. Now, picture that your boss can pay you whatever he wants, including lower then minimum-wage, and there is no such thing as unions, worker’s comp, safety instructions, minimal working hours, or anything else. If you see a need and are able to get a loan for a new factory, you too can engage in this type of behavior, but for now, you’re stuck working 16 hours a DAY and having money cut from your paycheck if you fall asleep on the job, take too long to eat lunch, get hurt, or take a break so you can go to the bathroom.

It’s a good and bad thing. Good in that it promotes ideas as needed and creates new markets and items for consumption, bad because most don’t like regulations of business.

This brings us to Bioshock.

Released by 2K Boston (now Irrational Games) in 2007 for the XBox 360, and later released in 2008 for the PS3 by Digital Extremes and in 2009 for the Mac OS by Feral Interactives, BioShock took away so many awards and good reviews when it came out that it’s considered a must-own. The first-person shooter (FPS, for those who aren’t savvy), revolves around the main character entering a world created by a man named Andrew Ryan which holds the objectivist/libertarian viewpoint of no regulation of business, art, or science. When you reach the underwater city, situated in the North Atlantic, you soon realize something is very wrong and, in classic form that many gamers know, you go in to mess up whatever there is and to help the few survivors by killing the dangerous ones.

The story itself is full of twists that should not be spoiled (though probably are, we are on the internet) but the basis is you, through the character of Jack, slowly learn what went wrong in this underwater city called Rapture. The two small spoilers I’ll give are two people you either help or go up against: the first, Dr. Steinman, speaks often of his “goddess” and wishes to see what he can do as a surgeon. This mostly means he’ll kill most of his “subjects” while trying to create a new beauty, a la a Cubist painter. In other words, not a nice man.

The next is an artist, Cohen, who will give you change for a $10 with three $3 and a dollar, and who’s idea of ‘art’ would make Jeffrey Dalmer a bit happy. He wants you to help him with his newest piece of art, which requires you to kill his old protogees and bring back pieces.

 

Now, back to our seasteading and Peter Thiel. Thiel’s idea is to set up a libertarian utopia, hence his donations over the years. He even states he was inspired by Atlas Shrugged.  Considering also that one article says the idea is to “start from scratch–free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place” for these floating islands (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html), some people would raise objections due to various points, which include the sea-cities being a crackpot idea, the lack of urban planning, and even with some residents of San Francisco who live on the water or waterfront “wishing them luck” and pointing out that “it’s not always easy” (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/01/MN1T1JB0FJ.DTL&tsp=1). The founder and many of those who buy into the seasteading feel they should have a “consumer-oriented” place, as well as wanting to have either a libertarian or objectivist viewpoint for their new ‘countries’. He appeared as part of Olbermann’s “Worst Persons” due to wanting to create the libertarian “utopia” and with Olbermann objecting due to the point that most of the ideals of many libertarians and objectivists don’t, to him, seem realistic. Also, they would apparently be in “Doctor Strangelove”… Again, I don’t always agree with him.

So yes, sometimes the truth is stranger then fiction, and if I have to go and save one of those platforms from itself, I and the rest of the gaming community will probably either find that very funny, or very sad.

Or both.