Considering that the article cites Wikipedia, it's curious how it perpetuates the myth that AAC was "invented and promoted by Apple." While Apple is one of the corporations using it, and it does support FairPlay, it is possible to have completely non-DRM-encumbered AAC files. I've ripped most of my CD collection into AAC format using iTunes with no restrictions placed on how I use those files. The format wasn't invented by Apple either. From Wikipedia: "AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia, and was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Pictures Experts Group in April 1997."
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
For the one/. reader left who still hasn't seen Triumph Of the Nerds, here's the story: IBM, a big name brand, released a personal computer. Although not the first (the Apple II, amongst other PCs, beat them to the market), people trusted their brand name, and it became popular. IBM didn't have the time to write their own operating system, so they paid Microsoft a small amount of money to make one for them. Microsoft, in turn, bought QuDOS, which was in turn a clone of CP/M. IBM's first choice was to get CP/M, but the company that made it, Intergalactic Digital Research, refused to sign their non-disclosure agreement.
That's why IBM PCs used to use DOS. Then the clones came - 100% IBM compatible compatible PCs that were slightly cheaper. Microsoft charged all of these companies per single copy of DOS, and got very rich very quickly. Consumers could run IBM compatible programs for slightly less money, and Microsoft made a huge profit.
Then Apple bought the rights to the GUI from Xerox. They released the Apple Mac as a result. This made some people revert back to Apple in 1984 when the Mac was released. Microsoft had to keep up, so they made a similar GUI for DOS, which was called Windows. As almost everyone uses IBM compatible PCs (to the extent that incompatible ones are seldom even called PCs any more), almost everyone wants to use Microsoft Windows. Even those who don't want to use it still need to be compatible with it in order to share files with everyone else. Many people don't even realise they have a choice, and think all computers are IBM compatible PCs running Windows.
This state of affairs has pretty much continued to this day. Everyone uses Windows because everyone else uses it, but historically, they used to use DOS because Bill Gates wasn't stupid enough to refuse to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. It has nothing to do with which operating system is easiest to use (probably OS X), most stable or secure (probably a Unix variant), or philosophically least evil (probably GNU, whenever it's finished).
Thanks for posting the video link. Am I the only one annoyed that they called these mixtapes counterfeit? My dictionary defines a counterfeit item as imitating something else with the intent to deceive, whereas mixtapes by their very nature are original creative works made entirely from other people's original creative works. They're derivative art, but in no way are they pretending to be someone else's whole album. That's the whole point. First they call copying "stealing," now they call original creative works that are derivative "counterfeit." Where will it end?
Do we support this behavior (DJ Danger Mouse) or do we not (the example above)???
It's up to everyone to form their own opinion. Personally, I'm against completely ripping off someone else's song, but all for taking a very short sample out of context. Kind of like how you're allowed to quote other books when you write your own, based on how much percent is original.
However, the honest man who won't do any of these things...well, what does it matter if his stuff is "locked"?
It doesn't just prevent illegal copying, but also any unauthorised use. This generally boils down to any copying. This means you can't write a song that samples someone else's DRM protected work, even if you would otherwise pay royalties once you got signed to a record label after showing off your demotape. It means you can't copy and paste a few lines from a digital version of a book to quote it in a discussion such as this one. It's physically impossible to make a DRM scheme that can tell the context and motivation of your actions.
If genetically modified crops were available for sale at a reasonable price, but subject to a scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (growing, eating, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (growing a second generation you didn't pay for, cross pollination), would you support the usage of such a scheme? Especially if it meant a wealth of superior food? In other words, if you object to such schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?
Of course, crops are more important than entertainment, as they can be quite literally a matter of life and death, but both things use technology in order to stop people freely using and sharing them as they otherwise would naturally be able to, because of patents and copyrights.
Don't forget that backups aren't the only form of legal use prohibited by DRM schemes. What if you want to use a copy of the cover artwork, a still frame of a film, or any other kind of short clip as an example for the purposes of a review? What if you want to make a parody, and need to analyze the original to do so? What if you want to sell your only copy second hand, or to let a friend borrow it for a while?
