17th May 2008: Games With A Purpose, Nintendo Sued For Game
Controller, HP And Microsoft Beg Customers Not To Install SP3, More
People Download Illegally Than Legally Shocker
Welcome to today's edition of The Minimalist Blog, a blog and podcast
offering you the opinions and insights on the day's technology
news. The Minimalist Blog is brought to you today by
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There is a new game out there, and for once, parents will encourage
their kids to play! GWAP.com (short for Games With A Purpose) is
designed to help computers figure stuff out. Now, as with
everything, there is a downside to all this. It was designed by
the guy that invented Captcha. You know, the annoying letters and
numbers combination over a pattern that is sometimes damned near
impossible to read? Yeah. Him. From someone who made
something I go out of my way to avoid, as my eyesight isn't what it
was, this stuff actually sounds pretty interesting. Tag a tune
matches two players and gets them to tag a noise or a song over the
duration of said noise or song. Every time you match what your
opponent wrote, you get a point. Another game called Matchin lets
players judge which two pictures of the same thing is better.
Verbosity amasses facts for use by AI. Squigl gets players to
trace around an object so that computers will be better at recognising
objects. I really like the sound of Matchin and Verbosity.
I kind of like the sound of Tag a tune, but I think after a while it
would bore me. Also, I think it would frustrate me if someone got
more tags than I did on a song I loved. And Squigl just sounds
horrible unless you have a Wacom tablet. Let's be honest here, we
all know that mice aren't good for drawing with, hence Wacom tablets
existing.
Nintendo are having to pay out $21,000,000 to a company in Texas after
losing a patent court case. Anascape have won their case that
they hold the patents to technology which powers the Gamecube
controllers and the Wii Classic Controller. Nintendo are planning
to appeal, if only to reduce the damages they will have to pay.
Now this interests me, because apparently the guts of the argument is
that Anascape own the patent on analogue pressure sensors on a stick
shaped controller and a Gamecube shaped controller. But I am
certain that I remember playing games on the PS2 which required you to
vary the pressure you put on buttons. And the sticks on the PS2
controller were referred to as analogue sticks. And you could
push them down. So, surely this means that Sony were the original
violators of this patent, not Nintendo. My other point is, what
about the third party manufacturers? Do they just get away with
being able to do this too? Perhaps I should create a company
where all I do is sit in an office and think, ok, this would be a great
idea, I'll patent it! And then patent it, and when someone
violates my patent, I will sue the pants off them. I mean,
seriously, we are talking about one company sueing another company over
controller designs. So are Nintendo now going to sue Sony for
putting an accelerometer in a controller? Maybe Sony are going to
sue Microsoft for having a box shaped console? And Atari could
sue Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony for creating a video game
console. And then retrospectively sue Sega too. Ridiculous
lawsuit, and ridiculous that it actually got to the point where The Big
N have to pay money out.
Microsoft and HP are begging customers not to install the new SP3 patch
for Windows XP. The problem occurs when an AMD powered PC
installs SP3, which contains an Intel specific power management
driver. The driver isn't supported on the AMD chipset and causes
a constant reboot problem for AMD customers. It eventually causes
a Blue Screen Of Death. I was actually discussing this exact
issue last week. At the Linux User's Group I attend most
months. Even by Microsoft's standards, this is a pretty big balls
up. Come on, how can Microsoft not have tested this patch on AMD
and Intel machines not to make sure? I will give you an example
of testing processes I personally use. For this blog and podcast,
I write it in Seamonkey Composer. Not the most advanced web
design tool, but it works. I then view it in Seamonkey (a Mozilla
based browser), Firefox, and Opera. The idea behind testing it in
Opera is that Opera claim if it works in Opera, it will work on
anything, which takes care of Safari and IE. And this is just a
blog. I test my code on three different platforms, and it's just
a blog. It's not like if I mess up the HTML someone's computer is
going to die and they are going to lose all their work and data.
