Bully video game - thanks, Vancouver

This is the best a Vancouver company can produce?

The company that makes the popular and controversial Grand Theft Auto series of video games is letting players of its latest release try their hand at schoolyard bullying.

Talk about being an irresponsible corporate citizen. The press release, written by an obviously clever spin doctor, describes this disgusting video game as brutally funny and tongue-in-cheek, among other disclaimers from corporate and moral responsibility.

On its website, Bully publisher Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. describes the game released Tuesday as "outrageously funny." ... Point-scoring activities include beating up and humiliating other students, setting off fire alarms and striking teachers.

Yeah, I can just see Baba and Gido rolling on the floor over such cute and adorable antics.

A U.S. judge on Friday rejected a bid by a prominent detractor of video games to have Bully banned in Florida ... "There's a lot of violence" [the judge said] after seeing the game played. "[But] less than we see on television every night."

Oh well, that makes it ok then. But didn't someone once say that "evil happens when good men (and women) do nothing"? Heaven knows, you can't expect anything from those of questionable character.

The game, available only for Sony's PlayStation 2 console, is produced by Take-Two's Rockstar Vancouver studio. Spokespeople for Take-Two and Rockstar did not immediately return calls for comment.

A spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment Canada declined to discuss Bully [and] Canadian representatives of video game retailer EB Games declined to comment ... instead referring the question to the U.S. parent company GameStop Corp. of Grapevine, Texas. GameStop spokespeople did not immediately return calls for comment.

i imagine these spokesmen would consider them nuisance calls and not worth their time.

Take-Two also publishes Rockstar Games' popular Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, which depicts life in crime-ridden, decaying urban centres. The franchise has drawn criticism from some quarters for allegedly glamorizing criminal activity, but its defenders point out that "sandbox" style games such as GTA that leave players free to interact with the game world in any manner they choose also mean they can play peacefully if they wish.

Yeah, right. As we all know, kids always choose broccoli and carrots over teeth-rotting candy, so they would naturally pass on the latest attractively packaged and aggressively marketed new toy.

Makes me real proud to be a resident of Greater Vancouver (she said extremely sarcastically).

Kontakt TV now podcasting

Slavko at Infoukes has just announced that you can now download the Ukrainian TV program Kontakt every week to play on your Video iPod!

The RSS feed is located here. To access it, use programs like iTunes ... go there and just open up a podcasting link to the RSS feed location.

You don't necessarily need an iPod, tho. The programs are available for download and streaming as before.

However, the nice thing is that there is now an RSS feed to the site, so you can add it to your feed readers. Now, whenever there's a new program uploaded, you will automatically be notified.

BTW, if you're looking for a nice and easy (and free) feed reader, try this one. I use it and it is dandy.

Mainstream media in an alternate universe (literally)

Well, if this isn't an illustration of the decadent west, I don't know what is.

Reuters is opening a virtual news bureau in Second Life, a three-dimensional online world inhabited by hundreds of thousands of users and one of the world's most popular virtual economies.

... Starting Wednesday, Reuters will publish text, photo and video news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real-world readers.

Reuters is one of several real-world corporations that has a presence in the virtual world on the internet. Organizations such as Harvard University, American Apparel Inc. and CNet.com are among those opening operations in Second Life, while musicians such as Duran Duran and Suzanne Vega have broadcast virtual concerts there using the world's lifelike animated characters.

The parallel universe was created in 2003 by San Francisco-based Philip Rosedale, chief executive officer of Linden Research Inc. It has more than 800,000 inhabitants, of whom more than 100 are earning a real-world, full-time living there...

Unbelievable. A major newswire service investing valuable resources to report on reality to grownups playing pretend. But then, it's just "business as usual" in an industry where all the big players jump on the same bandwagon.

... While objects are bought and sold using Linden dollars, the Second Life currency, Linden dollars can be exchanged for U.S. dollars, so users can make real money. ... It would have an annual gross domestic product of about $150 million US if it were to stop growing today, according to the Associated Press.

The weird thing is, this "alternate world" is pretty poverty-stricken... 99.9875% in fact (if I did my math correctly). But Reuters must believe there is real opportunity in this la-la land, more than in real countries where real people struggle with a lack of real money. Countries like Ukraine, say.

Still shaking my head. Has the Twilight Zone morphed into reality? Or maybe it's just something in my morning tea ...

