...and then blame others for their stupidity. It's sad, really. I have two stories courtesy of our local NBC affiliate, WITN, which show people doing incredibly stupid things most of us would not think twice about, and they're looking for anyone to blame but themselves.
This first one should be an easier sell than the next one. Down in Florida (surprise surprise) a teacher spiked her soda with hot sauce. The parents of the kid who stole the soda are all upset. I suppose it would do to point out that the kid is autistic. OK, he has a learning ability. OK, the teacher knew he'd steal the soda, which is why she spiked it. Still, hot sauce never killed anybody. And still, if he hadn't stolen the soda, he wouldn't have gotten - wait, the kid wasn't even harmed. He was embarrassed. That's it. Anyway, this actually went to trial, and she was found guilty, and faces up to five years in jail. And in 10 years when this kid's legal, he'll be behind bars because, first, his parents taught him it was OK to steal, and the system taught him that if you try to protect your stuff from getting stolen, you can do some serious time even if nobody gets hurt. Freakin' stupid.
Might not be able to convince those of you who have kids, but a couple down in Arizona took some nudie pictures of their kids - three young daughters, it says, ages aren't given - and then tried to develop the pictures at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart called the FBI, I suppose, and the state brought them up on charges, and took their kids. Now they are countersuing the state as well as Wal-Mart for defamation and some other crap. First of all, naked pictures of kids are contraband in the United States, with some exceptions given. Typically parents are allowed a few of their own kids, up to a certain age. Usually a judgment call is made at the photo counter. But it is the policy of any photo lab - and I worked at one, so I know this firsthand - to call the FBI for pictures including any child nudity, and then they make the call. (There is another number for bestiality photos.) Now, I know anyone, say 15 or older, knows their parents have naked pictures of them. It's a given. My mom even sent my wife a couple. Insert eye-rolling emoticon here. But let's be serious. People know that crimes against kids have risen in the last 15-20 years. It's all over the news. More people are aware, and more people are sensitive to rights people never attributed to kids before. And one of those rights is the right to not be photographed in the nude. Pictures don't get lost or disappear anymore. Did I mention that they used a digital camera? They could have printed these pictures at home. Digital cameras are the new Polaroids, they're great for those taboo sex pictures and videos you don't want to take to a lab to get developed. They could have emailed those pictures to all their family members and the FBI likely would never have found out. But no, they took them to Wal-Mart. So they got caught, got busted. But rather than plead their case, they're suing. First of all, Wal-Mart is in the clear. They did their job. They did what they were supposed to do. Now, the state may have overreacted. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure these people aren't going to win their lawsuit. Then again...
Anyway, if you look through the comments on those articles, I post as "Nathan" from "Eastern NC". I pretty much said what I said here, just in 1000 characters or less per comment.
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Eight years ago today...
...the world changed forever. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Kennedy, everyone who lived through these events will never forget where they were or what they were doing that day. Had I been living on the East Coast, I might very well have been awake when it happened, but I was still living in CA, and I remember being home alone, and the phone kept ringing. I wanted to sleep longer, but to do that I had to silence the phone. So I got up, and just as I was about to pick it up to silence it, it rang again. We didn't have Caller ID so I had no idea who it was before I answered.
It was my brother's ex, though they were still together at the time. Later, she'd leave him for another guy, who, as I understand, would later leave her for another girl. Turnabout being fair play and all that.
Anyway, she told me that we as a country had just been invaded and bombed. I told her we were alright, got off the phone, and went to look on the TV. I was pretty sure she had said the World Trade Center in New York City, but all they were talking about on TV was a plane crashing into the Pentagon. I had to go online to get the story in New York.
Since then, I've been distrustful of televised news. They tell you what they want to tell you, with more information after a word from the sponsors. You go online, you set up Google News or a similar service the way you want, and you do it right, and you get the whole story on one page. You use Firefox and Adblock Plus and there are no sponsors, just the facts (and no ads means it loads faster).
We also - Americans in general - learned a lot about the Middle East. I can't be the only one who didn't give it a second thought. It also put the attack in perspective - one attack (well, four - four planes) was such a culture shock, but the Middle East sees attacks like this weekly. Daily, some weeks. So we have to think, if 9/11 was really as bad as we make it out to be, it must be really sad to live in the Middle East, and have this happen all the time. But two factors are in effect: First, we haven't had a terrorist attack on our soil by a foreign power outside of wartime before. This is a new thing. When it happens every day, it's less of a shock. Still sucks, but it's not the epic shock 9/11 was and continues to be. Second, too often Americans think of themselves as worlds better than the rest of the world. Too many of us figure terrorists blowing up terrorists is OK, tending to overlook the fact that, too often, children are caught in the crossfire. Far more children die in their bombings than died on 9/11, that's for sure. Of course, any child killed or harmed needlessly (or at all) is a tragedy. Still, we overlook it when the child isn't American.
It was also former President Bush's finest moment. Never mind that bin Laden and the Bush family go way back, with ties in oil, as well as military (specifically, when Bush's dad, who ran the CIA then, assisted the Taliban in getting the Russians out of Afghanistan) and it was quite convenient that Bush was in Florida at the time. I still think he expected Flight 93 to hit the White House and that his old Saudi buddy told him to be elsewhere. And never mind that Bush gave his Saudi buddy a full month to get out of Afghanistan (and his Taliban crew a month to decide to tell him where to shove his demands). And of course never mind that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. The idea of cleaning up the Middle East was not entirely a bad one. Saddam Hussein was a bad man who deserved much more than he got. He and his sons, if an article I read in Time can be believed, raped women, molested children, and killed whomever for fun. I am glad that he and his sons are dead and can only hope that their victims can move on. I do believe we spent a lot more time and more money there than we needed to, and that it was a big part of the recession that the Republicans engineered, but some of the aspects of the war were justified. If only Bush hadn't spent so long over there and tanked the economy doing so, but then again, I wasn't sitting in his chair for eight years. He did what he felt was right based on the information he had, and that's what he'll be remembered for. I only hope Obama can fix it before too long, because I know McCain had no interest in reversing any of Bush's failures - he thought the recession was this country on the right track!
Anyway, I don't want to get too (much more) political. That's all fact, though, if a little biased, based on what I've read and heard. The last bit is straight from McCain's own mouth on the debates, though, which I watched.
So I suppose the point that I've arrived at is that eight years ago today, we all woke up and realized there was more going on in the world that we were aware of, and that we had to recognize our voices, our place in the election system.
It was my brother's ex, though they were still together at the time. Later, she'd leave him for another guy, who, as I understand, would later leave her for another girl. Turnabout being fair play and all that.
Anyway, she told me that we as a country had just been invaded and bombed. I told her we were alright, got off the phone, and went to look on the TV. I was pretty sure she had said the World Trade Center in New York City, but all they were talking about on TV was a plane crashing into the Pentagon. I had to go online to get the story in New York.
Since then, I've been distrustful of televised news. They tell you what they want to tell you, with more information after a word from the sponsors. You go online, you set up Google News or a similar service the way you want, and you do it right, and you get the whole story on one page. You use Firefox and Adblock Plus and there are no sponsors, just the facts (and no ads means it loads faster).
We also - Americans in general - learned a lot about the Middle East. I can't be the only one who didn't give it a second thought. It also put the attack in perspective - one attack (well, four - four planes) was such a culture shock, but the Middle East sees attacks like this weekly. Daily, some weeks. So we have to think, if 9/11 was really as bad as we make it out to be, it must be really sad to live in the Middle East, and have this happen all the time. But two factors are in effect: First, we haven't had a terrorist attack on our soil by a foreign power outside of wartime before. This is a new thing. When it happens every day, it's less of a shock. Still sucks, but it's not the epic shock 9/11 was and continues to be. Second, too often Americans think of themselves as worlds better than the rest of the world. Too many of us figure terrorists blowing up terrorists is OK, tending to overlook the fact that, too often, children are caught in the crossfire. Far more children die in their bombings than died on 9/11, that's for sure. Of course, any child killed or harmed needlessly (or at all) is a tragedy. Still, we overlook it when the child isn't American.
It was also former President Bush's finest moment. Never mind that bin Laden and the Bush family go way back, with ties in oil, as well as military (specifically, when Bush's dad, who ran the CIA then, assisted the Taliban in getting the Russians out of Afghanistan) and it was quite convenient that Bush was in Florida at the time. I still think he expected Flight 93 to hit the White House and that his old Saudi buddy told him to be elsewhere. And never mind that Bush gave his Saudi buddy a full month to get out of Afghanistan (and his Taliban crew a month to decide to tell him where to shove his demands). And of course never mind that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. The idea of cleaning up the Middle East was not entirely a bad one. Saddam Hussein was a bad man who deserved much more than he got. He and his sons, if an article I read in Time can be believed, raped women, molested children, and killed whomever for fun. I am glad that he and his sons are dead and can only hope that their victims can move on. I do believe we spent a lot more time and more money there than we needed to, and that it was a big part of the recession that the Republicans engineered, but some of the aspects of the war were justified. If only Bush hadn't spent so long over there and tanked the economy doing so, but then again, I wasn't sitting in his chair for eight years. He did what he felt was right based on the information he had, and that's what he'll be remembered for. I only hope Obama can fix it before too long, because I know McCain had no interest in reversing any of Bush's failures - he thought the recession was this country on the right track!
Anyway, I don't want to get too (much more) political. That's all fact, though, if a little biased, based on what I've read and heard. The last bit is straight from McCain's own mouth on the debates, though, which I watched.
So I suppose the point that I've arrived at is that eight years ago today, we all woke up and realized there was more going on in the world that we were aware of, and that we had to recognize our voices, our place in the election system.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Amazon Kindle: Strike Two
Last month or the month before, I wrote in general about the reasons I don't use an eBook reader like Amazon's Kindle, in a response to the controversy surrounding Amazon deleting eBooks remotely (which they weren't authorized to sell in the first place). Aside from that silly mess, my main gripe is that you must pay full price for a book, you can't buy it used, and you can't sell it secondhand when you're done, or even loan it to a friend without loaning out your $300 Kindle, and if you do, obviously you yourself can't read on it until your friend is done. It's a mess.
Now there's a new controversy around the $300 device (and yes, I love going on about how expensive the bloody thing is). If they get stolen, Amazon has the technology to see who stole it, and even to shut it down completely, but in the name of good business (as in, the thief paying for books), they're protecting the thieves' personal information, until ordered to release it by court order.
Talk about stabbing customers in the back, eh? $300 for the device, $25 for books (or whatever hardcovers cost these days, I know they vary), and if it gets stolen, even though they know who did it, they're just going to leave you hanging like that?
Enough's enough, people who have had this happen really need to lawyer up and sue Amazon. They're charging an insane amount of money for a service, basically encouraging theft ("if you steal one, you're just as good a customer as if you'd bought one"), protecting thieves, thereby encouraging it more, and basically they're obstructing justice. Sure, they comply with a court order, but if they know who has your Kindle and they're not telling you, they're an accessory, and at the very least, they ought to replace the Kindle, if it is such a big deal to them to keep the thieves' business.
Seriously, if your Kindle got stolen and Amazon won't help you, call your lawyer. At the very least, file a claim in small claims court. It's under five thousand dollars. If Amazon doesn't send a rep, they forfeit the case... at least, I believe that's how it works. And if they do send a rep, that rep's gonna have a hell of a time explaining to a judge why they're protecting a criminal and, at the same time, why they won't compensate you for your stolen property, when they make millions of dollars, and they're profiting from a crime against you.
...And this is coming from a fan and loyal customer of Amazon.com who has spent probably a few hundred dollars there on books, music, movies, games, Microsoft Points cards, and other stuff! But hey, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em - and this is bullshit.
Now there's a new controversy around the $300 device (and yes, I love going on about how expensive the bloody thing is). If they get stolen, Amazon has the technology to see who stole it, and even to shut it down completely, but in the name of good business (as in, the thief paying for books), they're protecting the thieves' personal information, until ordered to release it by court order.
Talk about stabbing customers in the back, eh? $300 for the device, $25 for books (or whatever hardcovers cost these days, I know they vary), and if it gets stolen, even though they know who did it, they're just going to leave you hanging like that?
Enough's enough, people who have had this happen really need to lawyer up and sue Amazon. They're charging an insane amount of money for a service, basically encouraging theft ("if you steal one, you're just as good a customer as if you'd bought one"), protecting thieves, thereby encouraging it more, and basically they're obstructing justice. Sure, they comply with a court order, but if they know who has your Kindle and they're not telling you, they're an accessory, and at the very least, they ought to replace the Kindle, if it is such a big deal to them to keep the thieves' business.
Seriously, if your Kindle got stolen and Amazon won't help you, call your lawyer. At the very least, file a claim in small claims court. It's under five thousand dollars. If Amazon doesn't send a rep, they forfeit the case... at least, I believe that's how it works. And if they do send a rep, that rep's gonna have a hell of a time explaining to a judge why they're protecting a criminal and, at the same time, why they won't compensate you for your stolen property, when they make millions of dollars, and they're profiting from a crime against you.
...And this is coming from a fan and loyal customer of Amazon.com who has spent probably a few hundred dollars there on books, music, movies, games, Microsoft Points cards, and other stuff! But hey, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em - and this is bullshit.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
WWE Superstars reviewed
Last month, I wrote about my thoughts on what works and what doesn't with WWE. A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a representative of a kind of marketing group representing WGN America (a TV station) and WWE. They suggested I check out WWE Superstars on that network. I looked for the station when the show was first announced and couldn't find it, and was about to reply back saying that I didn't get the channel, when I thought to look on their website, which pointed me to the right channel. (We have DirecTV, and I still don't understand the need to have hundreds of channels when you can't find the one you want - and they still don't carry MyNetworkTV, which broadcasts WWE SmackDown.) So I set the DVR to record the show. I just watched it last night, four days after it aired. (Better late than never, I guess.)
WWE Superstars advertises itself as a show which matches up talent from all three brands (RAW, ECW, and SmackDown). Because RAW tours by itself and ECW and SmackDown tour separately, I knew there was something fishy about Superstars. There was no way, I figured, that they could do a separate show. And I'm sure this is a no-brainer to anybody who's gone to a taping of any of the three brands' shows. It's relatively common knowledge among fans who look at the WWE from the "backstage perspective" (I really hate to use the term "smark", which means "smart mark", a mark being someone who takes the product at face value (they believe it's real) and a "smark" being someone who knows it's fake but loves it anyway) that these tapings tend to have a "dark match" or two that is not taped, I suppose to justify people paying $50 a seat when they could have just as easily watched the show on TV, not to mention the other perks.
What WWE Superstars does is, it takes the dark matches from all three shows and puts them in a one-hour timeslot. If you're there watching the show live, I imagine the show starts out as Superstars for one match, and then becomes RAW, ECW, or SmackDown. (Fun fact: Did you know that, for ratings purposes, RAW is only one hour long? The second half is rated as "RAW Zone", so if you see "Zone" tacked onto the logo... that's why.) As far as scheduling, I'm still working on the details. I know for RAW, they use the previous Monday's RAW, because I recognized a sign ("Less Big Show, More Gail Kim") that I saw last week on RAW. That's kind of a no-brainer, though, because RAW is always billed as live, so if they shot on Thursday and delayed most of it till Monday - that just wouldn't make sense. ECW and SmackDown are taped together, and I don't know what their road schedule looks like. It's a safe bet to assume that their segments are from the previous episodes as well.
As a show, Superstars is pretty cool, actually. It sounds like it would be a mess. It kind of is. It has three segments - last Thursday had SmackDown go first, ECW go next, and then RAW at the end. For each segment, the announcers from that show call the match. You'll also notice the ropes change color as well. Oddly enough SmackDown used red ropes Thursday; I could have sworn they used blue in the past, but I could be mistaken. ECW's, the middle segment, were silver, and RAW's were the usual red. If it weren't for that sign, I wouldn't have noticed that the second half of the show, dedicated to RAW, was at a different arena than the first half. You probably wouldn't if you weren't looking, but I look for stuff like that.
Superstars isn't any different, really, from ECW, SmackDown, or RAW, as far as the basic idea. It's mostly a recap show, highlighting the drama from the past episode of each show, and one match from each that didn't make it to TV. That being said, what's good about Superstars is that it seems to avoid the stupid "joke" matches. On RAW, there are always a couple matches that either end badly or end with a joke, or are just a joke altogether. Perfect example: the Home Alone ending to the Hornswoggle/Guerrero match. When I watched Superstars, all three of the matches were good.
