Slashdot Mirror

I started to write a response to this point-by-point, but quickly I realized how ill your perception is. Not to mention your previous posts.

The statements in the agreement only apply to being a beta tester. The license for the final project will be extremely different from this closed beta test. This license will be available on the website for public viewing; A practice not common in the industry.

The reason for these statements are to protect me from being sued. I am doing everything I can to make it work the first time. However, things happen. Even with the three computers I have to test the game, no one has the same exact computers I own. That's what beta testing is for.

Also, I need to protect the assets such as video and sound. The personal I have working on the project have not agreed to a creative commons license or GPL work. Release in such a manor would be breach of contract to these individuals. I am currently working on other projects under the CC and GPL, but Antidote is not one of them.

This statements do not include malware. After working for two years at an IT Help Desk, I would not be going right to creating such programs. Hell, I wouldn't have the time anyway!

I may be a undergrad at Emerson College, but I know that license agreements are there for a reason. I'm sorry you don't agree to the license, but that's why you didn't apply and others did tonight.

I started to write a response to this point-by-point, but quickly I realized how ill your perception is. Not to mention your previous posts.

The statements in the agreement only apply to being a beta tester. The license for the final project will be extremely different from this closed beta test. This license will be available on the website for public viewing; A practice not common in the industry.

The reason for these statements are to protect me from being sued. I am doing everything I can to make it work the first time. However, things happen. Even with the three computers I have to test the game, no one has the same exact computers I own. That's what beta testing is for.

Also, I need to protect the assets such as video and sound. The personal I have working on the project have not agreed to a creative commons license or GPL work. Release in such a manor would be breach of contract to these individuals. I am currently working on other projects under the CC and GPL, but Antidote is not one of them.

This statements do not include malware. After working for two years at an IT Help Desk, I would not be going right to creating such programs. Hell, I wouldn't have the time anyway!

I may be a undergrad at Emerson College, but I know that license agreements are there for a reason. I'm sorry you don't agree to the license, but that's why you didn't apply and others did tonight.

I've gotten around a lot of the countless screen clutter out there by hacking together a consortium of the main search forms i use every day (including wikipedia) and making this my home page. I get all the information i need in one single location, and i really didn't have to learn much html to do it.

Of course i hope for the best for wikipedia and all things open source/gnu, and i trust google. If they do anything to wikipedia, i'm sure they'll have long since learned from their usenet mistakes and actually change wikipedia -- if they DO change wikipedia (pretty big if there) -- for the general public good.

But, as my subject implies, so long as i can still grab their form and use it to get to the information i need without my corneas being bombarded by some corporate advertising jiz, then i really have no personal cause for alarm.

The only SP2 installs I had fail on me were one custom CPU I own and one where the laptop was unpluged and the battery cut.

But for hotfixes, patches, and lesser updates, I've never had a problem personally or with the hundereds of CPUs that come in to the desk.

Now, I find OS X updates as a whole better to deal with as Apple will milestone their updates. Something I wish Redmond would do more often. But to be honest, I've had some quick OS X updates fail on me more than Windows updates.

What about my game, Antidote, you insensitive clod!

Sorry, had to say it. It is the most anticipated game at Emerson College. It may be the only game being produced at Emerson, but it is the most anticipated!

As the lead website programmer for the Student Government Association for Emerson College, I and my fellow team members are working on an issue tracking system for the entirety of Emerson College. Thought the system, we can identify, analize, and resolve issues and concerns in an open diologe for all members of the college community.

This system (We're calling it ECVoices) is for any student, staff, or faculty member to submit an issue of concern about the college to the SGA. Our intent is to bridge the gaps between the faculty, administration, and student together about the small and large issues of Emerson College.

I'm sorry I can't give a preview right now since we are still in development, but I want to make the point that available of technology is only worth the investment if there are tools that utilize the technology. Emily Garr, the president of the SGA first came up with the idea of such a forum. When she enlisted the help of the crew and I, we worked with her and the rest of the Emerson College community to develop this system.

