I’ve given up, and I’m not afraid. Only there’s something I would like to understand. And I don’t think anyone can explain it. You see, I know it’s the end for me. I know it, but I can’t quite believe it, I can’t feel it. It’s so strange. There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that it’s something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now it’s over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, and it isn’t that they are indifferent, it’s just that they don’t know, they don’t know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there’s something about it that they should understand. I don’t understand it myself, but that’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?

Ayn Rand, We the Living

It's good to be back!

Last week I had one of those urges that only a pregnant man can have, to step back into the shoes of Tommy Vercetti and relive the delights of Vice City. This 2003 Rockstar outing was easily one of the best games I ever played, everything about it simply oozed style and polish. It’s almost as if the developers took a standard checklist of things that get rated in a game, made sure every area got given the works, and then spent the rest of their time filling in the gaps. Because it’s exactly that which nails it for this game, the attention to detail that makes playing Vice City like stepping into the ’80s: the clothes, the music, the cars, the giant mobile phones, heck, even the intro scene features the game being loaded on a Commodore 64. Rockstar’s particular sense of humour is also here to see by the bucketload, from the tongue-in-cheek nature of some of the missions, through the fantastic dialogue and hilarious radio stations, to the small jabs and puns that little the streets of Vice City.

All of which is without even touching on the gameplay. Sitting firmly in the sandbox genre, Vice City gives you a wonderful feeling of being able to go about things your own way. Goofing around, stealing cars, running from the police, there’s plenty to do in the game when you aren’t really doing anything! But fortunately that doesn’t mean that Rockstar skimped out on the main storyline, which is by all means fantastic, and features all sorts of mission types, from starting riots, racing through the streets, to knocking off banks and delivering numerous methods of ‘persuasion’ to various denizens of the city. Aside from the main plot, there are plenty of other side missions and extras to discover, which add ample distraction to the standard mayhem generally meted out whilst driving between missions.

Censorship

Unfortunately, on account of where I currently live, the copy I got hold of was one of the draconian censored versions designed for people with severe mental disabilities and no wish to stand up for themselves. Frankly, the censorship wasn’t immediately conspicuous: it’s been long enough since I last loaded the game up, that I didn’t notice the lack of blood under the tires, or the inability to kick people when they’re down. Even in a mission involving a chainsaw and a nice Hawaiian shirt, it didn’t immediately occur that there were no droplets of blood on the screen.

Eventually, however, I found my way to a location where I knew there to be a hidden rampage, one of Vice City’s mad little sub-missions involving a mad psychotic killing spree against the clock, only it wasn’t there. After a quick search on the web, I realised that this was in fact on account of the censorship, and not any corruption in the game or an error on my part. Fortunately, whilst searching for the reason I also found the solution: the BlutPatch replaces the game’s main executable and restores all of those missing features hacked out to try to put some kind of moral fibre into this hellraiser of a game.

And honestly, what is the point of it? On installing the ‘patch’ I realised just how many little details had been taken out of the game. Like the ability to rob the people you’ve killed was entirely removed, so what exactly is the message we’re supposed to get? Ripping someone from the front seat of their cars and being them to death with a hammer is fine, but taking $20 from their wallets afterwards is beyond the pale? Or the issue of sex. The game revolves around the criminal underworld, it kicks off with a drug deal, ends in a massacre, and has everything in between, yet it was the ability to hire a prostitute and sit in a squeeking car whilst your health goes up that was deemed unfit for polite society. Unfortunately I didn’t play the game long enough without the BlutPatch to tell if the censored version also touches on those other likely offensive areas in the game, namely the strip club and the porn studios.

Vista Issues

Sadly, the game hasn’t entirely lived up to the test of time. Whilst the gameplay, humour and polish of the game are still as fresh as they were on its release, getting the game to run with any degree of reliability is a bit of a trial. I was running it under Vista, which wasn’t necessarily the greatest problem, but no doubt the BlutPatch did nothing to help matters. Fortunately after a bit of tinkering I got the game to run fairly smoothly, albeit with a couple of annoying issues:

• Mouse sensitivity was unfortunately rather crazy, and affected the vertical rather more than the horizontal. This mouse has a few buttons for tweaking the DPI, but there are also some tools below which may help.
• Occasionally the mouse would refuse to function at all, generally fixed by pressing escape, or restarting the game. This would not happen mid-game, only when moving from the main menu screen and back again.
• The game would occasionally crash outright after some kind of collision involving a police/military vehicle. Not entirely sure what this was caused by, nor if it was restricted to police vehicles, and it was fairly infrequent, though highly annoying when reminded of it on Vigilante level 15.

