So GamesRadar released a little list of video game music they think is worth putting on your iPod. They said that they realize that everyone's taste in music is different, and I tend to agree! (After quickly realizing that their picks were quite atrocious.) So I'm going to make my own little list of music to say you should listen to! (I'm also going to forgo the whole subliminal advertising for Apple.) I'm going to take this opportunity to test out a little Flash music player that my friend Iaian7's been using for a while, too, but in case it doesn't show up, you can click the title of the track and get the MP3! (No OGG, AAC, WMA or any weird stuff here. MP3 forever.) These are all 30 second clips, to avoid any rampant lawsuit by the RIAA claiming to be representing the artists of these tracks.

10. Myst - Myst Theme
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I'm having a difficult time sorting these by priority, so I'm going to wing it. I'm not going to pick some arbitrary number and try to come up with enough to fill the list... I'm going to show you 10 of my favorite video game tracks, rated, more or less, from least important to most. Still, being the bottom of the top 10 is no crying matter, and I'm going to start off with a track that everyone who calls themselves a gamer should have heard by now. Anyone who regularly reads this blog will definitely know what it is. It's the Myst Theme, by good ol' Robyn Miller. It's been so long since it first reached my ears and I can still remember the pure awe and sense of mystery surrounding this game.

9. Super Mario 64 - Koopa's Road
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Similarly, anyone who calls themselves a gamer should know what this is by now. Koopa's Road, by Koji Kondo. I really have no experience to associate with this, because I was late on the Super Mario 64 scene, but there's just something about it that defines Bowser, and something that just feels right while you're trying to reach him through some otherworldly mess of gadgets and baddies built in the vast expanse of absolutely nothing.

8. Metroid Prime - Menu Select
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This is one thing we agreed on, though, GamesRadar and I. Except they picked the Main Title of Metroid Prime 2, and I picked the music that accompanies the menu in the first game. By both Kenji Yamamoto and Kouichi Kyuma, according to my sources. This is the game that precedes all other Metroid games, says Nintendo. The story that started it all and a best-seller on that "failed" console, the Gamecube!

7. World of Warcraft - Legends of Azeroth
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I'll bet you didn't know that pounding music that plays during the log on screen had a title! Well, it does! Legends of Azeroth by... A whole heck of a lot of people: Jason Hayes, Tracy W. Bush, Derek Duke, and Glenn Stafford. I remember the first time I started up World of Warcraft. The dark swirling portal on the side opposite of Azeroth, looking through from a dead, desolate world to a lush, green paradise... A world that the Burning Legion wanted for their own, and a world wracked with war after war with so much story... A lot of history. More than most fantasy novels, even.

6. Myst Online: Uru - Gallery Theme
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My first intention was to only list tracks from games that weren't related to each other. One Mario, one Myst, and so forth. But I realized that my list really could not be complete without the Gallery Theme, by Tim Larkin. Kadish's Gallery. The token personification of the pride of D'ni. The pride before their fall. You remember the story behind it, right? That when Veovis and A'Gaeris were poisoning the entire civilization, Kadish's wife (who you can hear singing) was waiting for him at home, singing his favorite song from his favorite play. He never showed up to be with her in D'ni final hours. He was too busy dying, alone, surrounded by all his wealth that was locked away deep in his Age. They both died alone.

5. Chrono Trigger - Chrono Trigger
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How's that title for you? The track "Chrono Trigger" from the game Chrono Trigger, by Yasunori Mitsuda. Arguably the best role playing game of all time, with no exceptions in my book. Final Fantasy doesn't come close. Nothing does, and nothing ever will. Chrono Trigger is pure brilliance, with the best story and the best musical soundtrack you could have ever asked for on a Super Nintendo. (Incidentally, this clip I'm giving you is actually a special remix made for the Playstation release after Square sold out to Sony and abandoned Nintendo.)

4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - The Goddess Appears
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Speaking of Nintendo! Here's a classic for you. The Goddess Appears, by Koji Kondo. You may recognize it as Great Fairy's Fountain and the menu music from the Ocarina of Time and... Well, I think pretty much every game since the first one. There's really not much to say here. It's Zelda. It's Fairy's Fountain. It's good, and it's had so many revisions it's not funny. I picked A Link to the Past because it was the only copy I had that wasn't actually a fan remix, but it's still so good!

3. Perfect Dark - Institute Menu
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This track has special meaning to me. My grandparents have a neighbor who we always hang out with when we visit, and he was one of the first on the block to snag a Nintendo 64. We could play Goldeneye 007 constantly! ...Until Perfect Dark came out. This marked my first real endeavor into all-night gaming! Fragging it up at 3am, freezing the console when we coordinated the detonation of all our remote trip mines at the same time. Awesome times. The entire soundtrack for this game is amazing. Not too heavy like nearly every other FPS, but enough to get you on the edge of your seat when the time comes!

