my.bicycle

The weird thing isn't that I'm linking to a story about a wayward Japanese guy who cross-dressed to sneak into the women's side of the baths. The weird thing is that I found the link from an Icelandic blog.

Fans of HALO and Red vs. Blue will be amused to see the Warthog "Puma" made real by Peugot's new "Hoggar."

In a related follow-up to the kigurumi links yesterday, Warren Ellis posted my proffered Mighty Lady link on Die Puny Humans, and it's also on BoingBoing.net! I've got street cred now. Kindasorta. Thanks, Kristen! This is all thanks to your "disturbing image of the day" series.

Okay, anyone who's read my stuff at Futurismic knows that I'm a sucker for Bastard Pop. To some, it's a bunch of half-wit, technologically enabled music pirates destroying otherwise well-produced pop music. To me, it's a new art form that has the added bonus of being of questionable legality. I'm going to keep tacking stuff into this post, so peek at it from time to time. However, I'd like to draw your attention to el mannion's No Sleep 'Til Bastard album. In particular, I like the way track 6 finishes up, apparently using samples from a language instruction tape to create a strange, foreboding, and discomfiting environment where two androids' date ends in tragedy. Base58 has much more goodness, my goodness.

Saw the pre-event link at DPH about a strange, quasi-webcam anime "girl." This prompted me to peek around for lots more stuff about this weird fetish from the wild country I'm in. It didn't surprise me when the longest page of useful links came up in English. Near immediate addenda: a stronger composite presentation, as well as less random links on boingboing.net.

Holy crap. This questionable-use doll looks just like Sadako from The Ring. Who'd want to fuck with that?

Addenda: I've seen some of these dolls in non-pr0n shops in Osaka. I thought they were weird, and then just sorta dismissed them from my headspace. I've seen a lot of professional kigurumi actors at amusement parks and such; when the AbaRangers (this year's flavor of Power Rangers), or Anpanman show up, it's these guys. So when I saw there's a fetish attached to it, it didn't really register as weird. I just posted to Japan Tribe to find out what people think about this stuff; personally, I'm mostly weirded out that I'm not weirded out, that I've become inured to it, apparently. Or I'm clueless.

Labels: nsfw

Get the shoe that Ripley shoved straight up the Alien Queen's bony bootie.

from gamespot:
"Conversations this reporter had with gamers themselves indicate emotions run a bit warmer than the mainstream press suggests. Although some gamers may write it off as "just a game," many are uncomfortable with the premise of Rising Sun. As one gamer put it, "You know, even though it's just a game, those are our fathers and relatives we're killing. There's something about it that I just don't like." Another wondered how a game like this would be received in other countries, saying, "...this is a game in which you play as a foreign soldier and try to kill troops from your own country. I bet that you couldn't even sell a game like this overseas. I have a feeling that Japanese are the only people who would brush this off because 'it's only a game.' I don't know if that's good or bad...""
11/27 update: Penny-Arcade

Darkness and light, whimsy mixed with the horrid: It is the spiritual mutant creation that may happen if a Hello Kitty vibrator got caught in a Jan Svankmeyer world. Jojo in the Stars is charming. Which is good, since I was beginning to lose faith in Tim Burton. (via scattershot)

"We truly seem to have entered a new phase in American celebrity, in which there’s almost no one that doesn’t believe Jackson likes little boys and R. Kelly likes slightly less little girls, yet both artists continue to sell albums by the millions ... which is odd, considering that everyone’s so freaked out by gay marriage. If our society was so moral, wouldn’t we be boycotting the horrid musicians and endorsing the legitimizing of marriage of loving adults?" Go, Marc. Tell it.

The Dirty Dozen of the Lion and Lamb project (among other things, like testifying before congress) lists games that parents should not let their kids play. While I'm impressed that they are reasonably up to date, I don't understand how they can include THE CLEARLY ESRB LABELED text, and ignore the "Mature" rating on it. GTA: Vice City's descriptor includes:

Neither the video game nor retail industries enforce the voluntary ratings system, which means that teens can easily buy and rent Mature-rated titles. Even retailers with policies that restrict the sale of Mature-rated games to children allowed children to purchase Mature-rated video games 73 percent of the time, according to a recent Federal Trade Commission survey.

