Culture

Buzz Out Loud 1205: Bizarro Upside-Down Day (podcast)

Today is just baffling, frankly, for all of us. Twitter has a business plan, Opera Mini has been approved by the Apple App Store, the mobile Internet will soon overtake the fixed Internet, and despite a raging professional video game culture, Korea is trying to keep kids from gaming 24-7. But they NEED them! We're so confused!

Tom Merritt Former CNET executive editor

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Tom Merritt

April 13, 2010 1:01 p.m. PT

3 min read

Watch this: Ep. 1205: Bizarro Upside-Down Day

41:27

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EPISODE 1205

Other Stories

Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet
http://gigaom.com/2010/04/12/mary-meeker-mobile-internet-will-soon-overtake-fixed-internet/

Facebook unveils revamped online safety site
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iMMGNAWho0Vc1GRVcitBLEwuBpHwD9F26MUG0

Ousted Call of Duty creators ink EA deal
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20002282-235.html

Jobs: Apple owns trademark on “pad” and plans to enforce it
http://www.9to5mac.com/steve-jobs-pad-trademark-app-3450386433

Nokia announces social-networking Kin-style phones, too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/nokia_handsets/

The 1 Terabyte SSD Arrives
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/04/13/1235232/The-1-Terabyte-SSD-Arrives

Kickers and Science

Korea cuts off kids’ online gaming access after midnight
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20002316-71.html

StarCraft Cheating Scandal Rocks Korea
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/04/13/0359232/emStarCraftem-Cheating-Scandal-Rocks-Korea

Hey Buzz crew, I gues I been listen to yuo like for 4 years, you are awsome, well Molly a little bit more.

I live in Mexico and this whole thing of the cell phone register (RENAUT) its been a bit complicated.

So, as you metioned, lots of cellphones were not registered, because we as mexicans always leave everything at the end, and the SMS system hasnt process all the requests, there are like 2 millions still in the que, but it seems that its going to be true, that the cellphone companies are going to suspend the lines, and that those who registered their cellphone in the name of the president or other people are going to have to go through another process to validate that they are the president, jeje. Lets see if this helps to combat crime

Keep the good vibes in this Tuesday 13th

Mariano from Mexico City
@marianorenteria

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Hey JaMoTo!

On the Monday episode Molly was curious about how restrictive the conditions are that game console developers work under to get a game published under one of the Big Three. Short answer: Yes. It is incredibly restrictive. I work in technical QA and am (unfortunately) greatly familiar with getting a game past technical certification for 2 of the big three consoles. Game consoles pride themselves on uniformity of experience compared to open platforms like PC gaming, and that uniformity arises from a huge list of possible ways your game can fail certification. Forget to capitalize an official registered term in that consoles ecosystem? That could potentially be an instant fail, and a game that could potentially be 2 weeks into cert with no other problems can be thrown out and the developer has to spend another few weeks putting it through its own internal QA again before its sent back to the console holder for their cert.

That's just for certification. Now to be fair, on the tools and languages side both of the consoles I've worked under have great support, and if you're lucky enough to be working under a large publisher you get considerable leeway in working the way you want with the tools you want, but otherwise you are stuck developing with a very restrictive set of languages. I'm not on the Apple bandwagon though; the horror stories I've heard regarding lack of communication re: apps that are still making their way through the approval process sound kind of scary to me. My point is that if you're trying to paint Apple as the bad guy for trying to control their own platform with draconian methods, there are far far better targets you could pick. – Anonymous