$100,000 to Study WoW
Well I suppose this is research. But public money to the tune of $100,000 to study a small aspect of World of Warcraft gold farming? Her comments are somewhat interesting into how the Chinese view WoW and play it, to dispel at least some myths surrounding the traditional ‘gold farmer’ label, though the focus on Americans’ modding of the game seems incredibly limited in scope to justify that amount of spending. At least with the corrupted blood incident, the potential for that research went beyond simply understanding of social aspects of online MMOs and into transmission and development of real-world diseases.
ACTA Unveiled
This looked quite interesting, partially because I’m getting the odd feeling that with this in the news, the RIAA might start using the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement model (even thought it appears to be simply an international agreement) as vindication of what they have been doing or as a means to continue their aggressive policy towards file-sharing. Now don’t get me wrong, I do agree that with the initial premise behind the ACTA to combat physical forms of piracy related to the mediums of CDs and actual large-scale copyright infringement is good (as those attempting to distribute and make money off of ripping people off should be prosecuted and shutdown), a reading of what little information there seems to be on it seems to me to leave a large wide-open gap as to whether this agreement will apply to online file-sharing as well.
And if it does apply, then we run the real risk of continuing to have organizations such as the RIAA pursue litigation against anyone and their dog, rather than adapt to a changing market environment in the distribution of music as they should do if they value the free market system. I mean, we already have Radiohead releasing their album online where people can pay whatever they choose for it, other artists either advocating or encouraging music downloads, and even journal articles* on the subject of online music sharing. I’m wary to see legislation going in the opposite direction and ignore the reality individual file sharing has in musical purchases.
~Shaun
*Sources related:
- Whatever happened to payola? An empirical analysis of online music sharing, Marsden, J.R.; Bhattacharjee, S.; Gopal, R.; Lertwachara, K., Decision Support Systems,vol.42,no.1,pp.104-120,Oct. 2006
- Do Artists Benefit from Online Music Sharing? Gopal, Ram D; Bhattacharjee, Sudip; Sanders, G Lawrence, The Journal of Business [Chicago], vol.79, no.3, pp.1503-1533, 2006
- Covering music file-sharing and the future of innovation, Russell, Adrienne, First Monday, vol. 11, no. 9, pp. np, Sep 2006
- The Anti-competitive Music Industry and the Case for Compulsory Licensing in the Digital Distribution of Music. Srivastava, Ankur, Touro Law Review, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 375-472, 2006
Potpourri News Day
Looks like there isn’t going to be an election any time soon in Canada, what with the Liberals (predictably) abstaining. While I understand they want to wait until Stephane Dion shows himself to be a bit more of an astute leader than he currently is and/or something goes horribly wrong with the Conservatives (and to be fair to Harper, he’s rather clever when it comes to politics and I don’t foresee him slipping up in the near future), it still just seems like they’re sacrificing bits and pieces of what the Liberal party stands for (and not at all acting like an Opposition) just to avoid a vote. They might as well not even be there, since the NDP and Bloc are far more visible in actual opposition of the government. The problem with continuing to wait until their situation becomes more tenable is that all the government has to do is continue to issue confidence motion after confidence motion, since, as we’ve already been familiar with Stephane Dion for 10 or so months now, large scale changes in perception aren’t going to happen in just a few months. It could be up to a year before anything substantial shifts and by then the Conservatives would have already managed to push through dozens of pieces of legislation. I guess we’ll see if Harper will try and push his luck and force something through the House that won’t allow the Liberals to simply abstain again.
In other news, it would seem that, a few, businesses are attempting to emulate the guild behaviour of a few MMOs. Now, forgive me for possibly pointing out the obvious, but, wouldn’t your aim (as a business) be to try at all possible moments to [i]lessen[/i] the amount of stress and competitiveness amongst your own employees? Competition between separate business entities is great, because it can spur innovation and the like, but when your own employees begin to compete with each other (and gods forbid they take it to the extreme that higher ’status’ within this system equates to higher salary) then (at least taking experience from actual MMOs here) they become far more focused on their own individual selves and less on the actual company. If there was a choice between doing something that might help the business and doing something else that will benefit your ’stats’, then I’m fairly sure the majority of workers (who already don’t care much for the long grind of work) are going to try and get more for themselves.
And as if there was some entity out there trying to prove that it was a slow news day last year, I present this gem. Because as we all know: an evolutionary theorist we’ve never heard of who makes a report for a satellite TV channel about a prediction -thousands- of years in the future, is entirely newsworthy within the BBC. This saddens me.
~Shaun
Edit: And note to self, as my lovely partner in crime on this blog here pointed out: Check the damn date on the article! Which brings up another question, since said article is currently #3 on most read and #1 on most emailed today (and you bet I made sure I checked the date this time)…What the hell is everyone doing being so concerned about a year old article anyway? We as a society aren’t that behind in keeping up on the news are we?
Almost…
Straight out of science fiction and one of the more promising developments that seems to be emerging within quasi-space architecture arena is the space elevator. And just this past week we nearly had a Canadian university team, who were working on building a part of said elevator (at least the things that may end up building/transporting stuff up and down it) nearly fulfill the requirements set by the contest to claim top prize! They still came in first, nonetheless, missing out by climbing the structure just 4 seconds too slow, and seem to be on track to finally reach the ever-increasing and ambitious goal set by NASA when they compete again in 2010.
All in all, great showing, and an awesome stride forward to the possibility of making such an orbital-delivery system that much more closer to reality.
~Shaun