2. Halo 2 - Unforgotten
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Of course, Marty O'Donnell took FPS soundtracks to an entirely new level with Halo, and then completely outdid himself with Halo 2. I don't have the Halo 3 soundtrack, and I don't think it's even been released, yet, so this is the next best thing. I believe (if I recall correctly) that the title insinuates that those who went above and beyond the call of duty in the Covenant War will never be forgotten, and boy... It sure does drive that feeling home, if you ask me.

1. Okami - Rising Sun
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This is the reason for my rule of "one track per game or game series", otherwise, I would have filled it up with Okami tracks and it would've bored you to death. However, Rising Sun, by Rei Kondoh, is the pinnacle of any music that I have ever heard from anywhere in my life. Usually, I'll listen to a track and remix it in my head, trying to make my own arrangement and see how I could make it sound better, maybe with different instruments or slower or what have you. Not Rising Sun. The more I listen, the more perfect it is, and the more I love it. I've listened to this so much before I even heard of Last.fm, so whatever count you see there? It's far, far, far greater than that. My all time favorite and I guarantee that you won't be disappointed with having this track on your MP3 player!

I have another one of those "hypocritical" articles to show you.

With the advent of the internet, and the fact that information "wants to be free", there have been a multitude of sites that have appeared over the years that have been especially useful! I think one of the more important benefits to the internet is the fact that we don't have to rely on the liberal news corporations to hear what's going on anymore, which is especially good when it comes to politics and the media throwing themselves behind one candidate without portraying the others in a fair light. Even Digg understand this, with their outcry against CNN for clearly staging debates and asking only questions that advance certain political views that they want asked. When Digg defends the Republican candidates from CNN, you know something's very, very wrong with CNN.

Anyway, people love the internet. They can say what they want and read what they want. At least... That's the plan, and people enjoy it when their own views get publicized and tell the world that they can stop up their ears and hum loudly if they don't want to hear it. However... This doesn't always seem to be the case.

The University of Toronto has declared that YouTube is a "breeding ground" for anti-vaccination propaganda, and that these clearly insane publications are getting better ratings than the pro-vaccination propaganda videos. They go on about how people are being misinformed and how more people seem to think that the anti-vaccination videos are more informative than the ones for vaccinations, and that doctors and "health care professionals" need to be aware of this "concerning" trend and that something needs to be done.

Hmm, so it's alright for you to post videos telling us how great vaccinations are, yet it's not okay for other people to post videos telling us how not so great those vaccinations are. Isn't that the very definition of indoctrination? Isn't that against the very idea of sharing information? Like abortion and evolution, they only want to present one side of the matter and if someone else dares come along to say otherwise, they get called out for shoving their false, unscientific propaganda on everyone. Hmm...

Do you want to know my personal stance on vaccinations? They're extremely dangerous. I can personally attest to this. I've had, maybe... three vaccinations in my life, before my parents realized how dangerous they were. Mumps, measles and something else. I don't remember, and, frankly, I don't want to know. I actually experienced chicken pox, so that wasn't the other one. But when I was around... oh. 8 to 10 years old, I got something called HSP. It's got a big ol' long name, and I'm not going to bother trying to type it, but I had it, that's for sure. Strangely enough, Wikipedia doesn't seem to cover how you contract this thing... It comes from a vaccination. I don't remember which one, exactly, but my parents read about it extensively, so I could ask them again. I believe it was measles. Anyway, I got this as a direct result from a vaccination I received.

Actually, as a matter of fact, Wikipedia does mention very slightly at the very bottom of the article that it's considered an "allergy". So, yes, I got it as an allergic reaction to one of the vaccinations I got. My brother also reacted poorly to vaccinations with incredibly high blood pressure. Needless to say, with personal experience, vaccinations are not all they're cracked up to be. Some company invented this crap and decided it was worth fighting to make them required by law, and now we have to take some to do certain things. Isn't that lovely? Can't make our own choices? (Hmm, who else is fighting for making choices... Oh! Abortionists and homosexuals. People listen to them, though. When we talk about vaccinations, we get labeled as inferior morons who clearly don't understand how medicine works and we should shut up and deal with it.) Anyway, I'm getting off track...

It's just... amusing, shall we say... That it's okay for people to do whatever they want on the internet! That is, it's okay for people to do whatever they want, as long as it conforms to what's considered "scientifically accurate". I don't hold much for scientific accuracy these days. It's scientifically accurate to assume that the universe is 80 gazillion years old? It's scientifically accurate that the planet is going to fry itself thanks to the parasite called "human" pumping gases into the atmosphere? It's scientifically accurate to declare that drugs are good for you and you should take them because your doctor tells you to, even when the side effects could be worse than what the pills are supposed to be temporarily covering up?

