Beatmania IIDX Gameplay Report - March

Hmm, I could have gotten my schedules even better but before there was time when I attempted Expert Mode, I had already attempted most of the songs up to Level 9 from Lincle, Tricoro and Pendual before even attempting the other songs. Not to mention that I Easy-Cleared V with the Auto-Scratch On in Hyper with improved skill level but the real step in clearing that song in the future will be to clear it with Auto-Scratch Off.
Then, moving on to March which was last month, I attempted the Expert Mode and needless to say, some of the courses have Level 10 songs in Hyper in which I have no match for. Not to mention that the machines were like in Okay condition but for Guitarfreaks machine, some of the buttons were damaged for both controllers but thankfully, everything was fixed on time after that that I didn't even care. There's no need to know who the culprit is nor anyone cares about finding out because these technical problems last for a short time like nobody cares.
Of course, for the Qpronicle Chord, it's another controversial event for me besides the Chrono Seeker one. What's controversial about Qpronicle Chord is that the Qpro character which represents you is longing for something indecent and at the end of the first chapter, he's pretty much sent flying in the sky for that by one of the former boss characters from IIDX Tricoro. You can read on what the characters say in Qpronicle Chord cutscenes if you know much Japanese language if you want to know what's going on. The controversy is the same for the Step Up Mode story as well. These surely make IIDX Pendual look like it's a game suited for ages 17 onwards compared to the previous IIDX games. Was Konami looking like a spoilt brat company or something for that indecent crap? No, it might be for the sake of the bullshit fanservice like I may steer away from some indecent IIDX Pendual boss songs like that after sometime.

Introduction to Technology of IOT webinar

I was glad that the connection went well this event time recently in which the event took place several days ago starting from 3AM to 4AM. Yes, 3AM to 4AM for some unusual reason in which the organizer decided to start the webinar at lunch time in his office or something. This is about the Internet of Things which may be the interesting topic to look at but then, there might be way too many slides to talk about on time for the 1-hour webinar like that but the workaround for him would be to present stuffs about this in some public conference like he'll do the same presentation of the first part of his webinar presentation next month and I hope that he'll have covered everything on time. This is the second part he organized several days ago and it's going towards the technological parts of Internet of Things while the first part of the webinar which he'll be presenting again next month is the one for business. The third part is the IOT Business Plan in which how the companies will develop their own IOT stuffs for probably enterprise use, home use and so on. Overall, the webinar is not about IPv6 stuff like it's kind of off-topic to GogoNet Community. Why would he organize the webinar like that with a topic that isn't related to IPv6 while he's a manager of that community? The thing is, there may be people who come from GogoNet Community as well as the one from IOT-INC so expect many business people watching this webinar just like other events I attended. Many of those events are leaving me speechless but I'm still going to blog about what I can recall. Thankfully, I have some screenshots of that webinar in case I forget but to respect privacy or whatever, I'm not going to show them here.
There may be slides in which we get familiar with the networking OSI Model but when it came to IOT, the one he showed looked very detailed. Other things he talked about included the software-defined and hardware-defined products which looked kind of understandable. From the software aspects, the coding may represent the instructions on what the machine is supposed to do but it must match the anticipation to keep things current. Any difference is probably due to some faults or maybe the update requirement. Speaking of firmware update, some networking components will be needed and especially that you should know that on the hardware aspects, the device is pretty much an embedded system. Embedded systems are what we know of in general but I guess that even the anticipated specifications should be the same for the hardware aspect like it shouldn't take up so much power that may cause itself or everything to shut off due to overheating issues or maybe it's exceeding the amount of electrical power where the prediction may say that some components may be the sensitive victims of overheating issues that such hardware instruction will be executed for the sake of damage prevention. For External System in which he talked about, there are Analytics, External Data, Business and IOT product systems. Analytics and External Data may be somewhat important for the business technically and especially for Data Security and Privacy he mentioned as well.
Then, about Software Defined Product, it consists of Task Programming Language, Control and Sensing and Real-Time Computing. Task Programming Language looked kind of mathematical according to his slides and the Control and Sensing looked like some kind of electronics diagram on how things would work based on the programming and output will be stored via Real-Time Computing.
On the hardware side, how do the developers of those embedded systems get the actual data instead of spending time like trying to guess like a trial-and-error method? Lastly would be the Network Fabric he talked about as well like how the networking worked on the IOT device but then, that was the time he had to end the webinar because he went out of time and besides, the presentation had about 100+ slides and that would be too much to present on time even if he had to speed up or something.
And sometime after the webinar, I guess that I was free or something like that was all the stuffs I worked on but there may be things to keep in mind that certain of those stuffs were still in incomplete state due to incomplete resources of something and besides, I finally started to beta-test Windows 10 this month although there might be annoying bugs that annoyed the hell out of me compared to other OSes I beta-tested last time. But don't think it's over for my blogs. There will be future IT related events to attend and blog about as well to keep myself active.

