Jan

6

It has come full circle in the weird relationship between Blizzard and GamesWorkshop.  With the recent release of Blizzard Licensed and Upper Deck produced World of Warcraft miniature game, both companies are now in each other’s marketspace competing directly with one another.  It will be interesting to see how the relationship plays out.

I have never seen it from an official source but internet forums are rife with stories of how the founders of Blizzard Entertainment approached Games Workshop to do an PC version of their fantasy Warhammer tabletop miniature game.  Having their love spurned by Games Workshop, Blizzard decided to create the game anyway and started their epic journey as PC game making powerhouse with their real time strategy PC game called “Warcraft” (well….the journey had really started with earlier titles but let’s face it….Warcraft put them on the map).

Some might be a little put off by Blizzard creating a PC version of Warhammer without the blessing of Games Workshop.  Still others might dismiss it as completely unrelated.  You see, it’s all based on Tolkien anyway.  To make sure everyone knew for a fact that Blizzard was “honoring” favored pastimes such as tabletop miniature gaming they took a very uniquely Games Workshop IP, Warhammer 40K, and implemented a game looking strikingly similar.

You see, Warhammer 40k, which had been developed from a simple game to a full ethos since the late 80s, was based on these “Space Marines” with Stormtrooper type armor and big shoulder pads.  One of their arch enemies, besides “space orks”, was a bug like race called Tyranids (think of the bugs from Starship Troopers).  What do you know but Blizzards new game called StarCraft, based on the same gameplay RTS style as Warcraft but in the future had “Marines” in storm trooper type armor and very large shoulder pads and a bug like race called “Zerg”.

However, as to not completely expose themselves to an IP lawsuit they changed it up and created a third race that looked a lot like your typical “grey” space visitor to earth that people claim to be given probes by and called them Protoss.  Again, Blizzard had a huge success on their hands.

By this time Games Workshop had had enough and decided what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and added a “grey” alien race to their Warhammer 40K game called “Tau”.  They couldn’t do this before Blizzard completely exploded the PC gaming world with a little piece of code called “World of Warcraft”.

World of Warcraft was a MMO, a service based PC game proven viable by it’s predecessor called “Everquest”.  Blizzard took “their” successful WarCraft methos and created a first person game out of it.  Although they changed things up a bit to ensure even further distinction between WarCraft and Warhammer make no mistake that a lot of the same art queues were there.  The success of this game is indescribable.  It’s made more money than all of Hollywood in some of it’s better years (or something like that).

Games Workshop decided after the success of “WoW” to fight fire with fire (which I always prefer to lawsuits) and created their own MMO based on their Warhammer methos.  PC games are nothing new for Games Workshop.  They have been licensing their material for games for years with decent success in recent years.  It’s out and doing relatively well, which is to say it’s surviving which is hard against for MMOs against the juggernaut that is WoW.  This puts Games Workshop in direct competition with Blizzard in the MMO business.

Just in case you think I am completely fabricating the “relationship” between Blizzard and Games Workshop I present to you the curious case of “Andy Chambers”.  You see Andy was one of the original developers who created Warhammer 40k working for Games Workshop for years.  What is Andy doing now (and since 2003)?  Working for Blizzard on their successor to StarCraft: StarCraft II.

Did I mention how big of a success World of Warcraft MMO was?  Well, it was huge….really huge….in describably huge in PC gaming terms.  At this point Blizzard has taken a page out of George Lucas’s playbook and decided “our game is so big, people will buy toilet paper with our logo” and started licensing out all sorts of WoW related goods.

They started small with just t-shirts and hats.  Naturally being a digital version of the old pen and paper “Roleplaying Games” they ventured out a little bit and created a pen and paper version of their MMO.  Everyone knows that the successor to pen and paper roleplaying games was collectable card games, so they made that. . .  can you see where this is going?

That’s right, they have recently released a miniature game.  Now, it’s a collectable miniature game which means it is in a slightly different market space than Games Workshop games.  I mean, they are pre-painted and are collected like baseball cards with some being “rare” as opposed to Games Workshop games where you buy the minis you want, assemble and paint them yourself and then play with them.  Make no mistake: Blizzard has entered Games Workshop’s “house”.

