No doubt there’ll be a few who don’t agree with the boastful title, but that’s too bad. In my mind it is. Feel free to leave your suggestions for other contenders in the comments. It’s a violin sonata in B minor (adagio) by the great Johann Sebastion Bach. I won’t write a spiel for it. Just turn it up and immerse yourself.
I’ve long been fascinated by the means by which the marketers so effectively manage to determine our choices in the marketplace. This effectiveness has long been appreciated by the corporations who spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year in marketing their services and products. While information about how these techniques work, and the reasons for their success, are starting to filter down to ordinary people (empowering their choices and to some degree liberating them from the malaise) - still many are unaware of their implicit involvement in marketing processes. We are helping the marketers and we don’t even know it. What I’ll attempt to demonstrate is the degree to which classic marketing techniques rely on the competitive and combative elements of human nature to re-inforce the individual marketing message. Once it is seen just how involved we all are, the insidious nature of corporate marketing becomes stark. We begin to realise just how much we help the marketers to do what they do.
Half Life 2 has been on the market now for several years, but still I feel a sense of awe whenever I step into that terrifying universe. The scope of the story, the immersive visuals, the characters - all of it combining to form an incredible gaming experience. But its as a narrative that I find the game most interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dr Breen’s rants against the “dangers of magical thinking” - a rich allusion to the struggle between rationalist and romantic ideologies. Beyond this, I find it fascinating the way they resolve the natural tension that exists between gaming as a narrative medium - and the exigencies of narrative structure itself. In most cases they limit the choice of the character so that there is one and only one path to follow at any given time. This allows Valve, the game’s creators, to guide the player through their carefully crafted narrative - at the expense of player freedom. Nevertheless, I was able to find one part of the game, where they allowed the player more choice than even they suspected. The result is a scene that they didn’t intend for you to see.
The BBC is reporting on the AACS reaction to the HD DVD Digg revolt. It’s a pretty entertaining read. It is claiming that it will pursue legal and technical means to stop the spread of the HD DVD processing key. Well he better get cracking - currently the numbers on google show 1.4 million pages contain the code - as per the following screenshot.
Madness is ensuing over at Digg.
For those who don’t know what is going on, here is a brief history. Recently a hacker over at the Doom 9 forums figured out the processing key for the HD DVD format. This key means that effectively the digital rights management functions on such media are rendered neutered - so the information could then be copied, or played on unauthorised boxes (such as linux).
Just a couple of minor blog related things I want to quickly mention.
First of all - for regular readers - you might have noticed that I’ve changed the template.? It’s a minimalist wordpress theme from Plain Text . I’m not sure if I like it, so I might swap back. If […]