links for 2007-12-01
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Kindle, Disassembled.
November 2007 Archives
Killer Sofa -- an inaccurately modeled depiction of childhood obesity
This picture is a campaign flyer for Childhood Obesity Awareness Campaign. Childhood obesity is a problem -- in addition to getting made fun of and bullied by their classmates, fat kids stay at home sitting on the couch with an upside down XBox 360 staring into space while holding an XBox 360 controller that's plugged into nothing. Last time I checked, XBox360 controllers plug into the front of the XBox 360, not the back. Not only that, but this particular obese child also doesn't realize that XBox 360 is plugged into nothing. Of course, this photo is also highly inaccurate because the sofa is much too clean -- if we are to believe that this child does nothing but sit on the couch, eat his chips and soda and can't be bothered to plug in his damn game system, there should also be residual crumbs and leftover food wrappers decorating the premises. Being so tidy, it feels like this photograph was taken in an IKEA showroom. Of course this particular kid gets to be a model for a high exposure campaign against obesity -- that's gotta score some valuable rep points on the playground on Monday morning.
MacWorld 2008 Predictions
With a little over a month to go on MacWorld 2008, speculation has already started about what Apple will choose to reveal at the Apple-centered conference in mid-January. The top contender is an ultra-portable MacBook. In fact, since December of 2005, the rumor of a Mac ultra-portable has been on analysts predicition lists, but has never materialized at MacWorld.
With a completely new lineup of iPods having just been announced in September, it is highly unlikely for Apple to make any new announcement of iPod related products at MW2008.
In June of 2005, Apple announced the transition to Intel. In January of 2006, Apple moved their first computers to Intel with the MacBook Pro and the iMac. This announcement led to consumer frustration from those who had purchased new computers the previous holiday season, and in January of 2007, MacWorld came and went without announcements of new computers or new iPods, and instead focused on introducing new products. Such a strategy does open up the possibility for new computer types, such as the Mac mini (which was announced at MacWorld 2005) as well as completely new device types, such as the Apple TV and the iPhone (both premiered at MacWorld 2007).
One thing which hasn't seen a lot of coverage at MacWorld has been Apple's iTunes service -- they've instead chosen smaller venues to coincide with announcements about new product offerings on iTunes, but I believe that MacWorld 2008 might see the announcement of Apple's iTunes media rental service (which has already been revealed as a future possibility within iTunes). The release of an official iPhone development kit in February also lends some validity to this theory, as you would not want developers stumbling across this feature and confirming such functionality before an official announcement could be made. A video rental service would also provide a boost to Apple's lagging Apple TV product.
There are some that predict that MacWorld 2008 will unveil a 3G iPhone. While I definitely believe that to be a possibility, I think that such a product is already expected and will not make the kind of impact that Steve Jobs and Apple usually like to have in a keynote announcement. At the same time, I can't help feeling that MacWorld 2008 will be the MacWorld of the iPhone, so maybe an expansion of the iPhone line-up with a smaller cheaper iPhone? The possibility of this ties in perfectly with the release of the iPhone SDK in February.
Google to Bid For Wireless Spectrum
The big news this morning is that Google has announced that they will take part in the bidding process for the 700 mHz wireless spectrum in the United States. In order to bid, they must file an application with the FCC by the deadline, which is this Monday. Google is interested in the C-block of the spectrum, which currently carries a reserve price of 4.6 billion.
As part of the auction, the FCC has made "open access provisions" part of the C-block of the spectrum, mandating that the auction winner "shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice..." and that "no licensee may disable features on handsets it provides to customers....", all of which means that someone like Verizon, who is notorious for locking down and deactivating certain features of phones on their network isn't going to bid on the spectrum. If the reserve price isn't met, then the spectrum goes up for auction again, this time without the open access provisions. With Google bidding, at the very least the spectrum will make the reserve price, and open access provisions will be in effect.
Chairman Eric Schmidt has stated in a press release:
"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are. Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet."
Looking at the big picture, if Google wins the license for the spectrum, Google could become a provider of mobile phone and internet services, and it could also partner with or lease the spectrum to those who are interested. With their recently created Open Handset Alliance, they will soon have phones which will run on their Mobile Platform. Google, doesn't intend on becoming a carrier like Verizon or Sprint, and I believe if they were to become a carrier, their services, much like their software products, would be available for free, and likely supported by ads.
