I'm going back in time and introducing intellectual property rights to the ancient mesoamericans. No more "we own all your corn now" bull from the biocorps; you pay the New Aztec Empire, or you JUST DON'T EAT.
No more farmer-crushing works derived from free maise in the 21st century. No more feeding Europe and Asia for centuries at practically no cost. Mexico's economy will retroactively have gone through the roof.
Or.. geez, this being/. maybe I'll just open source maise. Problem solved for everyone. (But what license? LGPL?)
Note to self: remember to bring along a case of small pox vaccine.
Re:Until they farm harvesting out to zombies...
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Goddamn outsourcing.
President Bush! I implore you! Stop sending our spamming jobs to Zombonia!
The plot of Tron revolved around a monolithic corporate entity that absorbed intellectual property from sources all over the world, protected itself with a restrive and overpowered security model subject to hackers, destroyed the creative spirit of individuals, and twisted the vision of its creators to suit its own ends.
If there's a studio more qualified than Disney to write that story, I don't know who it is.
Sometimes it's about doing the most you can with the least you've got. Sometimes it's about not having a huge budget, or even a budget at all. Sometimes it's just funnier that way, or the medium carries the message, or... or whatever. Sometimes authors show innovation within their craft by imposing limits on its structure. Might as well ask why Shakespeare "made do" with the constraining rules of iambic pentameter when he could have free-flowing written blank verse instead.
Well, yeah, maybe Shakespeare it's not. But it's fun to do anyway.
Think of it more like Junkyard Wars: cobble together whatever you can to make it work somehow and reach a goal. Why reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of bent and broken ones lying around that can be beaten into a close enough shape?
Also, there aren't that many teams of graphics designers, programmers, and animators sitting around waiting to work on a film that doesn't have big $$$ to pay out. Give these guys a break, huh? Feel free to start your own studio if you want to show them up. While you're at it, why don't you make your own cameras like Lucas did for Episode II?
As for stealing the IP... I don't quite buy it. They're filming themselves playing the game they paid for. It doesn't strike me as an inch out of line with screenshots and demo reels, except that nothing gets shot unscripted.
The Guild Theater in Albuquerque NM was recently host to Tromadance NM, the first of what will hopefully be an annual local filmmaking event. This was grassroots, homegrown, micro-budget stuff I'm talking about, like about $100 here -- I think $3000 was the max including equipment. I'm sure a lot of the shorter peices were budgeted literally with change dug out from under the sofa cushions. Lloyd Kaufmann of Toxic Avenger fame (among other things) ushered the event in, and everyone had a blast.
I ran into a few folks that I'd known from high school a decade ago, who I them had the pleasure of seeing on-screen or as directors. It was a bigger thrill than meeting Redford would have afforded. Regular, ordinary folks *love* to make movies, and have some pretty cool stories to tell too. The innovation is amazing considering what some of these guys try to do with so little tech available to them, which ranged from simple Macromedia Flash animations to cheap Sony videocams to (rarely) prosumer-grade DV cams. I would have loved to see some machinima.
The governor's office in New Mexico has waded hip-deep into local filmmaking, by which I mean Hollywood comes to town for a few weeks and hires local crews. This isn't the kind of local filmmaking I'd *like* to see the governor pimping the state for (SUPPORT FILMMAKERS WHO ACTUALLY WORK AND LIVE IN NEW MEXICO, PLEASE), but I guess it's a beginning. Plus, it means there are plenty of "workforce training" and continuing education classes to get the mad film skizzills. There's a lot to work with for the amateur, hobbyist, and professional filmmaker alike.
I've got to agree -- the Dark Side just isn't all that subtle or sinister. It's mostly just rude, sneering, and curiousity as to why the I, the PC, "shouldn't just kill you now and take what I want!"
Oooooh, sinister.
