A Mind @ Play

Internet footprint

Fips — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:54:01 +0000

: The Internet Trail

An email arrives from a company you’ve never heard of telling you about a change to their user policy. It could very well have been spam, except that the details are actually correct for a change, and you’re not being offered a credit card, mortgage, or a million dollars from a Nigerian general. The email details alterations to a privacy policy you probably never read, particularly since the company name itself doesn’t register. You’ve just stumbled upon your Internet trail, crumbs you’ve scattered around the place registering here and there over the years.

But just how big is your Internet footprint? If you’re a conscientious user who goes out of their way to protect their information and avoid pointless trivia on the Web, it could be that you’ve only left a few grains behind you. But for the rest of us, those little titbits could very well be quite liberally scattered throughout the Internet, potentially accessible to just about anyone with the time and inclination. Whilst the content we’ve created ourselves might be relatively humble, today’s social web has ensured that all but the most camera shy can end up having their pictures online for virtually anyone to see, and references to us can be found with just a few simple searches. But our Internet footprint isn’t just limited to those relevant bits which appear when we’re Googled—which after all is as much dependent on the uniqueness of our names or the fields in which we work—but simply, how many little instances there are of us out there.

Control of information

Just how much information about us is available out there on the Internet can sometimes come as an unpleasant surprise. French magazine Le Tigre set themselves the challenge of publishing the life story of a young French architect based solely on the information it could glean from Internet sites such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. The article appeared in the magazine in December, 2008, and a more tempered version that appeared at the gentleman’s behest can still be found he re (in French). Certainly, the man in question was clearly au fait with the new world of social networking sites and the like, but none too concerned about his privacy. Information on his holidays, his former girlfriends, his work and friends, even such information as his mobile phone number and whereabouts were all gleaned from these sites with a scanty amount of detective work. In this case, the man was responsible for publishing a large amount of information about himself on the Internet, but how can any of us stop third parties doing the same? How many of the 350 million Facebook users has a real clue about its privacy settings? And how many of those are friends with people who are conscious about controlling the information available about them?

A captcha of logins

Signing up to a social networking site, you might be forgiven for thinking that at least then you can have some form of control over the information available about us. But there is more information available on the Internet for those with a desire to look for it. Just think about how many sites out there you have an account for. Just how many little instances of ourselves are there out in the wild? Email accounts, social networking sites, online banking, multimedia sites, shops, forums, services, blogs. Even just counting the ones we use with any amount of regularity, that could easily amount to a few dozen user accounts, and that’s to say nothing of the various gizmos we use that aren’t accessed via the Web, such as instant messenging platforms, backup or VoIP services, online games etc. More importantly, how many other extra accounts are there out there from services we’ve only merely sampled and don’t use with any frequency? How many accounts out there belong to users who have signed up to give a website a trial and perhaps never came back? Or worse, have been forced to sign up in order to access essentially free material, or to leave a one-off comment, and left their account ever after disused?

Personally, I would not be surprised if my own number of instances scattered around the Internet included over a hundred accounts. People more active on the web no doubt have many more. Those accounts may not all contain the same information—different usernames, passwords, email addresses, heck, sometimes even different names—but they are all linked to me, and the differences are not usually so bold. Most of us probably have a particular username and password combination that we like to use; it makes our lives easier if we only have to remember a single combination for all of our online activity. Occasionally those plans go awry when we find our username has already been taken, forcing us to adopt an arbitrary modification, like adding a number to the end, or an underscore in the middle. Other times our passwords have to change to accommodate some rules for a particular service, meaning our regular password has to suddenly grow or lose a number or special character, or grow or shrink accordingly. But in general, our online presences are cloned copies of our logins sprinkled across the Internet like a particular allele in the gene pool.

Well, so what? It’s not like these details are generally put on public display. Except that they can be. Try typing your own unique username into a site like User Name Check. And all it would take is for one of those sites to have a flaw in their security for someone to potentially have access to any number of services you’ve become a member of over the years. Only recently, a popular social website with over 30 million members proved to be a ripe source for the usernames and passwords of all its members. As detailed here, this represented a pretty basic flaw in security, yet despite its popularity, the site nevertheless failed to protect the information of its members. Would you really trust every little site and service you’ve signed up to to do the same?

The circle of trust

The web has to a large extent now grown to become an extension of the societies in which we live. Web presences have been something of a standard for most reasonable-sized businesses for a long time, and many small outfits have long since followed suit. Yet the last few years have seen that requirement spread to the general populace. It seems like every man and his dog has a Facebook account.¹ Information about us that would once require some serious detective work can now be gleaned from the comforts of your own home, with a bit of patience and a supply of coffee. The potential is still there to control how some of that information is shared, but only to a certain extent. And how many people are actually aware or savvy enough to look after that information is an entirely different matter.

Nevertheless, we are usually willing to place a lot of faith in the many online services we subscribe to, often without so much as reading the privacy policy or terms and conditions. In order to save ourselves the heartache of memorising different usernames or passwords for those services, we tend to limit ourselves to a small handful, all too often to some of those found on lists such as this one. With the potential for any one of those services to become victim of an attack and reveal to unknown third parties information including, but not limited to, usernames, email addresses, passwords, personal and payment details, it seems borderline lunacy that we leave so many unnecessary little copies of our details scattered around the Internet. This latter point is particularly true if you use the same username and password combination for the majority of sites. On the Internet we are willing to accept many into our circle of trust, but it still only takes one site to be broken for us to have a potentially large headache on our hands.

So what can we do to minimise our risks? Simply follow the same rules of common sense you would adhere to in the real world: keep your passwords secure and make yourself a smaller target; actually read the privacy policies and terms and conditions before agreeing to anything; acquaint yourself with the privacy settings on social networking sites, and keep control of the information about yourself; if you run a site of your own, don’t force users to sign up for an account unless absolutely necessary; and as a general Internet user, try to limit the number of instances you create, and delete the ones you no longer use.

Or else Bebo, MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn etc.

Fixing a broken network printer

Fips — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:07:00 +0000

There’s one problem which was driving my parents nuts on XP for some time before we finally got around to finding a reasonable solution. For whatever reason, one of their computers insisted on automatically adding the shared network printer on the other machine as the default printer in the list. This regardless of whether we had already assigned a local default, and whether the network printer was already in the list.

Whilst that already caused some consternation when documents would be sent to the wrong machine, it was compounded by the fact that if the printer was offline at the time, Windows XP would spend 100% CPU time trying to find the damn thing, leaving the PC highly unresponsive until the print queue was manually cleared. Meaning the options were between remembering to change the printer on every print job, or forgetting and rebooting the machine in between.

Fortunately, we found the handy little script below on some forum or other (praise be to the original author). It stops Windows’ printer service, deletes any waiting print jobs, and then restarts the service. Copy the lines below into a batch file (or into a simple text file and change its extension to .bat) or alternatively download the same script as a file.

@echo off
echo.
echo Purging the print queue . . .
net stop Spooler
echo Deleting all print jobs . . .
ping localhost -n 4 > nul
del /q %SystemRoot%\system32\spool\printers\*.*
net start Spooler
echo Done!
ping localhost -n 4 > nul

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Ten reasons Valve’s Steam fails to live up to standards

Fips — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:02:58 +0000

Steam

I’ve been using Steam for a fair while now, in fact pretty much since the beginning, and have seen the program grow on from its fairly humble origins. There are now hundreds of titles available, including games from big-name publishers and independent game houses alike, and the usual crashes and quirks that afflicted the early releases are pretty much gone. Nevertheless, there are still a number of key areas in which Steam continues to live up to standards, at times making using the system a bit of a nightmare. This is a list of some of those issues which in my eyes prevent Steam from becoming a really top class product, delivering everything the platform really promises. Some of these issues admittedly have their origins outside of Valve’s headquarters, but the way in which they are dealt with only compounds the problems further, for both customers and clients.

Steam Friends

It’s an instant messenger on a budget. Think of your favourite system, but without any of the frills. There are no file transfers, no webcams, none of the various add on junk you find with most of the big name instant messaging clients. And let’s face it, Steam Friends is all the better for it. It’s a simple service that does what it needs to. At least most of the time. Which is exactly where this little service fails to live up. Steam Friends suffers so much downtime, it makes you wonder what the system is actually running on; it crashes about as often as Windows 95.

For the most part, that downtime isn’t much of a problem, since few people use it for anything important, and even if the service is up and down like a yo-yo, the periods of downtime generally aren’t particularly long. But the outages are sufficiently frequent to leave you wishing that Steam really did have some of those standard added extras common to other instant messaging services. The lack of being able to send offline messages means you end up having to hold staccato conversations trying to keep in time to the downtime conductor’s baton. And with no chat logs there’s no recourse to checking what was last said if you happen to close the window. Which can be doubly troublesome if you happen to have the Steam overlay open at the same time, since the messages people send might appear on the window on your desktop, but not on the game overlay, meaning you’ll still have to ALT+TAB out of the game you’re in to read the messages, one of the supposedly key advantages of using Steam Friends in the first place!

Why hasn’t this API been opened up to third party clients? Why can users navigate the Steam Communities pages, leaving messages and reading profiles, but have to run Steam as soon as they want to send a live message? The downtime, exclusivity, and lack of ‘regular’ frills leave Steam Friends to be a last resort mechanism, when it has the potential to be a very promising communication tool.

Steam Group Chat

Similar to the Friends service above, Steam’s Group Chat provides every group on the Steam Communities page with their own little chat room. Very generous, very appealing, but does anyone actually use it? I’m sure there are some groups out there in the dark corners of the gaming world who actually pop into those chat rooms and spout some drivel, but for the rest of us, I really can’t see the point. Most other groups have already come up with their own solution to such problems, using IRC or other such technologies, and those who haven’t will have difficulty finding the Group Chat options anyway. If group administrators had the ability to tie in their chat rooms to other pieces of software, particularly IRC for example, these rooms actually might find some use, but as it is they stand pretty exclusively neglected among Steam’s various other appendages.

Steam Prices

One of the key supposed advantages of buying games via an online content distribution service such as Steam is that the savings made by the ‘publisher’ are passed on to the customer. And not to do Steam any discredit, the customer has certainly had the opportunity to benefit from some great prices and bargains, in many cases undercutting in-store prices considerably. But that isn’t always the case. Particularly since the introduction of prices in Euros and Pounds in December, 2008, customers have been able to see the discrepancies between the various zones. Especially in the Eurozone this could leave games for sale that were actually more expensive than their box-and-disc in-store equivalents, and significantly more expensive than the prices listed in pounds or US dollars.

Whilst Valve cannot be held to blame for the price differences of many of the titles chosen by other publishers and distributors, the discrepancies can often also be seen with Valve’s own titles, most especially when games are put on limited-term offers. Of course, some users can work around the restrictions, by having others buy them games as a gift (see below) or else logging in themselves in another country, and making their purchases in the relevant currency.

