On March 2nd, the Copyright Board, under advisement from the RIAA, increased royalty rates for internet radio stations to nearly 100% of small-broadcasters’ revenue. Traditionally, these rates were as low as 1-10%. Several small broadcasters have created a formal petition, complaint, and Congress-writing site at http://www.savenetradio.org. Just listening to Club977 80s radio right now, I’ve heard a message from their DJ asking fans to please write representatives of senators to annul this rate hike. So add your name to the petition, file a complaint with your Congressional representatives, and cast off on the Black Pearl for ye mythical pipes of bandwidth. Arrr!
Monthly Archives: March 2007
Ubisoft considers introductory Music Composition for Games course
Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Campus endeavor in the Montreal, Quebec, has over the past year been seeking to add VG Music Composition as a course. Ubisoft Campus is not a traditional campus, but a network of existing local schools networked together by funding from the game company. The company is looking to expand it’s educational program which primarily focuses on design and development.
The big hitch, however, is that the college with whom Ubisoft is talking with, McGill University, has stated that they will not fund the program, that all of the funds must come from the company, or possibly the Computer Science department should pony up some money. The basis for this is that the students coming into the courses will not be students in the music program, money spent on it would drain the department without putting anything back into it. Many of the details at this point are sketchy at this point, though it does look like the company is going to try to get the program going. The Associate Dean of the music program, Bruce Minorgan stated “We may be reviewing the contract…[but] I cannot give a definite schedule.”
From the McGill University Student Paper, The McGill Daily
Ubisoft
ThaSauce Forums: For Your Benefit
That’s right, the ThaSauce Forums are for your benefit. Not only can you scope out the songs currently being checked for quality for Remix:ThaSauce by the Arbiters, you can voice your opinions in the open Remixing forum. Also, you can let us know what you think about the site layout, content management, and other design issues on the Feedback forum.
The Remixing forum doubles as the Public QC Arena and the Musician’s Help Sauce, where one can ask questions pertaining to getting the best bang for their buck out of their weapons of choice. Exceptional threads will be condensed and their contents posted on ThaWiki, which will in the future work together with the VGMix Library so that there is no conflicting information between the two. The Dev forums is for developers, coders, and scripters who are looking for resources within the Video Game Music Arrangement community, for website owners looking for someone to assist them in building websites, and for game developers to show off their goods. Just made an original song? Swing on by the Pimpage forum! Here you can showcase your music that isn’t on R:TS for all to see. Of course there is also a R:TS Review section, where you can share your thoughts and offer criticisms of the music hosted on Remix:ThaSauce. There is also an open Projects forum in which you can offer up ideas and samples for community projects, not necessarily exclusive to video game music.
So! Check it out! 🙂
Forums.ThaSauce.net
Guess Who’s Back… Commodore!
The company which brought us the best selling PC of the Twentieth Century, Commodore, is back. This time around, the company which practically created the demoscene will be focusing on top end gaming machines.
Commodore will unveil more details at CeBIT in Germany, so for now all we have is speculation. The comments on the article range from “Hooray!” to “Just riding on the coattails of nostalgia.” We’ll just have to see in another week’s time.
A Guide to OverClocked ReMix
Our story starts with “Cleveland Rock,” a remixer-hopeful submitting a Mario’s Time Machine ReMix in “surf rock” style. This is the result.
As you can see, it received a NO OVERRIDE from Judge Larry Oji because
it was too close to the original. Rather than taking the rejection
quietly or complaining in public on the forums, he decided to make a
satirical guide about submitting to the site on YouTube, which is quite
funny and creative, so here is the link for now.
it was too close to the original. Rather than taking the rejection
quietly or complaining in public on the forums, he decided to make a
satirical guide about submitting to the site on YouTube, which is quite
funny and creative, so here is the link for now.
Additionally, here is a discussion thread about it on the OCR boards. Maybe he will submit his song to R:TS instead?
30 Days with Linux (HardOCP)
Brian Boyko and HardOCP have published 30 Days with Linux, a detailed look at the viability of Ubuntu Linux being an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Boyko decided that the frustrations of using Vista along with the “Switch to Linux” mantra were enough to try a simple project, use nothing but Linux for a month. He chose Ubuntu linux because it is hailed as “Linux for People,” and he wanted the most stable distribution to test.
UPDATE: Finally able to finish reading the editorial, and have the final word.
I’m not going to digest everything for you right now, HardOCP is experiencing the Slashdot effect. Sorry guys.
I would like to suggest you give it a read (hopefully the website will be viewable again soon), there are quite a few moments where Boyko gives a good laugh based user ineptitude (even a power user makes mistakes!).
I’ll edit in the final verdict when I’m able to access the webpage again, maybe you’ll have better luck!
The editorial at Consumer.HardOCP.com
UPDATE:
Boyko reported that while he liked how highly configurable most things were, he had a few reservations about using kino (a video authoring program) and the fact that there are no softwares able to compete with Sony ACID or Apple’s GarageBand. He also felt that while GIMP was phenomenal, it is simply not near the level to make it a replacement for Photoshop. In spite of all of this, though, he has decided to stick with the 32-bit Ubuntu (the 64-bit version has many more problems being a newer technology, there isn’t as much support for it yet). He decided that at the time, though, Ubuntu was not quite ready for the mass market, although it does look like it will be spreading at a faster rate among power users who have the determination to stick with Linux and increased frustration towards Microsoft.
The Unsound Method!
Shael is back… Kinda. After he made an acquisition of some new software, he decided to make a demo with it and wanted to release the tune under a different name. So he blew the dust off of The Unsound Method! Cheers!
Shael’s myspace blog entry
The Unsound Method – Owl, I’m a Fiddle!
PS3: Get ready to rumble?
A year ago, it seemed that DualShock, the vibrating technology in Sony’s console controllers, wouldn’t be seen again. That may not be the case anymore.
In an announcement today, Sony and Immersion Corp. (which holds the patents to the type of rumble technology used in the PS2’s and XBOX’s controllers) have wrapped up their patent infringement case and have entered into a deal for Sony to licence the technology.
This is potentially good news for Sony, as recent developments make the PS3 less desirable in the long run. While there is no set timetable for introducing rumble to the PS3, it is coming, and could be a much-needed boost to the last-place console. (In January, the top-selling consoles were, in order, the Wii, PS2, XBOX360, and PS3.)
Additional source: DailyTech.
SimCity Coming to DS this Summer
From GameSpot:
“Before Will Wright concocted the PC juggernaut The Sims, his previous masterpiece was the metropolis-building SimCity. The franchise has evolved onto several systems since its debut on the PC in 1989 and was recently announced for release in Japan for the DS under the very workman-like name SimCity DS.”
The game appears to be somewhere in between SimCity 2000 and SC3k in terms of features and graphics. The article also mentions use of the DS’s unique features to expand on the original game. WiFi gets some use, but it’s not clear how it will be integrated into gameplay.
SimCity DS will see a worldwide release this summer.