Nintendo just ended their Creator Program and released a general usage policy that applies to all. Now, everyone is allowed to publish videos that include Nintendo characters, which is nice, but unfortunately, their requirements are short-sighted and narrow-minded, and also discriminate against various people. As written, the policy states:

Q1: What types of content are acceptable under the Guidelines? What types of content are not acceptable?

A1: We encourage you to use Nintendo Game Content in videos and images that feature your creative input and commentary. For example, Let’s Play videos and video game reviews are within the scope of the Guidelines.

However, you may not simply upload or livestream an existing Nintendo video, gameplay footage without your own creative input, or a copy of content created by someone else. For example, mere copies of Nintendo promotional trailers, tournaments, music soundtracks, gameplay sequences, and art collections are outside the scope of the Guidelines.

Some of the things that they forbid make sense, like a copy of someone else’s video, and even a copy of trailers and soundtracks. Footage of a tournament on the other hand is restrictive, especially that unlike a music concert, there is no way for people to purchase a formal copy of it.

Worse, they forbid uploading gameplay footage without “your creative input and commentary”, which is short-sighted and narrow-minded, as well as discriminatory to various people.

It is short-sighted because even though it is vague and open to interpretation, you can certainly bet that Nintendo will not hesitate to attack videos that they claim are not sufficiently derivative and put the burden of proof on the creator to prove that it is.

It is narrow-minded because it does not account for what might count as creative. They say you cannot just upload gameplay footage without creative input and commentary, but gameplay (style) is creative input. For example, speed-runs are creative, as are other styles of play (e.g., playing the game backwards, 100%ing, going for minimal-score, playing with restrictions, and so on).

Worse, that conjunction is important; legally, saying and instead of or is significant because it requires both creative input and commentary, not one or the other. This is discriminatory because it essentially means that to post a video of a Nintendo game, you must include your voice. (Technically, you could probably get away with just onscreen text, but that is not usually practical, and Nintendo would probably attempt to discount such videos regardless.) Requiring a spoken commentary discriminates against people with medical conditions that prevent them from speaking, people who are shy (or have social-anxiety disorder), people with unusual voices, and such.

Legal documents are tricky, and this one definitely needs a bit of tweaking to be more fair and considerate to players.

I can’t stand it when perforated papers are folded near the perforation. For example, a lot of checks/cheques or other government documents often have a tendency to do this. It’s absolutely infuriating because it makes it extremely difficult to properly tear the paper at the perforation and quite easily end up tearing the whole paper badly.

Fold things at the perforation! (or at least far away from them).

Something has always annoyed me about a scene in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the episode “Chain of Command”, Gul Madred tortures Picard to force him to say there are five lights instead of four (a 1984 reference). He tells Picard he can be treated well. Picard asks what he has to do. Madred says to tell him how many lights there are.

Just then, the guards come to take Picard home. Before he leaves, Picard defiantly shouts “there… are… four… lights!”

That doesn’t count; he said four only because they told him he’s going home, so he had nothing to lose by saying four again. If they had not told him he’s going home, he very well might (and probably would) have said five.

If you see an error in Google Images, you can submit feedback to (ostensibly) have someone check it and fix it, but to do so, you need to submit far too much information, including pretty much every scrap of data that the webpage can scrape from your system. So, sorry Donna Summers, I guess you’ll just have to stay sodomized.

(Explanations to be added later…)

Pathologically, chronically bad companies:

• Google
• Rogers (plus Bell and other providers)
• Apple
• Microsoft
• Valve
• PayPal and eBay
• RCA (Really Crappy Appliances)
• EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo (and other big game publishers)
• Disney
• Royal Bank
• Sony

Companies that are bad for only one or two reasons, or for personal beefs:

• SlySoft
• Intel
• Piriform
• United
• Rexall Pharmaplus

It is really annoying when television channels “evolve” to be something other than what they are supposed to be. It is one thing for a generic station to change, but many channels are subject-specific, so changing doesn’t make any sense. In fact when a subject-specific channel changes its subject, it renders the channel’s name meaningless, yet they almost never change their names to reflect their new material. Here’s a few examples:

It looks like the worst offender is The Learning Channel. It has gone from being a specifically educational channel to a pointless reality-show channel with absolutely no educational content whatsoever anymore. 😒

I friggin’ HATE selfish, greedy, inconsiderate, self-centered Rogers! I’m glad that Ted Rogers died and hope that they rest of those bastard executives die as well. I would be happy to have no phone, Internet, or TV if it meant that stupid, friggin’ Rogers were bankrupt and out of business.

(I will note that I do not know the internal workings of Rogers or Ted’s personal life, and that Ted may actually have stepped down some time before his death at the end of 2008. If so, then it could be that his stepping aside probably coincides with the downward spiral of the company which was not tooo bad up until about the mid 200x’s. If so, then I withdraw my invective about Ted and redirect it toward Nadir Mohamed, the man who took his place, especially since most of the worst degradations and customer abuse occurred directly during his reign, and that as an absurdly generous and undeserved severance package, the company—or should I say, customers—are paying him $16 Million. I would be enthusiastic about Mohamed leaving, but as they say, nothing bad ever left without being replaced with something worse.)