Surprisingly enough, they get it all wrong.
No doubt due to the controversy stirred up by Kevin McCollough, who’s since apologized for misrepresenting the game and gamers, Fox News decided to tackle the issue of sexuality and Mass Effect.
Games journalist Geoff Keighley does an admirable job of trying to set the liars straight, but he’s outnumbered. One “expert” suggests that the game desensitizes the player to sexuality (without mentioning that the sexual content is PG-13 levels at the most), and a member of the “panel” asks why the game wasn’t rated Adults Only (again, PG-13…).
Of course, the host admits that she only recently bought a video game for the first time, and another says she feels old, wondering where the Atari went.
And they’re telling viewers what to think about video games. They’ve all made idiots out of themselves, being willfully ignorant and spreading what’s tantamount to lies.
The whole issue would be hilarious if people didn’t actually watch, and believe, Fox News. Instead, it’s really, really frustrating, and more than a little scary.
Update:
Joystiq reminds me that the “expert” actually laughs when Geoff asks her if she’s ever played Mass Effect. Then she says no.
As the line between creator and audience becomes more and more muddled, that is to say, cooperative and indistinct, is there some singularity out there where creator and consumer become indistinguishable from one another?
What would that look like?
Or is the participatory culture a fad? Is the much-heralded “conversation” a real thing, or merely an extension of normal human communication?
But, of course, how does one define “normal human” in any scenario, let alone one of language, something hardly definable as it is?
Anyway, just a question posed to the aether, I guess. I’ve been able to find little discussion on this subject — real, contemplative consideration of where this is going, that is.
A thought: If I’m writing this post, now, with the intent of conversation, and the assumption of readership–and I wouldn’t write it in absence of these–are you not just as necessary a part of this discussion as I am? So even in this incredibly “traditional” sense, where is the line between creator and consumer, if we’re both seemingly equal participants?
Maybe I just need to sleep more.
What is wrong with these people? It’s like they insist on making everything as terrible as possible.
Because a rootkit wasn’t bad enough. Because admitting DRM is a bad idea by telling people how simple it is to get around wasn’t bad enough.
Well, now that they’ve finally decided to drop DRM, here’s how they plan to implement it:
“DRM free music from Sony BMG will be available from January 15 to those who purchase a plastic card called the “Platinum Music Pass†for the album they want from a retail store for $12.99. Buyers will then have to visit MusicPass.com and enter a code to download the DRM free album they selected in the store.”
You have to go to the store, by a piece of plastic, go back home, and then download the songs DRM-free.
Wow. I hope lots of people get fired for this.
TechCrunch suggests that maybe they’re setting this up to fail, so that they can claim there was no demand for DRM-free and go back to selling DRMemd music.
Me? I think they’re just idiots.
Link.
Sony has a solution for iPod users who’ve cashed in their Sony Rewards points for DRMed WMA-format music: Just circumvent their DRM.
And they even tell you how. Of course it’s the old ‘burn it to a CD, then rip CD’ trick, but still, helpful!
Sony is, of course, the last major music publisher to still insist on DRM, but at least they understand that it’s useless, easily circumvented, and annoying.
“Attention iPod users:
Our download service provides files in the WMA music format or the WMV video format, which is not supported by Apple Macintosh computers. To use your music with an iPod, simply follow the steps below:
1. Save each downloaded song to your PC
2. Burn a music CD (in CDA file format)
3. Import the music from the CD into iTunes
4. Update your iPod”
Ars Technica story.
via Michael Geist
To the point, even, that I don’t want my mp3s to think I don’t like them. 
Yeah.
I’ve noticed a really odd thing that I’ve been doing for some time that I don’t quite understand. It seems that instead of skipping to the next song in Amarok when it’s near its end, I’ll restore the window and drag the time slider to the end of the song. This is because I’m worried that skipping the song will affect its rating/score, and I don’t want to do that if I like the song.
I even have a few “sacrificial” songs in my playlist. When I want to skip to an album way down on the list, I’ll place the song to be sacrificed below the current track, drag the slider to the end, and then once it’s playing the sacrificial song I can safely skip to the song I’d wanted. Because I don’t care if the sacrificial song gets a bad rating.
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Canada’s planned changes to copyright law will include lots of rules that will make it the worst, most restrictive in the developed world, according to Cory on BoingBoing:
If this law passes, it will render all of the made-in-Canada exceptions to copyright for education, archiving, free speech and personal use will be irrelevant: if a technology has a lock that prohibits a use, your right to make that use falls by the wayside. Nevermind that you’ve got the right to record a show to watch later — or to record a politician’s speech so you can hold him to account later — the policeman in the device can take that right away with no appeal.
