Lavabit and Slient Circle shut down their Email service

Okay, today’s the National Day in Singapore in which we can have a smoother celebration online and offline although the peaceful celebration couldn’t be the same for United States in July 4th last year. Lavabit and Slient Circle have closed down due to the on-going spying program from the US government. Interesting thing about Lavabit is that Edward Snowden happens to be one of the users of this email service but to us, the non-US citizens, we don’t even know what Lavabit and Slient Circle are all about until we have discovered the news about it.

For Slient Circle, they have their official blog post stating their reasons for shutting down after discovering that Lavabit is doing the same thing as seen at http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/to-our-customers/. It’s interesting that both Lavabit and Slient Circle are made in the US in addition to other companies I knew of from my childhood like CompuServe and AOL, etc. Of course, I’ve been using AOL to receive emails ever since two years ago upon seeing the stupid rumors regarding the reasonless social networking shutdown. Maybe I SHOULDN’T HAVE BELIEVED those useless rumors all along!

Now, who else eventually cares for the spies and the program leaker by then? But what we care is the important activities we should do as well as to enjoy the national celebration or perhaps the national birthday like I should have a nice August 9th. So celebrate your independence, NOT TO FOLLOW OR CONTRIBUTE TO shitty policies, laws and rules.

Megatex again

Not really much to say about this IT show that took place in August 1st until today but it seems that the same companies are showing their new products. There may be earpieces with the bass support but there are those without the bass that you may need to find some software as the work around for enabling the basses. Also, you get to see the 2 in 1 input device from Rangers company that has the remote control on one side and the mini computer keyboard on the other side. It may be cool enough if this is kind of true but I could have gone out to visit this IT show yesterday instead of today to see even more cool stuffs. Headphones on the other hand, you have to use the headphone that is loud enough for both multimedia and gaming purposes because no one wants to wear the headphone that is freaking soft and whose design is posing a challenge in wearing it.

Unfortunately, while Megatex is supposed to be the IT show event, there are appliances that are not IT related such as the beds, kitchen accessories as well as other home appliances. If those kitchen accessories have the technological stuffs such as the microcontroller stuff which we can instruct them on what to do in a cool technical way, then there will be a reason to explore them. For those things, we surely expect a mini screen along with the buttons to press with similar to what the 2 in 1 photocopying devices are.

Lastly, there are even Samsung media players with the wireless bluetooth support where you can use your IOS device for instance to tune in to music or video wirelessly. They may be great in addition to inserting some disc but the main purpose of those media players is obviously the wireless bluetooth playback.

A-Tech Rain Dance Speaker Obtained!

As seen from some IT show the last time at Singapore Expo, I eventually bought this speaker for $39.90 yesterday. This set I bought features dual speakers for some reason which added some challenge on hooking things up correctly. Of course, this is one of those cool things you can use when listening to music and comes with the Stereo Plug where you can get direct audio capture from whichever device to your computer. Of course, one end of that cable leads to the headphone jack of whichever device and the other end leads to the microphone jack of your computer if that’s what I mean correctly.

Now that I have this speaker, I should be able to redo my video capture of Xevious 3D/G+.

Megpoid Stereo Earphones Obtained!

Days ago, after buying a PSN card for buying Xevious 3D/G+ from the PSN Store, I stumbled across this interesting geek related accessory. Well, the title pretty much says it all and after buying this, I was told that not all things could be imported from Japan and this earphone is one of those Made-In-Japan products. There was another earphone with Lily, another Vocaloid character but I guess that I’ll stick on to the most known Vocaloid characters anyway.

Inside the package, there are two additional orange stuffs to be placed on the earphone in case you end up losing the current ones. I don’t know what are these called although the shopkeeper surely had mentioned that name. Also, the nice thing was the coloration as well as the Chibi Gumi thingy that was for balancing or something.

Xevious 3D/G+ Obtained!

