Groove Coaster 3 EX Dream Party First Play

The Japanese version of Groove Coaster 3EX Dream Party has its own voice acting for other navigators besides Linka/Linker although not all navigators have their own corresponding voices but the English version only has one and that is Linka/Linker. What a shame! The new default navigator, Yume, should HAVE the English voice acting but no, there ISN'T ENGLISH VOICE ACTING for her whatsoever. At the Navigator tab, you can choose whichever navigator character you want and on the text box on the right side of the screen, you can clearly see if there's a voice actor involved for the corresponding character or not. For example, Linka/Linker apparently has her own English voice actress as credited but the new default navigator, Yume, doesn't. So, if you choose Yume instead of Linka/Linker in the English version, you get the default announcer that is recycled from Groove Coaster 2 except the English pronunciation isn't native. It's like Linka/Linker takes over the English version as the main navigator of GC3EX Dream Party when Yume is SUPPOSED to be the main navigator.
Also, WHAT IS THE POINT OF PUTTING OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE GAME AS NAVIGATORS WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE THEIR CORRESPONDING VOICES? This is like putting custom costumes in a game with no corresponding purposes whatsoever. The same thing may or may not go for cosplays depending on the character you're dressing yourself as. Certain games already have the costume-specific special skills, moves, attacks, etc. but to put something like a custom navigator may or may not require voice acting at all. There should be no such thing as partially voiced list of navigators when the others don't have ones at all.
One special idea I have in my mind is that for every different costume the character wears, the character should have their own moves, quotes, poses, motions and other stuffs related to the corresponding costume worn but it may mean the replacement of some default stuffs the character normally does. So, what about the announcer/navigator part? Will the announcer/navigator wearing different costumes affect the way they announce?
Lastly, to unlock additional navigators will mean the contribution to the in-game events by adding tons of event points which is a money-consuming idea compared to doing the same thing on other platforms since it's an arcade game and I'm already lagging behind as if the players are seriously hardcore at the rhythm game genre and especially for Groove Coaster series. They may be tons of times better than me but if the song is manageable enough, it's a sign of relief.
Imagine the Vocaloid characters doing the navigation of Groove Coaster... That will turn us off when that happens if done incorrectly. For Voiceroid, the limitations so far are the expressions and emotions and the EX-voices for some characters are not quite enough. Even if you make various adjustments on how the Voiceroid characters say certain things, things may still sound robotic and asking for Voiceroid characters to be in Groove Coaster as custom navigators without knowing their technical limitations is an absolute face-slap!
By the way, I had already changed my player name again as it appears that my nickname is too long to fit.

NES Classic Edition

Well, the NES Classic Edition console was apparently discontinued this year after its launch last year with huge demands that it quickly sold out. The flaws as we knew them were strong like the lack of the ability to play any NES/Famicom games besides the pre-given ones along with the fact that everything is all stored on the ROM with no storage device whatsoever. There should be an internal storage SOMEWHERE in the console but no, it's like a modern NES-on-a-chip system but superior than any NES clones you can find due to decent emulation when compared to the one from Virtual Console on 3DS, Wii and Wii U. Hell, you can also use the Wii U controller for NES Classic Edition but obviously, another flaw involved the short cord of the controller and it's even worse for Mini Famicom since the cord is part of the console and you can't use the Wii U controller as the alternative.
Also, the controllers are said to have some disabled features for the Mini Famicom in addition to the cartridge slot being fake. Even if you make it real like it can be opened or something, the board itself is completely different.
One cool fact about the system is that it uses the Linux Kernel that there may be some chances for hacks or whatnot. While it allows for the addition of other NES/Famicom games, the downside is that the hacks have been done for illegal purposes like allowing the games for other systems to be run on NES Classic Edition. How about using any Linux distribution on that system? It's not easy as the console doesn't have the NON-READ-ONLY storage for that. If only the console has micro-SD card slot or perhaps the USB port for storages, there should be a technical chance.
Lastly, to discontinue the console like that has made people think, "What's the point of releasing this in the first place?" And the worse thing is that Nintendo bounds to repeat this campaign with SNES Classic Edition that will be released this holiday.

