Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

*Places down Soapbox and jumps on top of it*

Blogger geeks beware! If you have the wrong interests listed on your livejournal account, you might be eligible for deletion without prior warning.

On May 29th, hundreds of livejournal users woke up to find either their personal journals, or community journals they were watching/members of, gone without any sort of warning. Letters sent to these members later claimed that their journals were deleted due to violation of the TOS. Later, more than one member of the LJ abuse team admitted that they were sent lists of journals with certain keywords that needed to be deleted. This was because, according to their legal team, listing certain activities could be seen as the promotion of those activities, and if LJ knew and didn’t respond then they would become legally liable. They were not allowed, however, to admit who came up with these lists. (More below - Cut for length and possibly offensive topics)

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That’s the tag line that went along with Blizzard’s big weekend announcement that there will be a Starcraft 2. Rumors and hoaxes have been rampant lately, but this news is directly from blizzard’s web site. Unless the folks at blizzard have gotten cocky enough to annoy their most loyal fan base for a laugh, this one is real.

They give no word on when the game will be released. As usual, “it will be done when it’s done". As someone who has spent years in the software industry, I can see the wisdom in that. As a big fan of the original game, I can see anxiety in it.

Judging by the content of the web page, we’ll be lucky to see a release by Christmas. I haven’t been able to watch the gameplay videos yet (I will someday… when they finish downloading), but I noticed that the rest of the site is pretty light on content. Either they have very little to put up, or they are holding back. I’m guessing it’s the former.

As for the storyline, it claims to pick up where Brood Wars left off. That’s not surprising, since they left the story wide open for just such an event. I’m just surprised that they have decided to pick it up now, 9 years later.

Starcraft 2 has some big shoes to fill. Starcraft became more that just a beloved classic, it became an obsession. It broke up marriages, ruined college careers, got people fired from high tech jobs, and has even been blamed for a death in South Korea. It won’t be easy to top that! Good luck Blzzard, we’re rooting for you!

Here’s a link to a soon-to-be-released OLED keyboard. The price is just a little steep. $1564 is more than most of us budget for an entire gaming system. Needless to say, the expected market is pretty small.

The keyboard itself is a pretty cool device with a small LED array in every key. It allows for some pretty unique uses. Unfortunately, the uses don’t live up to the price tag.

Like I said, for the geek who has everything… except a brain.