So I have some extra Destiny beta keys and figured I’d give them out here!
Webhosting Explained
Are you looking to start your own website for your clan or guild? or even just to have a personal website? The first task is finding a webhost to host your website. This can be a daunting task but I’m going to tell you what you should be looking for to make your buying experience less stressful. Also, as a quick note, I am not being paid by either company I am comparing in this article.
It’s the year 2014, gone are the days of paying for bandwidth (the amount of memory your website sends over the internet). Earlier in the 90s and even 2000s, webhosts would have you pay for the amount of bandwidth you wanted. This would obviously restrict you to a certain amount of data and then they’d either charge you overage or just take down your website for the rest of the pay cycle. Think about buying a cell phone and going over your minutes, it’s what used to happen with websites. So obviously, any company that does not provide “Unlimited Bandwidth” is pretty much not worth even looking into.
Just like bandwidth, storage space is also mostly unlimited now. With technology the way it is, it is very cheap for companies to add more storage space to their servers so again, any company not offering “Unlimited Storage” is not worth looking into.
I’m going to put a comparison between 2 companies and then explain the differences:
Dreamhost vs Godaddy
You can see by the comparison, it’s a really tight race. Obviously both companies have more than just those package options but these were the closest to being the same.
Confused as to what “Shared Hosting” means? Shared Hosting just means that your website is hosting on the same server that other sites are hosted on, it’s the way for companies to keep the prices so low. It also means that all the server resources are shared (think about running multiple games on the same PC at the same time, after a certain number of games open, all of them are going to run a little slower). Both Dreamhost and GoDaddy utilize “Shared Hosting”.
What is a MySQL Database? MySQL is the language in which the database is written in. The database is what most websites use to store data (this blog uses a MySQL Database to store all of the blog posts and other information). With Dreamhost you get a nice unlimited Database. GoDaddy limits the number of databases you can have and how big those databases can be. Given, most databases are relatively small, but if your website does grow above that number, GoDaddy would hit you with another charge.
So conclusions are that the main things you need to be looking for are Bandwidth, Storage, and if your host can provide databases and provide them unlimited or not.
Personally, I’ve been using Dreamhost since 2008 to host all sorts of sites, including this blog. I have never had any problem with my webhosting at all. Their customer service is pretty quick and personalized. Unfortunately I haven’t really ever used GoDaddy to make a comparison but honestly, I’ve never felt the need to go shopping for a new webhost in all the years I’ve been with Dreamhost and that says something.
To order a site from Dreamhost, check out the order page on this site! We also have a 15% off new webhosting promo code! Exclusively for readers of this blog!
Computer Air Pressure Explained
Is your computer really dusty? Looking for a way to keep dust out? You may want to think about the Air Pressure inside of your computer case.
For those of you who just got really scared by the words “Air Pressure”, trust me, it really isn’t that confusing. When you’re talking about a computer case, positive pressure is created when there is more intake fans (fans sucking air into the case) than exhaust fans (fans blowing air out of the case). With Positive Pressure inside your case, the air tries to find ways to get out of the case, so even if its a teenie tiny hole not visible to the human eye, the air will try to escape that way. So, as a side effect, dust does not accumulate inside the case because there is no way for the dust to enter since all the air is escaping the computer case.
That being said, you are still going to need to make sure your intake fans are filtered. Obviously, the air that the fans blow in will blow in any dust as well. If your case is metal, they sell magnetic filters that easily attach to the outside of your case to cover the grates. If your case is plastic / not metal, they also sell filters that screw in underneath the fan. (If you need any help with this, feel free to reach out to me directly via Twitter or email).
Please remember that having good airflow should not be compromised. You still need some exhaust fans, you don’t want all of your fans blowing in, as it will create a dead air situation inside your case and you will have hot air with nowhere to go.
First Impressions – Destiny Beta PS4
I will be the first to admit, I didn’t like Halo. Before you come after me with a pitchfork, understand that I am a PC Gamer at heart and could never really handle playing a FPS (First Person Shooter) on a console with a controller. It always feels clunky and unresponsive to me. I also never really liked Halo’s repetitive maps, meaning, most of the maps felt relatively the same to me. I won’t even get into multiplayer, with my lack of skills, Multiplayer is really just me getting wrecked over and over again (Some video of that shortly). All of that being said, the Destiny Beta has blown me away. Destiny is most closely related to an MMOFPS but in my opinion Destiny is creating it’s own genre.
Upon starting the game there is a character creation screen. The options for customization are slim and I’m not sure if that is because the beta only has a few options or if this is it. There are 3 races and it doesn’t look like race changes anything as far as stats or bonuses. The 3 choices are Human, Exo (android-ish), and Awoken (look like aliens).
The 3 classes are Titan, Hunter, and Warlock. Titan is most closely related to a Warrior class in other MMOs, Hunter closely resembles a Hunter / Rogue Class, and Warlock is most like a Mage. Now that being said, the class only provides you with unique skills, the game is still primarily a FPS and no matter what gear or class you have, if you can’t aim, you aren’t going to do well. With all the experience that Bungie has with Halo, the Aim-Assist is phenomenal. (Aim-Assist is what helps you be a little more accurate since aiming with a controller isn’t as precise as aiming with a mouse. Think like a very minor aimbot.)
