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This comes to mind.

Reminds me of THIS.

Not quite. In that case, the subject matter being parodied was directly Barbie (at least in part it was demonstrably a direct parody of Barbie). Very clearly and understandbly direct.

In this case, the song is not being parodied, it is being manipulated to parody Kerry and Bush. Since it is not a direct subject of the parody, and only used as a means to parody something else, it is quite possibly not a protected use. The expectation is that if you are going to parody, you have to use your own material to do so.

This same issue came up for a Penny Arcade comic that used Strawberry Shortcake characters to parody American McGee. In that case as in this one, the characters were not being parodied, but used *in* a parody. Though Penny Arcade backed down well before going to court on that comic, it is generally thought they would have lost. Shortly after, they did a comic directly parodying American Greetings for their trouble, and never received notification to take it down (under a claim such as 'defamation of character' or some such) so the lawyers probably acknowledged that as a direct parody and protected speech.

All that said, it *MAY* be possible to show that the song is at least partially directly parodying the orignal song. One segment that comes clear to my mind in this context is the Native American saying 'this land was my land', which does directly parody the spirit and meaning behind the song. There are other places, but if I was going to fight that in their shoes, I would think that would be a good focus point to demonstrate that it is in part a direct, protected parody.

After reading that, this picture comes to mind.

Remember this?

Seem's like the same situation.

I'm posting this from that mythical place we have all heard of. Outside.

Be original M$

I don't think that the Xbox has failed just yet. AFAIK, popular games (Halo 2, sports games, etc.) are still being released for the system three or so years after its release, although that might just be MS being able to expend huge amounts of money on ensuring development and multiple-platform launches. I do agree that the Xbox doesn't have a compelling list of games, but I've always chalked that up to the PS2 being released first.

Personally, I try to buy games for the Xbox. I'm not a PS2/GC/Xbox-only fanatic, so I own a PS2, a GC and an Xbox. I think that the graphics look "better" on the Xbox. If I thought the graphics were better on the PS2 or GC, I would buy games for the PS2 or GC. On the other hand, there are some games that I can't get on the Xbox that I can get on the PS2 or the GC, so I purchase them for the required platform.

TotalGaming.net was also mentioned on PA in the last three paragraphs of todays news post

Possibly yes, but are you really sure that the Linux world is ready for 100 million tech support e-mails a day from people's relatives asking "how the hell do I setup xyz piece of hardware?". I know that for now I'm happy to sit in my own little Linux world where I have all the good fun of not worrying about virii and pretenting that I have a learning dissability whenever anyone asks me for me for help.

Here's a relevant comic.

There's a Penny-Arcade strip which points out how retarded you look when you refer to Microsoft as M$. Penny-Arcade isn't exactly the mainstream; these guys are fellow geeks.

When you refer to Napster as "the RIAA's lapdog", rational people quickly tag you as some sort of fringe moron, and most will stop listening to the rest of what you have to say.

Napster started this war. Music sharing and mp3's were confined to the geek niche, then Napster came along and all of a sudden Metallica's ranting and Shawn Fanning were headline news, and jokes about them were on SNL and MTV. Now they provide a legal service, but it's not like they're the ones suing hundreds of their users.

If you ever wonder why it is that you're having trouble convincing the average Joe that RIAA and MPAA are awful, and that DRM is crippling, not enabling their devices, it's because when the RIAA and MPAA representatives talk, they sound like intelligent, (albeit not all that technically knowledgable or charismatic) rational businessmen, whereas you sound like a paranoid 14-year-old revolutionary with a 70 IQ.

I think they made the comic to insult her lack of knowledge of the spider-man characters.

Gabe has stated many times in the past that he enjoy 's a good web-slinging from time to time. He was just insulted that she didn't know anything at all about the character (and characters) in the movie thats making her millions.

I think they made the comic to insult her lack of knowledge of the spider-man characters.

Gabe has stated many times in the past that he enjoy 's a good web-slinging from time to time. He was just insulted that she didn't know anything at all about the character (and characters) in the movie thats making her millions.

I think they made the comic to insult her lack of knowledge of the spider-man characters.

Gabe has stated many times in the past that he enjoy 's a good web-slinging from time to time. He was just insulted that she didn't know anything at all about the character (and characters) in the movie thats making her millions.

I think they made the comic to insult her lack of knowledge of the spider-man characters.

Gabe has stated many times in the past that he enjoy 's a good web-slinging from time to time. He was just insulted that she didn't know anything at all about the character (and characters) in the movie thats making her millions.

The penny-arcade was ragging on her late last week also. funny comic.

Hats like this one will be perfectly acceptable.

It's not my fault your world orbits a ball of fire.

Also, this cartoon from Penny Arcade comes to mind.

Well I still paid around $1000 less for my faster computer which also runs a Unix-like operating system. And I didn't buy it because it was pretty and grape ! So Ha!

