Casino Choices

Ok, we’ve officially gone mad as a country.

First there was the insurance comparison websites. Then came the mortgage comparison sites, quickly followed by ones that compare credit cards, car loans, holidays, and online shopping prices.

But I’ve just seen the last straw. A website that compares online casinos and recommends ones which are fair.

I mean…..come on! It’s bad enough that more people are gambling these days, and more of them are going online, but now we have to recommend places for them to gamble?!?

Countdown Scores

Is it me, or do the score indicators on the new Countdown set look like they’re bleeding?

OK, that’s it. TV has officially gone mad.

I’m watching a documentary about Titanic on Channel 5 now. It started at 8pm and by 8.05….we were into the first advert break.

Five minutes into the show and we’re cutting to commercial! They’ve barely had time to explain their theory about the sinking yet!

Easiest 1000 Xbox 360 Gamerpoints Ever

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/18/new-avatar-game-awards-1-000-gamerpoints-in…

This is a great example of truly lazy gamerpoint creation.

I don’t mean the gamers are lazy. I mean the people who made the game.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the game, the points are given out like candy. The game is a game of a Japanese TV show called Avatar, which is getting to be pretty big over there. I think Toonami show it here. The video shows the character standing in a corner as the guards rush towards him, and throwing energy balls at them. The gamerpoints are given out for so many hits without being hit, and since the guards cannot get close enough to you before being struck down, there’s never any danger you won’t get the achievement.

There are only seven achivements in the game, worth either 150 or 300 points. Literally all you have to do is stand in a corner holding the B button down. It really does take only a few minutes (if you skip the in-game videos).

It’s pretty bad design that you could collect all gamerpoints available in the game before completing the first level.

Name-ology advert

Am I the only one disturbed by the advert on TV for a love compatability test?

Basically, you text your name and your partner’s name to them and they give you a “compatability rating”.

Which is all good and well and a bit of fun.

But the advert shows a woman using the service to choose between two almost identical men that she’s interested in.

Does that sound right to you?

Oh god no….

It’s just Halloween now, and already the Christmas adverts have started on TV. I’ve already seen several shops with their Christmas sections out and heard Christmas music blaring out of one shop.

For once and for all, heed our call: It’s too damn early!!!

Just…just no, OK?

OK, I know that sex sells. Flaunt a couple of naked ladies in front of a product, and most men will hand over their cash with about as much though as an extra in a zombie movie.

But seriously; Hot Import Nights 2’s TV advert takes this to the extreme. It seems to be aiming at the teenage boy market (in a similar vein to the accurate gravity physics decicated to bouncing breasts in the latest Dead Or Alive game).

The advert features a woman dressed in a bikini and hot pants, with gratuituous ass shot and noticable nipples. Seriously, I have some less provocative stuff in my porn collection. It spends an equal amount of time showing you the game as it does showing you the woman advertising it.

But the advert has so much female flesh on display that it can’t be broadcast before 9pm at night, hich may mean it’s missed its core market’s bedtime.

XboxSpace: 360 Blu-Ray Player a Possibility

XboxSpace: 360 Blu-Ray Player a Possibility

I like the quote at the end:

It is not your responsibility as a consumer to fight this war for them. When they make up their minds, I’ll be willing to start buying.

However, there are two contradictory stories floating out there, one posted on Thursday 12th January 2006 and the later on Wednesday 18th January 2006

MS: Blu-ray on Xbox 360 ‘possible’ | The Register
MS says no to Xbox 360 Blu-ray support | The Register

YouTube – Phil Collins “Gorilla Drummer” Cadbury Ad (Dairy Milk)

YouTube – Phil Collins “Gorilla Drummer” Cadbury Ad (Dairy Milk)

The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck folks!

It’s 00:21 on Sunday, and I saw an advert for a Phil Collins CD. Immediately, I thought of the Cadbury’s advert with the gorilla playing the drums. So off I went to YouTub typed in “drums gorilla” and it was second in the search results.

I started playing it, glanced over at the TV and the advert was playing at almost the exact same point!

And then the theme from The Twilight Zone started playing in my head….

What is it with album collaboration?

Seems like an album is only “revolutionary” or “a marvel” or “a masterpiece” if the artist has had someone collaborate on the album with them. they seem to need to have songs with guest stars, usually including Justin Timberlake (does he release any songs of his own any more?)

I’ve just seen an advert for 50 Cent’s new album “Curtis” and it seems every song on it has a guest artist singing with him.

What’s up with that?

Febreze Oddity

OK, so here’s a question:

If Febreze is marketed as a product that doesn’t just mask bad odors with a pleasant odor, but instead to neutralise the odor, then why does Febreze come in three different fragrances?

Oversalted burger leads to charges – Yahoo! News

Oversalted burger leads to charges – Yahoo! News

Interesting article…

I think the McDonald’s employee’s question is a good one. Why didn’t the officer stop eating the burger once he realised it was too salty? Instead he continued eating what he must have realised was over salted meat, then got sick and came back to complain.

What a tool.

Honestly, what kind of idiot would keep eating a burger like that? Either he wolfed the thing down so fast he didn’t have time to taste it, or he knew it was tainted…..but continued to gobble it down.

As I said; What a tool.

Blu-Ray Drive on PS3 – Extra Storage Space for Games

Someone told me today that the fact that Playstation 3s have a Blu-ray drive instead of a DVD one is a big selling point for game makers, because a Blu-ray drive has a storage capacity of arounf 50Gb, whereas a DVD has a capacity of about 8Gb, give or take.

He said it was better because the game makers can put more content on the discs, make the textures photo-realistic, add sound capacity for Dolby 7.1 surround, etc.

I disagreed for the following reasons:

First of all, I don’t think the 50Gb on Blue-ray discs is necessarily a good thing for the PS3. Because if you’re a games studio and making games that are 20, 30, 40 Gb in size then they’re going to take longer to code, longer to create the artwork for and longer to test. End result: your company makes fewer games per year than a company that’s making games that are 7Gb big. OK, the games you make will probably be fantastic, photo-realistic, great surround sound, etc. But if you’re going to get the same amount of money per unit for a 40Gb game or a 7Gb game, where would you pour your limited resources?

On the other hand, how many people have a surround sound system attached to their TV that will hook up to the console? Not many, I’ll bet because most people have paid a fortune for a LCD HD TV, the console, the games, the DVD player, etc. The surround sound is probably the first thing you’d knock off your shopping list.

It it needs it, why doesn’t the Xbox 360 use a multi-disc format for their games?

PC owners for years were able to put up with a multi disc game, before games came in PC-DVD ROM format. It was simply a matter of getting to a certain stage in the game and changing the disc. Granted a free roaming game would never work as a multi-disc game, but most linear games would be fine. I certainly wouldn’t mind paying a bit extra for a multi-disc game if it meant it would last longer and give me more gameplay.

Brilliant Alternative Scene from the movie Transformers (2007)

A friend of mine sent me this.

Brilliant concept for an alternative scene.
Transformers arrive on Earth changing to look like items near them.
One lands in pool and comes out to see small girl clutching My Little Pony.
Large pink horse turns up at Transformers meeting going “What are you all looking at?”

Wish I’d thought of it…..

Atonement Teaser Trailer

When I first saw the teaser trailer for Atonement, I was in a cinema. The trailer was full of atmospheric shots, little dialogue, huge splashes of colour on the screen, and no clue as to what was going on.

