So This Is How It's Done

I am beginning to understand how things work in this universe:

Government commissions study in the service of the people. Study doesn't support the arguments of the Copyright Pharaohs. Government concludes '<'there was no need for external expertise''. Tries to hide it ever existed. Continues the plot to extract from us the essence of cultural freedom which the Pharaohs have been consuming, and need to consume to extend their decrepitly long legacies for yet another 50 years.

This appears to be the mechanism by which the arterial media of this world have become clogged with the sticky legal deposits created by the circulation of these massive conglomerates.

More Star Wars, anyone? Just be sure that the part of your brain you are storing that in, is not a part from which you are ever planning to create anything in your entire lifetime (or even in your children's lifetimes, should you pass the 'copyrighted' plots and characters, fable-like, on to them).

And most of all — woe betide you online if George Lucas should ever use your name.

[Published originally at The Laroquod Experiment.]

Apple vs. Art, Part 1

It took the appalling spectacle of Apple trying to deny iPhone distribution to these artists at Murderdrome to draw my attention to Infurious Comics and their neat little enterprise.

My willingness to try to distribute Hypothesis through the iPhone's App Store will hinge on how Apple responds to criticisms like this one. I could be comfortable with an App Store-wide rating system that treats all media equally, but it would depend on whether it's just a cloak for more censorship. (After all, nothing about having a rating system dictates that all or even a vast majority of entries will therefore be accepted.)

Don't enterprises that venture first into new media spaces that may hold the keys to the future of this planet (if their rhetoric is to be believed) have a special responsibility not to bar the way to others based on matters of taste? If not, perhaps they should.

[Published originally at The Laroquod Experiment.]

KEGSlotDroppers 0.4

The latest iteration of the energetics I 'coded' to slightly speed-launch classic games in Hypothesis 0.3. KEGSlotDroppers are a set of AppleScript droplets which can be used to automate the tedious manual editing of slot assignments that is required to change which disk images to load into the KEGS Apple IIgs emulator on Mac OS X.

System Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3 or later. (10.1 or 10.2 might also serve, but I have not tested them.) Also, you need a working installation of KEGS. I recommend KEGS-OSX from casaGS. Then you need to make sure you have Apple II games in disk image format. These can be found at a variety of sources online.

DOWNLOAD KEGSlotDroppers 0.4
(316K)
[Published originally at The Laroquod Experiment.]