On a more serious note Mac users are generaly more computer literate than PC users, but thats not all of them. In fact, working in tech support, some of the stupidest people I've ever delt with were on Macs. I recently have fallen in love with Macs for graphic design after I was forced to use them at my college. However, before that I was quite anti-mac for a good reason. In addition to being some of the most annoying people alive "my computer is a new Mac, ok? it didnt break. i spent like $7000 on this. do you even make that in a year? its your service that is broken!" on tech support calls their whole community is a bit annoying. I remember back in high school we had a choice of macs or pcs in our web dev class. I chose a PC and my teacher gave me a 20 minute lecture on how much better Macs were. However, I got my revenge. These were the first iMacs (the ones with nothing internal) and for some reason I discovered playing a CD, having Eric's Ultimate Solitare, and a web browser window open at the same time would instantly crash the Mac, all of them. So every morning before class I would crash every since Mac in the lab. Showed her.

Basically the world is full of morons on computers and Mac users are no better than PC users. They just get a slightly more stable operating system at the expence of being overcharged and not being able to build their own system.

I think that's what I'm hearing. Babies. Crying.

Oh, sorry, where was I? Yeah, this whole subscription plus game issue is completely a nonissue .

What next? You mean I have to PAY for a COMPUTER to play these games? And a GeForce 4 or better video card?! That's $1,500 just to play a game! Then I have to buy BROADBAND INTERNET, too? That's $50 per month plus $100 for installation and equipment! Ohh, AND I have to already be paying $30 per month to get a phone line or cable TV! How convenient-- I use a cell phone you insensitive clod! And what the fuck? What the fucking hell are you trying to pull? Fifty goddamn dollars to buy a boxed game? What the fucking shit is this? You've got to be fucking kidding, right?

And the whores? I've got to go buy Russian brides to play from Eastern Europe to join my Super Group and fight Dr. Vhaz?

Figure it out. If you're playing a MMORPG you're already paying a lot more for 1) Your computer, 2) your internet connection, and 3) all the other techno-shit in your life.

...would have to change before I invest money and time into it.

To begin, it costs way too much to support that sort of habit these days. I'd pay... 4.95 to 9.95 a month for a decent MMORPG. Even if the CD costs me 49.95 to start. (WoW: Blizzard, are you listening?).

I would absolutely love to play World of Warcraft when it comes out, but, when the numbers add up, I'm afraid my 'disposable' income can't take that hit.

Here's another issue. Players who detract from the overall experience. Espicially when game administration refuse to do anything about it. Not a case of 'can not', cases of 'will not'. Albeit, some games are adopting tougher policies on cheaters/assholes and are cracking down on them. Good. Good for them. More of you should be doing it.

I'll just refer everyone to classic pennny arcade

Over-rated as they may be, slick graphics are a real necessity in today's commercial games. Sure, I go back to UFO Defense about once a year, and I just recently spent quite a few hours trying to get Syndicate Wars running under XP (my machine is not quite fast enough to handle it under DosBox).

But the sad truth is that we are the extreme minority. Many gamers actually do make purchasing decisions based on what they see visually -- and shortsighted megalithic publishers don't seem to care what gamers think about the gameplay once the game has been purchased. At the same time, great games with less-than-stellar graphics are routinely overlooked by the market.

Although some games will always aim for the photorealistic, I agree that's going to increasingly cost more for increasingly less benefit. Stylized graphics are likely the way to go in no small part due the Uncanny Valley, but also pure economic motivations.

But at the moment Cel Shading (done reasonably well) is one of the more intensive graphic styles. It's a fairly computationally expensive process, and takes comparably high-poly models to get the look right. (though you can save a bit if you're not aiming for crisp black outlines; but are going with a more Tartakovsky/Samurai Jack style)

Proper styling in general can make fewer resources go a helluva lot further (see: WoW vs EQ2). But cel shading itself is not one of those low resource techniques.

It has to be referenced...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-12 -14&res=l

They know our weakness!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-06 -30&res=l

I'm just happy someone else than Interplay is picking up Fallout, it's a truly great series. But Interplay really is something, they have (had) several strong franchises and golden opportunities that they've completely squandered time and time again.

Let's see, I can't even remember how many there's been... Descent and the excellent Descent: Freespace licenses come to mind. Ran those into the ground pretty spectacularly. Then there's Fallout of course. Interplay published the first Baldur's Gate, then botched that up completely, can't blame Bioware for not wanting to have anything to do with these guys anymore. Black Isle, now that was an innovative game house. Brought us Fallout and one of the greatest CRPG ever, Planescape: Torment. What does Interplay do? Shut the lot down. Well, at least we got Obsidian and Troika out of that wreckage. Didn't they have the Lord of the Rings license back in the day too? Now that's a license to print money, but somehow they managed to mess that up too.

At the moment they're just hogging licenses, they should sell the lot on Ebay and maybe we could get some respectable game companies like Obsidian or Bioware to give us some decent games.

Click me, you 'tard!

With classics like Penny Arcade who can blame us?

you need to leave your place and go outside more often.

