19th Jan2012

The Scum and Corruption of SOPA and PIPA

posted by Aaron

Description Removed Due To SOPA

(note: this article was written a couple of weeks ago)

I know this has already been talked about to death across various platforms, such as Youtube and Tumblr itself (which powers this blog) but I feel like I have to at least acknowledge the truly illegal and unconstitutional act that is passing through the United States Congress as of right now. Not even passing through, but rushing through I should really be saying. Don’t say that this doesn’t affect you. If you’re reading this post, it genuinely does affect you. If you use Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, or even this website right here (I’m not in any way saying that this website and those previously mentioned can be comparable in terms of popularity in any way), then this affects you.

SOPA and PIPA threaten the very existence of the Internet. Instead of using existing law and due process to stop copyright infringing websites, the record industry and the movie and television industry have been using the congressmen and women that take low enough bribes to support a bill that effectively breaks the Internet. Under this bill, any site that contains or links to copyrighted material (including linking to songs on your Facebook wall or even a link on Wikipedia) is legally allowed to be taken down by the media industries for copyright infringement with no due process and no appeals process. If it’s a US website, it can be completely taken down. If it’s outside the US, DNS is changed in the US to block said site. China says “hello”, citizens of the United States. And if what was witnessed these past few days with an episode of Tech News Today is anything to go by, these companies can even take down websites that they just don’t like without any good reason. The sound you hear is the slow destruction of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which does allow fair process in terms of the law. This bill circumvents that amendment. This bill is simply illegal from the terms of the stepping stones of the country that is trying to pass it. I’ll talk about how it is also again unconstitutional in just a second. The bill also is the definition of “guilty until proven innocent”. But the thing that really gets me riled is that no one wants this bill. The fathers of the Internet, the people of the United States and the world, the heads of the biggest Internet-based companies in the world (vested interest, but I’ll allow it for what I’ll outline in a second) and so many others do not want this bill to pass in any way, shape or form. This will not stop piracy in any way because pirates don’t use the DNS system to download illegal content, and they know the method in which to circumvent these blocks. The only people affected by this are innocent bystanders as the true pirates immediately negate any effect that this bill has. It’s similar to DRM. Hackers can still remove the complicated and intricate DRM you put on movies and games; it just pisses off the people who actually bought the damn product genuinely in the first place. It’s a similar thing here. The pirates know how to get around this system (hell, even I do), so who is this bill stopping? Those without technical know-how, of course. Those who can’t access their favourite shows or favourite blogs because it links to another blog that contains copyrighted content or it’s a Tumblr blog and the whole of Tumblr gets shut down because of copyright content.

The violation of the First Amendment happened a few days back with an episode of Tech News Today on Leo Laporte’s TWiT Network. Whilst discussing a video owned by MegaUpload that Universal Music Group sued over (despite the fact they didn’t own the rights), they showed clips of it whilst talking over it for commentary and critique purposes, which is protected by the First Amendment. It’s a news show; it isn’t distributing illegal content. But just like MegaUpload having it taken off of Youtube by UMG, that episode was also taken offline by UMG, illegally violating the First Amendment to the Constitution. UMG didn’t even own the rights, but due to an agreement with Youtube, they can take any video they want off the site without even owning the rights to it. Imagine this happening with every single website you know, or maybe even your website. If someone leaves a comment on your site leading to a Tumblr blog, your website could be taken offline with no appeals process. Luckily, the DMCA allows an appeals process and that’s why that episode of TNT is now back online on Youtube, but imagine UMG simply saying that they think a website violates copyright when really it’s because they have had a disagreement over their totalitarian attitude over content on the web. Corporations are able to take websites offline that they just don’t like with no appeals process, and if this passes then this is completely legal to do.

This is further thrown into shambles by members of Congress openly admitting that they have no idea about what they’re voting on or how the Internet works, especially how ineffective these measures will be. This even goes down to thinking that only American websites can own .com, .org or .net addresses. An exception has been granted for these websites thanks to an amendment. You know what website uses a .org address? The Pirate Bay; the biggest illegal torrent distribution website on the web. According to this, they are granted as exceptions to the rule. It is also disgusting that despite it being clearly explained as to why it isn’t fair, people with dynamic IPs can be punished with copyright infringement. This means that if you are given an IP address randomly by your ISP that has had illegal content downloaded on it in the past, you are responsible for someone else’s illegal content like you did it yourself. Even the politicians are aware of this and don’t care. This stinks rotten. Lobby groups such as the RIAA and the MPAA (the same groups that incorrectly predicted the end of the music and movie industry with the introduction of VHS and cassette tapes) are paying Congress members to be purposely ignorant. They then praise their own ignorance by admitting that they don’t know how the Internet works and they still vote on something to do with the fundamental core of the Internet. When asking Google about filtering results, they even asked that if China could have a firewall, then why not the US too? They openly admit that they want their country, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, to be censored and have their citizens have a restriction of their free speech. As we go into modern day, we see the Internet as an extension of being able to show your Free Speech rights,even down to the infamous and much hated “godhatesfags.com”. Apparently, this site is allowed to stay whilst a Tumblr blog that I have no control over can take down my website in a heartbeat. How is this a fair system? This is simply a joke. Even one of those that strongly backs this bill, Republican Senator for the state of Arizona John McCain, fought for those freedoms as part of the Navy. He is now taking the side of taking those freedoms for free speech away from the people he fought for and for those rights he fought to protect (opinions about the Vietnam war aside) (additional: this is the same man that fought against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which will be another article in the future). This whole move is simply an oppression of lower classes, crushing free speech for those who seep their way onto the free Internet wanting to increase their social standing. No one owns the Internet, but the United States feel like they can bully their way on and inject their own policies and messages and feed them to the rest of the world like swine eating their swill. This reminds me so much of their “colourful” foreign policy of making Middle Eastern countries into their ideal vision of America before giving up and declaring “Mission Accomplished”. They feel that because they’re big that they can bully the rest of the world; in real life with their occupations and subsequent attempt of Americanization of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the virtual world by controlling what their citizens can think and see with their own eyes, taking the rest of the Internet with it by shoehorning their own control over an Internet that doesn’t even belong to them. Who allows them to do that? The big American corporations that invest their reduced-tax earnings (because of their lobbying for lower taxes against the rich) into buying more Congressmen and women (those that you have the power to vote out) to suit their own means and to make themselves more powerful. These are the same companies that drive the country into the gutter financially and then expect firemen and schoolteachers and pastors and nurses and fast food workers to shell out and pay for their stinky, filthy corrupted mess. They run the show, and they want to keep running it. The Internet is one of the few things that can belittle their power, with cord cutting and independent movie distribution on a grand scale to the world, and with Creative Commons music and Internet only record labels. This can scare them. This can threaten them, and rather than embrace this medium and use it to reach a new audience, they see fit to tear it down. If it were for them, we would still use vinyl and would have to pay every time we want to see a movie a second or third or fourth time at home instead of having a DVD. They want to take down the Internet, and by blocking what people can see just because they don’t like a website is how they want to do it. They want to turn the Internet against itself to tear it down. Lincoln once said “A house divided against itself cannot stand“. These corporations want to use the inter-connective nature of the Internet to shut it down by simply saying that “we don’t like that” or “they’re attacking us with legitimate reasoning that belittles us”. People will be scared to give their own ideas and produce their own content, and that is just what they want. They want the old world to come back. They want the world they used to control to come back again. Well, no. No. We control the Internet; the people who use it and produce content, not you. You want to own the Internet, but you never will. If this passes, tech savvy people will stop buying your products. You remember those corrupt politicians that you paid for? We can vote them out in a heartbeat if we want. Then you have to start all over again with your disgusting blood money. That money that you could be using to bail the economy out, you’re spending oppressing the lower classes and making that 1% richer and richer. This is disgusting. What would Lincoln say to that?