I honestly thought I was watching a Jean Paul Gautier perfume advert.

See for yourself:

Atonement – Trailer

Poor Shia LaBeouf

It’s bad enough for him going through live with a name that sounds like a pornstar.

But to go through with a name that sounds like a female pornstar…..

Shia LaBeouf

Razors – Stop The Madness!

I’m going to show my age here. I remember the time when the two blade razors launched, like it was some sort of quantum leap.

Since then every few years a new razor has launched with an extra balde in it. We’re currently up to five blades.

Where will it end?

Controversial game gets new rating – Video Game News – Yahoo! Video Games

Controversial game gets new rating – Video Game News – Yahoo! Video Games

M-kay….

I have to admit to being confused about this one. OK, so the game’s original version was quite violent and had been toned down. That part I get. It’s the seemingly insane American rating system that I can’t get my head around.

You see, for those who aren’t familiar with it, in the UK computer games either use a system similar to the rating system for films. The film ratings go like this: U, PG, 12, 15, 18. Or the games use the Pegi (Pan European Game Information) system, which rates the game on the intended audience age (e.g. 7+, 12+, 16+, etc), but also contains specific information helpful to parents, so warns if the game contains any of the following: bad language, discrimination, drugs, fear (likely to scare children), gambling, sex, or violence.

Here’s where I get confused about the American system:

…the launch was indefinitely delayed after the Entertainment Software Rating Board, an industry group, slapped it with an adults-only rating, for consumers 18 and older. It also faced bans in several European countries.

An “AO” rating would have essentially prevented the game from being sold. Large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. don’t stock “AO” games, and the three major console makers – Microsoft Corp., Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. – do not allow “AO” games on their systems.

“Manhunt 2″ maker Rockstar Games and publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. said the revamped version of the game received a less-stringent “M,” or mature, rating for consumers age 17 or older.

So the game originally gets an AO rating, so only 18 year olds can play it. This means most retailers won’t sell it and none of the three console manufacturers would allow it to be released on their consoles, so it would be a PC only title that no-one could buy.

However, then the game gets edited into an M rating, so only 17 year olds can play it.

Does anyone else see the problem there? There’s only one year difference between the AO and the M rating. What could possibly happen to American children in that one extra year of growth that would make them more mature and less impressionable? I accept that the distinction between childhood and adulthood is, and always had been fuzzy and hard to define, but one year?!?

There’s a three year gap between the UK 15 and 18 rating for a reason, which is precisely to prevent this kind of idiocy.

Wall to wall text ads

OK, I’m up later than I normally would be, but screw it, it’s Friday. And it’s 01:39, and I’ve just seen an advert on ITV2 that was nothing, and I mean NOTHING but adverts for text based chat and dating services.

Six minutes of text adverts.

Oh boy…..

Lightspeed Shopping

I’m really starting to hate my local supermarket. Everytime I shop there, I feel like they’re rushing me out he door as fast as possible.

The problem is when I’m packing my goods at the till. The assistant keeps scanning my purchases faster and faster, and there’s not a whole lot of room at my end of the conveyor belt. I have to ram items into bags as fast as I can just to keep up. It doesn’t help that the bag dispenser is a pain to use and always gets tangled up. And there’s always another customer behind me, because even though the place has the usual 7-8 tills you’d expect from a shop that size, there’s never more than three actually being used at any one time.

The solution is so obvious; to remove the 8 tills they have, put in four larger tills, with a bigger packing space at the end so shoppers don’t feel rushed into getting their stuff packed up and in bags.

Believe me, if there was anywhere else nearby that I could get my entire week’s shop done, I’d be there. And the reason I don’t go to a few shops to get my stuff?

Well the fact is, I’m a lazy lazy man…

A complete Homer Simpson moment

Oh, I could kick myself.

I went out at lunch today to pay in a cheque to the bank, and after waiting ages in line, paid in the cheque and left.

About 50 yards down the road, the next task for my lunch popped into my head.

“I need to buy something now, so I have change for the bus.”

Immediately my inner critic piped up:

“Where have you just been?”

Sheepishly, I answered
“Bank….”

“And what can banks give you?”

“Change….”

Oh, I felt like an idiot.

Comment: Don’t vote for scientific ignorance – opinion – 25 July 2007 – New Scientist

Comment: Don’t vote for scientific ignorance – opinion – 25 July 2007 – New Scientist

This is interesting, in an “Oh god, we’re all going to die!” sort of way:

WHEN 10 Republican candidates for the next US president were asked in their first Presidential Debate in May whether they believe in evolution, three of them – Kansas senator Sam Brownback, Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Colorado representative Tom Tancredo – answered no.
……..
Huckabee, for example, openly stated that he does not know if the Earth was created in six days, 6000 years ago…..

If a potential president is unwilling to accept the fundamental results of chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy and geology, …… then how can that individual be expected to assess the complex scientific and technological issues that will form the basis of US policy over the next eight years?

Lawrence Krauss poses an interesting question. If a presidential candidate is unwilling to accept the overwhelming evidence of all modern sciences, which all tell the same story about the age of the Earth and the Universe we observe, then how can we trust them to make informed decisions regarding science?

The problem with George W. Bush isn’t that he’s an idiot, he’s not. He’s an intelligent, educated individual. The problem is, he’s removed from reality. Anything that crops up that isn’t part of his view of the world is simply ignored. This is clear from his science policy.

He’s used this to ignore climate change, approve editing of science papers by people not scientifically trained, used it to veto bills on stem cell research and generally contribute to the impending crisis that America is facing; that they have nowhere near enough scientifically trained persons to run their scientific facilities, research departments and probably not enough to become science teachers and lecturers and train the next generation.

We’ve become a culture that celebrates stupidity. Look at Jade Goody (or any Big Brother contestant). We celebrate the fact that she’s stupid. Actually, she’s got what you might call street smarts, but she’s not academically intellectual. This is not a bad thing, but the fact that she’s become famous, partly from being perceived as stupid, is deeply worrying.

The real question is not do you believe in god? The real question is, do you believe in progress? Progress should be defined that just because we can do a thing, does not mean that we must do that thing. But all scientific knowledge has come from progress from great thinkers who have sought to increase their understanding.

No-one ever made progress by standing still.

9 people file lawsuit against TB flyer – Yahoo! News

9 people file lawsuit against TB flyer – Yahoo! News

Andrew Speaker is being sued by nine people on the plane he returned to the US on, because he had TB and may have infected them.

The article is interesting, but not the whole story. Initial test showed that Speaker had XDR TB, an extremely drug resistant form of TB. As such he was a serious health risk to others, and his own treatment would prove difficult. People with XDR have about a 50/50 chance of survival, and even if they survive the disease, there’s abother 50/50 chance they will remain carriers of the disease for years.

In effect the US government told Andrew Speaker, a native of Atlanta to “stay in Europe and die” because of the disease. They wouldn’t risk flying him home.

And yet, it was all a mistake. Speaker doesn’t have XDR TB, only MDR TB, a multi drug resistant, but still treatable form of TB.

I’m not condoning his actions. If Speaker really had XDR, then he put dozens of people at risk on the flight. But the US actions aren’t exactly squeaky clean here either.