WWE Superstars advertises itself as a show which matches up talent from all three brands (RAW, ECW, and SmackDown). Because RAW tours by itself and ECW and SmackDown tour separately, I knew there was something fishy about Superstars. There was no way, I figured, that they could do a separate show. And I'm sure this is a no-brainer to anybody who's gone to a taping of any of the three brands' shows. It's relatively common knowledge among fans who look at the WWE from the "backstage perspective" (I really hate to use the term "smark", which means "smart mark", a mark being someone who takes the product at face value (they believe it's real) and a "smark" being someone who knows it's fake but loves it anyway) that these tapings tend to have a "dark match" or two that is not taped, I suppose to justify people paying $50 a seat when they could have just as easily watched the show on TV, not to mention the other perks.
What WWE Superstars does is, it takes the dark matches from all three shows and puts them in a one-hour timeslot. If you're there watching the show live, I imagine the show starts out as Superstars for one match, and then becomes RAW, ECW, or SmackDown. (Fun fact: Did you know that, for ratings purposes, RAW is only one hour long? The second half is rated as "RAW Zone", so if you see "Zone" tacked onto the logo... that's why.) As far as scheduling, I'm still working on the details. I know for RAW, they use the previous Monday's RAW, because I recognized a sign ("Less Big Show, More Gail Kim") that I saw last week on RAW. That's kind of a no-brainer, though, because RAW is always billed as live, so if they shot on Thursday and delayed most of it till Monday - that just wouldn't make sense. ECW and SmackDown are taped together, and I don't know what their road schedule looks like. It's a safe bet to assume that their segments are from the previous episodes as well.
As a show, Superstars is pretty cool, actually. It sounds like it would be a mess. It kind of is. It has three segments - last Thursday had SmackDown go first, ECW go next, and then RAW at the end. For each segment, the announcers from that show call the match. You'll also notice the ropes change color as well. Oddly enough SmackDown used red ropes Thursday; I could have sworn they used blue in the past, but I could be mistaken. ECW's, the middle segment, were silver, and RAW's were the usual red. If it weren't for that sign, I wouldn't have noticed that the second half of the show, dedicated to RAW, was at a different arena than the first half. You probably wouldn't if you weren't looking, but I look for stuff like that.
Superstars isn't any different, really, from ECW, SmackDown, or RAW, as far as the basic idea. It's mostly a recap show, highlighting the drama from the past episode of each show, and one match from each that didn't make it to TV. That being said, what's good about Superstars is that it seems to avoid the stupid "joke" matches. On RAW, there are always a couple matches that either end badly or end with a joke, or are just a joke altogether. Perfect example: the Home Alone ending to the Hornswoggle/Guerrero match. When I watched Superstars, all three of the matches were good.
- The SmackDown match featured John Morrison and David Hart Smith, and it was a good match, lasted at least 10 minutes, and showed good performances from both performers, particularly Morrison (who it's hard not to call by his last character's name, Johnny Nitro - he's always been good, though). I did call out his current character in my other blog entry as being a cheap ripoff of a deceased rock legend, but that doesn't make him any less entertaining.
- The ECW match had newcomer Sheamus and Goldust (Dusty Rhodes' son; Cody Rhodes' brother). Pretty good match, a little above average, but not bad at all.
- Lastly, the RAW match was a mixed tag-team match, with Kofi Kingston and Mickie James against Carlito and Rosa Mendes. Normally, I don't like tag teams, especially ones with lax rules, for example when one team tags out, the other team has to switch up as well (so men can't fight women), but this was alright. Kofi Kingston's good anyway, and I can never look at Mickie James enough. (Yes, my wife knows - she says the same about Jeff Hardy.)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Amazon vs. 1984
Just yesterday, I wrote about the growing trend of Xbox 360 gamers artificially enhancing their Gamerscore, and Microsoft going into their machines and resetting their score to zero. Before that, however, and certainly more popularly, Amazon.com is catching hell for remotely deleting books from their own electronic book reader, the Kindle. What's worse, the book in question is none other than George Orwell's classic story of totalitarian government oppression, 1984. Sure, they refunded peoples' money, but is that enough? Amazon, some customers, and the owners of the distribution rights to 1984 seem to believe so. Others disagree.
First of all, this is not about censorship. 1984 is, as a novel, but that is beside the point. (Fahrenheit 451 would have been a much better platform to cry wolf on, had it happened to digital copies of that book, as it's about firemen who burn books.) No, it's just a matter of copyrights. Amazon, like any book seller, has the rights to sell new and used copies of virtually any book they like, from Dr. Seuss to Stephen King and from cookbooks to the Kama Sutra. (A note for young people trying to sneak into R-rated movies and play M-rated games, your local Barnes & Noble has far juicier content, including stuff you can't even see in movies and video games, and they won't stop you from reading it.) Their first copyright problems surfaced a few years or more ago when they started letting you read the book right on their web page. Not all books qualified, but for those that did, you could look at the first few pages. Some let you read a random page, up to however many pages. In any case, however, the rights of the copyright owner were always respected. And that's all this is. They thought they had the rights, and between that and learning they didn't, they sold so many copies. Remotely deleting the books, while distasteful, was just an attempt to avoid copyright infringement, which could have made them liable for millions of dollars. If I, or any of you reading, were in Amazon's shoes, you would have done the exact same thing.
Now, I've always been leery of "eBook readers" like the Kindle. You pay a couple hundred dollars for this thing, and all it can do is read books? Where's the benefit? The books still cost roughly the same. And you can't loan or give the book to a friend when you're done. You can't buy a used eBook for half the price. An eBook reader presumably takes batteries; that, or it has a rechargeable power supply like a cell phone. An eBook reader is discreet; without seeing the screen, you can't tell a person reading de Sade from somebody reading Shakespeare. On the other hand, though, you give up any claim to any kind of distinguished look you might have earned from reading classic literature if you're reading it on a screen, you look no better or smarter than somebody reading John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks on an eBook reader, so that goes both ways. Personally, I'm used to paperback books. I don't like hardcovers; they're too big. I barely tolerate the Harry Potter paperbacks, which are nearly the size of hardcovers. (Speaking of which, Book 7, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" finally came out, last week, after 2 years exclusive in hardcover. While I did read spoilers, I have actually held out and have just started reading it.) I have tried to read eBooks on a laptop computer and on a modified Nintendo DS, and it just did not work for me. The one advantage I can think of is that with an eBook reader, you can set a digital bookmark which will not fall out. While a Kindle might combine the portability and ease of use of the DS with the large screen of the laptop, I'm not about to spend $200 or more to find out.
So, what am I saying? Should I have to spell it out? $200 (or more!) for an eBook reader, plus $9.99 for a book that's inconvenient to read that can be remotely deleted... or just $9.99 for a book they can't take back, with the option to get it less secondhand, and/or resell to get some of my money back? (Amazon has a flat shipping rate for sellers of $3.99 per book, and I know it doesn't cost half that, so I'm guaranteed at least $2 back if I sell it for just a penny.) And considering that a book is still the best value in entertainment (though Oblivion on the Xbox 360 is quite a contender; I've got 85+ hours into that sucker and I still ain't halfway done), that ain't bad. eBook readers just screw it all up. This issue though, it's nothing, at the most it's just icing on the cake, or rather, the final nail in the coffin.
First of all, this is not about censorship. 1984 is, as a novel, but that is beside the point. (Fahrenheit 451 would have been a much better platform to cry wolf on, had it happened to digital copies of that book, as it's about firemen who burn books.) No, it's just a matter of copyrights. Amazon, like any book seller, has the rights to sell new and used copies of virtually any book they like, from Dr. Seuss to Stephen King and from cookbooks to the Kama Sutra. (A note for young people trying to sneak into R-rated movies and play M-rated games, your local Barnes & Noble has far juicier content, including stuff you can't even see in movies and video games, and they won't stop you from reading it.) Their first copyright problems surfaced a few years or more ago when they started letting you read the book right on their web page. Not all books qualified, but for those that did, you could look at the first few pages. Some let you read a random page, up to however many pages. In any case, however, the rights of the copyright owner were always respected. And that's all this is. They thought they had the rights, and between that and learning they didn't, they sold so many copies. Remotely deleting the books, while distasteful, was just an attempt to avoid copyright infringement, which could have made them liable for millions of dollars. If I, or any of you reading, were in Amazon's shoes, you would have done the exact same thing.
Now, I've always been leery of "eBook readers" like the Kindle. You pay a couple hundred dollars for this thing, and all it can do is read books? Where's the benefit? The books still cost roughly the same. And you can't loan or give the book to a friend when you're done. You can't buy a used eBook for half the price. An eBook reader presumably takes batteries; that, or it has a rechargeable power supply like a cell phone. An eBook reader is discreet; without seeing the screen, you can't tell a person reading de Sade from somebody reading Shakespeare. On the other hand, though, you give up any claim to any kind of distinguished look you might have earned from reading classic literature if you're reading it on a screen, you look no better or smarter than somebody reading John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks on an eBook reader, so that goes both ways. Personally, I'm used to paperback books. I don't like hardcovers; they're too big. I barely tolerate the Harry Potter paperbacks, which are nearly the size of hardcovers. (Speaking of which, Book 7, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" finally came out, last week, after 2 years exclusive in hardcover. While I did read spoilers, I have actually held out and have just started reading it.) I have tried to read eBooks on a laptop computer and on a modified Nintendo DS, and it just did not work for me. The one advantage I can think of is that with an eBook reader, you can set a digital bookmark which will not fall out. While a Kindle might combine the portability and ease of use of the DS with the large screen of the laptop, I'm not about to spend $200 or more to find out.
So, what am I saying? Should I have to spell it out? $200 (or more!) for an eBook reader, plus $9.99 for a book that's inconvenient to read that can be remotely deleted... or just $9.99 for a book they can't take back, with the option to get it less secondhand, and/or resell to get some of my money back? (Amazon has a flat shipping rate for sellers of $3.99 per book, and I know it doesn't cost half that, so I'm guaranteed at least $2 back if I sell it for just a penny.) And considering that a book is still the best value in entertainment (though Oblivion on the Xbox 360 is quite a contender; I've got 85+ hours into that sucker and I still ain't halfway done), that ain't bad. eBook readers just screw it all up. This issue though, it's nothing, at the most it's just icing on the cake, or rather, the final nail in the coffin.
Do you care about your Xbox 360 Gamerscore?
If you have an Xbox 360, do you care about your Gamerscore?
If you don't have an Xbox 360, this video game console has a new system not seen previously in video game systems. It has a system-wide system of tracking Achievements from game to game. An Achievement is a kind of trophy given for accomplishing a certain feat in a game, and it comes with an icon, a name, a description, and a point value of one Gamerscore or more. Every Xbox 360 game has at least 1000 Gamerscore total (some have more), and each game can have up to 99 Achievements. Some games are more generous, with huge rewards for finishing the game and certain milestones, while others are more conservative, instead offering dozens of Achievements for finding various secrets in the game.
Most people earn their Gamerscore by playing games, but others cheat to raise theirs. You can give somebody you trust your username and password, and they can "recover" your profile to their Xbox and earn you achievements; usually they do this for Microsoft Points (the currency on Xbox Live, which costs $1 for every 80 points) or other online currency. Some do it for free. When they're done, you recover your profile back, and, if you're smart, change your password back. I have never done this, I've only heard. There are also various hacks which will raise your Gamerscore exponentially. One, as I understand it, figures out the total possible Gamerscore one could have if one bought every single Xbox 360 game and unlocked every Achievement for each one - something like a quarter-million points.
However, Microsoft not only disapproves of Gamerscore manipulation and outright hacking, but they will reset your Gamerscore if they catch you at it. They will also revoke your online privileges, even if you're paid up a full year in advance. In the worst cases, they will blacklist your entire Xbox, so if you had, say, six accounts paid up for a year in advance (a cost of $300) you would not be able to play online, and you wouldn't be able to recover any of that money.
The thing is, do we care enough about Gamerscore that this is such a big deal that we approve of Microsoft cheating people out of their money? More importantly, how do we feel about Microsoft having that level of control? Mind you, these people are not (necessarily) cheating in online matches. They're simply raising a score, which hurts nobody at all. You cannot buy anything with Gamerscore; it's worthless except, maybe, for bragging rights. But if you have a quarter-million Gamerscore, is that really worth bragging about? I would say anything over 100,000 is evidence of manipulation of some kind. I would say that a Gamerscore of 25,000 or more belongs to somebody who has absolutely no life. My wife's brother has about 13,000, he's had his Xbox 360 for three years, and he hasn't had a job in that time. His girlfriend had a good job, and was able to support his gaming habit while he (read: his friends and family) looked after the kids. He has that plan with Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, you can rent one game at a time for as long as you like. He rents a game, plays it until he beats it, and then returns it for the next game. He doesn't seek all 1000 (or more) Gamerscore from a game, but he does complete the main objectives, which get him between 40% and 75% of the total Gamerscore.
I have about 2900 Gamerscore; Jen has close to 2200. And we've had ours nearly a year and a half. I would not care if Microsoft reset my Gamerscore. It means nothing to me. Sure, it's nice to get the Achievements, and it's extra nice when they're worth more (like 50, as opposed to 10), but it's never more fun than actually earning the Achievements. If I wanted to jack up my Gamerscore, I could rent Avatar: The Last Airbender (a fighting game); I understand it's not only possible, but very easy, to rack up 1000 Gamerscore inside of about five minutes from the start of the game. But I don't want that game on my profile; I don't want it known that I was willing to put a stupid game from a stupid franchise on my Gamertag's profile just to raise my Gamerscore. I'd rather earn fewer points by playing games I'm proud to have on my record. Not that I've never played a stupid game; Dash of Destruction is a free Arcade game sponsored by Doritos worth 200 or 250 Gamerscore. I got it for Jen to help her catch up, but it actually looked fun, so I played it until it wasn't. I got some points from it, but nowhere near the total. Jen got all the Achievements but one, so she got more from it than I did. And that's fine, she wants a higher score, but she mostly sticks to games with "Guitar" and "Band" in the title. I've played through The Orange Box and Oblivion, and those games hand out Gamerscore like candy. Assassins Creed and Mass Effect were also both good for Gamerscore, but they bored me, so I stopped playing them. Grand Theft Auto IV is a little more conservative, still gives Gamerscore, but not as much as the others; it bored me as well, so I put it down. I am going to strive for all 1250 Gamerscore associated with Oblivion, but not because I need the score to stroke my ego, but because I love the game and want to get everything out of it. But I'm also doing things that don't get me Gamerscore, too; I'm going for 100% completion, which just happens to result in getting 1250/1250 along the way.
So that brings us back to Microsoft. How comfortable are we with Microsoft policing video games? Sure, crack down on people cheating in online matches. I'm fine with that. If people want to cheat, though, don't take away their access if they want to pay. Just create a new Gamerzone (e.g. Pro, Recreation, Underground, Family) called Cheaters, or perhaps Hackers, and lock them in it. Make a new option in the profile called "Play with cheaters?" and set it to NO by default. Cheaters would thus only be able to play with other Cheaters, and with those brave souls who enabled play with cheaters (which is what their friends would have to do to play with them). Sure, crack down on people putting offensive language in their profile. I'm fine with that, too. The Xbox 360 is a family-friendly console, and people actively undermining that are threatening Microsoft's financial situation. Sure, crack down on people modifying their Xbox to play copied games. I am fine with that as well. Video games cost millions of dollars to develop, just like films. I do not agree that Microsoft should be able to remotely kill an Xbox 360, if their employee they laid off can be believed, but Verizon does something similar with their phones, they can remotely disable a phone's ability to charge its battery, forcing you to buy a new phone. That ain't just crazy talk, either, they did it to me in 2004. I couldn't afford a new phone, either, and they said they'd rather I just cancel my service than let me continue charging the battery until I could. So I guess when you're at the top, you can set the rules like that. But Microsoft's video game competitor, Sony, is no better. Sony put a nasty computer virus on music CDs with the understanding that anyone who puts a CD into their computer is probably intent on distributing it online. Meanwhile, thousands of people, perhaps millions, downloaded the album on BitTorrent and other networks, courtesy of Linux users who were unaffected by the virus, which affected Windows and Mac OS systems only. Playing by the rules is no safe harbor either; users who updated to Microsoft's new Dashboard for the Xbox 360 last November were blocked from Xbox Live for up to three weeks if they were not part of Microsoft's beta team. Too bad the download and the installation didn't say that. Whoops. Not to mention the whole Verizon thing, or fans of music on Sony's BMG label who just wanted to play music on their computer that they'd bought legally.
