Ask Duds

I hate iTunes, it’s a bloated, slow whale of a software with a user interface that makes just less than no sense in windows. It also installs several memory irrelevant things without your knowledge and bundles Quicktime with itself which if you only want music is completely superfluous.

And that’s why 5 years ago I spent £150 on a 40gb Creative Zen Xtra instead of near twice that on the 20gb ipod of the time (the last gen pre-photo I believe). It’s done well, been used for multiple hours everyday in that time and survived the fact I’m completely cack handed. It’s only a slightly dodgy hard drive that’s stopped me using it.

So I look around, all I need is a music player with a big capacity. Somehow in the 5 years since I bought the Creative (which you could get in 60gb form too), everyone’s forgotten that the whole point of the original iphone / Creative Nomad etc was to have your music collection in your pocket. Not part of your collection, not 4 albums, your collection. But yet, in the UK today the 2nd biggest Mp3 player you can even buy is 32GB, a full 20% smaller than my half decade old Creative.

2nd biggest I say because Apple still make a single model that’s actually an MP3 player in the traditional sense and not a glorified MP3 player and squinty video player. The iPod Classic, a mildly updated version of the 6th Gen iPod is still around and comes with a full 120gb capacity in its 1.8″ hard drive. It’s also merely mm thicker than the non-hard disk players, partly by using a drive half of the current best capacity. The interface has been refined to a fine art too, with features like coverflow and the excellent separation of podcasts from the music (which I can shuffle in its entirety without catching podcasts in the net). I’m still not fond of the clickwheel but it does, to borrow a phrase, just work.

Meanwhile in the 3 years since I last used it (right when they broke 64-bit compatibility without telling anyone if you remember) iTunes has got really considerably better. Oh sure the user interface still hates me (podcasts aren’t “mark as listened to”, they’re “mark as not new” to prevent syncing), it still wants to take your folder structure and pee all over it and it apparently can’t play full screen video on my perfectly normal PC either. But it’s much, much better, it’s quicker for a start, using only about 3 times too much cpu now instead of utterly disabling my 3500+ of the time just trying to play an SD video.

Nonetheless, it’s not completely hateful anymore and the store has evolved into something considerably better. Music is (finally) DRM free, even if the video isn’t, the pricing is not (quite) as stupid as it once was and the range of free podcasts grows ever bigger, the BBC especially providing compelling regular content that’s trickier to get running elsewhere.

More importantly though, however iffy iTunes still is, no-one else is trying at all. Even if someone else did have a player that holds even close to enough, they don’t have anything that even tries to do the same job. There’s plenty that Apple could be doing better here, letting me put music on my iPod using Windows Explorer like a normal person for a start, but no-one else has any kind of comparable store or podcast support at all.

So what’s a guy to do. I still don’t like Apple, I think they spend a lot of their time making Microsoft look like a tame pussycat bringing you delicious snack treats with their actions. But here they’ve quite simply made the best product for the job, if only by being in a field of one. If I want to have my music on the go I don’t have another choice, if I want podcast management not involving me hunting down individual mp3s I have no choice. And the 120GB iPod Classic is no longer the £300 the equivalent was in 2004, it’s £175, or almost exactly what I paid for my Creative. If no-one else is going to cater for my needs, it’s into the Apple store in Regent’s Street I go, even if I do have to cover my nose to avoid choking on the sheer smug.

GI Joe is an awesome movie.

Ok, you’ve all gone.

No really, let me justify myself here. Yes, I haven’t gone mad, just watched as a straight film, GI Joe is hideous, but I think it’s actually a gigantic, elaborate 110 minute trolling of all action fans. It’s presented straight but it follows every genre cliché so slavishly, so accurately, so brilliantly that it can only be a perfectly observed parody of the entire genre.

Now, if you don’t want to be spoiled you really need to stop reading here. In the next paragraphs I’m going to spoil everything except how the big chase scene ends. And I’m going to do that right here, they hit a cross street train in Paris. Paris doesn’t have those by the way.

And this is where the genius lies; it does EVERYTHING a brainless action movie ever does, without exception. Let’s take a look at the evidence.

Main girl on evil side just happens to be ex-fiancée of the hero we’re supposed to sympathise with on good side – Check.

The hero just “happens” to be on the mission to transport some warheads that she intercepts; despite the fact there are several million suitable people in the US military – Check

Said evil girl’s costume appears to use more rubber than the entire industrial tubing industry. Note I didn’t say all these things were bad – Check.