But this is what has happened at Microsoft. Someone has said
"Works on Intel, let's roll". Stupid. And as we said at the
Linux group last week, someone in Quality Control at Microsoft has been
fired, and you know it. The thing that made me laugh about this
report is that customers have been complaining that Dell, Gateway,
Lenovo and some Asus chipsets have been failing under SP3. No
they haven't. AMD processors have. Gateway, Lenovo, Dell
and Asus don't make chipsets, they make desktops and laptops.
There is another huge argument within that one, but, let's just leave
it at this; Linux users are really happy this week.
Music Ally have been studying people's music downloading habits and
have found that the same number of people who download music legally
also download music illegally. 28% of people have illegally
downloaded music. 14% of people regularly use the licenced
services, but 22% of people regularly use filesharing services.
The biggest complaint about paid downloads is the price. 50p a
track for an MP3 download, and 34p a track for a mobile download.
The figures speak for themselves. Roughly 3 tracks are downloaded
from services likle iTunes, but 12 tracks are downloaded from services
like Isohunt or The Pirate Bay. Maybe it's because The Pirate Bay
works on any computer and is really easy to use. Just saying is
all. However, The Register point out that 86% of users aren't
downloading music from filesharing sites. And The Value
Recognition Strategy in the UK said that illegal downloads weren't the
main cause of the music industry failing. My take on it is as
thus; I don't download music at all. I used to pay for it, but
then I discovered streaming and stopped downloading at all. If I
want to listen to a specific song, I just find it on Youtube and
listen. The rest of the time I listen to a station on
Last.FM. Or I listen to online radio. The thing is, a lot
of people aren't downloading not because it's expensive (50p a track
isn't a lot, it makes it £6 for an album) but because they don't
understand the technology. And they probably visit a friend who
does understand the technology and they give them the music, or rip CDs
for them. I know that's what my friend Mike does. He just
bought an iPod and brought a huge stack of CDs over, I ripped them
using Windows Media Player, and then transfered them using
iTunes. With drinking and listening to music from the CDs, it
took us an evening, and 1 gigabyte of his iPod's 8 gigabytes.
So, the observant of you will have noticed that yesterday's podcast
didn't appear. It should have, we thought we had done everything
that we needed to do to make sure that the podcast would be able to be
downloaded. This didn't happen and by the time we figured out
what was wrong with the RSS file (an unclosed item tag for those who
know about these things) we didn't have a chance to fix it. This
is now fixed as you can see, and we are planning to make the podcasts
available a few hours after we post. This is because we need to
give Odiogo time to process our latest post and convert it to
speech. However, we're not planning to stop there. We
actually have a lot of really great ideas that we will be rolling out
over the next few months. Those who know the history of The
Minimalist Blog know that we have been on a difficult road to this
incarnation. We've had so many launches and relaunched, mostly
due to a lack of interest in what we've been doing. What we are
doing now is an idea that we've been planning and playing around with
for a long time over many meetings. This is just stage one.
More and more will be rolled out over the next few days and
weeks. Expect big things. And if we get enough interest
from you guys, the readers, and the listeners, we are planning
something massive.
It's interesting to read a guide about linkbaiting. The art of
putting up a story or article for shock value more than anything, with
the aim of getting people to link to your blog or site.
Personally, I'm not hugely in favour of this. I believe if you
need to do something like that to get your blog across then it's not
particularly good for you. My theory is this; if your content is
good, and consistently good, then people will come. That's the
idea behind this site, hopefully you find our content really
interesting, and you keep coming back, or you keep downloading the
podcast. Whether or not this actually works, I have no
idea.
And now, it's time for today's top five list. Today's top five is
our top five 80s artists. Unlike most days, I really cannot put
these in any order, because I think they are all really good, if a
little cheesy.
Men at work. Ok, so they only had one huge hit, but man, what a
hit. Everyone knows Land Down Under. It has to be one of
the catchiest songs ever written. Whenever I hear it on the
radio, I just have to sing along to it, even the parts of the song I
don't understand.