So again, how important is Gamerscore that it's worth making such a big deal out of?
If you don't have an Xbox 360, this video game console has a new system not seen previously in video game systems. It has a system-wide system of tracking Achievements from game to game. An Achievement is a kind of trophy given for accomplishing a certain feat in a game, and it comes with an icon, a name, a description, and a point value of one Gamerscore or more. Every Xbox 360 game has at least 1000 Gamerscore total (some have more), and each game can have up to 99 Achievements. Some games are more generous, with huge rewards for finishing the game and certain milestones, while others are more conservative, instead offering dozens of Achievements for finding various secrets in the game.
Most people earn their Gamerscore by playing games, but others cheat to raise theirs. You can give somebody you trust your username and password, and they can "recover" your profile to their Xbox and earn you achievements; usually they do this for Microsoft Points (the currency on Xbox Live, which costs $1 for every 80 points) or other online currency. Some do it for free. When they're done, you recover your profile back, and, if you're smart, change your password back. I have never done this, I've only heard. There are also various hacks which will raise your Gamerscore exponentially. One, as I understand it, figures out the total possible Gamerscore one could have if one bought every single Xbox 360 game and unlocked every Achievement for each one - something like a quarter-million points.
However, Microsoft not only disapproves of Gamerscore manipulation and outright hacking, but they will reset your Gamerscore if they catch you at it. They will also revoke your online privileges, even if you're paid up a full year in advance. In the worst cases, they will blacklist your entire Xbox, so if you had, say, six accounts paid up for a year in advance (a cost of $300) you would not be able to play online, and you wouldn't be able to recover any of that money.
The thing is, do we care enough about Gamerscore that this is such a big deal that we approve of Microsoft cheating people out of their money? More importantly, how do we feel about Microsoft having that level of control? Mind you, these people are not (necessarily) cheating in online matches. They're simply raising a score, which hurts nobody at all. You cannot buy anything with Gamerscore; it's worthless except, maybe, for bragging rights. But if you have a quarter-million Gamerscore, is that really worth bragging about? I would say anything over 100,000 is evidence of manipulation of some kind. I would say that a Gamerscore of 25,000 or more belongs to somebody who has absolutely no life. My wife's brother has about 13,000, he's had his Xbox 360 for three years, and he hasn't had a job in that time. His girlfriend had a good job, and was able to support his gaming habit while he (read: his friends and family) looked after the kids. He has that plan with Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, you can rent one game at a time for as long as you like. He rents a game, plays it until he beats it, and then returns it for the next game. He doesn't seek all 1000 (or more) Gamerscore from a game, but he does complete the main objectives, which get him between 40% and 75% of the total Gamerscore.
I have about 2900 Gamerscore; Jen has close to 2200. And we've had ours nearly a year and a half. I would not care if Microsoft reset my Gamerscore. It means nothing to me. Sure, it's nice to get the Achievements, and it's extra nice when they're worth more (like 50, as opposed to 10), but it's never more fun than actually earning the Achievements. If I wanted to jack up my Gamerscore, I could rent Avatar: The Last Airbender (a fighting game); I understand it's not only possible, but very easy, to rack up 1000 Gamerscore inside of about five minutes from the start of the game. But I don't want that game on my profile; I don't want it known that I was willing to put a stupid game from a stupid franchise on my Gamertag's profile just to raise my Gamerscore. I'd rather earn fewer points by playing games I'm proud to have on my record. Not that I've never played a stupid game; Dash of Destruction is a free Arcade game sponsored by Doritos worth 200 or 250 Gamerscore. I got it for Jen to help her catch up, but it actually looked fun, so I played it until it wasn't. I got some points from it, but nowhere near the total. Jen got all the Achievements but one, so she got more from it than I did. And that's fine, she wants a higher score, but she mostly sticks to games with "Guitar" and "Band" in the title. I've played through The Orange Box and Oblivion, and those games hand out Gamerscore like candy. Assassins Creed and Mass Effect were also both good for Gamerscore, but they bored me, so I stopped playing them. Grand Theft Auto IV is a little more conservative, still gives Gamerscore, but not as much as the others; it bored me as well, so I put it down. I am going to strive for all 1250 Gamerscore associated with Oblivion, but not because I need the score to stroke my ego, but because I love the game and want to get everything out of it. But I'm also doing things that don't get me Gamerscore, too; I'm going for 100% completion, which just happens to result in getting 1250/1250 along the way.
So that brings us back to Microsoft. How comfortable are we with Microsoft policing video games? Sure, crack down on people cheating in online matches. I'm fine with that. If people want to cheat, though, don't take away their access if they want to pay. Just create a new Gamerzone (e.g. Pro, Recreation, Underground, Family) called Cheaters, or perhaps Hackers, and lock them in it. Make a new option in the profile called "Play with cheaters?" and set it to NO by default. Cheaters would thus only be able to play with other Cheaters, and with those brave souls who enabled play with cheaters (which is what their friends would have to do to play with them). Sure, crack down on people putting offensive language in their profile. I'm fine with that, too. The Xbox 360 is a family-friendly console, and people actively undermining that are threatening Microsoft's financial situation. Sure, crack down on people modifying their Xbox to play copied games. I am fine with that as well. Video games cost millions of dollars to develop, just like films. I do not agree that Microsoft should be able to remotely kill an Xbox 360, if their employee they laid off can be believed, but Verizon does something similar with their phones, they can remotely disable a phone's ability to charge its battery, forcing you to buy a new phone. That ain't just crazy talk, either, they did it to me in 2004. I couldn't afford a new phone, either, and they said they'd rather I just cancel my service than let me continue charging the battery until I could. So I guess when you're at the top, you can set the rules like that. But Microsoft's video game competitor, Sony, is no better. Sony put a nasty computer virus on music CDs with the understanding that anyone who puts a CD into their computer is probably intent on distributing it online. Meanwhile, thousands of people, perhaps millions, downloaded the album on BitTorrent and other networks, courtesy of Linux users who were unaffected by the virus, which affected Windows and Mac OS systems only. Playing by the rules is no safe harbor either; users who updated to Microsoft's new Dashboard for the Xbox 360 last November were blocked from Xbox Live for up to three weeks if they were not part of Microsoft's beta team. Too bad the download and the installation didn't say that. Whoops. Not to mention the whole Verizon thing, or fans of music on Sony's BMG label who just wanted to play music on their computer that they'd bought legally.
So again, how important is Gamerscore that it's worth making such a big deal out of?
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
$2M for 24 songs?
By now anyone not spent the last week in a cave has probably heard that a jury somewhere in the middle of Nowhere (Minnesota?) awarded that modern Mafia, the RIAA, nearly $2 million, to be paid by a working mother of two or four, depending on who you read, because she or her kids downloaded 24 songs on KaZaA. On iTunes, in America, songs go for 99¢ apiece, but I've heard in Europe they go for what amounts to $1.29. I pay 160 Microsoft Points ($2) for songs in Rock Band, but those aren't just songs, they include nine instrument tracks (3 difficulties times 3 instruments), a vocal track with lyrics, a couple facts about the band for the loading screens, and sometimes, custom band gestures for the virtual band on the stage (though Guitar Hero is bigger on this point). Even at $2, 24 songs are only worth $48. 24 into the $1.92 million award means each song got paid for, at the $1 rate, 80,000 times. Given the way file sharing networks work, you're not going to share a song you downloaded 80,000 times. I guess it depends.
Impulse or nonpayment?
The RIAA would like the general public to think that every song downloaded is a sale lost. Just ask yourself, of all the songs you've downloaded, would you have paid a buck for each one if you couldn't get it for free, or are there some you got just because? (Everyone downloads, including the "high and mighty" on Internet forums who say they've never downloaded - 9 times out of 10 those are the biggest pirates, testing the waters or somesuch.) So while every download represents a kind of interest, it doesn't exactly translate to a lost sale. Besides, it's clearly not lost sales they're concerned about, per se - how many sales will they lose with a $1.92 million fine? I'd say all of them; she's not going to be in a position to buy a CD for quite some time, and people all over are calling for boycotts of music from RIAA-represented labels.
From lost sales to sales
The recording industry's biggest challenge right now is converting lost sales, real or imaginary, to real sales that bring in money. CDs alone are pretty useless; since so many people play music on portable devices now, "ripping" a CD is almost too much work, so acquiring digital files is now the new thing, but the early players - mostly iTunes, but others as well - loaded the music with copy protection, which the industry demanded to keep piracy in check. Problem is, CDs remained more convenient - you could still rip a CD. But more cars play CDs than Mp3s, and more home stereos play CDs than Mp3s as well. So, though CDs can be burned from digital audio files, CDs remain relevant. But it's not just a convenient format - music has to be desirable. The packaging is a good place to start. When I was a kid, albums and tapes came with lyrics, and liner notes, and pictures. You can download that stuff, but the original packaging, back then, was special. They don't really do that anymore. All you get now is just the track listing, and that leads some to wonder, "why not just download it?" On top of that, so many people are saying the quality of music is deteriorating. Perhaps the labels should be listening to these prospective customers? But by far, the most ambitious method they've used to get sales, to get people buying music again, is the Rock Band franchise. This "game" lets you play along with music on plastic instruments, and it's available for all gaming consoles, even the last-generation PlayStation 2. It's not very demanding as far as games go and really only amounts to a puzzle game, at best, but it's getting people buying music. We've spent more on songs than we have on both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. We have 332 songs on our Xbox 360's hard drive. More importantly, not one downloadable Rock Band song has been pirated yet. You can pirate the game disc itself, which includes 55 songs (Rock Band) or 84 songs (Rock Band 2), but you need a modified console to do it, and not that many people actually do. And since it came out that the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can flip if they catch you modifying that console, it's a really stupid thing to try.
Computer security
In the 1990s, we learned that a computer must have antivirus. In the later part of that decade, anti-spyware became the next big security measure to take. Now, a computer must additionally have PeerGuardian. The developers of PeerGuardian track the RIAA and other anti-filesharing companies and maintain a list of the IP addresses of these computers, and prevent these computers from even seeing your computer. So say you're downloading a song that is hosted by the RIAA. Your filesharing client will basically act like nobody who has the file is actually sharing it, when, in truth, all of the peers are blocked. You can see them but they cannot see you, so they are not going to share with you. Now, once some poor schmuck who isn't using PG downloads the song, you can download from them, and when they catch a C&D letter, you won't get one at all. Welcome to the third tier of computer security: anti-spy. A secure machine must now protect against viruses, malware, and online spies in order to be safe. Because now they don't just want to damage your computer. They don't just want to use your computer as a slave to attack other machines. Now they want to get to you through your computer and attack your economic situation; essentially, they want to rob you through your computer. "Don't they have the right..." No, they don't have the right to take away our Fourth Amendment rights, which protect us from unlawful searches, which is what this amounts to.
What comes next?
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the RIAA is not going to collect $1.92 million from this case. The RIAA traditionally offers a settlement in the neighborhood of $3,000-$5,000 to keep the case from going to trial, and they haven't ruled out closing the door on that offer, even though the case has been decided for much higher. That would stem any argument that the woman would never be able to pay the fine. It would be a huge economical hardship, but not impossible. Still, it would be a huge loss for the RIAA, twofold at that. First, the case has cost them a lot of money already, money they're not going to fully recover regardless. And second, if this woman has to pay anything above her means, she's probably never going to purchase a CD ever again. (Would you?) On top of that, people across the Internet are calling for a boycott of RIAA-backed labels' music. There is really just no easy solution for the RIAA. If they don't go after people for downloading music, more people will do it. The more they do, however, the more people hate them. And if you go onto an Internet forum populated by members of sites like The Pirate Bay and isoHunt and ask them what the RIAA should do, the unanimous answer will sound something like "roll over and die". Of course, if they disbanded tomorrow, and the record companies they represent all folded, the impact on the economy would be severe, as they do employ thousands. And of course, if they go under, who will bring us the popular music we like? Radiohead was able to offer their album "In Rainbows", I believe it is, for "whatever cost you feel like paying, including nothing" because they're already an established act. Millions of unsigned bands have been giving away music on MySpace and through other venues for years; it hasn't gotten them signed, let alone Radiohead-level fame (which, I admit, is quite a ways away from, say, Metallica fame, or better yet, The Beatles fame, but I digress).
In short, the recording industry needs to look at what's working and what isn't. Some things they're doing are effective, such as songs in Rock Band; also, microSD cards for phones which contain full albums in MP3 format. That's brilliant. Services like iTunes and its competitors are a good idea, moreso now that they're using regular MP3s, not copy-protected AAC and WMA files. Financially wrecking otherwise honest Americans is not working, however, and especially in this recession, amounts to both class warfare and economic terrorism. It's that serious. It's $1.92 million serious.
Impulse or nonpayment?
The RIAA would like the general public to think that every song downloaded is a sale lost. Just ask yourself, of all the songs you've downloaded, would you have paid a buck for each one if you couldn't get it for free, or are there some you got just because? (Everyone downloads, including the "high and mighty" on Internet forums who say they've never downloaded - 9 times out of 10 those are the biggest pirates, testing the waters or somesuch.) So while every download represents a kind of interest, it doesn't exactly translate to a lost sale. Besides, it's clearly not lost sales they're concerned about, per se - how many sales will they lose with a $1.92 million fine? I'd say all of them; she's not going to be in a position to buy a CD for quite some time, and people all over are calling for boycotts of music from RIAA-represented labels.
From lost sales to sales
The recording industry's biggest challenge right now is converting lost sales, real or imaginary, to real sales that bring in money. CDs alone are pretty useless; since so many people play music on portable devices now, "ripping" a CD is almost too much work, so acquiring digital files is now the new thing, but the early players - mostly iTunes, but others as well - loaded the music with copy protection, which the industry demanded to keep piracy in check. Problem is, CDs remained more convenient - you could still rip a CD. But more cars play CDs than Mp3s, and more home stereos play CDs than Mp3s as well. So, though CDs can be burned from digital audio files, CDs remain relevant. But it's not just a convenient format - music has to be desirable. The packaging is a good place to start. When I was a kid, albums and tapes came with lyrics, and liner notes, and pictures. You can download that stuff, but the original packaging, back then, was special. They don't really do that anymore. All you get now is just the track listing, and that leads some to wonder, "why not just download it?" On top of that, so many people are saying the quality of music is deteriorating. Perhaps the labels should be listening to these prospective customers? But by far, the most ambitious method they've used to get sales, to get people buying music again, is the Rock Band franchise. This "game" lets you play along with music on plastic instruments, and it's available for all gaming consoles, even the last-generation PlayStation 2. It's not very demanding as far as games go and really only amounts to a puzzle game, at best, but it's getting people buying music. We've spent more on songs than we have on both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. We have 332 songs on our Xbox 360's hard drive. More importantly, not one downloadable Rock Band song has been pirated yet. You can pirate the game disc itself, which includes 55 songs (Rock Band) or 84 songs (Rock Band 2), but you need a modified console to do it, and not that many people actually do. And since it came out that the Xbox 360 has a killswitch Microsoft can flip if they catch you modifying that console, it's a really stupid thing to try.
Computer security
In the 1990s, we learned that a computer must have antivirus. In the later part of that decade, anti-spyware became the next big security measure to take. Now, a computer must additionally have PeerGuardian. The developers of PeerGuardian track the RIAA and other anti-filesharing companies and maintain a list of the IP addresses of these computers, and prevent these computers from even seeing your computer. So say you're downloading a song that is hosted by the RIAA. Your filesharing client will basically act like nobody who has the file is actually sharing it, when, in truth, all of the peers are blocked. You can see them but they cannot see you, so they are not going to share with you. Now, once some poor schmuck who isn't using PG downloads the song, you can download from them, and when they catch a C&D letter, you won't get one at all. Welcome to the third tier of computer security: anti-spy. A secure machine must now protect against viruses, malware, and online spies in order to be safe. Because now they don't just want to damage your computer. They don't just want to use your computer as a slave to attack other machines. Now they want to get to you through your computer and attack your economic situation; essentially, they want to rob you through your computer. "Don't they have the right..." No, they don't have the right to take away our Fourth Amendment rights, which protect us from unlawful searches, which is what this amounts to.
What comes next?
