Set Sail for the Lulz

Lulzsec was an organized group of hackers for approximately fifty days. They hacked a number of important, or at the very least high profile organizations. Their stated purpose: “For the lulz”, but was it? If one looks at the list of targets Lulzsec has effectively pursued would anyone honestly be able to say that they had no agenda aside from fun? Their recent list of targets includes, Sony, PBS, the CIA, Arizona state law enforcement, theEscapist, EVE Online, League of Legends, Bethesda software, a number ofpornographic websites, and a host of others.

A cursory glance at that list two stand out, the CIA and Arizona’s law enforcement websites being hacked are clearly not just “for the lulz”.  One who has been following news on the internet, rather than just drooling on their keyboards and playing flashgames would be quick to point out that PBS’s website being hacked was in response to a Frontline documentary about Wikileaks. Lulzsec has taken a great deal of responsibility for the PSN and additional Sony hacks, and given how many flaws there were in their security systems, I don’t blame them one bit. It could be considered a public service to point out such glaring holes in one's security. Their attacks on many others have been more annoying than properly offensive (denial of service attacks against the escapist, EVE online, and League of Legends), but they are still certainly frustrating to those who depend on those resources for income. 

Many people are referring to Lulzsec and Anonymous as “hacktivists”, so clearly this analysis that Lulzsec isn’t just in it “for the lulz” is a widespread understanding. It appears that despite their tenacious attacks on so many varying targets Lulzsec has officially announced recently that they will be disbanding, whether due to infighting, the international crackdown on hacking activity, or whatever other reasons can be concocted for Lulzsec to walk away from the limelight at the top of their game. Maybe the members of Lulzsec are content to return to Anonymous and return to their much larger group’s plans, or maybe it’s a show of unity, Shortly before Lulzsec announced that they would be dissolved they had begun publically partnering with Anonymous for future attacks, to build up a larger “army” of hackers and others devoted to disruptive or anarchistic activity. I’ve never felt a compulsion to delve into hacking myself, but I can certainly say that some of the things Lulzsec has stood for have been both newsworthy, and have been effective in knocking people off their high and mighty pedestal. My not being able to use any of the nice online features of my PS3 for quite some time notwithstanding, I can say that I generally support the “hacktivist” movement, though not necessarily the backlash that seems to be coming from it. For what it’s worth, I will leave you with both the Lulzsec mission statement, and a link to their final announcement:

“Hello, good day, and how are you? Splendid! We're LulzSec, a small team of lulzy individuals who feel the drabness of the cyber community is a burden on what matters: fun. Considering fun is now restricted to Friday, where we look forward to the weekend, weekend, we have now taken it upon ourselves to spread fun, fun, fun, throughout the entire calender year.”

Final Announcement

Writing about the Wii U? Mii too.

The Wii U is still likely over a year away, and the internet is already rife with speculation about the system. There are many concerns including the lack of announced launch titles, an issue that plagued the recently released 3DS as well, but there’s plenty of time for them to announce a fuller list of launch titles at next year’s E3 event. Then again, the good folks that all but singlehandedly kept me from exercising until I was entering high school could phone this one in and bank on the notion that an innovative controller and backwards compatibility will lead the system toward success despite its apparent lack of launch titles.

Certainly Nintendo has used the "Two screens are better than one" argument before and this is no different.  Nintendo has made some obvious upgrades over the Wii graphically, and they’re including a low resolution 6+” touch screen in the controller. Cynically speaking Nintendo has run back to the well of innovation to try to come up with a new system concept, but they found that they’ve dipped into the well too many times and now they have combined their two most recent successes into one super system. Optimistically speaking, one can have faith that while 3^rd parties may not have a clue what to do with this technology right away, Nintendo has been developing successful titles for both platforms individually, and should be able to make some absolutely spectacular games that mix up the fun.

Nintendo as a company has had their missteps, but with over a year to announce more launch titles, and with the speculative knowledge that Nintendo’s launch price in the US market will likely be under $300 (Nintendo strives to bring consoles to market at approximately $250), and the projected price per controller is being estimated at around $70 the system is going to enter the market at about the same price as the current generation consoles, which in and of itself isn’t enough to sell the system, but it’s certainly a good starting point, especially as they promise better online gaming support and full backwards compatibility with the Wii. 

The system has a lot of time to build up steam, but only time will tell what Nintendo is really going to accomplish with this system. Certainly the Wii U is going to be an upgrade over the current generation Nintendo console, but they will fall into the same trap they have with the Wii, once the competition comes to market, they will look two steps behind again. Innovation and some engaging exclusive titles have carried them through this generation, but they’ll need to bank on the same reasons for success in the next generation of gaming consoles as well. I for one am excited, but the console certainly has potential to fail. Innovation can only carry them so far. Sure the Wii U will have 1080p HD compatibility but we’ve got quite a bit of time to see what Nintendo’s new system will really be capable of, and while graphics are far from the top priority of some gamers, and most Indie game designers, they are a selling point to most of the core market.

What Can't We Wrap in as Rap?

Rap is far and away not my favorite genre of music. That is not to say that there’s anything wrong with rap, and there are some artists I do enjoy listening to, but it brings me to an interesting discussion I had recently with Kira from Roll the Dice and Play Nice. The debate came up as to whether Rap is more aptly defined by the musical style, or the vocal style. My position, and I feel it will be rather hard to make me budge here, is that the vocal style more strongly typifies the genre. The opposing point was used as Jay Z has available both acapella  versions and "instrumental" versions of some of his songs available. The instrumental tracks were listed as rap, while the acapella versions were not. This to me is baffling. Often the backing music for rap songs are built off of samples from other songs, sometimes a large portion of the hook is done this way as well. However, the lyrical style of much rap is wholly unique to the genre, excluding some rock artists integrating rap intotheir style.

That said, it caused something of a mental spark, Nas’ “I Can” contains large portions of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”, with only a synth drum beat accompanying it through most of the song. Based on the assumption that rap can be typified by the instrumental backing, Nas would have inadvertently made Beethoven the first rap artist. Conceptually this is plausible, but let’s be real here, no one is going to call Ludwig Van Beethoven a hip-hop or rap artist, which invalidates the point provided by the notion that Jay Z’s instrumental tracks are qualified as rap, without a vocal track. Clearly there is some amount of ambiguity here, one could argue that the addition of the percussion makes it an entirely different song (though I don’t know that I would go that far), and it is doubtful that one would argue that Primer 55 is a rap group despite their stylized vocals. Certainly it is an amalgamation of the two needed to call music rap, however it is rather hard to argue that the instrumentation is enough to declare a track as rap, many rap songs may very well be equally qualified as pop music in the modern age based solely on instrumentation while it’s rather hard to argue that the vocals would match up with what we expect from rap much more.

Perhaps it is much more applicable to say that no one aspect of a song solely typifies the genre it comes from. However, some are certainly much more indicative of a song/album’s resting place in the record store, or for those of you that don’t believe in owning hard copies of albums, what search term returns the expected tracks on iTunes.