Messages

Shady shit? I don't think I mentioned shady shit. I pointed out that studio time and personnel (musicians and engineers) cost money. Those are necessities for making music. Musicians needing to get paid so they can buy some food is not shady stuff. Neither is marketing, really--it's almost as much a necessity as anything else, whatever you may think of it.

Anyway. Yeah, there seems to be a rather hefty difference between buying a CD and buying an album on iTunes. But you have to take into account, for instance, that the costs involved for the retailer are different. A company selling CDs has to keep a stock of merchandise, and they have to pay to get the stuff there. In many cases they also have physical shops, which have to be located somewhere people want to be, need a lot of people working, and also need their own little stocks. All this has to be included in some way in the price you pay, and none of it applies to iTunes. Again, I'm not saying that if we take this into account there won't be any difference, but comparing on the basis of manufacturing costs alone is just not a fair comparison.

You also have to keep in mind that recording costs are almost always absorbed by the artists, not the record labels; almost every CD you listen to was financed by a loan to the artist from the label, which has to be paid back with royalties.

OK, I can't dispute this (though I can't confirm it either)--but where do you think the artists get their money? Regardless of whose name is on the bills, the money that goes into production comes from sales, to a large extent. I fail to see how it's relevant to this discussion who is actually shuffling it from the one to the other in the meantime. Besides, for the label to be able to even lend money, the label has to have money...

(I realize this is entirely OT, people. Feel free to stop me if you want to talk about Virgin and stuff.)

I'm not going near this discussion itself, but if you want to change any portion of the public opinion, there are better places to do it than in the Adventure Game Studio forum. I realize it's easy to get involved in any discussion about a topic you care about, but sometimes you might benefit from putting the discussion itself into the proper perspective, and making a judgment of whether or not you're just wasting your time and emotional involvement. If you've done this and still think it's worth it, I couldn't care less, but I think it's worth thinking about at least twice. I'm with scotch: this has been discussed to death.

I know a web site that will print CDs with jewel cases and full-colour jackets for $1.75US on demand. Considering the inflated price of on-demand manufacturing and the doubtlessly large percentage of that $1.75 going toward profits, walking into a high-street music shop and being expected to spend $13+tax on a CD single is absolutely asinine.

I hope you realize, though, that pressing the discs is not the only cost involved in music production. Time in a high-quality recording studio (and access to the millions of dollars worth of equipment therein) is neither free nor cheap, and musicians and engineers also like getting paid, understandably. And then there's marketing, which I have somewhat less insight into myself, but which is far more costly than the average person might realize. I'm not saying that this is enough to explain and dismiss the issue, but building your entire case on the fact that producing physical CDs is cheap is futile and ignorant.

Can we even assume he's aware that he won, and that he should start a new contest? It seems reasonable to conclude that he's not very active here.

I see no reason to assume that would be quite legal. Demoscene music might be a bit of a gray area (I really have no idea), but game music certainly isn't yours to do whatever you want with.

Besides, I'm not sure internet radio is really different from on-air radio as far as licenses for public playing of it goes. The point of that license money is to pay the copyright holders of the music, not the owners of the radio station, in which case it's doubtful if the exact medium changes anything.

[good]

This is a tune contest? But it's so polished and serious-looking, and... six entries? What's happened? This is good, by the way.

Dear <Emerald's side of the argument, whoever subscribes to it>,

You might want to read a basic textbook on linguistics. It sounds like harsh criticism, but that's... well, honestly, that's exactly how I mean it. Many of the crucial premises here are basically nonsense from the perspective of our knowledge of how language actually works. While I could be happy to leave my remark at the "this thread is full of nonsense" point, I'll address some particular issues as well, in the order that I consider most efficient for my literary purposes (if you wonder why the chronology is screwed). I've tried to be as concise and to-the-point as possible, though I'm aware that this post is pretty massive. Sorry.

It's like the internet slang thing. Words like 'lol' and 'pwned' are actually beginning to creep in to the english vernacular. 'Pwned' is just a common typo, and 'lol' is an acronym -- it has no founding in linguistics whatsoever. It's a chaotic word defined only by general consensus.

OK. Pwned is one among many words that originate in one way or another from a mistake. And most of its pals are what we at this particular time would call "standard English". How about apron? Everyone ought to know we should say napron, like we did back in the days of Middle English, when we still perhaps recognized it as our own version of the Middle French naperon, and a relative of "napkin". Then all those idiots who lack the sense to leave language alone heard people say a napron, and misinterpreted the word boundary so that it became an apron instead. (Actually even naperon is the result of some even earlier idiots who decided it was easier to pronounce the Latin mappa with an [n] instead of an [m].) I'm confused by your phrasing "it has no founding in linguistics whatsoever", but although blatant typos are indeed a rather uncommon source of lexical variation (widespread literacy is in itself is a rather young phenomenon), the basic principle is well founded.