Google has thus far, done an excellent job of destroying paid service models -- before Gmail, users of MSN and Yahoo! Mail happily forked over cash for more mail storage, and I find myself working more on Google Documents than I do within Microsoft Office. I think what will happen with OHA and Google will be a variety of handsets that will provide the user control of their phone, in ways that previously was limited to those with more technical expertise. For instance, cellphone content are still an item that consumers spend millions on per year -- what Google could have is a pipeline to deliver that content -- even if Google does not win the bid, they will have at least met the reserve price to open up the spectrum for the open access provisions to go into effect.
Louise Bourgeois' Maman
Last year, when I went to Japan, we visited Roppongi and saw this giant sculpture of a spider.
Since War of the Worlds had been released the previous year, I overheard people who believed that perhaps this was a movie tie-in. I knew this probably wasn't the case as Martian war machines have three legs, but I took photographs of the sculpture, and then forgot about it, until I recently saw this photo taken in London:
Thirty-five foot tall spiders made out of bronze aren't something you see everyday, but this time I had more information. The work is called "Maman", and the original one made out of stainless steel is located at the Tate museum at London. The sculptor is Louise Bourgeois, and there are six bronze full-size castings of her work located at:
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
- State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
- Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
- Mori Art Museum, Roppongi, Tokyo
- Samsung Museum of Modern Art, Seoul
- Havana, Cuba
Now, the last time I was in San Francisco, we drove by the Embarcadero, and I noticed a smaller spider done in the same style. The one in San Francisco is not "Maman", but the smaller "Crouching Spider" done by the same artist.
2007: Most Wanted Products
One of the things I've been thinking about has been that of this year's "Most Wanted" Products.
- Nintendo Wii
It's been more than an year, and the Nintendo Wii is still flying off the shelves, and still as difficult as it was a year ago to find. Why is it so hard to find one this holiday season? Because while a normal product cycle has Nintendo stockpiling supplies beginning in August, this year's sales of the Wii has had the Nintendo warehouses empty of console units, as retail orders were filled. Nintendo games like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Mario Galaxy definitely helped the new console's game library, which, prior to this year consisted of few "must-have" games.
- iPhone
While there's some discussion of a new 3G iPhone on the way in 2008 , this should not be a surprise -- there's always a newer phone, and a newer product due from Apple, but this version 1.0 product has quickly become one of the most talked about products of the year. I know of no other product this year that had people lining up for days in advance, in order to own the iPhone. When Apple announced the iPod Touch, which looked very similar to the iPhone in terms of shape and size, I wondered if the iPod Touch would cannibalize sales of the iPhone. Amazingly, it seems that while the iPod Touch is a beautiful device, people would rather have an iPhone (and have the added camera and phone capabilities), while the iPod nano seems to be doing a pretty good job of selling to the masses.
- Amazon's Kindle
Though I don't see the appeal of the Kindle, the new portable e-reader made waves last week when it was announced, and sold out in a few hours. I can see this device being good for a business traveler, or someone on the go, but without a larger selection of books available along with a better display and tactile feel to the device, it's not a product that I can recommend at this time.
Star Wars Mimobots Series 2
New Star Wars Series 2 Mimobots, shipping in January/February. 49.95 for 1GB, 69.95 for 2GB, and 109.95 for 4GB. Some of these new ones have helmets that reveal a painted face underneath.
links for 2007-11-27
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... Just eyeballing it, I'd say this guy definitely blew more than 35 grand on all that stuff.
links for 2007-11-25
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An interview with Kristin Sloan, the ballerina-blogger in the iPhone Ad, "The Winger"
links for 2007-11-24
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Why pay for Amazon's DRM locked files, when you have Manybooks for free?
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Free e-book: Trigger Happy by Steven Poole, a book about videogames, released under Creative Commons.
links for 2007-11-22
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You buy land, you pay taxes on the land, and now you're buildng your retirement home on the land when your neighbor declares the land to be his because you haven't used it in while. A strange case that feels a little suspicious.
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Carmack about Apple and Games.
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Some pretty radical ideas here about an e-book reader.
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The present is crazier than the future that he could have imagined.