For most of these and many other problems, there is an excellent guide over on the GTAForums. Some of the solutions call for the use of some tricks produced by the ToCA Edit team, sadly rather hidden away on their website and so reproduced below.

There are also a couple of patches originally produced here (original website now defunkt) for fixing two specific bugs, namely the never-ending slow motion camera on doing Unique Jumps, and the unreachable Cuban outfit on doing missions in a certain order. Using the patches is a simple matter:

All game fixes are meant to be coding fixes for common game issues. As their role is intended to be fixes, they are in fact plug and play. That means you drop them into your data folder (AFTER backing up your original main.scm), rename it to main.scm, and you load your save without having to start a new game.

Meine Gedichte brauche ich dazu nicht mehr; in meinen Bücherregalen ist das alles viel besser gesagt. Aber was würde mit einem passieren, wenn das schon ein Grund wäre, etwas aufzugeben? Wo blieben wir alle? So schreibe ich weiter, doch oft genug erscheint es mir grau und papieren gegen den Abendhimmel, der jetzt über den Dächern weit und apfelfarben wird, während der violette Aschenregen der Dämmerung schon die Straße füllt.

Erich Maria Remarque, Der schwarze Obelisk

Fortunately there was an easy, if rather roundabout fix available: simply email the files to my Gmail account, and use the option there to open them with Google Docs. Bingo!

Yet this little viral video series actually has an aim, aside from simply highlighting blissful ignorance for cheap laughs, being to get more young people to visit the South African Apartheid Museum. As their motto goes, “a history forgotten is a history lost.” But it also says a lot about the influence of US culture around the world, and how surprisingly gesticulatory answering questions in South Africa can be!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click for the full series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

[Via African Politics Portal]

However, the announcement that really put the cat amongst the pigeons has been that the core development team may now be promoting what were formally called canonical plugins, now known as core plugins following the unpublished results of a poll in December. It appears that whilst attempting to address a genuine issue, the very idea of having plugins that stand in the limelight with an official stamp of approval has incensed many community plugin developers.

Some really excellent debate has been held which has, amongst other things, revealed that the initial go ahead for core plugins will be very limited; just three plugins, including an old, out-of-date plugin, a chunk hived off from the core, and a newly developed plugin. Nevertheless, the potential for these core plugins to have wide-reaching effects on the plugin development pool, create stagnation in the community and a greater top-down hierarchy is something that in the eyes of many developers and enthusiasts, has not been addressed.

The Pros

Most of the people arguing in favour of core plugins have the same ultimate motivation as the core developers. They don’t acknowledge the potential negative side-effects of the move, and if they do, they don’t consider them to be negative.

• Reliability. Perhaps the biggest driving issue for this move is that of plugin reliability. Most WordPress users will have come across the problem of using a plugin to such an extent that a site essentially relies on its features, or may even have been built around it, only to find that the plugin developer has got bored of his project, and the next version of WordPress breaks it entirely. Finding a suitable, working replacement may take a lot of time and effort, but will not guarantee that the situation won’t repeat itself.
• Security. Stemming largely from the above phenomenon, users making use of plugins that are no longer maintained by their developers find themselves loath to update their WordPress installations for fear of having their sites fall apart should those plugins no longer be compatible. They voluntarily take the risk of running an out-dated version with potential, known security flaws, unnecessarily making themselves a potentially viable target. Of course, even if that plugin works in the latest version of WordPress, it doesn’t preclude that the unmaintained plugin itself isn’t wide open to abuse, just another potential security hole in an otherwise fairly sound system.
• Support. There are literally thousands of plugins out there, the vast majority written by individuals who developed their plugins for their own special needs, and out of a bit of thought for the community, decided to share their creations with other users. They probably aren’t looking for any form of reimbursement, neither gold nor glory, other than a bit of gratitude. And whilst there may be some of that, they are far more likely to drown in a hail of support issues, bug fixing and feature requests, something they are neither capable or inclined to cope with. Some people post on the WordPress Extend site itself, many ask questions on the release post on the author’s blog, other plugin authors run their own forums, but even these may require that users sign up just to find how little information there is or how infrequently the author actually answers posts. Where exactly can users go then for help?
• Quality. The WordPress Extend repository proudly states that there are over 9,000 plugins with a cumulative 80 million downloads: and the vast majority of those are utter cruft. I don’t think anyone should have any illusions about that. A plugin is obviously more than just what it purports to do on the box, and a good plugin in particular is one that ticks more than just the boxes for functionality. It needs to have accurate and up-to-date documentation, how to install, use and (ideally) uninstall the plugin. There should be an accurate and preferably human-readable changelog detailing the key alterations, bug fixes and feature additions between each version. That’s a lot of work for one man, and I very rarely find a plugin that gets it all right: I’ve seen plugins which link to other pages for an up-to-date changelog that doesn’t include the last two versions, or others which link to a trac page without even the slightest attempt to translate that list in something regular users would likely understand. One popular plugin has documentation that is sadly so incomplete, that users point to posts on other blogs for fuller idea of how to use it.