All Is Lost (Movie)

The movie went quite unusual for me for an hour like it could fit the definition of independent movie/film. The reasons were that the movie takes place in the sea somewhere in the middle of Indian Ocean and there's only one character according to the cast as seen in the credits. It's all about a lonely man on a boat stranded at the sea due to the fact that the boat collides with the container ship, the boat has taken damage as a result that he has to abandon it. But before he abandons it for real, he takes some items along with the life raft which is an emergency evacuation accessory needed for survival. The navigational and communication systems are damaged and there's already no way to move the boat as a result of the damage. Also, the man has been stranded for days and certain days already have the storms which may probably make things worse for him.
The map didn't give me any clues for guessing on where the man is going as the whole place is nothing but sky and sea with nothing else and somehow, the man has the guts to nap in both the boat and the life raft as if he needs rest to exhaustion of the energy. He tries to seek help by signaling flares near the container ships but fails. And eventually, one major mistake is that he tries to burn a bunch of papers to attract attention or something but the fire grows and rages out of control that it burns the entire life raft and then he decides to drown himself or something. However, a miracle appears at the end of the movie, there's a hull boat approaching the burning life raft and he quickly swims up to the surface to grab some hand, indicating that there's hope for him. Well, that's pretty much the movie after that.
The filming probably took place in some beach and I have no idea on how they managed to film the whole scene consisting of a stranded man on a boat/life raft on the sea without anything else. Also, the amount of scripts is less like the man rarely says something.
Apparently, this is one of the movies that was screened for free at Our Tampines Hub but I don't know if they have the license to screen movies like that in public. If the movie is to be screened for free like the visitors can watch it anytime, what about the profits for other businesses there? It was an unusually distracting movie for me like what the movie was truly all about. I expected another scene like taking place in the city, street, town, or even a business office but the movie stays at the sea scene with nothing special or epic happening. It's all about the man salvaging to survive for days while being stranded at sea. I watched like the most parts of the movie so I missed out the beginning part where the man's boat has taken damage due to collision that causes the interior to be flooded. There are attempts to repair some stuffs but the damage is already done due to collision and natural obstacles getting in his way.
When looking up the Wikipedia article about this movie, it turns out that the boat collision at the beginning is the source of the cause that it has taken enough damage and stranded the man for days. Also, the entire movie takes place in the sea and the music being played in the middle of it didn't give me any sense. Plus, the filming is done on the water tank for two months at the studio located at the beach with the actual ocean being filmed for a few days.
The movie is said to be excellent according to the overall reception but what about my opinion?
The first flaw is that the character has made some bad decisions as I already mentioned about him burning the life raft and then sinking himself before a miracle happens. The second flaw is the lack of certain safety equipment deemed standard navigating the open ocean. Speaking of the navigation, it appears that the man is closer to going through the shipping lane which is the red highlighted path on the map but what didn't give me any sense was that I expected some island or continent on the map. So, I give the movie an excellent grade when it falls under the indie film category.

IT Show 2017 at Singapore Expo

Did I look like I had plans to buy anything from there? In the end, no. There might be previous generation Ipads and Iphones along with various Android devices but what am I going to do with the Ipad I have purchased then? Would I get Reflec Beat and Jubeat on that thing? Would I download some DJ software that would enable me to hook up the tablet to that iRig Mixer? What about those Android devices there?
I had messed myself up by having bought the second Android tablet with a defective touchscreen hardware in the past and I couldn't afford myself to buy another Android tablet at that time. There might be those devices that cost less than $200 but...
One controversy was that there was a joke-level touch drum controller on sale along with the touch-piano. Who wants to buy those when buying a real drum-set or piano is a better bet? In fact, you could have bought a drum controller elsewhere like the one that is from Rock Band games. Not to mention that the DTX simulator was being shown off at the public event in action with those drum controllers. That was what sparked controversy there and turned me off when I saw it but taking pictures of that booth as evidences might be as disrespectful as I thought. To use the simulators/emulators or perhaps the unofficial music remixes/arrangements/covers for a public event might be an illegal idea like I already witnessed one in the past. The damage of the reputation was big on the local scale on where the event took place but it couldn't be undone if shown on the net, news or even media. Luckily, only the controller shown there was profited but I think it's still risky to use the simulators like the Drummania simulator, DTX, at Singapore Expo as there's no way a license can be obtained like that for public roadshow sales. What about the music stored on the computer then? Did they have the license for that?
So, the controversial discovery was a lesson for new musicians, comedians, DJs, rock band members, etc. A license for profitable performance in public is required along with the music you take from that can be USED LEGALLY. I don't want to see a gaming event with game system emulators being used. It's illegal to me that way and there's no way to tell who owns the those games and the license like that. The same goes to the gaming event involving music games, fighting games, racing games and even simulation games. In fact, preparing the device for an IT event that contains illegal software and materials can land the organizers in trouble. There were already complaints from the customers regarding whatever they discovered inside upon buying an electronic stuff.