And so  the dance continues between Blizzard and Games Workshop.  I rather enjoy the weird, almost co-dependent relationship between the companies.  I really think they spur each other on to improve their products and sometimes you get the feeling the are winking at each other (well, Blizzard winking at Games Workshop and Games Workshop snarling back at Blizzard).  Who knows, with all the money that Blizzard has made maybe they will just buy-out their inspiration.

Aug

19

The IOC is completely ruining the Olympics.  Although I don’t mind the recent commercialization of the Olympics because it has brought and kept higher quality athletes, the IOC has gotten too obsesed with making money on the Olympics. 

Here is my prediction: Greco-Roman (and possibly Freestyle) Wrestling’s last Olympics will be in 2020.  That’s right, I think the oldest and one of the most traditional of Olympic sports will be dropped from the modern Olympics after the 2020 games.

First, some background.  Unless you have wrestled or have been part of a wrestling family, you probably won’t find wrestling entertaining to watch.  It’s a simple fact of life that wrestling can not be a spectator’s sport short of turning into WWF….oops….WWE.

The basic rules have been in place forever: three rounds of wrestling, score points for moves, if there is no fall during the match then the wrestler with the highest score wins.  The IOC felt that there wasn’t enough ACTION and SCORING in the sport so they insisted that FILA change the rules.  Now, you win rounds and instead of just wrestling each round you split up the round into three parts.  First minute of a round you wrestle.  Then 30 seconds of mat wrestling with a random wrestler chosen to decide his position.  Final 30 seconds of mat wrestling where the other wrestler has his choice of position.  Tie round goes to the last wrestler to score.

Not only are these rules terrible but they do exactly the opposite of what the IOC wants; they decrease scoring and action.  Only having a minute of standing wrestling is usually not enough time for greco wrestlers to setup and perform moves. 

Most of the greco matches I saw had no action in the first minute of the rounds.  Just a bunch of hand slapping.  That means that the round was decided through random chance and low scoring mat wrestling.  It gets worse.  Some scoring for escape moves was removed, which decreases the motivation for one of the wrestlers to even try a move during mat wrestling.  Finally, since the last one to score wins then wrestlers who felt they could win in the last part of the round would basically stall (i.e. try not to make any moves) so that they could score in the last round, get the tie and win for being the last one to score.

Finally, these rule changes made/make it very easy for the best wrestler to lose.  This happened in a match beween a Chinese wrestler and an American wrestler.  Chinese wrestler score 6 points in the first round with some great moves.  Round goes to he Chinese wrestler. Second round the American scores last in a boring 1-1 tie and wins the round.  Third round the American wrestler scores last in another boring 1-1 tie.  The Chinese Wrestler kicked the American’s butt by out scoring him 8-2 AND LOST THE MATCH!!  Many favored wrestlers were beat in the qualifying round of wrestling and had no chance for a medal.

I think the IOC decided that wrestling wasn’t bringing in enough money, force rule changes they knew would mess up the sport and the next step they will take is to remove the sport since it is so messed up now.

Oh yeah……there have been some weird things going on in Women’s Gymnastics, too.

Jun

3

It has come to this.  Revision3, a new media company with it’s own shows and distributes them using new technology (P2P) is attacked by the “old media”.  Revision3 has its own shows, which I doubt the “old media” sees any “action” (i.e. money) from.  They use P2P technology to distribute their shows.  They made a technical mistake in that the way they used P2P also allowed non-Revision3 employees to “seed” P2P network with illegal files.  Once they found their mistake they, like good net citizens, locked it down.  “Old media”’s response?  DoS attack a legal ligitimate company.

If you or I were to DoS attack a company we would have the feds knocking at our door and probably be arrested.  MediaDefender (who’s media are they defending?) does it. . .  no big deal.  The way I see it since the “old media” saw Revision3 was making money on it’s shows without the “old media” getting it’s cut of the action, they decided to take them down.  Kinda like the guy who comes by your store and insists that you pay “insurance” for nothing “unfortunate” happening to your store.  Funny thing is, THAT is illegal.  However, RIAA or MPAA taking you out since they aren’t getting their cut of your “media”, that’s all well and good.