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the RIAA is not going to collect $1.92 million from this case. The RIAA traditionally offers a settlement in the neighborhood of $3,000-$5,000 to keep the case from going to trial, and they haven't ruled out closing the door on that offer, even though the case has been decided for much higher. That would stem any argument that the woman would never be able to pay the fine. It would be a huge economical hardship, but not impossible. Still, it would be a huge loss for the RIAA, twofold at that. First, the case has cost them a lot of money already, money they're not going to fully recover regardless. And second, if this woman has to pay anything above her means, she's probably never going to purchase a CD ever again. (Would you?) On top of that, people across the Internet are calling for a boycott of RIAA-backed labels' music. There is really just no easy solution for the RIAA. If they don't go after people for downloading music, more people will do it. The more they do, however, the more people hate them. And if you go onto an Internet forum populated by members of sites like The Pirate Bay and isoHunt and ask them what the RIAA should do, the unanimous answer will sound something like "roll over and die". Of course, if they disbanded tomorrow, and the record companies they represent all folded, the impact on the economy would be severe, as they do employ thousands. And of course, if they go under, who will bring us the popular music we like? Radiohead was able to offer their album "In Rainbows", I believe it is, for "whatever cost you feel like paying, including nothing" because they're already an established act. Millions of unsigned bands have been giving away music on MySpace and through other venues for years; it hasn't gotten them signed, let alone Radiohead-level fame (which, I admit, is quite a ways away from, say, Metallica fame, or better yet, The Beatles fame, but I digress).
In short, the recording industry needs to look at what's working and what isn't. Some things they're doing are effective, such as songs in Rock Band; also, microSD cards for phones which contain full albums in MP3 format. That's brilliant. Services like iTunes and its competitors are a good idea, moreso now that they're using regular MP3s, not copy-protected AAC and WMA files. Financially wrecking otherwise honest Americans is not working, however, and especially in this recession, amounts to both class warfare and economic terrorism. It's that serious. It's $1.92 million serious.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Portable Applications, and Right & Wrong
A few months ago, I wrote about this great new technology in PC computing called "portable applications" by which applications were not installed (to Windows and its Registry), as usual, but rather installed (to a flash drive, usually, and set up for portability) and then could be used on any computer. Normally, when you install a program, the old way, it is tied to that Windows installation. You can't move the program's folder to a flash drive and run it on another computer, because it hasn't got those roots. Likewise, you can't reinstall Windows and expect the program to still work, for the same reason. And why should it be this way? Why should a program which has nothing to do with Windows be tied to Windows? The most practical reason is file associations. Generally, you want your media player to open your music and video files when you double-click on them. Nevermind the fact that, if you're not careful, a Windows Media Player upgrade will steal those associations away. Also never mind the fact that virtually every media player has a means to open media files themselves. Most also let you "drop" media files on them to play them. The double-click method is the most convenient, sure, but you can set this up without having to tie a program to the system. Internet Explorer wasn't even part of Windows initially, but since the third edition of Windows 95 (colloquially referred to as "Windows 97" but more lengthly titled "Microsoft Windows 95 Microsoft Internet Explorer" on the loading screen) it has been. Before that, it was its own program and Windows Explorer, the file manager in Windows, was completely different. Does anybody remember Windows Explorer before it was married to IE?
All in all, portable applications are great. You can take your favorite programs and their settings you've fine-tuned over the years from computer to computer. And all portable applications are free and open-source, right? Well, that's what their chief proponent, PortableApps.com, might have you believe. Well, another advantage to a complex installation is that if your program is commercial, it can also be tied to one user and steps can be taken to ensure it isn't being shared by all your friends. Of course, software piracy is even older than music and movie piracy; it's been going on for years. Software that's controlled by alphanumeric codes (like Windows) is shared with a code that works. Software that's controlled by online activation (like Windows XP and newer) is shared with altered files which have been tricked into believing they've been activated. But not everybody can follow often simple instructions to get a downloaded version of a commercial program (such as Adobe Photoshop, one of the biggest targets of software piracy) to work. Portability to the rescue. Once an application is thusly cracked, it can be made portable, and then the process is automated for everybody. Make no mistake, this is illegal as hell, but it's done every day and fewer than a thousandth of a percent of software pirates are ever convicted of a crime or sued. If that.
But while most people honestly know that pirating paid applications like Windows and Photoshop are illegal, did you know that it is also a violation of many free programs' end-user license agreement (EULA) to redistribute them without permission? Technically, while you can download and use programs like Winamp (a media player) and CCleaner (a computer maintenance program) free of charge, you can't burn them on a CD and pass them off to your friends. You can tell them where to get the programs, or email them the links to the official webpage, but you can't just redistribute them. But wait, you say, what about sites like Download.com, Softpedia, and FileHippo? These sites get permission, and that's OK. If you, a nobody on the Internet, email AOL (they publish Winamp) or Piriform (they make CCleaner) and ask for permission to share their programs with your friends, your emails will probably go unanswered, or you'll get a nice form letter thanking you for your interest and directing your questions to the program's homepage. On the other hand, if you pass off the programs, nobody will care, most likely. But what about Firefox and VLC Media Player (formerly known as VideoLAN)? These programs are open source, which is supposed to be the big savior of software. While open source is freer than freeware, there are still some caveats. For open source, you have to share the source as well. Firefox, despite popular belief, is not 100% open source. The logo and name are trademarks of Mozilla. You can redistribute Firefox the program, but you cannot call it Firefox, or use the logo. People do do this, of course - Iceweasel is one, and Blackbird is another. Both are basically Firefox, but they have a new logo and name. I don't recall what the story is with Iceweasel, but Blackbird has a black theme and is set up with bookmarks and extensions which, as a complete package, are supposed to make it the ideal web browser for African-Americans, whatever that means. Sounds separatist to me. As a "white boy", I'm highly tempted to use it, just for laughs. "Hey, I'm rockin' BLACKBIRD..." Heh...
So anyway, they tell me over at PortableApps.com that it is in fact illegal to redistribute closed-source free programs like CCleaner and Winamp (CCleaner is the more usual target of these discussions, Winamp is just my example) and that it is illegal to redistribute open source software without the source code. And they get pretty serious about these things, too! While I admire their dedication to righting wrongs, I find hypocrisy in the fact that they publish portable versions of emulators, programs used to play old console games. Specifically, they carry programs which emulate NES, Super NES, and Game Boy Advance games. Now, personally, I have no problems with emulators or people who use them. I really don't. I've in fact used two of the three programs they offer - the NES emulator I used was another one. Not too sure about the one they have, but it must be good if they chose it. And here's the thing I've tried to explain to them: Nintendo has never authorized the use of those games on personal computers, and in fact they speak out against it at great length. Some console games were available on other systems, including PCs (MS-DOS, usually). Some were ported to newer consoles (the Game Boy Advance has a "NES Classics" series, for example; also the Nintendo DS features a Nintendo 64 game). Konami even released both Contra and all three Castlevania games for the NES on the PC, using what amounted to an emulator. That's all fine and that's all legal, but at the end of the day, Nintendo has license agreements in every game manual saying the game is only licensed for use on the console it was designed for.
In their defense, members of the PortableApps.com forum have offered a couple defenses. First, they argue that emulators don't violate any licenses, it's the ROMs (the game files) that do, and they don't offer them. True, but the emulator is good for nothing other than running these ROMs. They argue that programs like VLC can be used to play pirated music and video files. This is also true, but they have many legal uses as well. There are no legal uses of emulators. Second, they've argued that they use emulators for "homebrew", software written by others to run on consoles. That's cute on the console, but running console homebrew on a console emulator is pointless. The point of homebrew is to extend the features of the console. There's no console homebrew which beats the equivalent software on a PC. Furthermore, they failed to name any of any merit. They've also argued that they play games they still own, but the consoles have fallen into disrepair and have been given or thrown away. When I asked if they actually kept all those games in a drawer, that question went unanswered as well. Essentially, they were blowing smoke, covering up the fact that they have no respect for Nintendo's licenses of paid software (games). Also, most of these defenses are answered by Nintendo's legal FAQ. Yet they will go to war over freeware, and open source, particularly Firefox.
Now, I know I sound like a real bastard saying all this. The truth of the matter, actually, is that I really don't care if people use emulators. I've used them. They just don't make games like they used to. Games used to be fun, so fun we didn't care how bad they looked. They looked good to us not because they did, but because they were fun and we genuinely loved playing them. Now it's all about polygon counts and frame rates. Games push people to buy a new computer every year just to keep up, but are the games actually getting better? Quite the opposite, in fact. There are some great games out there, but they're so few and far between. Deus Ex (2000). Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004). The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). Rock Band 2 (2008). Deus Ex: The Nameless Mod (2009, independently produced!). There are more, I know I'm forgetting a few, but this decade, compared with the last, is quite shameful for gaming. Those are some of the shining stars, though. So yeah, emulation is fine by me. But so are sites that redistribute Firefox and other free programs. They're fine by me. I do not see the problem. I do not see the problem with people downloading old console games they have no legal business playing on their PC, for a good many reasons, so who bloody cares if somebody passes along free software to a friend? Not I, that's for sure.
All in all, portable applications are great. You can take your favorite programs and their settings you've fine-tuned over the years from computer to computer. And all portable applications are free and open-source, right? Well, that's what their chief proponent, PortableApps.com, might have you believe. Well, another advantage to a complex installation is that if your program is commercial, it can also be tied to one user and steps can be taken to ensure it isn't being shared by all your friends. Of course, software piracy is even older than music and movie piracy; it's been going on for years. Software that's controlled by alphanumeric codes (like Windows) is shared with a code that works. Software that's controlled by online activation (like Windows XP and newer) is shared with altered files which have been tricked into believing they've been activated. But not everybody can follow often simple instructions to get a downloaded version of a commercial program (such as Adobe Photoshop, one of the biggest targets of software piracy) to work. Portability to the rescue. Once an application is thusly cracked, it can be made portable, and then the process is automated for everybody. Make no mistake, this is illegal as hell, but it's done every day and fewer than a thousandth of a percent of software pirates are ever convicted of a crime or sued. If that.
But while most people honestly know that pirating paid applications like Windows and Photoshop are illegal, did you know that it is also a violation of many free programs' end-user license agreement (EULA) to redistribute them without permission? Technically, while you can download and use programs like Winamp (a media player) and CCleaner (a computer maintenance program) free of charge, you can't burn them on a CD and pass them off to your friends. You can tell them where to get the programs, or email them the links to the official webpage, but you can't just redistribute them. But wait, you say, what about sites like Download.com, Softpedia, and FileHippo? These sites get permission, and that's OK. If you, a nobody on the Internet, email AOL (they publish Winamp) or Piriform (they make CCleaner) and ask for permission to share their programs with your friends, your emails will probably go unanswered, or you'll get a nice form letter thanking you for your interest and directing your questions to the program's homepage. On the other hand, if you pass off the programs, nobody will care, most likely. But what about Firefox and VLC Media Player (formerly known as VideoLAN)? These programs are open source, which is supposed to be the big savior of software. While open source is freer than freeware, there are still some caveats. For open source, you have to share the source as well. Firefox, despite popular belief, is not 100% open source. The logo and name are trademarks of Mozilla. You can redistribute Firefox the program, but you cannot call it Firefox, or use the logo. People do do this, of course - Iceweasel is one, and Blackbird is another. Both are basically Firefox, but they have a new logo and name. I don't recall what the story is with Iceweasel, but Blackbird has a black theme and is set up with bookmarks and extensions which, as a complete package, are supposed to make it the ideal web browser for African-Americans, whatever that means. Sounds separatist to me. As a "white boy", I'm highly tempted to use it, just for laughs. "Hey, I'm rockin' BLACKBIRD..." Heh...
So anyway, they tell me over at PortableApps.com that it is in fact illegal to redistribute closed-source free programs like CCleaner and Winamp (CCleaner is the more usual target of these discussions, Winamp is just my example) and that it is illegal to redistribute open source software without the source code. And they get pretty serious about these things, too! While I admire their dedication to righting wrongs, I find hypocrisy in the fact that they publish portable versions of emulators, programs used to play old console games. Specifically, they carry programs which emulate NES, Super NES, and Game Boy Advance games. Now, personally, I have no problems with emulators or people who use them. I really don't. I've in fact used two of the three programs they offer - the NES emulator I used was another one. Not too sure about the one they have, but it must be good if they chose it. And here's the thing I've tried to explain to them: Nintendo has never authorized the use of those games on personal computers, and in fact they speak out against it at great length. Some console games were available on other systems, including PCs (MS-DOS, usually). Some were ported to newer consoles (the Game Boy Advance has a "NES Classics" series, for example; also the Nintendo DS features a Nintendo 64 game). Konami even released both Contra and all three Castlevania games for the NES on the PC, using what amounted to an emulator. That's all fine and that's all legal, but at the end of the day, Nintendo has license agreements in every game manual saying the game is only licensed for use on the console it was designed for.
In their defense, members of the PortableApps.com forum have offered a couple defenses. First, they argue that emulators don't violate any licenses, it's the ROMs (the game files) that do, and they don't offer them. True, but the emulator is good for nothing other than running these ROMs. They argue that programs like VLC can be used to play pirated music and video files. This is also true, but they have many legal uses as well. There are no legal uses of emulators. Second, they've argued that they use emulators for "homebrew", software written by others to run on consoles. That's cute on the console, but running console homebrew on a console emulator is pointless. The point of homebrew is to extend the features of the console. There's no console homebrew which beats the equivalent software on a PC. Furthermore, they failed to name any of any merit. They've also argued that they play games they still own, but the consoles have fallen into disrepair and have been given or thrown away. When I asked if they actually kept all those games in a drawer, that question went unanswered as well. Essentially, they were blowing smoke, covering up the fact that they have no respect for Nintendo's licenses of paid software (games). Also, most of these defenses are answered by Nintendo's legal FAQ. Yet they will go to war over freeware, and open source, particularly Firefox.
Now, I know I sound like a real bastard saying all this. The truth of the matter, actually, is that I really don't care if people use emulators. I've used them. They just don't make games like they used to. Games used to be fun, so fun we didn't care how bad they looked. They looked good to us not because they did, but because they were fun and we genuinely loved playing them. Now it's all about polygon counts and frame rates. Games push people to buy a new computer every year just to keep up, but are the games actually getting better? Quite the opposite, in fact. There are some great games out there, but they're so few and far between. Deus Ex (2000). Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004). The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). Rock Band 2 (2008). Deus Ex: The Nameless Mod (2009, independently produced!). There are more, I know I'm forgetting a few, but this decade, compared with the last, is quite shameful for gaming. Those are some of the shining stars, though. So yeah, emulation is fine by me. But so are sites that redistribute Firefox and other free programs. They're fine by me. I do not see the problem. I do not see the problem with people downloading old console games they have no legal business playing on their PC, for a good many reasons, so who bloody cares if somebody passes along free software to a friend? Not I, that's for sure.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
What Works (and Doesn't) With Pro Wrestling
When I moved out here, I hadn't seen a total hour of pro wrestling in my life. Once I saw my youngest brother watching WCW Monday Nitro back in the 90s. On commercials, he'd flip over to the other channel and look at WWF Monday Night RAW for a while. Later I found out my wife used to do the same thing. I started out following her favorite wrestler, Mick Foley, on Monday Night RAW (now WWE) watching with her sister's boyfriend at the time, letting her know what was going on with the soap opera side of the show as I had Mondays off and she had to work. Didn't take long before I was hooked, and now it's almost four years later and I can't help but fancy myself a bit of an expert. I know there's a lot I haven't seen, though I've been watching RAW for a quarter of the 16 years it's been on TV (which is kinda scary). It's getting to the point where I feel like there's nothing new and it's time for a drastic change. So I have a few ideas I'd like to throw out there.
1. The WWE really needs to stop using the commercial breaks as a plot twist. It's extremely lame and screams to the audience "if you still don't think wrestling's fake, you're a bloody idiot". Here's what'll happen. The good guy (the babyface, or face, in backstage terminology) will build a good momentum against the bad guy (the heel), and typically knock them under or over the ropes to the outside area, between the ring and the crowd. Fade to black. Four minutes of commercials. Fade in from black. Face is on his back in the ring and Heel is beating the crap out of him. RAW isn't live anyway (despite them saying it is - half the time they don't even tell you where they are) so why not simply pause the broadcast at the commercial and resume where they left off? And it happens this way all the time. Another easy solution would be to plan the commercial breaks around the matches. Sometimes, toward the end they'll have an ad break, then an interview or sponsored segment (e.g. a "Just for Men" ad on the bottom half and a recap from last week on the top half), then another ad break, then one of the combatants will go to the ring, then a third ad break, then the other combatant will come out, the match starts, and we get a fourth and sometimes fifth ad break in the middle. I don't mind the frequent ad breaks near the end, but I'd prefer them not in the middle of matches, and then used as a quick reversal.