There's a survey? It's a government survey? Provide a damned URL; I'd like to know if it was in the last two years.

I got so worked up, I forgot to add my gripe. Er, point. Videogames don't kill people, guns do. And guns don't even kill people unless there's a person attached to the user-end, and a victim on the other. If GTA caused people to kill other people, wouldn't there be a larger corresponding spike of overall murder with the stupendous success of that game? Instead, all I see are the same lame-asses who cannot accept responsibility for their own actions, and a public that wants to maintain its own victimization without addressing the actual causes of its degradation. Want to prevent kids from being affected by violence? Try not letting them watch the news, or read the newspaper.

The fine yacht, "Seuss" it is, then!
A better boat, there never has been!
Young Sally McPun would take it out daily,
In fact most days, she felt quite sail-y.

On any day the Seuss-boat sailed
A trail of chortles behind it trailed.

The McPuns, they came from smiles around
And wondered at that laughing sound.
From the rivers,
From the tress,
And even from the homes of bees!

On shoreside homes, a rippling sound of dripping laughter
Came pouring, pouring from the rafters.
When it showed no signs of stopping,
The McPunsters felt their bellies popping.

"Stop!" they cried, their sides near-split.
"We are sore from laughing at the boat's bow-sp'wit"
And so that day, young Sally sailed to port, forsooth
and just for them, that day, she dock'd her "Seuss."
[posted to Puns! tribe]

Gamespot reports CESA's results of a survey given at TGS, the major Japanese tradeshow focusing on electronic entertainment. (thanks, weezie)

OS X app for practicing Japanese reading skillz. (via jeansnow)

"It was the best of blogging, it was the worst of blogging." B3ta asks, "What would the Victorian Internet look like?" Their readers answer. Caused most consecutive snickers of any website in recent memory. Next up: gilt PDAs on open display at Dickens' Faire. (via boingboing)

MK12's self-promotion brand "Ultra Love Ninja" combines James Bond swank, Porn kitsch, and hot NINJA action in a way that is teh sexy.

The theme song is reminiscent of early Bond theme song offerings. It immediately went into obsessive rotation in the video's tiny quicktime window. I wrote MK12 to purhase a copy of the song; they immediately (and very kindly) pointed me at a page of free, sexay remixes.

Googling revealed a still active, older page; desktops and fonts and PDFs for stickers and such are available under TREATS.

This page on ~mind control~ also turned up when searching for more information. Coincidence? Um... Yeah.

Labels: nsfw

In response to a friend's query about life here, in Japan:

What can I say about life over here? It's great, it's weird, it's tasty, it's polite, and everything is wrapped up really well when one buys anything. It's a lot easier life than it used to be here. In the ten years since the first time I lived here, Japan gained cheese, scones, Starbuck's (and a few other REAL coffee places), and most importantly INTERNET ACCESS GALORE. On the other hand, Japan also "gained" Toys R Us, Blockbuster Video, more McD's, KFC's, and Pizza Huts. I assume Walmart is being beat back at the gates, or is quietly partnered with one of the major, but lower quality shops. In short, 10 years ago I felt like I was on an island, and if I wanted a taste of US items, it was hard to come by. Mail was (9 days going)+(response time)+(9 days coming back), and about a buck a letter. Email has stunningly changed the communication dynamic, as I'm sure you've deduced.

Gamasutra news headline today: "VIS Joint Venture Suffers Staff Loss (reg. req'd)" body text: "Representatives from VIS-ITV, a joint venture between Scottish developer VIS Entertainment and cable operator Telewest, have confirmed that a number of staff have been laid off." Call it nitpicking, but isn't it weird to say the company is suffering, or passively has suffered, when the company has chosen to lay off employees? Suffering implies "being put upon by outside forces" while "layoff" and "reorg" are actions that a company may take. It is something to which they subject their employees. Next up: "Dog suffers bite-compulsion syndrome from presence of Postal Worker."

Currently away from my copies of Kill Bill and RHCP's "By the Way"; I'm not sad, though. Oh, no. I'm shaking my geek-thang to Dread Zeppelin's version of "Sunshine of Your Love." Oh, the weasely, tortelvis-y goodness. "Gimme a towel, Priscilla."

addendum: The way fu-master Anthony Kiedis sings "Universally Speaking" is hard to understand. Until I checked the liner notes, I thought is it was "universal lispy king" -- some kind of Castillian Spanish reference, I'd assumed.

random

Re: Which comic was it?
A comics scholars list I belong to was able to save the day!