Airbus A380

Is it me, or is the new Airbus A380 not the most ugly passanger jet ever?

That’s it. No other thoughts on the matter. Just wanted to say it. God, it’s ugly…

Transformers (2007) – Full cast and crew

Transformers (2007) – Full cast and crew

Amazing! No, not the film. Haven’t seen it yet. I was just thinking that it’s amazing that in this age of CGI special effects, that some people still take such pride in their work and speciailse in specific aspects of CGI trickery. I mean, there’s a guy in the credits called Christopher Moore who’s a flame artist.

He just does the CGI flames.

Still, there must be enough work to keep him paid if he can specialise in just fire.

Makes you think. Fire was mankind’s first great invention. When we were first able to make fire, we took a step away from the animal kingdom and towards being human. And now there’s a man who sits in an office, at his computer and creates fire. All day.

Blades lose appeal on relegation

BBC SPORT | Football | Premier League | Blades lose appeal on relegation

I don’t get this. Normally, I don’t follow football that much. But it seems pretty clear cut. West Ham broke the rules in signing Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano. They admit it, the premiership organisation admits it, everyone knows it.

Sheffield United launched an appeal after they went down on the last day of the season and West Ham stayed up. West Ham had earlier been fined £5.5m for their handling of the duo’s deals.

So they get fined, fine. But they don’t get points deducted from them. Points they undoubtedly won because they had those players on their team. There’s no clearer example of turning a blind eye to the rules.

You’re not being kind and helpful, you’re just obeying the law…

Curry’s advert on TV right now. You’ve probably seen it. Three people talking about how to help customers when they deliver a new washing machine or fridge.

One guy suggest blasting them into space.

Then someone suggests why not take away the old machine, recycle it and take away the packaging for the new machine.

It ends with the new company motto “Thinking of you”

Thing is….they’re not being nice. They’re not being environmentally friendly. They’re not being ecologically responsible. They’re simply obeying the law.

They’re required to take the old machine away and recycle it, since it’s too large and bulky for the average consumer to manage. They’re required to take away the packaging from the new machine.

Nothing they’re doing is any more or less than their legal minimum requirement. They’re just making this advert to try to show themselves being nice, when in fact they’re simply being legal.

The Halo 3 Beta is over….thank god!

Controversially, I’m glad the beta trial of Halo 3 multiplay is now over. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, it was great. Better than great, it was outstanding! I loved it.

But every time I powered up my 360. Every time I started playing a game, I was flooded with invites from my friends inviting me on. The beta requires you to load Crackdown and launch from the downloads menu. So every time I slipped on to have a quick half hour session on Crackdown, everyone thought I was starting off a Halo 3 session!

Oh the humanity. To be only able to play one game on my machine!

Well the beta’s over now, and we can all wait until September to get the full game, which looks amazing.

So I have a few months where I can play anything I want…..then it’s back to wall to wall Halo 3, I supose.

The time for healing has come

The time for conflict is over. The healing has begun. We have settled our differences , put aside our tiffs and shaken hands like men.

It is time to start the healing.

I have finally forgiven my Xbox 360 for losing my Crackdown savegame when I was 90% through the game.

Oh sure, laugh it up. But imagine if you’d irretrievably lost 17 hours worth of work if Word decided to destroy a file you’d been working on.

Not so funny now, is it?

Due to a bug, six weeks ago Crackdown lost my savegame. It put me back to zero stats on my agent (I had nearly maxed my agent’s skills out), and it lost all my weapons, all my safehouses, all my progress.
I was fuming mad. Didn’t play Crackdown at all, played the 360 much less than normal.

Well it’s all behind us now. We can move on with our lives.

Now, where can I get a cheap memory unit to back up my games?…..

‘Purity’ ring case in High Court

BBC NEWS | UK | ‘Purity’ ring case in High Court

I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. The school say they were in their right to ban the ring, and it is not repressing her right to express her faith, as the ring is not an integral part of her faith.

However, there’s a phrase in the report that really got to me. Here it is;

The rings are inscribed with a reference to the biblical verse I Thessalonians 4:3-4, which translates as: “God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin. Then each of you will control your body and live in holiness and honour.”

I’ve never seen a more ambiguous phrase in all my life. Sexual sin? What the hell is that? It’s a phrase that is entirely dependant on your own morals and point of view. It could be interpreted any way you wanted it to.

Oh You Fuckwit!

BBC NEWS | Health | Panel endorses girls’ cancer jab

That’s it! I am madder than hell!

This is a vaccination against CANCER for fuck’s sake! And some religious groups are saying it will encourage young girls to have sex.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Seriously! It’s a vaccine that prevents cancer. And they’re complaining it promotes promiscuity. There’s an internet phrase that covers this nicely: WTF?

Their argument goes that a girl should only get the vaccine once she becomes sexually active. It’s not like girls are even having safe sex anyway, the rate of underage mothers shows that. Do you really think that a girl who won’t or can’t or is too embarrassed to get protection, do you really think she will go to a medical practicioner and get a vaccine before sex?

And to all the people saying this vaccine promotes promiscuity, I have this to say: You’re an idiot. I’m sorry, but you are. Seriously, on a scale of one to ten; how deluded are you?

Sometimes there’s two sides to every argument, a way to see something from the other person’s viewpoint, but in this case: You’re an idiot.

More info from Wikipedia
(Particularly the part that says that condoms offer, at best, only partial protection from infection)

Censors ban ‘brutal’ video game

BBC NEWS | Censors ban ‘brutal’ video game

I’ve had an epiphany.

I was on the bus this morning and the headline on the Metro cover was ” ‘Sadistic’ game banned”. They comdemn this game for its violence, and yet no-one objects to films like Hostel 2, which is closer to the mythical snuff movie that I’ve ever heard of.

What gives?

Is it because this game is more shocking than the movie? Or is it because games are seen as fundamentally “for kids” reardless of their age rating.

People don’t seem to understand that the age certificate on a game is just as legally binding as the one on a film. It’s an offence to let anyone under the age play the game.

Video rental shops used to have a bad rep in the UK. Cinemas were usually better, because they could have their distribution licence withdrawn if underage kids watched an 18 film. They’d get no more films to show people. But rental shops were different. Commonly, videos were rented to kids not old enough to watch them legally. It was only through prosecutions, fines and a lot of advertisements that people finally got the message: An 18 film is for adults!

Yet this message is being lost on game shops. Time after time I’ve seen a parent (often a mother) in the queue at my local game shop buying an age restricted game, with a young kid standing nearby, shuffling their feet.

How much effort does it take for the assistant to mention that the game has an age restriction?

Thing is, I don’t think it would matter if they did anyway. The parent would shrug it off thinking “it’s a game, it must be for kids…”

Anyway, back to my epiphany…

Newspapers are a terrible idea. Their money comes from their circulation. Their circulation is dependant on their stories. So of course, they’re going to jump on any bandwagon going.

There’s a reason why every few years you see stories about coffee gives you cancer, or coffee prevents you getting cancer, or coffee has bugger all to do with cancer. Medical researchers want to make a name for themselves. A name brings reputation, funding and success. So they write a paper about something that’s bound to get published about a common food that has a link to a disease everyone fears.

It’s not that they’re lying, far from it. It’s just that they don’t care about warning people about a danger, they only care about making a name for themselves.

Knock-off Nigel

Knock-off Nigel

???

