Valve is moving Steam into your livingroom

Excitement in the gaming world. Something that has been wishful thinking for many gamers for years is confirmed to be happening. Valve is working on a console-like PC specifically designed to bring steam to your TV. Earlier rumors of the Steam Box have been confirmed now by Valve CEO Gabe Newell. In an interview with the online gaming magazine Kotaku, Newell confirmed that their hardware department is working on a way to bring steam to a place where it can compete with the console experience.  And with the release of Big Picture they surely show a great deal of potential.

The Steam Box will be a closed hardware platform that has the ease of use of a console. Plug and play as easy as the current consoles. And with the steam sales it will be very hard for Sony and Microsoft to compete due to huge difference in prices for games. With this strategy Valve hopes to tend to the gamers that are uncomfortable with a linux PC environment and tempt the gamers who currently use a Sony or Microsoft console for their living room gaming.

But Valve isn’t putting its eggs in one basket. What makes the PC as a platform unique compared to consoles is its openness. This is why Valve is hoping to appeal to the manufacturers of media PC’s as an open gaming platform to include with their product. This way the owner can still choose his own hardware,  experience the openness of the PC platform and have Big Picture to make the experience feel as smooth as a console  without being limited like the user of the Steam Box.

It is very exciting to see Valve taking a step into a new market.  But the question still remains if it will be successful. Breaking into the console market isn’t easy and media PC’s have never really achieved popularity. But with Apple also eyeballing the empty space next to the TV, the rest of the PC manufacturers are getting shifty and don’t want to be left behind. Regardless of the success of media PC,  the enormous fan base that Valve has developed will make sure that this concept will be put to the test by the gaming community. Now it is up to Valve to deal with the enormous expectations of their fans.

 

European Parliament kills ACTA

ACTA was shot down today by the European parliament. The protests have been heard and the European Parliament chose to reject this treaty. Good on you members of parliament, good on you.

More info on the rejection of ACTA can be found here.

Can the Dutch Pirateparty make it into parliament?

The Pirateparty is a hot political issue in Germany and Sweden for some time now. This week in the North Rhine-Westphalia elections the pirate party managed to secure 8% of the vote. For such a new party to take such a big bite out of the Greens and die Linke is really a great achievement. This victory was cause for celebration for the Dutch chapter of the Pirateparty. And with the Netherlands having national elections in September and campaigning having started, its a great boost in confidence.  But will the Piratenpartij (Dutch Pirate Party) be able to live up to the succes of their German siblings?

The Pirate Party in North Rhine-Westphalia managed to inspire the voters of die Linke and the Greens to vote for a modern form of e-democracy. Their main keyword is transparency. They want to open up government to everyone. Every constituent should be heard and can be heard on every single issue with e-democracy. Where media and traditional parties have labeled them as a party which has no idea about how government functions, the German pirate party hasn’t retorted by denying that. They simply opposed it by their vision of how government should function in their eyes, and how everyone should be able to understand it. An idea that they managed to sell in Berlin and in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Greens and die linke have felt this severly since they have lost the position of being a party outside of the current political system.

Will the Piratenpartij be able to continue this trend? Where will the pirate party search for its key voters?

The Dutch Socialist Party is currently the largest party in the polls. And allthough they might not remain that big until September, chances are that the SP, who still has the image of being a party outside the establishment, will have a major electoral victory this fall. It will be very hard to get votes away from a party which is as radical as the SP.

Groenlinks (the green party) however is in the same vurnerable spot that the Green party was in North Rhine-Westphalia. The kunduz-agreement suddenly put them on the map as a party who wants to be part of the ruling establishment and is willing to compromise many of its ideals for that. With Groenlinks leaning to the establishment and the modern progressive alternative that the Piratenpartij could be there is a major source of votes under the idealists of Groenlinks.

The same goes for D66, a party that until two decades ago, was a strong proponent of democratic reform, lacked the ability to change the establishment when it got the chance. While they showed that they were a party that understands government, they dropped the ball on actually getting their democratic renewal done.