Steam Payment

Of course, giving your money to Valve for Steam purchases should be one of the easiest things in the world, but unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. Probably related to the differences in pricing mentioned above, Steam has some pretty pernickety requirements when making purchases above the payment method used and the location you’re buying from. I’ve had my Steam account locked from purchases on two or three separate occasions, without notification, for using a payment option on another account (these were the days before Steam Gifts). Clearly that’s one step away from money laundering. And only recently, my payment was refused because the address of my payment option wasn’t in the country I was buying from. This despite there being a clear option to check a box whether or not I was currently in the stated country; quite what this option is for if it is irrelevant to them, I can’t say. Is there something particularly insolent about making purchases from another country that I wasn’t aware of?

Steam Geography

As a system capable of delivering content to pretty much anywhere with an Internet connection, it’s perfectly reasonable that Steam acknowledges local laws and adjusts its own system to abide by them. This applies to a large extent to the pricing issues mentioned above, where various distributors only have the right to publish games within certain geographic locales. In which case, it’s up to the people of those nations to find workarounds, or to complain to their governments if they feel they are being unfairly treated. But it does lead to some rather irritating and odd situations when using Steam’s services. Take one of Valve’s own recently released titles like Left 4 Dead 2. The game generated a little controversy with its content, and ended up requiring Valve to publish milder versions for customers in Australia and Germany, according to the laws in those countries. Naturally the government of Germany feels that its citizens are a little more puerile and paramnesic in character than the rest of the world, and didn’t want to risk having a few people see a bit of gore. They might have been incited to invade Poland again, who knows. Anyway, buying a copy of the game in one of those countries will result in the customer having a permanently crippled version of the game,¹ which as far as I’m aware, cannot be fixed easily. On the other hand, loading up an account with a copy of the game purchased in another country will present the full flavour version that was supposed to be banned.

Steam Gifts

As mentioned earlier, I had my Steam account blocked from purchases in earlier days because I had the audacity to use my payment methods to log in to other people’s accounts and buy them games. Fortunately, with the introduction of Steam Gifts, this no longer became necessary. When buying a game, just tick the box that makes this available as a gift, and the copy will go to the person of your choosing; similarly, should you buy a game that you already own in a bundle, you can simply give the extra copy away.

The idea is all well and good, except for the limitations listed above about payment options, added to the problems of products only being available in certain versions in certain countries. But this is compounded by the fact that buying a gift means delivering that gift on the same instant; if you actually do want to buy someone a present for a specific occasion and want to keep it as a surprise, you’ll either have to concoct your own time-delay private email address, buy the game on the special day, or just apologise your gift is coming early!

Steam Accounts

Buy a game, a book, a car, a house, or a tube of toilet paper, and you generally find you have the right to sell it on to someone else. Alright, second-hand toilet paper is still a growth market, but you get the picture. With Steam, buy something and Valve reserve all rights for you to resell your items, including the account you bought the games on, refusing you even the right to “sell, charge others for the right to use or otherwise transfer [an] account.” Some might consider this to be a reasonable condition, for the lower prices and level of service Steam offers, but for those of us used to selling off old copies of games, the physical versions of that software does maintain some of its appeal. Perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that tying the serial keys of games bought in the shops to a Steam account can render them similarly unsaleable.

Steam Files

Just how does Steam organise the files it puts on your system? Is there actually meant to be some method to the madness? Whilst I can see that for the most part, Valve have little say over how its clients utilise the Steam system, Valve’s own titles are about as confusing as the lot of them. Most of Valve’s titles appear in the Steam\steamapps directory as compressed .gcf files, whilst third-party titles appear under the Steam\steamapps\common directory. Valve’s Left 4 Dead title, however, does the latter. Some of the titles store their user files in sensible places under in the user directory, others store them in their own folders in the common directory, whilst most of Valve’s titles go one step further, creating extra files per Steam account under the steamapps directory. That’s difficult enough when trying to backup your savegames, locate your screenshots, or edit a config file. But the latter variety causes even more problems if you have even just a few Steam accounts being used on a single PC; since each account creates its own personalised files, items such as cached models, sounds, third-party maps and extensions are all replicated, swelling the size of the installations entirely unnecessarily. I sometimes wonder how LAN centres which have several users signing in per day deal with the associated cruft (ignoring for the moment Valve’s Cyber Café Program).

Steam Backup

One of the obvious (dis)advantages of Steam, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting, is the ability to download your games from wherever you are logged in. If your Internet connection is fast enough, you can get your games downloaded ready for play the moment they are ‘released’; faster than it can be delivered in most cases, certainly faster than having to get your copy from the shops. But for those of us with slow connections, downloading items from Steam can be a slow and painful experience, and one that you don’t like to have repeated every time you decide to switch hardware. Which is why the implementation of a backup system to Steam was pretty much a no-brainer. Select Backup games from the main Steam menu and you can have your downloads all neatly arranged in CD or DVD sized chunks, ready to be reinstalled at the touch of a button.

Not a bad idea, except it functions about as well as combing your hair with barbed wire. The backup process is fairly slow, slower than simply copying the files manually, but that’s reasonably forgiveable since it does at least chop up the files in reasonable sized chunks. The real problems come when trying to reinstall games using the backed up files. Installing more than one game at a time left my Steam program actually trying to download the games from the Internet, exactly what the backups were supposed to avoid, and actually left the program so unresponsive I had to kill it. Trying to install the programs one at a time often threw up the error that the servers were too busy to handle my request; when I looked again, the games were being updated from the Internet. Not too busy to suck up my bandwidth I see! Third time lucky and the game actually did start installing from the backups, albeit as slowly as it was backed up in the first place, and for each game I had to go through the same rigmarole, which would have been even more painful had I actually had the backups spread across half a dozen DVDs.

Valve

However, the number one thing holding Steam back is Valve. You can normally draw a line in the sand separating companies into those with decent moral standards, and Microsoft, and Valve would almost certainly fit into the former category. They listen to their customer base, they generally keep their products up-to-date, fixing bugs and releasing new content for free, and they opened up the Steam platform to what are essentially their competitors. Each title released is like a mini-celebration in the industry, and is generally met with decent reviews and rewardingly good sales figures.

Yet the power they wield with Steam is not to be underestimated. Since no sales figures are actually published, one can only speculate, though it is bound to be a considerable proportion of the online distribution market. This monopoly type situation is particularly problematic when you consider Steam to be a marketplace run by one of the main competitors. Even if there is no deliberate attempt on Valve’s part to give themselves pride of place, with such power comes great responsibility that should not rest in uneven hands. I’ve seen days in which one of Valve’s titles will take pride of place in their store front, ahead of game of the year winners and new releases. And I forget now where I read it, but the number of people Valve actually has working on Steam is incredibly small, something like half a dozen staff. If it were properly managed, all of the above issues with the platform could no doubt in some way be addressed, for the benefit of customers and clients alike.

Summary

Fair play to Valve, they had the idea and they ran with it, dealing with the early teething problems and creating a popular and successful piece of software, and they deserve the financial reward for it. Ideally, however, Steam should now be hived off from Valve as a separate, independent company, to focus on the equal online distribution of titles from all software houses. It’s surprising in fact that many of the larger publishing houses haven’t already pushed for such a move, or made overtures to the courts. Who knows, with that bit of extra development, they could even get round to porting the Steam platform over to other operating systems and opening up the market further. As things stand, however, that little development push on Valve’s part is lacking, and this potentially well functioning, open marketplace is slightly stifled by the monopolistic nature of Valve’s position. Steam is not a bad product. Far from it, the complaints in this list are mostly areas lacking polish, oversights that a little more focused development would soon fix, or issues that arise from Steam’s interaction with national laws and distributors rights. But the basis is certainly there, for a free, open marketplace that gaming enthusiasts and developers alike can benefit from.

As an aside, I’ve tried the crippled version of the game’s demo, and have to say the changes are pretty drastic. Instead of reacting bloodily when challenged, dead enemies instead disappear unrealistically into the ether, an effect which is rather surprising and at times quite confusing. Do German soldiers in Afghanistan get a shock when Taleban soldiers actually start bleeding when shot?

Another WordPress blank page

Fips — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:04:47 +0000

There are plenty of examples out there of WordPress installs suddenly displaying blank pages—on admin pages as well as frontend posts—after changing themes, adding/removing plugins or updating the WordPress backend. Whilst there is plenty of good information out there covering most of the usual suspects, I just came across another which was fairly difficult to track down given the lack of information, though pretty easy to solve once I’d found it. If like me you’ve at any point tried to streamline your WordPress install by cutting down on a few unnecessary services, and reducing the number of calls to the database, you may have added some lines to your wp-config.php file like so:

define('TEMPLATEPATH', '/path/to/theme/directory');
define('STYLESHEETPATH', '/path/to/theme/style.css');

Fairly innocuous, until you actually change your WordPress theme, in which case those long forgotten about resource savers will leave you with little more than a blank page to diagnose your problem. If this is the case though, just updating the lines or commenting them out will leave you with a workable system once again.

Intelligence² Catholic church debate: Transcript

Fips — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:06:45 +0000

The Intelligence² group hosted a debate in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, in October, considering whether the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Speaking for the motion were Archbishop John Onaiyekan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, and the Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe, Conservative MP and Catholic convert. Speaking against were Christopher Hitchens, writer, broadcaster and polemicist, author of the bestselling book “God is not Great”, and Stephen Fry, actor, comedian and television presenter. The debate was presented by Zeinab Badawi.

Since the new Intelligence² website appears to have done away with transcriptions, I’m publishing this one here. Please note that this is an entirely unofficial transcription, so any mistakes are my own. The full video can be found on the official site, as well as on YouTube.

	Before	After	Change
For:	678	268	-410
Against:	1102	1876	+774
Undecided:	346	34	-312

Transcript:

Zeinab Badawi

Hello and welcome from central London. We’re just a stone’s throw away from the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, we’re here in Central Hall for this Intelligence Squared debate on the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Well, that’s a subject that’s going to generate a lot of heat, I think, and some light too, I hope. I’m delighted to be chair of this debate. We have a panel which includes some of the most provocative, intelligent and stimulating commentators and practitioners on the subject. Arguing for the motion: the Archbishop of Abuja in Nigeria, John Onaiyekan; the British Conservative MP, Ann Widdecombe. Arguing against the motion: the actor, broadcaster and author, Stephen Fry, and the journalist and commentator, Christopher Hitchens. Well, our first speaker is John Onaiyekan, His Grace the Archbishop of Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and His Grace is one of Africa’s best known, most respected commentators of the church, the Catholic church, so please make your way to the podium, speak at the microphone.