Even if it were possible to stop people from copying something unless it was for fair use (which it isn't as the device can't tell context), it would still be a waste of people's time implementing such a scheme. The whole point of DRM is to stop people from freely sharing something that is inherently designed to encourage sharing. You can put all the hard work and effort into making the original that you want, but it benefits society as a whole to be allowed to study and improve upon your work. This should apply to everything, be it medicine, genetically engineered crops, or digital media. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would probably mean that governments should fund scientific research, that musicians and actors should be paid for live performances, and that no patents or copyrights should exist. Just a thought.
What happens when big funding starts to demand what can and can't be placed into articles? "We're sorry, Wikipedia, but I'm going to need you to remove this, that and the other fact from the article because it might turn away our potential customers."
Exactly! As the film The Corporation pointed out, that was exactly what happened with reporters for some Fox show - they uncovered a nasty truth about a corporation, and their boss fired them for refusing to lie to the public about it when it turned out that the corporation in question, Monsanto, had adverts on many of Fox's channels.
Although DRM is a big motivating factor for us people that understand the issues surrounding new technology, most people still don't know what it is, or how invasive it is. As much as I'd like to be able to buy DMR-free music to instantly download from the Internet, I doubt such a move would have much impact on sales.
Incidently, as you're into being legal yet avoiding DRM (a difficult combination), have you considered downloading legally free music from archive.org's Netlabels section?
That's the music industry for you. Also note this little scam they have going, information courtesy of All You Need to Know About the Music Business:
Royalties are only paid for
each record sold. Rather than sell a hundred records to a shop for
85c each, the record label can sell eighty-five records for $1 each
and give them the last fifteen for free. While this makes absolutely
no difference in reality, it means the artist is only paid royalties
for eighty-five records rather than the full hundred. These are
called phoney free goods and about half of the record companies
engage in this practice.
I think iPod users are more free to switch to another player than Windows users are to switch their operating system. Bear in mind that (Java aside) an operating system isn't expected to run the exact same programs as its rivals, but these portable music players almost all support the MP3 standard, even if they can't always agree on the other codecs.
Really, what keeps people forcably locked into Windows is the same thing that keeps them locked into an iPod or anything else: DRM. As long as you don't buy any music from the iTunes store, you'll be fine. Personally, I recommend buying then ripping CDs and downloading free (as in liberated) music from archive.org. They should work on pretty much anything.
The man is skilled. Skilled at sampling and editing. He's not, however, a skilled musician.
This is kind of arguing the semantics of whether the word "musician" includes composers who create music but can't actually play that music. There's also the point that due to the invention of devices that can record sounds and play them back, and with it the genre of music concrete, you can be able to play instruments such as audiotape and digital samplers without having to play them in real time. I think we can agree that this person is talented at the same thing as The Art of Noise and Pop Will Eat Itself (and pretty much any composer who had an Amiga), and hopefully agree that the sampler is a valid instrument. At the end of the day, he's creating music that he can't play live, but he can show a recording of it to other people.
Just before anyone tries this, it's probably worth pointing out that speakers are essentially big magnets, so magnetically levitating them probably isn't a good idea. The same goes for leaving tapes or any other magnetic media next to speakers. The sand bags and Faraday cage should be OK though.:)
I believe that this guys priorities are a little messed up. We should be focusing on lowering the noise floor, increasing the dynamic range, increasing the sampling rate, and getting the music industry to stop producing albums that are ultra compressed and "loud". You're not going to get decent fidelity out of an iPod when it is limited to 16 bit output and a 44.1/48khz sampling rate with a -90db noise floor. We need 24/96 players with a -110db noise floor, and a decent set of ear buds. Not that it would matter for consumers that listen to the typical tizz and boom being produced today.
So you think we should replace CDs with a higher fidelity format (such as DVD-A or SACD), then convince everyone to listen to music with a greater dynamic range? I think your priorities are also misplaced. CDs are rapidly becoming replaced by a lower fidelity format, because the public seem to prefer convenience to fidelity. Although 128kbps MP3 and AAC files don't sound as good as CD audio, most people don't care because they're listening to heavily compressed music with hardly any dynamic range at all. Until the day when classical music is higher in the charts than pop music, or pop music evolves in a more interesting direction (which, given the nature that it's marketed at people who don't like to listen to music all the time for its own sake, it probably won't do), there's no point in trying to convince the masses to use a higher fidelity format. They won't personally benefit from it.
