l33tminion | Links: Politics, Games, and Art Edition

Lot of good stuff from the past few weeks! Political talk and commentary:

Olbermann rants about 9/11(TM), as the Republicans spin it.
O'Reilly defends Obama... what? The Daily Show team talks to Republican convention-goers about small-town values.
John McCain slams Obama for... protecting children from child molesters? Of course, this is good for McCain.
Obama discusses McCain's lobbyists.
The Daily Show parody's John McCain's biography film, noting how his policy positions have totally reversed since 2000 (some as late as 2006). They also go over his acceptance speech.
Joe Biden tears into John McCain, go Joe!
Samantha Bee of The Daily Show talks to RNC atendees about Bristol Palin's... what's that word again?
Questions that the media should ask Sarah Palin, as contrasted with what they probably will ask.
Ron Paul endorses the third-party candidates, ALL OF THEM. Bob Barr asks Paul to be his running mate, with Root agreeing to step aside. I do hope he'll accept, that would be tremendously entertaining.

On games and gaming:

Here's a paradoic (and hilarious) expose on GameStop's horrible business practices. And here I'd thought they were just garden-variety bad. I plan to avoid them in the future.
SPORE has awful DRM, and apparently the gameplay is lackluster, too. I was interested in this one back during its development, but now I think I'll take a pass. The game accumulated a ton of negative reviews on Amazon from disgruntled fans (over 2000, most very negative, before Amazon deleted them all (update: they're claiming that was a technical glitch and have restored the reviews)).
Meanwhile, there is some good news. Good Old Games is selling old classics via download, with no DRM, downloadable extras, and $6-10 price tags. They've just opened for their private beta test. Their EULA is still the usual (when is a sale not a sale?), but it's still progress. If you're looking to get your game fix now, Abandonia has freeware and abandonware games (copyrights fallen into the public domain by virtue of companies gone belly-up, mostly) available for download. I downloaded Ascendancy, since I really liked that game back in the day.

Regarding art:

Here's a video segment about a painter born without eyes.
And here's a short photo-essay about a painter (set of painters?) with dissociative identity disorder.

Miscellaneous bonus round:

One on Shovelglove, an intersting DIY exercise technique.
For technical-minded folks, here's an article on the history of the User-Agent string (and why Google Chrome is Mozilla, but in fact it's AppleWebKit, which is like Gecko (except not), but really it's just Chrome, which is pretty much Safari).
Here's an essay on one employee's experience in the Rent-to-Own business.
United's stock (briefly) tanked recently, after an old story about their bankruptcy was accidentally republished. danah boyd (she of the insufficient capital letters) took the opportunity to share another United Airlines horror story. Considering that my last airline horror story was also United, perhaps this is a good indication that they're another business to avoid.

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Gamestop video no longer available. drat it. I wanted to know what was so bad about them, since I've never once had a problem. (Doesn't mean they're not bad, other than milking customers for everything, but I haven't had a problem.)

The others are up, and there's a link to download the first episode at the second one. Don't know why someone took objection to the first one in particular.

watching the second video... I have had Gamestop employees test games and game systems *in front* of me to determine if they work. At one particular store, every time I sold something to them. At another, before they would give me the discs. They do upsell the used games, definitely, but I like the fact that some stores sell used dvds, and so I shop there when I can. Plus, I only have a PS2, so all games I get are now used, it seems. I know they're still occassionally releasing new games for the PS2, but they're never anything I'm interested in.

My favorite part about the second episode is the part about the really pissed off 12 year old out there somewhere. ^_^

"The only reason a sane person would trade things in at these prices were if they acquired them for free." Or the Gamestop employee never once mentions what dollar amount you're going to get on the used game that you consider utter crap. I once got two dollars on a forty dollar game, because a) they didn't tell me I was only getting two dollars, and b) Amazon turned out to be selling the same game, used, for two dollars...

Re: turning in games for "fake money". Gamestop gives slightly less in cash if you choose, you only have the one choice of fake money if you turn in crappy DVDs.

I'll continue my commenting on a new journal entry...

Honestly, treating customers badly doesn't bother me as much as the bad (and probably illegal) way they treat employees. After all, caveat emptor and all. There are worse fates than loosing a little money on overpriced video games.

GameStop definitely does profit off of theft. Their habit of opening new locations right next to big box stores is arguably more for this reason than any other.

ugh, yeah to the theft thing. I've often thought I look suspicious bringing in all those movies, but when it only costs three bucks for a Wal-Mart stinker (watched once, that's two dollars less than renting at Blockbuster!), I usually buy a buttload, and turn around and sell them to Gamestop. It's worth it to me to do so. More expensive DVDs I trade at http://bookins.com or sell at Amazon. I've got like seventy points there (Bookins), now, from trading just four DVDs. That's a lot of used books from the site (though I hate paying $4.50 postage so I don't order often). There are usually a lot of Blockbuster videos at Gamestop, too... You can tell from the stickers if they were bought or not.

Oldermann made a very interesting point. I take most campaign promises as empty pathetic appeals to announce ideals, but this puts light to what McCain could be doing. Though, I can say the same to Obama who's talked about Change so much that I wonder where he's kept it all before getting here.

Now, watching the videos for all the parallels, now THAT is hilarious.

Spore seems to have been dumbed down beyond all sensible conception. I'm really sad. I'm hoping that Will jumps ship while he has street credit....

You see, Maxis did this before, and survived out of Will's sheer genius. He made Sim City, succeeded, made Sim City 2000, and then made a bunch of Sim games to feed the market with all these crazy ideas. Sim Isle, Sim Copter, Streets of Sim City, Sim Life, Sim Golf, Sim Tower (Yoot Tower), and well... It fucked up, badly. A lot of the games were terribly buggy, and shoddily done. I loved them still >.> (Sim Isle was later redone as Tropico, Sim Copter was refined into many other helicopter simulators, Streets of became Twisted Metal, etc) The games were lack luster, and Maxis almost crashed. Will saved the company when they came up with The Sims, and then a sequel of Sim City, which was 3000. They were promptly sold out to EA before any more terrible ideas could happen, and since then, it's been driveling crap. Well.... Sim City 4 was good.... but too busy and unrealistic.

Links: Politics, Games, and Art Edition

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