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Friends, I must, I certainly must say I am grateful to be here, because for me this is more than a matter of debate, because that’s what my life is all about. If I didn’t believe that the Catholic church is a force for good, I would not devote my whole life to precisely working in that institution, hoping that I am involved in something that is good for the whole world. You see, for me to be a Catholic is a gift of God. Let me start with the word ‘church’, the Catholic ‘church’. Obviously, it means many things to many people, but I think as an Archbishop I should be in the position to say what it does mean, especially to us Catholics. Yes, the Catholic church is an institution, and some people say it is perhaps the best organised institution in the world, but that’s not really the essence of our church. We should go beyond institution. Now for us the church is first and foremost a community of believers. And this is a community of believers that is spread all over the world, made up of all kinds of people. And the institution itself, as well as those whom we normally consider church people—people dressed up like me, for example—we are there only because of that huge community of people who claim, who are Catholics. I’m stressing this, so that when you are asking yourself “is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?”, don’t look at me, don’t look at Benedict XVI, look at the Catholics all over the world.

That the church is a force for good in the world seems obviously to me, is quite obvious, the question probably which you will ask is “what kind of force?” There was once an arrogant dictator who asked in disdain “how many battalions has the Pope?” Obviously, he completely missed the point. It is not about military force or physical force, but it is about force, it is about the force of the spiritual message. The force of values, which has stood the test of two thousand years. And not only two thousand years in time, but has spread its message all over the world among different kinds of people, different races. We must also not forget the sheer weight of the number of Catholics. I have checked the statistics and we have told you that now we have about 1.2 billion Catholics all over the world, out of a population of 6.6 billion, 17.3%, and these are young, these are made up of all categories of people—young and old, women and men, peasant farmers and high tech professionals, simple citizens and even heads of states and world leaders. This is the great army, that is a great force for good in the world, and whatever they are doing, we consider it as being done, largely also as a result of the spirit which guides them. Independent statistics have shown that the Catholic church is doing far more than its numbers and its population would probably suggest. The action of the church is most significant in communities that are reduced to poverty and misery by human neglect, and sometimes by hostile environments. Talking of statistics, I spoke recently with the Director General of UNAIDS, which is the United Nations agency for HIV and AIDS, and he said that 26% of the health institutions in the world directly involved with the treatment of HIV and AIDS are run by the Catholic church. And please note, that it is a well-known policy of our church, whenever we are engaged in social welfare work, it is always given to all without any discrimination, whether you believe or not, irrespective of creed. Indeed, it is an integral part of our faith that our church is made up of saints and sinners. We are all struggling towards that perfection which Jesus asked us all to follow. Nor am I denying that the Catholic church has always and everywhere done excellent things, even sometimes in high levels, but this again only proves that we are in this world. Even the late Pope John-Paul II had no difficulty at all in admitting the mistakes that people who claim to be Catholics or to be working in the name of the church have done in the past. And he apologised, and suggestions of apology is very rare in our world today.

Let me conclude by drawing your attention to one particular aspect of my faith, which I admire greatly: we are very open to dealing, and moving, and collaborating with others. And I think this is very important for the world of ideas. We are talking of the world of today. We need more and more effects to link hands across all divides, so that we can manage to make our planet a better place. A world of peace and peace. Is there still anybody here who still doubts whether the Catholic church is a force for good in the world? Thank you very much.

Zeinab Badawi

Our next speaker is Christopher Hitchens, he’s arguing against the motion. He is a writer, journalist and commentator, particularly well known for his trenchant views and very original thinking. So, Christopher Hitchens, let us hear what you have to say, your time starts now, please make your way to the podium.

Christopher Hitchens

Fips — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:14:31 +0000

It’s a fairly common problem with Windows. Somehow a program manages to create a file with a name containing illegal characters or otherwise outside the file system’s parameters. No matter what you try, you just can’t rid yourself of it. The file certainly isn’t in use and being locked up by another program. Trying to delete or rename the file only results in Windows telling you the file cannot be found: “This is no longer in . Verify the item’s location and try again.” Even running the Command Prompt with administrator privileges doesn’t allow you to move, rename or delete the blasted thing!

Fortunately, I managed to find an easy solution. Fire up the 7-zip File Manager, and rename the file from there. Bingo – don’t ask me how Vista couldn’t manage it, or indeed why 7-zip could, but at least now you can delete the blasted thing! Kudos to the guys on this forum for the answer.

Verner’s Law: The Movie

Fips — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:37:17 +0000

Does it disturb you that despite the general appliance of Grimm’s Law, there are still some words which appear to deviate from the rule? Then you’re probably already well aware of Verner’s Law, but nevertheless here’s a really cute, little summary created by Ari Hoptman and filmed at the University of Minnesota.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

[Via Mr. Verb]

Cromwell and Irish wolves

Fips — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:39:51 +0000

Interesting little book review on the Irish Times website about the role of Cromwell in the disappearance of wolves in Ireland. Kieran Hickey’s book (possibly entitled The Natural and Cultural History of Wolves in Ireland—the article makes no reference) seems to confirm the role of Cromwell’s appearance in Ireland with the hunting and eventual extinction of the Irish wolf. I’m not aware of any attempts to reintroduce wolves to Ireland, and as this post on the Blather points out, there were fears that no one had learned from history, when policies in recent years called to cull badger numbers in the hopes of combating bovine tuberculosis.

Ireland’s sons

Fips — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:33:31 +0000

Ireland may have been the land that saved western civilization,¹ and certainly enjoyed a period of setting priests alongside agricultural products as the major export, but that’s not to say that nothing good came out of the experience. Their perhaps unique relationship with the Catholic church has put Irish comedians in a wonderful position, and combined with a deep love/hate relationship with the English, provides a rich source of material for us all to enjoy. Republicans, Catholics, Patriots, Atheists: here are some of my favourites of Ireland’s sons.

Tommy Tiernan

Perhaps one of the most controversial of Ireland’s homegrowns in the last couple of decades, this Donegal born son is also far and away one of the most successful. He holds the Guinness World Record for the longest stand-up comedy show by an individual. He’s also been accused of blasphemy by the Irish Senate, of killing Father Ted by Ardal O’Hanlon, and provoked quite an uproar recently with some jokes on the Holocaust. And he’s great!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dara Ó Briain

I’m not a religious man, I don’t even believe in God. But I’m still Catholic, of course. Catholicism has a much broader reach than just the religion. I’m ethnically Catholic, it’s the box you have to tick on the census form: ‘Don’t believe in God, but I do still hate Rangers.’ The fact is that it’s a shared hinterland between me and every other Irish person, a collection of references that we all understand, stories we all know… Once you’ve started Catholic, frankly, there’s no really way to stop being Catholic… It’s like a huge club you can’t ever leave.²

Ó Briain is certainly the more presentable face of Irish comedy, as his common appearance on the BBC attests. The worst criticism he has to contend with is a bit of sexism in his role as moderator of weekly satire program Mock the Week. Irish speaking he might be, at least he’s from The Pale!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dave Allen

Tallaght’s most famous son? At least for me—I’m sure Mick McCarthy would have another candidate.³ Dave Allen’s laid back, intimate style of show, with stories regaled over a smoke and a glass of whiskey interspersed with various sketches was certainly an inspiration for many who followed him. The world’s most dedicated practicing atheist will be sorely missed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

À la Thomas Cahill, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.
Courtesy of An Odyssey of Quotes.
Robbie Keane is another.

Corpsing on infidelity

Fips — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:49:06 +0000

Andrew W. K. shows us the dangers of partying too hard.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dearly beloved

Fips — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:31:27 +0000

No smoking. And soon, no drinking and no talking!

You have to give it to the man who wrote this. I still remember laughing at Eddie Izzard’s little piece on the smoking ban in California. Smoking bans have since then proliferated to such a state, that the Pacific island of Niue is intending to ban smoking altogether. And fair play to them. One wonders how long down the line before such a blanket ban appears in some larger nations. Smoking is essentially acceptable, despite the decades spent fighting it, and an outright ban would appear to be the only logical conclusion. Whilst opinions based on fact can cause uproarious controversy in the world of drugs, alcohol and tobacco remain relatively immune. But every step towards removing tobacco from the public light is a step towards the ban which will put tobacco in with cannabis and LSD.

Perhaps then we will see an end to these rediculous signs, and churches can go back to focusing on telling people to stop begrudging their neighbour’s donkey.

[Photo by Simon White]

Back to the Fold

Fips — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:28:01 +0000

The Fold

Many of us are probably familiar with the idea advanced in the early days of the Internet, that most users don’t know how to scroll through a website. Today that seems pretty unbelievable. The vast majority of websites, and indeed many of the most regularly visited, not only favour scrolling but to a large extent rely on it for navigation. So have the rules of the so-called ‘fold’ changed since the Internet’s inception? And what role should it play in decisions made regarding a website’s design today?

Viewing the web can be a very personal experience. Depending on your very own choice of browser, monitor or resolution, the web can look a very different place. If you’ve ever for some reason been forced to view one of your regularly visited websites on a much lower resolution monitor, for example, you’ll know what I mean. What once appeared spacious and easy to read suddenly seems squashed and cluttered. The cute little thumbnail images now take up good chunks of room and force you to scroll around them to get at the text. And should that site employ a fixed-width design that is wider than the current resolution, even more space goes to waste with the appearance of a side scrollbar.

Of course, well designed websites take their average readership into account, using accrued data to work out profiles that fit the viewing set up of their users. But finding out where that ‘fold’ lies can nevertheless be a tricky business, even armed with knowledge regarding the average resolutions used, given the various toolbars and other gimmicks most browsers can come equipped with, to say nothing of the size of the browser window, the workspace of the operating system, or whether the site will be viewed ‘zoomed’.

So does the fold even really matter? Jeff Atwood over on his blog at Coding Horror posits that scrolling fast became something of a litmus test for web users. Scrolling soon proved to be a prerequisite skill for web surfing, and thanks to the principle of survival of the fittest, every web user today should be a scroller. Yet old ideas die hard. Trying to cram as much content as possible into the top section of a web page is pretty common practice even today, and more graphically inventive or intensive preamble to content hidden beyond the fold are more of a rarity than they perhaps otherwise would be. The fear that content not immediately displayed on a page will go unread then, is perhaps given users’ willingness to scroll unfounded. But just because everyone is in the position to do something, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to do it.

As the research over at cxpartners points out, scrolling is par for the course, and in fact having content that is obviously cut-off or clearly points to content further down a page increases the amount of time users will spend scrolling through it. That isn’t to say there aren’t any pitfalls to avoid, and one thing that can seriously distract users and disguise potential content hidden offscreen is the use of strong, horizontal lines. Particularly if these should ever happen to coincide with the bottom of a browser window, such lines can act as a mental barrier, as users expect the content to end. A second pitfall can be the use of scrollable content embedded in the page, which remains hidden from the main scrollbar, an tool often used to gauge further content according to the results.

But the most important conclusion drawn from the test is that sites should avoid trying to cram too much content above the fold. Assuming that users will be drawn in by their first impressions of a site is one thing; concluding that they will only care for what they first see is entirely another. There are things that certainly belong in that noble place above the fold, depending on the type of site. A site logo/link to the home page, the main site navigation, the search form, a link to the checkout, the login form/registration link. We’ve come to expect that such staples of the web find themselves in an easy to find location above the fold. Sites which break these conventions, however, are not unheard of.

