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This isn’t my info — it is from the SourceForge mailing list — but it is so damn helpful that I wanted to re-post it in case it helps someone find it in the future.

Where I originally saw it: http://www.mail-archive.com/cx-freeze-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg00334.html

I had to make the following changes to get cx_Freeze to work on the Mac

Before building

change ldd in freezer.py to otool -L
mkdir -p Python.framework/Versions/2.6/
ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Python
Python.framework/Versions/2.6/

Before running a built executable

mkdir /lib /include
ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6
/lib/python2.6
ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/include/python2.6
/include/python2.6

Jeffery G. Smith
MedPlus, A Quest Diagnostics Company | Senior SCM Specialist | 4690 Parkway
Drive | Mason, OH 45040 USA | phone +1.513.204.2601 | fax +1.513.229.5505 |
mobile +1.513.335.1517 | jsm…@medplus.com | www.MedPlus.com

As always, the ‘Video Games are/aren’t Art’ argument is in full swing, with Roger Ebert (seriously?) apparently as the newest celebrity to chime in. You can read his latest rant on the subject here if you haven’t already.

Ebert frames his blathering as a critique of a speech by Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany in which she apparently says games are art, but agrees with Ebert’s original point of ‘No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists, and poets’ (apparently he holds the poets in extra high regard, worthy of the double mention). His most salient claim is that games are inherently separate from art because you can win a game but you can only experience art. He doesn’t support this with anything but applies it across the board to chess, basketball, maj jong, etc.

I disagree with both Ebert and Santiago on almost every point, but everything falls back to the definition of art, so let’s begin there.

Santiago goes with a Wikipedia definition (edit timestamp unknown): “Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions”. She also says “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging”. Ebert takes Plato’s definition of art as the imitation of nature, extends it to mean improvement upon nature through the artist’s vision (he prefers art have one artist, but concedes to himself that multi-artist pieces can still be art… again totally unsupported), then tacks on the ‘art can’t be anything that can be won’ part mentioned above.

I’m not sure where the definition of art became so convoluted. In my opinion, art is something that makes you think or feel. This includes the masterpieces, cave art, 4′33″, a starving dog, black square, etc, but equally includes an impassioned speech, a choreographed dance, a raked zen rock garden, an exceptional meal, a perfectly executed pass/shot/goal/step or a truly inspired play/move. You may not like it — in fact some art is created specifically to enrage or offend — but that doesn’t negate its existence as art.

Staying on topic, video games can be art on many different levels. Games like Shift turn the idea of a traditional level on its head (get it?). World of Warcraft can get you so attached to your digital accomplishments that you forget about the real world. Dwarf Fortress is one of the most feature-deep games you’ll ever play juxtaposed with a minimalist interface throwback to 1980. Canabalt makes entertainment out of a single button. Genetos is a shmup meta-commentary on shmups (I expect Ebert would be happy as a clam with a movie full of throwbacks to all the old influential directors and styles you suffer through in film class, but couldn’t give the time of day to Genetos). Infinity is a game that leverages procedural content so thoroughly that you literally have an entire galaxy to play in. Portal gets you to care about a box more than yourself; Karoshi Suicide Salaryman does just the opposite. Towlr is so incredibly simple that it is maddeningly difficult. All of these push some boundary or inspire you to think or feel something, despite most of them having a clear way to ‘win’.

Ebert’s only criticism seems to be the win condition — he even comments about an immersive game without points or rules (think Second Life), saying “it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them”.

This is the most inspired quote from Ebert’s article, although likely not for the reasons he intended. He touches the important part of art that he seems to be missing with his tunnel vision: the experience. The art of video games and everything else is in the experience. Without context, previously formed opinions, feelings, and memories art wouldn’t be able to carry its meaning (or intentional lack of meaning). Winning, like the end of a movie, isn’t the point – it is simply the motivation for the experience. I honestly cannot fathom how he critiques movies without this integral piece of understanding.

Ebert never makes a solid point, condemning video games as not-art because they can be won, because he doesn’t see a reason he would like them, or because, in his embarrassingly inexperienced opinion, they don’t compare to the masterworks of history. None of these things have anything to do with art — medium, personal taste, and quality simply cannot change something from being art. At every turn, his criticisms are awkward and uninspired. The acclaim awarded him by a passing generation, once a free pass to orate indiscriminately, now appears more like the oxygen tank that keeps him alive but means grandpa can’t go on the fun rides at the amusement park anymore.

Footnote:
On Flower Ebert says, ‘Nothing … from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card’. Where the hell is he buying his greeting cards?

I finally got around to updating the dokuwiki/wordpress integration plugin to work with the newer versions of WP and DW. It ended up being only one additional step which was tracked down by the commenters, so a big thanks to them for keeping this up to date.

http://keeyai.com/projects-and-releases/dokuwiki-tools/dokuwiki-and-wordpress-integration/

My test installs I just used are Wordpress 2.9.1 and Dokuwiki 2009-12-25, which are the two latest stable releases as of this moment.