But even if we accept that aspect, what is the reason people consciously say or write pwned even when they're perfectly familiar with the "correct" form "owned", other than simple bastardizing and corrupting our beloved language? They both mean the same thing, right? Well, the basic driving force behind pretty much all language change is the desire to communicate your thoughts as accurately as possible, with as little effort as possible. A change of any kind tends to either increase the communicative possibilities, or decrease the effort required to use them. Pwned has many properties that owned lacks--properties that are obviously relevant to people, because otherwise they would not use it. This is how linguists typically think of these things: there's no reason to doubt that a new word that is gaining momentum has some kind of advantage compared to similar words. If you can't for the life of you imagine what it is, you just haven't thought hard enough. Some more or less speculative ideas on my part:

*) usage of pwned identifies the speaker as a member of a particular group (gamers, geeks, hackers)--this is probably a major component in this particular case. This is a fairly common phenomenon, certainly not limited to our time. A linguistic term for such a word is shibboleth.
*) the nonstandard spelling, in itself, can be seen as a type of intensifier--if you're pwned, you're way beyond owned.

So how about lol? While I've already expressed my confusion as to the purpose of your "no founding in linguistics" claim, I'm obliged to say that acronyms are also a relatively uncommon source of new words, but it is certainly not unheard of (even if there were no other examples, lol would still be one!), and in the particular area of textual internet communication, examples abound, even though few have transfered into speech. As for the purpose it serves, at first glance it ought to be even more obvious than in the case of pwned: I for one can't think of a comparable word as equivalent as owned to pwned. But whatever synonyms you may think of, here are a few ideas:

*) obviously, lol is also to a some extent a shibboleth, although considering that it is more widespread than pwned, it also carries less weight in that function.
*) in the context of textual communication in the style of IRC or instant messaging, lol solves the problem of expressing an inherently non-verbal action in text. If we consider alternatives like "I'm laughing", or "I find this amusing", its comparative grace is obvious.
*) aside from the obvious direct meaning of indicating laughter or amusement, lol carries connotations, I'm sure you'll agree, of things like immaturity or "noobdom", which allows another dimension of ironic usage. Handling that irony correctly also functions well as a shibboleth in itself.

If a word "defined only by general consensus" is a "chaotic word", then I wonder which words are not chaotic. Those invented by dictionary authors or official language-regulating bodies? Oh, wait...

Think about it -- before, only people like Joyce or Shakespeare or dictionary writers or university professors could make up new words and have them spread around.

OK, I'm thinking about it. And it's utterly wrong. Now I advice you to read about it.

I can see some point in the future when grammar itself becomes so stretched and bent that dialects will begin forming based around internet communities instead of the usual countries and cities.

There has always been substantial dialectal variation correlating not necessarily with geographical location, but with social classes, professions, or other communities or subcultures. This is nothing new.

One can't say that the internet will kill modern language, because any means of communication is a language. The primary difference is that as long as the internet continues to function the way it does -- with free information -- the language will 'evolve' so rapidly that it'll break apart.

The rate at which language changes is quite variable, and there have certainly been periods in the history of the English language in which it has been very rapid indeed, but not once has a language been known to have changed so rapidly as to break apart. The phrase conjures up the image of a machine running faster and faster, until it literally breaks apart or overheats or something, and it's an effective rhetoric figure--but once you think about it, it is very dubious if it can at all be transfered into this particular context. A phenomenon doesn't automatically exist just because you can come up with a catchy formulation of it.

But that completely goes against the fundements of language. Sure, I accept that language evolves through colloquial speech, and the rules of grammar are more diagrams to explain the language than parameters for the language to fall in to (i.e. speech came first, as you said), but when you start giving people free reign, the whole purpose of language -- communication -- is lost.

What, then, would you say is the nature the fundaments of language? If we're just now starting to give people free rein, what did they have before, and who held the reins then? I'd be interested to hear examples of developments that you consider detrimental to communication (which I agree is the fundamental purpose of language), because as far as the examples you give here go, it appears to me that it all follows the basic trend that ultimately explains all language change: maximal communication through the most efficient means. Maybe you've discovered previously unheard-of evidence of language change in the opposite direction... or you just haven't looked at it at sufficient depth.


Language, much like biological life, is under constant evolution, spurred by a very large "population" of possible constructs competing for survival, with evolutionary pressures forcing them to attain, on the one hand, sufficient complexity to carry all the information we need to express, and, on the other hand, sufficient simplicity to convey that information with a minimum of effort. These are the mechanisms by which language change has always worked, and claiming that it would all fall apart if we "give people free reign" is like claiming that if you allow animals to go out and eat and reproduce any way they like, evolution will cease. Hopefully I don't have to explain why that line of reasoning is fallacious. Ultimately language change has always worked in the same way, and always will--and though it is essentially governed by a few simple principles, it is an immensely complex mesh of countless factors, far too intricate to be simplified into a basic argument of "older is better", or analyzed from one perspective alone without taking others into account.

