New Years Resolutions (the late edition)

Firstly, apologies for my absence. It seems that like all good new years resolutions, I've completely ignored mine.

It seems that I was supposed to be writing more in the year 2008 - however, it also seems that I'm 0 entries for 4 months ever since I was allowed into the fold of content contributors for this group. A truly pitiful state of affairs, I'm sure that you'll agree.

I suppose a part of this is when I look at the rest of the content that is supplied here, I get a certain sense that I have nothing of merit to contribute. When I try to sit down and think 'Right, intelligent and thought provoking comments!' I draw a complete blank. Whether or not this is because I'm sober, and therefore everything seems more complex than it really is, I'm not entirely certain, but nonetheless, I feel that my ramblings wouldn't go down too well.

Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe you're sat there, reading this and thinking 'Well, why have you started rambling now?' - you're onto something there, by the way. I'm not sure either.

I suppose partly, I wanted to discuss the latest (now outdated) news about Blu-Ray finally overcoming the HD-DVD. Then I realised that the only statement I had to make was something along the lines of 'Thanks for not taking a generation' and lamenting about Sony's continuing march to own peoples souls through the medium of PS3 (honestly, it's just a cheap Blu-Ray DVD player / multimedia-centre/ overpriced games console/ please enter your credit card details here.)

Then, moving on from that little gem (I'm not done on the Sony wheel of evil yet.) I wanted to discuss mobile tariffs. Apart from the fact that they are all painfully expensive (I don't understand how, if we're getting all of these fantastic savings, they can still post record profits year after year. Surely, if we're saving money with them, they should be looking at more modest profit margins?) I was hoping that someone could point me in the direction of the best smart phone on the market at the moment. I'm about due an upgrade anyway.

Back to Sony. Have you ever noticed that if you walk into any high street retailer, you can pick up the same game, on Xbox and PS3 formats, and have a difference of anything up to £10 for each one? Is this to cover the difference in production costs? Probably not, because if Blu-Ray cost £10 more a pop to produce, there's no way that it would've made if off the ground. Is it to cover the additional cost of development for the 2 different consoles? Probably not, most developers follow the crowbar approach, which means that they make minimal adjustments to allow the game to run on the other console, be that Sony or Microsoft. Although, as most games are developed for Xbox, you pay more money for an inferior copy of games on PS3 - a situation which is less than desirable. The main differences are games that are developed for Sony specifically (and these are very good for the most part), and a few companies that have taken time to redevelop the core aspects of the game to properly fit the Sony. These rare occurrances do produce games that are merit worthy, and that's not to be sniffed at. Shame they're so rare.

Hopefully, I'll be able to make headway on producing something that would be described as 'readable' in the coming days. I once again feel as though I've sneezed at the screen and forgotten to wipe the words away.

Quote of the Day

“Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It’s the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state.”

— Karl Sigfrid, Swedish MP and Moderate Party member.

A Rare Display Of Political Courage.

The self appointed leaders of the Green movement, acting like any sensible lobby, choose political lines and sticks to them like the front at Passchendale. This is great for consistency and hammer-blow lobbying, but not so good for the purposes of logic and energy policy. No issue has alienated me, personally, more from the green movement (whose broad aims it would be foolish to oppose) than the common intractable stance when it comes to nuclear energy, best summed up by the usually sane Peter Tatchell's absurdly ill-conceived post today on The Guardian's CiF. I would fisk each any every point of flawed reasoning if I didn't think it was so fruitless to argue with a fanatic.

I have always wanted to back the Green movements ideals, but any movement so willing to misrepresent the holy grail of energy production — Tokamak Fusion — as being more of the same as fission, should be viewed with distrust. Nuclear power has it's dangers, but reactor technologies have changed radically since Britain's main Magnox reactor producing era in the 50's and 60's (built demonstrably with the intention of weapon's plutonium production more than energy). Many of the problems of the technology have been eliminated, or should be viewed in the context of modern geochemistry. One issue indeed - that nuclear reactors are always built on the coast, and that water-born isotope chemistry is much more complex and diffusive (plumes of anthropogenic isotopes tend to spew out into the sea from the waters used to cool the reactor, and then behave in complex geochemical ways) - has never been resolved to my satisfaction, but the ongoing research on the topic continues to influence reactor design and placing. The tendency to mis-represent nuclear power as either science fiction or as dangerous 50's technology is contradictory and disingenuous.

