In music, movies and on television, the 80's are back in a big way. Let's not let nostalgia cloud our judgment... here's a rundown of some of the good and the bad of the 1980's:
Why the 80's (in the US) sucked;
Unchecked avarice
Rock and Roll took the decade off
Yuppies
Michael Douglas
Michael Jackson
Cartoons were really, really bad
Mindless action flicks
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Pop music
The 70's had to end for it to start
Ronald Reagan
The whole fucking Police Academy franchise
Madonna
Joe Camel
DayGlo
Women's shoulder pads
Perms
Nuclear proliferation and the threat of global nuclear war
That solid white, black and red art print of that asian woman with the ruby red lipstick and heavy eye makeup
Smoking in restaurants
High school cliques were really, really important
Word processors and dot matrix printers
The NES control pad (ouch)
MOTHERFUCKING Metroid passwords
Car phones
Pink neon, pink neon everywhere
Tom Cruise... HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE TOM CRUISE.
Teen Wolf (what the hell?)
Swatch watches
Alf
Suburbs/suburban life
Sexual repression
Homophobia
Film colorization
The original Star Wars trilogy ended with an audible fart and a bunch of Ewoks
Ewoks
Televangelism
Leftover hippies
Dan Quayle
Why the 80's (in the US) were cool:
New Wave
The origins of Rap
Arcades
Typewriters existed
Pirate radio stations
Bloom County/Berkeley Breathed
The Far Side
Nerds (candy)
The Brat Pack movies (yeah, I said it)
RoboCop
Watchably bad B movies in theaters and worse ones that went direct to video (which were AWESOME!!!)
Local video stores/rental places and that mysterious back room
Spree violence was less common than during the decades that preceded or followed
Sushi
The end of the idealized "nuclear family"
Boom-boxes
B Boys
Street Art
The Neverending Story
Ice cream trucks
Akira
Cheers
The original Apple Macintosh with the entire OS loaded onto a single 3.5" floppy and some shareware games on another
Dan Quayle jokes
Overall analysis: 1980's = inadequate decade.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
Freedom isn't Free
I always thought it was funny how those, in the US, who are most adamant about funding the military, the most hawkish about colonialism
spreading democracy and the most vocal about showing support for our veterans are also the same people who rally against having to pay for those things by way of federal tax.
So here; this is for all my friends who haven't thought about HOW we pay to ensure that our veterans are not forgotten and can live well for their service, for all my friends who haven't thought about how we can keep all those troops who are in active service fed and housed, about how we can fund defending our own freedoms.
So here; this is for all my friends who haven't thought about HOW we pay to ensure that our veterans are not forgotten and can live well for their service, for all my friends who haven't thought about how we can keep all those troops who are in active service fed and housed, about how we can fund defending our own freedoms.
The Future of Steam -- Social Networking
There are many reasons why a computer gamer would use Steam; it is convenient for launching and organizing your collection, it has a huge catalog of games and software, it has frequent, wonderful sales, lots and lots of indie games, there is Greenlight, games can be automatically updated and patched, Steamworks is one of the least offensive DRM schemes, many people like the achievements they can get from much of the games and software available... the list goes on.
There is also an integrated social network on Steam. People probably don't like using those two words “social network” to describe Steam Friends, but that's what it is.
Having a social network on Steam is wonderful and all, if you don't like using it, it is easily ignored, however, Valve went ahead and not only gameified Steam Friends, they made it integral to qualifying for many of their promotions. Without having 10 or more “friends” in your list you simply can not qualify for many promotions. Why? Are people who use Steam to play games rather than chit-chat on the social network aspect less worthy of discounts, prizes and achievements? Less capable of giving valuable feedback on a product? Is Valve telling us that social gaming is the future of gaming and that we should just get used to it and play their soon-to-be-released version of Farmville?
If one has the ethics and wherewithal to not capitulate and beg for users to add them so that they can get that shiny profile badge, qualify for beta-testing on a new product and earn that piece of virtual coal, they are effectively excluded and that's not really cool.
Valve, I thought you were cool.
There is also an integrated social network on Steam. People probably don't like using those two words “social network” to describe Steam Friends, but that's what it is.
Having a social network on Steam is wonderful and all, if you don't like using it, it is easily ignored, however, Valve went ahead and not only gameified Steam Friends, they made it integral to qualifying for many of their promotions. Without having 10 or more “friends” in your list you simply can not qualify for many promotions. Why? Are people who use Steam to play games rather than chit-chat on the social network aspect less worthy of discounts, prizes and achievements? Less capable of giving valuable feedback on a product? Is Valve telling us that social gaming is the future of gaming and that we should just get used to it and play their soon-to-be-released version of Farmville?
If one has the ethics and wherewithal to not capitulate and beg for users to add them so that they can get that shiny profile badge, qualify for beta-testing on a new product and earn that piece of virtual coal, they are effectively excluded and that's not really cool.
