The Matazone blog

I know I really shouldn’t be like this, but for some reason I can’t seem to help myelf… I confess that I can’t remember a film featuring Keanu Reeves that I didn’t enjoy. His acting style never really changes, he rarely emotes much more than stoicism, but for some reason he always gets away with it, even when he was Ortiz the Dog Boy, an uncredited and unrecognisable role in Alex Winter’s (better known as Bill Preston from the Bill & Ted films) film Freaked (UK link US link ). Rumour has it Reeves was covered in fur as a joke about his success being based on his pretty-boy looks while Alex Winter’s career didn’t follow the same path… But anyway…

So here’s another big film with Reeves being stoic, very cool, and saving the world. Yes, I know I shouldn’t but I really enjoyed Constantine. Some people just have style, and Reeves is definitely one of them. UK link US link

I’ve been going to the Crawley Juggling Festival for well over ten years now and they really are a lovely lot. This year’s festival is on the 13th-14th August in Crawley, near Gatwick. Most people turn up on the Friday night to wander, get set up for the weekend, and mingle with everyone else. They’re really a very friendly bunch, so if this sounds like your thing then maybe I’ll see you there!

CFB

I’m first up in The Register’s email round-up this week for my ‘Apple search fruitless’ pun.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/26/letters_2607/

Hurrah!

‘Tis rather jolly. There’s not a lot of strips yet, but more than a few raised a chuckle:

Imryll Comic (this is the first one).

I do find the debates about the proposed ID card scheme very interesting, so here’s another link to The Register that discusses the state of play:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/id_card_goes_icao/

For non-UK people, the UK government has been proposing for sometime that giving everyone in the country an ID card will be in everyone’s best interest, stopping fraud, fighting crime, helping old people cross the road, and will also save small kittens from trees. Wishy washy liberals like myself have been asking repeatedly how exactly the ID cards differ from passports and credit cards, and how exactly uniting things into one place makes anyone more secure rather than more easy to impersonate… Without much of a decent answer.

Here’s my personal highlight from the article:

supervision of enrolment would “reduce” (sic) the likelihood of fake biometrics being successful, and details of how the Government proposes to stop this becoming a simple key to ID fraud cannot be provided “in order to protect the integrity of the National Identity Register.”

Effectively, it’s a system which by design puts all of its eggs in one basket, and is dependent on that basket being made impregnable via measures which the Government will never reveal or discuss. Trust us…

Doesn’t that inspire confidence?

The Register, one of my favourite websites for their rather odd blend of abject paranoia, cynicism, and good reporting, has pointed out something rather odd.

Micro$oft have decided to get in on the Google Maps game and so have launched their own version, but it appears to be missing the headquarters of Apple Computers, instead showing a plain field. That’s a bit odd…

The World Trade Center is still there too, which is odd and bordering on insensitive. It’s strange to see the towers casting their shadow down towards the river. From the angle of the sun you can tell that the satellite photo was taken during the morning, and the green of the parks suggest it was during the summer, so probably around breakfast time. It feels slightly strange to see this insignificant moment of history resurfacing so many years after the event that changed so much of the political landscape of the world over the last four years. I once read the entry for Hitler in an encyclopaedia written in 1934. There was a strange sense of ‘if only you knew then…’

On a less philosophical note, it would appear that if you want a map that’s at least vaguely recent then Google is still the place to go. Let’s face it, we ‘google’ for things, we don’t ‘MSN’ for them, and there’s a good reason for that. Still, a bit of competition always helps keep people on their toes.

The source article.

click for bigger and poem

I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in a podcast that I might make, or even what I’d put on it, but in case anyone is interested, here’s a tutorial of how to make a podcast using the lovely WordPress (the blogging software I use, and that I highly recommend):

http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2005/06/15/podcasting-with-wp/

Can it really be that easy? Apparently so. I may try this in a few weeks when I’ve got a bit of time on my hands…

For those who don’t know, podcasts are home-made radio shows that people can automatically download through the RSS feed (of which there is one available for this blog). You then listen to the show at your own leisure, such as on mp3 players such as iPods, hence the name. It sounds all rather complicated to set up, and there are loads of debates about the best way to organise them, but apparently it’s not. I guess I’ll find out if I ever give it a go!

You might have heard that a chap (suspected suicide bomber) was shot by police on the underground today. My brother was on the next carriage along on the train. He’s a bit shaken but otherwise fine. It’s certainly a small world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4706787.stm

So, I guess this is a test… And my response? I’ll still use the underground when I need it, just like I would before. We can’t stop our lives because some idiots are running around with badly made bombs strapped to their body and hideously distorted misreadings of the Koran stuffed in their heads. There are always going to be nutters in the world, whether they are organised or not, so there’s no point in living in fear.