Yes, it is. If you're going to claim that it's not lossless because it doesn't capture the vibrations of the air absolutely perfectly, then tape, vinyl, and eardrums are all lossy, and therefore there is no need for the word "lossless" because nothing actually is. Some might call that nitpicking. It counts as lossless because it's not going out of its way to remove things that people allegadly cannot detect anyway, and because you can reconstruct the recording of the CD bit for bit.
If you want to nitpick, what wav isn't is compression - it's just a very long list of the positions the speaker cone needs to get into, raw and uncompressed.
There isn't a single unlicensed track anywhere on my iPod. Not even one unauthorized sample.
I take it you don't have any Pop Will Eat Itself then, and I doubt they're the only band that didn't clear their samples. But then again, you're not breaking the law by listening to them, the record label that signed them broke the law (in PWEI's case, RCA, now owned by Sony).
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public
That's an unrelated issue though - it's not to do with sex as in f*cking so much as it's to do with sex as in gender, even though it involves some of the same body parts. No one breastfeeds in order to try to titillate you, so to speak.
Just as the simpsons isn't meant for a 5 year old, not all video games are for little tikes.
Yes, I think this is more likely the problem. Just as some old fashioned people think that animation must be for children, then laugh nervously when they see blood or nudity in anime, some old fashioned people also think that computer games must be for children, and therefore also shouldn't contain these things.
I'm sure all this will cease to be an issue in another ten or twenty years, as more and more of the population will have grown up with computer games all their lives and see it as a valid medium of entertainment and artistic expression.
Apparently they are not breaking laws of any kind, so what really is the problem? Is your morale really that much tighter than the rules imposed on you by one of the tightest legal systems in the world?
Wow, what a way to avoid answering an honest question... you know, it is possible to disagree with the law sometimes, as flawless as it might seem. Say, for argument's sake, you've been asked to work on a web site that praises the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp for being so humane. Is it not possible someone may object to such an assignment? What would you tell them?
Probably not the best, but certainly an underrated two player co-operative game is Uo Poko. It's ideal for playing with your lover or with friends you get on really well with. Here's my review of it:
Uo Poko is a coloured-object-matching game, comparable to Columns or Puyo Puyo. So what makes this one stand out? One very simple thing: the co-operative two player mode.
Many games have a two player mode. That's certainly not a rare thing. Some have a co-operative two player mode, where the goal is to help each other out rather than try to outwit each other. What makes this game truly stand out is that the two player mode isn't an afterthought: it's really, in my opinion, by far the best way to play it.
The gameplay runs like this: one of you plays a cute yellow cat, the other one a cute pink cat (kawaii!). You both hold down your joystick for a short while to make your cat pull a chain which determines how far across the screen a coloured sphere is flung. You have to make your spheres touch other ones of the same colour to make them disappear. You get bonus points for chain reactions, and the point of each level is to clear the screen of all the spheres.
It's something you really have to play with at least a friend, but preferably your partner. To play it well, you actually have to communicate with each other. You can talk to each other to work out when you should both take your turn so your spheres don't collide with each other, and to work out a plan together. To this extent, Uo Poko is the most co-operative two player game I have played.
Besides, it's fun to do an impression of the yellow cat tapping the joystick and smiling happily.
Sadly, it's almost impossible for most people to play this game legally - export or operation of the arcade cabinet outside of Japan is illegal, and violators will be "prosecutedt to the full extent of the jam."
In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven.
The technology will certainly exist to do it, but no one will make such a product. It's a psychological thing - while someone might be willing to spend $40 - $60 for a season in a box, that person will be far less likely to spend seven times as much money on all seven seasons in one smaller box. For a start, it's a lot of money to spend in one go, even if you were going to get all the seasons eventually anyway. It also seems like too much money to spend on a single entertainment product, even if you are paying the exact same amount per episode.
We already have the technology for most people in developed countries to play MP3 CDs. I have seen a few audiobooks available in this format, because the single book will fit on a single disc. I haven't seen any MP3 CDs containing the complete works of a musician, however, because putting five or six albums on a single disc doesn't feel as if it is worth the same amount of money as buying those albums separately.