Waterway Point shopping mall

Well, it has been noisy everyday except for Sundays due to the Home Improvement Programs that have been going on in my town and it is rumored that my block will be next to be upgraded next month that things will be extremely noisy. Not only the renovation has been noisy from morning to late afternoon, but also there will be smokes and dusts generated from all that renovation work. They can be seen plumbing out the windows of the bathroom and toilet upwards to above units and it may be why the construction workers came up with some protection layers for the units being upgraded.
The Waterway Point shopping mall was opened last year and located somewhere at Pungol with some areas there being made famous but I shall not talk about them over their past history. The Storey layout is kind of strange to be frank as if I started off at the highest floor. There were three floors along with two basement floors there.
From there, I managed to discover some common stores I could find while exploring such as the gaming stores, the book stores, etc. but since it was a trip organized with my aunts and uncles, an annoyance was expected. It was a shopping and eating spree to be frank and they didn't know, care or even realize the fact that they were testing my patience with that shopping spree.
One of the gaming stores had some DJ controllers there which might be a strange move as they don't belong to such stores like the gaming stores. Who's going to buy them from there? And besides, they are Hercules-branded DJ controllers but more expensive than the one I bought last year which uses DJUCED 18. The ones I saw use DJUCED 40 and they surely are a little bit more expensive

Ransomware that requires that you get a required score in highest difficulty to decrypt

HOW IS THAT A JOKE ALL OFTEN? Do you know that this kind of trouble can be extremely big for the person who made this ransomware? Outside of Japan, getting the full versions of the actual Touhou games is already OUT OF LUCK for us and besides, they are SELF-PUBLISHED INDIE GAMES made by an individual! Obviously, a bigger sale of an indie game made in Japan may occur if released on consoles or perhaps Steam but all people got was a bunch of third-party Touhou games ported to Playstation 4 and Vita. Originally, they were on PCs as self-published indie games but they were actually made by other game developers. So, if you run into this ransomware, had it become goddamn real, you're already out of luck and getting the demo version isn't going to count I should say.
The highest difficulty as required by that ransomware is Lunatic and expect the game to be seriously hard that way and those who are not into bullet-hell shmup games will get blasted off easily out of their clueless-ness. Even I'm not able to deal with this sort of difficulty. A genuine example is when I played some Cave bullet-hell shmup games in the arcades or perhaps the Xbox 360. Even Eschatos, Ginga Force and Crimzon Clover will be unforgiving at the highest difficulty. I don't know if 1-credit-clearing is required by this ransomware because if so, it can piss off many players who run into it as if they are harmed.
It's a pure luck that the person who made this ransomware had apologized and claimed that this is a joke but this is one unusual experimental kind of ransomware we have to keep a lookout for. Furthermore, this is an un-doable mistake as there's already news about this ransomware everywhere on the net. What about the kind of ransomware that requires you to play some game on the console? On the technical side, it won't work but on the non-technical side, you're like supposed to enter some information or something but the problem is that people can fool the baddie with mis-information. Perhaps, this is the next awareness assignment for cyber-security researchers and investigators?
The damage wasn't anything big from this ransomware made by some filthy nerdy hacker out there who's into Japanese media stuffs. There was a previous case like the Mirai botnet which was much larger than this and the investigation is still on-going. Would the culprit freak out upon being found out, caught or something? And even then, these troubles for such actions may bring about the last present times for those hacking kiddies as if their future and career have ended without their knowledge.

Emulators banned from Xbox and Windows Stores

Without the policy like this Microsoft has come up with, there will be risks of lawsuits that can happen to that company by other game companies alike. In fact, there were already past lawsuits from Sony against those who made the Playstation emulators for Windows PC and Dreamcast but eventually, the formally sued ones worked on the same emulation stuffs for later generation Playstation consoles like PS2, PS3, PSP, PS Vita and the list goes on. Also, the emulators are said to be banned from IOS completely but I don't know if this is true or not and you still can see a bunch of them in the Android app stores.
While chaotic troubles are prevented this way, there's one problematic workaround, sideloading of UWP apps. Hopefully, there should be a policy against this that can be done in Group Policy but this is still a problem when it comes to non-business devices and especially Xbox One. Another workaround is the fact that there online emulators that can be played on the web browser.

