9 years old and dreams of Running an arcade. So he builds one out of cardboard boxes from his father’s used auto parts store. Caine is a hugely creative kid who has a simple price plan.

1$ for 4 plays.

2$ fo a fun pass. 500 plays for one month. Dude I want a fun pass so bad.

Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

Watch the video directed by the awesome Nirvan, who also happens to be Caine’s first customer, and the man responsible for getting the word out.  My favorite part about this whole venture? Not a single person suggested to Caine he buy a real machine. Everyone just wants him to keep creating awesome cardboard classics!

The people have pulled together as this arcade went viral to build a scholarship fund for Caine to go to college. So far the kid has $67,000! And the video has only been online for 2 or 3 days. Awesome job internet!

Caine’s Arcade: Facebook : Twitter

Caines Arcade | A cardboard arcade made by a 9-year old boy

Tags: awesome, Caine's Arcade, Cardboard arcade, Fun Pass

There is nothing more enjoyable then heading out to a cafe on your way home from work. Or stopping by for a sweet sweet cup on your way to a job. But what would happen if you worked at a coffee shop? I can imagine the task of picking through equipment to outfit a cafe would be daunting to say the least. I personally love coffee, and would enjoy nothing more than to browse through only the best equipment. But to find it all in one place would be kind of awesome. Enter Coffechino Commercial Coffee Machines, They have an assortment of only the finest Cafe and commercial equipment. From top of the line espresso machines, instant coffee stations, and enough ingredients to keep even the shop in running order.

Down the line, when the kids are older, it would be awesome to actually fulfill a dream of mine and open my own cafe. Trust me it would be awesome. But until then I have to be content to surf through stores full of the equipment, shiny objects are always fun to look at. And there is just something truly beautiful about a quality espresso machine. It might be the shiny pipes, or the simple and open design of the stainless steel. Either way a man can dream, until then tim for some click window shopping.

Disclaimer: This post is a Sponsored post, the words and statements all reflect the independent views of The CaffiNation.

Tags: Coffechino, Coffechino Commercial Coffee Machines, Commercial Coffee Machines

Yesterday wasn’t fun for me. I lost money, and lost a lot of fun. I lost ad revenue from people coming to my tiny little corner of the internet and clicking on an ad or two. Reading a funny post or learning a thing or two. Perhaps listening to the podcast that was supposed to record live last night. I’m not a hard hitting news site, and we all know this. This is where you come for a very niche brand of bad humor, good gadgets and fun. This isn’t a place for political machinations. Hell this isn’t a place that usually uses the word machinations… let alone spells it right both times.

This was the response from former congressman, and now MPAA chief Chris Dodd on Yesterday’s Strike
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals. It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.” ~Chris Dodd

Abuse of power? or a showing of strength. I can’t think companies would give up revenue and annoy their uses for no reason.

“If 50 people, yes 50 people a day walk in an sing alice’s restaurant and walk out… then, that, my friends is a movement” ~Alro Guthrie

With all apologies to Arlo for shoving the quote out in a hamfisted way, we have a movement. And people are starting to learn what is happening behind the closed doors in Washington. An educated populace is a dangerous one. You can’t kill a movement.

There are 94 million reasons for the Congress to listen to the MPAA, all of them fronting George Washington. None of those reasons has anything to back it up beyond a old fashioned payoff.

The reasons to keep the internet as it is are much more concrete. The bills as they stand break functionality, will loose people big and small real money and don’t add anything to the equation, in fact the process that the bill would implement would basically set us back years in terms of productivity and cooperative and collaborative work. The DCMA is a fine way to take down content that infringes upon people’s rights. It works, it has oversight. And the onus is on the copyright holder to complain if they feel their work is being misused. 

SOPA / PIPA would allow the US Government to shutdown sites first, without a hearing. Upon receiving a complaint.  What says the party in power doesn’t use this to shut down a particularly explosive story about one of its members, keep it out of the news long enough to win an election. This is censorship, plain and simple. This is not protecting jobs this is controlling information.

No one is defending piracy. We are rejecting censorship, in any form. Instead of standing up an old business models, innovate. Instead of locking people into content streams and milking them for money at every turn allow them to own their content and take it with them as they see fit. The piracy will go down. People quite simply don’t want to buy DVD’s or disks of any sort. they want files, and will pay for files, as long as the files can be played where they want them to play.

If you post a video with a song in the backround, under these laws you could go to jail for up to 5 years… does that sound like protecting american jobs?