2. Characters, characters, characters. The Undertaker is one of WWE's most valuable assets, and most fans don't know the man's real name is Mark Calloway (or that he's in a serious relationship with Michelle McCool - I forget her real last name). They don't care, they love The Undertaker, and that's fine. Nevermind that from when his music hits, you can order a pizza, smoke a cigarette, take a #2 bathroom break, pay for your pizza, and have the pizza mostly finished by the time Taker removes his hat. No, I can't say anything bad about The Undertaker - he's a character done right. What I'd like to see less of is characters modeled after and/or named after real people they aren't related to or movie characters from movies not made by WWE. If WWE wanted to make a movie with one of their wrestlers and then incorporate the movie character into the wrestler's character, that's cool. They kind of did that with John Cena and "The Marine". Before the movie came out, he went from being a rapper/thug to being a Marine, or at least a generic army guy. And that's fine, too. But John Morrison (a parody of The Doors' Jim Morrison) and Evan Bourne (a parody, possibly, but more likely a tribute to Jason Bourne, of the Bourne trilogy of books and movies) are just ridiculous. And they're both great performers, but they're cheapened by these pop culture references that they really don't need.
3. I'd like to see more respect for the titles. Most notably, "distract the ref and cheat to win" shouldn't fly. Or assaulting the ref to be disqualified, or walking away from the match, should not constitute a title victory. A title should carry prestige and represent honor and should only be won honestly... otherwise it doesn't mean a thing. And if it doesn't, that's fine, I suppose, but then why have it in the first place? Currently both world titles were ill-gotten. RAW's WWE Championship was won fair and square by Batista, but was vacated and awarded to Randy Orton when Orton and his two lap dogs came out and broke Batista's arm. More on "injuries" in a bit. And CM Punk retained SmackDown's World Heavyweight Championship in a match against Jeff Hardy by kicking the referee. He'd tried everything, couldn't get a win, so he turns around and kicks the ref. It's a disqualification, he loses, but a title can only change hands if the title holder is pinned or made to submit. In a real sporting event it would be unfair, but since WWE is not a real sport, it falls to lazy scripting. It's a cheap copout. And that's entirely apart from my personal opinions about the matches and their contestants. Furthermore, when they call themselves an X Time World Champion, they're really shooting themselves in the foot, because if they're not holding the belt, all that means is they've lost it that many times. If they are holding the belt, they've lost it that many times minus one. Wouldn't it sound better to say that collectively they held a title for X Days? (They actually did this a while back, Santino Marella was Intercontinental Champion at the time, and every week, he'd announce that the Honky Tonk Man famously held the title the longest, for however many weeks, and he'd display how many weeks he'd had it.)
4. Injuries vs. Fake Injuries vs. Silent Absences and Departures. While it's nice that the WWE is bringing back its "PLEASE Don't Try This At Home" (or as John Cena says, "Please don't try this"), the fake injuries only undermine that point. Now, we know that all these guys get along backstage. There are a few real-life problems, but nearly all on-screen rivalries are pure fiction. The last on-screen rivalry with any basis in fact was between Matt Hardy and Edge over Lita, who was dating Matt but left him for Edge. The three agreed to do a short feud on-screen but have since settled their differences. Amy Dumas (Lita) has since retired, but Matt and Edge (Adam Copeland) still work together, and Matt even helped Edge in a feud against Matt's own brother, Jeff. In addition to that, we know that Randy Orton, Triple H (Paul Levesque, while I'm dropping real names), and Batista (Dave Bautista) all trained under and were mentored by Ric Flair (close enough to his real name). So seeing Randy Orton and his lackeys break Batista's arm on stage with a steel chair, while disturbing, didn't come across as real, at all. Think about it: If there were an unscripted all-out assault by three performers on another in a live event, security would be all over it. That's what they're there for, to prevent things from getting out of hand. So one must conclude that things were entirely under control.
5. Lastly, I'd like to see some semblance of order and more respect for the rules. I'd like to see win/loss records introduced, even if it's not genuine and subject to change (e.g. records wiped clean when a wrestler changes characters, such as when Johnny Nitro became John Morrison, or when a wrestler changes brands or alignment (heel/face)). I'd like to see the refs' authority and presence mean something, and I'd like to see some decisions reversed "upon closer examination of the footage". I'd like some matches to even possibly have rounds, e.g. have one person challenge another to a boxing match or an MMA-rules match. Of course, the outcome would still be scripted, but I think it could work out well.
All in all, I enjoy watching the WWE because they know how to put on an entertaining show. I've tried looking at real fighting (such as UFC) and it's just not as fun. What does impress me about the UFC is the sportsmanship and respect that UFC's fighters display. You know the WWE does it as well, it's just off-camera. And that's a shame, because I think that's the best part of UFC. That these guys can beat the holy hell out of one another and still respect the rules, and one another's skills.
1. The WWE really needs to stop using the commercial breaks as a plot twist. It's extremely lame and screams to the audience "if you still don't think wrestling's fake, you're a bloody idiot". Here's what'll happen. The good guy (the babyface, or face, in backstage terminology) will build a good momentum against the bad guy (the heel), and typically knock them under or over the ropes to the outside area, between the ring and the crowd. Fade to black. Four minutes of commercials. Fade in from black. Face is on his back in the ring and Heel is beating the crap out of him. RAW isn't live anyway (despite them saying it is - half the time they don't even tell you where they are) so why not simply pause the broadcast at the commercial and resume where they left off? And it happens this way all the time. Another easy solution would be to plan the commercial breaks around the matches. Sometimes, toward the end they'll have an ad break, then an interview or sponsored segment (e.g. a "Just for Men" ad on the bottom half and a recap from last week on the top half), then another ad break, then one of the combatants will go to the ring, then a third ad break, then the other combatant will come out, the match starts, and we get a fourth and sometimes fifth ad break in the middle. I don't mind the frequent ad breaks near the end, but I'd prefer them not in the middle of matches, and then used as a quick reversal.
2. Characters, characters, characters. The Undertaker is one of WWE's most valuable assets, and most fans don't know the man's real name is Mark Calloway (or that he's in a serious relationship with Michelle McCool - I forget her real last name). They don't care, they love The Undertaker, and that's fine. Nevermind that from when his music hits, you can order a pizza, smoke a cigarette, take a #2 bathroom break, pay for your pizza, and have the pizza mostly finished by the time Taker removes his hat. No, I can't say anything bad about The Undertaker - he's a character done right. What I'd like to see less of is characters modeled after and/or named after real people they aren't related to or movie characters from movies not made by WWE. If WWE wanted to make a movie with one of their wrestlers and then incorporate the movie character into the wrestler's character, that's cool. They kind of did that with John Cena and "The Marine". Before the movie came out, he went from being a rapper/thug to being a Marine, or at least a generic army guy. And that's fine, too. But John Morrison (a parody of The Doors' Jim Morrison) and Evan Bourne (a parody, possibly, but more likely a tribute to Jason Bourne, of the Bourne trilogy of books and movies) are just ridiculous. And they're both great performers, but they're cheapened by these pop culture references that they really don't need.
3. I'd like to see more respect for the titles. Most notably, "distract the ref and cheat to win" shouldn't fly. Or assaulting the ref to be disqualified, or walking away from the match, should not constitute a title victory. A title should carry prestige and represent honor and should only be won honestly... otherwise it doesn't mean a thing. And if it doesn't, that's fine, I suppose, but then why have it in the first place? Currently both world titles were ill-gotten. RAW's WWE Championship was won fair and square by Batista, but was vacated and awarded to Randy Orton when Orton and his two lap dogs came out and broke Batista's arm. More on "injuries" in a bit. And CM Punk retained SmackDown's World Heavyweight Championship in a match against Jeff Hardy by kicking the referee. He'd tried everything, couldn't get a win, so he turns around and kicks the ref. It's a disqualification, he loses, but a title can only change hands if the title holder is pinned or made to submit. In a real sporting event it would be unfair, but since WWE is not a real sport, it falls to lazy scripting. It's a cheap copout. And that's entirely apart from my personal opinions about the matches and their contestants. Furthermore, when they call themselves an X Time World Champion, they're really shooting themselves in the foot, because if they're not holding the belt, all that means is they've lost it that many times. If they are holding the belt, they've lost it that many times minus one. Wouldn't it sound better to say that collectively they held a title for X Days? (They actually did this a while back, Santino Marella was Intercontinental Champion at the time, and every week, he'd announce that the Honky Tonk Man famously held the title the longest, for however many weeks, and he'd display how many weeks he'd had it.)
4. Injuries vs. Fake Injuries vs. Silent Absences and Departures. While it's nice that the WWE is bringing back its "PLEASE Don't Try This At Home" (or as John Cena says, "Please don't try this"), the fake injuries only undermine that point. Now, we know that all these guys get along backstage. There are a few real-life problems, but nearly all on-screen rivalries are pure fiction. The last on-screen rivalry with any basis in fact was between Matt Hardy and Edge over Lita, who was dating Matt but left him for Edge. The three agreed to do a short feud on-screen but have since settled their differences. Amy Dumas (Lita) has since retired, but Matt and Edge (Adam Copeland) still work together, and Matt even helped Edge in a feud against Matt's own brother, Jeff. In addition to that, we know that Randy Orton, Triple H (Paul Levesque, while I'm dropping real names), and Batista (Dave Bautista) all trained under and were mentored by Ric Flair (close enough to his real name). So seeing Randy Orton and his lackeys break Batista's arm on stage with a steel chair, while disturbing, didn't come across as real, at all. Think about it: If there were an unscripted all-out assault by three performers on another in a live event, security would be all over it. That's what they're there for, to prevent things from getting out of hand. So one must conclude that things were entirely under control.
5. Lastly, I'd like to see some semblance of order and more respect for the rules. I'd like to see win/loss records introduced, even if it's not genuine and subject to change (e.g. records wiped clean when a wrestler changes characters, such as when Johnny Nitro became John Morrison, or when a wrestler changes brands or alignment (heel/face)). I'd like to see the refs' authority and presence mean something, and I'd like to see some decisions reversed "upon closer examination of the footage". I'd like some matches to even possibly have rounds, e.g. have one person challenge another to a boxing match or an MMA-rules match. Of course, the outcome would still be scripted, but I think it could work out well.
All in all, I enjoy watching the WWE because they know how to put on an entertaining show. I've tried looking at real fighting (such as UFC) and it's just not as fun. What does impress me about the UFC is the sportsmanship and respect that UFC's fighters display. You know the WWE does it as well, it's just off-camera. And that's a shame, because I think that's the best part of UFC. That these guys can beat the holy hell out of one another and still respect the rules, and one another's skills.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Would you play this game?
Among many others, one thing that sets the Xbox 360 apart from other home entertainment consoles today is the Achievement system. For years past, we've been able to brag about our accomplishments in video games, but there really hasn't been any way to consistently prove this. Computers have screen recorders, but none are very reliable. You can record gaming footage from a console, but there's no way to prove you did it, as opposed to having downloaded that video from the Internet. With the Xbox 360, you have individual profiles; when you use it, you first sign into your profile (or use it as a guest), and your profile keeps all of your information separate from everybody else's, much like an account in Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. Your profile has an avatar, improved upon but nonetheless based on the Mii on the Nintendo Wii, a 3D character of your own creation, which can be made to look sorta like you, or it can be something entirely different. Then you have your gamer picture, a square icon which predates the avatar, but is still used to represent you in a smaller capacity. After that, you have your gamer score.
Traditionally, and though there are exceptions, retail Xbox 360 games come with 1,000 gamerscore that you can "unlock" by doing certain things in the game. This 1,000 gamerscore can be divided up into 1-99 Achievements, set accomplishments which net a predetermined score. Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games come with 200 gamerscore and must have 12 achievements, no more, no less. Exceptions include a couple huge games which have 1,200 gamerscore, and the expansions to the Rock Band franchise (e.g. AC/DC Track Pack, Track Pack 2, Classic Rock Track Pack) only come with 200/12 as though they were XBLA titles. How a game gives gamerscore depends entirely upon what the developer of the game wanted to do with the feature. Most games will give you a substantial award for completing the main objective. Many will give awards for completing important milestones in the game. Most award you for winning online matches. Some give you tiny awards for losing, as a sort of consolation prize. Many award you for finding secrets or by doing something creatively. For example, in the beginning of Half-Life 2 (from the game The Orange Box), you have no weapons, and you're being escorted through security checkpoints. A black stormtrooper guy knocks a soda can off the rim of a trashcan and tells you to pick it up, and throw it away. This is part of the tutorial. However, if, instead of throwing it in the trashcan, you throw it at HIM, well, he comes after you with a cattle prod. If you can get around him and away from him, you get 5 points for "Defiance". Later, in the course of normal game events, you're given the character's trademark crowbar from the first Half-Life, and you receive an award for this landmark.
Achievements and their associated gamerscore awards have become a point of pride for many Xbox owners. My account currently has 2405. My wife's is around 1800, and her brother has close to 12,500. But that's chump change; some people have 25,000 or more. A quick Google search lead me to a YouTube video showing a gamerscore of 237,355, but it's implied that this was obtained through an exploit in the system. On a given day of Xbox Live gaming, you're likely to see scores in the 40,000 to 50,000 range from time to time, but those are rare. Gamers in the 20,000 range are more common. What my brother-in-law does to get his, besides actually being very good at the games he plays, is, he has that membership at Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, he can rent as many games as he wants for as long as he wants, but he can only have one out at a time. Like us, he owns Rock Band and a handful of other games he plays just for fun, but he gets new games, and he beats them, not for all 1,000 points they're worth, but just to the end of the main story. He has 55-60 games on his profile (it keeps track of every game you play, as well). So that would be 50,000 gamerscore if he'd gotten all 1,000 from each. So it got me wondering: Would Xbox 360 gamers play a game which could take gamerscore as well as give it? This got me thinking, and I came up with an idea:
An auto insurance company and a car company team up to make a realistic driving game focusing on safety. While this game would seem boring, they'd map an entire state (New York or maybe California) and you'd be able to drive anywhere. The game itself could give you missions to drive people around, kind of like a tame Grand Theft Auto. The game's initial appeal would be that a total of 2,500 gamerscore could be obtained by unlocking all 99 of its achievements. However, there's a catch - there are a total of 99 "red" achievements which total NEGATIVE 5,000 gamerscore. Speed through a small town 10 miles per hour and get docked 10 points. The game could feature local trouble, you'd have a chance of getting a ticket and your insurance rate going up, creating an additional challenge to overcome within the game. You wouldn't get docked 10 points the next time you went 10 over, because the achievement was already unlocked, the penalty already imposed, but you could still be punished in-game if you were caught. However, maybe you go 15 over, you get docked 25 points. And so on until every green (normal) and red achievement were unlocked.
If you really went for all achievements, you'd have 99 green ones and 99 red ones, and you'd have 2500 gamerscore less than when you played the game. But, having accomplished this, would you really consider yourself worse off? In other words, is it the number of the score, or is it the sum of the accomplishments of playing and completing the games?
Traditionally, and though there are exceptions, retail Xbox 360 games come with 1,000 gamerscore that you can "unlock" by doing certain things in the game. This 1,000 gamerscore can be divided up into 1-99 Achievements, set accomplishments which net a predetermined score. Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games come with 200 gamerscore and must have 12 achievements, no more, no less. Exceptions include a couple huge games which have 1,200 gamerscore, and the expansions to the Rock Band franchise (e.g. AC/DC Track Pack, Track Pack 2, Classic Rock Track Pack) only come with 200/12 as though they were XBLA titles. How a game gives gamerscore depends entirely upon what the developer of the game wanted to do with the feature. Most games will give you a substantial award for completing the main objective. Many will give awards for completing important milestones in the game. Most award you for winning online matches. Some give you tiny awards for losing, as a sort of consolation prize. Many award you for finding secrets or by doing something creatively. For example, in the beginning of Half-Life 2 (from the game The Orange Box), you have no weapons, and you're being escorted through security checkpoints. A black stormtrooper guy knocks a soda can off the rim of a trashcan and tells you to pick it up, and throw it away. This is part of the tutorial. However, if, instead of throwing it in the trashcan, you throw it at HIM, well, he comes after you with a cattle prod. If you can get around him and away from him, you get 5 points for "Defiance". Later, in the course of normal game events, you're given the character's trademark crowbar from the first Half-Life, and you receive an award for this landmark.