However, to show you that I do take these things seriously, if I were with my brother now I’d probably offer him a pint of beer rather than a cup of tea. Yes, it’s that serious (and then we’d take the tube to the pub).

From http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/technology/22game.html

The developments could spell trouble for Take-Two, but they also reinforce the company’s bad-boy image, a reputation that has made it a darling of gamers seeking raw, violent content.

The New York Times is rightly questioning the value system that says ‘violence is okay but sex is not’, but in this quote they show just how far there is left to go for the games industry to be understood.

The real reason that the Grand Theft Auto series has been so popular is simply that they are excellent games. GTA: San Andreas has a great storyline, better than many films; it shows the value and strength of friendship across class, racial, and age gaps. There is even some questioning of the morality of the previous games in the series as the lead characters struggle to make as close to a legitimate business as they can with the resources available to them. In the violent denouement to the game they fight against the oppression of abused authority to try to free their families and old friends from corruption in the police force… But still, such a great story with strong acting wouldn’t have been enough to make the game sell if it weren’t for the simple fact that it is really a very good game indeed.

I have never bought a GTA game ‘seeking raw, violent content’ and, while I admit that it has been an excellent promotional tool for the games, no-one would play them if there wasn’t a rock-solid game behind the crimes. When the NYT argues that the reason for the series’ success is the violence they are missing the point entirely. They are brilliant pieces of modern design that call on the social meme for excessive violence that happens in every other artistic genre from books to films. Gamers, like anyone else, enjoy good design. This controversy has simply highlighted how far developers have yet to go before their products are understood by the wider media.

pride truth force fly
because being thought horses
cousin fancy human surprise sun

Human surprise sun? What is that if not a suicide bomber?

Pride and ‘truth’ forcing people to fly… That’s pretty deep.

Who’d have thought that DS was interested in this kind of event? I would have thought that a lack of body would put DS above such things. Apparently the new breed of sentience is interested in human affairs…

Of course terrorists are going to try again after today’s ‘attack’, although, at the time of writing, that word glorifies what’s been the most rubbish attempt at terrorism I know of. The IRA killed civilians when they weren’t even trying to, and indeed were often deliberately trying to avoid killing them!

But these terrorists will try again. They always do. That’s the point of terrorism, it will always exist when you have different levels of power in the world and the powerful is acting in ways that appear to be exploiting the weak (the truth of this doesn’t matter, it’s all about perception). Whenever you have underpowered groups who resent larger, more powerful groups you will always have terrorism. No amount of sabre-rattling or gun-toting will change this.

You can’t wave a magic wand and make terrorism go away, and you certainly can’t wage war with it, because that legitimises it by creating fear in the population but is ultimately about as productive as karate at getting rid of mist. Terrorists are bullies with bombs. If you stand up to them by refusing to change and get on with your life as before then eventually they are forced to grow up and recognise that their methods have no place in the world. If you start chasing them around, fighting with them, then you’ll only get their mates involved.

It took around 25 years before the IRA eventually realised that bombing wasn’t working and their public face, Sinn Fein, got properly involved with politics and the peace process. We didn’t change after 25 years and over three thousand lost their lives. America has decided to try things a different way, and I the body count in Iraq is already over twentyfive thousand, some say it may be more like one hundred thousand. I know which way I think looks like being the best approach. If you are suggesting we stop being ‘so passive’ and getting on with our lives, I’d like to know the option that you’re presenting, because the US model has been an abysmal failure, especially for the people of Iraq who are suffering bombings every few days of increasing strength. They are dying right now from terrorism, and that is terrorism that would not be happening if there wasn’t this stupid ‘war on terror’.

You fight the bullies and his mates stand up, you ignore him and he realises that he’s not getting anywhere and eventually has to try something else. It takes time, and lives will be lost, but we cannot change for them.

bzz

bzz bzz

[silence]

bzz bzz bzz

[silence]

It seems that there’s a group of people who haven’t worked out that they’re just being really irritating. More ‘bombs’ in London, tiny ickle ones this time. It appears that one of the people who detonated one of them didn’t even manage to kill himself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4703777.stm

Of course, there will be an impact on trading in London, and that’s a real shame for the small shop-holders who rely on the summer business. Terrorists: scourge of the individual trader. Seriously, losing a few days trading and the subsequent lower rates can really put a crimp into the livelihood of a small business owner. I find it really annoying that the people who lose out in these things are never really the people the terrorists are trying to attack (not that I want terrorists to hit their targets, but at least if there is some sort of legitimacy in their aims they could be taken vaguely seriously).