Good luck everyone and if you have any problems, please post in the comments.

Here we go for another round. This is really a rant, but I think enough people are going to blindly agree with the government and the RIAA/MPAA that this will fit snugly into controversy corner as well (judgmental, blanket statements like that will also help).

Like all the major issues that have vehement people on both sides, I think the argument fails because each side is arguing a different facet of the issue. For example, the abortion debate — one side is saying “don’t kill babies”. Nobody wants to kill babies guys, take a deep breath. The other side, instead of arguing “kill babies” like the first seems to think, is instead arguing “a couple cells aren’t babies yet”. The gray area of where they ARE babies, is what SHOULD be argued, but whatev. Now, some pro-life people say they are all babies from even one cell are doing great, from the argument’s perspective. However, the ‘potential for life’ side of the fence makes me think they should be up in arms about the millions of misused tube socks in teenage boys’ rooms across the world as well…

Back to the topic at hand! The RIAA/MPAA’s point is that stealing is wrong — they are calling it Piracy. Nobody disagrees with this. In fact, we all suffer through their anti-piracy ads (”You wouldn’t steal a handbag… You wouldn’t steal a car…”) and agree with each point as it goes by. That is, until they get to the “downloading movies is stealing” part. They really aren’t the same thing are they? At all… For some reason, we’re supposed to believe them when they just say things, even if they aren’t true.

Here is the crux of the issue: your harddrive doesn’t belong to the RIAA/MPAA, the government, or anyone else. Really, it doesn’t. When you make the bits inside it line up a certain way, it doesn’t magically become someone else’s property. Really, it doesn’t. When you show someone else the pattern of your bits (sounds naughty :D), and they line up theirs in the same way, no crime has happened here. Really. If you learn a song from the radio, it’s all there in your brain. Do you feel like you stole it? Of course not. There is something inherent in stealing, which is taking something away from someone else and keeping it. This is simply not the case. Nobody has lost anything, you have made a duplicate in exactly the same way as making a mix tape off the radio or taking a picture of a painting or literally just remembering something. Now taking that and selling it, that is abusing intellectual property, which is a different beast altogether.

The bad guys are desperately trying to hold on to a pre-digital business model in a digital age. We no longer MUST have a VHS tape in our VCR to watch a movie. We don’t need a CD in to listen to music. In fact, these things are very limiting and having them makes it harder to enjoy the content. They haven’t adapted to the changing market and, as capitalism demands, they’re beginning to fail. You can’t make a profit selling other obsolete things, why is it any different? If I tried selling mini-discs then starting complaining that MP3 players are stealing, you would laugh at me, and rightly so.

They are selling something people no longer need. Losing sales from a poor business idea is NOT the same as being stolen from.

I’d love to see some famous musicians make a major public push to having their music free online. They need to ALSO sell CDs to people who want them, and have merchandise (shirts, posters, autographs, etc). These are tangible things we want and are willing to pay for and can’t get without stealing (the real kind, which most people don’t want to do). Unfortunately, this is hard for artists because of the record label/radio conglomerate deadlock we have set up — perhaps in a few years there will be a strong enough internet presence to go around the radio BS and still be famous.

Synopsis:
Downloading movies/music isn’t stealing because ‘they’ can’t decide in what pattern you organize your hard drive, and because you aren’t taking anything from anyone.

Bands should be selling actual things — products like CDs, autographs, shirts, posters, and other merch, and services like live shows. These are things you can sell, and people will gladly pay for them.

The music/movie industry needs to adapt to the digital world. If they really want to keep their inflated sales model, maybe they should try selling custom hardware that is the only way to play their product. People will always crack it though, so a better solution is to adapt to the times — find a way to stream your content to users EASILY and CHEAPLY. The days of charging us $20 a dvd are dying, unfortunately (for you), but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a viable distribution method that earns more revenue after theater sales.

The fact of the matter remains, however, that the RIAA/MPAA has TONS of money and has created legislature using that money to make sharing the contents of your hard drive a crime, despite things like logic and reason. Perhaps one day lawmakers and judges will learn how a computer works and reconsider, but I cynically think the money will always make the laws. If you don’t like it, your only options as a citizen are to protest (write your senator? lol) or just bend over further and keep taking it.

Maybe they should make their money selling lube instead…

I’ve decided to make a new category for my little blurbs, quips, and mutterings that are almost certainly going to offend people, including but not limited to being blatantly on one side of a controversial issue. Some things ‘matter’, like abortion, religion, gun control, etc, but most of them are meaningless opinions blathered about popular bands or icons or ‘american pasttimes’ (baseball, you know I’m coming for you). Perhaps we can start some hilariously heated comment chains…

So, without further ado, my first entry to controversy corner:

“War Pigs” is a terrible song and I can’t figure out why so many people seem to love it. It’s awkward, long, and boring.