A little word to you folks who don't like what you see on the internet? Guess what? You don't have to look! Haha! And if someone does want to look, then they should be allowed to. If they think vaccinations aren't all they're made to be, then they should be allowed to research wherever they want.

And before someone brings up the idea that YouTube shouldn't be some place where you go to look for this sort of information, I have to ask this: Just because it's on YouTube? That makes it inaccurate? Does it really? Hmm, what about all those clips of Carl Sagan's Cosmos series on YouTube? I'll bet you think those are accurate, huh? Hey! Political debates and interviews are posted on YouTube all the time now, too. Does it make those inaccurate? Just because it's YouTube, it doesn't make it inaccurate. It's what's presented in the video that makes it inaccurate, and if you think something's inaccurate, fine. Don't watch it, and tell people that you think it's inaccurate and why.

Healthy debate is good. One-sided indoctrination is not.

There's a game out there called EVE Online. Basically a true virtual world with a massive ever-shifting economy, controlled by giant corporations who are in turn preyed upon by pirates. Really interesting place. Too bad it can quickly take weeks to train a new skill, and that was enough to kill the atmosphere. I'm not going to pay a monthly fee when all I can do during that month is learn Freighter Control Level 4 or whatever it was that was going to take 25 days.

Anyway, there's been a problem with the latest patch. It seems that the patcher program has been ordered to update a file called "Program Files\CCP\Eve\boot.ini". (And with that, any sane computer user would know what the problem is.) But that's right. An error in the patch script ordered the program to erase not \Eve\boot.ini... but C:\boot.ini. The file in Windows versions before Vista that allows them to actually start up? Yeah, that file. After using the patcher, poof! The file's gone. The system continues to run normally... Up until you decide to restart.

This is where things get messy, because, face it, not many people know how to fix the boot.ini file. For anyone having trouble, you need to put in your Windows XP disc and start setup. (Don't worry, you don't have to reinstall XP.) When the time comes, pick the option for "Recovery Console" and start that. It'll drop you at a prompt where you'll more than likely have to sign in as Administrator. This is usually an account made during installation, and if you didn't install XP, it probably has no password. Once you've signed in, run the command bootcfg /rebuild and then restart the system. That will replace the boot.ini file with what's supposed to be there. However, only do this if XP really doesn't start. It's probably not a wise idea to rebuild boot.ini unless it's actually missing.

But with all this, people are actually blaming Microsoft for, of course, allowing such a thing to "ever happen", because, clearly, this would never happen on Linux or OS X and is strictly a Microsoft problem. Uhm. No. No, it's not. I'll tell you why. Windows requires you to install applications as an Administrator, and things with Administrator access can do anything, on purpose or by mistake. A flaw, you say? Any smart person, at this point, would agree with me that it's CCP's fault, not Microsoft's. Not in the least bit. Because, hey! Guess what? On Linux, at least, since I've never installed an application on OS X, you have to install programs being... What? Root. Using Aptitude or Apt-Get asks for what? Root. Who do you have to be, more often than not, to run make install properly? Root. Root is required to install applications on more than just Windows.

What do you want? Do you want Microsoft to further seal up the workings of their OS and allow it to only be touchable by the most proprietary and closed source? Wait, no, that won't work. Nobody wants that. They scream "Doomsday!" whenever something like that is even suggested, let alone proven. You want Windows to pop up a window and say "Hey, what you're about to do might not be very wise"? Hey, WAIT A MINUTE! Vista has User Access Control! That thing everyone makes fun of because it constantly asks if you actually want to let a program operate as Administrator! That thing everyone shuts off!

Microsoft can't win. They're blamed for the problems caused by developers of poorly written games and bad drivers and when they try to fix these stupid flaws with things like UAC and signed drivers? Everyone acts like it's the end of the world, and they demand that Microsoft remove those features because they're going to "interfere" with people who want to "distribute their own drivers". Remember that? Also, let's not forget that Vista isn't even affected by this bug, because Vista doesn't use a boot loader in the same way anymore. But let's sweep that under the rug because we all know that Vista is little more than XP with a pretty Aero interface, right?

Ah, people, people, people... Cursing Microsoft for the fact that an installer application by a third-party can tamper with the boot loader of Windows, when Linux functions the very same way. Clearly, there is no better way of installing an application if Linux of all OSes uses the same method! We all know that Linux is the second coming in regards to operating systems and anything it does is monumentally immaculate, and even if other OSes operate the very same way on some levels? They're clearly inferior when a project beyond OS developer's control takes advantage of the feature to do something wrong, on purpose or by accident.

This is why I will never officially support Linux. The community rallying behind it are all hypocrites and see themselves as without failure. (I've been using that word a lot, haven't I? Been finding lots of two-facedness lately, heheh.) Tell me when you guys come around with truly open eyes and I might reconsider my stance on Linux and open source software in general.