It's a rumour, guys, at least according to the original article.

The GSL license has not yet been made public, but there are rumors, speculations, and concerns, fueled by online posts made by the brand manager and licensing manager for Dungeons and Dragons, and relayed by the lead writer of third-party publisher Necromancer Games that the GSL will contain a “poison pill” clause – that is, in order to use the GSL, a game company must not publish anything under the OGL.

Not that it's not alarming, but we probably shouldn't be putting [Oil of Impact] on our [Pitchforks of IP-Abuse-Poking] just yet.

For everyone's information, I've heard great things about the ADSL2 provider Be (http://www.bethere.co.uk). I've just signed up for them - after a warning about multi-week waiting periods on the site, they've said they're going to activate my account in 4 days!

The packages they offer are cheaper than Virgin (£18 for their "unlimited" package) and offer a lot faster connectivity (up to 24 meg downstream and 1.3 upstream for that package).

Haven't used them yet, so they might still suck (although I've read some glowing reviews), but at least they're still theoretically net neutral.

Yes, "On Food And Cooking" is fantastic. One of the best cookbooks ever.

On a similar note, two Molecular Gastronomy-ish blogs worth following are

http://blog.khymos.org

and

http://ideasinfood.typepad.com

(and the Mystery Project I'm developing, too, but I can't talk about that.)

Gareth - thanks, that's a really interesting reference. I've tried a variety of massage and similar bodywork techniques over the years, and the "storing" of emotion or memory is one thing that keeps popping up, despite my skepticism. I'm fascinated to hear that there's some scientific basis to it.

You don't happen to know if there's any scientific basis to "meridians" or "energy lines" as used in shiatzu, do you? Whilst presumably not lines of metaphysical energy as such, I do recall a physiotherapist I know mentioning that there was some basis in science for the framework.

Oh. My. God. That's truly amazing work.

(You see similarly massively impressive work in the Machinima field, particularly in the WoW community, but it's harder to do IRL.)

Big-budget movies are getting harder and harder to justify.

Superb work. This really shows off the strengths of Second Life for Machinima - minimal animation or walking, no talking, lots of gorgeous costumes and sets. The character models, particularly the woman, are just lovely.

Superb work. Thanks for the link.

Hey, he said "I was wrong.". That's rare enough in any public figure that it's worth applauding. Well done him.

Naomi - since you're reading these comments - are you focussing on all transformative works, or purely on fanfic? I'm specifically interested in Machinima, including non-fannish Machinima, here.

Obviously, we have our own small, underfunded organisation (the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences), but having someone else fighting for our rights as transformative creators would be great!

Great post, and great comments too.

On the subject of developing world charities, anyone know how well the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme is administered? I've given gifts from their range before.

As someone involved in making Creative Commons media using Open-Source tools where possible (BloodSpell) I'd throw my weight behind the "use AVI/XVid/LAME MP3" recommendations. OGG may be good, but it's not in common usage. That's a real problem, as several people mention, if you want as many viewers as possible.

It's already hard enough to persuade people to watch your films - it's pretty much an absolute rule that your viewers shouldn't have to download anything else beyond a movie file.

(I'd reckon that you at least halve the chances of a viewer bothering to watch your video if they have to download a new piece of software to do so.)

I'm also quite astonished that the report doesn't recommend - in fact, discouages use of - VirtualDub. For my money, it's literally the best encoding tool, in terms of speed, features and usability, available on any platform - if it also encoded Quicktime I'd use it in place of Apple's multi-hundred-dollar Compressor or Canopus's equally expensive ProCoder. I know a lot of other video professionals hold the same opinion. In particular, its resizing capabilities are extremely controllable and far higher quality than anything else I've used, its compression is impressively quick, and it offers the "direct stream" option for either audio or video when you only need to alter one of the two elements.

Overall, I'd take the recommendations here with a pinch of salt.

EEEKKK - Every DivX-capable player I'm aware of will also play Xvid-encoded video. We used Xvid for all BloodSpell encodes, and as far as I'm aware it has worked like a charm.

I believe YouTube and Stage6 will also accept uploaded video encoded with XVid.

Oops. Got the time slightly wrong - it's actually 5:30 pm.

D'oh.

I'm reminded of William Goldman's famous comment on Hollywood - "nobody knows anything".

An interesting link related to the discussion here - Tim "Four Hour Workweek" Ferriss on fat loss. No idea if it works, but he makes his money selling dietary supplements, and knows more than a bit about nutrition - an interesting read.

The Shangri-La diet or varients, which is basically all about controlling the point at which you get hungry, is also worth reading about.

Like I say, I have no personal experience with these diets (I'm one of those irritating people who sit on very low body fat no matter what I eat), and I'm not a nutritionist, so I have no idea if these things work, don't, or kill you. Just adding to the discussion.

Brilliant. The Souza argument is a tremendously well-articulated and clever way to illustrate just what we've lost. And it even played to the expectations of the audience ("Oh, we're hearing another "stupid luddite" story. No, wait - ").

I do wish he hadn't harped on quite so much about all UGC (a phrase I hate) creators being kids, but that was probably a necessity for a powerful appeal to his audience.

Oh, yes, yes, yes!

Finally the buggers bring it out on DVD and I can retire my greying, warped VHS boxed set...

Incidentally, for Twin Peaks fans - the books are worth aquiring too, particularly "The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper", which is actually rather good. Abebooks should be able to hook you up.

As someone who's kinda into his molecular gastronomy, I so want one. Unfortunately, the price is a little steep ($3,000).

Still, it's my understanding that you can start playing with sous-vide cooking techniques with a lot less cash - I was pricing hand vacuum pumps when I stopped for a BoingBoing break and saw this.

(A hand vacuum pump costs about £54.)

Sounds like a great Make article, actually, if I don't misunderstand the purpose of the magazine - how to do sous-vide cooking on the cheap.

The other funky MolGast gadget is a lot cheaper - a regulated water bath. I've seen them for as little as £150 new, and there are absolutely hundreds of interesting things you can do with them. F'r example, you can reliably cook a soft-boiled egg perfectly, every time, by cooking it between 62 and 68 degrees Centigrade - one of the proteins in the white solidifies at 62, but the yolk doesn't coagulate until 68.

Hi - one of the authors of the book here.

"Machinima" is pronounced MA - SHIN - EE - MA.

And it's the artform of making films using real-time 3D engines, usually using puppeteering techniques rather than frame-by-frame animation, and usually using a game engine.