Links For 3-26-2010

A few days worth of links. Old news to anybody who regularly visits my Google Reader shared items page.

Tech

Google Bookmarks Lists. Personally, I hate Google trying to cram their own version of social networking into all of their various online apps. I really liked the simplicity of Google Bookmarks before this. It's where I've been storing bookmarks that I infrequently access or things that I want to bookmark temporarily for years now. I'm also annoyed they changed the interface so that when you want to add or change tags on an existing bookmark, typing in the first letter doesn't give you a drop down box with all the tags that start with that letter. Plus Google Bookmarks runs really slowly now.

Idiot users still intentionally opening, clicking on spam. There should be some sort of IQ test that you have to pass before you're allowed to connect your computer to the internet.

Uh-Oh

Science says high-fructose corn syrup is pretty much the worst thing ever. It's making us all fat. Too bad it's in nearly EVERY item most people eat these days.

Business Fail

Blockbuster, Warner make deal to offer new movie releases before Netflix, Redbox. It still won't save a dying business. Good riddance  to Blockbuster.

Comcast looking to compress HD even more. My mediocre HD picture is going to get worse? How Comcastic! Is that what all that Xfinity nonsense is about?

Movie ticket prices going up this weekend. Because higher prices will do even more to discourage people from just downloading and watching at home, right guys?

Entertainment

DOCTOR WHO cuts 'force creativity'. I'm one of those weirdos who thinks the incredibly low budgets, terrible special effects, and slapped together sets of old 70's and 80's BBC sci-fi productions were a zillion times more creative and charming than most of the stuff coming out today. Yeah, it all looked incredibly cheap, even more so by today's standards, but once you can get past that, it was more imaginative. A lot of DOCTOR WHO in the 21st century has been cookie cutter plots with average CGI effects.

Judge calls Dr. Phil a "charlatan". Best judge ever. This clown tries to exploit every high-profile maladjusted sap out there. Of course, now he's getting quite a bit of competiton from that other attention whore hack, Dr Drew.

Actor Robert Culp, 79, dies after fall. I remember him from GREATEST AMERICAN HERO when I was a kid. I also had forgotten that he was one of the voice actors in HALF-LIFE 2.

Confirmed: Chris Evans is Captain America. So, that's that.

Zach Braff: SCRUBS is dead. Just as well. As much as I generally loathed the JD character and always wished they'd do the show without him, it seems like the writers didn't know what to do with the show without him. Then again, losing the rest of the cast except for Turk, Doctor Cox, Kelso, and the occasional Todd appearance, didn't help. If they could've kept more of the original cast, maybe the spin-off would've been better.

It's all over for "The Hills". The only way this could be better is if they shot the entire cast off into space never to be seen again. Preferably they'd take the rest of the "reality" garbage with them.

Video Games

Microsoft releases 250GB Xbox 360 hard drive. So that means... 120GB Xbox 360 hard drive drops to $99.99. Still too expensive.

HEAVY RAIN's Scott Shelby had a cameo in a real film. Wow, he's even wearing the same outfit he had on in the game. It's kinda surreal.

Infinity Ward: "Morale is high" despite Zampella/West layoffs. I smell some fear keeping the peasants in line sort of action going on here.

Third-party upscaler makes Wii HD. Consdering the Wii's graphics engine is behind the PS3 and 360 technologically, I don't think this would make all that much of a difference.

CONVICTION creative director: Previous SPLINTER CELLS too hard, made Sam into a "grandmother". Sounds like they wanted to dumb the game down so all the mouth breathers who like "shootan" games could play. Personally, one of the things I liked to do after my first play through on the older games, where I want to see the story unfold, is to go back and try to get through a level 100% stealth. No alarms, no kills or knockouts, and never having been spotted. It's really challenging.

Redesigning PORTAL: Valve’s artist speaks. More on PORTAL 2.

Yarr!

Complete ACTA text finally leaked. Basically it's the media companies wet dream and trying to force their purchased US politican agenda on other countries. It's essentially a global DMCA. Of course it's also pushing for "three strikes": ACTA Draft: No internet for copyright scofflaws.

RIAA: "We’re halfway through a rough age". I'd say more like 4/5 through the way to extinction.