One loose thread we have to tie up here: Lamar Smith of the great state of Texas. The man you have to blame for a restricted Internet. Inside his constituency, he has the offices of major groups and tech corporations that are against this bill. This is most of what is part of his district. So, he’s going against the interests of the people voting for him? Not only is this political suicide for ignoring the people who vote for you, but perplexing… until you dig deeper. According to Slashdot, the lobby groups that paid Smith for this bill gave him fifty thousand dollars over ten years to do their bidding. This man is disgusting and corrupt and is one of the reasons that no one trusts the legal system in the United States. Take a look at this man; this disgusting, vile, corrupt pig and see that he is nothing more than a puppet and a “yes man” and a fraud. He is a disgrace to his people. One of his core beliefs of his campaign is creating jobs by enforcing immigration law better. A better way to create jobs is to not destroy the jobs of the people who work inside your district. It seems like only fifty thousand dollars can cause a man to go against his core beliefs that he told people he would honour and enforce to make his area is a better place for people to live and work. Now we see he is nothing but a liar. He is nothing but a fraud and a trickster and he doesn’t deserve to smile and call himself a United States Representative. He should be ashamed and I’m sure that his political career in that district is now over. I spit on this man. Good riddance and we all hope the door slams into you on the way out.

The last thing you should do to stop this is to write to your local Representative and to your Senator. Go to the White House website and all contact information is given there. You may get a form letter back, but if these people value their continued political careers, they will see that a growing amount of mail from the people that vote for them in the upcoming election is something to pay attention to. If you’re outside the US, contact the US State Department and voice your concerns; it’s what they’re there for. We need to stand together as members of a free Internet. We need to stop this and keep the Internet free for all those that use it in any way we can. This is our Internet, and we need to take care of it and keep it open. We need to keep it free. We need to keep out the grimy hands of those that set to destroy it and regulate it and package it. We need to protect the Internet. We need to Protect our Internet Power and Privilege and Stop Online Privatization Altogether.

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02nd Aug2011

Pretention: Thy Name is Thoreau – Part 4: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles

posted by Aaron

Two high fives in just a few seconds; one to do with the book and one not. We’re just delaying again, as Megan reaches for the green pen and begins jotting down notes in her notebook, already getting pretty full from the pearls of wisdom (!) from Thoreau that we’ve divulged into over these past few days.

“Ze Hauswarmen Ha ha ha!”, says Megan in a mock German/Russian accent. It’s a little difficult to pin down the exact region, so I don’t think I’ll make an attempt to save the emails I would get later concerning it. She then points out we have reached page 281 of this torture – sorry – epic. Yet, we still feel hundreds of pages away from the end, regardless of how many pages we are through. It really gets silly when Megan begins saying blah blah blah to a lot of the text. This is just further evidence that, maybe, the sense of audience has been greatly lost to the point of incoherence. In other words, you’re boring your reader to tears! Of course, nothing is more exciting than to point out the picking of fruit and describing a nut that tastes like a frost-bitten potato. This hurts. This really hurts. To start with, how does he know what one of those tastes like? Second of all, he really thought that this was interesting writing? Really?

After some stretches, Megan falls silent, showing pure concentration on her face as she jots on the paper that is just out of shot of the camera. It’s intense. It’s a little intimidating. But I know that my sweetheart is still there somewhere under her exterior that emanates concentration. We break just a minute or two to talk about school supply shopping and then Megan switches back to the part of her personality that shows her intelligence. She’s smart. There’s no denying that. The mind on display now in the form of her working is something I fell in love with when I first saw it, and today is definitely no exception.

Silence. Ten minutes. Bubbles. Measuring. What? Apparently, he took the time and planning to describe the width of bubbles under ice. For two pages. Fuck this book. He is officially now been declared as “taking the piss”. After a brief discussion about Faggots in relation to British food, it is revealed that this chapter (and this post) are coming to a close, but not before admitting that he burned down a chunk of the surrounding woodland because he was acting like an idiot. Truly he is a great role-model to all of those three remaining readers that he has left, and they probably just don’t have the energy and the effort and the will to live left to put the damn book down…

Speaking of which, it’s time to put the book down for the day. The chapter is over. Thank God!

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01st Aug2011

Pretention: Thy Name is Thoreau – Part 3: Monday Night Ant Fight!

posted by Aaron

Back for more? You’re far braver than both of us!