So, when it is clear that the government has decided to push ahead with replacing our ageing reactors with modern models, in the face of massive media (the BBC are particularly fond of pandering to baby boomer nostalgia on the issue) and lobbying opposition, I feel the need to pat our elected representatives on the back. This is the right decision — more please, ditching ID cards would be nice.

---

Enrico Fermi's CP-1, the world's first nuclear reactor, constructed in a Chicago stadium in 1942. Modern reactors are not built to the same design.

Minesweeper: The Movie

Found by Lucas.

They Just Work

Apple Macs: "They Just Work".

Quote of the Day

“This is one of the things that makes me hesitate to get a Mac when I get my first laptop next year. Spec-wise a Macbook would fit my needs perfectly, but I’m just not sure I want to become part of the Mac demographic. Unfortunately, said demographic tends to intersect with the irritating-smug-people demographic and I don’t want anything to do with that. I like Macs, but I wish the company was secure enough in its betterness to present itself simply as creating great products, not as a creating products that are better than everything else.”
- “Margaret”

…left as comment to this post.

Dark Matter and the Luminiferous Ether

I wouldn't be surprised if these guys turned out to be correct:

Moffat compares the modern interest with dark matter to the insistence by scientists in the early 20th century on the existence of a “luminiferous ether,” a hypothetical substance thought to fill the universe and through which light waves were thought to propagate.

“They saw a glimpse of special relativity, but they weren't willing to give up the ether,” Moffat told SPACE.com. “Then Einstein came along and said we don't need the ether. The rest was history.”

The Last Place We Can Put David Hockney.

"Out in the sun they slave away,
While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Under the sea"

The air is foetid at the best of times, but you don't even notice. Your days are spent trapped in a tin can, with refrigerated food, and where there can be no communication with the outside world. The birth of a senior officer's son is accompanied by a short message "Victor born", anything more is inappropriate. The first atmospheric air you breathe upon the end of a tour is so sharp it drives home like chlorine to your lungs, for a second you prefer the recycled air breathed by the lungs (and rank with the feet) of 132 men. Such is the life on board Britain's nuclear deterrent.

Thank God you can have a fag down there.

The Royal Navy's submarine fleet (well, 4 Vanguard class subs based in Scotland, and it made my skin itch to use the word Royal) are among the few places to have an exemption from the smoking ban, which means their already ripe air is by far the worst left in any British work environment... Research published in 2002: Norris, W. Attitudes to smoking on submarines: Results of a questionnaire study indicates that 32% of crews are smokers, and 31% ex-smokers, and that it is an almost perfect 50-50 split between those in favour and opposed to a smoking ban.

I, for one, am rather glad that a third of the crew of the most dangerous vehicle on Earth are not suffering from violent chemical withdrawal. But as policy inflation leads us to photographs of tumorous lungs on cigarette packets, and an 18-year age-threshold for purchasing tobacco products, I remain suspicious. Even after they have managed to win the war on smokers, I am sure some health wonk has their eye on this final exemption. Still, for the present, this is the last vestige of Britain's smoking culture. Deep beneath the ocean, next to enough warheads to turn Australia to black glass (please God, one day), they are living it up like a jazz club circa '56.

More Das Boot than Starship Enterprise... Which raises the question: are the Russians allowed a crafty fag on the ISS?

---

After sating one urge with a dashing Slavic beauty, Bond lit up... The guys with harpoons could wait.

UFO Music Video

I commented a while ago on the rather artistic Issac/CARET UFO hoax. The craft and effort that has been put into this masterpiece of post-modern Barnum-esque trickery obviously inspired Kris Avery as well. He has produced a rather wonderful music video using CGI to bring the Isaac/CARET imagery to three-dimensional life:

Via UFOMystic, where Kris swears blind he wasn't responsible for the original hoax material. ;)

Stranded in a Sea of Silicone

Initially, I’d love to be able to say that this article is about breasts. However, I can’t, as it is about something that you’d normally associate with the kind of person who hasn’t seen a real pair of breasts without parting with a considerable sum of cash.

Over the last few years, the face of gaming has changed significantly.

Now, please accept my sincere apologies for the lengthy pre-amble that I am about to embark upon, but I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve only just arrived on the gaming ‘scene’ – I believe that I’ve certainly seen and done enough on consoles and actual computers over the years to be able to share an enlightened opinion with you. What that opinion is, I’m not entirely certain, as I’m letting my brain wander between the various hemispheres of my limited intellect until it arrives at the right spot by accident.