However the liberal party, VVD, has taken a lot of losses among young voters. Their last conservative cabinet which cooperated with the extreme right  PVV and the ultraconservative SGP has made many young voters shy away from the traditionaly liberal party. With their conservative policy on privacy and internet freedom, the VVD has made itself an caricature of their own liberal ideals among youngsters. Many issues that traditionally belonged to young voters have been torn down by the last cabinet. The drug laws came under pressure, anti download laws were introduced and privacy is neglected. Young voters are easily tempted to vote for the Piratenpartij which stands very firmly on these issues. But it’s not just young voters that feel abandoned by the VVD.

The loss of liberal values has not gone unnoticed in the rest of the VVD. It has been the feeding ground for D66. The reluctance of the VVD to stand up against christian parties on liberal core values like  privacy and self-determination, has damaged the image of the party severly. If the Dutch Pirate Party is able to show they are serious like they did in North Rhine-Westphalia, it could have a very hurtfull effect on the VVD.

The PvdA has just decided to go back to their core values and translate them to current times, and is looking to dust of the democratic socialism they once started out from. Where the PvdA is one of the core establishment parties that couldnt find their way in opposing the last cabinet. Its not clear yet which direction the PvdA will choose. If they go back to their traditional values, the Piratenpartij stands a good chance on social policy to compete with that.

The Christenunie, CDA and SGP have little to fear from the Pirateparty in losing constituents. With their christian background and voter support, they simply don’t have a modern enough point of view on politics to be threathened by the Piratenparij’s, almost technocratic, approach to politics.

To benefit from the current state of the Dutch parliament, the Piratenpartij will have to show that they are a serious alternative to the current parties. For this they need to use the creative resources they have to present their image as a strong tech-savvy party that uses new technology to update democracy and government to this new time we live in. This would be a  strong philosophical basis of the party program. They will have to present it professionally to the voter. This does not mean the Piratenpartij has to pretend to have all the answers. A realistic voter knows that a political figure is still a human being who hasn’t got all the answers ready.

Connecting to the voter isn’t about populism. Many politicians make this dumb mistake. People don’t want a politician with all the answers, they want to be heard. Connecting to the voter is all about actually connecting to the voter. With the internet the Piratenpartij has the best tool for that in their arsenal. If they utilize it well enough there is more then just one seat to be had.

The legends rise again. Like a bird, on fire!

Its hard to be objective about these legends of music. KG and JB of Tenacious D have admitted the world before that they are willing to set design official measuring scale for brilliance with every song they make. This new album is no exception. Rize Of The Fenix is an album of exceptional quality which is no surprise with these legends of rock. The obscene vocals and masterful music make this album worthy of following up their previous album.

All worship aside, its really nice to find the album on spotify and soundcloud before the release of it, not many musicians are dedicated enough to their music to do this for their fans. KG and JB also did an Iama on reddit which quickly became one of the most popular AMA’s since some time. They used soundcloud to answer some questions which made a great IAMA even more fun for the fans. Its really worth reading, check it out.

Swing is back, with a bite.

Recently I have been looking in to indie electronic music. A friend of mine with whom i was talking about this suggested me to give electroswing a try and suggested Caravan Palace. I was pleasantly surprised by the sound of this electroswing phenomenon.  The group is called Caravan Palace and as the name of the genre suggests, they present a modern interpretation to swing music. This leads to a very upbeat kind of music with a distinct retro ring to it.

Caravan Palace recently released their second album, its titled ‘Panic’. Its available on itunes but sadly not available on spotify yet. Thanks for the suggestion Heliophite. You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

The Pirate Bay, just a proxy away.

Hello world, you are surely going to love this one. Remember Geert Wilders who made a website where everyone could spew their hate about strange people from Europe? That website that put the Netherlands on the map as a nation not quite as liberal as it wants everyone to believe? Well that website is still online. Calling out for such blatant hate and discrimination is protected by law in this country. Well ok, i can understand that in some sense. Political freedom is something democracies are big on right? I tend think it is important and i don’t think many people oppose freedom of speech. But where is the same protection when another political party runs a politically motivated website?