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It sounds cool, but them you look at the actual video and it looks really lame.
Another Day, Another Entry on Kindle
I don't know what's been afflicting me, but I just can't stop talking about the Kindle, Amazon's new e-book reader. Maybe it's because I want it to die a spectacular death, since I don't want my book buying experiences for the rest of my life to be done on the Kindle.
I do find one thing to be of particular value on the Kindle, which also might be the sole reason for purchasing one: EVDO for free. EVDO is a wireless standard that is used on cellphone networks to transmit data. Currently, to get unlimited EVDO service on Sprint, it costs about $60 a month.
The Kindle is a standalone device, meaning that it doesn't require a computer, but it does, like many other cellphones, use a USB 2.0 for transfering larger blocks of data. I suspect that with a small number of Kindles having been delivered to the American public, it probably won't be long before it's torn apart, and someone figures out how to make the Kindle to act as a wireless access point.
links for 2007-11-21
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I used to think that Senators were pretty important people, but it turns out they spend all that time in Congress discussing issues like "Should Manhunt be M or AO?" With all the press coverage on Manhunt's rating, one wonders if they're being paid to do
Amazon's Kindle Sells Out in Less Than 6 Hours
Apparently, myself and the rest of the tech world that slammed the Kindle for being essentially a portable Amazon storefront, were way wrong when it came to the Kindle -- people are willing to part with $400 for a Kindle, because Amazon's stock of Kindles has apparently sold out in less than six hours.
Of course, we don't know how many were in that stock, but the relative availability of the Kindle (more to be shipped out next week on 11/29) suggests that this initial stock was meant to be large enough for some people to say "I got my Kindle!" while still producing a good number of hours for selling out. There's no incentive for Amazon to have a large amount ready to ship on announcement -- the way Amazon works, someone's not likely to cancel an order just because they have to wait a week for it -- no one else is going to sell Kindles except Amazon. They just need that number to be large enough such that if someone does ask how many they sold on the first day, it's not something ridiculous like 10.
I assume the initial stock was extremely limited, perhaps no more than 10,000 units. This is Amazon we are talking about here -- the company that sells out of their Wiis in a few minutes. 10,000 is a respectable number -- it's a large enough number that Amazon can say "That's all that we could have in time for the announcement", and it's small enough to say "We sold out of them in a few days". The fact that they sold out in 6 hours suggests that the inital allotment may be even less than 10,000 units. My own personal guess to the number is in the range between one and three thousand. If we work backwards from Nintendo's example, they sold 600,000 Wiis in a week, which becomes about 1 Wii sold per second. Even if Amazon were to sell 1 Kindle every second, that calculates into -- 1 x 60 x 60 x 5 = 1,800.
I love books, but when I logged onto Amazon yesterday morning and saw the announcement on the front page, my initial reaction was not to click the "Buy Now" button, but to read more about it. People have been saying that it's the iPod for books, but that's not accurate, because of the one big difference. The iPod never asked me to buy a whole new music library for my device. All the CDs I had didn't suddenly not exist to the iPod. The Kindle is asking you to pretend your book library doesn't exist. If you want your book on the Kindle, be prepared to shell out some money to have a digital copy of the book.
What I'd like to see implemented on Amazon is that they make available digitally any book I purchase physically. Give me an incentive to buy a Kindle, and to read my books on it. My physical book library will long outlast the Kindle's lifetime, and probably my own lifetime.
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing had this to say regarding the Kindle:
Here's the biggest mystery of the Internetiverse for me today: why is it that Amazon, the most customer-focused, user-friendly company in the world of physical goods, always makes a complete balls-up hash out of digital delivery of goods? You'd think that they'd be the smartest people around when it comes to using the Internet to sell you stuff you want, but as soon as that stuff is digital, they go from customer-driven angels to grabby, EULA-toting horrors. Why does the Web make Amazon go crazy?
This mystery is definitely something that's been on my mind -- Amazon has been great to me for buying books and other items -- I'll gladly plunk down 2 or 3 grand for a new camera, but when it comes to digital media, Amazon has yet to earn a single penny from me, and part of that is due to the feeling that something that exists purely as a DRM-locked digital file isn't permanent enough. That being said, the field of e-books is a frontier yet to be explored, but I've yet to see a system that works. This is a good try at trying to re-invorate the market, but I suspect that the winner of this will be someone who can make the experience more like a real book and less like a giant PDA.