Movies have not lost their revenue due to piracy, but because going to the movies is expensive and the economy sucks. Movies need to be really good for people to throw down coin in a down-turned economy. And that is just logic.

SOPA and PIPA are great examples of how things are really broken in our government. The constituents stand up and say they don’t want something to pass, it shouldn’t pass. Government by the people, not by the bank. A business does not get to vote, and does not get calls it an abuse of power? No my friends we elect people to make that laws. the congress shouldn’t be taking their ques from companies.

SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an “abuse of power”.

Tags: Blackout, pipa, SOPA, stopsopa, the caffination podcast

You want power? You need to fight. You want to negotiate you have to ask for things you would be willing to cut to get what you really want.

The biggest problems with the SOPA and PIPA legislation that everyone saw right off the bat was DNS filtering. You force sites off the internet by blocking their website from being recognized by DNS, the system that basically runs how the internet works.

DNS as a short example: Every computer connected to the network has a unique address, like a phone number that is that computers signature as it travles about online. There are a host of rules for what address your machine ends up with, and most machines have temporary numbers, when you connect you are given a number dynamically (DHCP), but websites have a Static Address, and DNS is the phonebook that translates www.yahoo.com to  98.139.180.149. Try it… both go to the same place. Big sites have the whole address to themselves, like yahoo, google ect.

but little sites like www.caffination.com -> 74.208.150.174 share the same number with other sites. And its the job of the DNS to sort all of that out.

Well with all of that explanation MPAA has taken the most offensive portion off the table. SOPA and PIPA live on, without the obvious flaw. now the problems which remain are just as bad, but a little less obvious. The laws would require the content providers to police everything that is ever submitted for possible copy-write violation, think about the volume of videos that youtube gets. should someone have to watch every single one as it is submitted. Would you be ok if it took a couple of months for your news and reports to get out?

The laws would also would attempt to legislate non us sites with a US law. How would you feel is Russia passed a law crippling a site you use?

This is like Haggling the MPAA and their friends never really wanted DNS filtering, but how much does it chill you that a company is talking about taking things out of our laws? An organization is negotiating with lawmakers on what they want. The system isn’t supposed to work this way, but it does and its about time it stopped.

Reeling MPAA declares DNS filtering “off the table”.

Tags: Bad Buisness, pipa, SOPA

The CaffiNation Podcast has been running since January 9th 2006, and Since April of 2006 we have been part of the fine folks at the Techpodcast Network. As it is their custom the fine folks at the TPN are winging their way to Las Vegas for CES, the consumer Electronics show. Basically a week long technology festival where all the vendors unviel thier most awesoem stuff, smaller developers get to showcase their wares, and only the best and brightest of tech shines.

This year Todd Cochran of the Geek News Central podcast, Andy McCasky of the SDR News, and Jeffery Powers from the Geekazine Podcast are all rocking it out on the conference floor looking and hunting for the best in tech.

We also have a friend of the Show rocking it out as a man on the Street. Norbert Davis is hunting for the best in Totally Cool Tech, So make sure to check out those websites in the coming days. But the CaffiNation will have the live stream of the TPN events on our homepage for the Duration of the conference!

Tags: Andy McCasky, CES, Geek News Central, Geekazine, Jeffery Powers, live stream ces, Norbert Davis, SDR News, Todd Cochran, totally cool tech, TPN, tpn on ces

Since the beginning of the Super Mario Bros. franchise, which began in 1983, there hasn’t been any kind of complaints about any of the game content in the series. Personally, I wouldn’t think there would be. Well, I guess I was wrong. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has decided to finally show there concern about a certain aspect of the game. They do not like the fact that Mario wears the Tanooki Suit.

23 years after the first appearance of the Tanooki Suit, PETA thinks it is wrong of Mario to wear fur. PETA stated, “Tanooki may be just a “suit” in Mario games, but by wearing the skin of an animal, Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur.” Even though Mario achieves the ability of the suit by grabbing a leaf, PETA feels that wearing it encourages animal abuse.

Tracy Reiman, PETA Executive Vice President, ”Tanukis are real-life raccoon dogs who are beaten and, as PETA’s undercover exposés show, often skinned alive for their fur. “This winter, everyone can give raccoon dogs and other fabulous animals a 1-UP by keeping our wardrobes fur-free.”To show much they really don’t appreciate the Tanooki suit, they have created a game called Super Tanooki Skin 2D, where you are a tanuki chasing after Mario to get your skin back. I have tried the game, and find that it is quite distasteful. So wearing the the Tanooki Suit is bad, but what about the frog suit?

