Monday 1 December 2003

Pic of the day: Gender inequality, screenshot from the upcoming game City of Heroes. (The hero is, as usual, the one with the most colorful clothes.)

Random news

So what's happening these days? Well, here in Norway the reigning king is being hospitalized for cancer. It is cancer of the bladder, which is said to have at least 80% survival rate, more if it is diagnosed early as it was in this case. Still, for the next couple months the crown prince (heir to the throne) Haakon Magnus will function as the country's official regent.

This reminds me that a couple years ago, a supposedly clairvoyant woman told Norwegian media that Haakon Magnus will become king while still young. This is a horrible thing to say, as it equates to a prediction of an early demise for the old king. (Admittedly, he is old... he married and had kids fairly late, and the crown prince is the second child; the princess is older, but back then sexual equality did not extend into royalty. I guess nobody had thought about it until suddenly this girl was born.) The clairvoyant was asked to prove her surprising statement by predicting the next day's newspaper headlines. She failed spectacularly, and the whole episode was forgotten. Officially, at least.

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Somewhat less serious, but affecting many more people, is the demise of MP3.com. For years, this site offered hundreds of thousands of free melodies to play or download, all legal. I know I have recommended it several times in my journal. But no more: CNET bought the site, closed it down and erased all the tracks. The reason seams to be that they intend to start a competing site next year. If they think this move will make them wildly popular, they need to stop snorting the stuff they are taking now. (And I mean that literally. Way too many business leaders are using illegal drugs that improve their self esteem and fill them with a sense of energy. I guess this explains a lot of the business deals that have caught our attention over the last few years.)

Anyway, remember this if you are ever tempted to buy a new product from CNET or their subsidiaries or affiliates. These are the same kind of people who burned down the Great Library of Alexandria. I am sure it seemed a good idea at the time, since they considered it a kind of competitor to their own ideas. Needless to say, I don't condone any kind of violence in retaliation for such an abstract and impersonal evil! But I hope they will always be remembered with a similar degree of sympathy as the Emperor who played songs while Rome burned. Except these guys played emperors while the songs burned. (Ironically, I would have burned a lot of those songs myself if I had known in time. On CD-ROM, that is.)

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To end on a more positive note, the long awaited massive multiplayer game City of Heroes is finally entering closed beta testing. They will start with longtime participants on the message boards. This should, eventually, include me... although there are probably a thousand or two before me in the line. I must admit that I have had my doubts about whether the game would ever enter production. Superhero games tend to suffer from rewrites, and this one has been through some pretty profound changes. But if it has come as far as to beta, there is hope that it will eventually be finished. If so, I may have two great new games to play next year. If I'm still around by then, that is. And I will do my best to be.