Amazon Kindle E-Book Reader
Amazon has just launched their Kindle e-book reader. Sporting a display of 6 inches with 167 ppi of electronic paper (e-paper) resolution, and weighting just 10.3 ounces (about the size of a small paperback book), it features both Wi-Fi and has a built-in EVDO modem.
The EVDO modem utilizes the cellphone network so that hunting for a Wi-Fi hotspot isn't necessary, making books available to purchase anytime you can get reception from the Sprint network. Despite the fact that it uses Sprint, there's no fees and no contract for using the wireless network. Can you surf the web on it? Yes. Can you e-mail from it? Yes, for 10 cents per e-mail.
The design of the device feels a mite unfriendly (and ugly) to me, with the buttons for next and last page mounted on large buttons on the sides of the device, I feel that you're essentially holding the Kindle at the bottom of the device, rather than the middle, which I believe may be problematic. The keyboard is a good idea, but I feel the keyboard should have been hidden in a sliding design, as the only time you need it is a small percentage to the main function of the device, to read books.
Keeping in mind that this device is released by Amazon, their motivation for releasing this device is pretty clear: they want to sell you reading material. Despite the free wireless service, putting anything on this device has a cost associated with it. Unless otherwise marked, all New York Times bestsellers and new releases are 9.99 or less, and magazines and newspaper subscriptions are reasonably priced and are priced on a monthly basis such as the New York Times for 13.99 a month, and TIME for 1.49 a month. Since the new media publisher is the internet, high volume blogs like Boing Boing are also available on Kindle for 1.99 a month. While I read Boing Boing daily, much of their content is based on providing links to other sources, and I'm curious if being part of Amazon's subscription is going to change their style of writing up articles. Content being offered for Kindle of course, provides another alternate revenue stream for bloggers and authors.
While I think the Kindle e-book reader is a revolutionary new attempt at e-books, it falls a little short of being a book replacement for me, for a number of reasons. The price of the reader is $399.99, and while that's as much as an iPhone, it does depend on multiple pieces of technology that may or may not exist in the years to come.
- EVDO network. Sure, it's currently one of the standards that we're using, but what happens when that technology is phased out?
- The Kindle and Amazon.com. The Kindle has a number of features locked into Amazon, including how to buy, download and store purchases. Lose your e-reader? Not a problem, as all the books are kept in your Amazon media library and available for download.. However, your e-books are at the mercy of Amazon -- should they decide to switch data formats or discontinue the Kindle program, you could end up with an largely unsupported device.
While I don't mind paying for new books, with the Kindle you can't really loan them out like you can do with a physical book. You can't re-sell them like normal books either. The prices for paperbacks are similar to new prices of paperbacks, meaning that old books like Snow Crash is priced at a somewhat mind-staggering $7.96, a $2.24 difference from Amazon's current retail price of 10.20 (my physical copy of Snow Crash cost me 5.99 in 1993, and will still be usable until the paper of the book disintegrates) while something really old like Foundation is $3.99.
The big worry on my mind is obsolescence -- while one would assume that should the Kindle program succeed, newer, faster, better e-readers would be on the horizon, and essentially you're paying $400 for an e-book reader that might be replaced in a few years. Which leads me into the ecological impact of e-books. On one hand, they save paper, but each e-book reader also generates an amount of dangerous e-waste in the process of manufacturing and disposal, and books decompose with less ecological impact, as most of the material will just naturally breakdown. The plastic case and the circuit boards shouldn't be disposed of in the garbage, but I'd say that a small proportion of them will still end up there, unless Amazon has a trade-in/used program for the future.
The applications for Kindle I see mostly using it for would be, interestingly enough, the things that they don't have on the device yet -- maps and photographs/graphics, both of which would require much higher storage capacity. I can see this being useful for educational purposes -- provided that a future Kindle would have color and graphics, you could have all your textbooks on one device, in much the same way that an iPod allows people to contain their entire music collection in their pocket.
It's a good idea, however, I feel that the initial implementation isn't polished enough. Time will tell if this is the future of e-books or just another electronic novelty.
links for 2007-11-17
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I always joke about Google Brain (gBrain) but maybe it'll be Microsoft Brain instead...
