Clams for Brains

Tutorial - K Accounts!

Hi Marist readers! This post is for you! I thought it had been a while since I made a good tutorial blog post so I decided to teach everyone something really handy: how to find out your K account! 

So, if you have a long name, it can be annoying to type out First.Last1@marist.edu every time you want to log into something. Don’t fear though, you have a much shorter account name, and I’ll teach you how to find it out! It looks something like: kfy2m. Much shorter!

Here is what to do: Visit foxweb.marist.edu and log in. Then, on the following page, it will say: “Your website can be viewed at: foxweb.marist.edu/SOMETHING.”

Where I put SOMETHING, that short string is your K account, and you can use it wherever you would use First.Last1. For example, you can send email to me at my David.DeNinno1@marist.edu, or fakekaccount@marist.edu or even my student worker account fakeaccount2@marist.edu. When you log into ilearn/my marist, you no longer need the @marist.edu so you can save a lot of time by logging in with k4rwy:password instead of Reallylong.Namessuck1@marist.edu:password. (All of these examples are randomly generated, they aren’t real account names)

Hopefully you find this as useful as I do! :D

Till next time!

Arrr! Pirates!

Hi Tumblr! Long time no write.

I thought I would make an entry today about how I’m feeling about the recent events surrounding the internet in the U.S. We got through SOPA, and now we’re just as plagued by ACTA. The government really really seems to be behind this idea that the internet can and will be regulated in the way that they want. Unfortunately, things really can NOT work this way, for a lot of reasons I won’t go into now. However, I am pretty sure that no matter what, the government isn’t going to stop. All I can say is, wow, the entertainment industry must REALLY be shelling out the big bucks to make this happen. The takedown of megaupload that occurred recently was actually the fault of the owners using it for illegal things, then being idiots and telling people that, but since then, a lot of other file sharing services are turning off the ability to share. They’re all afraid of being taken down, and letting themselves be intimidated by the government. In fact, the pirate bay just switched to a .se domain to avoid the U.S. government.

And there is a large point to be made: IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DOES!

The government is going to keep trying, and it is them versus the collective abilities of the entire population. This stuff is hard-wired into all of us. We all rely on the internet every day in our lives. There will always be a way around the law when you’re online, no matter what. However, what I am worried about is if the government doesn’t give up. Imagine the potential of our entire population. If some really bad law passed that prevented us from using the internet, what would happen? Mass riots? DDoS attacks on government domains? Hacking, publication of personal information? I’m sure we’ve all seen the potential of the black hats, especially recently in teams like Lulzsec and anonymous. We know what they can do.

I’ve always been a little detached from politics in general, I much prefer to sit back and watch what happens. What do you all think will happen? Feel free to answer below!

An 8tracks playlist I made :]

I check this website daily. Yep.

Love

Why I am a Buddhist.

I have been writing my final paper for world religions class, and it got me thinking about various religions. I thought I would share about Buddhism, and why I am a Buddhist. 

I used to be Christian. I was a Methodist all my life, until I really truly learned what Buddhism was. I have to say that the biggest difference is that I really am overall a happier person. Christianity is a great religion, in concept. Jesus was selfless, he showed so much love for others, and went through a monumental deal of suffering and sacrifice for the ones he loved. All Christians should strive to be like him. The problem is, most don’t. Modern Christianity has evolved into a group of people meeting once every week to sit and listen to a guy talk about how you should be like Jesus, and read from the Bible, then everyone leaves. Oftentimes, a lot of Christians don’t even do that. They don’t reflect on much, they don’t strive to make their lives better. They just pray. They pray for a better life. They pray for things to change. They pray for strength, courage, money, love. This is where I found the biggest issue with Christianity. There is such a lessened reliance on one’s self. Everyone must have faith in God, in Jesus, in everything, in that what they do in this life will be good enough to get into heaven. They’re afraid. Afraid of Hell, afraid that what they do is bad or wrong. Often, they are ignorant.

The reason I love Buddhism, and embrace Buddhism is that I am no longer afraid. I take refuge in myself, in the teachings of Buddha, called the Dharma. You can’t misinterpret the Dharma, and go around shouting racial and homosexual slurs at people, thinking it told you to. You don’t hear about people who committed heinous, horrible crimes, because “Buddha told them to”. You can’t be ignorant of others. The Buddha taught us to be good people. To be centered, calm, and calculating. To have an appreciation for nature, for the world around you. I feel much more connected to everything in the world, and instead of being afraid of punishment after this life is over, I just feel so much better to be alive. 

I know a lot of people will see this and think it’s crazy, that it isn’t true. But I respect that, and it’s okay. Each person to their own beliefs.

I learned you can’t hold on to things in life, you have to let things go. You have to go with the flow. Nothing is forever. People, places, things, all come and go. “Suffering comes from desire” is the second noble truth. Desire. Desire for things to stay how they are. To keep your job, to keep your friends, family. To keep things they way they are. While this is normal, it does lead to suffering. But just because you don’t have desire doesn’t mean you can’t have care for those things, or love.

Karma dictates a lot of what happens to us, and you can’t ignore how karma works. By being a good person to others, you naturally will feel better, and good things will come from it. React to everyone and everything negatively, and in turn, you will not like the outcome. It’s hard, but you have to try to be a good person. It’s on you.