The original reason I started this little post was seeing Chris Coyier’s personal blog redesign detailed over at CSS-Tricks. I was particularly impressed by the use of custom designs for various pages, such as this one and this one. What does this have to do with the fold? Because with this miniature resolution I’m using, there’s little content to see on first impressions, and only the content of the entries themselves to draw the reader further in. What made the pages particularly inviting, however, was certainly this attempt at customisation, a move towards giving each of his entries a more personal look suited to the content it is delivering. This step towards a magazine-style approach to displaying content is, in my eyes, a very welcome one. Of course, Coyier’s site is a personal blog and can perhaps be forgiven for breaking the other ‘rules’,¹ but I hope his reckless approach to the fold, along with throwing more colourful and individual content out into his posts will prove to be a success and an inspiration to others.

In my opinion the site suffers from a poor navigation and a lack of search functions.

Profit for free

Fips — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:18:58 +0000

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Play for free

How do you turn a free product into a profitable enterprise? That’s normally the challenging issue to be faced in today’s increasingly competitive online market. Internet giant Google continues to have issues attempting to monetise its expensively acquired YouTube daughter. Yet game developer Turbine is looking to do exactly the opposite, converting their current business model into a subscription-supported free product. But does ‘free’ pay?

It certainly appears that Turbine’s decision to offer their MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online for free has paid off. Hundreds of thousands of new players have signed up to take advantage of the new offer, and despite the ‘free’ price tag, subscriptions are up 40%. In addition, many players are taking advantage of an in-game payment mechanism to buy additional items and open up new sections of the game. Previously the game had required players to pay a one off purchase price, followed by a monthly subscription fee. Now just about anyone can download the game and be playing within half an hour, paying or otherwise. Turbine also maintain that some players are paying even more per month than the previous subscription fee alone, removing an important cap on how much individual players could pay into the game. Rather than seeing players who play without paying as freeloaders, Turbine are confident that such players bring their own benefit to the company, generating interest, advertising via word-of-mouth, and thereby generating new subscriptions and one-off payments.

Just how successful this move will prove to be in the long-run is difficult to estimate. It’s clear that the business model has worked to some extent, generating plenty of fresh interest in a game that is already over three years old. But will the benefits dry up once the hype is over? What is clear is that this move represents yet another step away from traditional methods of sale, and is another example of a trend away from that classic method of promoting games—the demo.

Indeed, it would appear that there is plenty of evidence that offering games for free, if only for short periods, acts as one of the best methods of advertisement. Figures produced earlier this year by Valve boss Gabe Newell suggest that offering their action zombie-fest Left 4 Dead at a discount price over a free test weekend boosted sales figures to such an extent that they beat launch figures. The same source reveals that the release of new content for their other key title Team Fortress 2 also boosted Valve’s sales significantly.

Of course, in the case of games sold via Steam the main impulse for the impressive sales figures lies in the buyer’s perception of the short-term heavy discounts being offered. But the principle of no cost gaming models isn’t limited to only short-term probation periods, nor is Turbine unique in pursuing their policy of a combined free and subscription service. Gaming giant EA recently entered the market with Battlefield Heroes, a comical extension to their successful Battlefield series, this time free to play via browser, and supported by player micro-payments for upgrades and vanity items. Certainly an experimental move on EA’s part, recent figures do suggest that there has been some success, with players who make use of the game’s extra features paying an average of $20, and the total number of players recently tipping the 2 million mark.

And it’s not just the big players who are experimenting with new sales tactics. 2D Boy are taking a leaf out of Radiohead’s books, and offering their award-winning World of Goo title for a limited time at whatever price the buyer wishes. Whilst I can’t see such a risk being taken by any of the larger games producers any time soon, regardless of how successful 2D Boy’s trial proves, it does represent yet another departure from the traditional sales models.

As ever, however, failure remains an important component of every experiment. Whilst systems of in-game micro-payments are providing some evidence of success for EA and Turbine, it appears other alternatives to direct subscription gaming aren’t bringing home the bacon. id Software’s Quake Live was to be a free browser-based game funded via in-game advertising, however earlier this year John Carmack revealed that a premium subscription service would be have to be offered in addition, an honest admission that their advertising model alone won’t foot the bill.

Nevertheless, it is clear that games companies are becoming increasingly willing to try new tactics when it comes to funding their productions. Direct payment and subscription methods are being gradually supplemented in part with micro-payments, and attempts are being made to integrate in-game advertising, although to date it seems with little relatively success. Valve’s Steam content delivery system is proving to be an able testing ground for offering short-term probation periods for gamers, and the different levels of discounts and their positive effect on games sales will provide plenty of food for thought for games publishers and psychologists alike. Whilst we are still some way from seeing such methods commonly applied to mainstream games, it will be interesting too see whether these current examples remain profitable, and if they will inspire others to do the same. It seems even a free product can turn a profit.

Peaceful intent

Fips — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:11:20 +0000

for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Noble Peace Prize

So was Barack Obama awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Cue gasps of glee, plenty of head-scratching surprise, and a profusion of controversy. Because the question on many people’s minds is quite clear: what for?

Ignoring the fact that Obama was nominated for the award only days after his inauguration, his term thus far has certainly been one of optimism and change. It would be unfair to dismiss his achievements, and plain wrong to chastise his goals. Amongst others, Obama has been responsible for: moving to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay; furthering plans for the US withdrawal from Iraq; easing tension with Russia by abrogating plans for the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe; moving to open talks with pariah states North Korea and Iran; extending a palm leaf to the Islamic world; fostering much-weakened international institutions and supporting diplomatic methods in the Middle East.

But is all that enough? Supporters of the decision argue that the award will act as a stimulus and a compulsion for further efforts to strengthening international diplomacy, both on the part of the Obama administration and others. As should be well remembered, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded not only for congratulating on past achievements, but for encouraging those who have struggled and continue to struggle for a peaceful world. Casting a glance over the list of former recipients, it is easy to spot examples of both, occasionally embodied in the same man. So if not for his past achievements, was Obama at least deserving for his dedication to the cause?

Not likely. Or at least, not if one considers the 10 months of Obama’s term to be equivalent to the untiring efforts of the prize’s many other recipients. Are we then to accept that the prize was awarded on the basis that he is better than ‘that other guy’? That he has attempted to set right the failures of his forebear, starting to bridge the rift that had opened between America and much of the rest of the world? It has been pointed out elsewhere, that the prize acts as yet another deliberate snub to the achievements of former president George Bush, following the previous awards to the United Nations and Kofi Annan, the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei, and of course the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore.

Yet the award of the prize also stands as a rather greater insult to former President Bill Clinton, whose efforts both during his presidency, in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, as well as work in the interim, such as his recent achievement in North Korea, have been overlooked. That would also be to say nothing of the many other candidates, whose nominations to the 2009 Peace Prize will not officially be revealed for 50 years.

The Nobel Peace Prize may be the most difficult to award, and a review of its history is bound to highlight the occasional dubious recipient. In 1973 for example, Henry Kissinger was awarded the prize for negotiating the ceasefire of the Paris Peace Accords and bringing an end to US involvement in Vietnam, a conflict he was not altogether innocent of, and spread secretly, and illegally, beyond its borders into neighbouring Cambodia. His co-recipient from North Vietnam, Lê Ðức Thọ, refused the award on the grounds that there was still no peace in his country. And the award in 2007 to Al Gore and the IPCC for perpetuating a theory truly stretches my imagination when it comes to defining the word ‘peace’. After all, as stated in Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded:

to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

In my opinion, the Norwegian Nobel committee made a terrible error of judgement in awarding Barack Obama the Peace Prize. Not because he has achieved too little, or campaigned for too short a time, although both of these factors contribute to the issue. The problem is that the award appears to have been lauded upon an idealist and a demagogue, for his policies of reconciliation, not his achievements for peace, and perhaps most of all, because one day, Obama would actually have been worthy.

The paper mp3

Fips — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:54:07 +0000

Amazon Kindle e-book reader

Reading this post recently, I found myself asking why ebooks haven’t really taken off as a medium. Certainly more recent efforts, such as Amazon’s Kindle, have helped to reignite the market after a rather dubious development period over the past decade or so, but if one compares the ubiquity of mobile phones or digital audio players, e-books are entirely missing from the landscape.¹

In purely utilitarian terms, should the technology ever be fully and appropriately used, ebooks have a lot to offer over their paper counterparts. There are far fewer requirements and resources needed for production, and distribution is much easier. Whilst a device on which to read ebooks might outweigh a single volume, additional books add nothing, and in terms of transporting books en mass, ebooks are clearly in favour. The ability to flick through a paper volume might be lost in the electronic form, but this is clearly compensated for by vastly improved tools for search and cross-referencing. Likewise combining other forms of media such as video and audio is a perfectly reasonable conception with ebooks, that the paper variety can’t really compete with on any level. They’re also more easily manipulable, in terms of being able to zoom, highlight or simple leave your own annotations about the place. All of which is to say nothing of the potential advantages for newspapers and other periodicals.

Yet although the technology is certainly in a position to deliver an entirely new experience for readers, the potential has not really been tapped to any great extent, and in fact it would appear as though it is being deliberately held back. Tempting as the current technology may appear, there are still many questions left unanswered that prevent any real rapid transfer. Can books somehow be backed up to prevent possible corruption? What happens to the titles previously bought should one buy a different reader? When buying a paper book, customers can feel confident that their purchase is physically in their position, to use as they see fit. Even simple, everyday acts that we would normally take for granted with a paper book,² such as photocopying pages or lending it to a friend, suddenly become problematic when dealing with the ebook equivalent. And what about being able to sell a book on when you’re finished with it? In addition, the recent case of Amazon withdrawing books sold for their Kindle reader,³ including deleting the items from user’s devices, highlights yet one more issue that users face when choosing between paper and electronic formats.

The current situation reminds me very much of that surrounding the invention and spread of mp3s in the later 1990s. Whilst the format gained in popularity and notoriety in the years following its publication in 1994-5, the music industry treated the news entirely as a threat to its position, and sought to localise and stifle the Internet phenomenon. When one considers that it wasn’t until mid-2003 that today’s largest online music retailer iTunes opened its e-doors, it becomes clear just how difficult working against such conservative forces can be. It’s an interesting phenomenon, given that most technological advances are met with very early attempts to capitalise upon them, that such an opportunity went virtually ignored and even shunned for almost a decade, before a success story could be made out of it. Perhaps all that is needed to really revolutionise the world of publishing is that mp3 format of ebooks, a format that will provide readers both the security of ownership that a regular paper equivalent manifests, combined with every advantage today’s technology can provide. That format for books has nothing to do with size and ease of distribution, as it did with music, rather a format that will open up a digital format to all publishers, and make the rather fledgling e-publishing market explode.

According to The Guardian in April 2008, ebooks accounted for less than 1% of the total publishing market, albeit this share has no doubt increased since.
Though with the potential to infringe upon copyright laws.
Pictured above. Image by davidking via Flickr.