Wham. The great thing about Wham is that they launched one of the
biggest stars in the world, George Micheal. But before he went
solo, they launched hit after hit. Club Tropicana. Young
Guns. Wake Me Up. Last Christmas. Everybody knows
these songs, everyone can sing along to them if you're under the age of
25, and it's just really fun, really innocent music, which everyone can
get into and it sounds great, if a touch camp in the warm summer sun.
A Ha. Now these were a really innovative band. Who can
forget seeing the video for Take On Me for the first time?
They're making a come back, which I don't think is a bad thing
whatsoever. Some of my favourite songs are Take On Me, The Living
Daylights and The Sun Always Shines On TV. Also, in
the 80s, sad as it is now, Morten Harket was one of the coolest guys in
the world.
Paul Young hasn't ever really gone away, but I think anyone under 25
has heard Wherever I Lay My Hat. I really like that song and I
actually have quite a few of his albums.
Bros weren't exactly huge on the hits front, apart from When Will I Be
Famous, but, that one hit was really great. Again, these guys
looked the coolest in the world in the 80s with their spikey blonde
hair, and their leather jackets and attitude. Of course, now one
of the Bros guys has now gone into acting and was in Blade 2.
Lastly, you cannot review the 80s without putting Chesney Hawks.
Cheesey, cringeworthy and annoying. And that was in the 80s, but
now he tours universities in the UK belting out The One And Only.
Finally for this slightly shorter edition of The Minimalist Blog is our
TV guide. As I said yesterday, we are going to review things from
BBC iPlayer, as anyone in the world who can operate a Geolocation
cheater can watch the BBC iPlayer.
First up is Dr Who. I know I plugged this yesterday as well, but,
come on, Dr Who is great! Tonight he is visiting Agatha Christie,
who has mysteriously disappeared. This episode I have looked
forward to for such a long time. It's going to be a comedy
episode, which is the first since the Children In Need episode.
Secondly tonight is Casualty. I know most people are going to say
that it's boring, and it's an old series which doesn't move with the
times, but I think they have dealt with some dark storylines, and I can
see the whole John's Family storyline coming to an explosive head
soon. Same with the Jessica and Adam storyline. Plus,
Jessica and Alice are both absolutely gorgeous. There are another
10 episodes before the end of the series, and I cannot wait to see what
else the BBC has to offer in this series and the inevitable next series.
Tonight is also the end of Love Soup. I have to admit, this
wasn't my favourite when I began watching it, I found it a little too
surreal, but once you get into the humour and realise every loose end
is tied up by the end of the episode. Plus, Tamsin Greig is just
the right age to play the neurotic single (loved seeing her in her
underwear a few episodes ago) and Sheridan Smith is another actress who
I love seeing. James Cordon, you are an idiot for leaving her.
Lastly is Click. Ok, so they may not have the most up to date
news, and the presenters acting and presenting skills leave a lot to be
desired, but their best of the web section more than lives up to the
name. Worth trudging through the sometimes boring show just to
see their best of the web section.
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16th May 2008: The Future Of
Music, The Future Of Computing, The Future eee PC, The Future Of BT
Employees,
Welcome to today's edition of The Minimalist Blog, a blog
and podcast offering opinions and insights on the day's technology news.
The Barenaked Ladies manager has been outlining his vision of the
future of music. And it's Doritos flavour. Terry McBride
has said that he thinks that the future of music isn't in CDs so much,
but advertising sponsored deals. His vision is that in the future
there will be paid subscription services as we have now, but rival
advertising sponsored services as well. The idea is that the
services you pay for will be viewed as "chic" and cool. He also
says that free and paid will become relative to the person's point of
view. Personally I don't get this as free is free and paid is the
precise opposite. Unless of course he is thinking of the Open
Source definition of free...