The Cons

• Labels. Core, Canonical, Official, Godly, call it what you will, all those plugins which make it into the selected few and get the rubber stamp will destroy the efforts of many other plugin developers who weren’t so lucky. Regular users will of course browse through the official lists before turning to true third-party solutions to their problems. In what developers like to call the plugin free market, it really is a case of all plugins are equal, but some are more equal than others.
• Hierarchy. One of the other big concerns from developers is that the move presents an encroachment in an otherwise egalitarian ecosystem. Plugin developers invariably create their plugins to fulfill a particular need, their own or someone else’s. They are the ones with the final say when it comes to fixing bugs, adding features and writing the code. With an official plugin, however, who’s the one who gets the final say when it comes to adding new features? Who’s to decide which code gets included, which issues get priority, and so on?
• Monopoly. A developer sets up a WordPress site and finds he needs something that isn’t covered in the core software, and for whatever reason hasn’t been implemented or implemented well by another plugin, so writes his own and publishes it for others to use. Of course, in all likelihood there are other plugins already available, which may approach the issue from different angles, or with different feature sets. These plugins, however, essentially overlap in terms of their usage, and the ensuing competition should result in more well-rounded plugins that are up-to-date, flexible, reliable and secure. Only the fittest survive. At least, in theory. With these official plugins, all of this competition goes out of the window, technically more proficient plugins with better features and tight code, will be overlooked by users in favour of the canonicals.

A personal take

In case it wasn’t already clear, I would have to say that despite the objections, everytime I’ve gone through the arguments in my head I’ve come out in favour of the core plugins idea. One of WordPress’ greatest strengths has definitely been its flexibility and easy extensibility. As one critic of this decision wrote, the bar for entry is low, it doesn’t take a coding genious to install WordPress, decide he needs something extra, and write a plugin to cover it. Recent updates have also made the WordPress repository so much more accessible; users can now search for and install plugins right from the WordPress installation.

Yet the quality and reliability of those plugins remains a major issue. I’m not even referring to those coding one-offs with barely a hundred downloads that presumably make up the vast majority of the plugin repository.¹ Many of the more well-known solutions out there still fall at one or another hurdle as already mentioned, whether it concern support, timely updates or documentation. To say nothing of the millions of potential issues of interoperability.

One of the more interesting complaints that a number of developers had was that of having a top-down hierarchy dictating what goes into which plugin, something that I found entirely fallacious. As it stands, the vast majority of plugins I’ve come across are developed by a single person, with occasional patches sent in by more able users. They are the ones who decide what happens, what gets fixed, what gets included, when things are released. And if they decide to give up on the project, for us mere mortal users we can only hope that someone equally competent will pick up the reigns and provide support and future updates. Sadly, that isn’t necessarily going to be the case. The idea of the core plugins brings at least some stability to proceedings, a guarantee that updating WordPress won’t bring everything to a crashing halt, and the knowledge that the entire project doesn’t revolve around the mind of a single man. It’s the very principle that has ensured WordPress itself has grown from strength to strength, why should it bring nightmares to the plugin world?

The great alternative that many people seem to be lauding is that of making improvements to the tools available to plugin developers. As already mentioned, recent WordPress updates brought the regular users and the plugin repository much closer together, by making the latter navigable from within the regular WordPress installation. This change, as well as other updates on the repository itself, have ensured that users can see when a new version of their favourite plugin is available, as well as read a changelog (assuming there’s one available), and check to see if the current version will work on the latest version of WordPress.

But these changes need to continue to support good plugin development work, and help users separate out the chaff. One of the most popular plugins on the repository, with well over a million downloads, has has only 800 ratings from users: the compatibility of the latest version with the latest version of WordPress at the time of writing has been reported on by less than 10 users, and there’s no elucidation as to what’s going wrong for the few who’ve reported it to be broken. With that in mind, how are regular users expected to know which plugin to install, when they search for an open or popular term and are presented with a dozen or more plugins? And since these are all likely one-man projects, what will they do when the time invariably comes and the developer gives up on updating the plugin and moves on to new horizons? Actually mentioned facetiously, since one of the contentious issues of the core plugins is that they will be presented on their own page on the WordPress backend, but the idea of having an editor’s choice list of plugins that fulfill a selection of standards for inclusion actually wouldn’t go amiss as an alternative to the current turmoil.

