Data Without Borders

Tragedy struck yesterday morning. Performing my normal Sunday morning responsibilities as the designated technical export for our youth group, I was setting up the Sunday school classrooms to play a couple video clips. Boring stuff mostly, but one was the scene from The Last Crusade with Indiana taking the leap of faith to reach the Holy Grail. Awesome. Anyway, I finished the setup and my laptop borked. Just gone. Like all the internal components completely disappeared. Unfortunately I had to do my job so I set my computer aside and hopped to a back-up machine. The entire morning I just figured that my little Acer, my mobile writing machine, was a goner.

After I did the standard plug/unplug/remove battery shuffle (which didn't solve anything), I hopped on the interwebs and discovered that this is a pretty common problem for Acer machines. I was able to fix and update the bios, but the scare really got me thinking about data back-up and what steps I should take to avoid a real disaster in the future.

Being the avid PSP gamer that I am, I was instantly reminded of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and the Militaires Sans Frontières or MSF for short. I need a solution that is essentially data without borders. A means to access all of my data from any machine. My first thought was Dropbox, which I have, but only a measly 3.25 GB free account. The only problem is that I need my 3.25 GB account to transform into one of those free 16 GB accounts. To do that, I have to recruit users to Dropbox. And I'm doing that with some assistance and success. But I need a better option.

Lifehacker posted a timely article about backing-up data today and it was a stern reminder that I'm not doing everything that I can to keep my information safe from the inevitable failure of technology. That's correct people. Technology will fail. Stuff will break. The glass is already broken. So is my laptop.

The Future of Video Games?

I guess I understand the precautions and the security that are seemingly imminent in the next generation of video game consoles.
I don't like it.

Consider the PSP. I believe that there were two types of people excited to hold the portable powerhouse of 2004/2005. The first type (this was me back then) plucked the PSP from its packaging and said: This amazing little machine can do so much!

The second type saw the potential of the PSP and said:
This amazing little machine can do so much more!

Sony already knew this (or realized it shortly after) because newer iterations of the PSP unloaded features and updates left and right. Still, we wanted more out of the PSP and people hacked it up, adding even more features to the amazing machine. Of course, hacking led to stolen games, which Sony claims is the reason for locking the PS Vita down.

I slowly grew into the second type of PSP owner. Unfortunately, Sony won't acknowledge the hacker ingenuity and creativity that grew out of the PSP. For example, you can use a hacked PSP for a USB monitor now. That's crazy. And amazing. And awesome.

My point here, when it comes to video games, give us Isla Sorna instead of Isla Nublar. Set the limits: it's an island. If you want to play with this video game console, you're going to have to stay within these boundaries or you'll drown. However, imposing too many limitations and needless security is going to cause problems, just like it did on Isla Nublar. With Samuel L. Jackson dying.

Sony needs to make something awesome, then sell that awesome thing and its island to the consumers, saying: here's the PS4 and here's the PS4's island, now make this awesome thing better.