"The comic referred to is SAVIOUR, published in the UK by Trident Comics in 1989-90. It was written by Mark Millar and drawn first by Daniel Vallely, later by Nigel Kitching. As far as I recall, there were no more than four or five issues and the storyline was never completed."

Eric Harshbarger, professional lego sculptor.

always becoming

What does it take to make me break my reasonably strict rule about using only lower-capitalization in the subject line? Well, it's KIKAIDER! dammit! Tripping around the blogosphere this morning, I was astonished to see DiePunyHumans had a blurb on it, which was then nabbed by boingboing, and I've seen on a couple of other single-user blogs. What is Kikaider? He's only the most bad-ass, guitar-playing wanderer who transforms into a motorcycle-riding cyborg, EVAR. When I was 6 or so, I'd watch this every Sunday, along with Raideen, Dai Apollon, and Go Ranger on Channel 22, KWHY in Los Angeles.

A Hawaiian company is releasing his series on DVD. There may not be enough exclamation points in the world to convey my bliss.

Defective Yeti's Matthew Baldwin has a bwilliant Matrix parody starring everyone's favorite presidential chimp (except "Bonzo"):

TRINITY: Please. Just listen. I know why you’re here, Geo. I know why you left your family and your friends, why you left your home to come to this city.
There is a HYPNOTIC quality to her voice. BUSH’s eyelids begin to droop as she speaks.
TRINITY: You’re looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Geo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did.
BUSH: What – is – the thingie.
TRINITY: The Matrix.
BUSH snaps awake.
BUSH: Oh. I was thinking of the other thingie. The sandwich.

Just how cunning is Matthew? He foresaw this.

One, last, non-yeti Matrix bit:
7) Bane: MIS-ter AN-derson, still dumb as a bag of hammers, I see.

What's this?

Educators to storm E3 Expo / MIT department to host preshow Games in Education conference.
The staid Massachusetts Institute of Technology said today that it would host a three-day conference to take place immediately before the E3 Expo opens its doors. The event will take place at the same site as E3--the Los Angeles Convention Center. The conference will focus on games in education and is part of a larger MIT program called The Education Arcade initiative.

The conference will take place on May 9, 10, and 11 and will include panels that will address a number of topics that draw on education, academia, and pure game design. Session topics include the following: Are Games Educational?; From Simulation to Interaction; and, Fostering Games Literacy. Roundtables will also be a part of the program, featuring topics that will focus on educational, technical, creative, and market trends.

The conference is free and open to the public (aged 18 and older).
By Staff, GameSpot [POSTED: 11/18/03 01:11 PM]

No handy links in the article, but googling turns up a site about the Education Arcade, and a handy press release.

I have never seen a run-up to E3 yet that isn't full of hair pulling (one's own, as well as other victims) and of last-minute trauma.

Of course I'm very interested in what MIT's got to say on new media, especially that well-spoken Henry Jenkins. But the timing on this seems very ill-planned. Most developers are polishing their demo's. Most developers are driving or flying to L.A. the night before E3 with their latest build in their backpack/briefcase/codpiece. Would MIT hold a conference the week immediately prior to "finals week"? It doesn't seem likely. It's possible that the only people who will be able to attend are ones that aren't directly making games. That's not a complete fiasco; if MIT focuses on appealing to marketing/sales/random executive types, it could influence the direction of games. It's great to see a respected educational institution taking an interest in this field, and then attempting to influence it in turn.

Now that I've found out what brand I am, I can't wait to capitalize on the franchising. (Why is captalize a Z, but franchising an S?) If I could only work up the will and gall to get a spurious patent on the no-mustache, chin-only goatee combined with a dramatically receding hairline, and enforce it, I'd be a gazillionaire. No-one is paying attention to prior-art, or the clearly defined differences between trademark, patent, and copyright anymore, so I can sue all the other game development art directors!

What brand are you? (via Diepunyhumans)

"Of the six positions, the "freefaller" is the more rarefied of sleeping shapes, with just 6.5 per cent of people preferring to sleep on their front. They tend to have "a brash and gregarious exterior", although this confident front hides a nervous personality that responds badly to personal criticism."