All in all I can only say I welcome the move, and look forward to its repercussions. Attempting to ensure high standards, compatibility, support and open source development are all laudable goals, that neither preclude the disappearance of competition and variety, nor the ability to provide plugins that are commercially supported (just that the open source alternatives might be all the better!). And here’s to a core plugin for creating multilingual blogs, I’ve had enough trouble switching over from one system, to another, to another!

For anyone really interested in the debate, the posts on Weblog Tools Collection and One Fine Jay in particular are definitely the places to look.

1. Some actual statistics on plugin downloads and updates etc. from the repository would actually make interesting reading.

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 here (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.

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

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

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.

1. 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?

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.

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.

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

Now I’m sorry to have to begin by disagreeing with His Grace. If you’re going to be a serious grown-up person, and appear to defend the Catholic church in public in front of an educated and literate audience, you simply have to start by making a great number of heartfelt apologies and requests for contrition and forgiveness. Now you might ask <applause> You’re fully entitled to ask, brothers and sisters, who am I to say that? Well, in the jubilee millennium year of 2000 the Vatican spokesman Bishop Piero Marini said, explaining a whole sermon of apology given by His Holiness the Pope, given the number of sins we’ve committed in the course of twenty centuries, reference to them must necessarily be rather summary. Well I think Bishop Marini had that just about right, I’ll have to be summary, too. His Holiness on that occasion—it was March the 12th, 2000, if you wish to look it up—begged forgiveness for, among some other things, the crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of the Jewish people, in justice towards women, that’s half the human race right there, and the forced conversion of indigenous peoples, especially in South America, the African slave trade, the admission that Galileo was right, and for silence during Hitler’s Final Solution or Shoah. And it doesn’t end there, there are smaller but significant—equally significant—avowals of a very bad conscience. These have included regret for the rape and torture of orphans and other children in church-run schools in almost every country on Earth, from Ireland to Australia. These are very serious matters, and they’re not to be laughed off by the references to the occasional work of Catholic charities. But I draw you attention not just to the apologies, ladies and gentlemen, but to the evasive and euphemistic form that they take. Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope, considered by some, considered by Catholics to be the Vicar of Christ on Earth, in his comment, one of the few he’s made on the institutionalisation of rape and torture and maltreatment of children in Catholic institutions, he said it’s a very severe crisis which involves us, he said, in the following: in the need for applying to these victims the most loving, pastoral care. Well I’m sorry, they’ve already had that, and to say that this is the response to be laid upon you, by the horrific admission that you’ve already had to make is not accepting responsibility in any adult sense. The same euphemism comes, in the term some Christians allow themselves to be deceived in this way and to act against the gospel, well, anti-Semitism was preached as an official doctrine of the Church until 1964. Do you think that might have something to do with public opinion in Austria, and Bavaria, and Poland, and Lithuania? There’ll come a time, when the church will issue apologies, and explanations, and half-baked appeals for forgiveness for things it’s still doing. I think that there will be an apology for what happened in Rwanda, the most Catholic country in Africa, where priests and nuns and bishops are on trial, for inciting from their pulpits and on the Church’s radio stations and newspapers, the massacre of their brothers and sisters. Staying in Africa, I think it will one day be admitted with shame that it might have been in error to say that AIDS is bad as a disease, very bad, but not quite as bad as condoms are bad, or not as immoral in the same way. I say it in the presence of His Grace, and I say it to his face, the teachings of his church are responsible for the death and suffering and misery of his brother and sister Africans, and he should apologise for it, he should show some shame. For condemning my friend Stephen Fry for his nature, for saying you couldn’t be a member of our church, you’re born in sin. He’s not being condemned for what he does, he’s being condemned for what he is. You’re a child made in the image of God – oh no, you’re not, you’re a faggot, and you can’t join our church and you can’t go to heaven. This is disgraceful, it’s inhuman, it’s obscene, and it comes from a clutch of hysterical, sinister virgins, who’ve already betrayed their charge in the children of their own church. For shame! For shame!

I don’t wish any ill on any fellow primate or mammal of mine, so I don’t at all look forward to the death of Joseph Ratzinger, I don’t, or any other bloke, not really, except for one tiny reason which I ought to confess and share with you. When he dies, there’s quite a long interval till the conclave can meet, and for that whole time, that whole interval—it is a delicious, lucid interlude—there isn’t anyone on Earth who claims to be infallible. Isn’t that nice? All I think, all I want to propose in closing is this: that if the human species is to rise to the full height that’s demanded by its dignity, and by its intelligence, we must all of us move to a state of affairs, where that condition is permanent, and I think we should get on with it. Okay, thank you for having me.