Achievements and their associated gamerscore awards have become a point of pride for many Xbox owners. My account currently has 2405. My wife's is around 1800, and her brother has close to 12,500. But that's chump change; some people have 25,000 or more. A quick Google search lead me to a YouTube video showing a gamerscore of 237,355, but it's implied that this was obtained through an exploit in the system. On a given day of Xbox Live gaming, you're likely to see scores in the 40,000 to 50,000 range from time to time, but those are rare. Gamers in the 20,000 range are more common. What my brother-in-law does to get his, besides actually being very good at the games he plays, is, he has that membership at Blockbuster where, for $22 a month, he can rent as many games as he wants for as long as he wants, but he can only have one out at a time. Like us, he owns Rock Band and a handful of other games he plays just for fun, but he gets new games, and he beats them, not for all 1,000 points they're worth, but just to the end of the main story. He has 55-60 games on his profile (it keeps track of every game you play, as well). So that would be 50,000 gamerscore if he'd gotten all 1,000 from each. So it got me wondering: Would Xbox 360 gamers play a game which could take gamerscore as well as give it? This got me thinking, and I came up with an idea:
An auto insurance company and a car company team up to make a realistic driving game focusing on safety. While this game would seem boring, they'd map an entire state (New York or maybe California) and you'd be able to drive anywhere. The game itself could give you missions to drive people around, kind of like a tame Grand Theft Auto. The game's initial appeal would be that a total of 2,500 gamerscore could be obtained by unlocking all 99 of its achievements. However, there's a catch - there are a total of 99 "red" achievements which total NEGATIVE 5,000 gamerscore. Speed through a small town 10 miles per hour and get docked 10 points. The game could feature local trouble, you'd have a chance of getting a ticket and your insurance rate going up, creating an additional challenge to overcome within the game. You wouldn't get docked 10 points the next time you went 10 over, because the achievement was already unlocked, the penalty already imposed, but you could still be punished in-game if you were caught. However, maybe you go 15 over, you get docked 25 points. And so on until every green (normal) and red achievement were unlocked.
If you really went for all achievements, you'd have 99 green ones and 99 red ones, and you'd have 2500 gamerscore less than when you played the game. But, having accomplished this, would you really consider yourself worse off? In other words, is it the number of the score, or is it the sum of the accomplishments of playing and completing the games?
Saturday, May 23, 2009
A culture of perversion exposed
The night before last, I came into work and was appalled by what I saw on television in a cubicle. A 51-year-old North Carolina man from Morehead City was on "paid suspension" by the Carteret County school system, most recently as a school counselor at an unspecified school, and also in some capacity at Morehead City Primary School and Newport Middle School before that, for taking nude photos of young boys. Unmarried, this man has five adopted "sons", who are likely the subject of the photos, though that was never specified. The oldest boy, 18, has moved out quickly enough, but defends his adopted dad's activities, saying that he believes strongly in nudism, and that nakedness is not bad. Further investigation reveals that he was planning on taking two of his "sons" to a pedophile resort in the area, which has photos of nude children with nude adults on its website, but hasn't been shut down due to vague laws over what is artistic and what is pornographic.
I understand nudist colonies are fairly popular, particularly with the college-age crowd. Now, I have nothing against nudist colonies in general. I think it's a novel idea, but they become labeled "pedophile resorts" by me when they force children to participate as well. I have no problem with consenting adults in a closed colony practicing nudity. I don't care if they have mass orgies, either. It is not something I would choose to do, but hey, life's short and all that. If that's how they want to spend their life, that's all good. It's when they want to bring children into it that I have a problem.
I remember a few years ago I read an article in TIME about a pedophile resort, highlighting a young girl whose parents had been taking her there for years, every summer they'd rent a cabin or apartment or something, and I guess it was only during the summer, because clothes were forbidden. She said that as a kid she didn't mind, it was fun, and she says she was never touched by anybody or forced to perform any sexual acts, but she says as she reached puberty, she wanted to cover up, and not only was it not allowed, it was not tolerated. The resort made a huge deal about it, threatened sanctions against her parents. Being a clever girl, she got ahold of the rules, and found a loophole that said towels could be worn, for example to dry off after coming out of the pool. So she began wearing a towel. And that was all she was allowed to wear. Now what kind of adults would tell a child she can't wear clothes? That pretty much sums up a pedophile to me.
Nude photos - Art, Nature, or Pornography?
A WITN poll, from the same site, asks readers the following question: "A local nudist resort has pictures on its websites of naked adults with naked children. Do you think this practice is appropriate?" Of the 428 who answered yes or no, 77 said yes, this is OK, or appropriate. While I don't doubt some of them were pedophiles, as this story would certainly attract their lot, especially an anonymous poll, I'm sure a good portion would have no sexual attraction to children, yet would answer yes for other reasons. When I was a child, back in the early 1980s, there was no grey area. Parents took nude photos of their children, but it wasn't explicit, and it wasn't in excess at all. It was common practice to have one or two pictures of baby's first bath, in those blue baby tubs they had. My mom sent my wife a picture of me, just having gotten out of the tub, at perhaps age 5 or 6, fully nude from the front. Or was it the one sliding into the kiddie pool? But back then it was considered cute, and innocent, and when I reached school age, the practice stopped immediately, but practice is too strong a word. It wasn't like my parents practiced taking them. But back then, you had to pay for film, and then you had to pay to have the pictures developed and printed. And in being printed, somebody got to look at each one as it came out of the machine. So you couldn't take explicit pictures. Well, you could if you had a Polaroid, but those were specifically low resolution images that did not last long.
Now, it's so much different. Just a couple years ago I remember hearing about a woman who tried to shoot a home video of her 11-year-old daughter in the shower. Took her by surprise and was trying to take closeup shots of her chest, backside, and private areas. The girl was so disgusted, she told her teacher, who called the law. When confronted, the mother said the video was just for family. Family, right. I'm thinking Uncle Craig. As in Craigslist. Yeah, she needed money and was trying to hawk the video online. Family wouldn't want closeups of her chest and private areas. That's not nature, that's not cute or innocent, that is patently pornographic, and it's porn because it focuses on sex. Now, you take - imagine, in your head, a naked girl of about that age, just standing there. Being a decent human being, you don't look her up and down, you look her in the eye - it's not a pornographic scene, it's natural. We're born without clothes, so there's nothing wrong with it. However, same girl, but now she's on her back with her knees up and her legs spread wide open. That isn't natural at all, that is patently pornographic. And there's the difference.
Having not seen the photos this school counselor was busted for having, I can't judge just the photos, but I can say they were sexual in nature. First of all, he's a single guy - no girlfriend or wife to speak of. He lives with five young boys, and forces them to practice nudity in the home. He hasn't adopted any girls, just boys, which shows a preference. Now, nudity in and of itself does not perversion make, and child gender preference does not sexual orientation determine. But when you add them together, what it adds up to is that this guy is a homosexual pedophile. He prefers children, and he prefers them to be the same gender. Homosexuality is a hot issue these days, and I have nothing against homosexuals who prefer adults. That's all good with me. But homosexual pedophiles, I hate just as much as heterosexual pedophiles. Because it doesn't matter if they abuse boys or girls, or both, I hate 'em just the same. But because he prefers, possibly requires that they be male - he hasn't adopted any girls - that makes it sexual. Now that doesn't mean that if he had adopted kids of both genders and forced them all to strip for him that it wouldn't be sexual, but the addition of a gender preference does help to quantify things. There are undoubtedly bisexual/omnisexual pedophiles out there.
Art as Safe Haven for Pedophiles?
When I got home the next morning, I fired up my Firefox browser, and saw Google's response to the controversy. They say a picture speaks a thousand words; worked into the Google logo was a painting of a woman holding a nude girl of about 8 or 9 years old, with just a cloth covering her lap. I'm sure it's a coincidence, Google being a Mountain View, CA company, some 3,500 miles from Morehead City, NC, but their point is made just the same. Porn isn't pornographic sometimes, if it's art.
When I was a young teenager, I had a few Penthouse magazines hidden away in my closet. I got them from my best friend, who stole them from his dad. His dad kept them in the bathroom in a cupboard without a lock. We were 13, he'd sneak them over to my place in his backpack, and he and my brother and I would gather in my walk-in closet, which was like a fort back then, and we'd all giggle over the bare breasts and genitals. It was great. And he'd let me keep some, too. One, I remember, weirded me out because it had a little history article where it was talking about how in the 1800s, it was common practice for the wealthy to have nude portraits done of their children. Nothing explicit at all, and the one they had featured a girl of about 10 or 11, sitting on a rock, like at the beach, with her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms around her knees. Her arms covered her chest, and she was sitting at an angle, so you couldn't see between her legs. I was glad the picture was small, maybe a square inch at the most.
A few years later, one of my cousins became obsessed with anime, and to this day he, his brothers, and my aunt still are. Very strange lot. Anyway, one of my cousins puts in this videotape, it's an anime about three crime-fighting sisters, and all I can remember is their names started with A, B, and C, and they rhymed. Anyway, this scene he thought was so cool, had this girl of about six get out of a swimming pool, go into the changing room, strip out of her bathing suit, and get dressed. Of all the ways I could think of to do it tastefully (aside from not doing it at all), they avoided, and I was pretty disgusted. I thought he had something illegal on his hands, but it turns out that because it was animated, and not involving real kids, while distasteful, it was legal. And that makes sense. Nobody's really being hurt, freedom of speech and all that. "If you don't like it, don't look at it" and all that. Fine. I don't like it, so I don't look at it. As a more popular example, I hear the original Japanese Sailor Moon got away with the same stuff. (Well, OK, I've seen it, an anime music video I've seen shows a clip. It's bad. Worse, I bet I could find it on YouTube. Yep, I think I see it. Search YouTube for "Jerry Springer Weird Al" and look for the boy with the dazed-out eyes. I didn't want a clever IT nerd at the servers seeing a search for Sailor Moon in my net history, otherwise my search would have been more specific.)
Lastly, I saw a program on Showtime named "Sex and the Silver Screen" in which they covered the crackdown on underage sex and nudity in the late 1970s. Reportedly, movies made before this time featured children in nude scenes to softcore sexual situations, and this was stopped by the 1980s. However, because the films in question were made before the law was passed, the movies are legal, and are still available to this day, even remastered on DVD. And every now and then, those movies and movies with similar content produced in other countries (including a popular one from Italy) are discussed on movie forums, and one has to wonder about the fans of these movies. I called some out rather recently, actually, and these guys got pretty defensive, their arguments basically boiling down to "you normals wouldn't understand". I've come to believe that topics like, "Hey, anybody like (such and such movie)?" are generally a sort of gathering call, I don't know if they're swapping email addresses to trade the "real stuff" (meaning the hardcore porn), or what, I don't know, but it's a good bet it's a gathering of perverts.
I've always thought of myself as an advocate or ambassador to kids, and I certainly like spending time with them, and listening to what they have to say about various topics, and I love helping them learn, but no, I don't understand the attraction. Even if you can justify the attraction, it has to go both ways, and then you have to have consent. The consent must also be informed, and a preteen is incapable of making the level of informed consent to engage in sex. Furthermore, there are physical dangers, not just risks, certain internal parts which are not developed enough, not large enough, to handle sex. So there is no way, shape, or form that it can ever not be abuse, and abuse of the worst kind, and while these perverts may try to tell themselves (or others, e.g. on forums) that they love the kids, they're not fooling anybody, probably not even themselves. And I've always thought of it as natural, as human nature, to be somewhat defensive of kids. So when I hear of people advocating abuse in any form, or saying it doesn't matter, I wonder if they're somehow less than human.
I understand nudist colonies are fairly popular, particularly with the college-age crowd. Now, I have nothing against nudist colonies in general. I think it's a novel idea, but they become labeled "pedophile resorts" by me when they force children to participate as well. I have no problem with consenting adults in a closed colony practicing nudity. I don't care if they have mass orgies, either. It is not something I would choose to do, but hey, life's short and all that. If that's how they want to spend their life, that's all good. It's when they want to bring children into it that I have a problem.
I remember a few years ago I read an article in TIME about a pedophile resort, highlighting a young girl whose parents had been taking her there for years, every summer they'd rent a cabin or apartment or something, and I guess it was only during the summer, because clothes were forbidden. She said that as a kid she didn't mind, it was fun, and she says she was never touched by anybody or forced to perform any sexual acts, but she says as she reached puberty, she wanted to cover up, and not only was it not allowed, it was not tolerated. The resort made a huge deal about it, threatened sanctions against her parents. Being a clever girl, she got ahold of the rules, and found a loophole that said towels could be worn, for example to dry off after coming out of the pool. So she began wearing a towel. And that was all she was allowed to wear. Now what kind of adults would tell a child she can't wear clothes? That pretty much sums up a pedophile to me.
Nude photos - Art, Nature, or Pornography?
A WITN poll, from the same site, asks readers the following question: "A local nudist resort has pictures on its websites of naked adults with naked children. Do you think this practice is appropriate?" Of the 428 who answered yes or no, 77 said yes, this is OK, or appropriate. While I don't doubt some of them were pedophiles, as this story would certainly attract their lot, especially an anonymous poll, I'm sure a good portion would have no sexual attraction to children, yet would answer yes for other reasons. When I was a child, back in the early 1980s, there was no grey area. Parents took nude photos of their children, but it wasn't explicit, and it wasn't in excess at all. It was common practice to have one or two pictures of baby's first bath, in those blue baby tubs they had. My mom sent my wife a picture of me, just having gotten out of the tub, at perhaps age 5 or 6, fully nude from the front. Or was it the one sliding into the kiddie pool? But back then it was considered cute, and innocent, and when I reached school age, the practice stopped immediately, but practice is too strong a word. It wasn't like my parents practiced taking them. But back then, you had to pay for film, and then you had to pay to have the pictures developed and printed. And in being printed, somebody got to look at each one as it came out of the machine. So you couldn't take explicit pictures. Well, you could if you had a Polaroid, but those were specifically low resolution images that did not last long.
Now, it's so much different. Just a couple years ago I remember hearing about a woman who tried to shoot a home video of her 11-year-old daughter in the shower. Took her by surprise and was trying to take closeup shots of her chest, backside, and private areas. The girl was so disgusted, she told her teacher, who called the law. When confronted, the mother said the video was just for family. Family, right. I'm thinking Uncle Craig. As in Craigslist. Yeah, she needed money and was trying to hawk the video online. Family wouldn't want closeups of her chest and private areas. That's not nature, that's not cute or innocent, that is patently pornographic, and it's porn because it focuses on sex. Now, you take - imagine, in your head, a naked girl of about that age, just standing there. Being a decent human being, you don't look her up and down, you look her in the eye - it's not a pornographic scene, it's natural. We're born without clothes, so there's nothing wrong with it. However, same girl, but now she's on her back with her knees up and her legs spread wide open. That isn't natural at all, that is patently pornographic. And there's the difference.
Having not seen the photos this school counselor was busted for having, I can't judge just the photos, but I can say they were sexual in nature. First of all, he's a single guy - no girlfriend or wife to speak of. He lives with five young boys, and forces them to practice nudity in the home. He hasn't adopted any girls, just boys, which shows a preference. Now, nudity in and of itself does not perversion make, and child gender preference does not sexual orientation determine. But when you add them together, what it adds up to is that this guy is a homosexual pedophile. He prefers children, and he prefers them to be the same gender. Homosexuality is a hot issue these days, and I have nothing against homosexuals who prefer adults. That's all good with me. But homosexual pedophiles, I hate just as much as heterosexual pedophiles. Because it doesn't matter if they abuse boys or girls, or both, I hate 'em just the same. But because he prefers, possibly requires that they be male - he hasn't adopted any girls - that makes it sexual. Now that doesn't mean that if he had adopted kids of both genders and forced them all to strip for him that it wouldn't be sexual, but the addition of a gender preference does help to quantify things. There are undoubtedly bisexual/omnisexual pedophiles out there.
Art as Safe Haven for Pedophiles?
When I got home the next morning, I fired up my Firefox browser, and saw Google's response to the controversy. They say a picture speaks a thousand words; worked into the Google logo was a painting of a woman holding a nude girl of about 8 or 9 years old, with just a cloth covering her lap. I'm sure it's a coincidence, Google being a Mountain View, CA company, some 3,500 miles from Morehead City, NC, but their point is made just the same. Porn isn't pornographic sometimes, if it's art.