So what the hell are you saying? I'm some kind of jerk?

There has been much coverage of camoflage lately. Wired had a big piece on optical, which primarily focused on the work that's being done here in Japan. It's unclear whether or not Ghost in the Shell's camo inspired that work (Like Clarke's geosynchronous satellites), or if Shirow was basing it on existing tech-philosophies. If you're wondering where the punchline for this whole thing is, you'll have to look a little harder.

Here is 2nd or 3rd hand reporting of the n00 urban legends that are popping up in Baghdad.

Next time I'm on Nankai line, and some noisy joshikousei or os'san is just gab-gab-gabbing away on their cellphone, I want my localized EMP to take them off the grid, baby.

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Fallopian Wank. What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey. Note this has changed; "Stim-U-L8 Shizzlemah" was Timmeh's nickname.

Some of the strangest pages in recent memory turned up at the Link Fu contest at boingboing.net. The shrinking-woman shabu-shabu (not for Chuji) is particularly effervescent with local ...flavor.

Kevin Fanning:
When your mother was a spy.
The time between ordering and eating.
True things about trish.

ColorMatch5K (perhaps an entry in The 5k contest?) is a sassy, but apparently non-HTML-compliant tool for generating a swatch of colors around which to design. The ColorMatch Remix will run in Opera, Mozilla and all that jazz properly, and offers a broader palette. Optimally, I wish there was a more readily available complementary color slot, but it's sufficiently slick without it.

Neat google deskbar trix.

Who is that, prowling amidst the tarmac! It is Brian, hands clutching two hardened pitas! He howls mightily:
"Blood and souls for my dark lord! Skulls will be fucked for Satan!!!"

I had just moved to Kyoto, and was staying in the ISE foreigner's dormitory while I tried to find a more permanent place; ISE was a pit of a dorm with very nice strangers all playing nicely. In fact, I understand that Pico Iyer wrote "The Lady and the Monk" while staying there. But a friendly American couple who lived over the hill in Kujo-yama saw the shabby, oily room I was in, and insisted that I say with them in their old, three-storey house, no rent, no nothing, until I could find my own apartment.

Kujo-yama is out on the trolley line that runs out of San-jo, up the hill, past the Int'l Community Center, and into a suburban portion of Kyoto city. Most of the places are quite old. My friends' place was probably between 50 and 100 years old, and in mediocre condition. It had a cesstank for its sewage, but I think it had regular gas lines. Old place. It was built on a hill (very near the trolley tracks) so the ground entrance was on the 2nd floor, with a stairway up to the bedroom, and a stairway down to the kitchen, which had a door leading to a pantry, which in turn led to a laundry/bath area.

I was given a shoji-separated side room, just off the center of the 2nd floor. The walls were a little dirty, and had children's writing and drawings all over them. The hill caused a slight sag in the house, so the sliding doors didn't entirely fit perfectly. There was always a gap at the top of the door, when the bottom of it was butted against the frame. For some reason, this all acted together to give my niche a creepy feeling.

Downstairs, there was the kitchen, which was bright, clean and charming. It had been the target of a successful remodel, and was the nicest room in the house. On the other hand, passing through the door into the pantry, immediately I could feel a contrast. The pantry was dark. It was just dark, bare wood, and an archway leading into the laundry area. Whenever I went into the pantry, I felt like I was being, well, not just watched, but stared at. Glared at, even. Then, stepping through to the laundry/bath area, the feeling was gone.

I stayed there for a few weeks, always feeling vaguely creeped out in bed, and always feeling watched when going through the pantry. Weird thing is how entirely different the kitchen felt; it was so much nicer than the pantry! Though honestly, it could have been the homemade waffles and pizzas that my friends were always cooking there, or the Pyramid Ales they always seemed to have on hand.

So that's my ghost story. What's that? There's no ghost, just a creepy feeling? Okay, well, the weird bit is this:

I started to tell this story that night, in the carfull of teachers that I mentioned in my earlier post in this thread. I got no further than the location, Kujo-yama, when one of the teachers interrupted me, and asked if it was the three-storey place just down from the station. I told him it was. He said, "That place was for rent earlier," this was true; my friends had just moved there when they invited me to stay with them.