Then again, this shouldn't come as any surprise. Reporting on reality to a fantasy world is way easier and more profitable than doing it the other way around.

Video version of Napster may be on the horizon

On his blog Intellectual property law expert Michael Geist discusses the parallels between YouTube and Napster.

He expounds on his newspaper column on the topic, speculating on whether the YouTube - Google deal foreshadows licensed (as opposed to pirate) peer-to-peer systems... and examines why YouTube appears to be succeeding where Napster failed.

Interesting perspective on the record labels' "conventional wisdom" that p2p file sharing is the reason the recording industry is floundering:

... there is reason to doubt that P2P is a significant competitive threat - in addition to the lengthy list of alternative explanations for the downturn of some record labels (retail price pressures, declining catalogue sales due to lack of availability, competition from DVD sales), a Canadian Heritage profile of the Canadian music industry released this summer found that Canadian artists have seen their sales grow steadily since 2001 with their share of the Canadian market increasing from 16 percent in 2001 to 25 percent in 2004.

Well, golly gee, whodathunk? Might it be that Canadian artists are, er, producing better than quality music than what the recording industry is flogging these days? And now that the labels are losing their monopoly on distribution, are able to reach audiences?

Well, it certainly appears that "the times they are a-changing" ...

In 1999, Internet distribution focused on the use of law and technology to control content and dictate terms of use. That control has proven notoriously elusive with consumer backlash against technological and legal controls and emergence of highly efficient user-based distribution models. Furthermore, it is Internet advertising revenues - not Internet controls - that today hold the promise of billions of dollars in revenue. ...

Given these changes, what is the likelihood that a new licensed P2P model will come to the fore in the near future? Better than you might think. During the height of Napster, experts estimated that even a five-dollar monthly fee would have generated billions in additional revenue for the content industries, yet those companies chose instead to sue the P2P services along with thousands of their users. The YouTube deal may foreshadow a reversal, with the industry at long last ready to embrace the remarkable commercial potential of the Internet.

Vancouver audio archives for Oct 15, 2006

Vancouver's Ukrainian radio audio archives for Oct. 15 are now available!

Archives for Chetverta Khvylia (4th Wave) are back! Join host Pavlo Manugevych for the latest news and views from Ukraine, in Ukrainian, as well as some great tunes!

On Nash Holos, Sylvia brings you more tips for Ukrainian cooking on Ukrainian Food Flair - this week it's about the relatively unknown benefits of using dried mushrooms. On Travel Tips for Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Fr. Bruce speaks of his experience visiting the museum at Auschwitz. And on A Spiritual Moment, Fr. Bruce has some fascinating facts about fall harvest rituals, just one aspect among many of our rich Ukrainian spiritual heritage.

And of course, there's plenty of Great Ukrainian music!

Do record labels lie? ( Is the Pope Catholic?)

Here's an illustration of the recording industry's stranglehold on the radio broadcast and music distribution industries as pertains to audience "research."

... While it's against the law for the [record] labels to bribe program directors, it's perfectly legal for them to pay subcontractors to deceive program directors. ...

This is not to say that online research is inherently bad. Not at all. But bad research is inherently bad.

And, sometimes, labels are inherently bad.

Entire article here.

Jack Palance’s farm up for auction

The end of an era ... Ukrainian-American actor Jack Palance auctions off his farm.

Read about it here.

Constrast that to press freedom in Ukraine ...

According to Ukrayinska Pravda, in October 2007 the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council (PACE) may stop monitoring Ukraine.

However, I see it as a call for cautious optimism rather than complacency....

.... drawing on other countries’ experience the PACE will discontinue its monitoring only after having guarantees of the irreversibility of positive changes in Ukraine.

Speaking about investigation of Georgiy Gongadze case, [PACE co-rapporteur on Ukraine Hanne] Severinsen claims that its exposure will not necessarily lead to removal of the PACE monitoring. Yet the PACE observes how Ukraine carries out investigation of the case and whether the authorities have the political will to disclose those who ordered Georgiy’s abduction.

Ukraine has radically improved the situation with the freedom of speech, but it strongly needs public broadcasting. The current situation with mass-media is complicated by the fact that nobody knows the actual owners of the television channels and who are behind them. ...

Another martyr for press freedom

This SPIEGEL ONLINE article is a fairly in-depth look at the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (who actually was American-born and of Ukrainian descent).

Very grim situation for press freedom in that part of the world. It hasn't progressed much, really, from Stalinist times.