Very odd advert about knock off DVDs. “Knock off Nigel buys knock off DVDs”

Went to the website, and can’t find anything on it explaining who is running the campaign or the website.

Also, I think they may have wanted to put more effort into the song. Nothing rhymes with “DVDs”, nor can it be sung in any sort of melodic way. Go ahead…try singing it.

Domestos

How come the Domestos adverts have changed from

“Kills 99% of all bacteria”

to

“Kills all known germs”

Have they significantly improved the formula of the cleaner, or has the continued usage of germ killing cleaning products forced 1% of germs into extinction?

Arrogant Uninstall Programs

Honestly, I thought these were a thing of the past. I was wrong.

In the past, uninstalling a badly written game from your PC could have unpredictable consequences. Often the uninstall program would remove something your computer needed, like a sound or graphics driver. The game arrogantly believes that since it installed the driver, that it wasn’t there before it came along.

Later, the industry cleaned up this problem by getting the install program to list everything that was on the PC before installation started. Then when being uninstalled, the program would only remove components that it installed, leaving the computer as it found it.

But I just removed Star Trek Legacy, a terrible game by the way, from my PC. And it’s reset my mouse settings for some inexplicable reason.

I started the computer today, moved the mouse and for a few seconds, I thought my arm wasn’t working. It was so slow…

UN rebrands radiation sign

UN rebrands radiation | The Register

The UN wants everyone to start using this new radiation sign, despite the fact that when shown to college students in the UK and US, most of them failed to understand what it meant. They picked up on the fact that the sign represented danger, but were unable to figure out what it meant.

In addition, every other hazard symbol is a triangle with a yellow background, not red. If this is to replace all radiation signs, this is misleading. Some hazard signs would look less important, such as the biohazard one. It often warns about deadly diseases that are stored inside, whereas the radiation sign often is only a warning about potential exposure. It needs to be listed on doctors’ and densits’ surgeries where there are x-ray machines, in hospitals, in university labs, etc.

In each place the normal level of exposure is not life threatening, and in a lot of places, you need to be exposed (like getting an x-ray or CT scan).

Imagine you’ve broken your arm and are in the hospital, and are wheeled into the radiography department. Would you want a sign that says “Danger Radiation” or a sign that says “Danger! Radiation and death! Run for your life!”

The worst part is that the new sign is the result of “five years of research and testing on 1,650 individuals in 11 countries” according to the article.

Do manners really cost nothing?

The bloody nerve!

OK, let me give you the back story to this. I got stuck at work on the one night of the week that I meet up with my friends. It’s only ever on this night! Anyway, I left work about 20 minutes late, so I’d missed the company shuttlebus that takes me home. So I waited at the bus stop and called Frazer to let him know I’d be late.

He told me that he and John were in a pub at the top of the hill. The hill I was at the bottom of. This big bloody hill….

So I told him I’d be up in a few minutes.

Now, I was already out of breath from running to the bus stop, and I set off up the hill. It’s a hell of a climb and I was rushing it to get there fast.

So I’m walking and walking and walking, and getting more and more out of breath.

About 50 yards from the pub (still going uphill), I passed this old lady selling the Big Issue.

Now normally, I do say no thanks to people selling it, if they are being vocal and offering it. But I was panting and sweating and seriously out of breath, so I didn’t.

And she shouts at me!

“It doesn’t cost anything to say ‘no thanks’ you know!”

If I’d been less out of breath, I’d have told her I was too out of breath to say it. Talk about a catch 22.

New Scottish Parliament

Alex Salmond, upon leanring that the SNP had the largest number of seats in the Scottish Parliament, held a press conference saying that this was a great result for the SNP and a great result for Scotland and that Labour had been thoroughly defeated.

Yet Labour only lost 4 seats overall, dropping from 44 to 40. In real election terms, that’s nothing.

The real losers were the minority parties and the independants. We’ve now only got one independant MSP now. There are no Scottish Socialists. Now, I disagree with most of what they stand for, but I respect their right to have a voice in the parliament.

This is a total disaster, the parliament is now a mostly two party fighting ground, with the smaller parties now even smaller and some forced out altogether.

How can he call this a great result for Scotland?

Dad vs Technology

I got a couple of calls from my dad on his mobile, but each time I answered, I just heard hissing and background noise.

Puzzled, I called the home number. He was complaining that all week, his mobile makes cals but he can’t hear anyone.

Meeting him today, I found the problem. He was wearing the handsfree headset for his phone around his neck on its carrying handle. Everytime he made a call, the phone routed the voice to the heaset. I was hearing the world around him, muffled slightly by his jumper….

Time for the top ten bad film remakes

10. Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton version). Terrible and with an ending that MADE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!!!

9. Flight of the Phoenix. Planes crashes, some people die, they argue a lot and rebuild it. And the remake will do what differently?…..

8. Assault on Preceinct 13. Original had hoodlums (that’s what they were called) attacking the station for no clear reason. New film gives it a reason. Which kinda spoils the whole “evil menace” thing it had going.

7. Evil Dead 2. Which was exactly the same story as Evil Dead 1. A clear example of why film making and LSD don’t mix.

6. Never Say Never Again. A remake of Thunderball with the same Bond actor. Doesn’t even get listed in the “official” list of Bond films.

5. Armageddon/Deep Impact. Remakes (kinda) of the ultimate disaster movie: Meteor! About the US and the Ruskies working together to blast a rock into smithereens. Excellent for bad physics, slagging NASA and cheesy 70s facial hair. No disaster movie is complete without Sean Connery.

4. The Italian Job. Was totally different from the original, and good anough to have it’s own name. What was the point is re-using the name? The only real similarity was the minis.

3. The Time Machine. OK the new version was actually closer to HG Wells’ book, but still… Jeremy Irons as the bad guy? Wow, what original casting.

2. Psycho. What the fluff?

1. Star Wars trilogy. They’ve been “re-touched” so many times, they practically are re-makes! And what’s with that lightsaber colour changing in the Millenium Falcon sequence on the DVD version?!? He’d better put in a damn good “explanation” in episode 3!

Finally, we get to find out how good an actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is…

Free Paris Hilton Petition (Bazooka Barf Alert!)

Now. Imagine yourself in Govenor Schwarzenegger’s position. A official from the “Free Paris Hilton Movement” comes into your office with this petition. You read it, and the first paragraph is:

Paris Whitney Hilton is an American celebrity and socialite. She is an heiress to a share of the Hilton Hotel fortune, as well as to the real estate fortune of her father Richard Hilton. She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.

…and you have to keep a straight face….

I can picture it now.

Govenor Schwarzenegger: “Vood you excuze me for a mooment?”

Walks into restroom, followed by the sound of explosive laughter.

However, the petition does make a good point, namely:

Brandy’s California Highway accident, although no proof of DUI was evidenced in her accident, resulting in the death of a young wife and mother in California, yet Brandy walks free as of today, never doing any time and A WOMAN HAS BEEN KILLED most likely due to her reckless driving!

Yet, Paris Hilton did not hurt, injure, or kill anyone or anything, and yet she must do jail time.

Which you have to agree, says a lot about the US justice system.

Another sign of old age…

You know you’re getting old when you see a L’Oreal advert, and the name of the actress flashes briefly at the bottom of the page, and you think to yourself:

Who the fuck is she?

