Matthew Federico attempts "The Year of the 365 Movies"

Fellow blogger, good friend and unique character Matthew Federico (who calls his site "A Sane Man of an Insane World") has vowed to watch one movie each day throughout 2010. So to chronicle his effort he has created another blog called, appropriately, The Year of the 365 Movies. The first one that Matthew has viewed and commented upon is 1941's Citizen Kane: considered by many to be the finest motion picture ever made.

(Personally, I would have started 2010 off with 1984's 2010, even though it's horribly dated now... and where the heck are our flights to Jupiter and pet dolphins?!)

Matthew says the probability of his finishing this project is "low". But I think he can do it :-)

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Shiny new blogger posts brilliant take on software piracy

Hot out of the gate and fresh into the blogosphere comes Matthew Federico, a fellow North Carolinian and I think that after just a few posts, his blog is promising some good things. Like this essay he just posted about video game piracy, and he covers all the bases rather eloquently...

Stealing is bad. Stealing is something you just don't do. You don't go into a candy store and just steal that Hersey's Kiss. You don't take what is yours, and you only get possession of something when you hand over your hard earned cash for it. You work hard, you spend hours after hours doing whatever it is that you do, you get your paycheck, you pay your taxes. You pay for insurance and food and gas and electricity and your cable. After all that, then you get to spend your hard earned money on anything you please, if that suits your fancy.

It's a system that makes sense. That is how economy works, in a nutshell. We all make a service or product, we get money, we pay for our essentials, then we buy our luxuries. And who made those luxuries? Why, somebody who was making a service, just like you.

So, what does our morale upbringing tells us when we think of stealing? Why, we remember that it is almost like we are stealing from ourselves. Thus, stealing is wrong. One hundred and one percent, all the time, always, and forever...

Mash down here for the rest of Matt's thoughts.

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Are video games becoming a luxury for the rich?

That's the question posed by Matthew Federico on his blog. It's his contention that the rising price of video games (lately hovering around sixty bucks each for games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) coupled with the current state of the economy means that only those with plenty of ready cash on hand can fully enjoy the latest slate of games like Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3.

On the flip side of the coin, a few months ago Theodore Beale (writing as Vox Day) on WorldNetDaily offered some suggestions for "living lean" and seriously advised that video games were a sound use of one's entertainment dollar, as opposed to spending it on something like movie tickets.

So are video games for the most part now in the province of those who can most afford them? It may be worth noting that even at the height of the Great Depression people kept flocking to movie theaters. When you figure in for inflation, Gone With The Wind is still the top-grossing film of all time, and it came out at a time when going to a cinema was still considered a high-falootin' expenditure.

What do y'all think?

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