Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:55:35 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/ Glide Underground Backend en-us http://www.glideunderground.com/images/logo.gif http://www.glideunderground.com/ http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3978 Video Games Live have posted up the PBS broadcast schedule of this summer's concert event. Sadly, a lot of cities are not on the list. If yours isn't - send an email to your local PBS people! Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:55:35 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3977 According to Apple Insider, the US Government is announcing new rules to specifically hit mobile devices and make things like iPhone jailbreaking unquestionably legal: The report noted that every three years, the Library of Congress' Copyright Office authorizes exemptions to ensure existing law does not prevent non-infringing use of copyrighted material. In addition, another exemption was approved that would allow all cell phone users to unlock their device for use on an unapproved carrier. Currently, Apple's iPhone is available exclusively through AT&T, but unlocking it can allow for voice calls and EDGE data speeds on rival carrier T-Mobile. Other exemptions announced Monday allow people to break protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws; allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy protection measures on DVDs to embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos; and allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices (dongles) if the hardware no longer works and cannot be replaced.We'd still do better to kill the DMCA altogether. Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:33:23 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3976 Lyle Lovett has some pretty pointed things to say about the music industry - echoing what's been said by others before. Techdirt had a previous article over here going into detail as well. Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:18:56 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3975 The management would like to point out yet another instance of "copyright law" gone ridiculously stupid. The 10-year-old budding actress' effort to raise money for a U.K. children's hospice through a homemade video has been dealt a setback by a copyright dispute with a New York-based publishing company that owns the rights to a song from a Charlie Chaplin movie. It all started innocently enough last year when Bethany decided to make a Chaplin-style film using money she earned as an extra on the critically acclaimed British soap opera "Emmerdale." She dressed up like the legendary silent-movie comic to star in her own video tribute. The homemade film features Bethany singing the song "Smile," the theme from Chaplin's 1936 classic "Modern Times." (Lyrics were added to "Smile" in 1954 and it was originally sung by Nat King Cole.) The video was posted on the JustGiving website to raise money for Martin House, a children's hospice in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, England. If anyone asks - Bourne Music Publishing are a bunch of heartless dicks. Feel free to write them emails reminding them so. Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:48:34 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3974 The Xbox engineering blog has a nice article up on what exactly goes into making the "achievement" system work: One hot topic that came up in that meeting was that profiles must be available offline. That meant that a player didn’t have to be connected to Xbox LIVE in order to access his or her achievements or profile settings. The impassioned statement was, “I have to be able to take my Xbox to Whistler for a ski weekend, and have all the achievements I earn there show up online when I plug in at home Monday morning!” Life would have been a lot easier if hotels in Whistler offered free Internet access but, instead, offline access became a big part of the profile story. Not only could you go away for the weekend, but you didn’t have to worry if you lost your Internet connection before reaching a critical milestone. Or you could play without ever connecting to Xbox LIVE, earn a pile of achievements, and have them show up in the cloud the first time you got connected. Offline access made for some late nights for the development team, but we knew it was the right thing to do and that was enough to justify the overtime.Read the whole thing - if you've ever wondered why certain things work a certain way, the descriptions of the discussions show they really did put a decent amount of thought into the system. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:57:47 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3973 Back from a long, long conventiongoing weekend. So many fun times, so much good food in the City of New Orleans. Back here at HQ - Castle Crashers has survived two (maybe 3?) major updates, which radically changed how the game was played. Survey says... most of the changes were good (bugfixes and exploit-kills), some not so great (inability to hold an "air-juggle" as long making certain character builds less viable). Transformers: War for Cybertron. Nice idea for a game, and I can see how it may work for the online portion, but I'm less than enthusiastic about the storyline missions and maps. They're so visually busy that finding item drops, and sometimes even enemies, is next to impossible. Also, the fact that co-op mode requires each person to have their own console? BOO. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:47:20 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3972 Techdirt takes on how the RIAA members defraud musicians, in an ongoing series that previously showed how movie theaters fraudulently claim to lose money on even the most powerful summer blockbusters. Of course, it's actually even more ridiculous than this report makes it out to be. Going back ten years ago, Courtney Love famously laid out the details of recording economics, where the label can make $11 million... and the actual artists make absolutely nothing. It starts off with a band getting a massive $1 million advance, and then you follow the money: Read all the way through, to understand why the music industry is so messed up. Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:01:57 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3971 Ultima VI's fan-done remake has been officially released! Enjoy the free game and have fun! Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:41:58 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3970 Behold the bionic cat. One day, we may be doing this sort of thing for humans. Documentary video available on Youtube. Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:32:29 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3969 The inventor of the Pixel has something to say: “Squares was the logical thing to do,” Kirsch says. “Of course, the logical thing was not the only possibility … but we used squares. It was something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.” Now retired and living in Portland, Oregon, Kirsch recently set out to make amends. Inspired by the mosaic builders of antiquity who constructed scenes of stunning detail with bits of tile, Kirsch has written a program that turns the chunky, clunky squares of a digital image into a smoother picture made of variably shaped pixels.Intriguing, though it still has to pass through a square-pixel monitor. Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:02:16 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3968 The band Men At Work have been ordered to pay a slice of royalties from their song "Down Under". The reason? A very small portion used a flute bit from a 1934 song. The author's long since dead, but in Australia's crazy, bizarre *IAA bought-off copyright laws, a megacorporation sucking up "copyrights" won in court trolling over a tiny snippet of the song. Yep. Copyright is messy. And overly burdensome these days. Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:34:28 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3967 Here's an interesting one for you - apparently getting out into nature significantly increases immune function. Stress reduction is one factor. But scientists also chalk it up to phytoncides, the airborne chemicals that plants emit to protect them from rotting and insects and which also seem to benefit humans. One study published in January included data on 280 healthy people in Japan, where visiting nature parks for therapeutic effect has become a popular practice called “Shinrin-yoku,” or “forest bathing.” On one day, some people were instructed to walk through a forest or wooded area for a few hours, while others walked through a city area. On the second day, they traded places. The scientists found that being among plants produced “lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, and lower blood pressure,” among other things.In other words: go for a walk in the park. You'll be happier and healthier. Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:30:35 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3966 Cliff Bleszinski says shooters are the next evolution of RPGs. I'm not sure I believe it. Sure, Deus Ex's rpg mechanics made the game awesome, and the Call of Duty keeps sticking in more RPG-like mechanics. On the other hand, there's something different about a shooter. In a true RPG, it's 90% the skill of the character, the stats, that make the difference - the rest is 10% planning on the player's part. In a shooter/rpg, more like 70% of the game is simply the player's twitch reflex. Oh, he also tries to defend Gears of War. Ouch. It depends on where things go. I mean, one could wean that from the comments I made earlier about the future of shooters is RPGs and see where things are going with us. But, I mean, I love the jokes about Gears of War not being an innovative game. Suddenly everyone has cover, everyone has roadie-run, everyone has integrated story-based co-op. And it always amuses me that the Gears games get criticism for their narrative. We never said we were making Shakespeare; this is a Michael Bay Film, go with it.Hey, uh, Cliffy? We hate Michael Bay films. Especially what he did to Transformers. Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:23:51 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3965 Remember when Roger Ebert said video games "couldn't be" art? He now admits he was talking out his posterior. See, he's never played one. Any game. At all. Who was I to say video games didn't have the potential of becoming Art? Someday? There was no agreement among the thousands of posters about even one current game that was an unassailable masterpiece. Shadow of the Colossus came closest. I suppose that's the one I should begin with. But many other games were also mentioned. If I didn't admire a game, I would be told I played the wrong one. Consider what happened when I responded to the urging of a reader and watched Kellee Santiago's TED talk. It would finally convince me, I was promised, of the art of video games. I watched it. But noooo. Readers told me I had viewed the wrong talk about the wrong games. Besides, arguing with a You Tube video was pointless if I had never played a game.Sadly, Old Fogie Ebert still to this day refuses to play one. Which means he'll never get it. Then again, as anyone who's ever seen his terrible and off-base movie reviews should know, he doesn't get art in any form. Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:09:49 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3964 The very first alien planet - a planet in another solar system - has been photographed directly rather than merely detected by measurement of its sun's orbit. If you zoom in really, REALLY close, you can see a bunch of aliens holding up signs saying "Hi Mom." The host star, which has an estimated mass of about 85 percent that of our sun, is located approximately 500 light-years away in a group of young stars called the Upper Scorpius Association that formed about 5 million years ago. The planet has an estimated temperature of over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,500 degrees Celsius). This makes the planet much hotter than Jupiter, which has an atmospheric cloud-top temperature of approximately minus 166 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 110 degrees Celsius). Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:07:35 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3963 Check out a problem to contemplate on a Tuesday. If you dare. Gardner himself tripped up on his simpler Two Children Problem. Initially, he gave the answer as 1/3, but he later realized that the problem is ambiguous in the same way that Peres argues that the Tuesday Birthday Problem is. Suppose that you already knew that Mr. Smith had two children, and then you meet him on the street with a boy he introduces as his son. In that case, the probability the other child is a son would be 1/2, just as intuition suggests. On the other hand, suppose that you are looking for a male beagle puppy. You want a puppy that has been raised with a sibling for good socialization but you are afraid it will be hard to select just a single puppy from a large litter. So you find a breeder who has exactly two pups and call to confirm that at least one is male. Then the probability that the other is male is 1/3. Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:44:19 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3962 The fan-made King's Quest: The Silver Lining has gotten a reprieve - Activision/Vivendi have actually given them permission to finish the game and release it! However, after receiving plenty of media attention and even a 3,000-signature petition, Activision has now done the honourable thing. "Activision reached out to the Phoenix Online team a few months ago with a desire to revisit their decision regarding The Silver Lining," said the game's developer in a statement. "After negotiations, the C&D [cease and desist] has been officially rescinded, and Phoenix Online has been granted a non-commercial license to release The Silver Lining!"I'm glad Activision finally saw the light on this one. Hopefully, more developers will take the hint in the future... Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:32:28 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3961 No, it's not complete, and never will be - but if you ever wondered what Zelda II would look like in 3D, here's your chance to find out. Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:18:30 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3960 Go ahead, Click that little soccer ball. YouTube dares you to. Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:56:58 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3959 PC Perspective puts the new Xbox360 Slim through its paces, and it comes out surprisingly robust. Among other things, the unit's got a better cooling system, and runs quieter on the single-chip CPU/GPU solution provided by AMD. On, and it's got a built-in 802.11n wireless solution... cunningly attached to a plain old internal USB port. Bizarre. I'm not sure I will buy one anytime soon, but... Now before we show you what is inside the NEW Xbox 360 "Slim" console I thought it pertinent to show you what it was replacing by taking our previous generation model and revealing the setup it holds. After removing the chassis from the original Xbox we find a somewhat busy PCB along with a large heatsink assembly and a pair of smaller, noisy fans used to draw heat and air out of the system. ... This is the only fan and heatsink in use on the new Xbox 360 S and because it is larger it can rotate more slowly and thus generates less noise than the previous models pair of fans. I have included a video of the Xbox 360 S versus Xbox 360 noise properties below - be sure to check it out!Quite an enlightening article, full of pictorial goodness. Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:22:21 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3958 I've lost track of the back-and-forth rounds, but the new Wii System Menu 4.3 is once again going after homebrew pretty specifically. From Nintendo's rather lame description: Unauthorized Modifications Because unauthorized channels or firmware may impair game play or the Wii console, updating to Wii Menu version 4.3 will check for and automatically remove such unauthorized files. In addition, there are some behind the scenes enhancements that do not affect any prominently-used features or menus but will improve system performance.It was as if millions of Wii owners suddenly screamed out, "DO NOT WANT"... Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:30:09 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3957 Ars covers people who are trying to ensure that past video games remain playable. It's much, much harder than one thinks. JM: The really simple, one-sentence answer is because games are important. In the United States we're looking at about 80,000 people who are directly employed by the gaming industry and maybe another 240,000 people involved in related, tangential industries that rely on gaming companies for their existence. So just as a monetary phenomenon, games are important. You probably saw the sales for Modern Warfare? We're talking a single game that realized over a billion dollars in sales. Sort of shows on a monetary level the importance that games have taken within our economy. This has certainly made librarians take note of games, but also they've become important culturally. There's a long history of wanting to say "popular culture is lower culture and therefore we should not be preserving it." For all of us in our project, we're rejecting that point of view. Popular culture is the most important culture we need to preserve. It shows what people were actually interested in and what they were doing.Read the whole article - this stuff is important. Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:51:30 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3956 Go take a look. It might just be what you've been waiting for... Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:25:27 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3955 Uwe Boll, not content with simply destroying franchises and being completely incapable of making a good movie, has found a new way to scam money besides exploiting German tax loopholes: he's signing on to mafia-like lawsuit mills. Any more commentary is probably unnecessary, but what the hey - we're talking about the man many have called the "World's Worst Director" here! "Like a modern-day Ed Wood, or a poor man's Michael Bay," the story continued, "Boll appears competent in every aspect of filmmaking except the actual making of the film. His movies are haphazardly scripted, sloppily edited, badly acted and, most crucially, brutally received. Out of 350,000-plus films rated by users of the encyclopedic movie site Internet Movie Database, Boll's three game flicks all rank in the bottom 100. Critics, especially the legion of armchair Eberts who post scathing reviews on the Web, have made a sport out of beating up the director."What I wouldn't give to get 100 people who were forced to endure one of his movies, and him, locked together in a warehouse with a bunch of paintball guns... Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:03:29 -0500 http://www.glideunderground.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3954 I wonder if we could hook both directors up to a polygraph? On one side, the NSA defends the Polygraph. On the other, these people disagree. Fair warning: the NSA's video is in Flash with no fast-forward/rewind/pause controls, which is pretty lame. Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:00:00 -0500