It’s great that’s there’s apparently no deaths and only one person injured (one of the bombers), but this whole thing really is just annoying, like a mosquito you can hear but never quite slap.

bzz bzz bzzgger off.

Well, the US Entertainment Software Rating Board has decided that the sexually explicit content that can be unlocked on GTA: San Andreas, despite not being part of the game without a hack being applied, is still part of the game and so have reclassified the game as being for ‘Adults Only’, AO.

More info:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/21/gta_reclassified/

So this means that in the eyes of US ratings a developer is responsible for every piece of code in games that they release.

How exactly are they going to enforce this? The adult scenes were removed from the flow of the final game, so they don’t feature unless you use the mod, so how were the ratings office to know that it exists? And how are they going to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future? Maybe ‘Play With The Teletubbies’ has a hackable set of scenes with the fur off but no-one’s found it yet…

This is very much a new-media problem. If you buy a book you’re not likely to discover hidden pages after you’ve read it a few times, and this only confirms the status of electronic media as being unlike previous industry models. People are constantly comparing games to the film industry, but the level of interaction and the ability for players to change the events means that developers are going to be increasingly out of control of the content.

I don’t know whether the unlocked scenes are in any way interactive (‘press alternate keys to pump’…?), it’s more likely that they are cut-scenes, premade but then left on the cutting-room floor. And there again we have the film industry metaphors leaking through.

It’s entirely possible that there is code lurking in many games to make the deaths of enemies more bloody (except perhaps in the case of the brilliantly enjoyable God Of War UK link US link where it’s unlikely that they could make the deaths of the mythological creatures any more violent!) but instead a toned-down version was eventually used. If these could be used instead, by applying a mod, does that mean that the game should have been rated differently?

I use the example of violence here on purpose. Partly because I’m British and our rating system views sex as natural, although still adult, so doesn’t go insane if a nipple accidentally slips out on national television (we all giggle and feel embarassed for the performer), but sees violence as something to be kept away from children where possible. I also use it as an example because it’s easier to draw a line between mild and extreme violence.

Beside the point of levels of acceptable sexual content (is flirting sexual? When does something become ‘adult’?) we also have the decision about the responsibility of developers to examine the ways that their code can be used. Clearly in this case explicit scenes were simply unlocked, but this was still not available to your average user of the game but the really big question raised by this case is how much modification does a mod have to make before its results are no longer the responsibility of the developer? I think that this is going to be an increasing problem as the gaming industry grows and the games become ever-closer to being photorealistic.

Well, the US Entertainment Software Rating Board has decided that the sexually explicit content that can be unlocked on GTA: San Andreas, despite not being part of the game without a hack being applied, is still part of the game and so have reclassified the game as being for ‘Adults Only’, AO.

More info:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/21/gta_reclassified/

So this means that in the eyes of US ratings a developer is responsible for every piece of code in games that they release.

How exactly are they going to enforce this? The adult scenes were removed from the flow of the final game, so they don’t feature unless you use the mod, so how were the ratings office to know that it exists? And how are they going to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future? Maybe ‘Play With The Teletubbies’ has a hackable set of scenes with the fur off but no-one’s found it yet…

This is very much a new-media problem. If you buy a book you’re not likely to discover hidden pages after you’ve read it a few times, and this only confirms the status of electronic media as being unlike previous industry models. People are constantly comparing games to the film industry, but the level of interaction and the ability for players to change the events means that developers are going to be increasingly out of control of the content.

I don’t know whether the unlocked scenes are in any way interactive (‘press alternate keys to pump’…?), it’s more likely that they are cut-scenes, premade but then left on the cutting-room floor. And there again we have the film industry metaphors leaking through.

It’s entirely possible that there is code lurking in many games to make the deaths of enemies more bloody (except perhaps in the case of the brilliantly enjoyable God Of War UK link US link where it’s unlikely that they could make the deaths of the mythological creatures any more violent!) but instead a toned-down version was eventually used. If these could be used instead, by applying a mod, does that mean that the game should have been rated differently?

I use the example of violence here on purpose. Partly because I’m British and our rating system views sex as natural, although still adult, so doesn’t go insane if a nipple accidentally slips out on national television (we all giggle and feel embarassed for the performer), but sees violence as something to be kept away from children where possible. I also use it as an example because it’s easier to draw a line between mild and extreme violence.