“I’m confused already. Now he has multiple personality syndrome. Hermit, poet, hermit, poet, hermit, poet”. I’m now silenced by Megan as she tries to figure out what he’s saying with some difficulty. Part of me feels like it’s going to be a long night. Little did I know… oh, just keep reading. I do love My Megan a lot, despite the fact that we can be so sensitive. She finally talks again, divulging that he is just talking to himself.

Oh dear. More talk of animals. I still feel bad after the woodchuck from yesterday so I feel that this page can essentially be replaced with a menu and no one would know the difference. Also, red ants and black ants are apparently at war too, which means he has to divulge into a full convoluted explanation of what this all means. You know what? He has too much time on his hands. Doesn’t he have a magnifying glass or something? That would really make the book a lot more interesting… Rather than do the fun and awesome thing, he does the silly thing. He gets out a microscope and examines the ants, including the disemboweling of one of them, along with them being disem-everythinged too. Good sir, you could just tilt it slightly to angle it at the Sun and it becomes a freaking Winner-Take-All Royal Rumble with Beams of Death. Then you can invite rednecks there and charge ten bucks a ticket, complete with cheering and chanting. That would just be so awesome. But, no. This is the 19th Century, so he has to be Mr Hermit and not Mr Awesome. This is a shame. We aren’t going insane yet, but the only thing that is stopping us from doing that is simply our own ability to laugh and what he says and try to make it entertaining. Us laughing at the book is much more interesting than the book itself. I have a small feeling that this was not an intention of him. This begs another question that we’ve asked before. Who was this book for? If it was aimed at the lower classes, you missed the mark. Who was this written for?

Enough of my whining. It’s all over. Megan next simply skims the rest of the chapter in silence, reaching the end early. I’m shocked, and pleased.

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31st Jul2011

Pretention: Thy Name is Thoreau – Part 2: Woodchucks

posted by Aaron

Megan is back to work again with the next part of our amazing saga on Walden, immediately starting proceedings with “Sounds like pretty stuff, racism and stuff I don’t care about”. Followed by a conclusion; her favourite part, she says.

Today’s colours of choice: Pink and Lime Green (hard to read, but we don’t care. It’s her work, damn it!)

The opening paragraph is immediately met with the overall theme for the rest of the chapter: “Sometimes I ramble to -” *falls asleep*. Chuckles ensue before an adjustment of the shiny, purple lamp to envelop the page with piercing light. It burns. Silly Megan… A click of the pen begins the endeavours into pure dicking around that is Thoreau. Page one; one whole paragraph: Trees. Yes. Trees. A full description of trees. We already feel like we are getting stupider and stupider by simply picking this apart, so the subject changes, aptly, to The Beatles.

We like The Beatles. OK?

Discussions of us moving in together and taking our posters with us are already underway (along with my coasters and magnets) and Megan tries to rub it in my face that her Abbey Road poster is framed. Yes. This is what we talk about, and it’s awesome. Drifting toward work again, Megan questions the pronunciation of the word “particular” in her drunken-like trance-y sleepiness. She was up late last night and didn’t get up until late, so she’s still a little dizzy in her head about her tiredness. To make matters worse, again, Thoreau starts becoming a pretentious git, comparing himself to a forest fairy standing under a rainbow before Megan finally draws a conclusion. He is not a pretentious git at all. He is a wandering schizophrenic with the mind of a  five year old, thinking he is walking through a fairy land filled with unicorns and sparkles and sparkly unicorns. In reality, he’s standing in light under a rainbow. That’s it. Thoreau, you aren’t special. OK? About the shiniest and sparkliest thing in this entire experience is the light bouncing off the lamp to Megan’s right as she switches it on and off as the light outside dictates her vision levels. It’s mostly dark in the room that she sits in, but she’s hard at work and can see like an owl using a VATS system from Fallout 3 whilst the letters are carrying glow sticks.

In his experiment (back to the work), he meets an Irishman on the path. He tries to convince him (after establishing the motive of the Irishman for being there; he’s one of his neighbours) to live like him in the ways of the hermit (though he does admit that he wasn’t like a true hermit. He had visitors and entertained frequently). After protest about luxuries such as coffee, Thoreau reveals more of his colours: he’s a die-hard Patriot, trying to convince the Irish neighbour (and by extension, us) that liberty means being given the chance to have these luxuries without being dictated by a government, but making a choice not to use them because you have free thought and expression. It is quite an interesting section and I do admire him for raising this. However, the man is, unfortunately, of lower intelligence and doesn’t possess the skills such as good math to think about living like Thoreau in a realistic sense. He does have a family to provide for, after all.

Pen change: light blue and a reddish, brownish colour.

“Ewwww! Gross!”. A woodchuck causes rumblings in the stomach of Thoreau  (“how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a chuck chuck woodchuck chuck fuck off”) as he wanders past it. We really start to question the lengths this man will go to just to make a point. He really is looking to be quite stubborn. The resistance is too strong as is evident by him picking woodchuck out of his teeth – wait. That was Megan making a joke. Thanks for that. These last few lines were completely pointless, but are definitely a nice distraction from the task ahead. He is, however, starting to question what makes him human in the first place as he begins to slowly revert back to his animalistic self and his survival instincts that all humans repress in order to assume higher morals and values. He is questioning in this which is, of course, a concept of psychology concerning the pre-frontal cortex (Megan offers a high five. I accept immediately). He also presents the idea of a false dichotomy. Next his criticisms fall onto education, him going back to his regular whiny self. The next subject of his scorn (completely out of nowhere, might we add) is those with a lack of vegetarianism. He just blatantly insults meat eaters for no reason, saying that “steak is offensive to the imagination”. Wait a minute… Is he contradicting himself? What? What’ going on? I’m sorry, but I don’t think you would bring your mom’s food back to her house after you received it (yes, she did make his food for him) and say “I refuse to eat this steak because it’s offending my imagination”. Seriously? What?! And he compares eating animals to cannibalism. You know what? Those are, kind of, completely different things. Just a little bit of a total polar opposite. Did this make sense in his head? Because to us it just simply looks idiotic and sad. Also, apparently, England and America will be destroyed by drinking tea and coffee, and that water is the drink of the wise man, but wine is not so noble. Can anyone see the deeper message here? At all? No? Didn’t think so… Why are we even believing or listening to him, also citing that tea and coffee destroyed Rome and Greece? W-what?