I’ve seen it pointed out that Revision3 was not “innocent” since they had a technical flaw in their system that allowed illegal seeding.  Isn’t that kind of saying “well, since you left your car door unlocked it’s partially your fault your car was stolen.”  Even if I make the mistake of leaving my car door unlocked, which IS stupid, it’s not less of a crime to steal my car.  I know techheads aren’t really into Christian philosophy but hey “he who has not sined cast the first stone”.  Or in this case “he who has not made a technical mistake defend MediaDefender’s DoS attack.”

P2P is great technology that has the potential to revolutionize data sharing on the intenet in the same scope that the “Web” revolutionized the use of the internet.  However, much like the horse buggy makers weren’t happy with the invention of the automobile, “old media” is not happy about P2P potential.  Unlike the invention of the automobile, world governments are slowly making use of the new technology illegal and empowering the modern equivilant of the buggy makers to be above the law.  Fighting this new technology only sets our modern advancement back.  But hey…..a lot of people want to put us back in the dark ages right now.

May

6

A new movie out by Ben Stein called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” has been released and been discussed a bit. Around the same time the movie came out (in limited release) a counter web-site debuted call “Expelled Exposed“. I have been surprised at some of the discussion at blogs I visit. You would think from a lot of media coverage that only backwoods, ignorant inbreeds still believe in Creationism or have doubts about Evolution. Despite what people like Bill Maher say, there are some very intelligent scientist who still believe in Creationism. I studied in college under respected particle physicists who, even if they may not have believe in creationism, definitely believed in God and participated in organized non-denominational Christian churches.

All this, however, is really just smoke above the fire. The true problem, which even with some of it’s possible flaws, that I think the movie “Expelled” points out is the lack of truth when evolution is discussed in our schools. To be clear, I’m not quite sure that creationism, per se, should be taught in science classes. However, there is no doubt in my mind that problems with the theory of evolution are simply ignored in both basic secondary school classes and by leading biological scientist. At this point the cultist followers of evolution, many of them very intelligent scientist, will have conniption fits at my statement about “problems” with evolution.

Fact: There are scientific (including mathematical) problems with the theory of Evolution.

Fact: Until the scientific community both teaches and studies these problems, biological sciences will not advance.

I apologize for my link to such an obviously biased website above. However, as Ben Stein’s movie points out, the scientific community simply isn’t discussing these problems.

For evidence of my second fact I state above lets look at the science of Physics. There are two theories in physics right now which have a lot of “problems” with each other. That is the Theory of Relativity and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. I remember these from college. I’m no physicists and I can barely understand it. However, what I do remember a quote from Einstein about Quantum Mechanics that says that “[God] does not throw the dice.” and a quote from Steven Hawkins that “Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”

The basics, as I far as my limited understanding goes, is that these two theories seem at odds with each other. However, experimental data provides evidence for each of them to be true. What do physicist do about this? Well, they teach them both, examine them both to try and find a theory that reconciles the differences. The fact is experiments show that facets of each theory hold to be true. The fact is facets of each theory (at least seem to) conflict with each other. There is some reason behind this and a scientific reason for this: a truth. Physicists are simply searching for the “truth”….the answer that explains it. Neither one of these theories is ignored. All aspects of both are taught to students. Eventually, some bright physicist, will come up with a theory that will explain both and science will be one step closer to a unified theory. Science will be advanced.

Let’s come back to the theory of evolution. As I mentioned and pointed out, there are problems with it. The people who have pointed out these problems are not ignorant, backwoods baboons. Nor are they pointing out the problems just because they can’t let go of their religious beliefs. These are scientific (especially the mathematical ones) problems with the theory. Unlike physicists, instead of teaching these problems to young biologist, instead of holding these problems up as counter examples to be examined, these “problems” are being completely and utterly ignored.

I’m not going to venture a guess as to why this is being done. Plenty of other people will postulate the motivation of leading biologist to ignore these problems. Quite frankly, I don’t care as to the motivation. The simple fact is, if these problems aren’t closely examined (and they can’t be without being taught) they will never be reconciled and the science of biology will be stagnant.

