AbleJames

Am I the only one who wondered what the point of this hypocritical interview was?

Morgan's entire message is that, "Hey, guys, I'm a gamer before I'm a woman." The interviewer, however, couldn't seem to ask a question that didn't begin with "as a woman in the game industry..."

How about asking her some substantive questions about actual *games*? It seems to me that the interviewer is just as bad as all of the guys who give her unwanted attention just because she is female.

It's a bit like asking some black guy: "As a black man, what do you think about health care in America?" I mean, the question comes from someone who thinks they're vastly more sensitive and attuned and want a 'black man' perspective, but how much more insulting can you get...? As if that guy speaks for 'every black person'; as if there is a person with a representative perspective of such an arbitrarily-defined group in the first place.

Morgan's point was that her being a female may have had some functional implications, but she's the real deal, she likes games, and get over it. The interviewer seemed to be more interested in following her 'hard-hitting' script than actually discussing gaming, which seems like it was what Morgan would have rather focused on anyway.

Super Metroid is going for $300 now? Pretty decent. I'm gonna hold onto my sealed copy for now though--I still haven't decided if I want to open it and play it. =D

I'll leave it on the pile with my two unopened Sega CDXs, and about 12 sealed copies of Ocarina of Time that the local video store sold for $5 each when they went out of business...

Rub Rabbits

You know, Joystiq--I'm not a fanboy, but you o seem to have a journalism bias problem here. It isn't just that you keep putting out articles that criticize the Wii for some pretty stale reasons--technology, for instance. It's that you don't seem to reference really anyone except your own critical articles repeatedly to make your point. (Logic 101: Cooking Mama on the DS was a novelty too, but there are plenty of non-novelty DS games that use the touch screen effectively. The same is true for the Wii. Now that we've cleared that up, you can stop linking to that article every chance you get.)

I'm saying this method is just poor journalism, regardless of really any problem with what you're saying.

If you want to say the Wii sucks, you need to do better than vaguely alluding to the Wii sucking by pretext of referencing Gamestop's odious bundling practices.

You superficially seem to point to a larger backlash, but really just keep referencing previous Joystiq opinion pieces. These pieces are usually by the same group of editors who, for back of a better explanation, really seem to be going out of their way to show how different they can be by hating the Wii.

So in sum: The Wii controls aren't the second coming of Jesus W. Christ, we all know that. That said, I'm having a hell of a lot more fun with it than on the 'standard' consoles. They have their place, and the Wii has its place. What doesn't have a place is this weird Joystiq vendetta--I mean, great, your editors are so free-thinking enough to break the masses' stupor and say the emperor is naked. We get it already. Move on.

@tekdroid: Haha--I was thinking the same thing. "Wow, this motherboard comes with a pair of handcuffs I have to wear all the time while using it! And other perks!"

Sorry, this guy is just totally unconvincing.

Listening to his samples and reading his explanations, it's clear you (or this guy) could choose an arbitrary song, find the golden mean point from either the start of the composition or the start of the loop, and then rationalize a music theory explanation.

I have a B.A. in music. It's not much, but it's enough to know that the music theory ideas this guy relies on as evidence of the golden mean manifesting itself at this or that point in the music are not especially uncommon, interesting, or convincing.

I mean, for example he says: "However, at the moment in question, the theme goes into what seems like a major chord built on the flat second scale degree, or a bII chord. Depending on how you interpret the three voices, you could argue that it may be a Neapolitan 6th chord, or N6. While the rest of the theme stays in Bb, placing a bII chord smack in the middle of the theme makes it stick out like a black sheep. What does it do? It adds tension to the theme. Whether you understand music progressions or not, the fact that it’s not a naturally occuring chord in the Bb scale means that your ears hear tension in the chord, and want it to resolve back into the key of Bb. Koji Kondo places this anamoly of a chord right at the Golden Section, making it that much more intriguing."

Having grace notes, flavor chords or unexpected transitions happen all the time--all the time quite literally when you factor in that, like this guy, you may arbitrarily decide what the motives and expectations are at any moment to belie. You can deconstruct the motivation of any moment of any piece of music to arrive at such a conclusion.

Sorry, but I might as well go see Jim Carrey rant about the number 23--the connections are just as tenuous.

Nintendo World Store in NYC gets a huge new shipment pretty much every day. I've seen them still have tons of systems around lunchtime, though they're usually sold out by early afternoon.

Just a tip...

"Be real. People aren't going to be viewing an HD-DVD while playing Quake 5. This is, at best, a contrived situation. His comments about not being able to use digital audio outputs are apparently _wrong_, since all HDMI receivers I'm aware of provide optical output capability."