"I went to check it out because the rent was cheap there, but when I got to the house, the genkan was locked, and I couldn't see in. I walked down the hillside, along the side of the house to the corner. I started across the wall of the house, but halfway across, something really freaked me out. I don't know what it was, but it felt horrible. I lost it, and RAN all the way back to the station."

I hadn't told anything about my experiences in the pantry, but the room was exactly halfway across the lowest storey; exactly where he described the weirdness.

"That's not all," he said, "I told one of my students that I was looking for a place to rent, and mentioned that I went to go look at a three-storey place in Kujo-yama. She described the place, and I was surprised that she'd take any notice of it. She said that she has to ride the trolley in front of it and so she holds her breath whenever she rides by."

My friends claimed I was imagining things, and that they couldn't feel anything weird. But at least three people felt something very strange there, two of us in the same spot, without having anything in common other than the house.

Getting corroborating stories from that teacher just made me feel more creeped out.

I am participating online in an interesting discussion, where we are all making puns at each other. The topic was "Vagina" so everyone was punning about sex. One guy's user-icon is a Stag/Deer with big antlers. He said:

Deer: Well if this discussion isn't clean, the least we can do is to wrap it up quickly.

Brian: Deer'y, that is just such a typical stag attitude. Be careful, or you'll get a reputation that you're only out to sate your horny self. You'd probably do anything for a buck (or some doe, for that matter).

He directly messaged me back:
Deer: You used up all the deer puns in one message! I've got nothing left, ya bastard! :-)

Brian: Venecin Vidi Vici :-)

Activision announced that they are immediately dropping 10 in-progress titles in reaction to lessened earnings:

'Ron Doornink said the company was taking steps to adapt to the new, high-stakes game of console, computer and handheld game development. "The video game market is increasingly dominated by high-quality products based on recognizable franchises supported with big marketing programs. We have decided to take steps to align our business with the continuing evolution of the video game market."'

Which is interestingly stunning bullshit. Do you remember the 4-page magazine spreads, TV advertisments, and pre-movie, in-theater cinematic ads shown prior to the launch of GTA3? No, because there weren't any. It was a word-of-mouth hit, with its success entirely due to its quality and innovation. This activistion plan seems analogous to a major TV station discovering that their shows are not popular, and reacting by immediately reducing the number of TV shows they will produce (limiting the audience's choices) and insisting that any remaining shows be spin-offs or reruns.

Two interesting stories on wired today:
MTV plans to get into the download music bidness, competing with iTunes, napster 2.0 and any number of other pay-to-play music services. Music on MTV? Great! How uncommon; last time I checked, MTV was about ¼ Road Rules, ¼ Real World (never tiring of the irony of that title), ¼ guest VJ sessions and ¼ carson daly and fred durst popping up, showing how little I should actually respect the creativity of any popular performer, and a smattering of Tough Enough, "for taste." Not many videos, so not much music. When they occasionally played videos, there were annoying comments that popped up in balloons, about as clever and entertaining as someone kicking the back of your seat during a movie, and making their own running commentary. Is MTV even popular as a brand anymore? I thought the big money was in all the 70's and 80's Flashbackers who like VH1.

The other story is more frightening and confusing; the broadcast flag chip has been mandated by the FCC as a requirement. What I don't really get is the ability of the FCC to require something for the production of hardware. It seems reasonable that the market should dictate what succeeds or does not, and requiring any hardware seems like it is an abusive move on the part of a government agency to assist the existing businesses unnaturally sustain their profit model in the face of technological advancement. To put it another way, this is like the dinosaurs petitioning to cease the fall of meteors that are altering their environment and hastening their extinction... and succeeding. How can the FCC mandate that a chip goes in a player/recorder? Can't companies sell TVs without tuners? VHS decks with no line-in? They could even try to sell VCRs with no line out, but there'd be no point, and the product would flop. But how can the government dictate what hardware goes into each and every box we can buy?

According to the wired article linked above, "The MPAA convinced the FCC that if TV producers weren't able to protect their shows from piracy they would begin to sell their shows only to paid outlets like HBO." In some ways, that sounds like a business deal. In another way, it sounds like extortion. Here are the players whom opportunity in America has made rich, making threats against the government. Can't we lock up these ass-hats under the PATRIOT act?

