Defiance, the SyFy series: kinda okay

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defianceSo, the SyFy is celebrating the most-watched scripted series premiere of the Defiance with 2.7 million viewers. Good sign? Probably. But how good?

They reached back into 2006. Seven. Years. Ago. That’s how long it’s been since a new and interesting serties got a decent rating. Practically while Stargate SG-1 was giving up it’s last Goa’uld ghost. When SciFi channel used to show, I don’t know, science fiction and not being obsessed with “ghost hunters”. Well, technically they did get obsessed with them even before then — cheap production costs, drama, ratings!

And as series itself it’s not bad, but rather boring and not engaging. Unshakeable feelings of “seen it” and “are they really going to go there” with “ugh” and “don’t really care” didn’t let me fully enjoy the first episode. Technically everything is there, all the ingredients. Defiant alien daughter (the rhinoplasty weird nose and forehead), soldiering father that just has to stay in this town “to keep the order” (hello, Jack Carter, your talking house misses you). Many aliens (including albinos) and some weird mutant things. Accidental techno-disaster, as a base for inter-species tensions. Mafias, fighting for the control of the city. Betrayal. Grand Conspiracy for the Sake of the Greater Good of Whole Humanity. Mediocre visual effects. Yet the combo doesn’t bring the joy :(

A bit more humor would be nice, a non-forced sense of self-irony, a bit less predictability. Oh, and probably less forced buzz about the fusion of game and on-screen content. Mostly because game seems to be rather rough around the edges right now (especially comparing to Guild Wars 2). Spartan content. Traditional server troubles. And bonus — rather low initial sales.

I’m judging by numbers from the SyFy’s press release that boasts about “six million hours of gameplay” since April 2nd. The game sales chart says first week had 173,399 + 65,174 + 53,551 = 292,124 copies sold. Being generous let’s presume the second week followed overall role-playing game pattern and sales dropped 72%. That’d be extra 81,794 copies. Total of about 380,000 copies and about 16 hours of gameplay per user. Not that much :( (compare that to a million players and 31+ million hours in one week for Halo 4).

I’m afraid that by splitting their resources between game and series, we got two rather mediocre products instead of one strong tv series. For the sake of grandiose tv sci-fi series, I hope I’m wrong. And that second week will pick up and the Defiance will improve and become more interesting.

Review: Max Gladstone: Three Parts Dead – 4 stars

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Three Parts DeadMax Gladstone: Three Parts Dead
★★★★★

There is that time of the year when you get a book hiatus. All the favorite authors are busy re-charging or typing feverishly new masterpieces and you have absolutely nothing to read. No new werewolf stories. No spunky witches hunting evil interlanders. Sookie Stackhouse not getting into trouble with fey. Dresden is having a short vacation.

I get desperate, I admit. So, I tried Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. I have never seen until now an attempt to link together magic and, well, lawyers (which was surprising as I expected something akin to an urban fantasy). And it kinda works. Main character is a spunky female Tara that dared to defy power-hungry authority figure. She suffers consequences but gets invited into a very powerful lawyer nercomacy firm that solves problems of people whose deity has died. Slightly convoluted plot, elements of a detective story with somewhat predictable ending and pleasant after-ending bit.

Liked: the setting and how everything comes together in this version of the universe. Tara’s boss is interesting. Plot twists are mildly interesting.

Not liked: narration is a bit slow. Okay, maybe not a bit — first part is rather slow, but I managed to get through it. There are many referrals to old events that could have been included in the story to spruce it up a bit.

Overall not bad. Not sure if I’d want to read a sequel, if there’s ever one.

Can this be? Google Fiber in Austin!

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So, local news station KVUE has confirmed that Austin will be picked for next Google Fiber deployment. Can this be? My wish back from 2010 is finally coming true?

I certainly hope so. Every additional city where Google expands to will show that it’s possible to provide reasonably priced internet access without lying about per-byte-billing and with great speeds. Even those who chose not to get it will benefit, as I am sure Time Warner Cable will conveniently bump up speeds and reduce prices “just because” (while denying any impact from potential competitor).

I hope the service will arrive in Austin soon.

p.s. it might also explain the reason Time Warner Cable has sent me a letter recently about “extending the promotion” and how they have bumped speeds for some plans (of course that could be a coincidence)

T-Mobile: Un-carrier with somewhat better prices

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T-Mobile uncarrier plansLooks like T-Mobile’s new “uncarrier” plans are now live. And it’s a good thing. Kinda.