If I created and wanted to market a game, I would spend a few days programming and animating in something contraversal like this to use the current (and foolish) political climate for for advertisment.
So the only thing missing in a game in which you have to beat up kids is controversy... Hmm... Yeah, kissing ought to fill that gap!
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Considering that the article cites Wikipedia, it's curious how it perpetuates the myth that AAC was "invented and promoted by Apple." While Apple is one of the corporations using it, and it does support FairPlay, it is possible to have completely non-DRM-encumbered AAC files. I've ripped most of my CD collection into AAC format using iTunes with no restrictions placed on how I use those files. The format wasn't invented by Apple either. From Wikipedia: "AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia, and was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Pictures Experts Group in April 1997."
Apple didn't buy any sort of rights to anything from anyone.
Really? According to Wikipedia's Xerox PARC page:
It seems like it's still debated though, and it's not like I was there or anything, so I'll have to take other people's word for it.
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
For the one /. reader left who still hasn't seen Triumph Of the Nerds, here's the story: IBM, a big name brand, released a personal computer. Although not the first (the Apple II, amongst other PCs, beat them to the market), people trusted their brand name, and it became popular. IBM didn't have the time to write their own operating system, so they paid Microsoft a small amount of money to make one for them. Microsoft, in turn, bought QuDOS, which was in turn a clone of CP/M. IBM's first choice was to get CP/M, but the company that made it, Intergalactic Digital Research, refused to sign their non-disclosure agreement.
That's why IBM PCs used to use DOS. Then the clones came - 100% IBM compatible compatible PCs that were slightly cheaper. Microsoft charged all of these companies per single copy of DOS, and got very rich very quickly. Consumers could run IBM compatible programs for slightly less money, and Microsoft made a huge profit.
Then Apple bought the rights to the GUI from Xerox. They released the Apple Mac as a result. This made some people revert back to Apple in 1984 when the Mac was released. Microsoft had to keep up, so they made a similar GUI for DOS, which was called Windows. As almost everyone uses IBM compatible PCs (to the extent that incompatible ones are seldom even called PCs any more), almost everyone wants to use Microsoft Windows. Even those who don't want to use it still need to be compatible with it in order to share files with everyone else. Many people don't even realise they have a choice, and think all computers are IBM compatible PCs running Windows.
This state of affairs has pretty much continued to this day. Everyone uses Windows because everyone else uses it, but historically, they used to use DOS because Bill Gates wasn't stupid enough to refuse to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. It has nothing to do with which operating system is easiest to use (probably OS X), most stable or secure (probably a Unix variant), or philosophically least evil (probably GNU, whenever it's finished).
Thanks for posting the video link. Am I the only one annoyed that they called these mixtapes counterfeit? My dictionary defines a counterfeit item as imitating something else with the intent to deceive, whereas mixtapes by their very nature are original creative works made entirely from other people's original creative works. They're derivative art, but in no way are they pretending to be someone else's whole album. That's the whole point. First they call copying "stealing," now they call original creative works that are derivative "counterfeit." Where will it end?
Do we support this behavior (DJ Danger Mouse) or do we not (the example above)???
It's up to everyone to form their own opinion. Personally, I'm against completely ripping off someone else's song, but all for taking a very short sample out of context. Kind of like how you're allowed to quote other books when you write your own, based on how much percent is original.
However, the honest man who won't do any of these things...well, what does it matter if his stuff is "locked"?
It doesn't just prevent illegal copying, but also any unauthorised use. This generally boils down to any copying. This means you can't write a song that samples someone else's DRM protected work, even if you would otherwise pay royalties once you got signed to a record label after showing off your demotape. It means you can't copy and paste a few lines from a digital version of a book to quote it in a discussion such as this one. It's physically impossible to make a DRM scheme that can tell the context and motivation of your actions.
If genetically modified crops were available for sale at a reasonable price, but subject to a scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (growing, eating, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (growing a second generation you didn't pay for, cross pollination), would you support the usage of such a scheme? Especially if it meant a wealth of superior food? In other words, if you object to such schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?