This is going to get worse before it gets better. Stay tuned!

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30th Jul2011

Pretention: Thy Name is Thoreau – Part 1: “Coloured pens and highlighters…”

posted by Aaron

My girlfriend has recently decided to take up an interesting new hobby for herself: actually doing homework. Rather than let us both suffer in silence from the pain that is “Walden”, we have both decided it be far more productive to let you have a little glimpse into our lives with bits of comedy gold. Take it away, Megan, with your sarcasm…

“Damn stupid glare on my skin. I look like a freaking vampire”, she says as she adjusts the light for the Skype feed before reaching for objects on the desk in front of her. “Coloured pens, highlighters…” (yellow, quotes. Orange, further research). Megan is always a big fan of weird school stationary. We love ourselves colourful Excel spreadsheets with schedules and numbers; we love numbers.

She opens her notebook to her pages of notes and reaches for the book that will make Megan a bitch for the next few days. “Welcome to Mastershit Theater – where we read masterful pieces of shit”, she quotes like a 1950s television talk show host.

“The Pond”: 21 pages of brilliance which apparently starts with “a guy bitching about people and wanting to be alone”. She remarks with apt frustration and annoyance to the subject matter “See? Isn’t that a simpler way of putting it?”. It is also clear that further on, Thoreau puts about as much detail into talking about fruit as My Immortal does talking about corsets.

At a random point in time after what seems like a few minutes of silence, she quotes The Lonely Island (“I’m on a boat”) and hits herself over the head with the book, much to my protest. Henry David Thoreau seems to think that going fishing is a sufficient point to take up two paragraphs. Why does he use two? Because we wouldn’t have a book otherwise. However at points, he does seem to show poetic flare. ”Lying between the Earth and the heavens it partakes of the colour of both”. A beautiful choice of words to describe the setting of the water. Quite a good choice of words, even considering that Megan accidentally on-purpose chose blue and green pens in order to carry out her torture. But this point is immediately countered by Thoreau (who apparently wrote all of this from memory) writing a whole page about the pond. From memory. With a man with such a great mind for memory, the field of science must have really been missing out with this guy.

Megan is now questioning the merits of literature in general, and how she is more dictated toward one of her two columns on her page when it comes to what words mean vs. what they actually say. It’s interesting to listen to, and she cites an argument over the random words “flipadidius pineapple”. According to a language teacher, those words are beautiful. According to us, we see nothing because it’s complete nonsense. The complaints continue again as we see the truly full and exciting life of Thoreau, as we see him talk about boiling chowder. This book was published in 1854. This book was apparently “written” thirty years previous. I am starting to bring his claim of it being “recalled from memory” into question, especially considering that I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone what I had for lunch years and years ago.

We have our first joke, and it’s a pun. Are you ready? “And thus, the shore is shorn”. OK… OK… Give him a point for a funny line, at least. But why bother putting a section about all of the birds and all of the fish that exist in the pond in so much detail? I don’t think anyone is really looking for this sort of detail to emerge at all. I don’t think people bought this to hear about this sort of information. Who was this written for? Was it a bad sense of audience, or was he not sure who he was writing for? Was he writing for himself? Was he pretentious? Most likely “yes” in the latter. Apparently, this was not for those who don’t like or want change and it is for people who aren’t contempt. In which case, he has missed his audience completely to the point of alienating them. He has missed Writing 101 completely; write to your audience.

Megan takes a rest, searching for Walden Pond on Flickr and Google to get a true sense of its beauty after a particularly moving section of text before it finally hits me. We’re riffing on 19th Century philosophy. And it’s awesome. Back down to work for the little lady as she continues her pursuits into the mind of a hermit before lunch time. Hot dogs. Check.  Milk. Napkin. Check. Big ass quote. Check. Aaaaaand… back to work…

Quote of the day: “How dare people use water to wash their dishes?! “

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16th Jun2011

Fail To The King – A Review of Duke Nukem Forever

posted by Aaron

 

Let’s be honest. When the first achievement that is attainable in a game involves fishing human waste out of a toilet, and you are then able to throw it at the walls, then you already know the tone that a game is trying to set and you know that you’re going to be in trouble. There is just absolutely no recovery. Yet, Duke Nukem Forever manages to resort to pure shit flinging within the first fifteen seconds. We can understand that Duke is meant to have risqué humour and exhibit risqué behaviour (that is what made Duke Nukem 3D so memorable, after all). But this is borderline unacceptable. We can understand that that sort of humour would appeal to some gamers, especially those who are members of Xbox360Achievements.org as evidenced through this link. But when your game has to assign 10 Gamerscore to acting like a chimpanzee in a zoo, then – actually. A chimpanzee doesn’t know any better. Human beings have a sense of decency, but you are expected to resort to the levels of an animal that is lower in the evolutionary ladder than us in order to get rewarded. Maybe they could add DLC that involves you ripping the head off a hooker while you’re fucking her. Hey, if you want to make the player act like a chimpanzee then why not make them act like a female praying mantis too and bring them down to that level? Go the whole hog, why don’t you? And that really sets the tone for Duke Nukem Forever. It is, by far, one of the worst of the worst in modern day video games because it seems to think that it is from six years ago, around the time of the conception of the target audience.

Whilst it is sad that after fifteen years of development (and it becoming an in-joke in the game community for being notorious vapourware) it’s finally come out as the biggest let down in the entire history of gaming, there are still no excuses as to the, frankly, sub par attempt at trying to make a Duke game. That joke is now on you. In fact, I would even argue that Gearbox Software (of all people. Creators of Borderlands) didn’t even try. Let me just make a quick point. After Duke Nukem’s original developers 3D Realms went under, Gearbox bought the rights to the game and the game up to the point it was at so far. The constant word from 3D Realms was that the game would be released under the “when it’s done” basis, but Gearbox purely wanted to make money and held one of the great icons of gaming to ransom.

