Friday Findings (17 April, 2009 Edition)

[akaihyo]

Shameless plug! We have a Roleplaying Game Demo Night at Tyche's Games tonight starting at 6.

Join my (virtual) dojo! Silly online fighting game.

What you need, my friends, is your own personal (programmable) soundtrack t-shirt. Though I want an MP3 player that adjusts what it is playing to the conditions around me.

On the more serious side, what should be done about music no longer in print? A whole community of bloggers are providing downloads of these otherwise unavailable pieces of music. Pretty cool if in a legal gray area.

Wired reports of civilian uses for nuclear explosives (they call they crazy, I think creative is better).

Comments

[xuande.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge fan of abandonware distribution, without which I'd never be able to play some of my favorite games again (since the original floppies died). But I'm not so sure about the musical equivalent. One of the reasons I think abandonware is morally (if not legally) justifiable is that there simply isn't much of a market for games with such primitive graphics and sound anymore. You have to go back significantly farther before the quality of music albums become an issue.

[akaihyo.livejournal.com]

Well, for the music, there is no way to get it unless you stumble across it in a box somewhere. There is no commercial release to compete with (and the ethical sites pull their files down if the music is rereleased). So, where does that leave it?

[xuande.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm saying is the game is less likely to be re-released than the music, because there's an a priori reason it wouldn't sell. For music to have a dated style, on the other hand, can actually be a selling point.

That hardly disqualifies it as an ethical practice, but I'd say it's a darker shade of gray than abandonware.