Mr eel
Check your facts!
Some folk learn the hard way and some don’t seem to learn much at all. While reading an article on 1UP about the history of lawsuits in the game industry, I game across an interesting bit of information. Sometime after Nintendo released Donkey Kong, Universal Pictures attempted to sue them for copyright infringement. This is a little snippet from the article.
“Howard Lincoln (now well-recognized as the Senior Vice President of the company) discovered that not only did Universal not own the rights to King Kong, they’d won a lawsuit years prior declaring that King Kong was actually public domain. It wasn’t Universal’s finest moment…”
Oops.
That’s actually quite interesting to consider, since someone could now legitimately create a King Kong game in order to cash in on the hype surrounding the remake. I wonder if anyone is feeling up to it?
Dear Apple…
Please stop the finder being total arse.
And fix your fucking network code already!
Thanks.
That is all.
Apple Hobbling the Music Industry?
Well, that’s apparently true according to this article on Business Week. The core argument is that it’s difficult for other music stores like Napster to compete with the iTunes store because of the popularity of the iPod and the lock-in that results — music purchased from the iTunes store can only be played in iTunes or on an iPod.
Well, it’s certainly true that iTunes/iPod audio files (DRMed ACC) aren’t open and inter-operable, they aren’t stopping competitors from selling music that can be played on the iPod. They will quite happily play MP3 and AAC files from any company, but here is the crucial point, as long as they aren’t DRMed.
So now we get right to the core of it. The only thing that is actually making life difficult for these stores, is the major record labels obsession with copyright protection schemes. DRM is not about protecting rights, it’s simply about limiting what music fans can do with purchased music. It’s also a perfect vehicle for creating a lock-in, which is what Apple has done — some people guess it’s so they can sell more iPods.
So, it’s the labels fault. Not Apple. They wanted the DRM schemes, they got ‘em. Now if it starts fucking things up, the labels are the ones we should be looking at.
Stupid greedy bastards don’t know it, but they’re making trouble for themselves.
Getting Fancy with Partials in Rails
Well! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about Rails. Lots of urgent work has left me without time to work on my little side-projects, but now I’ve got a little breathing space I can get back into things.
Anyhow, I’ve found some interesting uses for partials. They’re really good for cutting down on template code. However, I have come across a few instances where I have needed the contents of the partial to be slightly different. Say I need a form to have one less input.
I’ve got the option of duplicating the partial and omitting that input, but that defeats the purpose of using partials. You will end up having to maintain two partials that are very close to one another. The answer my deal little space-monkeys is to exploit the :locals option in the #render method.
Normally if I want to render a partial, I might do something like this:
render(:partial => '_form')
But we can pass in some additional variables to the partial using the locals option:
render(:partial => '_form', :locals => {:omit_name => true})
What the :locals option does is pass whatever variables you give it to the partial. So now the partial _form will have access to the local variable omit_name.
This means we can pass in configuration options to the partial. Considering the render call above, we could have this corresponding code in the partial:
< % unless defined? omit_name %> < %= text_field 'job', 'name' %> < % end %>
Succinctly, this code says “If there is a local variable called omit_name don’t show this field”. You can see how this could be used to switch different bits of a partial on or off, making them just that bit more flexible.
One small suggestion however, I would avoid getting into situations where you are passing multiple bits of configuration to a partial. In that case you may actually be better off using multiple partials instead of just the one. Remember, minimise the code in your views!
Nintendo Needs a Revolution *yawn*
This particular article from The Motley Fool has been doing the rounds on a couple of games blogs. It’s an examination of Nintendo’s current position in the market and it suggests that in order for the company to survive ‘the company absolutely must regain its console dominance of yesteryear with the upcoming Revolution system’.
By dominance I guess they mean selling the most consoles and having the most games released for the platform, as Sony has in the last round of consoles.
Their main argument centers on the fact that Nintendo has had a 21% decline in profits compared to the same period last year (April to September), which is a pretty significant drop. Nintendo have put this down to dropping sales of Gamecube — to be expected since it is nearing it’s end of life — and higher costs due to investment in Revolution development.
These seem like quite reasonable explanations to me and don’t portend a collapse of the company. Even with a decline in profits, they still make more selling games than say… Microsoft, who have reported billion dollar losses in their Xbox dept.
Bluntly the Revolution is not an all or nothing proposition. Even if it were to remain in third-place, Nintendo still has their other properties — DS, GBA, Pokémon — that would make up for any shortfall from the Revolution. This do-or-die stuff is bullshit.
Aside from that, the article also misinterprets Nintendo’s approach to the current market. I’ve highlighted a few particular statements that I thought were erroneous.
“At this point, I don’t think the key to success lies in the Revolution specs or its snazzy controller. I believe Nintendo will have to market its way out of its demise. I’m not saying that innovation isn’t important. But no matter how good the product is, consumers need to feel a sense of magic associated with the Nintendo brand to overcome the image of sheer power surrounding the PlayStation and Xbox systems.”
I don’t entirely disagree with this statement. The big N does indeed have a problem with it’s image, being perceived as a kids game company. But, discounting the controller is foolish. It fits into their current approach, which is to make games more attractive to people who otherwise don’t bother with them. In that sense it has everything to do with the marketing.
“Nintendo needs convince young, jaded hardcore gamers that its generally sunnier, cartoonier games can be just as cool as the criminal hijinks of Grand Theft Auto.”
Actually that is not what they need to do at all. It certainly is nice to appeal to that audience, but they aren’t the only ones who could be playing Nintendo’s games. If they were to rely on marketing purely to the existing hard-core players, it’s unlikely they they could compete with Microsoft or Sony.
“In my opinion, investors seeking to profit from the console wars should forget Sony or Nintendo — even if the latter does step things up — in favor of Microsoft. It not only offers the Xbox 360 business, but also the Windows operating-system monopoly and a ton of future dividend payments.”
Ha ha ha! I’ve got a better idea, how about you look for profits in companies that make profits? Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all make profits. Microsoft might be a good investment, but it’s not because of the Xbox. Their monopoly really helps.
Simply this article is very shallow. It’s the sort of assessment I would expect from a fan-boy, who only sees the market in terms of who has the best marketing, sells the most games and is well… the coolest. The business side is actually a little more complex than that and I think this article has missed that point entirely.