Valve, I thought you were cool.
Is Internet Piracy a Symptom of Greed?
Is internet “piracy” greed?
Isn't “greed” a bit strong?
Was it greed when we popped in a
Memorex to record our favorite songs off the radio?
Made a mix-tape for our crush?
Did greed play a hand in cracking the shareware version of some DOS game
for a buggy “full” version?
In giving it to a friend?
Was it greed when we used our Tivo to
record our favorite show to watch later, commercial free?
When we later shared that show with our
family?
Is it greed when one looks at an art
print online?
When one prints it themselves and pins
it to their wall?
I don't buy that it is greed that makes
us want to experience art that we may not be able to afford.
Copyright laws are clearly outdated and
have been abused and expanded for decades to benefit
mega-corporations. They hold onto licenses way after they should be
in the public domain, they charge fees for every possible use of
their properties and they abuse the laws to censor derivative works
and criticism.
Should Micky Mouse STILL be a
profitable and protected property for Disney with Walt Disney himself
long dead and the mouse's first appearance having been in 1928?
Nineteen-freakin'-twenty-eight?!
So where, truly, does the greed lie? In
the pirates or the mega-corporations who have lobbied for laws that
allow them almost complete control and monetization of more
properties than they know what to do with that won't expire until the
end of time if they get their way?
Both perhaps, but it is not as black
and white as the rights holders paint it for they, themselves, are
very tarnished.
I'm not so sure that it is greed alone that gives a person the desire to make a digital copy
of a digital file composed of harmless ons and offs, ones and zeros;
like so much Morse code, to appreciate something they don't
have and want to experience or make use of?
Not greed, I don't think, but a feeling
of entitlement, certainly. An entitlement that is witnessed not only
in those pirates who download those copies of those files but also in
the actions of the corporate rights holders themselves.
As Louis D. Brandeis said: “If we
desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.”
If the law makers made the laws
surrounding copyright respectable there would be much less of a
problem. It wouldn't go away of course, but nothing unethical ever
does.
Also; I'd like to see a revenue
analysis of piracy correlated with music sales (people who pirate
music then buy it) and the money that artists earn from legit
streaming services. That's something someone should look into because
streaming don't seem to pay the bills.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Do it, rub Blizzards snotty little face in it.
There was a time when one could play Unreal Tournament on a 56k dial-up modem lag free. Today, in late 2013, I cannot play Diablo III with a dsl connection many times faster than that, in single player mode, without lag affecting every action I take.
17 months after it released on PC Diablo III is still virtually unplayable to thousands of the rightful purchasers of the product.
Blizzard has taken the incentive and added and changed many things on the PC version of Diablo III, most of them completely irrelevant to the complaints that the games customer base asked for, begged for, gave up playing the game for, now hate Blizzard for.
I held out hope, I even bought Heart of the Swarm (I did), I've played the beta for the new micro-transaction based, social card game Hearthfire (I have, it's like a Zynga version of Duels of the Planeswalkers and literally requires playing against other humans for advancement, it also has an always online drm requirement for every single action taken... vs CPU).
I now completely give my puny, insignificant support to any group who can retrieve adequate server data from Diablo III and crack the game for totally offline play. I'd even pledge money to them for doing an honorable service to humanity... more money than I paid for Diablo III; just to spite Blizzard. Maybe someone could even mod the game so that you can actually build a ROLE PLAYING character instead of just playing for better loot with the same runes equipped that everyone else has. Maybe they could write a story that doesn't sound like it was penned by a trained monkey. Maybe they could make the loot drop system balanced.
Pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking? Yes. But it's certainly more probable, at this point, than Blizzard salvaging it's reputation as a decent game developer.
17 months after it released on PC Diablo III is still virtually unplayable to thousands of the rightful purchasers of the product.
Blizzard has taken the incentive and added and changed many things on the PC version of Diablo III, most of them completely irrelevant to the complaints that the games customer base asked for, begged for, gave up playing the game for, now hate Blizzard for.
I held out hope, I even bought Heart of the Swarm (I did), I've played the beta for the new micro-transaction based, social card game Hearthfire (I have, it's like a Zynga version of Duels of the Planeswalkers and literally requires playing against other humans for advancement, it also has an always online drm requirement for every single action taken... vs CPU).
I now completely give my puny, insignificant support to any group who can retrieve adequate server data from Diablo III and crack the game for totally offline play. I'd even pledge money to them for doing an honorable service to humanity... more money than I paid for Diablo III; just to spite Blizzard. Maybe someone could even mod the game so that you can actually build a ROLE PLAYING character instead of just playing for better loot with the same runes equipped that everyone else has. Maybe they could write a story that doesn't sound like it was penned by a trained monkey. Maybe they could make the loot drop system balanced.
Pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking? Yes. But it's certainly more probable, at this point, than Blizzard salvaging it's reputation as a decent game developer.
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