Girl isn’t evil after all and is being controlled by evil side – Check.

Girl “turned evil” because her brother got killed in a war, her brother being the cohort of previously mentioned hero/fiancée who’d said he’d protect him. – Check.

We knew this was going to happen because the flashback where this was set up did everything short of making his surname “Deadmeat”. – Check.

Girl has new rich bloke scientist husband who ends up getting killed for no apparent reason after they use his lab to arm some warheads – Check.

A lab they broke into despite the fact she owns it – Check.

Mysterious anonymous main evil scientist who’s invented metal eating weaponry turns out to be the brother of the evil/not evil girl who actually DIDN’T die at all – Check.

He turns out to be the real power behind the evil and becomes their leader at the end of the film, in place of the previous figurehead who he betrays because he’s smarter – Check

The above the clumsily foreshadowed by brother’s name being a word meaning “King” – Check.

Mysterious masked good at martial arts figure on good side turns out to be brother of good at martial arts figure on the bad side – Check.

Said brothers turn out to have old conflict based on the childhood actions of one of them and haven’t spoken in years – Check

Good brother eventually kills bad brother – Check

A well known building gets blown up, in this case the Eiffel tower – Check

When “our” good guys join the elite military unit to deal with all of this, the sergeant doesn’t like them and says they haven’t earned their place. Over the course of the movie they gradually earn his respect and are accepted – Check.

Our two main protagonists are an “All American hero” type and his “Comedy relief” friend – Check.

Said friend immediately comes on to only available woman in the place and is rebuffed. By end of film is vaguely heroic and gets said girl – Check.

Military girl has suit that makes her near invisible, for some reason this amazing tech hasn’t been extended to the entire team – Check.

Men’s suits cover entire face with helmet. Girl’s suit allows ample room for face and long flowing hair. It also had moulded boob holders. Who cares if she gets a headshot, at least she’s ready for a night out. Again, I’m not saying I’m complaining – Check.

Said invisibility technology is not used until about halfway through her main fight – with rubbed coated goodie girl, natch, meaning said fight turns from “sneak up behind her and kill her in one smack” to “Lengthy fight sequence achieving nothing”. Said technology is not used in many other situations it’d be very useful – Check.

Men suits allow them to run at 40mph with no regard for groin strains. Despite having to spend a 10 minute car chase on foot sequence scrambling over cars, suddenly they’re capable of jumping an entire train at the end – Check

Comedy relief character fails to do this because “He didn’t read the manual” – Check.

Throwaway conversation at start of movie about how comedy relief character wants to leave the army and join the air force becomes important when he saves day by flying experimental plane. Apparently the elite military unit never thought to recruit someone else who knew what a plane was and only he can do it – Check

Further to the above, comedy screw up character earns redemption by being main architect of success in the end – Check.

It does them all. It even manages to throw in some bullet time (although in this case it’s more “goo time”). I’ve just written 700 words just on obvious action movie clichés that it slavishly follows. You don’t do this by mistake, you simply can’t throw all this in without knowing damn well what you’re doing and if you DO then you wouldn’t get the timings for the reveals etc so exactly right. The director’s previous form is the Mummy films and Van Helsing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

Go see this film expecting this and count your own clichés. Or wait 3 months, rent it on some home format
and construct a drinking game.

If this really is the parody I suspect it’s one of the sharpest observed, snappily written and downright hilarious parodies I’ve ever seen. Ironically for a film whose only volume level is “ear death” even during quiet scenes it’s a massively more subtle and better parody film than anything anyone called “Wayans” has ever produced. Hopefully the one of them that was in it was taking notes.

Of course if I’m wrong and this was meant as a “straight” action film like say “Transformers” then it might just be the single worst thing humanity has ever been responsible for. But hey, I’m a “The glass is at least a quarter full” kinda guy.

This is a reprint from my gaming blog, originally published at http://www.gamingverdict.com/blogs.htmlлаптопдивани

Coming soon to this site is a review of Race PRO, Simbin’s long awaited port of their utterly brilliant simulation PC racers Race 07 and GTR Evolution. Without wishing to pre-empt they’ve judged the physics near perfectly but unfortunately the game is so bugged that technically it doesn’t even qualify to be called a “beta” under most software production methodologies. If you haven’t bought it yet DON’T at least until you’ve let us have our say. Suffice to say it appears there’s a very good reason they didn’t dare release a demo.