Dick Dastardly’s DSL

Fips — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:02:24 +0000

Interesting little snippet about the current state of South African Internet services. Designed simply to show up the state of South Africa’s Internet options, the test pitted a pigeon against a connection delivered by their largest provider. The pigeon managed to deliver 4GB of data 60 miles in little over an hour, and it took the company another hour to upload the data (one can only assume they were for some reason using an old USB 1.o/1.1 connection). In this time, just 4% of the data had been transferred via ADSL. Humbling though this message might be, I really wonder if services in the UK would fare much better? At a rough estimate, in the total amount of time it took the pigeon, my own connection might have managed around 5% of the total. The average business connection would probably have achieved twice that, but either way, the pigeon method wins hands down. Having said that, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any alternative pigeon networks set up in the UK just yet. ‘Packet loss’ due to hawk attacks would be monumental.

[Via African Politics Portal]

Open Source Bridges

Fips — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:23:16 +0000

Bridge solutions

Many of us have found ourselves in this position. Your business or group make use of an online system, such as a forum, wiki, blog etc., which you then wish to augment or combine with some other system. How you go about doing that, of course, depends entirely on your goals and the systems you’re trying to use together. Design and styling are usually the least of those worries.

The problem which consistently presents itself when attempting such a combination is what to do with the userbase. Whilst this issue can sometimes be simply ignored, in the hope that only a small number of the users of one system will need access to the second, this isn’t always the case. When it comes to one userbase requiring access to two or more systems, the first question that needs to be answered is whether the user information should be shared, enabling a unified login procedure amongst other benefits. Requiring users to sign up to various different pieces of the puzzle is a time-consuming process, and one that many will find confusing and unnecessary. And since different online systems often have conflicting requirements when it comes to usernames and passwords, for example, this can also lead to more lost password checks and work for the system administrator. However, programming such functionality oneself certainly isn’t within the realms of the abilities of all of us, and keeping such modifications functioning across various systems and versions can be a painful procedure.

Fortunately, in certain instances such functionality may well be freely available, usually in the form of third-party hacks or bridges, as they are often known.¹ Installing such addons is, in comparison to a home grown solution, much easier, safer and reliable. But reliance on a third piece of software does not guarantee that all of the features required will be available, and it also presents its own set of security issues. Aside from the software hiding its own potential security pitfalls, it can also lead to services being inoperable after an upgrade, if it isn’t kept regularly up-to-date with the latest versions of the systems it is meant to bridge, and in so doing advocates running outdated software.

This post provides no answers or alternatives. In fact, I’m not even sure if what I’m proposing is already available, or otherwise feasible or not. The news on the OpenTTD project website was the first to jog my mind about this, wondering exactly how they had solved their problems, and whether or there might be a simpler, more user-friendly option. Essentially, my idea would be for a new open source project, to offer a simple solution to the issue of shared user details across a variety of different online systems, be they forums, wikis, blogs, bugtrackers, etc. Beyond handling simple login information, the system could be used by administrators for handling various user-related issues, such as assigning general rights and permissions, handling groups, cookies, password requirements, user info and so on, but the basic benefit would be a central one-key-fits-all solution for unifying user accounts across a variety of different systems.

Does such a system already exist somewhere, one that is user-friendly, free-to-use, and supporting a wide variety of platforms? If not, would such a system even be feasible, given the different requirements and standards of the different systems, and the various issues of security and privacy involved?

Take this list of WordPress/forum bridges as an example.

Boris Johnson on the McKinnon case

Fips — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:56:10 +0000

It’s all a bit late now. Boris Johnson writes about the Gary McKinnon case in The Telegraph and points out what anyone living under a rock wearing a bag on their heads could already see. McKinnon is charged with breaking into US military computers from his 56k modem, leaving messages, deleting files and causing general mayhem. He admits to all accounts of hacking in, though denies deliberate attempts at causing damage, claiming these charges were invented to pursue extradition proceedings. Quite what the prosecutors are trying to achieve with this man are unclear, given that his crazy quest for the secrets of little green men and free energy actually provided a service to the US military authorities in pointing out their lax security. As Boris Johnson points out, they could as well be offering him consultancy fees, as trying to clap him in irons. But how long does it take before someone is willing to stand up for common sense? And given the seemingly endless machinations of the legal process, will such calls even have an affect? Aside from highlighting the blatant partiality of the US-UK Extradition Treaty, these proceedings have once more underlined the spinelessness of the UK government when it comes to rectifying gross injustice, and defending its people against what can only be described as foreign tyranny. Watching paint dry, grass grow, the wheels turn in Whitehall: the simile edges ever closer to a regular place in our vocabularies.

Swim when you’re winning

Fips — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:30:10 +0000

In a multi-record breaking event, marred by controversy over the technology of the new swimsuits, the final day of the 2009 World Aquatics Championships featured a fairly typical line-up for the Men’s 4 x 100m Medley Relay. Aside from Australia replacing Canada, and Brazil in place of Italy, the event could very well have been made for the G8. A fact no less marked than that the victors had a full replacement team to the one that qualified earlier in the day. Whoever said sport and money were a bad combination?

Bucking the trend

Fips — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:41:28 +0000

Harry S Truman

President Truman famously kept a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here”, a gift from an avid poker player. Yet whilst we might appreciate the imagery and the sentiment, should we really rely on there being a ‘buck‘ to pass? Is there always a man in charge, someone with whom the ultimate responsibility lies? The public at large like to believe so. Having someone who is nominally in charge provides a feeling that there is some level of control over daily events, that there is some direction to the madness that seems to govern our lives. It isn’t particularly important whether that person you believe in is God, the president, the Führer or Chuck Norris. Nor does that responsible person need to be an individual, it can just as easily be taken as being particular position, a group of people, or an organisation.

Yet having someone to look to as the ‘Man in Charge’ also entails having someone to blame when things go wrong. In general, people are not willing to look at events as the result of complex systems of uncountable interconnected threads. Such systems lack palpability, they invoke confusion and lack obvious conclusions. Much easier to view events as the result of simple inputs and outputs, revolving around the decision-making roles of important personages. When the proverbial hits the fan, the easiest response is to find those at the helm, whether particular individuals or a group, and lay the blame as thick and fast as the cement mixers can provide it. It’s a simple and effective reaction, since any person that can be held culpable must have made decisions, and any decision can be deemed retrospectively fallacious. Ergo any individual can be made and held responsible.¹

Take a quick flick through the history books, and you can find countless examples of this kind of scapegoating. The individual in question need not be reprimanded or even blamed, but we can see how the complex events of history were pinned on the actions and decisions of this one great personage. Take the failed General Strike of 1926, which occurred because Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin went to bed early, for example. Or the Battle of Borodino, was lost because Napoleon had a cold that day. There are any number of examples strewn throughout the historical literature, which describe the passing of major events through the actions and ideas of great individuals. Such writing of history maybe frowned upon, but it makes for a simple and entertaining discussion. How often have you seen a history of Europe in which whole peoples are summed up in such remarks as “the Germans believed” or “Russia felt”? How often are the courses of nations described as if being the personal hobby of one or other historical personality? Or how many people would recognise the name Gavrilo Princip as belonging to the man who started the chain of events that apparently led to the First World War?

Responsibility for events perhaps never takes a more crazy turn than in the realm of economics. For all the bales of paper used exhorting economic theory, for all the man-hours and computing power spent documenting the ticking of our economies, the complexities of a system that relies on the psychologies of six milliard people factored up by any number of other inputs, outputs and interactions remains as difficult to predict and describe as it perhaps ever will be. And yet the ups and downs, the dippings and divings, the riding of Kondratiev waves and Kuznets cycles, can all be pinned on the policies and opinions of a group of individuals. As William Easterly wrote in this post on Aid Watch,

Why do we all fall for the Man in Charge fallacy? We like to anthropomorphize a complex system of multiple power centers, bottom-up social norms, and spontaneous markets, innovators, and entrepreneurs, because it is scary to think of such a complex system with no Man in Charge.

Perhaps fear is exactly what prevents us from acknowledging the complexity of such systems. Though a certain level of convenience must also be acceded. Opponents of the government can argue that in the face of an economic crisis, it is clear that they overspent in the preceding year(s). Others argue that they spent too little. Some that they interfered too much in the market, yet others that they were too lax. It is the greatest position for the opposition to be in, since every argument they use is right. For the government was responsible at the time, thus the government must have been in error, therefore the government made the wrong decisions, and in that experimental laboratory of history there are no control tests and no repeat conditions.

Yet whilst the truth of what Easterly writes is fairly evident to see, for all who stop and think for more than a few seconds, the illusion of anthropological authority will always be with us. Set aside the angst ridden problems of an existentialism based on chaos and unrule, we need the chimera of the reprehensible individual as an idea we can understand and utilise. A complex system with more factors than we can conjure may be something to study in an ivory tower, but it isn’t something we can talk about, argue about, and shout about in the streets. Man is the centre of Man’s universe, and his self-deification continues to this very day. When Man created God, he had God conveniently recreate Man in his own image. Now that God has for many become optional, Man is left to fill the gap of responsibility. Despite the evidence of his exploits staring him in the face, Man continues to distance himself from the world around him. Extinctions almost always have his actions at root, global warming is a result of his ignorance or greed. Even the very products of his toil are labelled as man-made, counterpoint to all that is natural in the world. We take responsibility onto ourselves as a species – and then we play pass the buck.

Responsibility is an interesting phenomenon, when we step and look at it a little more objectively. We deal in it as currency, taking it when it suits, gladly passing it on where it doesn’t, and when things go wrong, laying the finger of blame on anyone we happen to find carrying it. Finding the roots of this psychology would be a difficult quest, though an interesting one, and one that no doubt shows fundamental equivalents in other members of the animal kingdom. But I cannot in any event imagine a future in which responsibility will not play a part in everyday society, qualming angst before unpredictability, providing the illusion of control over the unaccountable, and affecting change through the apportioning of blame and the running of scapegoats.

We should not forget, of course, that as much as we enjoy seeing certain individuals as being responsible for the workings of the world, both for the comfort it gives us whilst things are ticking along smoothly, as well as the convenience of having someone to blame when they don’t, the individuals themselves also enjoy a level of revelry in the illusion that they are the ones with all the answers.

Recent reads

Fips — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:42:29 +0000

It’s fairly rare for me to bother reviewing anything I read on here, however since I had some spare minutes and some actual opinions on some of the books I read this last month, there seemed to be enough to say to make up at least a short post. In fact it turned out to be a bit on the long side, so scroll down the relevant review if you’re really interested—being Stephen Fry’s strange debut The Liar, J.M. Coetzee’s rather aggravating Slow Man, Isabel Allende’s book for children City of Beasts, Zadie Smith’s impressive opener White Teeth and Murray Walker’s charming little autobiography Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken.

“The Liar” by Stephen Fry

The Liar

This wasn’t really one on my reading list, rather something I was asked to read for my opinion. I read Fry’s autobiographical Moab is my Washpot some time ago and found it a fairly interesting tale, though wasn’t particularly attracted enough to turn to his works of fiction. Fry’s reputation obviously precedes him, and despite The Liar being his first work of fiction, came with some reasonable acclaim and decent reviews.