Zeinab Badawi

Well Christopher, thank you very much for all of that. Our next speaker is going to have her work cut out, because she’s speaking in favour of the motion that the Catholic church is a force for good: the Conservative MP and former government minister, Ann Widdecombe. She’s as well-known for her religious views as for her politics. If you recall, she left the Church of England in 1992, in a blaze of publicity, when it allowed the ordination of women priests. The following year she converted to Catholicism, and has become one of the most vocal and staunchest defenders of the Catholic Church since then. Ann Widdecombe, the floor is yours.

Ann Widdecombe

If apologies are due tonight, they are due from Christopher Hitchens, who has just run through one of the longest series of misrepresentations of the Catholic Church that I have heard in a long time. He has said, with that certainty that characterises his utterances, that the Catholic Church has had a history of anti-Semitism. Let us just look at the record of the Catholic Church, when the Jewish community was under the most serious threat that it has faced in recent centuries, and just look at the role that the Catholic Church played in the last World War. Mr Hitchens ignores the thousands of Jews who were secreted and rescued in churches and monasteries throughout Europe. He ignores the 3000 Jews, who in the course of that conflict, took refuge in the Pope’s own summer palace. And coming nearer to our day, of course Christopher Hitchens is right, and who could possibly dispute with him, that the abuse of children, of innocent children, is one—in fact it is the—worst offence that anybody can commit. Of that, no doubt. But again he seems to think that the Catholic Church should have had some unique insight, which demonstrably was lacking in society as a whole, do not expect the Catholic Church somehow, when that was the state of knowledge at the time, to have acted in a unique and completely different way. In retrospect, yes, of course. In retrospect, yep. In retrospect, it should’ve done–so should the magistrates, so should the Samaritans, so should the National Council of Civil Liberties. But when we ask, whether the Catholic Church is a force for good, let’s just try to imagine a world today without, for example, the billions of pounds that are poured into overseas aid by the Catholic Church, contributing year on year more than any single nation. Imagine the developing world had been left without the input of the medicine and the education that was brought to it by the missions. Imagine the absence of those collections, Sunday upon Sunday, for famine relief. Imagine the absence of the church in the local community. We play a vital role. And you don’t need to be a Catholic to acknowledge that we play that role. What is the church? It is its members: it is the nuns and the monks and the priests and the layworkers and the congregations. It is not just the hierarchy of the Church. And I believe that the Church to which I belong is a massive, massive force for good. But, let us not just keep the debate at that level. I knew somehow that when we were here tonight, we would be discussing child abuse—and condoms, they came in the end, I almost thought we were going to get through an entire speech from Christopher Hitchens without condoms, but we got them at the end—but that isn’t what the Catholic Church is about, it isn’t only about the physical relief of the poor, it isn’t only about the work it does on Earth, but it is the message that it preaches. And that message is one of hope, that message is one of salvation. And it is all very well for some people to say, in an intellectual arrogance, we can do without that, but actually billions of people across the world live by that message of hope and of salvation. They try to live by the commandments and also by the interpretation of those commandments by Christ. Yea, sometimes they fail, sometimes their leaders fail—human beings do fail—but overwhelmingly, I say to you tonight with no apology whatever, that a world without the Catholic Church would be poorer, would be more hopeless, and would be a worse place in which to live.

Zeinab Badawi

Well thank you very much indeed, Ann Widdecombe. And our final speaker is against the motion: Stephen Fry, a bit of an all-rounder really, Stephen can turn his hand to many things. Stephen, let’s hear your views.

