LEGACY

Classic Gaming and a sequel to a Pop Icon.

LEGACY: Current Issue, Issue 2, Volume 1, for Tuesday, July 27, 2010. New Issue published every Tuesday, and updated throughout the week. Next issue due online August 3, 2010.

Thoughts:

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INITIALIZING

ISSUE INTRODUCTION BY EDITOR AND PUBLISHER C. A. PASSINAULT

Now we’re on the second issue of Frontier Pop, Legacy, and we have a great issue for you this time! Frontier Pop is finally getting up to speed, and we should have even more time to work on exciting new content at the end of summer.
In this issue, Legacy, we take a look at the upcoming sequel to the pop culture classic, Tron, Tron: Legacy, which looks so good that I will certainly see it, in proper 3D, in the theaters this December. Since Tron is based upon videogame culture, too, this is the perfect issue to launch our emulation section, review a classic arcade game, and review my favorite videogame console of all time, the 16 Bit Super Nintendo! Yes, Frontier Pop, unlike other pop culture and entertainment sites, will be publishing a lot of content about videogames, although, technically, we are not a site which focuses exclusively upon videogames.
On a more serious note, too, in this great recession, and with several recent disasters, we’ve noticed a huge number of charity events and charities which “just want to help” Well, yes, but half of them don’t do what you expect, and are set up, and run, by con artists to help themselves to your money, at the expense of the cause which that market and champion. We’ll show you how to recognize, and avoid, these common scams, too, as we suspect that half of all Tampa Bay charities are scams.

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IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial: Pending
Editor and Publisher C. A. Passinault posts a new editorial.

First Look : Tron Legacy
Disney has a cool new sequel to Tron coming out in December 2010, and since Tron is a pop icon, we wonder if the sequel will also become a pop culture classic. Also, since the Tron movies are rooted in video game culture, this issue of Frontier Pop has a videogame theme, and what better time to introduce our gaming angles to our readers? PENDING.

Play Now: Videogame Emulation
Play your favorite video games from the past now, and forever, whenever you wish. All about videogame emulators, and Frontier Pop opens its emulator download library. Game ROM's not included (We are very much into cyberculutre, but we're not pirates). PENDING.

What A Machine: The Super NES
It's no secret that our favorite video game era was the 16 Bit home console era of the early 1990's, and our favorite console of all time would have to be the Super Nintendo. Our "What a machine" video game hardware review section kicks off nicely with the Super NES, and our picks for the top ten games. Look at it this way: The Super NES, and its games, are still the same as they were back then, with stellar gameplay, beautiful 2D sprite-based graphics, and even better entertainment value, especially since they can be obtained for a song, today. Why spend a few hundred on a PS3 or an XBox 360 when the same amount of cash will get you a Super NES and a huge library of great games? Personally, we'd rather play a good Super NES game than play Call Of Duty 2: Modern Warfare on either the PS3 or the 360. Includes pictures of our mint-condition Super NES, from 1992, in our studio. BONUS: Play Super NES games on your computer, laptop, or PSP anytime, for free, although it requires some tinkering, and won't be as glitch-free as just going out and getting a Super NES. PENDING.

Best Side-Scrolling Beat Em Up: Capcom's Cadillac And Dinosaurs
Sure, it's not exactly an arcade classic from the early 90's, as it fell between the cracks of the arcade scene of the time, and it hasn't been properly ported to any home console, but we tell you why we think that this arcade game should be considered to be a classic, and why we think that it is the best side-scrolling beat em up ever made, even besting superb beat em up classics such as Streets of Rage 2 (Mega Drive / Genesis), Final Fight (Arcade, Super NES), and Double Dragon (Arcade). BONUS: You can play the arcade-prefect game, too, in your home on MAME, the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, on your computer (Emulator available for free, downloadable from Frontier Pop, but you need to find the ROM file on your own via search engine and an anti-virus scan on any downloads). The game plays perfectly on MAME for us, and we even use a wired USB XBox 360 controller, connected to our computer, to play it with! Awesome game! PENDING.

Charity Scams At Home: Why We Think That 50% Of All Tampa Bay Charities Are Scams.
Our Frontier Pop consumer scam-fighting database and resource section kicks of with information on Tampa charity scams. Learn how to identify, and avoid, these scams. PENDING.