Meanwhile, I've got to give George Lucas props: In Phantom Menace he chose to portray Senator Palpatine as a really nice guy with apparently the best of motives. No sneering, no cackling monologues, no winks at the audience. It's only through foreknowledge of events in A New Hope that he even comes under suspicion.
I'd love to play that kind of dark character in an RPG, and Bioware has the kind of writing team that could make it happen. Even better, I'd love be playing the game, thinking I'm holding to the good, right, moral course, only to discover that I've been sucked into the Dark Side without even realizing it. Maybe there's information I wasn't privy to that casts my actions in a new light or something.
The Dark Side is insidious because it appeals to your animal instincts, not your choice-making brain, right? Why do game makers feel the need to shove moral disambiguity down the player's throat?
Maybe it's something to do with the mythic quality of the SW universe, where Good is Good and Evil is Evil, and the conflict between the two is resolved without contradiction, sympathy, or subtlety. For all the beautiful vistas and wonderous corlds and cultures that KOTOR affords, the writers suffer from a bizarre lack of imagination.
We have actually had books for hundred of years, but the DMCA put paid to us actaully remembering any of thier contents. Unauthorized mental replication of copyrighted materials, you see.
And if you haven't read Who Censored Roger Rabbit, you really should. It's funny, original, brilliant, and nothing at all like the film. *Nothing* at all...
I haven't bothered with the Sci-Fi channel's adaptations of sci-fi classics ever since they remade Dune. Baron Harkonnen did *not* crack his poison tooth implant first, you insensitive clods!
Absolutely. An education that *you* value is far more important than an education that some mythical employer may or may not value. You get educated for you, not for your boss. This is the kind of thinking that lets you be your *own* boss someday.
Cynics may disagree (and sometimes I am one), but it is still entirely possible to write your own ticket to personal success. It may mean not settling into some company's swanky job at first, but you do have a shot at creating your own custom swanky job over the long run.
(Whoops. Minor edit: my favored game's name is Slouching Toward Bedlam, not Bethlehem. Apologies to the author. I guess I don't love the game as much as I thought!)
IANAIFA (blah blah Interactive Fiction Author) but I would contend that IF authors have to make more, not fewer, decisions than a pre-written author would for a work of the same length.
Pre-written authors need ultimately only follow one timeline where everthing happens in sequence; IF authors have to anticipate the player performing actions at any given time under different situations, and account for that. (Has the player got the dingus to go through the puzzle door? Has he talked to NPC #2 and subsequently learned about the Amazing Event? How is Sparky the Wonder Dog described in the rain versus when he's in his doghouse?) Also, IF that allows for multiple endings (like my current favorite, Slouching Toward Bethlehem) has to be flexable, yet credible under many circumstances, which means even more decisions on the part of the author.
Not to take cred from one or the other, but in order for the player to make choices, any choices, the IF author has to have anticipated them, made them, and accounted for them.
Maybe IF authors can be forgiven a little snootiness. It seems like a hell of a lot of work to me, and most players won't explore the game sufficiently to be exposed to all of it. (Yay, easter eggs!) Contrast with a written book, where it's just a matter of turning all the pages.
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I'm going back in time and introducing intellectual property rights to the ancient mesoamericans. No more "we own all your corn now" bull from the biocorps; you pay the New Aztec Empire, or you JUST DON'T EAT.
/. maybe I'll just open source maise. Problem solved for everyone. (But what license? LGPL?)
No more farmer-crushing works derived from free maise in the 21st century. No more feeding Europe and Asia for centuries at practically no cost. Mexico's economy will retroactively have gone through the roof.
Or.. geez, this being
Note to self: remember to bring along a case of small pox vaccine.
Goddamn outsourcing.
President Bush! I implore you! Stop sending our spamming jobs to Zombonia!
The plot of Tron revolved around a monolithic corporate entity that absorbed intellectual property from sources all over the world, protected itself with a restrive and overpowered security model subject to hackers, destroyed the creative spirit of individuals, and twisted the vision of its creators to suit its own ends.
