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We’re Bigger Than A Zetabyte
Thanks to the Facebook revolution (more of a devolution à la lamebook.com), we humans are consuming and producing more data than ever before. Not by a little, not by a marginal amount but by leaps and bounds more than any other time in our history. As an example of our dominance as a race, we upload 1000 photos a second to the mighty Facebook. One thousand. That’s 3 billion photos a month.
Now let’s get into this zetabyte thing. A zetabyte is a lot of information. A gigabyte used to be considered a lot. It’s not anymore. 1000 gigs is known as a petabyte, and a petabyte can contain every book being help in the US Library of Congress. A zetabyte is a million times that size. It’s 250 billion full length movies, and some time this week, we’re going to surpass that. If you took all of the data centers in the world and put them in one place, they would fill 20% of the island of Manhattan.
Here’s the most disturbing fact: the combined CO2 usage from these data centers is nearly the same as the entire airline industry. Flying under the radar? Sorry. Pun-ishing.
It's A Shame, Really
I don't hate the Kings of Leon. I don't. Their first two albums are actually quite good. Molly's Chambers, The Bucket, Joe's Head and the like. They had this quirky Brit-influenced twang meshed with the spice of Alabama's soul that you can't really attribute to anything in particular. It was theirs. And then, the whole Sex on Fire thing happened and the whole world decided that they were the best band since The Killers. (Quack.)
At an overpriced concert somewhere, a gang of pigeons (let's call them the Goodfeathers) decided they'd had enough of the whimsical stylings of the KOL and shit all over them. The drummer, (let's call him Puddy) is a strict germaphobe and couldn't handle being covered in the shit of flying rats. The show was halted and cancelled due to pigeon poo. The female-laden crowd chanted obscenities. Of course, he's a drummer and no one would be surprised if he took off early to read about dinosaurs or work on Lesson 6 from his Easy-Bake oven cookery class. Actually, I take back the dinosaurs bit. Dinos are rad. Sorry, fellas.
Starcraft 2 Is Upsetting Nerds Everywhere (But You’ll Never Hear Their Screams Of Anguish Unless You’re Near A Keyboard)
It’s easy to tell when a nerd is upset. They clam up. Their words go from eloquently nasal to short jabs of stuttered speech. Actually, that’s an incorrect characterization. I’m sorry, nerds. Please don’t flame me. I’m just like you, except I’m loved by women worldwide due to my level 70 wooing powers. I had to slay many a dragon to hit that 70. Grind my ass off, I did.
Holy tangent! Anyways, the biggest release of the hardcore gamer calendar dropped on Tuesday: Starcraft II. This is a big deal. With an estimated $100 million budget and almost 13 years in the making, SCII has been waited on with Mountain Dew breath by those who still remember the strongest card from Series 1 Magic cards.
Forget about thinking about this in a microcosm of suburban Canada. Think global. South Korea was rocked by an illegal gambling ring that shook the very core of the country. People there play Starcraft as religion, just as TSN covers hockey the same way. The game is over a decade old and is still revered for its balance and ease-of-use. A sponsored player can make upwards of $100,000 and a top-flight champ can make $300,000+. These players are celebrities there, photographed by paparazzi. Tournaments are watched by tens of thousands of live fans.
The sequel is getting mixed reviews, due to the ‘backstabbing of the hardcore’. No LAN support. Episodic content that’ll charge the player three times the normal price. No offline singleplayer. A clunky menu interface. Phone-in support lines have been rendered useless. Basically, the nerds feel ripped off.
If you don’t care about any of this nerd-fest rant, thanks for getting through it… especially if you’re an atypical shoe-loving girl. Nerds feel the same way about rom-coms. Actually, all guys feel the same about rom-coms. We hate them. Stop forcing to deal with an impossibly perfect world. The more you want it, the unhappier you’ll be when you’re eating chips for dinner on your fainting chair petting your only friend, a stupid tabby cat that yearns for the outside world. It cries for fresh air while you’re too busy smothering it with ‘love’. Hollywood love, dipped in ranch dressing. Yuck.
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