I’m in a quandary as to what to do with the weapon. I seem to install script updates pretty regularly - more regularly than actual entry updates. I still have another year of hosting, and I have no plans to let this get away from me. I’ll figure something out eventually.
I find this to be pretty much the most hilarious conflict in the internet theater in a while. It just goes to show you should always remember to take lefty criticism with a hefty dose of salt.
The hiatus is officially over, and the site has been improved in many invisible ways in my apparent absence. I’ve upgraded to the latest version of the weblog engine used here, and moved the entire site to a newer (much faster) server. Additionally, as new content is added I may consider enabling comments once again provided I stop seeing so much suspicious traffic around here, though this is appears unlikely at the moment. Stick around; things will be back in gear shortly.
e3 has been spectacular so far; it’s a really great time to be a gamer (especially in gaming media!). The real star of the show in my eyes has been Microsoft. I think we can all breath a sigh of relief knowing Cliffy B and Gears of War are definitely the real deal after seeing the footage at MS’s presentation last Tuesday. I won’t be updating this site with any of my more in depth e3 coverage, unfortunately, but suffice to say there’s a lot to look forward to on the horizon.
Additionally:
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There most likely won’t be very many updates in May or June. Things have been pretty crazy the past few weeks (and it probably won’t die down anytime soon). The year is coming to a close, and there’s the hectic nature of e3, but also I will be leaving the country shortly afterwards. I’ll have more information as it becomes available. Some articles I’ve written earlier may be posted, but not a lot of new stuff will be coming this month or next. I apologize for this, especially considering the massive spike in traffic the site’s seen lately.
After the controversy surrounding my recent post calling into question the integrity of certain articles featured on Kikizo.com I feel a thorough, public apology is due, both to Kikizo, and the Internet community as a whole - as well as a personal apology to Adam Doree.
To Kikizo: I’m sorry your site has a need to augment traffic and ad revenue by posting fraudulent, misleading content. I’m sorry your staff lacks the journalistic training and integrity to provide visitors with accurate, quality content and instead resorts to supplying them with useless conjecture, rumors, and flat out lies. I’m sorry your parents never told you “cheaters never win” when you were all growing up.
To the Internet community: I’m sorry certain websites desire to mislead and manipulate you with rumors and lies. As loyal fans of electronic entertainment you deserve honest industry news sources, whether you’re in the US, the UK or anywhere in the world. I assure you there are many upstanding, legitimate sites with plenty of up to date, accurate information - sites like IGN, Gamespot, and 1UP. Unlike Kikizo, these larger sites are held accountable for their actions, and have no motivation to lie to you so openly and frequently. If you’d prefer to utilize non-corporate, smaller sites I suggest HonestGamers.
To Adam Doree: I’m sorry you’re afraid to confront criticism of your work and instead resort to encouraging forum members to post lewd or threatening content on small, personal weblogs. I’m sorry you lack knowledge of the finer points of debate protocol, and instead feel a need to begin name-calling and swearing ad hoc. I’m sorry you feel the appropriate response to a request for an open, fair forum for rebuttal or clarification of your actions is to lose your temper and hurl ad-hominem insults; while you ignore the arguments against you. I am not the only one calling you and your website on your lies - sooner or later it’ll all catch up to you. I’m sorry if you’ve lost face with your inner circle over this incident, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from your mistakes. Take my advice: clean up your act. Whether you succeed or fail, you’ll at least have been honest.
Another administrative update: I’m done early with all the upgrades. Nothing should look too different on the main page, though the actual admin panel and writing interface have changed quite a bit. All in all, though, the upgrade the 2.0.2 has been successful, for now. I may be experimenting with themes and layouts this week as well, so if the page appears disjointed or broken at times it means I’m in the process of editing or testing something. The rollout of Spam Karma 2 is also complete, and it’s already greatly reduced the amount of spam I have to deal with. I recommend it to anyone running WP 1.5 or higher. Isn’t it great when everything goes as planned? Until next time.
This weekend I will attempt to upgrade the weapon to WordPress version 2.0.2 (currently I am running 1.5.2). I am not sure what is improved, but hopefully I will be able to implement it as painlessly as possible. I will also be adding Spam Karma 2 to the site, due to the massive amounts of spam comments I’ve been receiving lately. Here’s to hoping all goes well.
Kikizo was at it again a few weeks ago, this time claiming they had an exclusive interview with former Sega bigwig and Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki. This isn’t the first time they’ve posted fraudulent content surrounding Suzuki, you may remember last year when they claimed Shenmue 3 was being ported to next-gen SDKs shortly, and when Yu Suzuki directly contradicted this in an interview with a Taiwanese based gaming site, Kikizo went so far as to claim Yu Suzuki was completely cut out, and the project was a secret even to him (though it wasn’t to some shady, rinky dink website like Kikizo). This comes shortly after these same folks claimed to have a working Playstation 3, and “proved it” by watermarking some publicly available screenshots and hardware prototype images.
Of course, they never address how such a small time, low powered site gets such great features - when legitimate industry news sites like Gamespot, IGN, and 1UP have nothing close. It’s simple really: Kikizo lies. They lie to increase traffic and spread industry rumors. They never interviewed Yu Suzuki. They don’t have an inside source at Sega. They don’t have working Playstation 3s. They don’t even have a good layout or competent staff writers. If any stories they broke were real, wouldn’t they be mentioned on sites like Gamespot or IGN? Wouldn’t they be mentioned anywhere besides some bottom barrel site?
Please let Adam Doree (owner and head editor of Kikizo) know his behavior is unacceptable. You can email him at adam@kikizo.com.
A voice of reason in the Arab world - from a woman? I’m as shocked as anyone:
I initially wanted to see the response, but according to Mohammed Al Mohammed Bin Mohammed she’s a heretic, so there’s no reason to respond to her. (Transcript available here.)