I think he means normalising all files, which, when done correctly, indeed sets the loudest points of every file at the same volume but doens't produce pops, clicks or distortion. I've maybe half of my music library through Winamp's replay gain calculator to get everything play at about the same volume, works just fine. Basically the same thing, but without actually modifying the file.

The point is that unless the sound files are very similar, and internally uniform, even the most correctly done normalization will not be successful in producing an even perceived volume. For mainstream pop music, which is already insanely compressed, sure. For most other music, it will range from "probably not" to "definitely not". For voice acting, as Nikolas says, it's "hell no" (those being my words), even though even commercial games sometimes seem to use it, and reap gigantic fail because of it.

The first obvious question is: how does the mouse behave outside of DOSBox? If fine, I'd intuitively think it very odd if it were the mouse that's the problem... and vice versa.

[the ISPs]

The only questionable fact in that video, IMO, was the date 2012.

Along with, in that case, the whole idea of the very specific plan they're talking about being in the pipelines, and contracts being signed by ISPs and all that... in other words, the stuff that the video was actually about. Net neutrality in general is a big and important issue, but making shit up really doesn't benefit the cause, and that's precisely what these guys are doing, if we can agree that they're wrong about the date and so on. You don't see a problem with that?

I'm certainly keeping my eyes on this development, but to be perfectly honest I'm not that worried. It's definitely no secret that this sort of thing completely screws up all that's really awesome about the internet--but the thing is, it's not just crackers, pirates and perverts who benefit from the traditional free internet. Think about good old businesses, pro-democratic organizations in those scary Middle Eastern places everyone fears, as well as some of the guys who kind of started it all: universities and research institutes. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think the ISPs are powerful enough to overthrow all of that.

There's a whole world of stuff in-between network TV and these guys. I don't even watch network TV, but I'm still holding off my reactions until I find information from a source just a few steps above this happy band on the ladder of reliability.

Sure, they may well be completely right, but they don't even try to help me verify it. I'd be a very busy man if I trusted everything random people on YouTube said. Busy and stupid.

The particular thing they're suggesting is really huge. Let's assume it's true. If there isn't already a bunch of real information about it (I couldn't find any real quick) there will be tomorrow. I can wait until tomorrow before even worrying a bit.

[HOAX]

I think this video is a HOAX... perpetrated by the ISPs! They're actually going to do this in 2010, and they want us to believe we have more time than we really do. They're all in on it...

I'd want to hear that from a source that has just a tiny suggestion of reliability and seriousness before I pay any attention to it.

(I didn't look at the whole thing, so maybe they're doing this all the time, but 06:26 is some truly weird cutting work... who are these people?)

They are supposed to be... I was just wondering what they were doing to make them appear that way... as apposed to just making them darker as they go further back...

Oh. Sorry, I misunderstood you completely there. Missed a couple of little two-letter words or something. My mistake.

Art of the visual sort isn't at all my area, but for starters, imagine that they're simply getting brighter, not darker, as they move into the distance. And presumably more towards blue, but as I said this is not my area. Look at some real mountains and think about it.

Can't really suggest any particulars, but if I may suggest a direction to go in...

You might want to look for some kind of DAW (free ones exist, though I have little experience with that) that handles MIDI and preferably also VST instruments. You could do all your recording (and production) inside of it, and get some light, free VST drum sampler. I realize that I'm just spewing a bunch of terms here without elaborating on their meaning, but I trust you'll research (or ask) if it interests you.

Where are they supposed to be, if not in the distance?

(Maybe could use a little reverb on the drumsample.)

Well. There's already quite a bit of reverb on the drums, isn't there? I see no reason for more.

Anyway, sounds real good. What I did think of:

The initial slide thing (I don't really know the terminology in this area) at about 0:08 sounds odd. It weedles around a bit, then takes a tiny break, and then the riff starts. It would probably sound better if it were more connected to the following phrase--you probably know what I mean.

Probably of less importance since it is a sketch, but the ending is a bit awkward (rather uncertain sliding off somewhere at 1:0something, then a break that's a bit too long).

Neato.

Something about the cabin of the zeppelin thing (I realize it's not really a zeppelin, but you get the idea) makes me feel a lack of depth. Could be the shading to some extent. Could certainly also be that the white window things all appear to line up with the edges of the picture itself.

Congratulations on your first post, and I hope you will remain a valuable member of our community for years to come.

In any case I let stay the high ceiling, With this low ceiling seems to tiny and dark.

You don't suppose it could be the shading? I'd prefer a low ceiling--for reasons other than realism!--even if you don't want it dark or cramped. That wouldn't be the ceiling's fault.

And the mirror needs to be Ok, It's the Gran Admiral fleet Bath! xD

To me, that raises the question of why there's a rusty metal wall. I don't think I've seen that even in rather crummy bathrooms--so why in a fancy bathroom?