It equally sounds like you're contriving an unrealistic straw-man situation to make the issue trivial. Since you asked...

Graphics-wise, I often switch in and out of DVDs to do other tasks. If I understand correctly, the crux of the assertion is that the ENTIRE video channel is degraded. I don't want to have to close my video software each time I want to work in an environment that is higher than 800x600. And if you are thinking "No, the video WINDOW for the HD-DVD will be 800x600, not the whole environment," then you must know something I don't, because I only see the spec mentioning one video channel, which is tied to the physical output from the card, and that channel is what will be degraded.

The sound channel is also a big deal. I have music-making software on my computer that I use quite often to work in 24-bit, 192k sound. I also have media players that I use to play back legally acquired music, oftentimes against which I 'ear-check' when I'm mastering. What the spec and this paper seem to tell me is that my music making software's output will be degraded as long as I have any other protected content open.

I think it's a pretty legitimate and real complaint, but for the reasons stated in my last post, it's almost not even worth arguing about compared to the principle at stake, and the implications of that. Because, in all the justifications I've seen given, I continually see the very weak premise that "It doesn't mean much right now."

We couldn't play a game of chess, much less safeguard our rights in the face of the Trusted Computing initiative, with such myopic vision. There is no protection for the consumer in the Vista world--Microsoft has all the keys. Revocability makes every purchase only a rental. Degraded paths make every use a privilege. And the longer our actions support that situation, the harder it will be to extricate ourselves from it.

"There is a slight amount of real information in this article amid all the scare-mongering, but not much. The author seems to be postulating some circumstance where your system might be silently "infected" with protected content that would silently degrade all other content on the system. This is simply not so.

The requirements for DRM basically say that IF you're playing some protected content, the entire channel that the content passes through has to be secure, or it has to go down in quality or be blocked if the content provider wants it. That's it. What does this mean for games? Not a darn thing, because game content won't be protected with DRM.

Now, I _suppose_ that there might be some really contrived circumstances. Say, you're listening to some DRM'd mmusic while playing a game, or have a dual-monitor setup and are watching some protected content on one screen while playing on another. But those are fairly contrived."

It seems like you're not responding to the assertions in the article, which is that the entire channel is downgraded. I don't know about you, but Windows has a mixer because there are more than one sound channels often utilizing the speakers at once, and it sounds like all of them would be downgraded if ANY protected content was played from any application.

Further, video and other graphic applications utilize (wait for it) windows, making it a very common occurance that you will have multiple applications using screen space at once, all of which, according to this spec, seem to be part of the same downgraded video interface.

But more to this issue: You can say whatever you want about the effects of it currently, but at the very least, the fact that Vista technology deputizes your computer as an agent for Microsoft and other content providers that polices your actions, is very real and very scary. Besides, if you have read the NGSCB / TCPA spec, which is what evolved into Vista's DRM technology, the first steps were always supposed to be relatively painless. You hand over the keys to your computer, and Microsoft and partners don't flex their power for a period of time, to wait for enough of the 'trusted' technology to reach the proper market penetration. However, at that point, when 80% or more of the market has computers that trust Microsoft more than their users, I wonder if you'll be surprised to find how little control you still enjoy over your computer.

Does your stuff work now? Sure. But take Apple as a very good example of selling you something based on a certain set of DRM rules and changing the rules after the fact. After you've 'signed' the agreement with your cash, Apple can decide at any point to alter the terms of that agreement without any consent, authorization, or chance of recourse. Microsoft's NGSCB/TCPA/Palladium/Etc specs go far beyond FairPlay/iTunes DRM.

So, think past the 'what does it matter right now' implications. We'd do well to think about the full implications of handing the keys to our computers over to a court-affirmed monopolist with a history of strong-arm market manipulation. Their goal at some level is to give us the most full-featured OS they can, but only so long as they give us an OS that will create Microsoft's position as keeper of the electronic entertainment distribution channel.

We are scientific people, and we do want a 'but really, how does it affect us' analysis. However, we're not animals incapable of foresight, and the fact should be considered that in adopting Vista, the rights we enjoy now as owners of our computers will become instead privileges granted or revoked by Microsoft without any oversight, justification or chance of recourse.

I'll say it again. We lose rights to our own paid-for hardware. I think a relevant and scarier question is: seeing as how the right to property has been an inalienable right for centuries, we should ask at what point, in losing the privileges normally conferred by possessing something, do we cease to own it?

I hope that communicates just why a change of principle, even lacking specific harm, can be a very scary thing.

Long live Sam and Max! Let them feast on meatpies and blood pudding!