Right to free speech and the right to free information are mutually dependent rights. We have no freedom of speech when we are ill-informed, we have no freedom of information when nobody is free to speak. So what is up with taking down a website of a political party that calls up on these rights? Is there a double standard for free speech in the Netherlands, or is the state choosing side with the entertaiment  and the copyright industry? Its not a secret where Brein gets its funding, and whatever Brein claims goes for dutch judges. The piratenpartij tried to protest the summon for the takedown but wasn’t allowed to testify the hearing. Brein however was allowed to supply 20 pages of text to the judge who was in charge of the descision. Is this justice in the Netherlands when it comes to censorship? Hearing only one side, a non-profit organisation backed by entertainment industry, and not the other side, a political party aiming to represent the free people of the Netherlands?While the quality of the verdict is just one side of this story, there is an worse side to it. Not only is the judge siding with the wrong party, the verdict is also noneffective. The verdict forbids mirroring the piratebay on tpb.piratenpartij.nl. Not only has the take-down of the piratebay had no effect at all on the amount of dutch visitors to the site, it contains no summons to take down the general proxies used to mirror the piratebay. In order to keep people informed the pirate party has published a proxies 101 on the link  tpb.piratenpartij.nl, making the verdict about as effective as a drugs are bad campaign in a coffeeshop.

Update 15/4/2012: Brein has summoned the pirate party to remove any links to proxies on their website and has ordered them to block the piratebay from the general proxy they run. The Pirate Party will have to comply or face a € 10.000 fine for every day it is still online. For a political party that is run by volunteers it is very hard to resist such blatant abuse of power. The Pirate Party had to comply in order to continue its exsistance. This abuse of judicial power has lead to an anti-democratic situation where a lobby group like Brein can destroy an entire political party. Brein is waging war on an entire generation and democracy is just collateral damage.

The dutch media, with the exception of some tech sites, have not responded at all to this incident and are not interested in it at all. No political party has responded yet to this situation and it leads the voters of the pirate party out in the cold.

Repairing PR damage, the EA method.

Electronic Arts is caught up in a PR disaster which involves spambots, lgbt rights and Mass Effect 3. This morning i received an email from allout.org about a new petition that was opened. It states that EA has been targeted by anti gay protest groups, which protest the samesex marriage in  Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: TOR.  It left me very skeptical.

Electronic Arts is one of the biggest players on the field of video game production. Not many other companies have such a big range of games and so many customers. They managed this by buying succesful game studios and funding their game series until a franchise doesn’t sell anymore. A successful studio will integrate into EA after downsizing, an unsuccessful one will be scrapped. Many fans of specific game franchises became disgruntled after their favorite gamestudios closed down, or suddenly made by a new studio who takes a new direction with it.But this is not the only practise that puts off gamers to buying EA’s products. In 2009 EA was subjected to a protest at the e3 convention about their release of Dante’s Inferno.  This protest, which was made out to look like fundamental christians, was in fact a marketing viral that not many fans, nor christians were appreciative of. EA admitted that the protest was a staged publicity stunt. Recently a former employee has come forward who has shed more light on these kind of marketing practises at EA. They have a staff of 560 people trolling internetforums which contain bad publicity for EA.

Recently the PR problems for EA have been popping up around every game they release. PreOrders of battlefield 3 dropped with the release of the open beta. A lot of canceled pre-orders weren’t properly refunded. For some it took over 2 months to receive their refund. Bugs in mmorpg Star Wars: The Old Republic made it nescesary for bioware employees to use their banhammer liberally leading to many customer care problems afterwards.  Mass Effect 3 was received with a lot of criticism. The day 1 DLC made a lot of fans angry and its endings were a big letdown for many fans of the series.  After handling the complaints from their fans less than gracefully EA was named worst company in Americaby the consumerist last week. All of these incidents made EA realize that a serious PR crisis had dawned and had to be managed.

Which brings me back to the most recent not-soon-to-be-forgotten outrage. The allout.org petition concerning same sex marriage in EA games. Last week there was a picture floating around on social media that EA would use the same sex marriage controversy to improve their damaged image. At first I thought it was just a coincidence. But with the marketing practises of EA in the back of my mind i wasn’t so sure anymore. It wasn’t much later that I learned that large amounts of signatures were generated by spambots. Mike and Nick from North Korea were signing way to often to remain inconspicuous. And people from Jamaica apparently speak JavaScript when signing petitions.

EA has reached a new low in PR management. They not only managed to prove that they don’t take gay rights very seriously, they also damaged allout.org in the process.  I hope Allout.org realizes in time that they are being used by EA to repair PR damage. And that EA is becoming very toxic, destroying everything they touch.