Bill Gates has been touting a "new" technology. The Microsoft
Touch Wall looks like a large version of the iPhone or iPod touch, and
is being hailed as the next big thing along with Surface by Bill
Gates. The touch controlled computer works using infra red and
lasers. But here is my problem with this "new" technology.
I've seen it before. Not in a technology show. Not at an
expo. And it wasn't a prototype model. My ex's son's school
used this exact same technology using projector screens and a
projector. This isn't so much innovation, more "How can we make
an existing technology look cooler?"
Asus are promoting the hell out of the new eee PC 900, but some
customers are waiting on the 901, and they may have a point.
Blogee.net have showen pictures of the new eee 901 which looks curvier,
thinner and a lot slicker than the previous eee models. I have a
problem with the new eee PCs. My eee PC 701 cost £150, but
the new models are now becoming as expensive as a regular laptop.
Example - my new Toshiba A210 cost £338 including delivery and a
£50 rebate, but the new eee PCs are going to cost about the same
as that, except my Toshiba is far more capable than the eee PCs.
The new eee PC will also feature an Intel Atom processor.
BT is facing strike action from the union Connect who are rejecting the
pay deal BT are offering. Connect have said that they hope BT
will come back to talk with them, because they are unhappy with the
distribution of pay rises, not the actual pot on offer. One issue
is that there are managers who are going to be paid less than the
people who they manage. They also have issues over the fact that
men are still going to be paid more than women. Connect has
14,000 members inside BT, and have told their members not to travel to
work, and not to be contactable outside their contracted hours.
Possibly more difficult than normal when you work for a major telecoms
provider...
Phones4u are being investigated over strange business practises.
Allegedly. Their staff are given a commission for every mobile
phone they sell. These commissions vary depending on the
contract, phone, and network they sell. So the investigation is
finding out whether their staff are selling the phones based on the
size of the commission, or whether the phone suits the customer.
One other problem that has been highlighted is that people haven't been
told about the financial commitments in a contract. Naughty
boys.
Now, in this part of the blog, we are planning to discuss e-mails and
comments people have left for us. As this is our first post, we
can't, so, please feel free to e-mail or leave a comment. Our
e-mail address is hyde21k@gmail.com.
A truck has been developed that will run on coffee grounds. The
idea is that it uses a wood gas generator to create a combustible fuel
for the truck. To be honest, this could be used to turn anything
into a fuel for a truck, or any other kind of modified vehicle. I
think this is a great idea, with great potential, but I am not sure
whether or not it's going to be ready for the mainstream. I mean,
how many coffee grounds or trash or anything else are you going to need
to power the truck. However, I work in the retail environment,
and I know that we throw away a LOT of food, and our coffee machine
creates a LOT of coffee grounds. We also don't do home delivery
because of the cost of fuel outweighs the takeup for the service.
But if we had this kind of technology in our vehicles, we would
actually be able to run the vehicles for free. And that has to be
an interesting concept for anyone who is looking into doing this kind
of thing...
We also plan to run a daily top 5. It's just a fun thing we like
the idea of, and I'd like to think that you, the reading and listening
public can contribute to our lists in the way of commenting or
suggesting a top 5 theme for us! To start with - Top 5 80s kids
tv shows.
1: Dogtanian. Not sure if this ever made it to the US, but it was
huge in Europe. The retelling of D'agtanian with DOGS.
Genius! And one of the evilest villans ever? A rat.
He looked like Splinter about 3 years before Splinter from TMNT became
a TV show character. And the lifetime sexiest evil female in a
cartoon award goes to M'Lady. I know it is wrong on many levels
(she's a cat, she's evil, she's a cartoon) but damnit, she was
hot. And guys my age agree.
2: The A Team. Despite the fact that it was based around 4 guys
travelling around in a van together, being macho, it was still a great
show. Especially the episode where they were locked in a hangar
with NOTHING and drove out in a tank.
