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.