Net Neutrality in India

Previously, the real Net Neutrality in the US was passed that it regained peace and fairness for internet bandwidth but the ISPs there were like crying out loud that they filed a lawsuit against FCC for passing it. Why? Why did those ISPs waste their time on disrespecting the real Net Neutrality like it's not that important? Without it, things would be chaotic for the internet bandwidth like the bandwidth can be extremely slow that it will annoy many users, not to mention the extra charges for whatever stuffs you don't own and use. They might be the reasons on why the fight for real Net Neutrality was seriously important in the first place in the US and other countries. Speaking of other countries, it may seem that Net Neutrality in other countries may look as important as the one in the US one day and based on the recent situations in India, it appeared that Net Neutrality there is already in danger that people's requests for real Net Neutrality there should be fulfilled.
While Net Neutrality was passed in the US, the one in Europe still has yet to be passed to ensure proper freedom and April 24th is the deadline to see if the real Net Neutrality in India will be decided or not.

Facebook's response to illegal tracking update

The illegal tracking is still on-going with Facebook as if the ranting is going to continue from us and in this update, they may have recently responded that this is probably a bug in the social media plugin that the fix is on the way. The right thing they had done previously was that the users are able to opt-out of the app usage tracking and that may be a good thing but this time, it's probably a bug that Facebook is getting aware of.
What the bug does is that it adds cookies to computers of people who don't have their Facebook account with the use of advertising ID that tracks the actions which is kind of bullshit. Other stuffs about illegal tracking from Facebook might have included the access to Friends list by apps, data sharing among other companies as well as the location data control.
What else was found as the evidence that many people can write an article about? And of course, Microsoft's fight against the illegal data request thing is still on-going that there may be nothing new for me to blog about.
Lastly, the fight for internet freedom is still on-going ever since. Even if the previous crappy bills might have failed, there may be same ones rising from their graves or maybe the new bills that put the previous ones to shame. Of course, in addition to the bad bills, there may be good ones too and even the tech giants may be aware of what's going on in the different way so whining on why is privacy important like a kid is making you look like a knucklehead for sure, not those who are seeking freedom and proper privacy.

YouTube Kids app - Ads targeted at children

Embeddeding advertisements in the products or services is one of the ways for the company to make money but the serious downside is that the advertisements may be used to track users illegally by collecting or even stealing data from them for some bullshit purposes. Maybe there should be an app that doesn't have the ads at all and that it should be free even if it is highly popular but without advertising your app, you won't be able to make money from it as a developer. Perhaps, there should be other ways in making money like DLCs, in-app purchases and that's that.
It may be unbelivable that YouTube Kids app is under FTC scrutiny for targeting ads at children. Why do you want to be brought to things by those ads? And the annoying thing about ads in YouTube or any other app is that there may be video ads that do or do not have relations to the apps/services at all and it can be extra annoying that you may have to watch the entire ad in order to proceed any further. I think that it may be the most annoying moment on YouTube unless you have the extensions that go against the ads which can be simple to get but for YouTube Kids app, I can probably assume that there are ads about stuffs that will affect the people in a negative way whether they are children or not. So if the ad is about Cola-Cola product, it's a negative example because there may be something unhealthy about soft drinks like Cola-Cola ones. Even worse is that the other channels children may want to watch thanks to those ads may require subscription from their parents.
Or better yet, there shouldn't be ads in the first place because illegal tracking by ads is one of the security bullshits and that you should stick on to something really healthy and decent online services.

Microsoft stops selling Kinect v2 for Windows

For whatever reason, the Kinect v2 for Xbox One and Windows has identical functions that the Windows version is a complete duplicate. But then, the Kinect for Xbox One is more of an addon nowadays that even if you have that console, you can buy the Kinect for other purposes besides playing Kinect games. Of course, there's an adapter for that console that will allow you to connect that device to the PC but then, you must have the technical reason on why you're using the Kinect for some technical project to work on on the PC. If you already had the Windows version, this is something to disregard.

Do Not Track to be disabled in Project Spartan by default

OK, it's a better time to truly know what Do Not Track feature is after the major leakage happened in June two years ago. Do Not Track feature protects you from being tracked by the advertisers and surely, many of the web browsers have it. The controversial thing about it three years ago was that it was enabled by default in Internet Explorer 11 but that is not a sufficient part of the security protection. Speaking of security protection, many of the Android devices will be getting Android 5.0 upgrade which features improved hardware security as if there would be nothing special to blog about. But starting with later minor version, such kind of security protection will be optional just like Do Not Track is in other web browsers. You want to enable that sort of security protection, you can go ahead with it and the upcoming Spartan for Windows 10 will have Do Not Track optional.
To use Spartan however, you will need a recent build of Windows 10 that has this new web browser. Expect updates or something if you're using an earlier build.