First, the good part:
- no more contract. If you want a “discounted” phone, you have to just finance it, and add to monthly payments. This was always the worst possible aspect of US cell phone service — you used to get contract no matter what. And if you didn’t want the phone — too bad, just sell it on eBay or something.

- unlimited data. Kinda. They say that speed will be downgraded to “2G” after included allotment is used up. Better than overages for sure.

- unlimited minutes and texts. No explanation needed, this is pretty much “the thing” now — everyone offers it, though at different prices.

- mobile hot spot is now standard. About time. There’s really no reason why regular carriers charge extra $20 for mobile hot spot — you’ve already paid for the data, so it shouldn’t matter how exactly you are using it.

Now the bad part:
- unlimited minutes and texts. Yes, it’s both good and bad. There used to be plans with less minutes but more high-speed data — no more. I think it was Verizon that started the trend of making all minutes unlimited, wether you want it or not. Not everyone needs tons of minutes, so now there are less options.

- plan charges you 20c for every international message (see here for details). While it’s better than, say, Sprint charging you for both incoming and outgoing international text, still, MVNO that use the same T-Mobile network but also include international messages in price.

- price is somewhat too high. Again, looking at MVNO (for example, Solavei or Simple Mobile or even Go Smart Mobile which is owned by T-Mobile) you can get all the same things but for less, especially if you already have a phone. Most of the MVNO give you more data at overall same or less price ($45 for something that includes 2Gb+ of high speed data).

- credit approval may be required — I suppose for phones only? Doesn’t really say.

- those pesky taxes and fees. Specifically: “Regulatory Programs Fee of up to $1.61 per line/month applies. Taxes approximately 6–28 percent of your monthly bill”. In other words, the real price will be up to $65.61 ($50 + $1.61 + $50*0.28). With true pre-paid you get maximum of sales tax/USF fee, which is generally less. And no “regulatory” fee.

Overall, it’s a step in the right direction. Tiny, tiny step. Hopefully more steps will be taken soon, such as bigger variety of voice plans, and cheaper data.

p.s. Of course if you go with MVNO you probably won’t get LTE data for a while, but given how limited T-Mobile’s LTE network is, it probably won’t make any difference.

Review: Psycho-Pass/サイコパス anime (4 stars)

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psycho-passPsycho-Pass/サイコパス
★★★★★
It doesn’t happen that often, but every once in a while I run into nice new anime. Lately there’s been a lull, but finally I stumbled on Psycho-Pass. Futuristic story about the society, where artificial intelligence system Sybil is providing, essentially, all guidance for everyone — where you should study, what job you should take, etc. It’s all done thanks to monitoring and reading people’s psychological state. Based on that, the system assigns you a “crime probability coefficient” and psycho-pass color — the higher your coefficient is, the cloudier your psycho-pass becomes (and more people obsess over it). And more dangerous for society you are considered to be. As your hue changes, you get assigned therapy or medical intervention, but sometimes nothing helps and people flip out.

Series follows a group of Enforcers — criminals who are considered to be incurable and have detective-handlers, who control them. Each one is equipped with the Dominator — special gun connected to Sybil. If the target is considered to be well-behaved, the gun won’t fire. For high “enforcement” cases it shoots paralyzing impulse, and higher — kills.

A rather interesting premise. From one point of view, everyone in society believes that Sybil is always perfect, and accepts job, training, everything dispensed based on their hue. On the other hand, how come there are still criminals? And worse, along the way, the story reveals even more disturbing cases where criminal isn’t considered to have high crime coefficient so… can’t be shot. Plus other side stories tell what happens when, for example, a close friend gets whisked away for having cloudy psycho-pass. And, of course, “forbidden romance”.

Four stars — some detective stories are rather interesting. World is painted gradually, with more and more interesting details added.
Romance side, unfortunately, a bit predictable (okay, up to 13th episode, I don’t know what will happen next). It makes me think of Death Note in terms of plot getting more and more twisted. Plus back-stories of characters are gradually revealed.

Warning for those, who might be upset about some rather bloody scenes (well, it’s futuristic anime with smart guns, after all)

Series are available on Hulu for free Psycho-Pass