When I was a young teenager, I had a few Penthouse magazines hidden away in my closet. I got them from my best friend, who stole them from his dad. His dad kept them in the bathroom in a cupboard without a lock. We were 13, he'd sneak them over to my place in his backpack, and he and my brother and I would gather in my walk-in closet, which was like a fort back then, and we'd all giggle over the bare breasts and genitals. It was great. And he'd let me keep some, too. One, I remember, weirded me out because it had a little history article where it was talking about how in the 1800s, it was common practice for the wealthy to have nude portraits done of their children. Nothing explicit at all, and the one they had featured a girl of about 10 or 11, sitting on a rock, like at the beach, with her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms around her knees. Her arms covered her chest, and she was sitting at an angle, so you couldn't see between her legs. I was glad the picture was small, maybe a square inch at the most.
A few years later, one of my cousins became obsessed with anime, and to this day he, his brothers, and my aunt still are. Very strange lot. Anyway, one of my cousins puts in this videotape, it's an anime about three crime-fighting sisters, and all I can remember is their names started with A, B, and C, and they rhymed. Anyway, this scene he thought was so cool, had this girl of about six get out of a swimming pool, go into the changing room, strip out of her bathing suit, and get dressed. Of all the ways I could think of to do it tastefully (aside from not doing it at all), they avoided, and I was pretty disgusted. I thought he had something illegal on his hands, but it turns out that because it was animated, and not involving real kids, while distasteful, it was legal. And that makes sense. Nobody's really being hurt, freedom of speech and all that. "If you don't like it, don't look at it" and all that. Fine. I don't like it, so I don't look at it. As a more popular example, I hear the original Japanese Sailor Moon got away with the same stuff. (Well, OK, I've seen it, an anime music video I've seen shows a clip. It's bad. Worse, I bet I could find it on YouTube. Yep, I think I see it. Search YouTube for "Jerry Springer Weird Al" and look for the boy with the dazed-out eyes. I didn't want a clever IT nerd at the servers seeing a search for Sailor Moon in my net history, otherwise my search would have been more specific.)
Lastly, I saw a program on Showtime named "Sex and the Silver Screen" in which they covered the crackdown on underage sex and nudity in the late 1970s. Reportedly, movies made before this time featured children in nude scenes to softcore sexual situations, and this was stopped by the 1980s. However, because the films in question were made before the law was passed, the movies are legal, and are still available to this day, even remastered on DVD. And every now and then, those movies and movies with similar content produced in other countries (including a popular one from Italy) are discussed on movie forums, and one has to wonder about the fans of these movies. I called some out rather recently, actually, and these guys got pretty defensive, their arguments basically boiling down to "you normals wouldn't understand". I've come to believe that topics like, "Hey, anybody like (such and such movie)?" are generally a sort of gathering call, I don't know if they're swapping email addresses to trade the "real stuff" (meaning the hardcore porn), or what, I don't know, but it's a good bet it's a gathering of perverts.
I've always thought of myself as an advocate or ambassador to kids, and I certainly like spending time with them, and listening to what they have to say about various topics, and I love helping them learn, but no, I don't understand the attraction. Even if you can justify the attraction, it has to go both ways, and then you have to have consent. The consent must also be informed, and a preteen is incapable of making the level of informed consent to engage in sex. Furthermore, there are physical dangers, not just risks, certain internal parts which are not developed enough, not large enough, to handle sex. So there is no way, shape, or form that it can ever not be abuse, and abuse of the worst kind, and while these perverts may try to tell themselves (or others, e.g. on forums) that they love the kids, they're not fooling anybody, probably not even themselves. And I've always thought of it as natural, as human nature, to be somewhat defensive of kids. So when I hear of people advocating abuse in any form, or saying it doesn't matter, I wonder if they're somehow less than human.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Two games Harmonix needs in the Rock Band family
Last week I wrote about five songs that Harmonix needs to license for Rock Band. One of them was "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce. A day or two after I posted that article, I heard about Activision's forthcoming offering, "Guitar Hero's Greatest Hits" which will combine the best of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (those two previously only available for PlayStation 2), Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock into one big game. What's more, all of the songs will be master recordings, not cheap covers. (The covers were OK, but the masters are preferrable.) And what's best of all, "Through the Fire and Flames" is confirmed!
Oh yes. We will be getting that.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather than simply suggesting more songs, I now write about two expansion sets Harmonix needs to bring to the Rock Band family:
1. Rock Band: Adult Edition
One of the biggest problems with the Rock Band franchise is that, in order to get the coveted T rating which allows kids to buy games without parental permission, they censor songs and a lot of good songs would be impossible to do, because of the censorship. Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" was completely butchered, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Sir Psycho Sexy" was just a mistake. The T rating affords them the ability to use songs with suggestive themes ("Sir Psycho" is about a sex fiend who, among other things, rapes a "lady cop" who pulls him over; "Sickness" is about a guy killing his abusive mother); they just can't use most words. Every now and then they do something cool. On the Rock Band 2 disc, "Man in the Box" substitutes words that are phoenetically similar enough to credit you for singing the original lyrics. "...buried in my shit" becomes "buried in my pit", and "...shove my nose in shit" becomes "...shove my nose in spit". And they let Weezer get by with saying "bitch" (rather, "beotch") in the downloadable song "Troublemaker". Why they don't go the Battlestar Galactica route and replace "fuck" with "frak" (hey, it worked for the Sci-Fi channel on cable) is beyond me.
So they can't taint the main games, but as far as I can tell, nothing at all stops them from making an adult edition of Rock Band. First, redo the songs that were butchered with their original lyrics. Second, include songs that aren't just profane for the sake of being profane, but rather good songs that would never be usable on a T-rated Rock Band title, so that groups of adults who play Rock Band (like me, my wife, her brother, and our friend, and many others) can enjoy some more adult-oriented songs. And since some of these songs have hidden joke songs that can be unlocked near the end (e.g. "Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld" from South Park on the first Rock Band), throw in a few overly profane songs for shits & giggles. That new "Death to All But Metal" by Steel Panther, for example, sounds fun to play on all instruments (especially sing) but it's way too obscene to even consider. Another good "joke song" would be "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello. Borderline able to go in the T-rated game, it's still kind of harsh. Or how about going all out and doing "Fuck the World" by Insane Clown Posse, just for the line, "Don't bother trying to analyze these rhymes. In this song I say 'fuck' 93 times!" I haven't counted, but I don't doubt him.
The new GTA game on the DS drops two F-bombs in the intro movie alone. I thought I was being so funny modding my DS just to watch a porn clip on a Game Boy, and then Nintendo goes and proves that adult content isn't entirely outside the realm of what they can do with their handhelds. Kind of moots my point, but it was still fun to make. So if the Game Boy can swear, what makes Rock Band so puritan? There's nothing puritan about any rock star's life... unless your band is called Petra... so why not drop the pretense, at least for one game that, sure, kids won't be able to get at, but older players will eat right up, and of course like all the other games, you'd be able to integrate it into your master setlist by exporting the songs to the Xbox hard drive.
2. Rock Band Pro
Rock Band games are fairly balanced across the board. You've got easy games and hard games, and on the disc, it all balances out. While most of the downloadable songs lean toward the easy tiers, Rock Band's hardest songs, namely Yngwie Malmsteen's three, and Rude Mood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, are downloadable. But these games tend to wear out quickly for the best gamers out there. People who can master songs in no time. You see them on YouTube and score-tracking sites like ScoreHero. The top 100 or so scores all have 100%; once they can hit all the notes, they work on gaming the system to score the most points possible (overdrive timing). Even if you can top the high score by just a point or two, it's worth striving for.
My second suggestion, therefore, is to release a collection of the hardest downloadable content, plus some new stuff sidelined under the excuse that it would probably be too hard for most players. Songs that shouldn't be in the game because they'd just be stupidly hard, but a package that would appeal to the best of the best. I like telling people who are good, "You think you're good at Green Grass, but could you hang with Nightwish if Harmonix released some as DLC?" And then I'll put on the live version of "Wishmaster" and blow their minds. The song itself is a beast, but the live version is something else. Absolutely not to be fucked with. Might as well create a new difficulty tier in and call it "You've already failed". And then throw in some speed metal, and thrash, some death metal, in addition to the symphonic metal. And, as Stevie Ray Vaughan's DLC shows, songs don't need to be metal to be hard to play. Now that we have Yngwie Malmsteen, we need some Steve Vai. We need some Joe Satriani. We have blues. How about some jazz? Jazz is easy to make fun of, but try playing it.
The premise would be simple. In Rock Band, you start out as a garage band and end up touring the world, but even as you do so, the quality of the songs you're playing doesn't increase much. Rock Band Pro would put you in the shoes of a gifted musician, and your rise would not be in terms of venues played, but rather more like the respect of other musicians.
It seems like Harmonix answered Guitar Hero: Aerosmith with AC/DC: Rock Band Track Pack. Are they really answering Guitar Hero: Metallica with The Beatles: Rock Band? Sure, the Beatles are a good band, but will any of their songs offer a challenge? How about Nightwish: Rock Band Pro?
Oh yes. We will be getting that.
But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather than simply suggesting more songs, I now write about two expansion sets Harmonix needs to bring to the Rock Band family:
1. Rock Band: Adult Edition
One of the biggest problems with the Rock Band franchise is that, in order to get the coveted T rating which allows kids to buy games without parental permission, they censor songs and a lot of good songs would be impossible to do, because of the censorship. Disturbed's "Down With the Sickness" was completely butchered, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Sir Psycho Sexy" was just a mistake. The T rating affords them the ability to use songs with suggestive themes ("Sir Psycho" is about a sex fiend who, among other things, rapes a "lady cop" who pulls him over; "Sickness" is about a guy killing his abusive mother); they just can't use most words. Every now and then they do something cool. On the Rock Band 2 disc, "Man in the Box" substitutes words that are phoenetically similar enough to credit you for singing the original lyrics. "...buried in my shit" becomes "buried in my pit", and "...shove my nose in shit" becomes "...shove my nose in spit". And they let Weezer get by with saying "bitch" (rather, "beotch") in the downloadable song "Troublemaker". Why they don't go the Battlestar Galactica route and replace "fuck" with "frak" (hey, it worked for the Sci-Fi channel on cable) is beyond me.
So they can't taint the main games, but as far as I can tell, nothing at all stops them from making an adult edition of Rock Band. First, redo the songs that were butchered with their original lyrics. Second, include songs that aren't just profane for the sake of being profane, but rather good songs that would never be usable on a T-rated Rock Band title, so that groups of adults who play Rock Band (like me, my wife, her brother, and our friend, and many others) can enjoy some more adult-oriented songs. And since some of these songs have hidden joke songs that can be unlocked near the end (e.g. "Timmy & The Lords of the Underworld" from South Park on the first Rock Band), throw in a few overly profane songs for shits & giggles. That new "Death to All But Metal" by Steel Panther, for example, sounds fun to play on all instruments (especially sing) but it's way too obscene to even consider. Another good "joke song" would be "Three Little Pigs" by Green Jello. Borderline able to go in the T-rated game, it's still kind of harsh. Or how about going all out and doing "Fuck the World" by Insane Clown Posse, just for the line, "Don't bother trying to analyze these rhymes. In this song I say 'fuck' 93 times!" I haven't counted, but I don't doubt him.
The new GTA game on the DS drops two F-bombs in the intro movie alone. I thought I was being so funny modding my DS just to watch a porn clip on a Game Boy, and then Nintendo goes and proves that adult content isn't entirely outside the realm of what they can do with their handhelds. Kind of moots my point, but it was still fun to make. So if the Game Boy can swear, what makes Rock Band so puritan? There's nothing puritan about any rock star's life... unless your band is called Petra... so why not drop the pretense, at least for one game that, sure, kids won't be able to get at, but older players will eat right up, and of course like all the other games, you'd be able to integrate it into your master setlist by exporting the songs to the Xbox hard drive.
2. Rock Band Pro
Rock Band games are fairly balanced across the board. You've got easy games and hard games, and on the disc, it all balances out. While most of the downloadable songs lean toward the easy tiers, Rock Band's hardest songs, namely Yngwie Malmsteen's three, and Rude Mood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, are downloadable. But these games tend to wear out quickly for the best gamers out there. People who can master songs in no time. You see them on YouTube and score-tracking sites like ScoreHero. The top 100 or so scores all have 100%; once they can hit all the notes, they work on gaming the system to score the most points possible (overdrive timing). Even if you can top the high score by just a point or two, it's worth striving for.
My second suggestion, therefore, is to release a collection of the hardest downloadable content, plus some new stuff sidelined under the excuse that it would probably be too hard for most players. Songs that shouldn't be in the game because they'd just be stupidly hard, but a package that would appeal to the best of the best. I like telling people who are good, "You think you're good at Green Grass, but could you hang with Nightwish if Harmonix released some as DLC?" And then I'll put on the live version of "Wishmaster" and blow their minds. The song itself is a beast, but the live version is something else. Absolutely not to be fucked with. Might as well create a new difficulty tier in and call it "You've already failed". And then throw in some speed metal, and thrash, some death metal, in addition to the symphonic metal. And, as Stevie Ray Vaughan's DLC shows, songs don't need to be metal to be hard to play. Now that we have Yngwie Malmsteen, we need some Steve Vai. We need some Joe Satriani. We have blues. How about some jazz? Jazz is easy to make fun of, but try playing it.
The premise would be simple. In Rock Band, you start out as a garage band and end up touring the world, but even as you do so, the quality of the songs you're playing doesn't increase much. Rock Band Pro would put you in the shoes of a gifted musician, and your rise would not be in terms of venues played, but rather more like the respect of other musicians.
It seems like Harmonix answered Guitar Hero: Aerosmith with AC/DC: Rock Band Track Pack. Are they really answering Guitar Hero: Metallica with The Beatles: Rock Band? Sure, the Beatles are a good band, but will any of their songs offer a challenge? How about Nightwish: Rock Band Pro?
The Pope is an idiot.
"Is the Pope a pedophile?" is the meaner variation on "Does a bear shit in the woods?", itself a dirty and sarcastic way of saying "yes". I don't know the true answer to that first question, but I do know that the Pope is an idiot.
Never mind that he's the patriarch of a religion which adamantly opposes marriage between two men (or women) who love one another while at the same time protecting pedophile priests with equal resolve. I mean, anyone who says love between consenting adults of the same gender is wrong, but if it's a man forcing himself on a boy, it's alright, must be a rational individual, right? There's the world's self-appointed moral authority - it's no wonder so many people enjoy being bad!
But that's just traditional Vatican hypocrisy. It's not just the atheists who can see it; some of God's followers take the Catholic Church with a grain of salt as well. I wouldn't have anything to say if the Pope were just continuing the Church's storied tradition of hypocrisy and abuse. Downright stupidity shouldn't make a headline, either, but hey, it's a slow news day, you know?
Apparently, as reported by the BBC, the Pope flew down to Africa and told this AIDS-ravaged continent that condoms aren't the answer, and that contraceptives are part of a decline in morality. He stopped short of including homosexuality in his list of immoral contributors to this decline, and also stopped short of saying that people who got AIDS through sex deserve it, but that's what he was getting at. So condoms not only prevent unwanted pregnancies, which the Church has always taken a hard line with, but they prevent disease as well. Seems the prevention of disease is not a good enough benefit to offset the "atrocities" of not wanting to start a family just yet, though AIDS prevention, not family planning, was the focus of the article.
The Pope's solution? Don't have sex. Oh, really? Is he serious? If people want to get down, they're gonna get down. Besides, every time a girl has her period, including when she's 9 or 10 or whenever they start, that means an opportunity to bring a new life into the world was passed by in favor of not wanting to raise a little taxpayer. Ultimately, fundamentalist Christians and hard-right Republicans want to rescind womens' rights and turn women into breeding farms as soon as they're old enough to have children as inferred by their opposition to contraceptives and abortion; take their remarks on those subjects to the farthest logical conclusion, and that's what you wind up with. Pure stupidity and a lot of steps backwards.
And forget about preventing AIDS, it's not that big a deal, is it, Your Holiness? Someone ought to contract the Pope with AIDS and see how important he sees it. Of course, they don't choose Popes that are more than a few years from their deathbed anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter, AIDS might not work fast enough for him.