Plunging in, it quickly became clear how much the plot owes to Fry’s own life (at least judging from what was revealed in Moab). At every turn I was reminded of snippets of that work of autobiography, stretched and bedecked with fansifications from Fry’s extremely fertile mind. Whilst I’ve no doubt many of the characters are based on real people, the book very much feels aloof from reality and announces itself as such. But such an approach doesn’t make a book bad. What The Liar lacked was anything to appeal to it beyond the language. Plot, such as there was, often became confusing, with frequent unmarked jumps of scene and timeframe. Whilst they weren’t so outrageous as to get the reader lost, they did sometimes require a bit of backtracking, particularly when picking the book up again. Added to that were some sections in italics in which the characters’ identities were disguised, and whilst they may have been intended like so much corn flour to thicken the plot, they were abstract in the utmost and entirely destroyed come the book’s final revelations. To my mind, the problem was that the story tried to offer too much, instead of focusing on being a lighthearted yarn. It’s a work of fiction, and tries to be funny with it, but I felt the few openly amusing moments were all too infrequent on account of making the plot out to be something that much more than it was.

As his first work of fiction, I can’t claim that Fry did a particularly bad job. It was interesting enough to make me want to finish it, and whilst at times the unexpected time jumps and secluded identities made the plot a little confusing, the ultimate lightness of the storyline meant that this wasn’t too much of a problem. The writing itself is of course interesting and pleasant to read, as one would expect from such an eloquent and vociferous character. This itself was enough to carry the story to its rather overinflated conclusion, but the book was ultimately a disappointment. Perhaps I should’ve been more wary of the fact that some of the highest words of praise on the book’s jacket came from Fry’s longtime friend Hugh Laurie:

It’s very unfair. It took Joseph Heller seven years to write Catch 22. Stephen seems to have knocked this one off on a couple of wet Wednesday afternoons in Norfolk.

A couple of wet afternoons, indeed, and any comparison to Catch 22 is rather a tad on the optimistic side! Only for the die-hard Fry fans, I can only assume his later works show a more mature hand, but for those who expect novels to deliver what they promise, I recommend reading Moab is my Washpot, the original version of The Liar, sans the guff.

“Slow Man” by J.M. Coetzee

Slow Man

Coetzee is an author I’d never picked up before, but given the reputation thought I should try on for size. And the opening third of the book certainly appealed to me. The writing is concise, descriptive, and at times you might say beautiful. And the story appeals for its simplicity: an active, elderly man loses a leg in a cycling accident, and has to deal with this sudden change in his life. Not only has his whole way of life been affected by the alteration, but he is sharply introduced to the way society views him, an old man, perhaps even before he became emasculated.

Then come the people in his life. The early introduction of helpers with whom he has to become accustomed promises much of the story, and indeed starts off as an interesting exploration. All of which is sent completely out of the window with the appearance of Elizabeth Costello. As an author who appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the story, it’s difficult to know exactly how to deal with her. Is she supposed to embody Paul, the main character’s inner thoughts? Or perhaps she’s supposed to be Coetzee himself, and the ensuing discussions which take place principally between Paul and Elizabeth are a form of dialogue that investigate the very nature of the author’s relation to his subject? Who the fuck knows. I’m afraid to say, I don’t. It’s a very rare book indeed that I start and don’t manage to get through to the end, and for a book as short as Slow Man, it says rather a lot that I didn’t. The character of Elizabeth is irritating in the extreme; her presence, quite baffling. In the end I found myself put off by the combination of these two factors and moved on to other things. Perhaps those interested more in writing than reading will find more to earn from reading this book, but for myself it was off-putting.

What began as an intriguing, well-styled look at such everyday relations was completely spoiled by this aggravating and unexplained intrusion. I can only assume it was all something I didn’t understand, else Coetzee’s acclaim stems from his other works.

“City of the Beasts” by Isabel Allende

City of Beasts

Moving on up from Coetzee should’ve been easy, but unfortunately I made a mistake with this work from Isabel Allende. Another author I’d never previously got around to reading, I picked this book up on a whim from the library shelves, and took it as being a ‘dead cert’ after the disappointments of Slow Man. What I hadn’t realised however (and what wasn’t particularly clear from the cover—a fact a lot of Amazon reviewers also agreed with), was that City of the Beasts is a book for young adults.

Such as it was, I actually got through a fair few chapters before giving up, which may be a good sign at least as far as recommending this book to the intended age group. The subject matter is probably sufficiently interesting, the sense of adventure reasonably acute, and the writing free-flowing and inviting enough to appeal to children of the right age. Of course the main character is a child, and the other main protagonists are suitably bland figures lacking in much depth that is probably well-suited to a younger mind. There was no way I could stomach forcing myself through to the end, however. I’m still very much of the opinion, as the wonderful and very sadly missed Linda Smith remarked, that adults who wish to ‘read’ books like Harry Potter in public should at least have the decency or common sense to disguise it with something more appropriate like pornography.¹ Not that there’s anything wrong with children of the right age reading it, but I honestly fail to see the appeal or sense in reading trivialities, largely no doubt on the basis that it is popular, when there’s such a wealth out there to choose from.

Whether City of the Beasts really lives up to such expectations then, you’ll have to find out elsewhere. But for me this was just another sad disappointment in a month of poor reads.

“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith

White Teeth

Fortunately, this month of bad picks was finally rescued by Zadie Smith’s surprisingly excellent first novel. I’d originally intended to read this book on the recommendation of a friend almost ten years ago, and it was just by chance that I finally got around to picking it up now. After the thorough disappointment of the previous books, I suppose anything with half a plot and a few interesting characters would have sufficed, but White Teeth lived up to its reputation as the award-winning bestseller it is advertised as.

The book follows the tribulations of a handful of families thrown together in the London melting pot, taking snippets out of their lives as the decades roll by. Described by some as a ’serious comic novel’, Smith certainly approaches her subject in a light-hearted manner, weaving plenty of humourous little moments into what is otherwise a fairly serious look at the issues of multiculturalism in late-twentieth century Britain. Despite the large cast of characters, the different generations and jumps back and forth in time, Smith does a good job of keeping the reader aware of what’s going on, and it never felt unnecessarily confusing or convoluted. There are occasional threads in the story that appear to have little meaning or significance in the overall plot, and could have been left out to save a few pages, but the writing is so attractive that it didn’t detract from the overall goal.

Whether White Teeth would have come so highly acclaimed had it not been published when it was, however, is another matter entirely. Although perfectly readable, and highly entertaining, the book is not without its fair share of problems. The novel is built upon the strength of its characters, and Smith has what has elsewhere been described as a Dickensian tendency to deliver a rich array of supporting players, each of them individual, each as important as a major character. Whilst it was clear to see where the adjective had sprung from, Smith’s minor characters don’t quite have that sublime combination of simplicity and depth of Dickens, yet worse is the fact that some of her major characters felt rather more wooden than these throwaway roles. Smith’s guiding light, however, is not a man like Dickens but rather Salman Rushdie. The few references thrown in along the way are only the more glaring hints that it is this style which Smith is trying to emulate. White Teeth appeals at heart as a contrastive and comparative look at dealing with the gray areas of multiculturalism, from different perspectives and different generations, yet there are clear signs that Smith was attempting to turn the novel into an epic along the lines of Midnight’s Children, spanning more generations and decades, entwining key historical events. The only thing really missing was the magic realism of Rushdie. Yet where others have lambasted the mimicry, I rather enjoyed the similarity, because Smith is far from being just a mockingbird, and her own unique voice was a pleasure to read.

For a first novel, White Teeth certainly illustrates a lot of promise and potential in Smith’s writing. Many complained that the book did not deserve the praise it received, and they certainly are justified in pointing out certain problems in the overall picture. But personally, I found any complaints I had were niggling and temporary, and thoroughly enjoyed the style, the characters and message of this debut novel. I only need wait and see now whether it takes me another decade to pick up another Zadie Smith or not.

“Murray Walker: Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken” by Murray Walker

Unless I'm Very Much Mistaken: Murray Walker

Normally I wouldn’t review an autobiographical work such as this, let alone read one. I have little patience for most self-eulogies, but occasionally I find myself tempted, and for a man like Murray Walker, I gladly make an exception.

I should perhaps first make clear that I’m not the greatest motor racing fan. Particularly when I was younger, I was perhaps aware that it went on, and would occasionally make a mental note of the results when such would appear on the news, but this was usually limited to a few races a year, and I don’t believe I ever actually sat down to watch a race. Yet I was nevertheless aware of this man’s presence. He really was the Voice of Formula 1 like no man perhaps ever again shall be. With British television being as it was, sports coverage was for many years dominated by the BBC. As the independent stations began to take a keen interest, and of course the cable and satellite subscription services became popular, after some competitive bargaining the BBC was left with scant coverage of generally fairly lesser ranking events for some years. Formula 1 moved over to ITV, but unlike in pretty much every other instance, at least that springs to mind, that voice of commentary went with it!

And that’s pretty much where I came into F1 racing I think. For whatever reason, with the move to ITV I finally found myself taking the time on a Sunday afternoon to put my feet up and watch the coverage from wherever the event happened to be. That might have principally been down to the terrible television signal we had for the BBC stations at that time. Either way, it’s testament to the man’s presence that perhaps without really knowing his name or who he was, I knew Murray Walker’s voice like I knew my own father’s. Whoever was in the run, wherever the action took place, the scene wouldn’t be complete without his commentary.

Formula 1 is a sport that virtually cannot exist without commentary. If you’ve ever watched a race with the sound off, you’ll perhaps understand what I mean. Since the action doesn’t always happen in front of your eyes, and the nature of the race means that the full stretch of track can have important events happening at once, motor racing does at times seem singularly unsuited as a spectator sport. Perhaps the reason why the Americans took to the circular track form to make it more spectator-friendly. With cars pitting, crashing, overtaking and lapping, the order can get very confusing, very quickly, till the viewer has hardly more clue about who’s leading the race as a boxing fan knows who’s winning a fight on points.

Which is where Murray Walker seemed perfectly made for his job. As a motor racing enthusiast and son of a fairly successful motorcycle racer, he had the opportunity early in life to take up the commentator’s microphone. From humble beginnings blossomed a long-standing career, as private passion first accompanied then replaced his regular work in advertising. And what a fortune for those of us on the receiving end. His genuine enthusiasm for the sport turned Formula 1 seasons into thrilling epics akin to gladiatorial fights. When something happened on the track, you’d know instantly just how important that was, and what that meant for the race and the championship. Throwing in some extra tidbits of information from races and seasons past, even the relatively quiet moments of a Grand Prix would be filled with something informative, an important accessory in a sport in which for large periods of time, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that nothing of any import was happening. When someone at the back of the field was making progress, you’d hear; when someone made a pitstop, you’d understand what that meant for the ones around him; when someone set the fastest lap, you’d know how that compared to previous years or previous fastest laps. All these little hints and titbits made his commentary all the more engaging and informative, but kept the viewer exactly on the button in an otherwise incredibly detailed sport.