Unity to be dropped in favor of GNOME in Ubuntu 18.04

During the time the netbooks were around, there was a Netbook Remix edition of Ubuntu that used the Unity UI which was eventually brought over to all editions of Ubuntu with Netbook Remix edition being made obsolete. It was a controversial move at the time as if the UI layout and design were different while still bringing in some shiny looking icons until Unity 8 is where all the glassy-ness is gone with solid looking rounded squares. The icons in Unity for Ubuntu may probably look like the Superbar from Windows 7 although the others may compare the Unity UI to the Mac Dock UI. The similarity is that you click on the icons to open their corresponding programs and if you close those programs, the icons in the Unity bar are still intact. However, if you open a different program whose icon is not in the Unity bar, it's a similar vein to opening a different program in Windows 7 and Mac OSX. Certain programs in Mac Dock have their special menus where else in Windows 7 and Unity for Ubuntu, certain programs have special commands on the menu when you right-click on them on the taskbar.
In the near future starting next year, Ubuntu will be switching back to using GNOME although it uses GNOME 3 whose UI is different than the classic GNOME so if you click on the top left in GNOME 3 and Unity, you get to see many apps on the screen and somehow, GNOME 3 has the similar elements to Unity UI. So, the controversy isn't over yet when switching back to GNOME like that with GNOME 3 in the future. The workaround is to install the classic GNOME like I already did with Ubuntu on my computer the last time although the UI layout was restored that way, it wasn't the same from the way it looks in current Ubuntu OSes like everything is going all solid with lack of gradients.
The situation is that Canonical is moving towards cloud computing, Internet of Things along with Ubuntu Core and Snap apps which are applicable to IoT devices. Of course, running their own data center for the sake of cloud computing is energy and money consuming but what will they get is the money from the users running virtual machines in the cloud as part of the monthly subscription. This obviously makes more business sense that way as having to turn a phone into a computer will still give you limited software resources that is if you're running Windows 10. On Ubuntu Touch for phones and tablets, you're still sort of limited in the same vein as Windows 10 Mobile but from their demonstration, you should be able to run desktop-like apps stored on those devices when using Convergence.
Needless to say, both Unity and newer versions of GNOME are likely to take up more resources than the classic version. You could have run the other editions of Ubuntu if that's the case on the old computers.

Verizon AppFlash

Well, the internet privacy is gone in the US as people around the globe know about the news like this and especially that the US ISPs are planning on making their services pre-available with the cyber surveillance stuffs. Like, what kind of political selfishness is that anyway?
If you really care for freedom and know the situations that have been going around, there must be careful plannings and you must make sure that you plan things right but for US ISPs, it will be a challenge for the US citizens heavily concerned about them. Various tech companies have been concerned about the privacy, net neutrality and other stuffs outside of the tech field that try to affect their businesses negatively but if you're going to talk shit about this sort of concern, perhaps, you're borrowing that sort of political selfishness like you think that the tech companies are helping baddies and stuffs like that.
It seems that Verizon had started delivering their phones pre-loaded with the worthless search engine app, AppFlash, which is based on some existing search engine app. Currently, the phone to delivered with the app is LG K20 V and as of now, we don't know if the other Android and IOS devices will be the next victims.
The reputation is bad enough for the US ISPs and even Google does the same sort of security compromise through its services like the Play Store that you're better off with the third-party alternatives to it.
Speaking of alternatives, you can get the Cyanogenmod OSes on your Android devices when possible but they're not the only workarounds for privacy protections. VPNs are useful for bypassing the data collection and censorship but the downside is that they can be used for viewing and obtaining foreign contents as if the regional information is made false on purpose. I don't like falsifying personal information on many of the websites but if the websites don't have international support, chances are that your phone numbers will be mistaken like it already happened to me during the Relay texting assignment I had last year and there won't be a Country option in the form that supports full country list. Last suggestions for privacy protection are to make use of the secure web browsers like Tor and Tails OS but I don't recommend them to you as they are too over-protective and going through various websites you visit everyday can be a problem that way.
So, privacy protection is an important thing but don't use the purpose of this barrier for doing bad things as it will be penetrated through once you are found out.