What's exclusive in this compilation is that Xevious Arrangement and 3D/G have the arrange soundtrack in addition to the original. However, the FMV videos are likely to be different than the arcade version of Xevious 3D/G although I don't know what's with the ending, like shooting at the giant ancient symbol on the sandy ground to summon the beam that wipes out the enemy fortress in space. Maybe this ending is what STH4E2 ending should have been in the first place like getting out of the Death Egg II and returning back to the planetary surface and if you have all the emeralds collected, you can use them to wipe that out.
Unfortunately, the PS1 version of Xevious 3D/G has even more flaws than ever. It has lack of graphical and environmental details as well as the blocky looking polygons compared to the arcade version. Also, the effects are mostly polygonal like there's no signs of sprites being used in the game. Also, when I played Xevious 3D/G on my Playstation Vita, there was a huge amount of lag in Area 3 when going through those rotating ring shaped wooden stuffs where there are still ground enemies to take out.
I may be glad to see this having come out in the PSN Store for Playstation Vita. Also, thankfully, there's auto-firing for easier playing. Video captures of the gameplay with arrangement soundtrack will be on my YouTube account soon after this blog post.

Project Diva F 2nd next year

It may be months since my blogging about the upcoming video games but I may believe that my work of last year is still not yet finished. It seemed that I might have already finished most of the arranges ranging from Bemani games to other games but things are not over with the on-going Floor Infection events from Sound Voltex II. With the Floor Infection, it enables me to make a smooth arrangement of the Sound Voltex I songs without encountering those silly sound effects that come from that game. Next time, there will be an arrangement of Daniwell’s Butterfly-Cat but in the meantime, you can view the recent SDVX arrangement on my YouTube account.

Now, here comes the proper part. Sega is announcing Project Diva F 2nd on Playstation 3 and Vita next year! Two of the songs are existing ones and I don’t know how the upgrades are like since we don’t know what’s new in Project Diva F 2nd. There may be more songs exclusive to that game and at the time I’m blogging, I just knew one of the newer Vocaloid songs out there will be in Project Diva F 2nd. Other rhythm games for that song, I don’t know as I think that it is not in those games at all. Sure, the popular Vocaloid songs had also made it to Groove Coaster, Taiko No Tatsujin and Konami rhythm games in addition to today’s Sega rhythm games but the atrocious thing about Konami rhythm games that will piss the Vocaloid and Bemani fans off is what had Konami done with LLNF for Future Tom Tom. WHAT IS THAT COVER, IT’S BULLSHIT compared to the original? That’s right, the same controversial mistake ever since the release of the original Sound Voltex is here this year, damn it but at least the controversy isn’t as big as the one last year. I don’t know how Melt sounds like in Future Tom Tom but those were all the videos I found in Nico Nico Douga.

OK, it may seem like it’s too early for Project Diva series to evolve again after the last year’s release of Project Diva F so its sequel is on the same multi-platforms again. It’s probably due to Sega not owning the Playstation 4 development kit so that they can make future Project Diva games on Playstation 4 in addition to Playstation Vita. Also, I may be sorry about some Konami rhythm gaming X Vocaloid ranting but that’s what happens Konami screws up again but putting in the Vocaloid powered songs in the wrong way ever since the original Sound Voltex but this year, it may look like Sega is gonna be pissed off over Konami’s wrong way of putting Vocaloid songs in their newer rhythm games, that is, if someone from Sega goes to the arcade and finds the Vocaloid song being played using shitty cover, it will be like he can blame Konami for putting those songs in a wrong way.

Aaron’s Law introduced

For this blog post, I probably care for fixing the worst parts of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which are said to criminalize all sorts of mundane Internet use. One part that is really the worst is that you may be forced to surrender your Facebook password to your company if you’re working in the US company as if you may be landing yourself in prison for that but then, we might have already thwarted the CIS** bill the last time. Can this new law repair the shit out of CFAA?