After character creation the game puts you through a tutorial mission where it teaches you how to play and gives you a little back-story. **A side note: Peter Dinklage plays the voice of the Ghost (your little robot companion) and he does do a good job I think. Whatever the fuss was over his voice in the Alpha seems to have been fixed.** Once you’re out of the tutorial it brings you to the Tower. The Tower is the main hub where you can buy new equipment, pick up quests (side and main story), and pick up bounties. Bounties are quests for multiplayer (example: Win 3 Multiplayer Games and get experience and other goodies). Then you can fly your ship down to Earth which is pretty much a wasteland now. The main area on Earth seems to be Russia (or what’s left of it). The game at first gives you the false sense of instanced quests, meaning that the landing zones for your ship are not linked in any way and you can only play in that single area. The world is actually completely open. What looks to be instanced mission areas turn out to be all connected. If you wanted to, you could walk from end to end of Russia without ever having to go back to your ship. I made the mistake of running off and exploring and I ended up in an area with level 10 enemies who swarmed me and destroyed me, a tiny level 4. That being said though, until I got swarmed, I was able to duck and weave well enough where I was actually killing them. That’s where the FPS side of the game shines through, if you can aim well enough, you can kill higher level enemies, it’s just going to take longer per kill since they have more health and armor at that level.
Just one more interesting gameplay tidbit. You have a bar that charges while you play. I believe kills make it charge faster but I wasn’t able to prove that 100% yet. When it charges you are “Supercharged” and can use a Special Attack. It makes for an interesting mechanic in multiplayer, see the second video below for an example.
So enough of me talking, check out the 2 videos below. The first one is an example of a “boss area” in a mission and the second video is me using a Supercharge to take out 2 guys trying to cap a point in multiplayer.
I will post some final thoughts once the beta is over in a week or so! Sound off in the comments or twitter about what you think about Destiny.
Discussion on Net Neutrality
The concept of Net Neutrality has become a huge point of contention in the US. Upon trying to get more information I was bombarded with what seemed to me like screaming either for or against and it seemed very hard to me to get a good grasp about what exactly the arguments were. I’m going to try to set out both sides in a way that makes sense and then add my 2 cents to the pile.
Net Neutrality is really the term for keeping the internet “free”. That means that the internet companies can’t tinker with the flow of data over its networks. “Tinker” can mean a lot of different things from limited access to specific sites to purposely slowing the speed of the internet for certain people to “spying” on their networks. Scary thought? Very Scary. So with that being said, it would seem that the answer would be clear cut right? Wrong. If the answer were as clear cut as that, there wouldn’t be an argument. The FCC (Federal Communication Commission) is the government body that regulates communication in the US. In 2011, Verizon filed suit against the FCC for overstepping their rights to regulate and won. This is when Net Neutrality became a huge issue.
Opponents of Net Neutrality (surprise, surprise, most big voices against Net Neutrality are the Internet Companies themselves) put forth some actually clear arguments. The biggest argument is that the regulation by the FCC would cause the infrastructure to lag even further behind the rest of the world. To back up a step, for those of you who don’t know, the US lags far behind other developed nations in broadband speed and bandwidth. If there was no Net Neutrality, the argument is that the internet companies could charge for “Tiered” service and thus make more money to spend on building up the infrastructure which would eventually lead to higher speeds and better coverage overall.
What is “Tiered Service”? Think of it like a line to get on a Disney World Attraction. If you have a Fast Pass you can get into a special line and get to ride the other ride faster than someone in the regular line. Essentially what the internet companies could do would be to create these faster tiers of internet and charge more for it.
The other big argument is that letting the FCC (A government entity) regulate the internet would cause even more problems. It is put in this way: Right now, as a customer, you have a choice. With the FCC regulating, every company would essentially become the same and the choice would be ripped away from you.
Given those 2 big points, let me show you why there is an argument. The way that the large internet companies argue, introducing the Tiered Internet Model would give them more money to invest in infrastructure. However, what is the goal of any company? To make more money. The fear is that without any FCC Regulations, the Internet Companies would start Tiered Internet but then have no incentive to actually invest the money, but instead just line their own pockets. The Tiered Internet Model would also impact low income customers who would not be able to afford the faster tier and then be stuck with an internet that is slow and worse than someone able to pay for a higher tier. It is not only going to affect the customer directly but indirectly too. Without FCC regulation, Internet Providers could cut deals with companies like Netflix. For example: Verizon and Netflix could cut a deal where Netflix would be the only movie streaming service available on Verizon Internet or at the very least, stream faster and with higher quality than a competing service. That would cause the customers to pay more since a deal like that would cost Netflix a lot of money, driving up their subscription costs.
In regards to the argument that if the FCC were regulating, the customer would have little choice left is just absurd. The Internet Companies pretty much have a monopoly on the industry anyway. Most Americans only have 2 – 3 choices of internet providers.
There are more arguments on both sides but those are the two that come up again and again. Honestly, I think the underlying problem is not Net Neutrality but the monopolies that have sprung up causing there to hardly be any competition and driving prices way up. An Op-Ed Piece in the New York Times from 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html?_r=0) really explains the underlying problem. In France and much of the other civilized parts of the world, internet is cheap. How cheap? Imagine getting 1000mbps up and down for $33.00. You can in Seoul, South Korea. Look at: http://oti.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2013_Data_Release.pdf for more information about the prices around the world.
We’ll see what happens but personally, I believe that nothing is going to get fixed until we do something about the Internet Company Monopolies and their chokehold on the industry.