Code Creating Culture
One of the main ideas of the music mogul game was to somehow quantify buzz and let people pretend to ride waves of fandom for success (or failure). The only way I had found to quantify that was to scrape the billboard charts for hits and formulate that to some number.
I see now that Yahoo already has several buzz charts, including one for music.
Boy, this would be a fun project.
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It’s only a matter of time before somebody puts together commons bits and creates a family tree of related ideas. Turns out that xbox or ps2 controller you’ve got isn’t that far removed from the old Atari 2600 ’stick on a brick’. Ah, memories…
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The data from E3 is slowly coming in. Lots of good stuff including a very thorough run down of the latest MMOGs:
NCSoft had one of the largest, loudest, and most prominent booths at E3 this year. It featured a huge stage with a regular live band and pyrotechnic stage performances. Nearly every game in their stable was on display and playable via multiple machines, as well as three of their upcoming titles. They received a tremendous amount of traffic; IÂ’m sure more people got a chance to play Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, and City of Villains than played Imperator or Dungeons & Dragons Online, so I expect these titles will generate a lot of interest over the coming months.
NCSoft has been pretty hot recently (City of Heroes revitalized the game type with its un-drungeons and dragons fair and Guild Wars with its ‘no-fee’ based business model, in addition to Lineage). Should be some good stuff coming from that company.
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Morpheus, the man of nose-pinching shades unwavering Kenau belief, has now died in the MMOG Matrix Online.
Morpheus’ demise was not without controversy. In the days leading up to it, the developers’ live team, who orchestrate the game’s big monthly story-advancing moments, carried out a Wachowski-Chadwick plot that had Morpheus, in the words of some users, “turning terrorist.” According to storyline, Morpheus wanted to reclaim the body of the fallen Neo, which was being held by the Matrix’s machine overlords. Morpheus tried to pressure cooperation by planting bombs throughout the Matrix infrastructure. That’s how the live team, including developers who controlled Morpheus himself, set things up. Players aligned with the game’s three factions — the establishment Machines, the maverick Exiles, and even Morpheus’ own group, the emancipating Zionists — had been assigned by their in-game leaders to defuse the bombs and stop the out-of-control digital Laurence Fishburne. But not everyone wanted to stop him.
When the game was launch it stood out because of Sony Online’s commitment to being very story centered – going so far as to have live actors carry out story advancing bits in game. Let the Morpheus assassin who-dun-it begin!
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Say what you will about the french – it does seem like they have the right perspective when it comes to mp3 swapping:
Now, in a widening rift, the powerful president of the French magistrates union has begun to openly advocate decriminalizing online trading in copyrighted works for personal use.
“We are in the process of creating a cultural rupture between a younger generation that uses the technologies that companies and societies have made available, such as the iPod, file download software, peer-to-peer networks, etc.,” Judge Dominique Barella told Wired News. “It’s like condemning people for driving too fast after selling them cars that go 250 kmh.”
Barella first began his crusade after writing an article in the French daily Libération in March following rulings by French judges who suspended jail time and fines for alleged perpetrators who were caught downloading music for their personal use. The leniency of the French judges illustrates what Barella describes as confusion over the definition of the intellectual property protection law. Instead, a more appropriate policy needs to be adopted in France and in Europe that protects what he says are mostly young people of the MP3 generation who are weak targets against the machinations of the entertainment industry’s legal agenda.
:upper:
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So we frequently pitch all kinds of fun DIY projects here at mutednoise. But where does one get the parts? Well there are quite a few places that sell surplus goods but finding them was a pain. Not anymore.
Vendors listed on this page sell miscellaneous and surplus hardware, tools, lab supplies, motors, adhesives, Dremel bits, screws, gizmos, and whatnots. Stuff you might need for successful hardware building and hacking, stuff you’re inclined to packrat until just the right project comes along. These people aren’t your average thick-cataloged every-part-number-under-the-sun guys—they’re the other guys; the random crap purveyors of the world.
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I lost interest in Jay Leno a long time ago. Last night, however, Leno had the national text-messenging champions verses morse-coders. You could watch the video yourself. But if you can stand the suspence the morse-coders won… easily… with time to spare.
Dang. Time to learn morse code? Have morese code apps available for cell phones? Maybe you have to know it to right it but the phone takes the dots and dashes and converts them to text?
Music critics usually get advanced copies of albums to listen to so that the reviews are all typed up when the music comes out. Things changed when the labels got all uppity about the kids usin’ the new fangled computers to trade bits. So they started forcing critics to attend listening parties where they would have a record label stooge play the new music once or twice. Now a critic cries ‘no more’:
I will not write about any piece of music unless I have unlimited access to a portable version of it, renderered in either the CD, MP3 or vinyl format. I have broken this private rule a few times, when I cared especially for the artist, and I think those were stupid, weak lapses. No more.
Artists spend a lot of time making albums, and in most cases, critics get advances copies of these albums months or weeks before they become commercially available. This lead time gives critics time to think and write and file their pieces for publication. It’s a system that, give or take some postal delinquency, works, because it helps a critic to mimic the experience most consumers have with popular music: listening to it repeatedly, wherever and whenever, figuring it out and filtering it through other music and the shit in one’s life, over time. Advances are good, and every critic who gets them should be thankful that publicists and labels send them out.
But there are some albums, including almost all hip-hop releases, that don’t go through this advance process. In these cases, even though the artist in question has usually spent months working on the album, the label of issue will demand that music critics—most of whom get paid poorly and have to write lots of reviews at once—sit in a room with other critics and listen to the album, once or at most twice, usually at a time not of the critic’s choosing (and not at a volume of their choosing either). The fear driving this arrangement is that critics in possesion of advance CDs will light the bonfire of MP3 bootlegging.
WOW. I thought I had a nice work environment. Turns out it has nothing on the Personal Computing Environment. Yikes. Only $6000.
http://www.mypce.com/images/pce_pics/media_pics_girl.jpg
Meanwhile the guys over at del.ic.ious, flush with venture capital, have bought a couple of plastic chairs. 
Somebody learned something from the dot-com bomb.
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Before today the only real advantage that P2P software (like Kazaa) had over BitTorrent was that you could search other people’s content. Not anymore. BitTorrent is sporting a snazzy new search ability that (at least initially) provides uber fast searches.
What does this mean for Bram and the other members of the BitTorrent crew? Are they going to bring down the hammer because his software has crossed somekind of line between useful and piracy enabler?
In other news EliteTorrents is the focus of the first US BitTorrent criminal investigation. Eleven subpeons served today. 