New and better science is not developed from constantly seeking to re-enforce current theory. Sure, some evidence and experiments need to be done to prove current theories but the biggest advancements in science are done from examining the current problems with theories. It is only by examining these problems that newer, better theories can be developed and science advance. Devoid of creationism and whether or not it should be taught in science class, it’s time for biological science to start looking at the problems with their current theories instead of constantly looking at evidence to re-enforce current theories. Only then can great strides be made in the science.

Jan

3

So, it seems that the “real” media has actually covered the latest lawsuit by the RIAA that I already discussed after coverage from the Washington Post.  A lot of coverage is saying “no, no, no, the RIAA did NOT say ripping CDs is illegal”.  However, what they are missing is that it is in fact the RIAAs stance that ripping CDs IS illegal.  You want to parse words?  Let’s parse words.  From the RIAAs website:

Copying CDs

  • It’s okay to copy music onto an analog cassette, but not for commercial purposes.
  • It’s also okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) – but, again, not for commercial purposes.
  • Beyond that, there’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
    • The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
    • The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.
  • The owners of copyrighted music have the right to use protection technology to allow or prevent copying.
  • Remember, it’s never okay to sell or make commercial use of a copy that you make.

THAT is what the RIAA says about copying to your computer.  Notice the bold and especially underlined parts.  They don’t say it’s legal.  They say “it won’t raise concerns”.  In other words they are reserving the right to say it’s illegal should they so chose in the future.  Another way of putting it is to say “We promise not to try and sue you or this as long as you follow our little rules we have set up. 

I want to emphasis this the RIAA itself does not say that copying a CD for personal use is legal!!!!!!!!  What hey say is that it usually won’t raise concerns.  That means there are circumstances in which you follow their little guidelines and it can raise concerns.  I personally would like to know what my liability is.  Right now I don’t.  I know that I will “usually” be ok as long as I follow their guidelines.  I have no idea when I wont be ok even if I do follow their guidelines.

In other words they hold the keys to the kingdom.  The U.S. government has relequished control over copyright enforcement to the RIAA.  Don’t get me wrong; they should be able to do some enforcement of their copyright.  But should they be the ones to decide what is fair use and legal and what is not?  From all appearances and practical purposes, right now they are. 

 

Dec

12

From arstechnica: RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still “unauthorized”.

So, you buy a Sony MP3 player and use the Sony software that comes with it to RIP a Sony CD to your Sony computer and copy it to your Sony MP3 player.  Sony then pays the RIAA to sue you for copying the Sony CD to the Sony MP3 player with the Sony software.

Can anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture?

Nov

30

Future TV Shows

November 30, 2007 | 1 Comment

So I was reading about Futurama and all the little secret messages that the writers put in the show.  I realized that, although I enjoy the minor ones I pick up on I would never bother to freeze frame through the show or figure out the secret alphabet used in messages of the show.  I would like to read about what others figure out……just not do it myself.

Then the thought occurred to me: Why not have a game in a show.  Basically, my idea is to cross ARG and TV shows, like dramas.  A TV show could have all sorts of secret messages in it.  However, it wouldn’t ever pointedly state that there was a game or message around the show.  In fact, much like ARGs an “insider” might have to plant the first finding of a message or clue on the internet themselves.  Then people would watch the show every week for clues.  Those clues could be used to take some action in real life, mostly going to websites or such but could include someone having to go to a building in a city to find a clue that they would hopefully tell others about using the internet.  You might even have money or item prizes to individuals that attained certain goals.  Part of the game would be to figure out how the game is played.

But then you have all these people who would take it too hard core and go after other players and then murders and blackmail start to happen.  Pretty soon it would bring about the downfall of America, some teenage emo kid who believes that “life is pain” would get ahold of the nuclear football and end the world.

Forget I ever brought it up.

Nov

5

Guitar Hero III for Wii

November 5, 2007 | 2 Comments

A week ago I went out during lunch and picked up Guitar Hero III for the Wii. The only time I had played GH was when it first came out at a Best Buy during lunch for about a week. I liked it a lot then but just couldn’t justify spending the money on the game. When I found out that GHIII was coming out for Wii I was thrilled (I have a Wii). So I went out last week and purchased it.