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April? That's such a long time away (sniff)
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As soon as we saw the previews for Beowulf, we all screamed "Uncanny Valley" as being the major problem for the film. Part of me still wonders why they didn't just film the actors if they are going to use their likeness.
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Multi-player and co-op. I always wanted to be a Ghostbuster.
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What would it take for you to sell out your right to vote? For 1 in 5 NYU students, that vote is only worth an iPod touch.
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...because it means they need to either take down Google or Yahoo! Given Microsoft's animosity for a certain bay area search engine company, you can guess which one they want to knock down.
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Book Covers of 2007
Gaiman at Beowulf Premiere
I am notoriously bad at matching names to faces. Anyone watching a movie with me will vouch for this, as whenever a person comes on the screen that looks familiar to me, I'll say "Hey, isn't that (some actor)," and the people in the room will look at me with puzzled looks on their faces and say "Huh? They look nothing alike. No, that's (some other actor)." In Hollywood especially, I find that faces more or less all look same. For years, I could not tell the difference between Al Pacino from Robert De Niro (thankfully, it's gotten better as they've gotten older, as Pacino grows more gaunt and wrinkled, while De Niro goes bearded).
I present a photo of the Beowulf premiere that finds that Getty Images sucks as much as I do in identifying people. The description of the image reads as follows:
Beowulf Premiere - Inside
LONDON - NOVEMBER 11: (EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION IN UK TABLOID NEWSPAPERS UNTIL 48 HOURS AFTER CREATE DATE AND TIME) Crispin Glover and Sir Anthony Hopkins attend the European premiere of 'Beowulf', at the Vue West End on November 11, 2007 in London, England. (Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images)
Yes, that's Sir Anthony Hopkins. The man standing beside him, however, is not Crispin Glover (Thin Man in Charlie's Angels, George McFly in Back to the Future), but rather writer Neil Gaiman.
Chewbacca! What a Wookie!
If memory serves, in Empire Strikes Back, Chewbacca served as a pack mule, carrying the destined interpretor for Jabba the Hutt and future deity to the furry Ewoks on his back as they made their escape from Bespin, and now you can relive the adventure, with the mighty Chewbacca backpack, which, unlike the Yoda Backpack, doesn't really fit into the Star Wars continuity (or maybe it does in the Expanded Universe, or in Han x Chewbacca slashfic somewhere). While I can't imagine anyone of school age not getting beat up for wearing this or being the target of jokes (remember, Leia would rather kiss a Wookie), there's something deeply unnerving about unzipping Chewie's backside to shove books inside.
Guitar Hero III vs. Rock Band
When I plugged in Guitar Hero III into the Wii a few weeks ago, I started career mode on easy, and instantly I felt challenged. Now, let me be clear, I am not a good Guitar Hero player, I can barely get past the first set on Guitar Hero II on the medium difficulty level, but on Guitar Hero III I can't even pass a single song on medium.
Part of the background about Guitar Hero III is that the original developers Harmonix left that franchise to Neversoft, a new group of developers, and Harmonix started working on Rock Band. Now, from a game player aspect, I definitely enjoyed playing the songs on GH2 much more than on GH3, but I was never a fan of classic and metal rock of the 70s era, and I blame the Neversoft developers (who probably do enjoy that type of music) for picking a ho-hum playlist of songs. In the end credits for GH3, photos of the Neversoft developers appear, and they all appear to be middle-aged balding men of the right age to enjoy the classic rock oldies that make up the bulk of GH3. Sadly there's not many songs on the unlockables that I find interesting.
Interestingly enough, there are songs that appear on both Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band, and Games Radar did a side by side comparison of their difficulty.
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is one of the films I plan on seeing this winter, not just because it has Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman in it, but because it's got Holiday Kid's Movie written all over it.
In a Holiday Toy Drive last week, they've also managed to raise an auspicious 28808 pounds of toys for Toys for Tots.