Of course, given such details and the speed with which things happen in motorsport, people make mistakes, and Murray Walker was infamous for them. The very title of his autobiography indicates as much. Whilst some might argue that his ‘Murrayisms’ detracted from the commentary and were indications that he was losing it towards the end of his career, I couldn’t disagree more. There was always something harmless about his gaffs, something comical and endearing, that neither detracted from what he was trying to say (at least most of the time—there were occasions when it was difficult to work out what he was on about) nor interrupted the wonderful flow of enthusiasm he conveyed. A few of his more illustrious Murrayisms are on this blog’s Quote Collection—a full list could exhaust a post of itself!

After reading this book, I had originally planned to write a separate post about this wonderful man. However, since I’d already decided to write about some of my recent reads, it seemed more appropriate to append it to this post. One final thing that became clear from reading Murray Walker’s autobiography was how great a gentleman he really was. So much was fairly clear from his commentary, and I can hardly imagine a harsh word spoken by him about any of the competitors, even when all around him were screaming abuse for one reason or another. When accusation of cheating or unsportsmanship were floating around, Murray would always give the benefit of the doubt, and it’s not difficult to see why he was so well liked by his colleagues and associates. Although some of his thoughts and opinions might not be everyone’s cup of tea, he was deserved of every accolade he received, and more besides. A true pillar of sport commentary, F1 hasn’t been the same without him, and whilst rumours abound about his return with the shift of F1 coverage back to the BBC, I think it would be wrong of him to take any role greater than the one of website commentator already revealed.

YouTube links to Linda Smith’s Room 101 possibly available here: 1, 2, 3.

All tourists are potential terrorists

Fips — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:14:51 +0000

At least, so you could be forgiven for believing. Taking photos of buses can get you in some trouble these days. Perhaps now the British government would think twice about stepping in to prevent their own tourists from suffering judicial heavy-handedness. Even snapping a bobby in London could land you up to 10 years, under Section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. You can see how important that “Counter” part in the title was felt to be; if they’d left it out you’d never be quite sure which way to interpret the act. Fortunately there are still some people willing to stand up common sense. Nevertheless, the UK government policy seems clear. Whilst UK citizens have to accept being the people most spied upon by their government, the latter is taking every advantage to make sure the cameras only point one way. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Left 4 Dead Review

Fips — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:08:59 +0000

Left 4 Dead (PC)

For whatever reason, Valve deemed last weekend to be worthy of celebration, and in addition to offering a welcome discount, offered a free trial for their action-packed zombie fest Left 4 Dead. Never one to pass up on such offers, and having a few friends who’d already bought the game, I spent a fair few hours last weekend testing the game out, enough so to have convinced me to actually buy the thing!

Whilst Left 4 Dead sits firmly in the survival horror genre, it is without a doubt a shooter through and through. Whilst the genre may have its early origins with games like Alone in the Dark, Left 4 Dead is to that what 28 Days Later is to Night of the Living Dead. It’s a high-energy bloodbath, which is well and truly the game’s essence. Forget setting, plot or character development, the game boils down to an assault course for four, through levels strewn with zombies to some method of escape, with occasional safe points along the way.

That might not sound particularly novel, but the game’s central tenet is its co-operative side. Whilst there are plenty of games past that have featured zombies in one way or another, none have quite provided the experiences associated with the stereotypical zombie genre. Left 4 Dead clearly owes a lot to the zombie movie, from the opening intro to the closing credit sequences, and the gaming world has been truly aching for such a game. Mods such as Zombie Panic! or Zombie Master filled a gap, but Left 4 Dead has made full use of the Source engine to create a movie experience built for four.

Teamwork

Over the trial weekend I was lucky enough to have had 3 experienced veterans to guide me through the game’s four campaigns. Each features the characters making their way through a typical dystopian setting, liberally sprinkled with the living dead, towards some form of rescue. Generally the levels are punctuated by minor set pieces, and an occasional pause whilst something important happens, during which time the characters have to hold their ground as a horde of zombies is thrown at them. Whilst that might sound simple enough, and nothing that a player couldn’t manage on his own, without those extra three guns a player would quickly find it difficult if not impossible to withstand the tide of brain eaters.

In terms of the teamwork element, Left 4 Dead is quite probably one of the best co-operative gaming experiences to date. Although there are plenty of other games with co-op modes built in, these tend to add nothing to the single player mode save having to find extra weapons and health packs for your companion(s), and you might as well be running around on your own for all the use that the extra players bring. In Left 4 Dead, however, running off on your own will likely soon find you lying under a rugby scrum of zombies all trying to take a memento of your flesh. Players can easily become ‘incapacitated’ by being trodden down under the weight of too many fiends, or else attacked by one of the few special zombies each equipped with certain abilities. Without another player handy to rescue them, it would soon be lights out.

Instinct

Stocking up whilst there's chance

If the game owes so much to its shooter heritage and zombie film inspiration, then we can thank Valve that it plays like it should. That is to say, if you’ve played other FPS games and seen a zombie film or two, you should know what to expect. The game is peppered with time- and thought-saving features that generally go unnoticed, but which all serve to make the game run so seamlessly. Take the weapons, for example. Each player immediately comes equipped with a pistol with unlimited ammunition, which for anyone who’s experienced being reduced to playing an FPS with nothing more effective than the tattoos on your knuckles and harsh language as a means of defending yourself, immediately appeals as a good idea. The player chooses their main weapon from a small selection of the usual suspects arrayed out at each safety point in the campaign (i.e. the beginning of each stage), and ammunition is available in occasional piles scattered throughout the levels, regardless of weapon. Aside from those two guns, players can take one medikit, one grenade and one packet of pills (a temporary health booster), all of which prevents players from stockpiling weapons from their teammates, or having to constantly swap around guns for lack of ammunition.

The clever level design is another efficient time-saver. Rather than have players walking around as headless as the zombies they’re trying to avoid, the levels are laid out fairly simply and intuitively, each section leading to the next. When there is an occasional set piece, the task is highlighted so that the players know exactly which lever to press, which lift to climb into, or which radio to use. This highlighting feature is also used to show players where their teammates are, by displaying bright blue outlines of the players when they would normally be out of sight behind objects, a really excellent idea that serves to prevent players from getting completely lost and separated from the group, and really comes into its own when a player finds himself incapacitated or smothered by a wall of undead flesh. Without that ghostly blue outline to help find him, a player might as well put his calls for help on hold and enjoy the cheesy lift music.

Mr. Hyde

The regular campaign mode, although perhaps the highlight of the game, is only a part of its repertoire. When you’re fed up of running through the campaigns as a survivor (of which more later), the option is there to put the boot on the other foot and play as one of the opposing ’special’ zombies against a team of survivors. Each of the four zombie types has its own special ability to cause general mayhem and suffering, ranging from the Hunter, a nimble, springy beast that might remind players of the alien mode in Aliens vs. Predator, through to the rarer but more dangerous Tank, a lumbering beast that takes some serious firepower to stop, somewhat resembling the untoward appearances of Mr. Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The way the zombie players spawn in is another nice feature of the game, having them able to see the ghostly outlines of the other zombie players before they choose their spawning location, as well as being able to follow the survivors around, seeing their outlines through walls, thereby being far more able to set up ambushes and the like.

Although an interesting idea, from what I’ve seen the mode really doesn’t have all that much to endear itself. The zombies, although now perhaps a little more coordinated being human controlled, are still just as easy to spot and kill as when controlled by the AI, with the zombies making the same giveaway noises they normally would: the projectile vomiting Boomer zombie eliciting sounds dreadfully similar to those heard in most British city centres on a Friday night. Added to that are the sadly long spawn times between lives, and the players on the zombie team inevitably end up feeling rather more like spectators than participants. Fortunately the teams are usually swapped at the end of every segment and the two quartets compete as to who can complete the levels with more of their brains unchewed, but it still doesn’t add very much to the original co-op mode, and feels rather much a cute novelty than a real gaming mode.

In fact, Left 4 Dead at times appeals to the rather more cynical side in me, which suggests that the name for the game really came about when the developers stopped working on the project and moved on to other things. The original four campaigns in their co-op mode are thoroughly enthralling, and the versus mode at least offers some variation on the theme, but playing through the same four segments repeatedly soon gets very tired. Naturally there are different difficulty settings—but which FPS doesn’t have one of those—and the so-called “AI director” does at least ensure that the segments aren’t entirely predictable, by changing the locations of health, ammo and special zombies and calling in zombie hordes occasionally. But honestly, whether a horde of zombies appears a third of the way through the level rather than at the half-way stage isn’t exactly the most radical alteration worthy of a repeat performance.

Conclusion

A molotov cocktail in the right place can decimate a zombie horde

With the help of a team of experienced zombie fest veterans, I managed to play through the four campaigns in the one evening of the free trial, arguably exhausting a good chunk of the game’s playability. And despite that fact, still went out of the way to buy the game. In fact, as ever with Valve, actually parting with my money was a more difficult feat than pre-loading the game and taking advantage of the free trial. Apparently, purchasing from them using a payment method that isn’t tied to the country you’re in is considered somehow suspicious by Valve, a completely retarded policy if ever I heard one, which I swiftly outmanoeuvred through a bit of remote administering of a computer in another country. This wasn’t even the first time I had difficulties paying via Steam, having had accounts locked in the past for using payment methods in ways deemed incompatible with their policies.

But I digress. Although I was persuaded enough by the trial (and the discount!) to buy Left 4 Dead, as the package currently stands it really doesn’t live up to its regular price tag. The original co-op campaign modes are really well made, and easily one of the best four-player co-op experiences available in an FPS, but with around an hour’s playtime for each, the game weighs in extremely short in terms of regular play, replayable though it is. The versus mode on the other hand has its moments, but in general doesn’t live up to expectations, and really feels more like a way of distracting four players whilst the other team actually plays through the game.

What Left 4 Dead really does have on its side, however, is Valve’s reputation as developers. Their dedication to adding features and fixes long after a game’s release is certainly to be factored into the game’s longevity. There was recently a new game mode introduced, which I haven’t yet had the time to try out, and no doubt there are many other ideas swimming around in their fertile little minds. As with many developers today, Valve’s development cycle really has shifted much further beyond the release date than ever before, with Left 4 Dead being a perfect example of a game released in a half-complete state in terms of content, albeit that half being well polished and gruesomely good fun!

Pros

Graphics—perhaps not the prettiest graphics around, but still looks very authentic
Co-operative mode—grab three friends and have some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on
Gameplay—set off a car alarm by mistake, and hear the howls as the entire zombified neighbourhood comes to dine

Cons

Length—the four main campaigns last perhaps an hour each, and apart from replaying those, there isn’t very much extra content
Versus mode—more of a gimmick than an extra playable mode

And if you came here mistakenly expecting to read something entertaining, here’s a saving grace in the form of Yahtzee’s wonderful 4 minute Left 4 Dead review.