By sheer coincidence, my LoveFilm queue (filled almost exclusively with games I liked the look of but didn’t actually buy) threw up the System 3’s PS3 equivilent “Ferrari Challenge” this week and I got round to having a play tonight.

What ultimately turned me off buying the game was that the promised DLC never arrived due to licencing issues and that the developer is Eurtechnyx whose driving game CV is long but peaks with “Total Drivin” (desperately average PSX game from 1997), the crap versions of the LeMans game from the mid 90s and “Pimp my Ride – The game”.

Somehow though they’ve nailed this one, it’s not just the subject matter that means this immediately reminds me of Sega’s “Ferrari 355″. The physics are dead on for the Ferraris and I’m loving the care and detail that’s gone into being the game of the marque. So far as well there’s none of the screen tearing, crappy frame rate and massive AI bugs that are just part of the “charm” of Race PRO either.

Not that it’s perfect of course, you can only use one car until you’ve done really quite a lot of driving for example and I’d want more time with it to see if there are no nasty surprises in store but I think I’d be confident in saying that if you were interested in Race PRO and own a PS3 as well, save your £35 and spend less than half that picking a copy of this up from the good people of ASDAoptical communications.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7826663.stm

Let’s play a game of analyse the report shall we…

Teen killed mother in Halo 3 row

“A US teenager killed his mother and wounded his father in revenge after they took away his violent computer game, a judge has ruled.

So any reasonable person reads that as “Judge blames game”.

“The defence team for Daniel Petric, 17, had argued his addiction to the Halo 3 game, in which players shoot invading aliens, had made him insane.

But the judge rejected this, saying he had planned revenge for weeks”

Oh, so basically we lied in the headline AND byline. Super. Thanks BBC.
Still, you can’t legislate for these things, people will find a way to cause you harm if they want to, it’s not as if the parents had done anything mindbogglingly dumb.

On the night of the shooting in October 2007, Petric used his father’s key to open a lockbox and remove a 9mm handgun and the game, the court heard.

Wait… WHAT? You had an effectively unsecured gun in the house? You don’t think that might have been some sort of problem? That you couldn’t be bothered to secure a sodding GUN?

But no, it’s Halo’s fault, a game where at no stage do you shoot a human. Crime need means, motive and opportunity. The parents provided 1 and 3 by leaving a gun (to all intents and purposes) lying around. Perhaps the motive is that they were total bloody morons…

And this is the (albeit rapidly going downhill since the staff cuts) BBC News website. God knows how the Mail will try and spin it. At least in this case he was old enough to play the thing.

So Channel 4 decide to give their alternative christmas message to President Ahmadinejad of Iran. The MPs leap into action to condemn Channel 4 for daring to practice free speech. We do of course have free speech in this country, you’re allowed to agree with as much of what Gordon Brown says as you like.

мебелиLabour MP Louise Ellman, chairwoman of the Labour Jewish Movement, said: “I condemn Channel 4’s decision to give an unchallenged platform to a dangerous fanatic who denies the Holocaust, while preparing for another, and claims homosexuality does not exist while his regime hangs gay young men from cranes in the street.

“Who will deliver next year’s alternative Christmas message? Will it be David Irving or Robert Mugabe?”

Either would be excellent if you can get them Channel 4. If the MPs are so sure how wrong these men are, why are they so afraid for us to be allowed to hear what they have to say. How is this any different from China blocking access to the BBC’s site because it doesn’t agree with their government?

If you think the Iranian President is so obvious a loon Ms Ellman, why can’t we find that out…. or perhaps maybe he isn’t of course, we don’t know unless we here. An unchallenged platform? What exactly do you think you’re doing if not challenging him with that statement? What do you think I’m doing if not challenging you?

Always be suspicious when someone wants to only let you hear one side of an arguement. That’s how most of the world’s problems get started with generations growing up to hate entire other races, religious or indeed sexualities simply because they’ve only heard their side’s views.

I mention homosexuality because of course the Pope had a bleet away last year that the destruction of the planet due to climate change was no different than having a couple of blokes kiss. He’s got a point of course, so long as the world is desperately underpopulated. Hang on, I’ll just go and check….. Ah. Apparently we’re about 2 billion over the max the planet can sustain long term already and rising. Super.

Meanwhile he uses his Christmas message to appeal for an end to hatred and violence in the middle east. That’s different of course to his previous call FOR hatred against homosexuals of course, the countries in the middle east really do have genuine grievances against each other. The only reason to be anti-homosexuality is because you’re a bigoted meddaling former member of the Hitler Youth.