After the acquisition, it’s pretty clear that rather than do what 3D Realms were trying to do (i.e. make sure every detail is perfect), Gearbox simply took the sections that were done and made a game around those, filling in the gaps with long, generic corridors and unfairly hard enemies in order to pad out a five hour game to around twelve on a good day. Particular culprits to this are the driving sections. The environments are quite simply shoddy and are a joke in modern standards, especially with games such as Half-Life 2 doing much better jobs are keeping the long driving sections interesting. To start, they don’t pad them out for over an hour, the jumping sections are ridiculously stupid, there is a cooldown on the turbo which could involve you tumbling off a cliff, there is no penalty for messing up a jump so you don’t care by the end of it, and the truck keeps running out of gas coincidentally at the start of cave systems and buildings that are full of gas cans scattered around the environment. There is absolutely no reason to have something such as gas in a game that was simply made for mindless action, button mashing and shooting. This is purely an attempt to break up driving sections with action sequences and it’s a simply poor attempt at doing something that could have been fun. After running over your third Pig Cop, it gets boring. So imagine running over your fiftieth. And your sixtieth……. Who thought this was fun again? If you want to make a good driving section, and if anyone want to play one, I recommend Half-Life 2. You can stop at some points for action sequences and puzzle solving but, bar two (which are essential to learn how to use new weapons and how to beat new enemies), they are optional. You don’t have to stop on your way to Nova Prospekt at all in Half-Life 2. With Duke Nukem, you need to stop roughly every five to ten minutes. Did I mention as well that that section of driving goes on for over an hour unnecessarily? Just in case you didn’t get enough of the tedious and boring driving section as a shrunken down version of Duke in an RC car driving for his life, you have to do the exact same thing with even more of those annoying jump sections. It wouldn’t be as bad if the graphics were pretty, and when we get games like Far Cry 2 (which came out in 2008) and Portal (which came out in 2007) producing utterly great visual treats to us, then you can assume that Duke Nukem will definitely deliver. I mean, Borderlands (another Gearbox game) looks great, right? *sigh* Sit down… This is going to hurt.

There is no easy way to put this. Duke Nukem Forever uses Unreal 2.5. That’s an engine that was released mainly to support the XBOX. Not the 360; the original. May I remind you that the XBOX was released in 2001? 2001?! The engine that this game is running off is older than the target demographic. So you can imagine that the graphics and effects for such a game are, how do you put i- awful. Constant physics glitches, inconsistent hitboxes, non-damage scaling hitboxes, buggy controls. Granted that the engine is a heavily-modified version, but if you try and build a game off of a ten year old technology then I really don’t think that the game will be able to perform next to titles such as any single one of them mentioned in this review so far that was made after 2005. Even the jokes are outdated, with references to Leeroy Jenkins, Team America and Christian Bale’s ranting. The game seems to be stuck in the past with no new innovations, instead taking too many steps back and simply resorting to nudges and hints at Duke Nukem 3D. The game plays off nostalgia but it seems like something that you see on a bad Newgrounds site. I feel insulted to have, not only pre-ordered, but paid money for this game. I feel like I have been severely let down by Gearbox and it is such an insult to one of the great video game characters that we have all come to know as “The King”. There is a reason for that.

Duke Nukem was such a breath of fresh air from games like Wolfenstein and Doom. Rather than focus much on strategy or anything, Duke gave that the finger and went in with a rocket launcher in one hand and a can of beer in another. Now Duke Nukem focuses too much on puzzle solving in something that should have been a game that was all about mindless stupidity. However, when the first seconds of your game involve pissing in a urinal and picking up shit then that is not what we meant by stupidity. However, it does balance out the utterly, mind-numbing boredom that the rest of the game brought to me. I couldn’t play more than two and a half hours at a time without having to take a break or do other things. It is really a game that shouldn’t be played in one sitting. It needs to be done over several weeks as you hack away at it. The patience you need for Duke sees no payoff either, with the final boss being a reskinned version of the very first boss that you meet in the game (which may I add took place inside a video game inside your video game and never really happened).

The elephant in the room is what drove a lot of players to the point that Gearbox must have been testing their patience. This section is The Hive, where the women kidnapped by the aliens are absorbed into the hive, raped and impregnated with other aliens that then try to kill you by exploding out of said women. Whilst there were mutated women in Duke Nukem 3D, these women didn’t feature naked breasts, they weren’t crying, they didn’t explode and when you shoot them, their guts don’t spew out all over the floor. Gearbox seem to think that this is a joke to them. They seem to think that this what players really want to see when they play Duke Nukem, a game about a guy with a steroid and peroxide addiction going around with shotguns and rocket launchers killing aliens. Well, Gearbox, this isn’t what we wanted to see. It just proves to everyone who has played your game (yes, your game) that you have a hard-on for this sort of sadistic behaviour. We want action in an action game. We don’t want to put the barrel of a shotgun in the mouths of women that have been kidnapped and raped and then blow their brains out. This is simply an insult to every single person who has held out for this game all these years and they should simply be ashamed of themselves for putting out such a product.

Duke also has a multiplayer aspect to it. Whilst I do applaud Gearbox for placing all of the achievements into the single player campaign only (so we don’t have to rely on pulling off thirty headshots in under ten seconds or something ridiculous like that to get Gamer Score), the motivation for multiplayer is a little weak. It’s good to have a central hub that handles multiplayer (Bioshock 2 had your bedroom in Rapture, as an example) and Duke has his building to house all of your multiplayer rewards. It’s a nice idea, but the concept falls flat when there isn’t a lot to actually do in multiplayer. You level up to get trophies and women to appear in your penthouse suite. As for the multiplayer itself, the game modes are generic, boiling down to Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill. The maximum number of players are four per team (with games like Team Fortress 2 from 2007 allowing 16 per team) but I still feel that the servers are simply unable to handle even eight players. This isn’t due to graphics or network problems (ping is reported as less than fifty), but purely due to poor network code. Players teleport, jump backward, perfect shots cause no damage whilst complete misses instant kill. And explosives are unbelievably overpowered with the ability to spawn kill also being present also. It doesn’t help that every single player looks like Duke. Every. Single. One. There is one character model for multiplayer with the only differences being different coloured shirts for each team. That. That is unacceptable. That’s lazy. Why didn’t you let us play as characters like the Pig Cops or the Armoured Aliens or the EDF soldiers? You missed out on so many opportunities here to make a multiplayer that rivalled Goldeneye for awesomeness. That could have given you so many points in your favour. But it was a rushed job. It was multiplayer experience that couldn’t even compete with a college game project.