Waiting and Wooting
I wish I could say that I've had a productive day, but I haven't really. You see, I've been watching the woot-off on woot. I'm alright on the general concept of woot! -- I look at what special item they're selling at 10 pst, and then figure out if it's something I need/want, and then I move on with my life. Woot-offs, however, appeal to my obsessive-compulsive nature -- as soon as one item sells out, the next one is brought forth like the next gladiator in the Coliseum, until the woot-off is finished. Woot is, for the most part, an easy way for me to get new/refurbished parts for whatever make-it-yourself project I'm working on, but today's woot-off has been sorely lacking in useful materials (unless I was building some kind of telephony/audio/headphone project).They've had two Zune items which took forever to sell out of (I guess wooters aren't zuners), but not a whole lot of useful bits to take apart and disassemble. I suppose I should be thankful that the woot-off has stalled; otherwise, when would I get around to writing entries like these?
How Much is Digital Content Worth?
In a Daily Show-esque report about the writer's strike, I can imagine this is similar to what Jon Stewart would be saying if the writers were still writing the jokes for the Daily Show:
Apocalyptic Manhattan
This Apocalyptic Manhattan built by gamer oimorrigan takes up 3 rooms in an apartment, and was built for Warhammer 40K. They used casting, foamboard and construction plaster to create the damaged buildings.
Link (via Boingboing)
Another reason to not shop at Best Buy this Holiday Season
There's really one one electronics store that I refuse to buy anything from -- Best Buy. While I have a mild distaste for Fry's (mainly because 50% of their for sale stock is stuff that has been previously returned), I despise Best Buy because they have shown time and time again that they are incredibly sleazy and hostile towards their customers. The latest story is on a particular Best Buy in NJ selling "the last Wii" over and over again:
"I was standing near the back of the store when one of their salespeople came strolling from a back door holding a Nintendo Wii over his head, and started walking the aisles announcing that it was their last unit. I followed, wondering both how quickly would it get snatched up and how quickly could I decide if I wanted to buy it. It took a few minutes for a couple to come rushing up to claim it, exclaiming how happy their kids were going to be. I went back to looking around the store. About 30 minutes later, I heard this announcement on the store's PA: "Attention Best Buy customers! Julie is now walking through the store with our last Nintendo Wii! If you're looking for a Nintendo Wii, please look for Julie!" And there was another salesperson doing the same thing as the first - walking the aisles of the store holding the Wii above her head."
In addition, Best Buy has been caught before with charing more for an opened item than a new item, outright lying to their customers, and using a in-store website that showed different prices than their online website. They're just a terrible place to do business with, and they won't be getting my money for a long, long time.
Touring the Museum of Creative Inaccuracy
Way back in June, John Scalzi posts about how the creation museum opened up down the street from from him, and how he refuses to visit. This of course, incited one particular reader of his blog who said that
"Scalzi should not be allowed to get off so easily. The Whatever Community needs to rise up and DEMAND he pay a visit to this important cultural center ASAP. In fact, we need to give him an irresistible reason to go. Here's my idea: not only will I pay the price of the Scalzi family tickets to the Creation museum, I will donate an amount matching the price of those tickets to the charity of John's choice... but only AFTER he files a comprehensive report about his visit on the Whatever.
Are there any other Whatever readers willing to make a modest donation to a Scalzish charity to compel a Creation Museum visit? C'mon, let's pass the digital hat. Who's in????!?!?!"
which followed in a counter by Scalzi, who put his going price by raising $250 by the end of the week to force a visit.
I will go to the Creation Museum and file a full, detailed and delightfully snarklicious report of the trip IF AND ONLY IF I receive at least $250 in donations via PayPal by 11:59pm NEXT FRIDAY, June 15, 2007. ALL the proceeds (minus PayPal's processing bite) will then be donated to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization which for sixty years has striven to keep the chunky peanut butter of religion out of the dusky chocolate of good government.
Not only did the donations hit the $250 mark, it raised 256 times that amount, $5,118.36 to be exact. True to his word,
Scalzi then wrote a full report of his tour, complete with commentary and photographs , including gems like this one about dinosaurs being in the museum:
Are dinosaurs 65 million years old? As if — the Earth is just six thousand years old, pal! Dinosaurs were in the garden of Eden — and vegetarians, at least until the fall, so thanks there, Adam. They were still around as late as the mid-third millenium BC; they were hanging with the Sumerians and the Egyptians (or, well, could have). All those fossils? Laid down by the Noah’s Flood, my friends. Which is not to say there weren’t dinosaurs on the Ark. No, the Bible says all kinds of land animals were on the boat, and dinosaurs are a subset of “all kinds.” They were there, scaring the crap out of the mammals, probably. Why did they die off after the flood? Well, who can say. Once the flood’s done, the Creation Museum doesn’t seem to care too much about what comes next; we’re in historical times then, you see, and that’s all Exodus through Deuteronomy, ie., someone else’s problem.
