Tag Archives: claim
Nintendo lays advert claim to Let’s Play videos
If you plan to post a Let’s Play video of a Nintendo game, remember this: Nintendo gotsta get paid. A GameFront report with Nintendo response reveals that videos which exceed a certain length could be bookended by advertisements from the company.
The “content ID match ” process allows for much worse: it could automatically block videos on a regional or worldwide basis. That’s not what Nintendo’s going for, according to its statement:
“As part of our ongoing push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database. For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”
It does mean, however, that the videos no longer produce ad revenue for their creators. Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell argues that Nintendo is shooting itself in the foot.
“A new media for talking about games has emerged, which comprises an audience far in excess of existing channels,” Bithell wrote on his Develop blog. “This media is talking about your stuff a lot. Why curb it? Why dissuade those taking part in talking about how much they love you? Would you charge a celebrity for tweeting about how much they liked your game? Would you demand ad revenue from a game site for running a review?”
He says sales of his game increased eightfold from launch day when it was featured by YouTube personality TotalBiscuit. Would TotalBiscuit have made the video–and jumpstarted Thomas Was Alone’s sales–if he wouldn’t receive its ad revenue?
Of course, Bithell isn’t a giant corporation with its own marketing department. Do you think Nintendo was right to clamp down on its intellectual property, or is it a shortsighted move?
Brit Police Claim Odor Of Cannabis Plants Causes Cancer
?Think American cops are dumb? From time to time, police in other countries step up to the plate and prove that they can make statements every bit as stupid as those from their American brothers in blue.
Police are warning that when cannabis plants reach the final stages of maturity the odour they release has carcinogenic properties … Officers who deal with the plants use ventilation masks and protective suits and people who have plants in their home, especially anyone with young children, may be exposing their family to a health risk.
Yep, and remember you read it here, first, folks: Just smelling one of those horrible cannabis plants can give you cancer!
Of course, that’s complete horse shit, and anybody who’d believe it either hasn’t looked into the subject or is a damn fool… or likely both of the above, in the case of most police officers.
Those who have bothered to actually look into the topic before making fools of themselves in public — unlike the Corby Police force — know that cannabis has proven anti-cancer, tumor-shrinking qualities.
Limonene is currently in trials, as a matter of fact, to study its ability to prevent breast cancer formation. It has also been investigated for its usefulness in reducing or eliminating antidepressant use.
But back to the sadly clueless Harborough Mail; we’re not done with them, yet.
“Pathetic excuse for journalism,” commenter “Blunt Man” responded on the newspaper’s website. “You should be ashamed for printing such lies and perpetuating reefer madness.
“I am a licensed medical marijuana patient and I am offended,” Blunt Man wrote. “I am subject to much discrimination from ignorant people and your rag has only made matters worse. You have become a viral joke.”
?”Something like 80% of the ‘facts’ relating to drugs in general and cannabis in particular are complete nonsense,” added commenter “phils.” “I think we have just seen the creation of another one.
“I expect the Daily Mail will be shrieking in moral outrage about cancer-causing cannabis odours killing Our Children™,” phils wrote.
“How did you ever expect to get away with sheer fiction like this?” commenter “TokenMaWeed” rightly asked. “This is the type of reporting that you just know the person behind the story didn’t get an education and hasn’t really a clue about his or her job.”
“This sort of trash reporting is what fuels the public’s misconceptions of cannabis,” added commenter “Isaac Redeye Facebook Me.” “If you see a story like this in the press please don’t swallow it as gospel truth, after all previous reports about cannabis stated that it was meant to send you crazy, make you grow breasts and become infertile — all debunked!”
“Just how stupid does the local police think the local population are?” asked commenter Philip Walsh.
Such a furor arose, in fact, from the Harborough Mail‘s laughably inept coverage, that it’s now to the point of recrimination and finger-pointing.
The laughably earnest coverage came after a drugs sweep in Cottingham, one of three carried out in the Corby area late last month.
Police raided a house in Cottingham on February 20, and a 45-year-old man from the village was arrested on suspicion of “drugs offences.” Ninety marijuana plants, “with a street value of between £20,000 and £30,000,” were seized from the property.
The man at the residence has been released on bail “pending further enquiries.”
“Everyone in the village is talking about the raid and some people are really stunned,” said Ian Hodge, who lives in Berryfield Road, Cottingham. “I’m not surprised a cannabis factory has been found in Cottingham because, with all the activity to shut down drugs houses in Corby, the problem is likely to move outside the town. There’s a lot of money to be made and people won’t give it up.”