Of course, crops are more important than entertainment, as they can be quite literally a matter of life and death, but both things use technology in order to stop people freely using and sharing them as they otherwise would naturally be able to, because of patents and copyrights.
Don't forget that backups aren't the only form of legal use prohibited by DRM schemes. What if you want to use a copy of the cover artwork, a still frame of a film, or any other kind of short clip as an example for the purposes of a review? What if you want to make a parody, and need to analyze the original to do so? What if you want to sell your only copy second hand, or to let a friend borrow it for a while?
Even if it were possible to stop people from copying something unless it was for fair use (which it isn't as the device can't tell context), it would still be a waste of people's time implementing such a scheme. The whole point of DRM is to stop people from freely sharing something that is inherently designed to encourage sharing. You can put all the hard work and effort into making the original that you want, but it benefits society as a whole to be allowed to study and improve upon your work. This should apply to everything, be it medicine, genetically engineered crops, or digital media. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would probably mean that governments should fund scientific research, that musicians and actors should be paid for live performances, and that no patents or copyrights should exist. Just a thought.
What happens when big funding starts to demand what can and can't be placed into articles? "We're sorry, Wikipedia, but I'm going to need you to remove this, that and the other fact from the article because it might turn away our potential customers."
Exactly! As the film The Corporation pointed out, that was exactly what happened with reporters for some Fox show - they uncovered a nasty truth about a corporation, and their boss fired them for refusing to lie to the public about it when it turned out that the corporation in question, Monsanto, had adverts on many of Fox's channels.
OFFER FUCKING DRM FREE MUSIC FROM YOUR OWN SITES
Although DRM is a big motivating factor for us people that understand the issues surrounding new technology, most people still don't know what it is, or how invasive it is. As much as I'd like to be able to buy DMR-free music to instantly download from the Internet, I doubt such a move would have much impact on sales.
Incidently, as you're into being legal yet avoiding DRM (a difficult combination), have you considered downloading legally free music from archive.org's Netlabels section?
That's the music industry for you. Also note this little scam they have going, information courtesy of All You Need to Know About the Music Business:
Royalties are only paid for each record sold. Rather than sell a hundred records to a shop for 85c each, the record label can sell eighty-five records for $1 each and give them the last fifteen for free. While this makes absolutely no difference in reality, it means the artist is only paid royalties for eighty-five records rather than the full hundred. These are called phoney free goods and about half of the record companies engage in this practice.
I think iPod users are more free to switch to another player than Windows users are to switch their operating system. Bear in mind that (Java aside) an operating system isn't expected to run the exact same programs as its rivals, but these portable music players almost all support the MP3 standard, even if they can't always agree on the other codecs.
Really, what keeps people forcably locked into Windows is the same thing that keeps them locked into an iPod or anything else: DRM. As long as you don't buy any music from the iTunes store, you'll be fine. Personally, I recommend buying then ripping CDs and downloading free (as in liberated) music from archive.org. They should work on pretty much anything.
The man is skilled. Skilled at sampling and editing. He's not, however, a skilled musician.
This is kind of arguing the semantics of whether the word "musician" includes composers who create music but can't actually play that music. There's also the point that due to the invention of devices that can record sounds and play them back, and with it the genre of music concrete, you can be able to play instruments such as audiotape and digital samplers without having to play them in real time. I think we can agree that this person is talented at the same thing as The Art of Noise and Pop Will Eat Itself (and pretty much any composer who had an Amiga), and hopefully agree that the sampler is a valid instrument. At the end of the day, he's creating music that he can't play live, but he can show a recording of it to other people.
Just before anyone tries this, it's probably worth pointing out that speakers are essentially big magnets, so magnetically levitating them probably isn't a good idea. The same goes for leaving tapes or any other magnetic media next to speakers. The sand bags and Faraday cage should be OK though. :)
I believe that this guys priorities are a little messed up. We should be focusing on lowering the noise floor, increasing the dynamic range, increasing the sampling rate, and getting the music industry to stop producing albums that are ultra compressed and "loud". You're not going to get decent fidelity out of an iPod when it is limited to 16 bit output and a 44.1/48khz sampling rate with a -90db noise floor. We need 24/96 players with a -110db noise floor, and a decent set of ear buds. Not that it would matter for consumers that listen to the typical tizz and boom being produced today.