You can’t let the small things get to you. All you can do is strive to be a better person, to have a better life. Be helpful, be carefree, be loving, and most importantly, be happy.

Thanks for reading. ☮

Sony, Sony, Sony.

Tut tut. For ages I have been pretty anti-Sony, and I believe that the company should stick with what it does well - audio hardware and software. That’s it. No camera lenses, no PS3, no PSP, no phones, no tablets. I am sure a lot of people know about the recent downtime and data breach Sony had on their PS3’s PS Network. EVERYONE had their personal data stolen. Every last person. Why? Because Sony was so obsessed with keeping hackers from jailbreaking their system that they spent most of their resources on DRM. Again, all this does is screw over paying regular users, and give a new, fun challenge to hackers. Apparently, everyone’s personal data was behind one or two firewalls, stored in plain text (Including credit card info). Is this really where the priorities of companies lie these days? People trust a company with their information, and they don’t even put in the effort to protect it. The whole reason the PSN got hacked and that data was stolen is because the hacking community was retaliating to Sony suing people, and forcing certain websites to give IP information of anyone who supplied or DOWNLOADED the firmware hack for the PS3. Then, they took all those people to court. Sony needs to do some serious re-thinking of their business model if they hope to keep their customers- if it isn’t already too late. Are you going to give up on Sony due to this data breach? Do you still trust them, and agree with how the operate?

Apple Patents.

This is something that has been bothering me for a while now. What is happening to major corporations? Instead of trying to be the best they can be, they are instead trying to stifle those who are better than them using the law. For example, Microsoft had an independent company create allegations against Google, claiming their search was unfair and essentially that they were too good at what they did, and were “stifling competition and promoting monopolies”. While doing this, they were secretly stealing Google’s search results and using them on Bing. They didn’t even get in trouble for it. Google was the better man (company?) and told them to stop and that was that. Why do so many other major corporations feel that they have to sue every other competitor into the ground? Now THAT is stifling competition in an unfair way.

The other big offender I see is Apple. I have never seen another company file so many patent infringement lawsuits against other companies. Another very recent one is for billions versus Samsung, claiming their designs is “too similar to the iPhone and iPad”. The reason this really upsets me is that THEY ARE SMARTPHONES. They are all the same size, the same shape, roughly the same specs. They are all going to be similar in some regard. Patent wars are the most stupid thing I think a company can do, and is why I hate Apple, Steve Jobs, and their business practices. They went from “the little guy, sticking it to the man” to a huge big brother corporation who locks down everything.

The state of gaming today.

I have witnessed games evolve as I age, and I am noticing something interesting. Back when I was younger, there were so many really fun games out that you could buy for 15-20 dollars and play for literally hundreds of hours. It was great.

In recent years, a game I can beat in 10 hours can cost me up to 60 bucks. The average price of games has risen SIGNIFICANTLY, and while the graphics, gameplay, etc, have improved, the CONTENT, which is the most important, has all but disappeared. Some people will claim that the high price of games covers the multiplayer experience (See: Call of duty) but honestly, why do games need to be so expensive?

Piracy is a huge topic of debate right now. Some people claim that these prices are fair, considering the amount of piracy going on. Game studios spend less time on the actual games, and more time on DRM that will get easily hacked within a week or two anyway. Why bother? If you don’t want people pirating your games, make them affordable. Look at steam. They sell a game for 50-80% off, and sales go up over ONE THOUSAND PERCENT. I don’t understand how game companies can’t get this into their heads.

Another issue I want to point out is DLC. There are two types of DLC: good and bad. Good DLC is “expansion style”, like borderlands or GTA4 (IE Gay Tony). This DLC is released after a while, and lets users keep playing games they love even after they have progressed through all the content they have. It is just essentially an expansion pack over the internet. This was the original DLC and I very much love this type. The BAD type of DLC is the EA/Bioware type. This DLC is released about the same time as good DLC, but the content released is very different. What basically is happening is that game developers are taking game content out, and selling it to you later, instead of with the already 50-60 dollar game to try to get more money out of you. This DLC contains things like: “NEW PLAYABLE CHARACTER!” “NEW OUTFITS!” “SPECIAL WEAPONS!”. The reason I think this is so broken can be explained by my experience with dragon age origins. I’ll be up front: I pirated it. But, I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to show my support for the game and I bought some DLC. What I didn’t realize was that the DLC was almost all worthless to me. I had already beat the game multiple times, playing through with every possible combination of choices I wanted. The DLC I got wasn’t useful to me at all unless I played through the game YET AGAIN. These types of DLC should be included WITH THE ACTUAL GAME, NOT AFTER YOU BEAT IT. I think it’s an absolutely deplorable thing to do.

Because of this, I recently (2010, 2011) am seeing an overall change of focus away from these larger game corporations that are ripping us off, and turning towards indie game studies for content. Minecraft, super meat boy, amnesia, etc, are all very affordable games that provide entertainment just as good (if not better) than games from large corporations. I very much support this change, and I am very interested in how games will further evolve in the future.

Thanks for reading! :D