Tags: Gaming, Mario, nes, nintendo, PETA, Super Mario Bros, Tanooki, Tanuki

With the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 due out Tuesday, November 8, many are waiting patiently. However, some gamers in France were so excited, they just couldn’t wait. Saturday was a disaster for Activision, with the hijacking of not one, but two trucks, both containing copies of the next installment of Call of Duty. The estimated total cost was €780,000, or $1 Million.

When the first attack happened, the delivery truck was hit by another vehicle. When the drivers went to inspect the damage, they were met by two men in ski masks wielding knives. After throwing tear gas, the masked men made off with the truck.

The second attack happened about an hour later, when another truck carrying the same cargo was stopped by a vehicle in the middle of the road. This time, three men jumped out, with one pointing a handgun at the driver.

At this time, no arrests have been made in either robberies.

Tags: Activision, Call of Duty, cargo, delivery, France, Gaming, heist, hijack, Modern, robbery, war, warfare

 

…

 

Google is officially ending a couple of their programs. Some of them today, others a bit further down the roadmap. Today for instance is the last time you can go into Google Labs! They announced that it would be closing down a while ago, and today… is that day.

According to the official word from on high. The list of projects going down is as follows.

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it usingGoogle Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.

Official Google Blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: google buzz, google code search, google earning report, google fall cleaning, google labs, igoogle, jaiku

About a month ago, I released a story about how Netflix was making big changes. This news did not sit well with just about every subscriber of Netflix. Comments came pouring in about splitting the company into 2 different services. The overall feeling was that it was the worst idea for Netflix to come up with. Well, that and raise in prices. It was a decision that would have devastated the company.

After all the complaining finally settled, Netflix finally realized what they were about to do. So, to make sure everything clears up, Netflix sent all the customers, like me, an email like this…

	Dear Stephen, It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster. While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes. We’re constantly improving our streaming selection. We’ve recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we’ve added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS. We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows. Respectfully, The Netflix Team

For probably all of us, this was a sign of relief. The idea just seemed to complicated. And the company would have definitely lost a decent amount of customers.

Tags: change, customer, DVD, LionsGate, mail, movies, Netflix, Paramount, Qwikster, rentals, show, television, theater, Warner Bros, website

When Netflix raised their prices, people were outraged. Many dropped the service, feeling it was too expensive to keep receiving DVDs in the mail. So, to try and get rid of the confusion, get back some old customers, and grab some new ones, Netflix is making some drastic changes.

One of the changes they did to infuriate customers, was splitting up the streaming movie service and DVD-by-mail service. So what they are going to do, is completley change the name of DVD-by-mail service, which will be called “Qwikster.” Netflix will still keep the name, however, it will only be for the streaming videos. Their will also be a change in your credit card statement, but the prices will stay the same.

For me, the best part is what they are adding to the service. Not too long ago, I wrote an article, Gamefly vs. Redbox, that talked about how Redbox started video game rentals. What will be known as Qwikster, will not only be using the DVD-by-mail service, but they will be giving into the video game rentals. Many customers having been wanting this service for years. At this time, there is no information as to when this will start and the price of the service. It is great to hear that they are going ahead and trying this out. Now that Netflix will be doing game rentals, it will be another company to add to the list of companies who give the same service. Since Netflix is a popular name, they might have a better chance of succeeding.

This comes to light after Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix, released a statement on the Netflix Blog , explaining the changes that have happened and that are coming. Many comments about this blog are showing disagreement on all the changes. Some explain the problems it will cause. Only time will tell how well this new system will work

Netflix Adding Video Games Rentals, Spawning Spin-off Qwikster. 

Tags: blog, credit card, DVD, gameboy, Gamefly, Games, mail, movies, Netflix, nintendo, playstation, Qwikster, reedbox, streaming, visa, Xbox

When I first heard about EA Games bringing females hockey players to NHL 12, I immediately thought of Jimmy Dugan from ‘A League of Their Own’, “I don’t have ball players, I’ve got girls!” This will be a start of something new to all future sporting games.

The decision to put the female gender in the game comes after a girl wrote a letter to EA, telling them she felt it was unfair. Lexi Peters wrote, “It is unfair to women and girl hockey players around the world, many of them who play and enjoy your game.I have created a character of myself, except I have to be represented by a male and that’s not fun.” When the letter reached the desk of David Littman, NHL12 lead producer, he was fascinated with the idea. “Lexi’s letter was a wake-up call, here’s a growing audience playing our NHL game and we hadn’t done anything to capture them.”