Between this, and the copyright extension stuff I've covered earlier, I feel like Big Media and the copyright industry is pissing on my shoes.

Some friends I have. Sheesh. My keyboard is beginning to have a cottage-cheese-like substance growing on it from the amount of milk and OJ I have nose-ejected onto it after reading something funny while drinking. Rather than offering to come clean the kybd, or sending me a new cheapie US-101, Weezie suggests that:

I move that we remove Bwana from the list if he can't keep expelling food from his face. In lieu of that, here's some great alternate responses to list humor:
1. The classic shit eating grin.
2. Hard nipples.
3. Knee slapper.
4. Accidental fart.
5. Bat your eyelashes.
6. Give a nearby coworker the thumbs up.
7. Shove your fist in your mouth.
8. Yell YAHTZEE!
9. Head butt the monitor.
10. Double take followed up with an "aw shucks" shoulder shrug.

Which had Chuji follow on its heels with:

11. Run for Governor of California
12. Give out the 'ol "HOO HAH!!!"
13. Do the Arsino Hall fist thing while screaming "Whoo Whoo Whoo!"
14. Fill your pants with poop
15. Grab the nearest Asian man and shout "NANI????" into his face
16. Fill your pants with someone else's poop
17. In your best Clayton voice say "Really, Benson...."
18. Get outta my dreams, and into my car.
19. Do the Icky Shuffle
20. Three Words: Sans Pants Dance

Gotta make some new friends, or inject these ones with SYMPATHY DNA! It's just cheese, or something like it.

YAHTZEE!

I'm reading too many books at once right now.

I've finally started Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, which I've owned for about four years and never previously cracked open, but Justine recently recommended it, so it's my train-ride paperback. Weezie sent me a hardcover edition of Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country, which appears to cover pretty much everything I've been worried about since the shrub entered office after being appointed by the Supreme Court, rather than being elected fair-and-square. Yeah, thanks for throwing in the towel, Gore. Don't quit on my account; as part of the American people that you said "deserve better," I wouldn't have minded waiting for a full recount, or a reconsideration of the entire electoral-vote process, so outmoded after all these years. Or hell, let's have a "do-over," and see how many people turn out to vote when they actually think their effort may make a difference this time. Remind me why I thought you cared.

Holy Venom! (*dismounts high-horse) Sorry. Got carried away.

Lastly, Mike lent me Rebel Code by Glyn Moody, an entertaining and detail-rich, if heavy-handed history of the recently highly significant Linux OS. This is of primary interest as background, as I am fooling around with Linux at work lately; I got a junker box and put Mandrake 9.2 on it (it didn't eat my CD-ROM drive's firmware, thanks). It is a major chore, and a lot of fun at the same time to fool around with an OS other than Mac OS X or Windows 2000-J, my two staples. There are some paradigms that are requiring brainbending, and that's always fun.

A short list of things we should be able to access through the public domain but cannot, because of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. For instance, if the letter of the law had been followed, we would have no Nosferatu.

Be forewarned; this post rambles, and sucks. The links are good, though. Try the links.
Just peeking at Charlie Stross' blog, and found a site that generated this gem:

"He's an immortal drug-addicted master criminal She's a warm-hearted gypsy bounty hunter descended from a line of powerful witches. They fight crime!"

It reminded me of one day at Namco when we were comparing which one of us was the biggest weirdo magnet. One guy had the odd fate of any loon that had line-of-sight on him walk up, and begin randomly talking. This had happened for the umpteenth time at lunch, where some stranger got up off a bench and walked up to our appearing-to-be-purposefully-walking group and stop all of us so he could talk to our Weirdness Magnet. When we got back to the office, we tried to one-up each others' stories of confrontations with insane people. It turned out one of us had been cornered in a late night situation a nut who claimed to be bulletproof. It had freaked him out. "Naw, that shit's easy," came the reply, "just look him straight in the eye and say, 'GREAT! Let's fight crime!'"

This online sample of artist Miwa Yanagi's "My Grandmothers" series is beautiful and creepy. This was found on Stealth Tribe, a group of creators and webcrawlers who search for found (ephemeral) objects.

This cannot be good. Microsoft buying Google? I'm sure it's possible, and all, but so far the other things Microsoft has bought have turned to crap.