I don’t know why, maybe because I took so long to get it, but I was as excited as a kid opening a Christmas present when I got it home and opened it. I hadn’t felt that way about something in a LONG time.

I was pretty tired when I first started playing it so I thought I would just sit in my gaming chair and try the game out. That didn’t even last halfway through the song. I felt the need to get up and dance around while playing. It didn’t help my playing ability any but, holy cow, it was fun. I can play the game on easy level sitting down but anything harder than that I have to stand up. Only recently have I began to start playing without moving around like a complete goofball. Even still every once it a while I break out and start moving funny while I play because I just can’t help it.

It is that fun. The past week I haven’t been able to tear myself away from the game to even play World of Warcraft. Being the age I am (let’s say. . . . over 30) I’m not sure I will ever finish the hard levels. Also, I get my butt kicked playing strangers online. I think I have won only one match online and most of the time I just get completely wasted by the ability of my opponent. However, I do have fun just trying.

If you played air guitar as a kid and like video games then I highly recommend this game.

Jan

23

After not really getting into the Oblivion or KoToR I finally gave up and asked my buddy half a nation away to name his game and I would play it online with him. Being an old IL2 fan he said “IL2″. So, I loaded it up and started practicing my flying. Although they are passe now flight sims are the old standard of computer gaming.

Although flight sims are the most advanced type of gaming in terms of realism that is available on computers there is one aspect that has interfered with compelling gameplay. That aspect is the one of looking around. In other games you point to where you are “aiming” or you have a third person style view. However, in flying (and driving for that matter) it is common to be going one direction and looking another. You have to in order to maximize your situational awareness.

With this in mind I started to want a way to move my head around to dictate where I was looking out of the airplane. My buddy first link this to me. I quickly dismissed it as being counter intuitive. After all, you may be moving your head around but you have to keep your eyeballs straight ahead. I thought this wouldn’t work.

So, I started looking for headtracking VR goggles. Wow, even after 15 years of promises this technology’s price point is still way to high for me. Not only that but many of them don’t even have headtracking as part of their functionality.

But after reading forum ravs on IL2’s website about the TrackIR and watching video of it’s use I started to come around. I decided that if I got serious about playing that I would get one. I probably would have bought one yesterday if they were carried at Fry’s or Best Buy near my place of work.

After remembering that I have a pretty nice webcam and I wondered if I could use that somehow to do the headtracking. Well, I found Cam2Pan. I was pretty happy to see you could demo it before you bought it. Last night I tried it out to see how well this headtracking technology really worked for flight sims.

The Bad

It would now be a good time to explain how the software appears to work. The software uses an algorithm to recognize the ambient light coming off of your nose. As it tracks the movements of your head it sends that data to NewView who then translates that into a view position that it tells IL2 to use. This can be some of the cause for the “Jitters” because if it’s not fine tuned then the translation for where it wants your view in the game to be will be arrived at by using large steps instead of small steps (or something like that I think). This is also the cause for loosing center. If I moved my head around where the tracking software lost my nose or had trouble keeping a track on it then when it found my nose again it might not recognize exactly where it should be (again, something to that affect I think).

The Good

After I was done I went to spend time with my wife. However, I continued to think about what it would be like to go back to playing the game without Cam2Pan and whether I could do it. I decided that I don’t think I would want to play the game without it anymore. It really is that intuitive and adds that much to the game.

TrackIR

I don’t have, nor have I used TrackIR. However, after trying Cam2Pan out I think I could take a guess at how well it would work.

I think it would be smoother. The new versions of IL2 have TrackIR capability built into the software. This would decrease background CPU required, increase smoothness and likeness to mouselook and allow more CPU for graphics and the program.

I think it would be easier to fine tune and have less recognition issues. Since the device is specifically designed for this use, it uses a “dot” (either sticker or in the latest version a clip that you attach to your head) to track then I would imagine the recognition would be easier. I believe it also comes with software that is easier to get your “profile” to know how to recognize your movements. So, Cam2Pan is the poor man’s TrackIR and I think TrackIR would bring better quality that is worth the price.