This game is simply a mess, and it is out simply because Gearbox wanted to make money as quickly as possible without even attempting to listen to customers. I didn’t even mention the fact that Duke uses the Halo weapons mechanics of two weapons at a time only. How was this necessary? Old Duke was like Gordon Freeman and could carry a rocket launcher with a dozen rockets without breaking a sweat, so why change that? It worked, didn’t it? This is, quite frankly, the lowest a game can sink. PC Gamer’s Dan Stapleton gave this game a glowing 80/100. I now question this man’s journalistic and reviewer integrity. In the past, it was not uncommon for some developers and publishers to buy a good review. A classic case of someone who went against this and spoke his mind, despite being paid to give a good review was Jeff Gerstmann of Gamespot. Eidos (the developers of Kane and Lynch) sunk a lot of money into advertising Kane and Lynch on the Gamespot website, including a full reskin and a change of interface. After Jeff gave only an average review of the game, he was promptly fired for “undisclosed reasons”. This lead to editors Alex Navarro, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Caravella leaving the site out of protest against advertisers buying reviews. These people who don’t cave into corporate pressure are the ones we should be listening to with our reviews. If you want to find a site with good journalistic and reviewer credibility, go and take a look at Blistered Thumbs. They do amazing work over there and are completely independent. They give disclosures and they are fair and honest with their reviews. Seriously, go and check those guys out.

Duke Nukem Forever, as it is, is simply a corporate tool, used to blackmail gamers into parting with money. It is simply serving shit onto a silver platter, sprinkling it with icing sugar and putting a can of beer next to it. Duke Nukem Forever gets a final verdict of 2/10. And that is being generous. This is simply a must-avoid game. Do. Not. Buy. This. Game. This shouldn’t be Duke Nukem, this shouldn’t be $60, this shouldn’t have been released. It is appalling that this should be allowed. Avoid this game at all costs and buy an actual good game. Get something like L.A. Noire. It has a lot more sophistication, it’s a lot more intelligent, really well made, immersive, significantly longer, much more entertaining and there is a massive potential for DLC with extra cases. Buy L.A. Noire and avoid Duke Nukem Forever. It’s simply a rotting turd sat on top of the golden throne that once belonged to a much better man much more worthy of it.

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29th May2011

Have A Takei Old Time

posted by Aaron

It's OK To Be Takei

Written by Megan Shepard and Aaron Fowkes

Everyone with a brain stem and a decent pulse knows that George Takei is freaking awesome. Why wouldn’t he be? He was in Star Trek, he was in Heroes, he’s been in FMV video games (namely Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (“You are made of stupid”)) and he’s the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. Why shouldn’t he receive the attention that he deserves? Like Stephen Fry in the UK, George would really be accepted as a national treasure over in the UK too. It’s actually funny that I mention Stephen for the simple reason that is this: according to a recently passed Tennessee law, people like George and Stephen would simply “disappear”. The simple reason for this is actually more complicated than it seems. Tennessee seems to still operate under the “leeches and witch-burning” system, i.e. they seem to be stuck in the 1500’s; the time of throwing feces out of second story windows, countries still being discovered and religion being the be all and end all of modern values and beliefs (well, as modern as the 1500’s can get). This includes the idea that God-fearing Christians are supposed to marry as man and wife, swiftly followed by having twelve kids and dying of Dysentery aged forty. Fast forward to 2011, and Tennessee still believe that they live in the days of feces and Dysentery (wow. The people of the 1500’s really were completely obsessed with shit, weren’t they?). Yes, children. It’s time to discuss an old subject that I’ve talked about before: homosexuality. In this case, the “Don’t Say Gay” law. But this time, I have a little help from my (girl)friend… Megan? Care to discuss cultural retardedness with me?

Tennessee needs to get its priorities straight (I’m allowed to say that, right?). If I were a Tennessee parent, I would be more concerned about my child learning about morals from the same state that spawned the KKK than learning about other kinds of families. However, this issue does raise a question about education: What duty does the state have in educating about real life? Considering the curriculum in question is entitled “Family Life”, the answer for any rational human being would be that all types of families should be explored. After all, these are K-8 kids (you can tell this part was written by Megan. Her and her little Americanisms. Adds a certain charm though, don’t you think?); the most objectionable fact about the birds and the bees that they could learn would come from crude drawings and euphemisms. I don’t even remember the big “S” word being discussed until 8th grade, on the very tail end of the age group affected by the Don’t Say G–, er, Takei law. The wording of the most recent draft of the law that I can find manages to agree with me and completely disagree as well. The bill acknowledges that “human sexuality is a complex subject”, yet only bans “any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation OTHER THAN HETEROSEXUALITY”.  Parents and Internet commentators beg the state to “stop sexualizing our kids” and that “forcing beliefs” has no role in a place where “age appropriate education” should be treasured. As I have previously discussed, educators won’t be showing kindergartners which lube is best for their gay lovemaking, or teaching fifth graders how to please their lesbian lover. They will, as part of the “Family Life” curriculum, be teaching about families. Families come in different shapes and sizes; sometimes kids are adopted or families are joined together by marriage; some parents have different color skin; some children have two mommies or two daddies. The only fear they should ever be taught about families would be to look out for signs of abuse. Evil people come in every shade of sexual orientation, yet we are singling out homosexuals. Straight sex is fine to teach about, but if there’s more than one penis around, then that’s harming kids? Tennessee, get your priorities straight.