Game Debate to the Death! Vertical or horizontal?

Game Debate to the Death! Vertical or horizontal consoles? :: DESTRUCTOID :: Hardcore video game blog

My word!

I was browsing some gaming websites when I came across a heated debate about whether it’s better to have your console vertical or horizontal. The debates are heated, and get quite personal at times, decending into a flame war.

In case you’re wondering, the consensus seems to be:

The Wii should be vertical if you have space for it, unless you plug in GameCube controllers, in which case, it seems likely to fall over. The GameGube won’t go any other way.

The PS3 seems to be stored mostly horizontal due to the weight distribution inside it and the overall cost of the machine. The PS2 seems to be mostly horitontal, since you need to buy a stand to make it sit upright without falling over.

The 360 debate is still out for the count. It’s clearly designed to be stored in either position (unlike the original XBox), but some people claim vertical knackers the DVD drive or the discs. Yet clearly (from experiments), the machine stays cooler if kept vertical, strangely, since vertical blocks off the largest air vent on the machine. The overall clearance at the bottom (when horizontal) is quite small and won’t let much air through.

I suppose you could correct that by fitting stick on rubber pads to the bottom to raise its ground clearance in horizontal if that worried you.

So the jury is still out.

Windows Vista: Aero

I was trying to get a friend’s new laptop online recently and had my first proper look at Windows Vista, including the brand new Aero interface, a graphical interface that stacks the programs running and shuffles them like real files in 3D.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Microsoft realise the implications of the name in the UK, since it shares its name with a popular bubble chocolate bar. Aero: Full of holes and melts easily.

Made me laugh anyway.

There’s slow and then there’s slow

I always used to complain when I was younger than my sister ate her food much slower than anyone else.

Turns out that she also drinks just as slowly. When I commented on this, as she was half way through a drink when everyone else was finished theirs, she said “I can’t help it if I’m a slow drinker.”

To which I replied “Slow? I’ve seen glaciers move faster!”

I was then struck with the thought that in 50 years time, kids might not get that joke…

I don't get it.

At the bottom of my street are a couple of communal recycling bins, accepting paper, cardboard, packaging and plastics. They’ve been there for a few years, and I take care to seperate my recyclables.

Today, the council let us all know how much paper we’d saved over the last year……by putting a leaflet through our doors.

Honestly…

eBay Madness!

Ok, so I’m on eBay looking for some bargains and I can’t help but think that some of the people using eBay might have missed the point of an auction.

Y’see, an auction is supposed to be a place where you bid as much as you are willing to pay for an item, and see who wants it the most. But over the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of people playing a different game. They seem to be trying to pay an amount as close to the item’s retail value as possible, without going over. Sort of like a real version of The Price Is Right.

I’ll give you an example. I was bidding on a used computer game. I had already had the foresight to look at online retailers to determine what they were selling it for. Play.com had the lowest price, so I deducted the postage costs from their price and found the maximum that it was worth paying for the game. Then I deduct a little more to find my maximum bid that I’m willing to go to.

In the end, I got sniped in the last minute of the auction, something I hate to see (but am forced to do myself in order to win any auction).

To these people, I ask you a question: What is the point of paying £24.49 for a used version of an item that sells brand new for £24.99? Seriously! Is it some sort of psychological compulsion? I know eBay addiction exists, and some people just have to win an auction, but I’ve seen this behaviour so many times, it’s worrying.

My sister once bid on a book and CD for teach yourself chinese. The seller actually put in his listing: “Please don’t bid more than £25 for this item as the book is still in print and sells for this amount.”

She was sniped in the last five minutes by someone who paid £27 for the book.

What a tool.

The problem is, I don’t see an easy solution. It’s a balance between getting the best bargain, and getting an item you really really want. If I put in the maximum bid I was willing to entertain paying straight away, I’d probably get sniped at the last minute, but I could end up paying more than I might have otherwise got away with. If I constantly re-bid on the item, I push the price up anyway and risk going over my personally set limit for the item.

Dumb

It’s a terrible thing when you realise you may actually be getting dumber.

For a few months now, I’ve been putting up with my Bit Torrent client hampering my web browsing, causing web servers to reset my connection because my computer took too long to respond to their requests.

Only now have I tried fiddling with the settings. Finding the controls that limit the number of outgoing and incoming connections seems to have corrected the worst of the problem, and I’m fairly sure that tweaking it will eliminate the error altogether.

But four months before I went looking for the settings?

I’m more than a little worried…

Heaven Can’t Wait

That advert for Heaven chocolate is getting on my nerves.

How come it’s OK to portray men as disposable commodities in adverts in the UK? We’re constantly bombared with images of men being used, abused and dumped by women, just to sell product.

This advert features a woman answering her door to her date, she throws his flowers nto her apartment, checks out his underwear, kisses him and ruffles his hair, then abandons him on her door step with the words:

“I had fun tonight. Call me soon.”

She then goes inside to eat chocolate. And I know that it’s an allegory, a deliberate exaggeration of events to emphasise the product. But all I can think when I watch it is he’s not going to call her any time soon because she comes across as slightly unhinged.

Windows Vista

Well afer my disasterous attempt to make Vista work on the internet for a friend, I now realise what the future of computing is.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem Hal?

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t communicate with that peripheral. Do you have the driver disc?

No Hal, I don’t have the disc.

I think it’s a camera Dave. Can you select which manufacturer from a list?

IT’S A PRINTER HAL!!!

An hour of trying to get it on the Internet. It couldn’t even recognise a local area connection, and seemed to think that all broadband internet is PPPoE (telephone based ADSL). My friend had cable.

I seem to have a reputation of being a ‘fixer’ of PCs. I tell you, the proudest moment was when my dad, cut off from my support help when I moved out, figured out a complex problem on his own. It was like that line in Superman

The father becomes the son and the son….the father.

Mysteries of the Universe (Part 1)

Ever noticed how in a crowded lift going up, the people getting off on the lower floors are at the back of the carriage and the people going to the top are next to the doors? Thos going the furthest are in a poition to get out first, before those going a shorter distance.

And when you finally finish off the carton of juice or bottle of coke from the fridge, the last drop always fills the glass to the top, without overflowing.

I started wondering about these things while watching a boring movie at the cinema (yes, it was that bad).

Well, like most mysteries of the universe, the answer is in the maths.

The volume of juice in the carton or bottle is a function of the volume of the average glass size. Since most people will either fill the glass most of the way, or fill it half way when taking a drink, (when was the last time you saw someone pour themselves two-thirds of a glass), the volume of drink left at the end is usually exactly one glass full.

And the lift? Well, in a shocking discovery this week, I found out that if people are waiting for a lift to arrive in the morning to go up to work, those going to the higher floors arrive after those going a shorter distance. They then fill the lift carriage in the order they arrived.

But exactly why this occurs remains a mystery…

Cillit Bang!

Man, those adverts are annoying…

The latest one is about a cleaner for sinks, bathrooms and drain cleaner. It features the most disgustingly dirty sink followed by a grime encrusted toilet bowl.

The Cillit bang works as advertised and cleans away the dirt and limescale, looking like it hasn’t been cleaned in months. The lady in the advert says “I don’t use my ordinary bathroom cleaner any more.”