But seriously, the ability to just come out and put on a placard that the Jurassic era is temporally contiguous with the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt — well, there’s a word for that, and that word is chutzpah. Because, look, that’s something you really have to sell if you want anyone to buy it. It’s one thing to say to people that God directly created the dinosaurs and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. It’s another thing to suggest they lived long enough to harass the Minoans, and do it with a straight face.
Videogames Plus Parenting
A recent poll found that 43% of parents don't play video games with their kids who do, and the media is going crazy about these numbers. Not because 57% of parents DO play videogames with their kids, but because these 43% of parents don't know what their children are playing, don't know what they're being exposed to, and don't know what they might be learning from them, and this scares people. If you're a parent, you basically have two options:
- Option 1: Start playing videogames with your kid.
- Option 2: Take away your kid's videogame console.
Of these two choices, I feel that option 1 is the better of the two, and not just because the media loves stories about violent acts that happen when videogames are taken away, but because I feel that option 2 ostracizes the child from their friends who probably play. When 81 percent of children age 4 to 17 play videogames at least occasionally, parents need to realize that videogames are a piece of childhood just like owning a pet, birthday parties and sleepovers. That's not to say that videogames should be "unlimited play" -- there will be times when your child will want to play, and it's up to the parent to say "no" or to place restrictions on the child. That is, quite simply, part of the job of being a parent.
Furthermore, I believe that option 1 has bonding possibilities, while option 2 just opens possibilities for conflict and confrontation. In my own childhood memories, I will always remember the day my father brought home an Atari 400 computer and a couple of landmark games: QIX and Pac-Man. My father and I turned QIX into a competition -- who could get the largest percentage covered before dying, and swapping turns with my father to try and get Pac-Man to the next board. I was bonding with my father over Pac-Man and QIX when I was just five years old -- these were games without any real story to them, today games are much more complex and detailed, resembling a movie or a soap opera.
My own childhood was filled with games of all type, not just videogames, but card games and board games too. While some games had very little purpose attached to them (as far as I can figure, all Pac-Man ever trained me to do was to learn how to move the rock hard joystick horizontally and vertically).
When we got our first PC, my father also had a floppy disk full of games. It had all the games you get as programming exercises these days, games like Towers of Hanoi (recursion) and Blackjack (moving things off stacks), although all I ever saw my father play those days was Blackjack and Chinese Chess.
My father had taught me how to play Blackjack as soon as I could do simple arithmetic, and we always had playing cards around the house (plus we used to get them every time our relatives would fly over to visit us -- in those days airlines would give you a deck of cards if you requested them -- I don't think they do that anymore. This computer version had things I didn't understand, like betting, doubling down and insurance -- I had no understanding of casinos then, but it was basically casino blackjack, and just like casino blackjack, you eventually lost all your money to the house. My father was okay at this game -- he could take the $100 that he started with, and sometimes make it up to $150 before he lost it all. Sometimes I could make it to $300 before losing it all, and my father would come by, look at my score, and say to me "When you 18, we go La Vayga and you win money for Daddy". "Okay," I said with as much enthusiasm as a 10 year old could muster up. I had no idea where Las Vegas was, or even what the relationship between being 18, having a high score and winning money was.
A year later, we went to Vegas with my grandfather and uncle. Being only 11, I couldn't play, and couldn't even really watch other people play, so instead, my father and I headed to Circus Circus (which supposedly had the best video arcade), and we played some head-to-head driving games for bit while my uncle and grandfather lost their money downstairs. I understood a little bit more after that trip, and it likely shaped my attitude towards the silliness of casinos -- they had lost collectively a total of $100 in the same amount of time that my father and I had spent less than $5 at the arcade, we we could have stayed there for 20 hours rather than just one, and if I really wanted to optimize my money-time, I could figure out which games I could last the longest on, and just play those.