So you think we should replace CDs with a higher fidelity format (such as DVD-A or SACD), then convince everyone to listen to music with a greater dynamic range? I think your priorities are also misplaced. CDs are rapidly becoming replaced by a lower fidelity format, because the public seem to prefer convenience to fidelity. Although 128kbps MP3 and AAC files don't sound as good as CD audio, most people don't care because they're listening to heavily compressed music with hardly any dynamic range at all. Until the day when classical music is higher in the charts than pop music, or pop music evolves in a more interesting direction (which, given the nature that it's marketed at people who don't like to listen to music all the time for its own sake, it probably won't do), there's no point in trying to convince the masses to use a higher fidelity format. They won't personally benefit from it.
From the article:
WAV, a "lossless" compression format
From the parent poster:
Wav is not a lossless format.
Yes, it is. If you're going to claim that it's not lossless because it doesn't capture the vibrations of the air absolutely perfectly, then tape, vinyl, and eardrums are all lossy, and therefore there is no need for the word "lossless" because nothing actually is. Some might call that nitpicking. It counts as lossless because it's not going out of its way to remove things that people allegadly cannot detect anyway, and because you can reconstruct the recording of the CD bit for bit.
If you want to nitpick, what wav isn't is compression - it's just a very long list of the positions the speaker cone needs to get into, raw and uncompressed.
There isn't a single unlicensed track anywhere on my iPod. Not even one unauthorized sample.
I take it you don't have any Pop Will Eat Itself then, and I doubt they're the only band that didn't clear their samples. But then again, you're not breaking the law by listening to them, the record label that signed them broke the law (in PWEI's case, RCA, now owned by Sony).
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public
That's an unrelated issue though - it's not to do with sex as in f*cking so much as it's to do with sex as in gender, even though it involves some of the same body parts. No one breastfeeds in order to try to titillate you, so to speak.
Just as the simpsons isn't meant for a 5 year old, not all video games are for little tikes.
Yes, I think this is more likely the problem. Just as some old fashioned people think that animation must be for children, then laugh nervously when they see blood or nudity in anime, some old fashioned people also think that computer games must be for children, and therefore also shouldn't contain these things.
I'm sure all this will cease to be an issue in another ten or twenty years, as more and more of the population will have grown up with computer games all their lives and see it as a valid medium of entertainment and artistic expression.
Apparently they are not breaking laws of any kind, so what really is the problem? Is your morale really that much tighter than the rules imposed on you by one of the tightest legal systems in the world?
Wow, what a way to avoid answering an honest question... you know, it is possible to disagree with the law sometimes, as flawless as it might seem. Say, for argument's sake, you've been asked to work on a web site that praises the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp for being so humane. Is it not possible someone may object to such an assignment? What would you tell them?
Probably not the best, but certainly an underrated two player co-operative game is Uo Poko. It's ideal for playing with your lover or with friends you get on really well with. Here's my review of it:
In a few years, you'll buy every episode of The West Wing on a drive the size of a deck of cards rather than on 45 DVDs in a box the size of your microwave oven.
The technology will certainly exist to do it, but no one will make such a product. It's a psychological thing - while someone might be willing to spend $40 - $60 for a season in a box, that person will be far less likely to spend seven times as much money on all seven seasons in one smaller box. For a start, it's a lot of money to spend in one go, even if you were going to get all the seasons eventually anyway. It also seems like too much money to spend on a single entertainment product, even if you are paying the exact same amount per episode.
We already have the technology for most people in developed countries to play MP3 CDs. I have seen a few audiobooks available in this format, because the single book will fit on a single disc. I haven't seen any MP3 CDs containing the complete works of a musician, however, because putting five or six albums on a single disc doesn't feel as if it is worth the same amount of money as buying those albums separately.
How about the Mac OS bomb?
BOOM!
Boom... Boom.
If I created and wanted to market a game, I would spend a few days programming and animating in something contraversal like this to use the current (and foolish) political climate for for advertisment.
So the only thing missing in a game in which you have to beat up kids is controversy... Hmm... Yeah, kissing ought to fill that gap!