It’s a long, hard road to democracy in Egypt- but the Egyptian people carry no illusions about the process. Sharon MartinThey know it will be a difficult road ahead, as parties, candidates and the military try to figure out how to come to the table together, and lead a country that’s already greatly struggling in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. There have already been signs of further uprising amongst the population, including several clashes between protestors and the military over the length and extent of their caretaker rule of the country. But this is an experience every modern democracy has shared in its infancy- and America is no exception. That’s why it’s so important to take note of the important moments and milestones which will come to define the new Egypt in the decades ahead. Moments like the first free Presidential election in the nation’s history.
I wish all Egyptians a safe, successful trip to the voting booth today- hopefully your enthusiasm for the process will inspire those of us overseas, who take such important milestones for granted.
As it turns out, having an “$” in your name makes it a whole lot easier to be generous in paying for your mistakes, as evidenced by “Micro$oft”‘s latest in a series of costly apologies to customers. When called out over a bug which disabled the split-screen multiplayer feature of the 360 release of Minecraft for some users, Xbox corporate offered affected users a full refund. Say what you will about the Microsoft company history, but their Games Division’s ability to guilt trip their higher-ups into doing right by their mistakes continues to impress me.
As a soon-to-be-former RIT student(!), I’ve interacted with Microsoft’s games division on multiple occasions. Far from representing the cutthroat corporate culture the company became synonymous with in the 1990’s, these Microsoft guys were relaxed, fun, innovative, creative… the total antithesis of the Microsoft I grew up with.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in their reaction to the homebrewing cottage industry which sprang up in the wake of Kinect’s release. 90’s Microsoft would’ve responded with Cease-and-Desist’s; last year’s Microsoft cheered on when a tech company put out a bounty to the first person or group to successfully create open-source drivers for the peripheral (although to be fair, they did flip-flop a bit first). 90’s M$ would have bought out all the startups working with their licensed tech, and gutted them; today’s MS houses several companies working on Kinect apps.
They may not be perfect, but I think Microsoft deserves a decent amount of credit for trying to change their ways, and for giving the Xbox division the freedom it needs to earn the trust and respect of this generation of gamers.
I’m not a big fan of G4. I appreciate the effort they put into the programming, but in all honesty I’ve never been able to overlook the brazen pandering the network makes to the stereotypes of its audience. It bugs the hell out of me that G4 feels that in order to maintain its audience it needs to lower the bar, not raise it. What if ESPN had taken that approach to legitimizing sports broadcast journalism? Conversely, what if instead of putting so much emphasis on objectifying women and emulating l33t-speak on-air, G4 focused its creative efforts on real investigative journalism, and on lifting the veil off the secretive and enigmatic industry they’re supposedly covering?
Don’t get me wrong- I understand the need for ratings, and the need to fill programming slots with more than just Cops reruns and hard news segments. But there aren’t ANY real news segments on G4. At all. That’s a world of difference from a network like ESPN, which has struck a fine balance between news programming like SportsCenter and less serious content like SportsNation and Pardon the Interruption. That’s why ESPN isn’t just watched by sports fans- it’s respected by sports fans.
Maybe if G4 respected its audience more, it would stop trying to grab the low-hanging fruit and put more of its energy into actually winning the respect of the 18-34 year-old gamer audience it tries so hard to capture.
Kevin Pereira Also Out At G4 [Blip]Kotaku
Two weeks ago, we reported that Adam Sessler had parted ways with television network G4TV. Today, popular Attack of the Show host Kevin Pereira said he is also leaving the network. [G4TV] More »
God, I thought I was the only one left who still thought these games were some of the biggest wastes of potential in gaming history.
What Is?
Hey! I'm Mike, this is my blog. and my dream is to use my middling tech skills to make the world a better place (not in the techno-libertarian, "the world is a better place if I get mine" sense, but in the actual, "I want to help" sense).