A signature on the GameFAQs message boards says something like: Religion is to the poor true, to the wise false, and to those in power useful. It's true. I mean, I believe, despite logical arguments telling me the entire Christian mythos is false and explaining where it all comes from. But a part of me still believes. Not enough to go to Church... organized religion is crap, more often than not these days a congregation of idiots, stupid people gathering and preaching hate and intolerance. Fifty years ago it was blacks, now it was gays, the Church always seems to need some group to villify, no matter how good that group's members themselves may be. Some are even Christians themselves! What ever happened to sin and temptation and Satan being the bad guys?
Never mind that he's the patriarch of a religion which adamantly opposes marriage between two men (or women) who love one another while at the same time protecting pedophile priests with equal resolve. I mean, anyone who says love between consenting adults of the same gender is wrong, but if it's a man forcing himself on a boy, it's alright, must be a rational individual, right? There's the world's self-appointed moral authority - it's no wonder so many people enjoy being bad!
But that's just traditional Vatican hypocrisy. It's not just the atheists who can see it; some of God's followers take the Catholic Church with a grain of salt as well. I wouldn't have anything to say if the Pope were just continuing the Church's storied tradition of hypocrisy and abuse. Downright stupidity shouldn't make a headline, either, but hey, it's a slow news day, you know?
Apparently, as reported by the BBC, the Pope flew down to Africa and told this AIDS-ravaged continent that condoms aren't the answer, and that contraceptives are part of a decline in morality. He stopped short of including homosexuality in his list of immoral contributors to this decline, and also stopped short of saying that people who got AIDS through sex deserve it, but that's what he was getting at. So condoms not only prevent unwanted pregnancies, which the Church has always taken a hard line with, but they prevent disease as well. Seems the prevention of disease is not a good enough benefit to offset the "atrocities" of not wanting to start a family just yet, though AIDS prevention, not family planning, was the focus of the article.
The Pope's solution? Don't have sex. Oh, really? Is he serious? If people want to get down, they're gonna get down. Besides, every time a girl has her period, including when she's 9 or 10 or whenever they start, that means an opportunity to bring a new life into the world was passed by in favor of not wanting to raise a little taxpayer. Ultimately, fundamentalist Christians and hard-right Republicans want to rescind womens' rights and turn women into breeding farms as soon as they're old enough to have children as inferred by their opposition to contraceptives and abortion; take their remarks on those subjects to the farthest logical conclusion, and that's what you wind up with. Pure stupidity and a lot of steps backwards.
And forget about preventing AIDS, it's not that big a deal, is it, Your Holiness? Someone ought to contract the Pope with AIDS and see how important he sees it. Of course, they don't choose Popes that are more than a few years from their deathbed anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter, AIDS might not work fast enough for him.
A signature on the GameFAQs message boards says something like: Religion is to the poor true, to the wise false, and to those in power useful. It's true. I mean, I believe, despite logical arguments telling me the entire Christian mythos is false and explaining where it all comes from. But a part of me still believes. Not enough to go to Church... organized religion is crap, more often than not these days a congregation of idiots, stupid people gathering and preaching hate and intolerance. Fifty years ago it was blacks, now it was gays, the Church always seems to need some group to villify, no matter how good that group's members themselves may be. Some are even Christians themselves! What ever happened to sin and temptation and Satan being the bad guys?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
5 Songs That Need to Be in Rock Band
1. "Scotty Doesn't Know" by Lustra
If the title of this song isn't familiar, you NEED to go out and see Euro Trip RIGHT NOW. The movie's about average among the great college humor movies of the last 30 years, but then again, it does have its moments. This hilariously dirty song about Fiona and Scotty's sham of a relationship told from the point of view of Fiona's backdoor man, who makes a big joke about everything, and it's a lot of fun to listen to, and sounds fun as hell to play for all four instruments. Best of all, nobody's heard of Lustra, even people who have seen the movie. You might remember the song, but the band is still an independent act out of Southern California. Harmonix should have no problem licensing their song, which would only make lots of money for both parties. And speaking of parties, it would become the essential song to play at a Rock Band party, along with The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".
2. "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce
Yeah, I went there. But seriously now. Not only is TtFaF the sole measuring stick by which all virtual guitars are compared, it's the first song most people think of when you talk about Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, the last Guitar Hero title most Rock Band loyalists played. Before Rock Band came out, GH3 was THE music game to play, and while it had a lot of great songs which will still be legendary 25 years from now, the song that anybody who beat it will remember it for is "Fire and Flames". The song is nearly impossible to pass on Expert and it's solely responsible for clever gamers to rig "bots" to pass songs for them. God challenging Satan to a duel with this song at the end of the tutorial helps as well. Onto the gameplay, though. We know the guitar is challenging - or do we? When you play "Fire and Flames" in Guitar Hero 3, you're doing the work of two guitarists. Watch the video - during the solo, the guitarists trade off. They clearly show it. Put it on Rock Band and divide the work in half. It'll still be hard as hell, but people who do good on Rock Band's "Green Grass and High Tides" and Rock Band 2's "Painkiller" shouldn't have too hard a time getting through it. It sounds like a blast on drums, and it'd clearly be epic to sing. The only problem is that it could be seen as too closely tied to the Guitar Hero brand and it's widely hated by Rock Band loyalists, at least, in words on message boards. Put it out and watch them all download it to prove themselves on the other three instruments. I know I want a crack at it on bass. I might not be able to pass it on Expert, but I know I can on Medium and I can probably get Hard after a few tries.
3. "The Pursuit" by Evans Blue
I really don't know how to classify Evans Blue. They sound like Tool, but not as creepy. Maybe a cross between Tool and Disturbed, but with a vocalist who is completely beyond compare. As for the singing, you might label it as emo, and it's certainly emotional rock, very emotional, with lyrics about relationships, most of them amazing failures, but the music is beautiful and angry at the same time, but it's a controlled anger, more of a dark passion. Both of their albums proceed like a dream, especially their second and final album. "The Pursuit" is both an abbreviation of the title, "The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends", which is also the last line of the song, delivered after an epic buildup. This band has many great songs as both of their albums are nearly perfect for the kind of music it is (and how many bands can you say put out as many near-perfect albums as albums they put out in total?); other candidates include "Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now", "Q (The Best One of Our Lives)", "Kiss the Flag", "In a Red Dress and Alone", "Beg", and even the two songs that got heavy rotation on rock radio in 2006, "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" and "Over". Unfortunately, the band broke up last year - well, technically they just fired their vocalist, who was better than two-thirds of what made them special to their fans in the first place. While some bands, most notably AC/DC, have come back stronger than ever after changing vocalists, only time will tell.
4. something in Latin
Doesn't matter what. My picks are "Salva Nos" by Yuki Kajiura, the FIFTH version of the song from her "Fiction" album, and "One Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu. The metal version used in the second Final Fantasy movie, "Advent Children". See, with all these wicked instrumentals coming out with "NO vocal part" as exclaimed in red when you go to buy the song, e.g. "YYZ" by Rush and "Rude Mood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vocalists need a song that is clearly a song for vocalists, but not a pushover, either. Rock Band has enough of them, they're called "Testify" and "Give it Away", two songs I can gold star in Performance Mode (track invisible) and I suck at singing. No, vocalists need a challenge beyond reading words on a screen (or knowing them by heart) and matching tone and pitch. Once you can do that, the hardest part seems to be singing songs by vocalists with certain special tones, such as Geddy Lee from Rush, or Bon Scott or Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Or if you're a guy, the female vocals will get you every time. But change the language, use one that nobody really speaks, and what you have would be to vocals what "Through the Fire and Flames" is to Guitar Hero guitarists. The new measuring stick. Oh, and both of those songs would be good on the other instruments, though "Salva Nos" is techno and would have to be translated. Not an impossible task. On the business side, I imagine either of those songs would be fairly easy for Harmonix to license.
5. "The Pharaoh Sails to Orion" by Nightwish
I used to say that the biggest reason Nightwish wasn't in Rock Band (clearly a match made in heaven) is that Harmonix didn't want to deal with a huge increase in customers returning broken instruments, but the release of Yngwie Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs recently have shot a few big holes in that theory. The music is just as fast and wickedly twisted as DragonForce's "Fire and Flames" and would be a good answer to that song for the Rock Band platform. I would actually prefer that they wait for a future platform which would allow for dual vocalists (duets) as the male and female parts go so well together on this track. Activision has dealt a decent slap to Rock Band with the announcement of a Within Temptation song to go on sale next week. Within Temptation are one of the more successful European metal bands trying to copy the formula of Nightwish's second and third albums. While nobody's actually done it (including Nightwish themselves, especially after breaking up and re-forming with a new vocalist), Within Temptation have come the closest. Seems to me Harmonix can either do nothing and hope that their less-experienced customers who haven't heard either band won't notice... or they can trump Activision and drop some Nightwish. Pretty much anything from "Oceanborn" or "Wishmaster" - the live version of the latter's title track would win on all kinds of levels. We're talking metal somewhere between Iron Maiden and DragonForce with vocals in the opera range. Think Enya. But singing to DragonForce or Iron Maiden. And you wind up with something that, for years, I didn't think was possible. And it pretty much is impossible in America - you've got to go to Europe for music like that. The closest thing we have is very heavily diluted - I think Evanuisance is still the closest American approximation, and it's like comparing Dora the Explorer to Akira - both are animated, but one is infinitely more complex.
There are hundreds of songs that should be in Rock Band. The oldest compilation album I still have to this day that I made contains some of the best songs of the 1990s, and a lot of those bands aren't in the game. Sure, you have Alice in Chains, but what about Soul Asylum, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers (Bob Dylan's son Jakob's band), Collective Soul, Live? Where's Marilyn Manson? He's got to have a song that's both clean enough for the game and popular enough for the fans. What about Korn? Oh, and let's not forget two of the best of all time, Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, are still absent. So are The Beatles, but that's coming in September. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger, The Doors, The Eagles, all on Guitar Hero World Tour but nothing for Rock Band. So while one can hardly fault the selection so far (592 songs at the time of this writing), there is still a long way to go.
If the title of this song isn't familiar, you NEED to go out and see Euro Trip RIGHT NOW. The movie's about average among the great college humor movies of the last 30 years, but then again, it does have its moments. This hilariously dirty song about Fiona and Scotty's sham of a relationship told from the point of view of Fiona's backdoor man, who makes a big joke about everything, and it's a lot of fun to listen to, and sounds fun as hell to play for all four instruments. Best of all, nobody's heard of Lustra, even people who have seen the movie. You might remember the song, but the band is still an independent act out of Southern California. Harmonix should have no problem licensing their song, which would only make lots of money for both parties. And speaking of parties, it would become the essential song to play at a Rock Band party, along with The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)".
2. "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce
Yeah, I went there. But seriously now. Not only is TtFaF the sole measuring stick by which all virtual guitars are compared, it's the first song most people think of when you talk about Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, the last Guitar Hero title most Rock Band loyalists played. Before Rock Band came out, GH3 was THE music game to play, and while it had a lot of great songs which will still be legendary 25 years from now, the song that anybody who beat it will remember it for is "Fire and Flames". The song is nearly impossible to pass on Expert and it's solely responsible for clever gamers to rig "bots" to pass songs for them. God challenging Satan to a duel with this song at the end of the tutorial helps as well. Onto the gameplay, though. We know the guitar is challenging - or do we? When you play "Fire and Flames" in Guitar Hero 3, you're doing the work of two guitarists. Watch the video - during the solo, the guitarists trade off. They clearly show it. Put it on Rock Band and divide the work in half. It'll still be hard as hell, but people who do good on Rock Band's "Green Grass and High Tides" and Rock Band 2's "Painkiller" shouldn't have too hard a time getting through it. It sounds like a blast on drums, and it'd clearly be epic to sing. The only problem is that it could be seen as too closely tied to the Guitar Hero brand and it's widely hated by Rock Band loyalists, at least, in words on message boards. Put it out and watch them all download it to prove themselves on the other three instruments. I know I want a crack at it on bass. I might not be able to pass it on Expert, but I know I can on Medium and I can probably get Hard after a few tries.
3. "The Pursuit" by Evans Blue
I really don't know how to classify Evans Blue. They sound like Tool, but not as creepy. Maybe a cross between Tool and Disturbed, but with a vocalist who is completely beyond compare. As for the singing, you might label it as emo, and it's certainly emotional rock, very emotional, with lyrics about relationships, most of them amazing failures, but the music is beautiful and angry at the same time, but it's a controlled anger, more of a dark passion. Both of their albums proceed like a dream, especially their second and final album. "The Pursuit" is both an abbreviation of the title, "The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal of Life Ends", which is also the last line of the song, delivered after an epic buildup. This band has many great songs as both of their albums are nearly perfect for the kind of music it is (and how many bands can you say put out as many near-perfect albums as albums they put out in total?); other candidates include "Dear Lucid, Our Time is Right Now", "Q (The Best One of Our Lives)", "Kiss the Flag", "In a Red Dress and Alone", "Beg", and even the two songs that got heavy rotation on rock radio in 2006, "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" and "Over". Unfortunately, the band broke up last year - well, technically they just fired their vocalist, who was better than two-thirds of what made them special to their fans in the first place. While some bands, most notably AC/DC, have come back stronger than ever after changing vocalists, only time will tell.
4. something in Latin
Doesn't matter what. My picks are "Salva Nos" by Yuki Kajiura, the FIFTH version of the song from her "Fiction" album, and "One Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu. The metal version used in the second Final Fantasy movie, "Advent Children". See, with all these wicked instrumentals coming out with "NO vocal part" as exclaimed in red when you go to buy the song, e.g. "YYZ" by Rush and "Rude Mood" by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vocalists need a song that is clearly a song for vocalists, but not a pushover, either. Rock Band has enough of them, they're called "Testify" and "Give it Away", two songs I can gold star in Performance Mode (track invisible) and I suck at singing. No, vocalists need a challenge beyond reading words on a screen (or knowing them by heart) and matching tone and pitch. Once you can do that, the hardest part seems to be singing songs by vocalists with certain special tones, such as Geddy Lee from Rush, or Bon Scott or Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Or if you're a guy, the female vocals will get you every time. But change the language, use one that nobody really speaks, and what you have would be to vocals what "Through the Fire and Flames" is to Guitar Hero guitarists. The new measuring stick. Oh, and both of those songs would be good on the other instruments, though "Salva Nos" is techno and would have to be translated. Not an impossible task. On the business side, I imagine either of those songs would be fairly easy for Harmonix to license.
5. "The Pharaoh Sails to Orion" by Nightwish
I used to say that the biggest reason Nightwish wasn't in Rock Band (clearly a match made in heaven) is that Harmonix didn't want to deal with a huge increase in customers returning broken instruments, but the release of Yngwie Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs recently have shot a few big holes in that theory. The music is just as fast and wickedly twisted as DragonForce's "Fire and Flames" and would be a good answer to that song for the Rock Band platform. I would actually prefer that they wait for a future platform which would allow for dual vocalists (duets) as the male and female parts go so well together on this track. Activision has dealt a decent slap to Rock Band with the announcement of a Within Temptation song to go on sale next week. Within Temptation are one of the more successful European metal bands trying to copy the formula of Nightwish's second and third albums. While nobody's actually done it (including Nightwish themselves, especially after breaking up and re-forming with a new vocalist), Within Temptation have come the closest. Seems to me Harmonix can either do nothing and hope that their less-experienced customers who haven't heard either band won't notice... or they can trump Activision and drop some Nightwish. Pretty much anything from "Oceanborn" or "Wishmaster" - the live version of the latter's title track would win on all kinds of levels. We're talking metal somewhere between Iron Maiden and DragonForce with vocals in the opera range. Think Enya. But singing to DragonForce or Iron Maiden. And you wind up with something that, for years, I didn't think was possible. And it pretty much is impossible in America - you've got to go to Europe for music like that. The closest thing we have is very heavily diluted - I think Evanuisance is still the closest American approximation, and it's like comparing Dora the Explorer to Akira - both are animated, but one is infinitely more complex.
There are hundreds of songs that should be in Rock Band. The oldest compilation album I still have to this day that I made contains some of the best songs of the 1990s, and a lot of those bands aren't in the game. Sure, you have Alice in Chains, but what about Soul Asylum, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers (Bob Dylan's son Jakob's band), Collective Soul, Live? Where's Marilyn Manson? He's got to have a song that's both clean enough for the game and popular enough for the fans. What about Korn? Oh, and let's not forget two of the best of all time, Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin, are still absent. So are The Beatles, but that's coming in September. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Seger, The Doors, The Eagles, all on Guitar Hero World Tour but nothing for Rock Band. So while one can hardly fault the selection so far (592 songs at the time of this writing), there is still a long way to go.
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