I first got into gaming with a Commodore 64 in 1986 – and have been going since then, getting most major consoles on the market and additionally a fair share of gaming quality PC’s – safe to say, I’ve paid my fair share towards the technology boom enjoyed by the companies in pursuit of the best profits, er, games.

There have always been great rivalries between the various factions of Hardware developers. Sinclair, Amstrad, and Commodore. Sega, Atari (remember the Jaguar?), and Nintendo carried this on in the early 90’s, but it’s worth mentioning that Commodore tried to prize their way in here, but failed, with the CD32, which indecently, is believed to have been largely responsible for their downfall. A trend emerges from all this, and it seems to be that eventually, all great console developers eventually meet their end. Looking at the successive generations of consoles, only Nintendo have been able to avoid bombing out at some point. But they’re the exception, as they were very quick to embrace innovation, and genuinely offer something new. This, along with a near fanatic army of lifelong fans, has guaranteed they will remain for a number of years yet.

The current generation of games sees the 3 great foes, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, battling for our hearts and TV’s with their latest generation of offerings. Technology has always been an expensive hobby, but these days, it’s moving into the realm of idiocy. At least with the previous generation, you could get the most from a console with a normal television. Nintendo, maybe to their credit, have not deviated from this line of thought. Sony an Microsoft have basically asked you to shell out an additional £300 minimum for a shiny HD TV to fully utilise what they are offering you, making your minimum purchase around the £600 mark. Depending on how much you like gadgets, this quickly rises above £1,000 – then games on top - £40 – 50 each. Quite soon you find yourself very poor indeed.

Then, there are the target audiences. I’ll be honest here. I’m a sucker for marketing. I actually believe all the hype that they spin. I’m hopeless and completely beyond help. I fall for it time and time again. On no less than 3 occasions I have found myself in a line outside a gaming retail outlet waiting for the very latest release of something, what exactly, I couldn’t honestly tell you. Over the years I estimate that I have spent over £25,000 on consoles, televisions, games, controllers, PC’s, online subscriptions, and the like. Please be aware that this is not a boast, it’s an admission of idiocy.

So, Sony and Microsoft want to get their mitts on the ‘serious’ gamer, the kind of person that will happily sit down and plough through 6 hours of their life in a mystical world full of intrigue and adventure until the story plays out. The sort of person who looks at information such as frame rates, resolutions, textures and sound modes. The person who will analyse the layout of a level, and maybe even look at the statistical odds of success of any given section before undertaking it.

Nintendo are different. They want the more relaxed gamer. They are more interested in people that want to have fun. The kind of person who will happily pick up the pad/wand/glove/other unusual and original control device and just dive in to the game. They may not play another game for months, but they will remember their console experience more fondly.

So, the obvious choice is to go for the Nintendo console, the fun angle. Simplicity itself. It gets to live for a further generation, and Microsoft and Sony can taste crushing defeat. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The decision between the various consoles is mired by the choice of Software available. The latest, greatest, best marketed and shiny games tempt the consumer one way or the other. The truly damned try to go for all, and discover that only 5% of the software market is unique – and that they have just shelled out a considerable sum of money for a shiny book-stop.

Then, in the way that it inevitably comes about, there is the rivalry. Oh joy, the fanatic baying of the hordes, locked in an eternal struggle to see who’s expensive toy will ultimately reign supreme over the inferior products of the competitors. Power versus functionality, graphics versus speed, online play versus social life, the debate is endless. The internet, once it was firmly established that everyone had a voice, seemed to be the ideal place for these electronically minded enterprises to fight the newest incarnation of the console war, but they quickly realised that they didn’t have to, as people would do it for them, in huge numbers, for free. Imagine if that kind of enthusiasm could be generated for actual combat. The concept is terrifying once you think about it. Religious extremism would seem tame in comparison.I’m rapidly running out of space, and getting no closer to something resembling a point, so I think that I’ll try to establish that one now.

Ultimately, there comes a point when technology will cease to be as innovative as it at this present time – there is only so far one can push graphics before you cease to notice differences. There will always be the 'next generation' of systems, but we are going to eventually ask ourselves why we continue to shell out large sums of cash for something that takes no significant step forward. Surely we should be more concerned about the enjoyment derived from a console, and therefore, we find ourselves back at Nintendo.

Ironically, this is the one manufacturer that I own no consoles from – you see, SEGA won my loyalty back in the summer of '94 with the Megadrive II.

Funny how these things come about.

---

The fun is back, oh yes siree,
It's the 2600 from Atari! (or from Little Man, What Now?)