We’ve been taking it slow, but we’ve finally got a retail trial running. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can finally see our product before buying one, at Best Buy.

"Now throw the switch and let us begin the battle for the planet."
--- The Brain

Back in March, Shamus Young suggested practical ways software vendors can deal with piracy. Step number 5 was “clean house”: as with movies, most of the widely-traded pirated copies of games come from insiders, not retail customers who’ve disabled DRM on their copy and uploaded it.

Supporting evidence for this claim? I just saw the official honest-to-prepress PDF file for the just-released 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. I’m sure WotC will sell plenty of copies of the book, but I’m also sure a lot of people will be downloading this PDF version for free.

[Update: heh; some downloaders have outed themselves by posting rules complaints and questions based on the PDFs, which apparently are not identical to the printed books. The files that leaked out were not the “gold masters”, as it were.]

While idly browsing the recommendations on Amazon Japan, I found the latest volume in the apparently-popular Moe yo! Tank School series. The uniforms are decidedly non-regulation, but what really caught my eye was the mascot on their tank.

I had my hopes up for a moment, but sadly, it looks like a generic angry bunny-head, not the one true Max.

Who came up with the idea of using black boxes full of white text as the universal character-sheet format? I just took a look at the new 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons character sheet, and there they are again! It’s like these people have never heard of chartjunk, or, more significantly, inkjet printers that bleed.

The designer at least had the good sense to use nice thick fonts in the reversed-out sections, but its still a huge inkblot, and the layout of the key data is an assault on the senses. I’m also surprised that someone would go to the trouble of using Adobe InDesign to lay this out, and then not bother keeping the text grid consistent between columns.

There are sure to be third-party character sheets, some better, most worse, but if Wizards actually delivers their promised official online tools, and they don’t completely suck, almost everyone will use them, which means their official character sheet will dominate. Pity.

Despite the fact that I poke fun at Amazon’s recommendation system a lot, I respect the amount of work they’ve put into solving a really hard problem. How do you classify how “similar” two items are? How can you tell the difference between classes of items that you want more of and classes where one satisfies the demand? When should you consider two items too similar? Etc, etc.

They’re mixing a lot of variables together, and trying hard to sort something to the top that will be interesting. Sometimes, they sort too many of the same class of item to the top. Sometimes, they come up with surprising, apparently insightful associations. Sometimes, they just goof.

And sometimes, I have to stop and try to figure it out. Today’s link goes from a lighthearted relationship comedy to a hardcore rape cartoon. The anime series Please Teacher is certainly suggestive at times, but it’s really a story about two misfits who accidentally marry and try to make it work. The only disturbing elements are the age difference and power imbalance between the couple: she’s his high-school teacher (and an alien with a powerful spaceship), and his physical maturity is below average for his age (especially compared to her height and lush curves).

Because I’ve told Amazon that I own one of the DVDs in this series, although I haven’t rated it, it recommended something called Perverted Thomas, which is apparently about a guy who learns an “ancient Chinese secret” that lets him force any woman to have sex with him. I’m pretty sure it’s not Calgon.

I think the link actually runs backwards, because on that page, Amazon reports that people who bought Perverted Thomas also bought animated titles like Night Shift Nurses, Maid Service, Xtra Credit, Mother Knows Breast, Anyone You Can Do I Can Do Better, Hot For Teacher, and … Please Teacher.

Boy, I bet they’re going to be disappointed.

[The also-bought list also included Cutey Honey, Appleseed, Please Twins, Elfen Lied, and Witchblade…]

One of the other students in my reading class brought in the first chapter of the One Piece manga, which we finished a few weeks ago. Towards the end, there’s a scene in the bar where the villain Higuma is laughing with his gang about how pathetic Shanks and his pirates seem to be. One line in particular is noteworthy.

To set the scene properly, the teacher is a rather attractive woman “somewhere past age 30” (coughcough), there are two male students in their early twenties who are big Japanese pop-culture fans, and a basically-bilingual female student who’s about 19. And me, the big hairy over-40 otaku. We were translating as we went, and I had just finished reading the following speech bubble:

酒ぶっかけられても文句一つ言えねェで!!

This loosely translates as, “they didn’t even complain when I threw a drink in his face!”, but before I had a chance to say that, the teacher launched into an explanation of the verb, which she was sure we wouldn’t know: bukkakeru.

All three of us guys were trying hard not to say anything, or look at each other. We just let that one go quietly by…

Fail.

With the latest antics among the Democrats, I was reminded of the video from their last convention [NSFW!].