The Repeatables

Fips — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:19:40 +0000

This isn’t meant to be a list of classic films. In fact, many classics would find it difficult to creep on to this list. These films don’t have to have bemusing screenplays, flawless acting, blood-pumping soundtracks, or brilliant cinematography. But they are all linked by that special je ne sais quoi which makes me able to watch them time and time again. That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of great movies that share this rather dubious accolade. I could and would watch many of them again, but the experience is always be somewhat diminished from that initial viewing.

The films on this list, however, have something special that gives them enduring longevity. It’s not the film itself but the film experience that counts. With the intricacies of the plot laid bare, the twists, turns, shocks and surprises all blunted by experience, what’s left is whatever ethos the film can conjure up. Which is precisely what some cult classics manage so successfully. Umberto Eco once wrote that “Casablanca became a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is “movies”.”¹ His point was that the film itself wasn’t any particular gem, but it encapsulated what movie-goers expected to see. The lines were famous before they were spoken, perhaps the most famous line of all being the one that wasn’t even in it (“Play it again, Sam”). But films that are able to do that go on to be remembered long after they’re made, irrespective of their individual merits and the quality of their cinematography, acting or screenplay.

This is simply a list of films that qualify merely on account of springing to mind first when considering what makes a film rewatchable. They’re mostly quite mainstream, with a heavy slant on the action side, no doubt in part because drama is a singularly poor trait for repeat value. But they are foremost a very personal example, and I doubt whether others will share even a portion of their number.

James Bond series

Bond

This is of course a complete cheat entry, as there are more films here than in the rest of the list put together. Nevertheless, the series is a perfect representation of what I mean by a film ethos somehow entirely separate from its content. In fact, the film ethos is so far separated from the material, that there is no real storyline threading the films together—one could go as far as to say the films do better being stood in isolation than seen as part of a series. The contradictions are numerous, the plots often bear scant relation to one another, with hardly ever a reference to what went before or what will come after. How else could so many actors have played multiple roles in the series?

The Bond films are an encapsulation of fantasy and escapism, the same as their belletrist predecessors. The third Fleming novel, Moonraker, was less well received in comparison to the other Bond outings, primarily because it is set entirely in England, and without the exotic locations that characterise so many of Bond’s adventures, the book lost some of its charm. The films endear to precisely those same principles, and would in a sense be incomplete without the clever gadgets, fast cars, racy women, wicked villains and so on. That’s not to say that each film is a carbon copy of the others, merely that watching a Bond film is entirely akin to unwrapping a chocolate bar: the experience will be entirely what you expect.

Although the films are not in themselves particularly bad, there is nevertheless plenty to criticise. The plotlines are often genuinely ludicrous, the villains are cardboard cutouts, and Bond himself, despite the change of actors and the seemingly unaged complexion after nearly 60 years of service, is a great ball of clichés. Which is curiously entirely to the series’ credit. Bond can find himself challenged by a chess Grand Master, a karate world champion, or a marathon race through the desert against a camel, and he will come through looking as though he were about to attend the embassy ball. As Raymond Chandler put it, “Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.” That just about sums up one of the greatest figures in cinema’s history.

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade

Indy

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade was the film which started this list. One idle Sunday afternoon when I should probably have been mowing grass, revising for exams, or generally doing something vaguely productive, I had a flick through the TV guide and noticed this film was on. Before another thought popped into my head, the TV was on, my feet were up, and a mug of hot tea had magically appeared on the table beside me.

This film certainly bears plenty of relation to the previous entry. The most obvious link is that the character of Indiana Jones was modeled to a large extent on that of James Bond. Adequate reason to have ‘the father of Bond’, Sean Connery, play Indiana Jones’ father in this outing. This extra dollop of charisma on top of Harrison Ford’s already powerful on-screen presence was probably what made this film the best in the series in my opinion. But the film series in general also shared much in common with its Bond inspiration, including the characteristics of its tough and endearing hero, the exotic locations, evil villains (plundering the Nazi legend for all its worth), and plenty of stunning action sequences, lightly peppered with short comedy elements. Even the formula James Bond intro sequence, that had little if anything to do with the main plot, was incorporated into the series.

Whilst the film offers nothing truly spectacular in comparison to many other films of the action/adventure category, nevertheless it built upon a successful heritage and represents one of the best in the genre. The story is solid enough that the film doesn’t simply feel like a collection of action sequences flimsily strung together, although if we’re honest, the film might just as well be described as a visual rollercoaster. John Williams’ accompanying music provides one of the most recognisable signature tunes, and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the ending provides one of the most satisfyingly cheesy farewells in cinematic history.

Duel

Should you already have pictured what the rest of this list would look like, Duel probably wouldn’t have figured among many people’s guesses. This low budget and innocuous little film has earned the acclaim of having established Steven Spielberg’s career, as the first of three TV movies he produced for Universal Studios.

Quite how I’ve managed to watch this film more than once is rather a surprise to me, given that I think every time I’ve noticed the film broadcast it has started at some unreasonably small hour in the morning. Nevertheless, the film has a certain charm about it that makes it so readily watchable. The simplicity of the story—a commuter on a lonely road finds himself harassed to the point of attempted murder by the unknown driver of an articulated truck—nevertheless fills the film’s 90 minute runtime nicely. With only one real character, and the open road for most of the filming, watching it is something akin to experiencing the thoughts of a man having a nightmare. The viewer literally is David Mann, murderously pursued by a great hulking truck for no apparent reason, attempting to find some kind of compromise, solution or escape.

Whilst elsewhere described rather nicely as a cross between a road movie and a monster film, Duel somehow has a satisfying, almost calming effect watching it. Perhaps it’s the TV equivalent of staring into a burning fire. Or perhaps it’s just a damn good film.

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, (London, 1986), p. 208.

Reliving an old gaming experience

Fips — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:15:02 +0000

Classics of their medium, but which will have a harder time in the future?

In comparison to a medium like cinema, computer games suffer from a particularly poor level of longevity. The vast majority of films can still happily be viewed today, often in an updated format, though keeping to the original production. That isn’t to suggest that films do not become dated, nor that more than just distribution formats are updated in later productions. Only recently I had the privilege of watching a once lost silent Polish film, A Strong Man (Mocny Człowiek), rediscovered in 1997. As there were no hints as to what musical accompaniment was meant to be played with the film, the DVD was released with a modern ambient style, that took a short while to get used to, but actually fit the film’s plot and style rather beautifully. On the whole, however, a film produced fifty years ago can be viewed with much the same clarity today as on the day it was released.

With computer games this issue is all too obviously unsolved. Not only do games age, as with any form of media entertainment, but they do so astonishingly quickly. The systems in place to support many of them gradually fade away, the communities surrounding them normally dissipate before too long (if there even is one), and in many cases the hardware and software required to run them simply move on.

To compare games to cinema is perhaps unwise, but many of the principle facets remain the same. Older games may not have the same visual complexities of today’s successors, nor the scope of their worlds or the detail of their mechanics, but their storylines and gameplay can remain as fresh as ever. A game such as Tetris will never die, on the basis of its blinding simplicity and addictive gameplay – but most importantly thanks to the myriad of rewrites, updates and clones that have kept the game alive to this day. Even the signature theme tune will live on as a classic example of gaming heritage.

Yet for every classic such as Tetris that has survived or been adapted for the modern era, there are simply thousands that have been essentially lost under the rolling wheels of technological advancement. Worst of all is that whilst many games become unplayable as operating systems and hardware develop, and as publishers stop producing them, copyright holders generally maintain their grasp on the games and consign efforts to keep them alive to pirates. This is quite frankly one of the more maddening aspects of computer game development, that golden classics should be consigned to history or piracy, since they cannot legally be made available for free, and cannot be purchased in any store that isn’t still anticipating the Millennium bug, is in my eyes simply a crime. All power to the outfits that make their games available after a certain period, or like id software have a policy of releasing their source code for free after a certain period.

Nevertheless, all is not Doom or Gloom. This post was originally inspired when I came across the remake of a classic of the 1980s game Ghostbusters, entirely rewritten for today’s machines. No doubt the original is out there somewhere, and playable via one of the many decent emulator programmes available, but trying to acquire and run these things can be a challenging experience. The more popular platforms have well developed, stable emulators with a lot of support, and finding ROMs for these isn’t particularly challenging, but for the more obscure platforms and titles, this can still be a frustruting and fruitless search.

Fortunately, some really great work has been done on a number of projects to keep certain niches alive. The ScummVM project has done some excellent work to make a number of classic adventure games playable on today’s operating systems. Quite how they’ve run into battles with the LucasArts legal team when trying to rescue their back catalogue from the dustbin is beyond me. A number of projects have also arisen around the selection of older id software games, such as Doomsday, which providing an updated game engine for Doom, Heretic and Hexen, helped in large part to id software’s laudable policy of releasing the source code (not to mention having the temerity to port many of their games in the first place). With a more general aim, the DOSBox project empowers a great many classics with a new lease of life, although this can be a tricky process, made much easier by the D-Fend Reloaded frontend. As per the recent entanglements with Worms, however, even this can cause some headscratching.

My favourite project of this ilk, however, has to be the astoundingly good OpenTTD. The ultimate goal being to create an entirely free re-working of Chris Sawyer’s classic Transport Tycoon Deluxe, the project certainly sits on shaky legal ground for attempting to present a copy of the game, but that aside the software is able to utilise the original game’s graphics and sounds, and not only recreate the original experience, but also improve upon it. Amongst other merits are the plethora of options, the feature additions which are well within the tone of the game, and of course the brilliantly updated multiplayer options which has given this game a decidedly extended lease of life. I could happily go on raving about this project, but that’s probably best left for another post altogether.

One might like to believe that the future looks brighter as far as gaming longevity is concerned. Distribution platforms such as Valve’s Steam allow games to be ‘published’ long after the traditional cycle, and has even been in large part responsible for resurrecting some old classics (e.g. Commander Keen). It may also spur developers to keep their catalogues ‘current’, at least as far as running on the latest Microsoft operating system. Nevertheless, the modern computer game has certainly moved far from its humble origins. The classic games of yesteryear that have remained with us on account of their unique simplicity, are mimicked today in the largely plotless gameplay oriented multiplayer games of the Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament ilk. There are of course more recent and highly successful moves in the direction of more immersive and detailed worlds, and although World of Warcraft alone probably accounts for well more than half of all players of MMORPGs, clearly in terms of gaming attributes the multiplayer aspect has grown to highly significant proportions.

Ultimately then, whilst there are numerous well-intentioned projects out there to attempt to rescue many classic games from the grave, will the future of gaming make that job actually harder rather than easier to achieve? Certainly any multiplayer gaming experience relies to some extent on the quality of the players involved, but setting up a multiplayer game of Doom is probably easier today than it was when it was released, the only thing needed are the players. But for games that rely on servers and a myriad other players cannot really hope to be recreated in the future, in the same way that an old DOS or Amiga game can be rewritten or emulated. In the future, will we be forced to look back upon a game like World of Warcraft as a phenomenon?