If there's a studio more qualified than Disney to write that story, I don't know who it is.
Yeah, you're missing something.
Sometimes it's about doing the most you can with the least you've got. Sometimes it's about not having a huge budget, or even a budget at all. Sometimes it's just funnier that way, or the medium carries the message, or... or whatever. Sometimes authors show innovation within their craft by imposing limits on its structure. Might as well ask why Shakespeare "made do" with the constraining rules of iambic pentameter when he could have free-flowing written blank verse instead.
Well, yeah, maybe Shakespeare it's not. But it's fun to do anyway.
Think of it more like Junkyard Wars: cobble together whatever you can to make it work somehow and reach a goal. Why reinvent the wheel when there are plenty of bent and broken ones lying around that can be beaten into a close enough shape?
Also, there aren't that many teams of graphics designers, programmers, and animators sitting around waiting to work on a film that doesn't have big $$$ to pay out. Give these guys a break, huh? Feel free to start your own studio if you want to show them up. While you're at it, why don't you make your own cameras like Lucas did for Episode II?
As for stealing the IP... I don't quite buy it. They're filming themselves playing the game they paid for. It doesn't strike me as an inch out of line with screenshots and demo reels, except that nothing gets shot unscripted.
The Guild Theater in Albuquerque NM was recently host to Tromadance NM, the first of what will hopefully be an annual local filmmaking event. This was grassroots, homegrown, micro-budget stuff I'm talking about, like about $100 here -- I think $3000 was the max including equipment. I'm sure a lot of the shorter peices were budgeted literally with change dug out from under the sofa cushions. Lloyd Kaufmann of Toxic Avenger fame (among other things) ushered the event in, and everyone had a blast.
I ran into a few folks that I'd known from high school a decade ago, who I them had the pleasure of seeing on-screen or as directors. It was a bigger thrill than meeting Redford would have afforded. Regular, ordinary folks *love* to make movies, and have some pretty cool stories to tell too. The innovation is amazing considering what some of these guys try to do with so little tech available to them, which ranged from simple Macromedia Flash animations to cheap Sony videocams to (rarely) prosumer-grade DV cams. I would have loved to see some machinima.
The governor's office in New Mexico has waded hip-deep into local filmmaking, by which I mean Hollywood comes to town for a few weeks and hires local crews. This isn't the kind of local filmmaking I'd *like* to see the governor pimping the state for (SUPPORT FILMMAKERS WHO ACTUALLY WORK AND LIVE IN NEW MEXICO, PLEASE), but I guess it's a beginning. Plus, it means there are plenty of "workforce training" and continuing education classes to get the mad film skizzills. There's a lot to work with for the amateur, hobbyist, and professional filmmaker alike.
Here are some links for the interested:
Albuquerque Independent Film Cooperative Forums
Albuquerque Digital Filmmakers Forum hosted by Blankstare pictures.
Exhilarated Despair Productions Forum run by Scott Phillips, producer/director of Stink of Flesh.
I'm leaving a lot of links out, but everyone is pretty much linked to everyone else, so those ones will get you well started.
And that's it. I'm done shilling.
The worst thing about the cosmic blind spot is that it's contagous. If you look at it long enough, the entire UNIVERSE disappears from view!
Let me chime in here with a "Me too!"
GTK is what makes my desktop go. I love it. Nice job, folks.
That's why I read all my articles through BitTorrent.
In China, all Slashdots are positive.
Hah! IBM can never hope to achieve the computing and storage power of my INCREDIBLE INFLATABLE BRAIN!
Mwahahahaha!
No, but inexplicably, it *will* be in the next version of emacs.
I've got to agree -- the Dark Side just isn't all that subtle or sinister. It's mostly just rude, sneering, and curiousity as to why the I, the PC, "shouldn't just kill you now and take what I want!"
Oooooh, sinister.