I feel that this issue is really overstepping some kind of mark (yes, your regular commentator is back again). Let me put this clearly: sexuality on 99% of occasions is not a choice that is based on any type of programming. In fact, it isn’t a choice at all. Sexual orientation, as argued on many occasions by scientists and psychologists, is not a free choice but is determined by biological programming. Obviously the remaining one percent may be caused by an environmental variable but it would have to already have some sort of “kickstart” in order for homosexuality to fully develop. But the way I word that, it makes homosexuality sound like some sort of condition. It may have been like this during the Shit Era that was mentioned earlier, but need I – sorry – we mention that this is 2011. We’ve had men on the moon, we’ve invented the bacon sandwich, we can get a letter from the other side of the world to someone’s doorstep in less than a day if we really tried hard enough, we can see the deepest depths of Space, we can invent a combustible lemon that burns your house – oh God. Sorry. I’ve been talking about Portal 2 for two articles in a row and I feel I have to make that reference or I’m not doing my job properly… Anyway, the point stands. Homosexuality is really something that we can’t choose. I was born straight, and no amount of education from Mrs Leeberwitz in 2nd Grade can convince me to be anything other than that. Race (as mentioned earlier by my partner-in-crime) is something that was brought up by the state of Tennessee very subtly and tastefully (!) by the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Race isn’t a choice; it’s biological. Why should race be treated any differently to homosexuality? It really is quite perplexing as to how such a pseudo-valid argument can really be presented and even taken on board by an entire state; 2% of the Union. If there was a class that discounted skin types other than white and was made to sound like any other skin colour didn’t exist, then would this law stay in effect for much time? Would it even make it past the State House of Representatives? Do you see the ludicrousness of what I’m conveying in this? The State is justifying this law citing that it would produce “less of a divide amongst classmates”. The opposite is achieved. It steps us back several decades and even centuries as this leads to further segregation and further bullying toward those that are different to what is acceptable as stated by the curriculum. And it always seems to be with Tennessee. Were you specifically created for the sole purpose of being stuck in the Middle Ages? We have 1925 and the Evolution debate, we have the KKK and now we have the Don’t Say Takei law. Why must you pop up on my radar like this? How could I miss this before? I’ve talked about Apple, Valve, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, podcasts, Chris Evans, Team Fortress 2, and much, much more random assortments of culture, but this is definitely a far more pressing issue than what I’ve been making it out as, especially in earlier articles when I have mentioned homosexuality. Megan is completely correct. Tennessee needs to sort their priorities out quickly or it’ll be us with the hoverboards and “It’s OK To Be Takei” buttons and stickers while they’re still trying to work out which way the horse goes on a horse and cart. Whilst dying of Dysentery.

Speaking of which, why not buy an “It’s OK To Be Takei” T-Shirt?

Category : Joint Articles
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17th May2011

When Will I Be Famous?

posted by Aaron

Note: this is a crosspost with fowk.es

Recently I was looking through my computer and found my old coursework for Communication and Culture; probably the only subject I did exceptionally well in at college. I thought it may be good to let you see me with my more serious analytical hat on as I take a look at television talent shows. I scored high on this, and I hope you all at least enjoy a more deep look at a more serious version of myself. Without further ado…

“When Will I Be Famous?” – Ordinary People and Celebrity.

Issue: Talent Shows.

What is the value of the “talent show” both in terms of culture and in terms of society? A case study of the X Factor.

In recent years, a lot of our culture has started to revolve around the idea of becoming famous quickly by way of appearing on television talent shows such as “The X Factor”. The idea of becoming wealthy and powerful with very little effort is an enticing one. However, the question is raised: how does society value the television talent show in terms of cultural worth and the effect it has on society itself. In this analysis, I’ll be specifically focusing on the “ITV” television programme “The X Factor”. I’ll be analysing “The X Factor” mostly from a Marxist perspective, with other theory such as Feminist included as and when appropriate.

It should be established that “The X Factor” consistently produces artists that sing pop music. The first thing that is required is to analyse pop music as a cultural product, before the television programme can be analysed properly. Pop music, in it’s own name, is flawed (“pop” being an abbreviation of the word “popular”). The value of pop music in a cultural sense is quite low. Traditionally, it usually required the specialist skill of musical talent in order to be successful. However, in more recent years, being a pop star is more about the actual popularity and image of the artist in question, rather than the music, which changes the convention of popularity in pop music from being about the music to about the actual person, and their acceptance as a role model. An example of this is the artist “Pink” (now known as “P!nk”). In previous years, she focused on songs about depression, separation and the deeper meanings of romance. For example, one of the lyrics from the song “Don’t Let Me Get Me” is: “Everyday I fight a war against the mirror, I can’t take the person starin’ back at me”1, which is not really accepted as acceptable in pop music (recently, P!nk has adopted a more modern and feminine image. This has caused her increased popularity in mainstream music). Pop music is usually about making people aim for something. This leads onto a point about role models. The actual pop music is now becoming less and less important, and success in the pop music industry is mostly based around image. Many of these artists become role models for the members of the lower classes. Britney Spears is often seen as a role model because of her showing an “ideal” female image that has been dictated by the dominant discourse. Britney is blonde, pretty, has perfect teeth, and, in terms of music, is quite traditional because of her songs mostly being about finding a partner and finding love. This is a traditional idea given by the dominant discourse in order to uphold traditional values. Britney Spears also gives an incorrect image, from a feminist point of view, as to what a female should, apparently, look like. Britney often dresses provocatively in her videos by dressing in skin-tight latex (“Oops! I Did It Again”) or schoolgirl outfits (“Hit Me Baby One More Time”). This is to show how a woman “should” look, and it attracts the male gaze, making her an object of desire. Younger girls often see Britney being successful and want to imitate her, which is dominant ideology showing control over easily exploitable young girls. Feminists would argue that this alienates young girls into behaving how society dictates they should.

With pop music, it should also be noted that it is classified as low culture because of it’s own name. “Pop”, an abbreviation of “popular”, is a type of music that is popular (as the name suggests). The reason for this is the image of the artists and, more importantly, what pop music is. Pop music normally uses simple, repetitive lyrics, a catchy instrumental part and singing about values such as finding true love or earning money (the Nineties were full of these types of songs. Out of the top 10 selling UK singles of the 90′s, two even had the word “Love” explicitly in the title: “Love Is All Around” by Wet Wet Wet, and “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston2). These are all values that the dominant discourse forces on the lower classes in order for them to act a certain way. By twinning an artist singing about these values, and then seeing them become increasingly popular and rich, it creates a system of positive reinforcement. Being rich – and therefore powerful in the eyes of society – is also capitalistic and oppresses the lower classes from being successful. If someone can become a pop star, then they can become rich and happy. This is exactly what “The X Factor” tries to achieve with the common person.