Beside the point of levels of acceptable sexual content (is flirting sexual? When does something become ‘adult’?) we also have the decision about the responsibility of developers to examine the ways that their code can be used. Clearly in this case explicit scenes were simply unlocked, but this was still not available to your average user of the game but the really big question raised by this case is how much modification does a mod have to make before its results are no longer the responsibility of the developer? I think that this is going to be an increasing problem as the gaming industry grows and the games become ever-closer to being photorealistic.

Sorry… But there is no ‘fast’ way to learn Flash, only the ‘fastest’. This is just my opinion, but I think that the Foundation Flash series published by Friends of ED is second-to-none when it comes to clear, practical, and easy to remember instruction on how to use the software. I just wish someone had been writing about them when I started!

US link UK link

Sham Bhangal, one of the main authors, has written loads of books for Friends of ED, and I really love his work. It makes learning much easier when the text isn’t as dry as the desert sands, and he hits the right balance between fun metaphors and information.

Yes, I know this sounds like a big advert, but I get people asking fairly often about how they can learn and so I thought I’d put my best suggestion online. I know it’s not as much fun to be told to read a book as having a personal tutor, but these really aren’t nearly as dull as most computer books, so it’s actually very easy to get useful information from them. I really do think that if I person goes through that book from the beginning to end then they will probably know more about the software than many people who’ve been working with Flash for years. If that’s not the fastest way to learn then I don’t know what is.

who realised it was just another hallucination.
(click for bigger)

New Labour: We have a bright vision for the future, where we will defend the rights of all to their own freedom. We want to encourage all people to unite under a banner of peaceful communication and to support a diversity of lifestyles. By encouraging identification we hope to allow people the freedom to explore the world in greater security. We might not be the very best at everything, but we’re probably the best option you’ve got at the moment.

Conservative: We have a vision of a protected nation, a nation where each person can compete fairly, and honestly, with other people from their local community, their own country, or representing their nation. We must defend the security of our people against those who would intrude and try to restrict our industries. We will use identification to prevent people from falsely gaining entry to restricted areas, and to promote open discussions of how to preserve national identity in the twenty-first century.

Liberal Democrats: We might have a leader who looks a bit silly, but our ideas always seem to look fresh compared to the competition. We’re not quite sure how we manage this, because basically we’ve been saying the same things for years and people still aren’t listening to us. Certainly you can work on making sure everyone has a networked identity, but we think as long as the people closest to you know who you are then it’s not going to do any good to any wider organisation to try and generate some massive scheme that boils people down to a string of simple bits of data. We do try new things sometimes, but we have a sneaking suspicion that the other groups just watch us, steal our best ideas, and then use better marketing to take all the credit. If only someone would stop thinking of us as ‘that group that had power so long ago’ then maybe we’d be able to make this world better for everyone.

Sony: We have a bright vision for the future, where we will defend the rights of all to their own freedom. We want to encourage all people to unite under a banner of peaceful communication and to support a diversity of lifestyles. By encouraging identification we hope to allow people the freedom to explore the world in greater security. We might not be the very best at everything, but we’re probably the best option you’ve got at the moment.

Microsoft: We have a vision of a protected nation, a nation where each person can compete fairly, and honestly, with other people from their local community, their own country, or representing their nation. We must defend the security of our people against those who would intrude and try to restrict our industries. We will use identification to prevent people from falsely gaining entry to restricted areas, and to promote open discussions of how to preserve national identity in the twenty-first century.

Nintendo: We might have a leader who looks a bit silly, but our ideas always seem to look fresh compared to the competition. We’re not quite sure how we manage this, because basically we’ve been saying the same things for years and people still aren’t listening to us. Certainly you can work on making sure everyone has a networked identity, but we think as long as the people closest to you know who you are then it’s not going to do any good to any wider organisation to try and generate some massive scheme that boils people down to a string of simple bits of data. We do try new things sometimes, but we have a sneaking suspicion that the other groups just watch us, steal our best ideas, and then use better marketing to take all the credit. If only someone would stop thinking of us as ‘that group that had power so long ago’ then maybe we’d be able to make this world better for everyone.

So who will get your vote in the next year?

So there’s this boy, right. He’s always felt out of place. He wears big, think rimmed glasses, and he lives in a pretty miserable situation… But then he finds out he’s got magical powers! And he gets an owl! And he goes to magic school and learns that he’s destined to be a great magician!

I am, of course, writing about Neil Gaiman’s 1990 story ‘The Books Of Magic’, and the rest of the books in the series. Hell, it’s such a nice set-up it’s amazing that no-one’s blatantly ripped it off yet!

…What?