The question for me now is $10 Cam2Pan or $180 TrackIR 4: Pro.

Jan

8

Although he has come close, Weird Al has not created the perfect polka medley, yet.

Over the holiday when I couldn’t find anything good to watch on the “bird ate the worm” channels I flipped over to VH1Classics for some nostalgic videos. They were running a countdown of the top 100 videos as voted on by some 50,000 people who visited their website. The number one video, again as voted on, was Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”.

That song makes me laugh. Unless I am actively listening to it I can’t think of how it goes. All I can think of is the way it is portrayed in Weird Al’s song “The Alternative Polka”. That reminded me of Weird Al’s polka medleys. So I had to go back and listen to them all. There is one, however, that I deemed better, if not the best, of Weird Al’s polka medleys. That got me thinking of seeing if it was just because of nostalgic remembrance of the songs or if it truely was the best one he did.

I decided to rate every one of his polka medleys. Here are my rules:

1) Only polka medleys of multiple artists are eligible. This means that “Hot Rocks” (which is Rolling Stones only) or “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which is a polka of a single song) did not qualify.

2) I would listen to each polka and for each song I heard I would rate a + or - for like or dislike. I would attempt to judge it objectively by not considering whether I knew the original song or whether I liked the original song. It impossible to rid myself of all biased but I tried to determined if the specific parody was a good application of polka to the modern song (from my zero knowledge of polka) and whether the polka application of the song was catchy (whether I liked it).

For each medley’s score I added all the +’s and divide that number by the total number of songs I judged. This works just like a score on a test at school. If the song had 20 parodies that I judged and I liked 10 then the score would be 50. This means that the more songs parodied makes the medley harder to score high because Weird Al has to do better on more songs. You get the idea.

3) Transition was ignored. I did not judge the transition between songs in the medleys. This means that any named polka songs used in the medleys were ignored. This also means that any parodies that did not use lyrics that formed words were ignored (for example “Bawitdaba” by Kid Rock that is found in the song “White Angry Polka”).

Here are the results from worse to best:

8) Polka Party: 25 (3/9)

7) Alternative Polka: 36 (4/11)

6) Polkas on 45: 46 (6/13)

5) Hooked on Polkas: 54 (6/11)

4) Angry White Boy Polka: 75 (9/12)

3) Polka Your Eyes Out: 76 (10/13)

2) Polkarama: 91 (11/12)

1) Polka Power: 92 (13/14)

Some interesting conclusions can be formed from this.

First, it is obvious that Weird Al has gotten better with his polkas over the years. Both Polkarama and Polka Power are more recent polkas. The only reason Polka Power scored better was that it had more songs to parody and therefore had a higher difficulty to be perfect. However, both of the songs only had one song that didn’t score.

Second, newer style songs are easier to make polkas out of than the style of songs that were out in the 1980s. I realize that may challenge my first point but that is a good question: Is Weird Al getting better at parody polka medleys or are modern songs easier to make polkas out of?

There is no question in my mind that some modern genres have polka influence. The new punk/alternative style that my younger sister calls “Sca” (like Blink42 or Smashmouth) has some polka influence in it. Neither my math nor my music is brushed up enough to do a mathmatically scientific examination of this so I’ll use more anecdotal examination to show this point. This “Sca” (as I will call it) has the same “uhm pah bah” rhythm found in polka. Both inspire dance moves that involved jumping vertically while moving the feet in the air. Polka dancing involves a shorter jump with much flailing of the feet while “Sca” involves a higher jump with less flailing of the feet. Some songs have less polka influence and may be more alternative or punk and many might disagree with me but when I first heard this newish style I immediately felt a polka influence. Maybe the artist were subconsciously influence by Weird Al polkas they heard when they were younger?

Finally, although Weird Al has come close he has not created the perfect polka medley. Madanna’s “Ray of Light” disqualified “Polka Power” and Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” disqualified “Polkarama” as being polka medley perfection. Although I’m sure his ability is getting better since the “Sca” stylings is, I’m sure, having less influence in music then Weird Al may have missed his chance.

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