How to Purchase Japanese iTunes Music/Apps in the USA

Piracy. If you’ve been around the internet very long, you’ve certainly heard this word plenty of times. There’s even a good chance you’ve heard a variety of perspectives on the issue, ranging from diametrically opposing it to considering it free advertising. And in truth, piracy is stupid: you’ll likely be locked out from certain features, get lower quality content than the real thing, and constantly have to battle countermeasures. But worst of all, the content creators are stripped of the support they deserve for their work. Of course, things are not always so clear cut. What if the content creator has not published their work in your country? Is it possible to steal what there never was a license for in the first place? As foreign media continues to rise in popularity here in the US of A, more and more people are asking themselves this question. Answer it however you will—your position is difficult to defend, no matter what stance you take. But what if you could avoid the question entirely? Isn’t there a better way?

I remind you this is the internet. Of course there is! Supporting your favorite content creators overseas is always the best way, and in this world where everything can be turned into a business there are lots of fine folks around the interwebs who are happy to help you do just that…without buying a plane ticket.

Computer Geeks: an Endangered Species?

There was once a time when if you really wanted to work with computers, you had to build your own hardware. You had to work programming languages in to existing hardware yourself. In either case, you knew your hardware and software alike quite well and were completely comfortable and capable messing around with both. Even as the decades wore on and software became more complex as hardware became simpler, anyone worth their geek salt was expected to have a decent working knowledge of current releases in both categories and be able to hold his own in dealing with them.

However, recent years have seen a major shift in this trend, and signs point to things only getting much worse. Are we arriving at the final days of true computer geeks?

Breaking Down the Video Game Stigma

News flash: if you’re a video gamer, your activity of choice is not well respected.

Another news flash: if you’re not a gamer, chances are you should respect gamers’ activity of choice a bit more.

Both of you, however, will have to take responsibility if this is to change. Everyone can agree that video games have made some large strides, but what remains to be settled is whether or not they have attained the same level of art as movies–or in other words, if they have reached a point where they are an acceptable or even constructive use of your time.. Regardless of which of the aforementioned groups you come from, the answers may surprise you!

COPYCAT!

People accusing other people of stealing their great ideas is nothing new. Who invented the telescope? Who discovered the New World? Who discovered electricity? Ask different people in different periods of history and you’ll get multiple conflicting answers. Go as far back in time as you like; anywhere someone thinks up something amazing and someone else promptly happens to think up the same amazing thing, blood instantly runs hot on both accounts as one person adamantly asserts that he has first dibs, and the other person defensively counters that he stole nothing. For whatever reason, intellectual property theft has always offended people and those loyal to them unlike any other offense out there.

…you can only imagine it gets worse when you throw technology into the mix.

Will there be a Tron: Legacy Sequel?

By now you're probably getting pretty well used to me giving my thoughts about sequels. But while so far I’ve only talked about existing sequels, what about the as-of-yet unannounced possible sequel to the ultimate movie for computer geeks and gamers the world over?

If you hadn’t guessed, I’m talking about Tron, Tron: Legacy, and whatever the future might hold for the series. Will we see a sequel, and if so, will it be one you’ll want to keep your eyes open for? If these sound like the kind of questions you want the answers to, then read on!

A few days ago, Disney XD began airing Tron: Uprising, an 18-episode, 2D cartoon tie-in to to the Tron series set to fill in some of the gaps between the two motion pictures. Now of course, we knew this would be coming for several months now, but even so, after more than a year since Legacy’s release, it is good to see that Disney is still interested in the franchise and willing to put continued effort into its development. Uprising does not, however, confirm the existence of a full live action continuation of the two stories we’ve already seen, and to be honest, while I can see where another sequel might fit in, I have my doubts as well.

Dead Drops: drop-dead geeky awesomeness

What you are looking at is nothing more than an ordinary USB drive that has been removed from its plastic shell, covered with electrical tape for waterproofing, and then mounted into a wall with cement. At least, it appears to be nothing more than this on the surface. The full story behind what this little memory stick is doing in a wall and why you should be interested in others like it is bound to get the treasure-hunter and/or secret agent in you very, very excited. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Dead Drops.

Say what?

Looking back…nostalgia, or a warning of things to come?

Well, this place is ‘my dropbox for tech thoughts’, and today I’m going to take advantage of that and launch into a train of thought that has been particularly bothering me lately. Let me start from the beginning. I often find myself slightly annoyed at work when I have to do tasks on Windows XP that Windows 7 could do much better. Frequently I recommend that home users also make the upgrade. I vouch strongly for Windows 8 and can’t wait to see how it performs on tablet hardware, especially of the x86-64 variety. And yet, for all my kicking against it, I can’t seem to completely move away from the OS myself.

…why?

Stupid About _________.

“We’re all ignorant, just about different things.” ~Mark Twain

You probably know by now that I love technology. In fact, I love it so much that I make a point of knowing the fine details of all kinds of computers, smartphones, cameras, MP3 players, etc.

But I’ll be honest: I hate cars.

I don’t care how many cylinders are in the engine, I don’t care what material the seats are made out of, I don’t even care if it has a CD player. As long as it gets me where I need to go, that’s good enough for me. The cheaper the better, and if I have to give up a few features, fine. Just give me a heater and air conditioner--the rest is optional. Therefore, when I look for a car, I look for the thing that will cost me the least initially and further down the road (no pun intended). Now, any car expert out there is probably shaking his head by now and thinking up a list of cars I should check out to prove me wrong that I can be satisfied with the least the auto industry has to offer.

See that blank in the title? Fill it in for yourself: you may love technology (that’s probably why you’re here), but you could hardly care less about ______ and have little passion to know the geeky details about ______. Well, guess what? That’s how the majority of people feel about technology.