August 2008 Archives

It's been something which I've wondered about for some time.

When watching a film on the DVD player, it seems to 'pause' every so often on a single frame.

It's not that annoying I suppose, but it did make me wonder if there was something wrong with the player itself.

It actually turns out to be something quite straight forward.

When the dual layer DVD disc makes the transition from one layer to the other it stops for perhaps a second.

I for one would have hoped that solving this would be relatively straight forward - but no, all new releases I buy seem to have the same issue.

A woman has been ordered to pay £16,000 in a landmark case over illegal file sharing.

The unnamed lady is among the first to be taken to court in the UK by computer game manufacturers seeking to protect their copyright.

She was ordered to pay more than £6,000 in damages and £10,000 towards legal fees for Topware Interactive, owner of the computer game Dream Pinball 3D.

And she's not alone - there are currently civil proceedings against 100 people suspected of illegally uploading games from this manufacturer.

If will send a shiver up the spine of many a file sharing addict, hitherto swopping games, music and films with abandon and seemingly no sanction.

Internet Service Providers such as Virgin have also recently been getting in on the act sending letters to people who have been illegally downloading large amounts of music, asking them nicely to desist.

For one thing I believe PC owners are somewhat shooting themselves in the foot - piracy has always gone on but it's incredibly widespread at present.

People complain that games are simply 'ports' from consoles - but you can hardly blame games manufacturers for putting more effort in on, say the XBox 360 release, if the PC version is copied thousands of times within days of release.

For example Topware say Dream Pinball 3D was shared 16,000 times in the first 14 days.

Some six million people are thought to engage in illegal file-sharing each year in the UK.

Codemasters, based at Southam in the Midlands has seen the extent of the problem - recently chairman Chris Deering said just three out of ten games recover their development and marketing costs.

So if you want proper games to be put out on the PC, I suggest you buy a retail copy.

Of course, this particular case is vexing because Dream Pinball 3D is, well, rubbish. One online review included the lines 'a poor approximation of what real pinball feels like', 'when the camera pans out everything is jaggy and messy', and 'a crippled version of pinball. The "physics" don't feel real at all'.

So there's another lesson - if you're going to be fined thousands for illegally downloading a game - at least make it a decent one!

Mobile giant Vodafone have hit the headlines for ramping up their minimum phone charges by an eye-watering 25 per cent - and not telling their customers.

Basically if you're on that network you will have received an insert in your bill last month detailing the prices - but not saying that they'd actually gone up.

Calls to 08 numbers like the free to landlines 0800 and the not so free 0845 are going up by even more - 30 per cent.

It's pretty underhand - and after all when you sign up to a deal, say, for 12 months as part of a package with a new handset, you would do so knowing what the charges would be

OK so prices go up - but if you're doing it by such a huge amount then stating so, rather than trying to sneak it out, should be how a responsible and honest big business should act.

Next time you get any letter laying out what you're paying, I suggest you compare it to what you were paying before.

You just can't trust companies to tell you that they're changing things - a pretty poor state of affairs.

Below: Vodafone - check your bill because you can't rely on this company to be entirely clear about the small matter of putting up charges by the small matter of a quarter.

Interesting new statistics from Ofcom about people's habits during the current multimedia explosion.

For me the striking thing is that people aren't changing their habits much - just doing more.

The report shows that Consumers spent 429 minutes, or more than seven hours a day, watching television, listening to radio, surfing the internet and making fixed-line and mobile calls in 2007, compared with 423 minutes in 2002.

This is an incredibly huge sounding amount, although I suppose you've got to take into account people will probably be doing other things, including driving, at the same time.

You might have thought traditional pursuits such as the simple telly would have seen a huge decline as a result of the increased platforms on offer.

But no - in 2007, 218 minutes a day were spent watching television, compared with 224 in 2002 - not a great deal of difference.

So basically social networking on the internet, texting, sending video messages, streaming your tedious existence pointlessly over the net through bambuser and so on is all in addition to whatever radio, tv and phone calls you were doing before!

You see those people over there in the corner? You probably don't recognise them, but they're your family. Go on, try and talk to them. Perhaps even go out somewhere together. Oh - someone's written a pithy comment on your Facebook wall. Better reply. Chance gone.

It's been mentioned to me that my blog needs brightening up a bit after a few text-only posts - so happily today there is a news story which lends itself to a more visual medium.

Yes there's another Tomb Raider - no not David Cameron thankfully (see earlier blog) - this time it's a receptionist from Croydon.

The new Lara Croft - Alison Carroll has been a professional display gymnast for 12 years so it would be fair to say literally that she's fit!

I wonder if it does all that much for sales - but it certainly gets a lot of column inches in the tabloids, and, erm, certain exploitative blogs...

News that part of the Olympics opening ceremony fireworks display seen by billions on TV was faked with computer trickery poses some interesting questions.

After all what can we trust with computer imagery so convincing? There has already been controversy over images being photoshopped and then published without the fakery being admitted to.

Why, just this week we have the row over singer Beyonce being 'whitened up' for publicity pictures.

Not to mention the recent Iranian missile tests, which were altered by the regime there to hid a non-firing rocket.

In the age of instant media, getting your message out first in the media is often more important than the actual truth.

After all, when the image is revealed as a fake by experts a month down the line many who believed the original will miss it, and carry on holding a misconception.

Newspapers have fallen victim to fakes over the years, but these days there is a real capacity for malicious misinformation - and an even greater emphasis should be on checking things before publication.

Social networking site Bebo has created a digital time capsule to send personal messages and pictures to the nearest planet that could hold life.

Bebo users can create their own images or text via an application and vie for a spot in the final 500.

The messages to be sent will be chosen via a web vote, and broadcast on 9 October by the National Space Agency of Ukraine's giant RT-70 radar telescope and are expected to reach their target during spring 2029.

Now, this story has been on the google news front page for THREE days now - an incredible shelf life.

This is, of course, the silly season, and as August continues there are some weeks when it seems you're the only one going to work.

So Bebo has been very successful in getting the maximum publicity for a pretty uninteresting 'innovation'.

I, for one, (as someone who doesn't like social networking sites very much) hope it horribly backfires.

Wouldn't it be great if Lori from Texas' message of "Like, hi to everyone out there" turns out to be the most insulting thing you can say on Omnicron Ceti III, prompting an interstellar battlecruiser to turn up and blast her into superheated gas?