Huh? I'm not sure what you're trying to imply. I get outside pleanty. Given some of the stories i've heard about Xbox Live, any mistaken assumptions i make about the average person on it being competent, civil and inteligent is probably based on spending TOO MUCH time outside and not enough time on Xbox Live (or any time for that matter.)

So if you meant to say that backwards, i do spend too much time outside with real people and friends to be able to make well informed judgements about the people on Xbox Live. I'm not sure if you meant me to feel insulted or what, but i'm just confused.

Maybe not HaloKing, but what about the Mech King?

The Reason Why!

Blizzard should take over the project themselves. I think that no other company will live up to their standards. It seems that the game got screwed before this years's E3.

From the Penny-Arcade post:
"What we saw at this year's E3 seemed almost unrelated to the game that had so drawn me in initially. Both the guy demonstrating it (and indeed, the game itself) actively distanced what it was doing from that earlier, stealth based iteration. The graphics seemed to have taken a turn for the worse."

Blizzard should take over the project themselves. I think that no other company will live up to their standards. It seems that the game got screwed before this years's E3.

From the Penny-Arcade post:
"What we saw at this year's E3 seemed almost unrelated to the game that had so drawn me in initially. Both the guy demonstrating it (and indeed, the game itself) actively distanced what it was doing from that earlier, stealth based iteration. The graphics seemed to have taken a turn for the worse."

Somehow, your post reminded me of this.

I guess you get to keep on secretly dreaming about Spidey coming out of the closet to declare his interest in you

Hmmm...

A customer appreciation bat.

Seriously, compared to CompUSA, they're downright saints. Still, if you don't like it, shop at a good honest local computer store (and if thier aren't any in you're area, you've probably got yourself to blame).

You stay away from my mom.

Go gettem tiger.

CHEETO! Haven't seen you in AGES! Where ya been, bro?

I've been on board since launch, and in the scant hours between raising a toddler and working 60 hour weeks, I've brought my character (scrapper) to almost lvl 30.

Team battles - I hang out with different people depending what time of day I'm on, and the composition of your team and that of the different enemy groups makes for plenty of variety (and lots of well-animated chaos). Soloing can definitely get repetitive, but finding a fun group makes all the difference. Quoth Tycho:

The other thing that I didn't understand is the extent to which playing with different groups reveals really crucial interdependencies. I'll talk about that some other time, but the more I play, the more I think that "teaming" is actually the purpose of their entire game.

Environments - The zones start out nice, and get cooler as you go. The scale of the damage in Faultline, the creepy atmosphere in Dark Astoria, and the Nazi base and Underground City indoor zones are my favorites so far (I haven't played or seen anything from the First Update yet). Although everyone is sick of warehouses and office buildings, all of the outdoor zones are huge, have their own unique feel, and the enemies make sense in their environment (mafia fighting triad for control of the docks, mystics performing rituals in graveyards, gangs stealing purses less than a block from superhero HQ (maybe not so much the last one)). Fantasy games just have a much more limited choice of settings.

The Writing - I strongly recommend reading all the "Clues" that advance each story, and always talking to your contacts. They've put a lot of effort into the content, and it is very entertaining. Doing missions with a group is much more rewarding than random patrols IMO. Plus I enjoy "events" like alien invasions, no matter how embarassing it is to get killed by an albino space chimp.

The Future - They are saying all the right things about where they want to take the game, and I am very curious about the higher-level content that is in the game now. I signed up for 6 months at once (it lowers the monthly rate to $13), and if I've seen all there is to see by then I will happily stop (hello WoW?). I'm not looking for a game to play forever (says the guy with active Diablo II accounts from like 5 years ago), but so far this has been fun every step of the way, unlike Lineage 2, which won't let you do anything fun at all until you are 80 hours in (I tried to enjoy the beta, really).

I'm reminded of a comic

To be honest, I don't know that much about Acclaim's games. The only thing I remember about them are some rather dubious advertising campaigns, which I don't think they actually ever meant to follow through on. I think they were just proposed for the shock value, the whole "any publicity is good publicity" idea.

I decided that I didn't want to buy any of their games because I didn't want to encourage that behavior, but I don't recall the issue actually coming up. They didn't make any games I was interested in.

And the comma has lots of fun friends. Let's meet them!

• Your friend at the end: the period!
• The Bad Boys of Punctuation

And the comma has lots of fun friends. Let's meet them!

• Your friend at the end: the period!
• The Bad Boys of Punctuation

Do you work for Daily Radar or something? Just wondering.

Or maybe Cleanmates?

Xentax

Do you work for Daily Radar or something? Just wondering.

Or maybe Cleanmates?

Xentax

I believe Ico was also a favorite at Penny Arcade. They tend to have pretty good taste, IMO. Found three related comics in their archive:

here
here
and here

I believe Ico was also a favorite at Penny Arcade. They tend to have pretty good taste, IMO. Found three related comics in their archive:

here
here
and here

I believe Ico was also a favorite at Penny Arcade. They tend to have pretty good taste, IMO. Found three related comics in their archive:

here
here
and here