“The X Factor” is a television programme that shows on “ITV1”, and runs during prime time on Saturdays and, in more recent series, Sundays too. The concept of the show is that nationwide auditions take place around the United Kingdom in order to find the next successful pop star from the common people. This can be seen as a vested interest of capitalism for the show to be successful. However, this involves exploring the cultural value of the show first.

The overall value of the show is still low. Points for high culture are strong, however. There is a large amount of expense needed for the show to take place. The fees of the judges must be paid. As the show holds auditions across the country, venues need to be booked. Miscellaneous staff need to be hired. Sets need to be built. Overall, there is a lot of money involved in the production of the programme which gives it some cultural value. It is also necessary for the actual contestants to possess talent in singing in order to progress further from auditions into the “Boot Camp” stages of the show, and then to the live shows that take place on weekends. Specialist skills of the contestants are needed for the show to be popular and the show itself needs people with specialist skills to actually get running in the first place, such as set designers, electricians and builders. However, as mentioned, it is becoming increasingly important for the singers to have a good public image or to be attractive in order to be successful or a combination of the two. The low points for the cultural worth are vast. As pop music itself is considered as low culture, the show is automatically classified as low culture due to the association. The show is easily accessible. The show broadcasts during prime time on weekend television, maximising the audience to the biggest it can possibly get (and with approximately twenty-six million UK households with television in the year 20033, the audience has the potential to be vast). Other forms of media also help to promote the show. Tabloid newspapers and whole segments dedicated to it in programmes that are meant to be informative, such as the BBC’s “Breakfast” or ITV’s “GMTV”, entices the target audience of people in the lower classes to watch the show. What comes from this is an audience of nineteen million people4 tuning in to watch the final of the 2009 series which saw Joe McElderry win the competition. It is also the potential for nineteen million people to buy even further into capitalism. In terms of capitalism, there are many opportunities for the show to make money. First, in order to show support for their act or to show they are fans of the show, viewers at home can buy merchandise, such as mugs and T-Shirts. It is also encouraged by the show for people to text and phone the show in order to prevent their favourite acts from being eliminated. This service usually costs the voter considerably (usually over £1 per vote). This is, again, buying into this artificial economy. The media also has their part in the popularity of such shows. Newspapers such as “The Sun” feature large features dedicated to “The X Factor”, helping to promote it further. People buy these papers in order to keep up-to-date with gossip from the show. It is also notable that the individuals that take part in the show often are subject to the gazes of the Paparazzi. Pictures of the star in question go into the papers, and help to make the newspaper more money by generating some media interest. Also note that a significant amount of money for the programme comes from advertising. With nineteen million people tuning into the show, it must be suggested that companies that advertise during “The X Factor” receive a significant amount of extra customer interest “fuelling the capitalist machine”.

However, it can be argued that it is giving power back to the lower classes. Traditionally, artists are from more upper class backgrounds. Bands such as “The Kooks” and “Franz Ferdinand” received upper class education. Most acts that enter “The X Factor” are from working and lower middle class backgrounds due to pop music being low culture, so it can be seen as giving regular people the chance to earn capital, live their dreams and become powerful. Marxists would see this as a positive point. However, the problem with this is is that winners of the show sign onto the record label “SyCo”, which is a company owned by Simon Cowell, which in turn is part of “Sony”. As they are signed to a record label, the record label initially invests a certain amount of money into an artist (which doesn’t have to be paid back if the artist is unsuccessful). Any money made from record sales goes straight to the record company first to pay off the initial investment. Most importantly, the record label (once the initial investment is paid off) start to pay a certain percentage of the profits (royalties) to the artist, whilst keeping a significant percentage of it for themselves. This money goes to the record label and gives them even more overall power to sign new artists, helping to further increase their profits. This is on-par with the “fuelling of the capitalist machine”. Giving into capitalism takes power away from the lower classes, as they are the people with the least amount of money. Marxists would see this as a negative point (the artist is a “pawn”, used to increase the power of the corporations).

Another point to show the capitalistic approaches of “The X Factor” happened in the most recent series with the “guest artists”. These artists are successful and perform their music in front of a live audience on the main stage. This is a method of promotion for the artist in question. Artists that have performed have included music icons such as Roger Taylor and Brian May of the band “Queen”, and Sir Paul McCartney. Other artists that have performed there include Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke5. The latter artists in this list are also signed to the same record label as the artist that eventually wins the competition, “SyCo”6. This increases the profits of the company significantly if the only artists to perform in a single show are all signed to the same record label, which gives them even more power.

Overall, it can be seen that the idea of “The X Factor” is to give the lower classes the illusion of control over the dominant discourse and the larger capitalist corporations. The idea of the general public (the working and lower middle classes, mostly) some kind of power over what music is introduced into the mainstream or not is a lie. Whilst the public choose which artist is “better”, the only people that genuinely benefit are not the artists or the public, but “ITV”, “Sony” and “SyCo” themselves, as they are the ones that receive the money (and the power) from the general public.

References/Bibliography:

1 “Don’t Let Me Get Me” (Moore, Austin (2001))

http://www.lyrics007.com/Pink%20Lyrics/Don’t%20Let%20Me%20Get%20Me%20Lyrics.html

2 “Top 10 Best Selling UK Singles of the 1990′s” (PopReport.co.uk (Unknown Year))http://www.popreport.co.uk/chart_history/nineties.php

3 “UK television households” (TerraMedia.co.uk (Unknown Year))

http://www.terramedia.co.uk/reference/statistics/television/television_households.htm

4 “The X Factor: more than 19m watch Joe McElderry win” (John Plunkett, “The Guardian” (2009))

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/14/x-factor-joe-mcelderry

5 Extracts from “Live show details” (“The X Factor (UK series 6)” article, Wikipedia (2010))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X_Factor_(UK_series_6)#Live_show_details

6 Extracts from “Syco Music – Current Artists” (“Syco” article, Wikipedia (2010))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syco

 

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