So, after getting NHL’s permision, the choice to use a male OR a female was official. And because she brought this to light, EA even used Lexi Peters likeness as the default character for female. This will definitley be the start of sports games adding females to games such as Madden, MLB, maybe even NBA.

There are now girls in this man’s game

 

 

Tags: Baseball, customize, EA, female, girl, hockey, Lexi, NHL, Peters, players, Sports, Tom Hanks

A 26-foot statue of Marilyn Monroe was unveiled in Chicago’s Pioneer Court. It is a recreation of her most famous pose, from the 1955 movie, The Seven Year Itch. The main reason for the staute, according to Zeller Realty Group, is to make people think.

A spokesman for the company stated that, “Paul Zeller likes to bring in things that cause a conversation. ‘They might be controversial, but he likes art that makes people think.” Although he is one to enjoy such artwork, some were not too pleased with the statue. Abraham Ritchie, editor for ArtSlant: Chicago, an art-focused website, wrote on Art Chicago Blog, “the statue was a ’creepy schlock from a fifth-rate sculptor that blights a first-rate public art collection.”

The statue will be standing through Spring 2012. Not to worry though, she is wearing an undergarment.

A day that I wish I could go and celebrate with the hundreds of other fans. Zelda Day is here to be celebrated on Saturday, July 23.  Taking a day to enjoy the lifestyle and music of Hyrule, with beer and drinks theme. Unfortunately, it is in Rio de Janeiro. So if you are in the Brazilian city, stop down at Praça General Osório, and show your love and support for the Legend of Zelda.

Tags: Brazil, celebration, cosplay, Legend, link, nes, nintendo, zelda

It has been over 3 weeks since PSN was attacked, with over 77 million user information being comprimised. They planned on having the system back up this week. However, Sony is now apologizing, asking for more time. What makes things worse, is the fact that they are being vague.

Since the beginning of the issue, Sony has been beating around the bush with details on the situation, and what they are doing to fix the problem. They have even tried to divert things by putting blame on the infamous hacking group known as Anonymous. However, Anonymous denied any involvement in the attack, issuing a statement “Sony, I am Disappoint.”

Yesterday, May 10, Sony’s Sr. Director, Patrick Seybold, issued another statement apologizing for the inconvenience and asking for more time: “I know you all want to know exactly when the services will be restored. At this time, I can’t give you an exact date, as it will likely be at least a few more days. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work through this process.”

Sony needs to start answering some questions, and take ownership in what went wrong. If they don’t, PSN users will lose faith in the company, and decide to abandon ship.

 

Tags: Anonymous, apology, hack, PSN, sony, statement, system

With Playstation Network still offline, Sony is strongly pointing the finger at Anonymous, an internet hacking group. If you are unfamiliar with the group, they are recently known for attacking the Sony website in response to the lawsuit against George Hotz, who was able to hack into the Playstaion 3, and record the process on his blog. Although they admit to the website attack, they deny any involvement into the disastrous outage of the Playstation Network, which was hacked, with  over 77 million user information being stolen. However, they have problems of their own.

Over the weekend, Anonymous’ IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server, AnonOps, was hit by a “denial-of-service” attack. It ended with some of the IRC servers being taken over. They come to find out that the person who caused the attack was one of their own. His name is “Ryan,” who was a former IRC Operator.

While it is unclear as to the reasons why he attacked the group, but some suggest that Ryan was power-hungry and wanted to take control of AnonOps. Another suggestion is that he was not happy with the structure of the leadership. It is believed that Ryan favored the idea proving yourself before being able to take advantage of tools like “Low Orbit Ion Cannon,’ which is an open source network attack application; the “denial-of-service” is a LOIC tool.

What is causing the alienation between Anonymous and AnonOps IRC servers? A few Anonymous members argued that the owners of the AnonOps IRC servers, and the tools they use, were starting to suffer a slight case of megalomania, seeing as their names were bouncing around the internet. There were also accusations of the small group making all of the decisions about who Anonymous would attack without involving the rest of the group in them.

Since the IRC  used to discuss plans for their activities, AnonOps are going to have to find another means of communication to talk about their devious plans. If they are looking for any suggestions, might I suggest GoToMeeting.com

Tags: AnonOps, Anonymous, attack, GoToMeeting.com, Hackers, IRC, megalomania, Playstation 3, PSN, Servers, sony, Tools