I turned to my sister and said “I don’t think she uses it now.”

ntl:Virgin No Longer Showing Sky One

Well the deadline passed a few minutes ago and Sky One is no longer broadcast on ntl:Virgin (and Sky will soon no longer be broadcasting any programs on Freeview unless you sign up for them).

At first when I heard about this, I was upset and annoyed.

But as I thought about it more, I realised I wasn’t going to miss Sky One. It shows mostly repeats and I’ve been using it in a lazy way, watching any old junk rather than surfing the myriad of other great channels and shows, or (as a truly outrageous suggestion), turning the damn TV off and doing something else instead.

I’ll buy the DVD box sets of the shows I’ll miss. They’re cheap enough online and come out soon after the show broadcasts anyway, so what’s the big deal?

Trident Soft Advert

Not sure exactly what it is about that advert for Trident Soft chewig gum that irks me, but I think it might be the comic’s style. Telling an audience what annoys him for laughs hasn’t been a popular comedy style for five years.

It just makes an annoying advert even more annoying.

The Dog Poo Fairy

What is it with some dog owners? They let their dogs crap on the street and just leave it.

What do they expect? Some magical creature comes swooping down to clean it up? Let me make it clear to all dog owners who do this.

Someone always steps in it! That’s how it get’s “cleaned up”!

One can only image that the dog poo fairly must be related to the cigarette end gnome, who goes about cleaning up all the discarded cigarette butts dropped in the street, and is probably a distant cousin of the chewing gum elf.

Bottom line: I don’t crap in your hallway, please don’t shit on my sidewalk.

Virgin slams BSkyB in TV dispute

BBC NEWS | Business | Virgin slams BSkyB in TV dispute

That Rupert Murdoch is a four star act. Those four stars taking the place of the four letter word I’d like to call him.

Virgin’s Responce

Sky basically have tried to increase the cost to ntl:Virgin by almost doubling the price. I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable. Are they increasing the charge to their own subscribers by the same amount? No.

As one person on the comments section of Virgin Media’s website put it:

Sky said last month it planned to withdraw its channels from Freeview viewers – offering them instead on a terrestrial pay TV service.
So Sky wants to hold all us television viewers to ransom, pay up or else! Isn’t it about time that the government stepped in and told Sky that they are not able to hold a monopoly?

Not likely given Murdoch’s strong connections to the government. But they do have a reputation of bullying other companies into getting their own way.

Frankly, I’m goosed either way. I don’t want to miss out of my favourite shows like Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica. But I don’t want to be bullied into changing my television provider. Like most people in Edinburgh, I would be charged extra for a non-standard installation. The roof is over four floors up and because most of the city is covered by a protection order, the dish can’t go on the wall. It needs to be attached to the chimney, if it’s strong enough to support it.

It’s basically £300.

I’ve got two words for that plan: Screw That.

Although those aren’t the two words I’d use to Mr Murdoch’s face.

Worst Junk Food Ad

I’ve just seen what I think is the worst advert for junk food I have ever witnessed.

When I say worst, I’m not talking about badly made, or annoying or innacurate. I’m talking about completely irresponsible.

It’s an ad for a microwavable burger, and shows a kid going to the fridge and looking for food. He dismisses the sausages as too much hard work, the red pepper as tricky, the fish as an unknown food and settles for the burger.

What the hell kind of message is that sending to kids? Forget healthy food, go for quick and easy? Exactly how hard is it to cook sausages anyway? Five minutes in a frying pan, 15 minutes under the grill or 30 minutes in the oven. How hard is that? Peppers tricky? Maybe for an idiot, but stuffed pepper is one of the first things I learnt at school cooking class and it takes fifteen minutes. And if he doesn’t recognise fish and the importance of protein, then he’s in for trouble later in life.

Ever Changing Norton Anti-Virus

That was the problem with the old version of Norton Anti-Virus. Although its program would often be changed with updates it downloaded, it was always at a loss to understand that this process could occur on other applications.

Every time my Star Wars Galaxies executable was updated by a patch, it had to be told to allow this program internet access. This consisted of deleting the entry to the program, allowing Norton to capture the outgoing connection, then allowing all instances of that program, so it would remember.

What have PCs and Grandfather Clocks got in common?

They’re both less agreeable when you move them.

Doesn’t matter how many carefully you move it, the darned thing never works just right the first time in its new location.

Pentagon Wins A Stop Loss Round

Pentagon Wins A Stop Loss Round

I first found out about this in an episode of Boston Legal. I thought it was a joke.

It’s not!

Qualls was in the Army from 1986-94 and re-enlisted in the Army National Guard’s “Try One” program in July 2003.

Under the program, Qualls was supposed to be in the Guard only for one year.

However, in October 2003 the Army told him he was recalled to active duty and his “expiration of term of service” was being moved from July 6, 2004, to Dec. 24, 2031 — not that Qualls would actually be held for that long. Stop-loss generally means a soldier is held in the service to the end of his or her tour of duty and 90 days after returning home.

It gets worse:

For Jessica Salamon of Ravenna, Ohio, the stop-loss policy has already affected her and her husband, Chad, a National Guardsman who is serving in Iraq with the 118th Medical Battalion as a mechanic. Chad Salamon’s six-year commitment should end in March, but he is almost certain not to return by then.

“This is supposed to be an all-volunteer military,” said Jessica Salamon, who has been to therapy and has seen her dream of starting a family deferred. “They’re not volunteering when they’re told they can’t leave.”

(Soldiers Facing Extanded Tours)

War

I’ve just finished watching an episode of Boston Legal, where James Spader is arguing that a soldier killed in Iraq shouldn’t have been there, was fraudulently kept in service and not given the correct equipment.

I don’t know how much, if any, of the story is true or based on true events. And since the phrase “based on a true story” has been rendered completely meaningless by cynical movie producers, I probably never will know.

But what I started thinking about was the reasons for going to war.

You see, I can understand why we went to war against Hitler. There was a clear threat there.
I can understand why the Korean War happened, because it was necessary to halt the spread of communism in an unstable region.

But then it gets a little hazy.

I understand (roughly) why the Vietnam war started, although I was shocked upon looking it up to discover that it ran for 16 years. Sixteen years at war.

I sort of understand the Falklands War, started because of a misunderstaning between what was said and what wasn’t said between the UK and Argentina. Basically, we decommissioned a small patrol boat guarding the island, a boat that would have lasted exactly five minutes against the Argentinian navy, but they saw this as a message that the UK would not defend the island if invaded.

But I cannot begin to explain the war in Iraq. I mean, I understand the first one. What I don’t get is:

1. Why we never finished the job, deposed Sadam and liberated the country.
2. Why we felt we had to go back and have another go at it.

The amount of money being spent there is obscene! Hundreds of billions so far. Likely to be measurable in trillions of dollars before it’s over. And why?

Yes yes yes, I know. Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Weapons that we already have, by the way. Weapons we haven’t been able to find, due to a fundamental failure of intelligence. A failure that continues to be promoted.

It’s like halfway through a game, somebody suddenly changes the rules. All of an instant, no-one’s talking about WMDs. I can almost imagine someone off stage whispering to the President or the PM: “Downplay the WMDs!!!”

This failure can be traced back to the bay of pigs incident. A small almost forgotten incident that occured (and partially led to) the Cuban missile crisis.

Basically: The CIA, with the support of the US armed forces, would support an invasion of Cuba by exiled activists. The key word there is “support.” No direct action would be taken, save for air support.