Stephen Fry

I genuinely believe that the Catholic Church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world, and therefore it is important for me to try and martial my facts as well I can to explain why I think that. But I want first of all to say that I have no quarrel and no argument and I wish to express no contempt for individual devout and pious members of that church. It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism towards any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it. That to me is sacrosanct as much as any article of faith is sacrosanct to anyone of any church or any faith in the world. It’s very important. It’s also very important to me, as it happens, that I have my own beliefs. They are a belief in the Enlightenment, a belief in the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world, and there is nothing, sadly, that the Catholic Church and its hierarchs likes to do more than to attack the Enlightenment. It did so at the time: reference was made to Galileo and the fact that he was tortured, for trying to explain the Copernican theory of the Universe. Just imagine in this square mile how many people were burned for reading the Bible in English. And one of the principle burners and torturers of those who tried to read the Bible in English, here in London, was Thomas More. Now, that’s a long time ago, it’s not relevant, except that it was only last century that Thomas More was made a saint, and it was only in the year 2000, that the last pope, the Pole, he made Thomas More the Patron Saint of Politicians. This is a man who put people on the wrack for daring to own a Bible in English: he tortured them for owning a Bible in their own language. The idea that the Catholic Church exists to disseminate the word of the Lord is nonsense. It is the only owner of the Truth for the billions that it likes to boast about, because those billions are uneducated and poor, as again it likes to boast about. It’s perhaps unfair of me, as a gay man, to moan at this enormous institution, which is the largest and most powerful church on Earth, has over a billion, as they like to tell us, members, each one of whom is under strict instructions to believe the dogmas of the church, but may wrestle with them personally of course. It’s hard for me to be told that I’m evil, because I think of myself as someone who is filled with love, whose only purpose in life was to achieve love, and who feels love for so much of nature and the world and for everything else. We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation, that leads to the playground bullying when people say you’re a disordered, morally evil individual. That’s not nice, it isn’t nice. The kind of cruelty in Catholic education, the kind of child—let’s not call it child abuse, it was child rape—the kind of child rape that went on systematically for so long, let’s imagine that we can overlook this and say that it is nothing whatever to do with the structure and nature of the Catholic Church, and the twisted and neurotic and hysterical way that its leaders are chosen, the celibacy, the nuns, the monks, the priesthood, this is not natural and normal, ladies and gentlemen, in 2009, it really isn’t.

I have yet to approach one of the subjects dearest to my heart, I’ve made three documentary films on the subject of AIDS in Africa. My particular love is the country of Uganda, it is one of the countries I love most in the world. There was a period when Uganda had the worst incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world, but through an amazing initiative called ABC—Abstinence, Be faithful, Correct use of condoms—those three, I’m not denying that abstinence is a very good way of not getting AIDS, it really is, it works, so does being faithful, but so do condoms, and do not deny it! And this Pope, this Pope,  not satisfied with saying “condoms are against our religion, please consider first abstinence, second being faithful to your partner,” he spreads the lie that condoms actually increase the incidence of AIDS, he actually makes sure that aid is conditional on saying no to condoms. I have been to the hospital in Bwindi in the west of Uganda, where I do quite a lot of work, it is unbelievable the pain and suffering you see. Now yes, yes it is true abstinence will stop it. It’s the strange thing about this church, it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we with our permissive society and our rude jokes, we are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly, because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult, it’s a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.

Do you know who would be the last person ever to be accepted as a prince of the Church? The Galileean carpenter. That Jew. They would kick him out before he tried to cross the threshold. He would be so ill-at-ease in the Church. What would he think, what would he think of St. Peter’s? What would he think of the wealth, and the power, and the self-justification, and the wheedling apologies? The Pope could decide that all this power, all this wealth, this hierarchy of princes and bishops and archbishops and priests and monks and nuns could be sent out in the world with money and art treasures, to put them back in the countries that they once raped and violated, they could give that money away, and they could concentrate on the apparent essence of their belief, and then, I would stand here and say the Catholic Church may well be a force for good in the world, but until that day, it is not. Thank you.

Zeinab Badawi

Well, Stephen Fry, thank you very much. So, you’ve heard all our four speakers. It’s going to be your turn, the audience, next, and I’ll give you a couple of minutes to think about what you want to ask our panellists, any questions or comments you may wish to make. Because I’m going to give you, now, the result of that vote that you all gave when you were coming in here to Central Hall. The motion is: the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. In favour of the motion were 678. Against the motion, that the Catholic church is a force for good, were 1102. Big difference. However, 346 of you were undecided, so Archbishop and Ann Widdecombe, you’re not only going to have to win over the undecided, but actually convert some from the other side. Let’s see if we can sway any opinions here amongst all of you by listening to some points that you wish to raise with the panel, and then we’re going to ask you to vote again. Now, put your hand up if you want to speak, a question, the lady with the spectacles.

Question

I would like to ask Mr Hutchens if he is only against the Catholic church or against all religions.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, go back there, the lady in the pink.

Question

Hi there, this is a question for Christopher Hitchens. Many people today feel that we’re really living in some kind of moral crisis, and you can see that all around us. Now, if one thing that the Catholic church does do for good in my opinion, is give us the ten commandments, a very basic and obvious way of giving us some kind of moral guidance. Would you not agree with that?

Christopher Hitchens

The lady in front began by asking me do I reserve this condemnation only for the Holy Roman church and not for Catholics, for example Byzantine Catholics and Protestants and so on. I think they’re all the same equivalent glimpses of the identical untruth. Now of the commandments, the first two or three are entirely about fearing the author of the audits, entirely about being terrified of someone you’re enjoined to love. I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but the idea of compulsory love has always struck me as a bit shady, especially if you’re ordered to love someone who you absolutely must fear. So, the first three are: look out for me, and keep at least one day of my way or you’ll be terrified full-time.