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THE LATEST ON THE OFFICIAL FRONTIER POP SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

Frontier Pop @ Facebook
Updated frequently.

Frontier Pop @ Youtube
3 new videos added, including some video game emulator tutorial/ gameplay videos.

Frontier Pop @ Twitter
Good inside information and upcoming features revealed on twitter.

Frontier Pop @ Myspace
Updated frequently.

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ELSEWHERE - TAMPA BAY SCENE:

Frontier Pop is not responsible for any site that we link to, as they are owned by other parties, unless otherwise noted.

There is nothing which caught our interest this week in the Tampa Bay scene. Check back next week for news of something worth checking out, we hope. At any rate, make sure that you think twice before supporting any charities (see our new Charity Scam section), as about half of them make money for the organizers at the expense of the cause that they claim to be supporting. Don’t enable, or support, a scam, as the people who do charity scams are bad people.

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ELSEWHERE - NEWS AND CURRENT EVENTS:

17 People Die At A German Rave Event
17 people died, and 80 people, were injured at The Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, on Saturday. They were trampled by the crowd. To me, this tragedy hits close to home.
As an event planner, crowd control in large events is always on my mind. When you are dealing with large crowds, the people are much like the cells of a larger organism. The crowd itself become a mass which can be more reactive, and can become dangerous. Large crowds demand attention, communication, and respect.
I remember all of the courses which taught me about crowd control, and how crowds can have surges, and waves, and of how people can get hurt. I am not looking forward to having large events one day, but I will certainly come up with ways to make them safer than this mess was.
Also, The Love Parade? Who in the hell named it that? It’s poor branding, in my opinion, and the event was successful, in spite of itself, more because there was a need for it, and not because of what it was.
I first became aware of “The Love Parade” when it was featured in a Mandy Moore movie called “Chasing Liberty”. At first, I thought that it was made up by the filmmakers. After I found out that it was real, I rolled my eyes at the name, and how it was set up.
You see, some events are not successful because they are done well. They are only successful, in spite of themselves, because there is a market, and a need, for them. The TFR comes to mind, in this respect. There is a need for a monthly film festival here in Tampa, but they didn’t do it well. As a result, it is no longer around. The demand, however, is still there. A monthly film festival just needs to be organized, and promoted, well to succeed.
This said, though, primitive, poorly organized event, or not, I feel bad for the people hurt and killed during this event. The organizers, from what I understand, say that this is the end of The Love Parade. I can only hope.
As an event planner, however, this makes me very aware of the need for crowd safety, and crowd control. People deserve better than to be hurt, or killed, attending any event.