There was good intelligence that there was a lot of resentment of Castro at the time, so a small uprising could give way to civil war and depose him. The insurgents were to be dropped off where they could make their way to nearby mountains if they needed to retreat.

Well first, the landing site changed. The mountains were now too far away. Secondly, Kennedy seems to have changed his mind and cancelled the air support, which was vital for the plan to work. But worst of all, the reported feelings of hostility towards Castro in the general populace was completely untrue. The CIA’s network had been completely infiltrated by Castro’s men and they were feeding false information to the CIA.

Castro then decided that he needed insurance against a US led invasion, which precipitated the Cuban missile crisis. Missiles were installed, and we damn near had world war three.

And all because the Pentagon was too eager to believe the reports coming from Cuba without verifying them.

My question is: Have we really learnt the lessons from our past? Do we truly understand how wars start and why they are fought? And do we know how to end a war when we know we can’t win it?

The Anne Hathaway Paradox

Odd thing about Anne Hathaway. She keeps doing Disney films like the Princess Diaries, and family films like The Devil Wear Prada. But every other film she seems to spend a lot of time with no clothes on.

Seems strange that she keeps getting cast in kids films.

What does quantum theory and SETI have in common?

And no, I’m not looking for the answer: They’re both expensive branches of science.

Here’s the thing. Everyone’s been looking for a way to unify quantum mechanics with gravity, a so called quantum theory of gravity.

There are numerous theories all trying to explain a way to unify them, often involving reasons why we haven’t found a theory yet. For example, the laboratories at Cern is looking for the Higgs boson. To find it, a new super collider is being built, that can accelerate particles to even higher energies than has been achieved before.
And even while this is being built, some theorist are saying that it won’t be able to achieve the energy level required to detect the Higgs boson.

Each experiment to find a new particle, or examine the structure of space-time in greater detail almost always require more powerful or more sensitive experiments. And sometimes it’s not even necessary. A twin satellite system called Gravity Probe B was launched recently to detect the distortion of space-time that occurs near a large, rotating body (like the Earth). And yet, the data to prove their case already existed from the Mars Global Surveyor in polar orbit around Mars.

This is exactly the same argument that has been levied at SETI. The argument goes something like this:

If we spend the next 100 years searching with every radio telescope on Earth, looking for signals from intelligent aliens, we still might not find anything. And yet, there’s always another way to search, different fequencies, different methods, another reason we haven’t found the alien signal, another reason to change the way we’re searching.

Since we don’t know in advance if there are intelligent signals to detect, we can’t be sure that it’s worth searching at all. Compare that with clearing a minefield, for example. You can be certain there are mines there, and you can be certain that you’ve got them all after you’re done.

The search for a unified theory might have the same problem. There’s no proof that such a unification is even possible. In fact, the reason we’re searching in the first place is that we know that both theories are correct (they’ve been obsevered working), except that they contradict each other.

So we have a choice:

• Continue searching for a way to unify the two branches of science or,
• Learn to live with the contradiction.

It’s something of a conundrum for humans. We can’t resist a good mystery.

And so, we search.

Year of the….?

So (if my calculations are correct) tomorrow was the Chinese New Year in 2006. This year, the new year begins on February 18th.

2005 was the year of the rooster.
2006 was the year of the dog.
and by the look of things 2007 is the year of the racist.
(actually it’s the year of the pig, which makes me giggle).

All I can remember thinking when I heard about the racism row in Celebrity Big Brother was “Yet another reason I’m glad I’m not watching.”

However, I do find it…perplexing, that this starts to happen after bosses at Channel 4 admit that this was shaping up to be the most boring Big Brother ever.

I’m not being paranoid, they really are out to get me.

Don’t DO that!

Oh my aching heart!

Windows got to the loading screen today and just froze!

Thankfully, one quick reboot later and all appears well, but oh god that gave me a shock!

There’s never a defibrilator nearby when you need one….

Federal Way schools restrict Gore film

Federal Way schools restrict Gore film

“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

You know, I rarely say this, but: what a dick.

This guy, Frosty Hardison, is the reason that no action is being taken on global warming. He objected to Al Gore’s film being shown because part of the message is that America is largely responsible for the global crisis.

As for him saying he deosn’t want sex education in schools: does he understand why we had a baby boom in the ’60s? It wasn’t that people were having more sex (in fact the birth rate should have dropped since contraception was more widely available). It was because people in the ’40s were never told how to have sex. Married couples went literally years before consumating their marriages!

There is hope though, one senior at the school is reported as saying that although she hasn’t seen Al Gore’s film, she wants to, since it explains how humans are affecting the planet, and what we can do to avert the crisis.

“Watching a movie doesn’t mean that you have to believe everything you see in it,” she said.

However, I read a brilliant joke in New Scientist magazine a few weeks ago. It was about how creationism has become intelligent design, which is now sponsoring science to gain acceptance as a ‘real science’. The quote was:

“It is ironic that a belief that Darwinian evolution is wrong, is itself forced to continually evolve in an attempt to gain popular support.”

Priceless…

TV Movie Editing

Can anyone explain this to me?

I was watching Star Trek: First Contact on Channel 4, and I couldn’t help noticing the very bad and inconsistent editing job they’d done. Removing certain lines that contain mild swearing, presumably due to the broadcast time (19:05-21:05). Examples of missing lines are:

• Lily Sloan’s “Bullshit!” and “You son of a bitch!”
• Zefram Cochrane’s “Sweet Jesus!” when he sees the Enterprise.

Yet they keep in:

• Scenes involving violence and death.
• Picard being poked in the eye with a drill (yeuch!).
• The Borg drilling into Data’s head.
• Worf hacking a Borg to pieces (they did cut out the bloody neck part).
• And probably worse of all: the flesh being eviscerated from the Borg Queen’s face.

So it’s OK to show scenes of violence before the watershed, but it’s not OK to swear.

This is very worrying, because it’s exactly the same slippery slope that American TV went down a few years ago, so that now they can show the most extreme violence and it’s OK, but throw in a naughty word (or a nipple shot) and suddenly everyone’s up in arms!

For the record, Star Trek: First Contact has a 12 certificate, the highest any Star Trek movie currently has.

Churches unite over adoption row

BBC NEWS | Politics | Churches unite over adoption row

Urgh! Again with the religion.

The problem with this arguement is that the people with strong religious feels about homosexual couples adopting have no common ground with the people who believe any stable family unit should be able to adopt. It’s like trying to teach someone calculus when they don’t understand basic maths.

I always find reversing the question helps in these matters. Currently the question is:

Why should church run adoption agencies be forced to go against their conscience and place children with homosexual couples?

It should be:

Why should a child be denied loving parents by a church run adoption agency just because of their prospective parents’ sexual orientation?

The problem is tradition (and the associated traditional values). People think that tradition means “We do this, because we’ve always done this.” But it really is only the last generation’s way of thinking. The current generation always have their own take on the world, and they need to come to their own conclusions about what traditions they keep and which they throw away.

“Ah, but is it not also true that times must and do change…”

-Eddie Murphy (Coming To America)

Religion has been proclaiming that homosexuality is wrong. This is based on some very shaky and controversial parts of historical religious documents (parts of the bible), while ignoring other rules in those same parts. Even then the documents only usually they only refer to men (since they were written by men and they didn’t really care about women got up to).

in the past, this rule against homosexual males made some sort of sense, since the human population was very small and any activity that didn’t produce more babies was likely to be harmful to the local population.