Zeinab Badawi

Ann Widdecombe, Ten Commandments, bedrock of moral teaching?

Ann Widdecombe

I would have thought it quite obvious that the Ten Commandments set out a blueprint for a moral and successful society. Let us just look at some of them: honour thy father and thy mother—think of today’s disrespect—thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not covet – tell that to the bankers with their bonuses.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, Archbishop, do you want to come in briefly on this?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

The Ten Commandments are in the Bible, but my father know it before he became a Christian. All African religions recognised those basic norms of morality, everybody knows that.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, let’s take some more questions from the floor, okay.

Question

This is a very simple question for Ann Widdecombe. You might think it may be a naïve question, if so I’d be very happy to be educated, why is it wrong for a woman to become a priest, but perfectly acceptable for a woman, such as yourself, to become an MP?

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks. I think we’re going to go just across here next.

Question

Ann made a point about the billions that are poured into Africa. I respect your faith, I respect the message you give, but why to pass that message on do you need the finery you wear, do you need the palace of the Vatican?

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, point made. I think we’re going to go, here.

Question

Archbishop, of which current Roman Catholic policy are you most ashamed?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

I don’t know whether you’re serious in that question, or you just want to provoke, because all of our Catholic policies are not just dreamt overnight by the Pope or anybody. If it is a Catholic policy, it is reasonable, it is based on our traditions and scriptures, and there’s none about which I am assumed.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, and the other question about…

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

And I don’t know what billions that he says the Vatican has. The billions of this world I think are not in the Vatican, we know where they are, and they are not coming to Africa, on the contrary, Africa is being sucked dry by those people, those multinationals, they are the ones who should be bringing our money back to us. I think we are targeting the wrong place. I come from Africa, and the funds that come from church agencies for us are very important.

Zeinab Badawi

Ann Widdecombe, one specific question to you, why not women priests in the Catholic church?

Ann Widdecombe

Well, no, the specific question was, why is it not alright for a woman to be a priest but it is for a woman to be an MP, that’s the specific question. And I have to say to you, that really does betray a vast ignorance. A Member of Parliament, male or female, does not stand in persona Christi at the point of consecration. But I don’t believe that it is any more possible for a woman to represent Christ at the point of consecration than for a man to be the Virgin Mary.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks. Lots of hands up and I really do want to go around everybody, so panel, if you could keep your responses to the point as much as you can. Up there, please.

Question

Question to Stephen Fry, I’m a Catholic, but I like you a lot, about … I don’t know that the Catholic church condemns homosexuality as such, only recommends chastity for everybody, and then, if I’m not married I should be chaste, whether I am homosexual or heterosexual.

Question

Hi, question for Ann Widdecombe actually. You accused Christopher Hitchens of judging the Catholic church by the standards of the time, but surely the truths in your doctrines are either eternal or they’re not.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, Stephen Fry, the question about the Catholic church apparently doesn’t condemn homosexuality, that question asked.

Stephen Fry

Well, I’m afraid it simply does, it does condemn it, yes. It calls it, the official word is a disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a moral evil. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made, is that the church is very loose on moral evils, because although they try to accuse people like me, who believe in empiricism and the Enlightenment, of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it’s some appalling sin, where what it actually means is thought, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely okay, and then they didn’t. And what is the point of the Catholic church if it says ‘oh, well we couldn’t know better because nobody else did,’ then what are you for?

Zeinab Badawi

Can you just clarify for us on this thing about homosexuality, the Catholic church condemns the act but not the individual. Did Jesus Christ himself actually say anything about homosexuality?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

That is a wrong question in this subject… <interjection from Stephen Fry>…no, because we not aware about homosexuality, the morality of homosexuality, being a matter that drew the attention of Jesus. But Jesus certainly spoke about the Ten Commandments and adultery, and I do not think we should deny the church the right to propound its own doctrines, you are not obliged to take it.

Zeinab Badawi

Let’s hear more from the floor, and then we’ll come…yep, go on.

Question

Our life is based on the life of Jesus Christ, not on emotion or peace or the way the world is going. So, I think all the people who are listening, I think the message we are getting here will lead us to live a good life.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks, let’s just get through some more comments. Okay, yep, briefly please, briefly.

Question

I spent 38 years of my life as a Catholic and then I saw the light, and my life now is going back and forth to Africa and next month I go to Uganda, and I’m working on trying to stop mothers dying in pregnancy and childbirth. What I’m saying is, please, please, reverse the ruling on condoms and family planning and contraception and save more lives, save the thousands and thousands of lives…

Zeinab Badawi

Let’s keep this moving, briefly please.