Strange though, you’d think a man whose job is basically to wear a dress in public would be more understanding of sexual identity issues…

Recently I’ve been doing more writing about games so if my bitching about my ISP isn’t enough Duds for you, additional Dudsitude can be accessed at the following locations.

Cast your eyes right for a banner for Gaming Verdict, there you’ll find reviews of everything for xmas and beyond. Levels of 100% Duds are found in the MotoGP 08 and Tomb Raider Underworld reviews with Tony Hawk Motion DS and Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe to follow.

Also at GV you’ll find my gaming industry blog. Where I blog. About games.

If that’s not enough Duds I reviewed MotoGP 08 for short and to the point review site Snappy Gamer, with hopefully Midnight Club LA to follow.

You’ll also find me in all 4 volumes of the excellent encylopedic games tomes “The Spectrum Games Bible“. Book 4 covering 1989-1990 is just out, joining books 1, 2 and 3. This was a charity project for an animal sanctuary so you’ll even be able to feel good about yourself if you buy it.

And finally, RGCD is back and preparing for issue 5, I’ll be much in evidence as usual.

Be’s latest “update”.

Dear Members

Felix Geyr
Managing Director, Be Unlimited

Almost complete bollocks of course but especially worth noting is the bit on 404s. Demon and PlusNet both show “We’ve blocked this because of the IWF” messages, making Be’s ranting at best a completely insulting lie.

At this point, despite using and loving Be for multiple years I simply can’t recommend you touch them with a 10 foot pole without a solid proxy to test every 404 you encounter and to get round the fact that currently you STILL can’t edit wikipedia despite the IWF removing the page 3 days ago.

Certainly don’t buy a static ip from them because you won’t actually get one thanks to their proxy. They’re lucky I’m not reproducing the bit in the forum where they threatened customers who wanted to cancel their contracts thanks to Be’s lying about the terms.

Incidentally, anything and everything in this post will apply to connections from O2 who bought Be and are currently running it into the ground.

Here’s Be’s “Official update”

Be have been working with the IWF along with O2 for sometime as we believe they are integral to helping protect children and allow users to report illegal sites and activity. The IWF has designated this content on Wikipedia as illegal and, in accordance with our commitment to the IWF, we have denied Be members access to this page. We are really sorry for the inconvenience caused, and also the 404 error page that you saw, but as requested by the IWF this is the page that we have decided to display when such content is blocked. We will continue to work with the IWF and hope you can support us in choosing to help protect children.

In other words “Dear Paedos, Fuck off, Love Be”.

I’ll repeat here what I wrote back…

I’m sorry, is this the final official statement?

SERIOUSLY?

Try again.

1 – Why did you lie and say you don’t use transparent proxies. By what time will this be included in the terms?
2 – Why did you lie and say 404, when will this be changed to a proper blocking message?
3 – Why are you taking the word of a non-legal non-elected body on legality?
4 – Will you be blocking all copies of this picture and all sites which host it, including Amazon and Google? If not, why not?
5 – When will you update the terms to make it clear if you use Be you will not be able to edit the 4th most popular site on the net?
6 – When will you make it clear static ips aren’t?
7 – What is your comment on the fact that the image can be seen by anyone, children or otherwise, in sufficiently large record shops and has been constantly for 30 years?
8 – Will you be blocking any of the 8 million proxy sites I could use to get around this?

This isn’t just an insufficient statement, it’s actually insulting. You could have achieved the exact same effect by posting “Be says that anyone who complains about this must be a paedophile”

I like Be, I adore Be. I’ve used them for over 2 years and recommended them at every turn. But I’ll take a slower internet anyday if it’s actually the internet and not just that portion of which an unelected, unmonitored group of Daily Mail readers deam is suitable for me.

Be’s laughable response

Recently a notice has appeared on Wikipedia when many UK users attempt to edit pages on the site:
“Wikipedia has been added to a Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible for us to differentiate between different users, and block those abusing the site without blocking other innocent people as well.”
We wanted to let our members know that we are aware of the situation and are currently looking into it.

This is the first time that a situation like this has occurred since Be signed up to the Internet Watch Foundation, a scheme that we signed up to with our member’s best interests in mind. We are making sure that whatever happens next is for the benefit of our members and the reasons behind it are clearly communicated.

Nothing about their lie of a claim to not use transparent proxies, nothing about them lying and saying the page didn’t exist when actually they were blocking it and no justification of using a bunch of unelected Daily Mail readers to tell me which bits of the internet I’m allowed to look at.