These days, videogame companies have access to mainstream 3D tools, but it wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1990s, 3D was in its infancy, so when Dennis Harper decided he wanted to do a game like Street Fighter 2, but starring realistic dinosaur-like deities, he had a problem. In the end, Primal Rage became a mash-up of one-on-one fighter and Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation (and then went on to become a crazy marketing phenomenon—there was even a Primal Rage slide projector).

For the full story, check out my interview with Dennis in Retro Gamer 83.

I’m not sure when ease of availability started being equated with ‘free’. However, we increasingly seem to be living in a world where no-one seems to grasp the basic fundamentals of copyright. I can cut individuals who very rarely deal with media a little slack, but (supposedly) professional publications are frequently stealing images and written content; worse, some then argue that it’s the fault of the creators for putting said content into the ‘public domain’ (i.e. online), despite the fact that the act of putting something online absolutely does not mean you no longer consider the material your copyright.

A stark example is found in the article Copyright Infringement and Me (hat tip: Adam Banks). An author is asked by a friend how one of their articles was published; the problem is the author has never heard of the magazine in question. After some investigative work, they contact the magazine’s editor and ask for an online and printed apology, along with remuneration in the form of a $130 donation (a very reasonable 10 cents per word) to the Columbia School of Journalism.

The response is both shocking and laughable (visit the original article to read it in full), with the editor—supposedly with three decades of experience—arguing as follows:

[…] the web is considered ‘public domain’ and you should be happy we just didn’t ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!

[…] the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally.

[…] We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me!

No, you’re reading that right. Since someone had the audacity to put an article online, it should be considered freely available for all magazine editors to steal. The author should consider themselves lucky, apparently, that the editor didn’t remove the author’s name from the copy and also charge them for an edit that they neither requested nor authorised. Classy.

So, well done, Cooks Source magazine, in attempting to overhaul copyright laws. I look forward to your future issues in which you try to charge Gordon Ramsay for rewriting some of his content and then attributing it to Brian Ovenmitts, shortly before you’re sued into oblivion.

Update: Looks like this is more a case of ‘busted’ than unearthing a one-off error. In the comments, Eric Meyer notes that Cooks Source has reprinted material from several sources, including Sunset, the Food Network, and WebMD, the last of those with a different byline. (All links from Meyer’s Twitter feed.)

Update 2: Meyer adds that a discussion thread on Cooks Source’s own Facebook page is compiling many more infringements.

Bloomberg reports Apple has 95% of the tablet market. This is because the iPad is the only viable unit available, unless you’re crazy and/or deluded. Hopefully, this will change next year.

However, I’ll bet regardless of the situation in 2011, three things will happen:

1. Apple’s marketshare will fall. This is inevitable, because competitors will exist, and at least some will be ‘good enough’. I’ll be amazed if Apple ends 2011 with more than 75% of the market.
2. Apple’s profits will remains dramatically higher than everyone else in the industry, despite its lower marketshare. This is due to Apple making profitable kit, but also because the market itself will grow. Therefore, Apple will have a smaller slice of a much larger pie.
3. Every analyst earning megabucks writing buying advice and industry commentary will note the first of these points and utterly ignore everything in the second one. Apple’s falling share of the market will yet again be seen as proof that Apple is doomed.

It’s 4:45 pm as I start writing this, and it’s getting dark outside. This wasn’t the case on Saturday and earlier, before the clocks went back. But today, things will be different. Way more people will drive home in the dark; fewer children will play outside, instead being told by their parents to “get home before it gets dark”. Heating and energy bills will rise, as will road deaths through traffic accidents and collisions. Depression will soar. On balance, people will be less happy and poorer, but for no good reason.

We’re living with arbitrary daylight hours designed largely for the benefit of the agriculture industry almost a century ago. In this modern age, isn’t it about time we had a serious look at moving our clocks to CET, matching France? While we’d still have the winter ‘jolt’ in late October, it would be less severe. And throughout the year, especially in this current age of austerity we’d reap the benefits: more daylight (and, potentially, lower obesity levels, since people are more inclined to exercise when it’s light), fewer traffic deaths, happier (on balance) people, lower energy bills.

Each year, the argument is made to at least investigate amending the UK’s time zone, but support usually stalls because of major concerns. However, most of those have fallen away in recent years. The agriculture industry no longer seems to care, leaving most of the resistance against change with traditionalists who think changing the time-zone is some kind of anti-British movement, and some Scots, who claim any change would plunge Scotland into eternal darkness (when in fact you’d merely end up with some parts of the country not seeing daylight until around 10 am).

Traditionalists can bugger off, frankly. Anyone rattling on about how silly it would be for Greenwich to never be on Greenwich Mean Time should note that it isn’t for seven months of the year now anyway; furthermore, anyone clinging to ‘GMT’ is being rather quaint, given that UTC is the world standard. No-one cares about Greenwich Mean Time these days, and so Brits should let this go.

For Scotland, I have more sympathy, but then I also happened to live for a winter in Iceland where it’s dark until gone 11 in the depths of winter. If Icelanders can deal with this, I don’t see why Scots wouldn’t be able to. And if they think otherwise, Scotland has its own parliament now anyway—give the country an opt-out if it wants one, and let the other 55 million Brits on these isles have clocks that make sense for 2010 rather than 1910.

Microsoft on Mac Office’s draconian product activation (which makes the product literally unusable if you don’t activate it within 15 days):

Microsoft Product Activation tries to reduce counterfeit software, and to make sure that Microsoft customers receive the software quality that they expect.

(Source: Macworld.)

Compare this with Apple’s iWork, which as of iWork ’09 even ditched licence codes entirely. With iWork, you just install the app and it works. However, having used iWork ’09 and Office 2008 extensively, I can say the former definitely has more ‘quality’ than the latter; so unless Office 2011 is an absolutely massive improvement to go along with its stupid new activation, Microsoft’s taking shit.

Additionally, how long will it be before Office 2011 is cracked? Once again, those who’ve legally bought a product will be saddled with a worse user experience than those who torrent the thing. So, well done, Microsoft, for joining the boneheaded brigade. And extra points for turning the two-computer install from Office 2008 into a single-computer install for 2011, forcing those who have a back-up machine or use a desktop at home and a laptop at work to buy an extra licence. Stay classy, Redmond guys.