It Is Now Legal To Break Your iPhone Out Of Jail
The FCC ruled that it is not longer illegal to free your iPhone, or other device, from the limitations that the manufacturer imposes on you. This is great, but it will still void your warranty, and your cell phone service carrier may make things hard on you if you do, too.
Apple doesn’t want you to do it, too, but I really don’t give a crap what they want me, or you, to do, anymore. If you are a mindless consumer who buys everything off of iTunes, well, sure, what they have set up is awesome! If you are more technical, and think for yourself, like me, well, they can be a pain in the ass.
Am I interested in jailbreaking? Well, I will be getting a 32 Gig iPod Touch, and a I had an iPad this year. My last Ipod Touch, an 8 Gig model which I bought late last year, was quickly filled to capacity, and I realized that I need one with more storage. I bought and installed about $30.00 of apps, like I was supposed to, and backed those files up, again, like I was supposed to. My computer later crashed, and I had to completely redo it, and even after restoring the files to my iTunes folders, it wouldn’t allow me to synch them. Thus, I have to buy the apps all over again! So, yes, jailbreaking sounds good to me. I did things the way that Apple wanted me to, found that they make it difficult for you to do any thing any other way (such as adding cover art to MP3's that you don’t obtain from iTunes), and make you buy things more than once. This is B.S.!
Apple makes computers and devices for idiots, anyway (no offense to my graphics designer friends who prefer to use Apple computers). I recently went into an Apple store, and told one of the employees that they had a lot of turnkey computers in the store. When asked what I meant, I told her that turnkey computers were computers for idiots; in other words, computers for untechnical people who don’t know anything about computers. Sure, there is a market for that, but not for me. My PC’s may need a lot of work, but at least I keep them running well, and have the flexibility to do what I need to do. I can even build awesome computers, which is something that Apple does not cater to. They want you to be dependent upon them, and while it may be cool for the common idiot, it’s not for me.
I will be jailbreaking my Ipod Touch, and my iPad, giving me what I need. I will also be installing custom firmware on my 2000 series PSP. Take that, Sony!
Hmph. Steve Jobs, in my opinion, is an idiot, anyway (although I do admire his ability to brainwash the public, and amass a huge following. I need to do that with my companies and projects!). His company makes this cool device called the iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad, ship them with flaws, and with batteries which are not user serviceable, promoting a culture of shallow entertainment and disposable, expensive electronics. What I really don’t like about Jobs, though, is that he is not a gamer, and it shows with making his touchscreen devices completely dependent upon the touchscreen; this makes great, tight gameplay impossible on the device! The iPhone and the iPod Touch were never meant to play video games, anyway, and video games were shoehorned onto the device after it came to market; the proof of this is that the device does not have so much as a D-pad to control games with, buttons that can be used to play games, and a form factor which makes playing games comfortable. Ever try to play Pac Man on a touch screen? It’s not fun. Of course, there are some games which make perfect use of a touch screen interface (Zen Bound is a brilliant game app, and most menu-driven games, like Monkey Island, are great on the iPhone/ iPod Touch/ iPad!). It’s just that, for classic arcade games and regular video games, the touch screen doesn’t work well.
Sadly, they repeated their mistakes with the iPad.
So, why will I be obtaining an iPod Touch and an iPad? Music, eBooks (some of my favorite British publications have apps), podcasts, writing (with a keyboard attachment), web surfing on the go, some game apps, and as electronic portfolios for my pictures.

I Hate McAfee Antivirus
Well, this is news to some of us. I just wanted to document my contempt for this piece of $&%# program. I hate McAfee with a passion. It’s true, and I do. First, my wonderful anti virus program decided to do a major update yesterday, which caused my computer to crash, and then caused it to run really slow and glitchy. I had to do a system restore to get my computer running properly again. Also, the program has a mind of its own, and constantly either downloads updates when I am doing something, or is slowing my computer to a crawl trying to run a virus scan when I am trying to work. Additionally a few months ago, it did not stop a Java application on a web site from punching through its defenses, launching Adobe Acrobat, and then infecting my machine with scareware through some exploit in Acrobat. The scareware hijacked my computer, told me that it was infected, tried to get me to buy some antivirus software, and disabled the mighty McAfee. I had to completely redo my computer to get rid of it, and lost some files in the process.
I had another system crash, and had to reinstall McAfee, a few weeks ago (losing more files), and it didn’t even install correctly. It gives me an error message every time the computer is started up, although the program is still functioning.
I tried to get rid of McAfee in March, but the stores were sold out of Norton, and I had to download some important files at the time it expired, and I always scan files as I download them. So, it was off to another year of subscribing to this vile, bug-riddled program.
Oh, and did I tell you about the time that it labeled Frontier Pop, back when it was a simple text page, and before it launched, as a “suspicious web site”? I had to write them, and protest, to get them to take it off of suspicious site status. It seems that their computers flag sites with certain keywords, instead of looking at them, and this sucks! I have the same issue with some third party net nanny type applications which libraries use, too, blocking access to at least one of my blogs because I’m addressing subjects with regular, normal keywords that it does not agree with.
I HATE McAfee and will be replacing it as soon as my subscription expires. It’s been nothing but a pain in the ass. This said, it did discover some Trojans and remove them from a downloaded iPhone jailbreaking application called “Spirit” that I downloaded off of a major gadget site, and others from a bit torrent download, but that’s what an anti-virus program is supposed to do by default, and that little bit of work is not worth the crap that it gives me.
At any rate, I just killed all of the automatic crap in my settings, regarding the scans and the updates, so maybe that will help me get along with this program.

Inception? What About Dreamscape?
Why is it that no one has compared the new movie Inception to the 80's classic Dreamscape? That movie was good, too, and their premise is the same!