My hope to you (the poster and any others in similar positions) is that you take advantage of the technology put in place. Do not be afraid if you do not know how to program or know the gross details of developing a technology. Know what you want from the technology, then find the people who can help make it happen.

If you (or anyone else) is interested in the ECVoices project, feel free to send me a note.

• Babson College Wellesley
• Bentley College Waltham
• Berklee College of Music Boston
• Boston Architectural Center Boston
• Boston College Newton
• Boston Conservatory, The Boston
• Boston University Boston
• Brandeis University Waltham
• Bunker Hill Community College Boston
• Cambridge College Cambridge
• Emerson College Boston
• Emmanuel College Boston
• Fisher College Boston
• Harvard University Cambridge
• Hellenic College Brookline
• Lesley College Cambridge
• MIT Cambridge
• Massachusetts College of Art Boston
• Massachusetts College of Pharmacy
  and Allied Health Sciences Boston
• Mount Ida College Newton
• New England Conservatory of Music Boston
• New England School of Law Boston
• Northeastern University Boston
• Pine Manor College Chestnut Hill
• Radcliffe College Cambridge
• Simmons College Boston
• Suffolk University Boston
• Tufts University Medford
• Wellesley College Wellesley
• Wentworth Institute of Technology Boston
• Wheelock College Boston

I dunno. Though not a true prime, I liked Optimus Primal quite a bit. Rodimus Prime wasn't too shabby either.

Of course, some would argue Optimal Optimus Prime was the best.

I dunno. Though not a true prime, I liked Optimus Primal quite a bit. Rodimus Prime wasn't too shabby either.

Of course, some would argue Optimal Optimus Prime was the best.

I went to school with a Jeni4 Jones. See here. I don't think it was her given name. But rumor was that it was legally changed.

I think you're thinking about Optimus Prime.

"What kind of chance does a film-maker have of making a difference in videogames, now films are becoming more game-like and games are becoming more film-like?"

I know this seems like a shameless promotion since it comes out tomorrow, but the answer to that question will be answered with "Enter the Matrix."

This is a very rare project where film directors are in the director's chair for a video game. This is revolutionary mainly because it breaks taboos in Hollywood about video games.

A few weeks ago, Emerson College in Boston held their 'Web Night' panel discussion which included Randy Fenton, the founder of Dare to Play (DtP). DtP is a tool to create a non-liner narrative structure using a hotmail-like account to interact with characters. The intent is for branding for movies where audiences experience a sort of prequel to a movie (as well as some Edutainment applications).

The common problem he has faced is being labeled as a game. For example, DtP was featured under the Sundance Interactive Festival, but only by a hair. The board was at a fight between calling DtP a game or not. Sundance Interactive do not want to incorporate 'games' into the festival, but how can an interactive project not be constructed as a game? Under this logic, titles like 'Myst' or 'The Longest Journey' do not have narrative merit. This is the challenge between the movie and gaming industries.

Hollywood thinks all video games are variations of Pong.

There are a lot of reasons and theories as to why, from union issues to change in audience positioning. But now, special effects work is very similar to video game creation, especially with motion-capture and human scanning practices. The film industry is already making mini-videogames as non-interactive movies for a few years now. Something needs to point out this fact to the industry.

I believe the Wachowski brothers will make that point with The Matrix. The principal photography of the new series of The Matrix was of 3 main units, "Matrix: Revolutions," "Matrix: Reloaded," and "Enter the Matrix." Film people made a video game. The game may or may not be revolutionary for the audience (out side of the plot's involvement with the movie), but it will be for the process of creating a video game.

It shall be exciting to see what happens next...

1. Fifty-Year-Old Computer Being Restored

On Monday November 22, @10:50PM with 116 comments

James Green directs us to "a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at...