... Only a few weeks before Politkovskaya's murder, Andrei Kozlov, a Central Bank official who had spearheaded a crusade against money laundering, was also gunned down in Moscow. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Politkovskaya was the 13th reporter to be assassinated since President Vladimir Putin came to power.

... For years, she had courageously exposed human-rights abuses in Russia and particularly in the North Caucasus region that includes Chechnya, making frequent trips to the war-torn area. She wrote, often in harrowing detail, of topics that have become off-limits for nearly all other journalists in Russia and broke the biggest taboo of all by criticizing Putin himself.

... As part of their investigation into her killing, police seized documents from Politkovskaya's home and office, as well as her computer, leaving her editors with no way of knowing how much work she'd left unfinished.

Born and raised in New York, where her Ukrainian parents were U.N. diplomats, Politkovskaya was a product of the Soviet elite. After the collapse of the Soviet Union she could have, like many of her generation, used her connections to build a comfortable lifestyle. Instead, she threw herself into independent journalism, ending up at Novaya Gazeta in 1999 -- just in time for the second Chechen war. By her own admission, she became obsessed with exposing the killings, torture and beatings of civilians by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. She wrote two books on the conflict, "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya" and "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches From Chechnya."

She made no secret of her contempt for Kadyrov or for Putin, and critics in Russia frequently accused her of lacking objectivity. In "Putin's Russia," a highly critical political biography of the president published in 2004, she accused Putin of failing to shake off his past as a KGB agent in East Germany.

... Politkovskaya won numerous international awards, but as she gained prominence abroad, she was increasingly marginalized at home. There was clearly an appetite for her kind of reporting -- in the last three years Novaya Gazeta's circulation has risen from 130,000 to 170,000 copies ... But in a country of 140 million spread across 11 time zones, the paper's impact was minimal. More than 80 percent of Russians get their news from national television networks -- all of which have come under Kremlin control in the past five years. Prominent national newspapers ... have also been scooped up by state-controlled companies or businessmen with close links to the Kremlin. And in the state-friendly media, Politkovskaya was persona non grata.

There has been no shortage of speculation about who might have wanted her dead. Novaya Gazeta ... has written that it believes her murder was either revenge by Kadyrov, or an attempt to discredit him. ... Politkovskaya's name was also on numerous lists of "enemies of the state" published on the Internet by ultra-nationalists angered by her support of Chechens. The pro-Kremlin media have been pushing a theory that she was killed in an attempt by exiled enemies of Putin to discredit Russia internationally and provoke instability.

... Putin himself has backed that hypothesis. ... According to Reuters, Putin had promised on Monday to "take every step to investigate objectively the tragic death" of Politkovskaya.

... Few expect any of the theories of her death will ever be proven right or wrong, or that Politkovskaya's killers will be brought to justice. Of all the investigations into high-profile slayings of Russian journalists in recent years, not one has resulted in a conviction.

Congratulations, Korinnya

Here is an example of an excellent blog by a performing group. Would that there were more like it!

Korinnya has been featured on Nash Holos the past couple of Christmases. They very kindly sent me their Christmas CD ... which is utterly delightful.

Now their artistic director has been nominated for a Hetman Award. Very deserved, I'd say!

Review of Kobzar's Children

There's a link to a review of the anthology Kobzar's Children: A Century of Untold Ukrainian Stories over at the books' blog.

Someone has anonymously taken me to task for my comment in defence of Marsha's position.

Which kind of surprised me ...

But then again I guess it shouldn't. When you're in the spotlight it's easier for folks to take potshots at you. ;-) That's just human nature and it's the price you pay for being in the spotlight.

That being said, as potshots go, it was certainly mild... and arguably deserved after taking a potshot myself at the reviewer.

Vancouver audio archives for Oct 8, 2006

Vancouver's Ukrainian radio audio archives for October 8 are now available!

There are no Chetverta Khvylia (4th Wave) archives with host Pavlo Manugevych at this time.

However, on Nash Holos, Sylvia has a wonderful dessert recipe that is right in season! OnTravel Tips for Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Fr. Bruce has details on another fabulous city to visit in Poland. Fr. Bruce also shares A Spiritual Moment, exploring our rich Ukrainian spiritual heritage.

And of course, there's plenty of Great Ukrainian music!This week's CD of the Week is Rokovyny by Stepan Pasicznyk.