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THE LATEST UPDATES AND NEWS ON OUR SUPPORTING WEB SITES AND COMPANIES

Story Series: Born Beautiful. By C. A. Passinault. Only on Independent Modeling.

Modeling Mailbags. By Monica Stevens. Only on Tampa Bay Modeling.

Tampa Indie Film. By C. A. Passinault. Only on the Tampa Film Blog.

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READER REACTION

The Frontier Pop Reader Reactor

CONTROVERSY SCALE: 1 (Warm) to 10 (Critical Mass)

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Reader reaction section is organized from top to bottom. Latest posts are at the bottom. See Disclaimer.

Agree? Disagree? Have a comment or opinion to share? POST NOW! Updated Daily.

Join the Frontier Pop Readers and post your opinion, today. It's free!

C. A. Passinault - Posted 07/27/10: 0800

First! The second issue of Frontier Pop is off to a great start. We still have another few hours to write the featured articles, but those will update throughout the week. The main issue is now up! Frontier Pop is doing really well, exactly as planned months ago, and the response has been fantastic. With the next issue, issue 3 next week, we will also begin the first monthly installment of our letters section. Can't wait!

Evil Nolan - Posted 07/27/10: 0820

This is not fair! Screw you, Passinault! Your Frontier Pop site is even better organized than my site is!I wish that I could have come up with a way as brilliant as the one that you came up with to organize weekly issues and to make it easy for the readers to navigate. It doesn't matter... I will defeat you, Passinault. Tezzy and me will dominate all, and we will take our readers back. I don't care how good Frontier Pop is.... we will band together and find a way to defeat you, once and for all! Now, where is my boy at? Tezzy!

the_truth - Posted 07/27/10: 0829

Passinault is a fake. He promotes himself as being Mr. Technology, but hates Apple and hates those complex anti virus programs. Adjust your settings, you idiot! Why is it that none of us have the problems that he has? The solutions are so simple, that even us common people can do it! So much for the genius who is aggravated by every day, simple things!

C. A. Passinault - Posted 07/27/10: 0844

Think what you want, truth. I don't care. I'm no fake, and I believe that you already know that. I'm frustrated that these companies make it difficult to do anything independent of them. They make the settings on their products as unintuitive and difficult as possible. For the record, I DO adjust my settings. Say what you will, but I don't believe that your solutions are coming to you as easily as you say they are, either. How can I trust what you say when no one knows who you are? Coward!

Joeba The Butt - Posted 07/27/10: 0851

You are crazy, C. A. Passinault. You keep talking trash out your ass, buddy, we all know what you do! A great number of people hate you. So do I! You are just petty and jealous of real filmmakers, and have to trash them to feel better. If you are so good, why don't you go out and make a film? Where are your films? Are we finally going to see indie films that will put us all in our place, and humble us, or will they always be coming next year! You are so full of crap!

Michael - Posted 07/27/10: 0858

Can't we all just get along? Some of you are really freaking me out! So much hate on here! We must first look at the man in the mirror, before we try to find fault in others. I mean, look at me. I'm perfect, and talented, to boot! I'm going to live forever!

C. A. Passinault - Posted 07/27/10: 0902

Joeba, the only people who hate me are petty, insecure people who are afraid of competition. I could really care less about what others think of me, too, as I am not defined by what others say, do, or think. I also don't need to be a filmmaker to be a critic, either, especially when my opinions are valid, and I bring up excellent points. Just because I give your films bad reviews does not give you the right to attack me. Address the issues with your films. Don't be an insecure and unprofessional moron, and react defensively so much. Some of you idiots are afraid of competing with me, and feel that they only way that they have a chance is to try to attack my credibility. It's not working. Regarding my films, though, I am a filmmaker, and you will all be finding that out soon enough. I won't be doing cheesy, poorly written cash-in horror films like are doing, either. Regarding my schedule, too, you have to realize that I have a lot going on. My track record is pretty good, too. It's not a matter of "if", either, but rather "when". Remember that, and you can go ahead and believe what you want, too. It's easier to put someone in their place when they delude themselves and underestimate what is coming. By the time some of my concepts are revealed, none of you will be in the position to adapt, compete, or to do anything about it.