But today, we have over 6 billion people on the planet. In my lifetime, that’s likely to rise to over 9 billion. Every model of the world says that even at 6 billion people, we have roughly twice as many people as the planet can support, longterm.

So the question really becomes: Why isn;t religion moving with the times? Why does it still stick to a few rules in the bible that support it’s bigotry, and I’m sorry to use that word, but it is the word that best describes the situation, and prejudiced view?

If anyone can answer that question, you’re smarter than me, because I’ve been trying to understand this all my adult life.

Home Office Reforms

BBC NEWS | Politics | Home Office split ‘within months’

The news that after the unforgivable screw-ups of the home office and its failure to record offences of Britons overseas on the police database, they’re now talking about splitting the largest civil service department into two parts. One to deal with justice and one for public protection.

I’d like to make a few predictions:

1. This will have no effect on efficiency. In fact it will probably make it worse, because there will be an increased amount of communication between departments.
2. The increased communication will probably require a new office to co-ordinate between the two departments.
3. Someone will accuse us of copying the Americans, since the two departments will have similar mandates of the US Department of Justice and US Department of Homeland Security.
4. It will only be a matter of time before some criminal uses it to his/her advantage by claiming that his/her human rights were violated when information is passed between the two departments.

PS3 Fails To Impress - My Take On Things

The problem (as I see it) was including the Blue-Ray DVD player in the machine. There’s no call for it as there’s little demand to have a next gen DVD player in the house at present.

It was suggested that Sony should release the PS3 with a standard DVD player, and later the next version of the machine could include the Blue-Ray.

Including the Blue-Ray has:

• Delayed the PS3 several times from its original release date.
• Vastly increased the RRP.
• Been seen as un-necessary by industry analysts.
• and been accused of Sony forcing their format on the world (there was a rumour that the Blue-Ray was included in the PS3 to increase the overall sales figures of Blue-Ray drives, thus allowing Sony to claim market ownership and crush HD-DVD)

Without the Blue-Ray, it’d be retailing at about the same price as the 360 when it first launched. This would allow consumers to make a direct pound for pound comparison with the features of the machines, give them a indication of how it would drop in price over time, and enable buyers to make an informed decision of what to do with their money: ie “I’ve got £330, so I can either buy the 360, 2 controllers and 3 games, or the PS3, one controller and 2 games.” (Or something similar to this.)

It’s got a lot going against it.

• It’s last to market.
• It’s most expensive.
• It’s got equipment that many users won’t be able to take advantage of.

A lot of people who are were PS2 owners might be put off by a perceived lack of support for the product from Sony.

They’ve had to put up with a less than brilliant online gaming system for the PS2, a cancelled hard drive for the PS2, a withdrawn from market network adapter for the big PS2, so only the little ones could go online, a blatant lack of support for the PSP and the worry of a repeat of the problem with the UMD films, where Sony tried to push it’s own format on the market and failed.

They might (as I do) worry that Blue-Ray will fail as a format, and then they’re stuck with a console that was sold as a DVD player/Console combo, that can’t play any new DVDs that come out because they’re all in HD-DVD format now.

PS3 Fails To Impress

A friend of mine sent me this.
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There are a lot of reports lately about PS3s sitting in piles on the shelves in the U.S.. Many were returned in the initial month after purchase when speculators failed to realise any profit. Ebay shows a number of PS3 sales at shop prices or just below, as people try to make their money back. Silly money for PS3s on Ebay lasted only for a couple of days.

Wii prices, however, are between 125 and 150% of RRP on Ebay, and most major shops still report selling out of any Wii console stock within an hour or two of delivery.

The PS3 has not been the major success that Sony were hoping for. So far the PS3 is only selling to early-adopter die-hard Sony fans with sufficient disposable income – not as big a slice of the market as Sony thought. Many reports (on Slashdot, Digg etc.) seem to suggest that almost all video-gamers already have a good gaming PC, or a recent console. Few people seem desperate to upgrade, except the early adopters, who’ve already done so. The PS3 is very expensive, and there’s one good game for it (Resistance). Motorstorm was a big buzz title pre-launch, but it’s now been revealed that the impressive scenes shown at game shows were pre-rendered cinematics. Software sells hardware, and there’s nothing so amazing that people will buy the hardware just to play the game (as happened with GTA3 on PS2).

By all accounts (from reading comments on several developer blogs) the PS3 is a complete pig to program well. The 360 is quite straightforward, being a multi-cored PC-in-a-box, and the Wii is a Gamecube v1.5 (which could well mean that a number of games for the Cube, which were shelved in development as the machine didn’t sell too well, could be polished up and released for the Wii, which is selling very nicely indeed).

True, Sony have deep pockets, and could support an unprofitable system for some time, but so did Sega, and their failure to market the Dreamcast pushed them out of the hardware business altogether. The cycle is fast, and vicious – console doesn’t sell well, so fewer developers release games for it – with less software available, the console is even less appealing to consumers, so doesn’t sell well…

Given that you already have a next-gen console, the question you’ll need to ask yourself is this: Is the small handful of platform-unique titles on the PS3 worth laying out £500 for?

Router Problems

A friend of mine, who currently has his broadband through a company in the UK starting with the letter “T”, shall we say, has had a rather unpleasant experience with them

Recently purchasing an Xbox 360, he wanted to hook it up to the internet for online gaming. This requires a router to share the internet connection, and he wanted to buy a wireless router, so he doesn’t have to trail cable all over the house.

So, knowing that some routers don’t work well with certain internet providers (my old one AOL for example can’t work with most Belkin routers), my friend called his provider to ask their advice.

They happily transferred him to their sales department, advising him that they could get the right router for him.

He bought it, and it arrived promptly.

Unfortunately, it’s an ethernet/cable router. It only works with either cable broadband, or with telephone broadband that uses an ethernet ADSL modem (a rare thing indeed).
He has a USB ADSL modem. There’s no way on this green earth that these two devices will talk to each other. They don’t even have a compatible socket.

So he called his provider, and asked to return it for a refund or exchange it for one that works.

They refused.

He was a little taken back at this, so he asked if they would provide him with an ethernet ADSL modem, so he could get it to work.

They refused.

He asked why they would sell him a router that couldn’t possibly work with his internet set-up, and their responce was basically:

“It’s your fault as the customer for ordering the wrong router from us, even though it was you (the customer) taking our advice (which was wrong) on which router to buy.”

Sorry, hang on a second.

Their excuse is basically “we’re too stupid to sell you the correct router, but we’re not going to replace it because it’s in good working order.”

In what world is this acceptable behaviour?

If you took your car for a service and the mechanic called you at work and said

“The brake pads need replacing. Do you want to 720s or the 380s?”
“What’s the difference?”
“The 720s are a bit more expensive but they last longer.”
“OK, I’ll take the 720s then.”

And later that day, you had a car accident because the brakes failed to work, the mechanic could not turn around and say “Oh it’s not my fault. I asked him which ones he wanted fitted, and he said the 720s, but they’re not made for his car. They don’t fit.”

No! This is not on.

Luckily for him, I’m going to try it out at home and if it works, I’ll buy it off him.

But boy is he pissed…