3: Knight Rider. This
is only not number one because it made The Hoff famous. That is
simply unforgivable. But still, the coolest car ever made, and it
still looks good today. Great premise for a show, and one of the
hottest redheads to ever grace our screens. And it had comedy
too...Hoff's perm!
4: Thunder thunder thundercats. HO! Sorry, couldn't resist
it. Worrying thing is, I have seen people in the papers who
look like Liono now. Y'know, one fake tan too many?
5: He-Man. Ok, so, looking back, gay as all hell. BUT, as a
kid, just awesome. I was always secretly rooting for Skeletor to
win just once, but he never did. And I always loved that green
guy with the metal jaw. Kinda like a cartoon version of jaws, but
way less sinister. Shame. And for those who argue that
He-Man wasn't gay, all I will say is Ram Man and Man At Arms.
Also, how camp was Orko? And for those without a sense of humour,
the gay references are as schoolboy as the TV shows...
Now, lastly, I am going to give you my TV picks of the day. I
have decided that our TV picks will be picked from the BBC's fantastic
iPlayer. Namely because anyone in the world can watch it.
Especially if you follow this link. Now, on with the viewing
guide! Since it's the BBC iPlayer, times don't matter. I
find normally it's best to go check an hour or so after the show has
aired. First up is Have I Got News For You, possibly one of the
funniest, sharpest comedy panel shows in the world. For those who
have yet to see it, an example from last week was:
(A picture of Boris Johnson and David Cameron appears)
Ian Hislop: "There's a picture of the next Prime Minister. And
David Cameron as well."
Paul Merton: "You're not seriously suggesting Boris might become PM!"
Ian Hislop: "Well, if he does a decent job as London Mayor, why not?"
Paul Merton: "It's like a joke that never ends isn't it? You're
just waiting for the punchline!"
Next up is QI. Easily the second funniest comedy panel
show. The talent speaks for itself - Alan Davies as the only
permanent member of the panel, Stephen Fry as the QImaster, and any
range of comedy talent filling the rest of the panels. The idea
is really simple. Sort of. The questions are all really
obvious. Like "what is man made object is visible from
space?" Here's a hint, the answer ISN'T The Great Wall Of
China. Or "what should you avoid whilst dehydrated?" The
answer isn't coffee. Or alcohol. Or even diuretics.
If the contestants give an interesting answer (QI stands for Quite
Interesting) but fewer points for just the correct answer, and minus
ten points for the obvious but wrong answer.
Next is Later With Jools Holland. This is just a great
show. The idea is that the latest and greatest bands perform
completely live with some classic or unknown bands. Jools
Holland, he of The Boogie Woogie Orchestra and Squeeze hosts the whole
thing and interviews the bands and various celebrities who visit in the
audience. If you have never seen this show before, you simply
HAVE to watch it at least once.
Then there is Top Gear. I don't really think I have to explain
this show, but for those who have been living in a cave under Loch Ness
for the last 5 years, the concept is simple. 3 middle aged motor
journalists who have a need for speed, fun, and sarcasm review fast
cars, challange celebrities to drive a regular car as fast as possible
around their private test track, and have The Stig (a tame racing
driver) drive fast cars to give an absolute time for said cars.
Oh, and sometimes they have challanges. Like driving "classic"
sports cars which cost less than £1000 from London to
Birmingham. Or racing each other from London to Sweden. Or
driving across the Sahara Desert in cars which cost less than
£1000. From the 70s.
Lastly, there is the excellent Dr Who. Now, I do feel tonight's
episode is a touch silly. If only because the aliens in it
basically blow bubbles into green water to communicate, and the ending
is touching, but overcooked. Can we please stop getting The
Doctor in situations he would NEVER take part in. Examples -
blowing up a space ship or the end of tonight's episode.
So, that is the end of our first episode. We know this is quite a
lot to read in one go, but why not download the podcasts when they
become available? We're planning to make the podcasts available a
few hours after we post the articles.
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