Meanwhile, I've got to give George Lucas props: In Phantom Menace he chose to portray Senator Palpatine as a really nice guy with apparently the best of motives. No sneering, no cackling monologues, no winks at the audience. It's only through foreknowledge of events in A New Hope that he even comes under suspicion.
I'd love to play that kind of dark character in an RPG, and Bioware has the kind of writing team that could make it happen. Even better, I'd love be playing the game, thinking I'm holding to the good, right, moral course, only to discover that I've been sucked into the Dark Side without even realizing it. Maybe there's information I wasn't privy to that casts my actions in a new light or something.
The Dark Side is insidious because it appeals to your animal instincts, not your choice-making brain, right? Why do game makers feel the need to shove moral disambiguity down the player's throat?
Maybe it's something to do with the mythic quality of the SW universe, where Good is Good and Evil is Evil, and the conflict between the two is resolved without contradiction, sympathy, or subtlety. For all the beautiful vistas and wonderous corlds and cultures that KOTOR affords, the writers suffer from a bizarre lack of imagination.
We have actually had books for hundred of years, but the DMCA put paid to us actaully remembering any of thier contents. Unauthorized mental replication of copyrighted materials, you see.
And if you haven't read Who Censored Roger Rabbit, you really should. It's funny, original, brilliant, and nothing at all like the film. *Nothing* at all...
I haven't bothered with the Sci-Fi channel's adaptations of sci-fi classics ever since they remade Dune. Baron Harkonnen did *not* crack his poison tooth implant first, you insensitive clods!
I have about 150 CDs and 3000 books. This is neither unusual nor takes up an excessive amount of space.
The CDs I can believe, but *3000* books? Are they written on the heads of pins or something?
Buh... Buhl... Blennn...
Damn. You're right, it's tough!
This should not confuse you at all. In order to be rediculous, once need only acquire the quality of diculousness twice in rapid succession.
Now, people using a word like "rediculas": that's just plain dumb.
When you are forced to compete against the government, you usually lose.
I've felt this way for years, and I'm not even a capitalist!
Absolutely. An education that *you* value is far more important than an education that some mythical employer may or may not value.
You get educated for you, not for your boss. This is the kind of thinking that lets you be your *own* boss someday.
Cynics may disagree (and sometimes I am one), but it is still entirely possible to write your own ticket to personal success. It may mean not settling into some company's swanky job at first, but you do have a shot at creating your own custom swanky job over the long run.
(Whoops. Minor edit: my favored game's name is Slouching Toward Bedlam, not Bethlehem. Apologies to the author. I guess I don't love the game as much as I thought!)
IANAIFA (blah blah Interactive Fiction Author) but I would contend that IF authors have to make more, not fewer, decisions than a pre-written author would for a work of the same length.
Pre-written authors need ultimately only follow one timeline where everthing happens in sequence; IF authors have to anticipate the player performing actions at any given time under different situations, and account for that. (Has the player got the dingus to go through the puzzle door? Has he talked to NPC #2 and subsequently learned about the Amazing Event? How is Sparky the Wonder Dog described in the rain versus when he's in his doghouse?) Also, IF that allows for multiple endings (like my current favorite, Slouching Toward Bethlehem) has to be flexable, yet credible under many circumstances, which means even more decisions on the part of the author.
Not to take cred from one or the other, but in order for the player to make choices, any choices, the IF author has to have anticipated them, made them, and accounted for them.
Maybe IF authors can be forgiven a little snootiness. It seems like a hell of a lot of work to me, and most players won't explore the game sufficiently to be exposed to all of it. (Yay, easter eggs!) Contrast with a written book, where it's just a matter of turning all the pages.
I hate to ask, but is there an emacs z-code interpreter? Has Firefox broken new "it's this kind of application but it also does *that*" ground?
Are you... by chance... this guy?
Awesome.
I seem to recall a post somewhere about this very topic. The phrase to look for is "a diamond class erection buried to the hilt inside of big red."
I... I can't really add to that, really.