Question

As a Catholic I’m actually very pleased to be here this evening to hear two sides of a very important argument, and the positive thing I take away is that the Catholic church can take the opportunity to reflect upon these comments and that we look for the future, and that it is by actually accepting these comments and by looking for a way forward that the church can actually grow and have a more important part in the world.

Zeinab Badawi

Thank you. We can’t take any more questions from the floor, really, but panel, what I propose is this: you’ve heard the points that are raised, some of them were comments, some of them were questions, you’re going to have a few minutes to make your closing statements, please incorporate these questions that you heard in your closing statements. Because audience, I want you to vote again. Now for those of you who are watching at home, if you’d like a briefing booklet on some of those issues that you’ve heard raised today, then please go to www.intelligencesquared.com and you can download that booklet, anybody can do it and it’s absolutely free. Okay, so everybody’s doing that, so while you’re all doing that, it’s going to take a little bit of time, we’re going to hear the closing statements incorporating some of the points that you the audience raised, and we’re going to do it in reverse order this time, and it’s going to be Stephen Fry first.

Stephen Fry

Well it’s been a really interesting debate, and I’ve loved some of the questions from the floor. I suppose I’m slightly disappointed that Ann Widdecombe in particular should say “oh, I knew they’d bring up condoms and child rape and homosexuality.” It’s a bit like a burglar in court saying “you would bring up that burglary and that manslaughter, you never mentioned the fact that I gave my father a birthday present.” You know, yes, yes, are you getting the message? There is a reason we hammer home these issues: because they matter. It’s such an opportunity, owning a billion souls at baptism. It’s such an opportunity to do something remarkable, to make this planet better, and it’s an opportunity that is constantly and arrogantly being avoided and I’m sorry for that.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thank you. Final statement from Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe for the motion that the Catholic church is a force for good in the world.

Ann Widdecombe

Right, we have had all the usual stuff, about how the Catholic church, being against condoms, has apparently caused untold misery. As I’ve said, our opponents always try to home in on sex, when the teachings of the church, which are after all only about the stability of family, the maintenance of fidelity, the virtue of chastity, when the church teaches that as one part of all its teaching, I do sometimes despair at the way that these debates always, always come back to that. So, I’m very pleased to have been here tonight, despite the fact that I think the incoming poll was slightly discouraging. I’m very pleased to have been here, to have been here with the Archbishop, and with the two gentlemen opposite, and thank you for the opportunity.

Zeinab Badawi

Against the motion, Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens

Unanswered questions: amazing, no one, though they were asked repeatedly, would say whether they thought Stephen Fry, my friend, was in a state of mortal sin or not. They wouldn’t tell you. Something about the question brought out their inner coward. Well, I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason. That when my children were young, I’d have been proud to have Stephen as their babysitter, and I’d've told them they were lucky, and if anyone came to my door as a babysitter wearing holy orders, I’d call first a cab and then the police.

Zeinab Badawi

Final statement from our final speaker, Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan. You’ve gotta make your final pitch now, to the audience.

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Thank you very much. I just want to draw the attention of the audience back to the topic, and the topic is quite clear, the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. It did not say it is the only source for good. It did not say it has always been a source for good, it’s not in the past, it is in the present tense – is a source for good. I still cannot see how they have in any way shown the Catholic church is not a force for good in the world. I can say all kinds of things about other people, but I think it is fair enough that when it comes to “what does the Church say about condoms? what does it say about homosexuality? what does it say about women priests?” we have to take the trouble to find out exactly what it is saying. Not what the newspapers are saying that we are saying. We never said that the Catholic church is perfect, we continue to do our best, to be as close as we can to Jesus Christ and what he wants us to be, and to constantly be a force for good in the world, and I thank you.

Zeinab Badawi

Archbishop, thank you. Audience, you’ve all voted again. Now the moment of truth, panel. Let me remind everybody that before the debate, when everybody came in, this is how you voted: for the motion “that the Catholic church is a force for good in the world” 678, against the motion 1102, and the undecideds, the ‘don’t know’s were 346. This is how you voted subsequently: for the motion “that the Catholic church is a force for good” from 678 it’s gone to 268. I’m sorry. Against the motion, it’s now 1876. And you can see that doesn’t leave very many ‘don’t know’s, it’s 34 undecided. So commiserations Archbishop and Ann Widdecombe, congratulations Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens. Thank you all, from me Zeinab Badawi, good bye.

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.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

[Via Mr. Verb]

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.

1. 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.
2. Courtesy of An Odyssey of Quotes.
3. Robbie Keane is another.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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]

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. Though with the potential to infringe upon copyright laws.
3. Pictured above. Image by davidking via Flickr.

[Via African Politics Portal]

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?

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