“The latest arrests are the continuation of our mission to tackle drugs in our community,” said Inspector Gary Williams of the Corby Police, apparently unaware that the drugs, after being tackled, had gotten up and scored a touchdown.
“Once again, we were able to act following some useful information we received from members of the public,” Inspector Williams said. “We are committed to dealing with drugs offences and information from the public is invaluable.”
Say, since they value “information from the public” so highly, would someone in Cottingham please tell these annoyingly clueless jackasses that the scent of cannabis doesn’t cause cancer? Thanks!
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Claim Your Career
Like anything you own, occupy or truly possess, you career needs to be treasured like a sacred piece of land. You just don’t stumble into your career these days, you need to claim it, seize it and by all means retain it if you want to get ahead. Staking your career claim is like venturing into unchartered terrain looking for the last piece of unclaimed land like the Land Rush of the 1800’s. You are competing against many other hungry and at times desperate folks who are searching for the same thing and are running against the wind to beat you to the finish line. Your career search may have you looking over your shoulder wondering who might be picking up their pace, closing in behind you.
Your career search is a game, a hunt and at times a crusade searching for the Holy Grail of jobs. Like never before you may find yourself up against insurmountable odds hoping against hope that you will luck out and be the one offered the coveted job opportunity. And if not, the game resumes with you a little smarter, more cunning and a little more agile in your ability to discern the playing field a whole lot better. Your career claim is a daunting task and if anyone tells you it’s “easy” they are lying to you. Now more than ever before you’ve got to be smarter than your opponent, because this is an all out talent war against the talent not the employer’s who are hiring them.
It’s not enough to be strategic, prepared or even well networked these days. Making your career claim is about perseverance and a deliberate and calculating attitude they don’t teach you in business school or in outplacement session. You are on a hunt, which means you need to think and strike with precision and forethought if you ever want a chance to cross the career finish line. This means you are not waiting for someone to reply to your job posting submittal or your LinkedIn in-mail request. You are actively and deliberately seeking out opportunities even when none apparently exists. What does that mean exactly? You have to create your next job if no one is creating one for you. In order to do this you have to be very deliberate and calculating and be very well informed to what’s going in and around your profession and in the industry.
Reading trades, e-newsletters and finding out what new projects a company is involved in is one way to start thinking out-of-the-box when it comes to creating and claiming a career opportunity for your self. Waiting for someone to tell you what job is open and applying the old fashion way is not going to work. If you hear that a company is having difficulty in an area where you can lend your expertise, THEN by all means send an in-mail and work your network for an introduction. Start speaking with bankers, lending managers, venture capital groups anyone that is involved in funding new projects for companies that you are interested in working for or areas you might see your self fitting in. Educating yourself on new technology, business applications and new ventures in and around the industry and “connecting the dots” so you are ahead of what’s happening allows you to think differently and creatively apply for jobs that quite frankly don’t exist. Business is moving at a rapid pace even though our economic conditions are bouncing off the wall to trying to keep pace. Your job search is no different. Supply & demand. You’ve just got to be in a position to claim the demand and supply your self as the talent necessary to complete the job. If you are too busy applying for the same jobs everyone else is you are not going to gain much traction in your race against the job clock.
If you start to think differently about how to approach your job search you can start to expect different results. Always following the path already plowed might help you get back in the job game but if you really want to stake your claim, you’ve got to find the shortest route to your destination and not follow the rest of the herd. Put a stake in your career before someone else does it for you.
GRIN Forced to Close Because Square Enix Didn’t Pay for Unannounced Final Fantasy, Founders Claim
The founders of developer GRIN, which was shut down in 2009 for what it called an “unbearable cashflow situation,” have come out and placed the blame for the closure on Square Enix. In a new interview, Ulf and Bo Andersson claim the publisher never paid GRIN for an unannounced Final Fantasy game it was working on and believe Square was intent on never allowing GRIN to finish its work.
Prior to closing, GRIN was responsible for Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Terminator Salvation, and the Bionic Commando reboot, among other games. A number of its employees would go on to form several new studios after the closure, by which point we learned it had been working on a Final Fantasy title known internally as Fortress, pictured above.
The interview, conducted by Swedish website Aftonbladet.se, alleges that Square Enix never paid GRIN for Fortress and raised a number of unfair complaints — this despite GRIN meeting all of the necessary milestones. The milestones became an issue when Square complained that its legal department was never sent them, which is noted in the interview as being a rather bizarre request. At one point, Square demanded that the entire game be sent to them by fax, including music files, to which the Andersson’s said (according to Google’s translation), “It is as silly as it sounds. It is an impossible requirement, you can not send ASCII or binary codes on the fax. It is backward. Really retarded. It was almost a criminal activity.”