I guess Geek.Com is behind ;-)

2. The first Transistor computer, TX-0, was restored to demonstratable condition in the 1980's by The Computer Museum. Yes it worked again, No question; as an original member and early volunteer of TCM (before the first tmove), I was there, and saw it run.

TCM was once of Boston, then of Marlboro, now of SilliValley. See the TCM Project Description and the Alumni page. It was built in 1957, so would be only 45 years old. I'm not sure what happened to it when DEC sold the building, or John McKenzie, who got it to work again. Shag Graetz's classic Creative Computing article on PDP-1 SpaceWar includes it's TX-0 predecessor. (and French translation) The TMRC pages include TX-0 history as well. See also Levy/Hackers

-- bill / n1vux

I recently transfered in to Emerson College in Boston, doing away with a double major in Design/Technical Theatre & Cable/TV Broadcasting at Western Michigan University. Upon starting at Emerson, I found out about a BFA program where a student can partake in a feature-length project in film, tv/video, radio, and new media. Long story short, I changed majors from a BA in Film to peruse BFA in New Media.

Personally, I think 'New Media' should be renamed 'Interactive Media.' With internet, with video games, it's a form of media that the audience interacts with. With 'New Media,' what happens in 20 or 10 years? Is it still new? And what happens when HTML goes the way of BetaMax? What does knowing HTML do for you then?

I use the class curriculum as a springboard for my own education. The classes provide the foundation, I complete the rest of the picture with my thesis project. What I hope to create is an education where I can understand how an audience interacts with the media I create. Programing languages and media delivery systems will come and go, but what I hope to keep is how best to allow my audience to interact with my artwork. HTML, Flash, Director, et all are tools for a user to interact with content. I'm trying to keep in check that the tools will change and improve, but the fundamentals of audience interaction are still in play.

In a prosumer, Cannes-Film-Festival-type environment, they'd be using this or either of the cheaper solutions, and editing audio on it, too... Unfortunately.

It happens way too often - I interned at Emerson College in Boston, and spent a large portion of my time helping video/film graduate students fix the audio in their Masters' and Doctoral thesis projects... and every last one of them treated audio as the last step of the project. This is further perpetuated by the software on the market, which pushes audio into the realm of "another" program.

-T

A big part of sitting in film school is watching movies. We prefer to watch them in the purest form we can because color, framing and grain of the film matter a great deal for the expression of the work. Most films we watched on FILM CELLULOID in classes or theaters. We weren't expected to bring them home and watch the celluloid.

We WERE expected, though, to watch the film on our own for private analysis to extract techniques (especially for learning Stop Motion Animation) and to really figure out what's going on. We had a film library with videos and Laser Disks (about 5 years ago, remember) that had to be checked out and watched in the library in these little porno-like booths. At the time, that's fine, but waiting in line to watch a film plain old stinks.

I also worked for the School's IT dept and at the time, Yahoo rated us the #1 Wired Liberal arts school in the country for our kick ass network and great intranet and internet access. We had this great technology (students could do their editing from their rooms calling up X windows from the avid machines in multi user mode, among other things).

I didn't realize it THEN, but i realize it now, that a digitized library of films from DVD clips in their pure form would be a great solution to the film library problem. the students can watch the film in the second best form (celluloid still rocks) which is FAR better than VHS copies or LaserDisks watched in little booths. Multiple students could watch HIGH QUALITY motion pictures for educational purposes if the DVDs could LEGALLY be decoded.

-----

to dead formats. Heck, Sony's no stranger to breaking backwards compatibility with its own dead formats. Oh, and insert obligatory Betamax reference here. So this new format won't go anywhere... who cares? We can thank Sony for creating some standards with sticking power. Weighing their successes and failures, I'd say the scale's still tipped towards success.

The US isn't really so different to the countries it arbitrarily chooses to oppose.

I downloaded MS Netshow before the link broke. You can get it from my school's web space. You're welcome. : )

Will Meyer
wmm@wmeyer.boston.ma.us