My mother was the one who bought the NES for us. She spent just as much time playing Duck Hunt, Gyromite and Excitebike as the rest of us, and actually ended up being the most animated when something bad befell our characters. While my sisters and I might mutter a "darn" or just accept defeat, my mother would be screaming "Oh no!" when the scientist in Gyromite got squished or "run run run" when the motorcyclist fell off in Excitebike. Even my grandfather had a NES and played Tetris. While he could beat some of my younger cousins, Tetris was my specialty and having just won a local Tetris championship, I was eager to show off my skills. My grandfather was surprised at the speed at which I smacked him down, and said to my parents, "Mike's really good at this game." My father laughed and said "He plays that game all the time, and he's young, so he'll be faster. Soon the cousins will grow up and you won't be able to beat them anymore." My mother piped in with a "I don't even know how to play, so you know more about this game than I do. The kids are the experts."
It's memories like this that I remember from my childhood and my interactions with adults, and it was encouraging to know that as much as I didn't really understand their world, they were trying to learn about my interests and my world. I think games help break down that barrier a little, and I feel that overall, the experience of playing videogames is a positive rather than a negative.
I think it's only by understanding videogames and interacting with your child with them that the third and final option is unlocked: the ability to trust your child with making their own decisions .
links for 2007-11-14
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In my childhood, there were a couple of movies that had a lasting impact, and one of them was The Last Starfighter, a sci-fi fantasy about a boy who plays a video game and gets wisked to another planet to fight the Ko-Dan Armada. After all these years, th
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SF Author Jay Lake tours a Titan I missile silo.
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A sobering look at the transfats, calories and sodium used in fast food
UC Berkeley Band Plays Classic Music from Videogames
When I was going to school, I lived right next to the stadium for two years, and had season tickets to the football games. After the game was over, the marching band would stop over by the hall and play our drinking song (in exchange for a keg to be delivered to the band later that day). My room freshman year faced straight out into the courtyard, so we always had a front row seat to this performance -- they played the music, our hall bellowed the lyrics. While I remember them playing for us (on occasion) themes from classic movies such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Last Ark and Rocky, I think the whole hall would have totally geeked out at a performance like this:
parakkum noted that if the Cal band was more like this when we were going to school, he might have showed up to games more often. I would have shown up more too, but the team sucked while I was going to school, and they only started winning after I left.
List of videogames/songs in the extended.
Continue reading UC Berkeley Band Plays Classic Music from Videogames.
Battlestar Galactica: Razor
Last night, kwc and I caught a free preview showing of Battlestar Galactica: Razor, a story that takes place following the Cain story arc with flashbacks as appropriate filling in the gaps between the attack on the Colonies and Galactica.
Unlike a normal movie showing, because this was sponsored by Microsoft, we were subjected to ads from before, during and after the movie. After the movie, we saw ads from Sci-Fi Channel, including some scenes from the upcoming season (starts in 2008?), as well as more extended version footage from the Battlestar Galactica: Razor DVD.
We were subjected to this Microsoft Zune ad twice during the showing:
While I would be perfectly okay with never seeing this ad ever again, I think the ad exemplifies the difference between Microsoft Marketing and Apple Marketing. While Microsoft is more involved with the abstraction of what a music experience is like (in the Zune's case, it's a weird kind of acid trip with dancing pink bunnies), Apple is more concerned with keeping the product on the screen or showing off the features of the device.
links for 2007-11-12
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Series preview for Macross F, Macross co-creator Shoji Kawamori, Macross Plus composer Yoko Kanno, and Macross Zero's animation studio Satelight are working on this 2008 TV series.
links for 2007-11-11
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Going straight to the heart of gaming addiction -- at BlizzCon 07.
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Scenes from the movie Aliens recreated with LEGO bricks
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Media Bias of Coverage of climate change. U.S. vs. U.K.
Wow, the networks play dirty
In case you haven't heard, guild writers are currently on strike, picketing the studios so that they can get some residuals on digital downloads and dvd sales. They're asking for 4 cents, and my guess is that they probably aren't going to get four cents -- they're likely to get a penny or two once things are totally negotiated out, but in the meantime, the network is still doing digital downloads, and in fact, NBC, which had previously blasted Apple for not wanting to raise their price from 1.99, has dropped the prices on their shows on Amazon Unbox to just 99 cents per show