Plan B (Wii Ware Game Developer)

I was telling some of you guys about Wii-Ware, the Nintendo downloadable mini-game service they launched last week to compliment Virtual Console. This looks like a way to develop and distribute (small) games with a low barrier to entry.

I am sure we have all fantasized in some way about developing games...but all accounts of the industry is that it's a real grind. Wii-Ware, and the Xbox/Playstation equivalents, seem like the ‘indy-film’ version of gaming.

I downloaded a couple of the Wii-Ware launch games for between $5-$7 and thought they weren’t bad. Here is the web site to one of the developers:
http://www.nnooo.com/home/nnooo.html

I read his story in a blog, and it is literally a 2-3 man operation out of Australia. He has a history in the gaming biz, so he wasn’t exactly starting from scratch, but it’s doable. He had good things to say about the Wii Ware development tools, especially in comparison the Xbox equivalents. He said he has to sell 30k copies to break even, and that the split with Nintendo is %65-%35 (that him-Nintendo). This is about $137k Australian dollars, but I think AU$ is within 5% of US$ right now… There are many millions of Wii’s out there, so I think he shouldn’t have a problem breaking even. (Being a launch title has to be a huge boost!)

I have an (admittedly lame) idea for a game along these lines. I'm sure we could come up with half a dozen other idea's over beers in one afternoon. We all know how to code and we have a built-in supply of beta testing in our all our gamer teens (andrew, neil, sean, little big jay etc...)

-Morgan

Death of an Artist

The famous american artist, and my distant cousin (actually, the 1st cousin of my Grandfather, I'm told), Robert Rauschenberg, died on Monday at the age of 82.

I never met him, but have seen his works in art museums before. They even have a few of his works at the Portland Art Musuem. And like much modern art, it is rather ... different.

This is one of his breakout works, "Monogram", a "composite" work done in oil, canvas, tire, traffic barriacde, and stuffed goat.



Supposedly he was groundbreaking in coming up with ways of transferring photos and images to the surfaces of odd objects. For example, I'd like to see a Kong print on a BMW 635 Csi.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-05-2004/0002225658&EDATE=

Very interesting ... But is it art? Discuss. Preferrably over lots of beer.

Solar power without photovoltaics

Sometimes, someone will come up with a brilliant yet simple idea, and it will just make me feel like an idiot. One such idea is to use water and mirrors (inexpensive) instead of expensive photovoltaics. Why didn't I think of that?

BrightSource Energy, started by American-Israeli solar pioneer Arnold Goldman, has contracts to supply California utility PG&E (PCG) with up to 900 megawatts of solar electricity from power plants to be built in the Mojave Desert on the California-Nevada border. BrightSource has developed a new solar technology, dubbed distributed power tower, that focuses fields of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats on a tower containing a water-filled boiler. The sun’s rays superheat the water and the resulting steam drives an electricity-generating turbine.

This technology is currently ~90% cheaper than photovoltaics,

You are losing your job because you are a dumbass engineer!

Check out this speech by Hurd:

He says there aren't enough talented technical people in the US and that's why they are going elsewhere. Coupled with the fact that HP is laying off HP engineers in the US one can only conclude that it's becuase we are a bunch of dumb-asses, unlike those smarty-pants overseas.

I understand now... I really do...

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/05/hp-ceo-dwindlin.html

HP CEO: Dwindling Tech Talent Could Hurt the U.S.
By Betsy Schiffman May 06, 2008 1:14:53 PMCategories: Hewlett-Packard
Americans are getting dumb, and it's difficult to attract top tech talent to the U.S. now. Or so says Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
Speaking at an event at Castilleja, a private girls school in Palo Alto, where his daughter attends, Hurd lamented the sorry state of technical research in the U.S.
"In this country, we have a problem," Hurd says. "The source of this country's greatness has been its technical talent . . . But you have to go where the tech talent is, and right now the tech talent is in Asia."
Hurd says that only 40 percent of HPs 40,000 engineers are now based in the U.S., where it had previously employed about two-thirds of its engineering force domestically.
"We often can't keep [engineers] in the country even after they've graduated from U.S. universities like Stanford," Hurd said.
If it sounds like a politically conservative, alarmist statement, it's worth noting that Hurd sits on the board of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (a notoriously conservative organization). He also says he gets all his news from Fox News. (We think he was joking . . . Sort of.)
Photo: Courtesy Hewlett-Packard

You don't always have to race the competition to the bottom...

Apple's average selling price for Ipods and Macs have actually gone up:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/76115-apple-links-higher-sales-with-higher-prices?source=yahoo

That's impossible, how do they do it?
By making cool shit, not just cheap shit.
Wow, never heard of that before....

Obama flounders on energy policy

I was listening to Obama's North Carolina victory speech last night when he said some things that made him sound particularly stupid. You can find the complete text of that speech here. I will focus on this paragraph:

The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one -- he can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that's not only keeping gas at record prices, but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet in the process. He doesn't need four more years of Washington policies that sound good, but don't solve the problem. He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our oil addiction by making the automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That's the change we need. And that's why I'm running for president.

In this paragraph I really get pissed off for a number of reasons. If we didn't have "an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies" we would have a reasonable (100%+) gas tax like the rest of the world. That would be a reasonable energy policy, but it would be less profitable for the oil companies. However, none of this would help you drive around and look for a job. Gas prices are higher than they used to be for economic reasons, not political ones.

Next we get to the assertion that we need "a permanent holiday from our oil addiction by making the automakers raise their fuel standards." WTF Mate? Because Obama can force auto manufacturers to make more fuel efficient cars when decades of market pressures couldn't? Because, you know, the EU is full of tiny cars that get good mileage for some reason other than market pressure? The best thing that could happen (in the realm of fuel efficient cars) is for our gas prices to continue to rise. Soccer moms across America need to realize that yes, a ginormous SUV does use a ton of gasoline. Also, that Urban sprawl has been a bad idea since the get-go and that eventually we will have to pay the price for decades of bad civic planning.

I am not even going to touch his statement about "oil companies invest[ing] their record profits in a clean energy future." This is an obvious allusion to his previous calls for a windfall tax on oil companies (completely reasonable) 10% profit margin. What I will take the time to touch on is what he didn't say. He didn't touch on our atrocious agricultural policy and how it drives up the cost of gasoline by diverting petroleum to be made into fertilizer. He didn't say that we should take the $47 Billion (as of 2004, source) we spend on farm subsidies each year and direct that money toward clean energy research. He didn't mention how most of the US Governments farm subsides eventually end up in the belly of a cow so that US consumers can consume larger and larger amounts of beef every year. He didn't propose a windfall tax on farmers, or ranchers, which in the end would make much more sense than a windfall tax on oil...

I am not sure what my conclusion is, other than that I like Obama way less than before I heard this speech. So much for being a great orator.

Chrysler subsidizes gas for new car buyers

I guess I don't have much to say about this, I just wanted to point out that it is hilarious. Here is a quote from one article discussing Chrysler's plan:

Chrysler also announced an offer that caps the price of gasoline at $2.99 a gallon for three years for people who buy or lease new vehicles from Wednesday through June 2. The offer is based on 12,000 miles of driving per year at the vehicle's rated fuel economy.

Customers will get a card for buying gas that is linked to their own charge account, Chrysler said. The customer will be billed $2.99 a gallon, and Chrysler will pay the rest.

Actual savings depend on what happens to gas prices over the next three years, but based on the $3.61 a gallon average price reported Monday by AAA, someone buying a 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser, which gets an estimated 21 miles per gallon in city driving, would save $355 a year.

source.