Results tagged “technobabble.” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

As a customer of Plusnet I am used to getting emails advising me of 'changes to my terms and conditions'.

Recently one included informing me of a new charge to terminate my service - nice given that when I signed up I had to agree to pay a penalty for leaving within a set period.

But after about three years with them this has now reduced to nothing - but now they've just decided to impose a blanket £20 fee.

There was another one a year or so ago informing me of a change to my download limits.

When I signed up with Plusnet for their plus package there were none, but this changed to 4gb 'peak' and 40gb 'off peak' a month ('peak' it transpires is whenever you actually want to download something...).

I never bust it or come anywhere near, because I don't really download much apart from software patches (although due to the buggy nature of some games these can be pretty huge some times [are you listening EA?]).

EA recently distributed the excellent Spore to journalists thorough their download system, as opposed to sending out a physical copy.

The 3.5gb file was pretty huge and I noticed afterwards that my internet was moving rather slowly - in fact my dial up connection from years ago would have put it to shame.

So I contacted Plusnet via their online customer service, and got a quick response - I'd busted my download limit for 'peak' times and they'd punished me by throttling back my broadband speed.

BUT they instantly waived the restriction (not permanently) and opened my account back up again, which was nice, but also possibly because they realised I'd been unfairly punished - after all I'd never before come remotely close to doing it before.

For me it just threw into stark relief the powers of companies for changing their conditions.

A key point for me with signing up to Plusnet was the no download limits - I just don't like feeling I'm operating on a rationed service, although I'm not a big data hog.

But they just changed it and sent me an email, just like changing the 'switchover' charges.

So the lesson may be - read the small print when you sign up to something - just so you know what it was when they change it.

And now with Plusnet if I decide to take my only recourse as a customer and clear off, they've changed the T&C so I get charged for that too.

THEM console thingies are getting more and more popular according to figures released today.

ELSPA (the Entertainment Leisure & Software Publishers' Association) has revealed barely creditable figures that the 'installed base of consoles' (whatever that means) in the UK has doubled from 8.8 million in September 2007 to 17.3 million in September 2008.

The figures do not include sales for older second generation systems such as PlayStation 2, so they are pretty staggering (and don't include 'in the back of the wardrobe' systems).

Whilst Sony and Microsoft have added a million installed users in the last 12 months, Nintendo has proven to be the biggest winner with an increase of some 2.5 million Nintendo Wii consoles and 3.3 million Nintendo DS handhelds.

From September 2007 to September 2008 the Nintendo Wii installed base has risen from 1.1 million to a staggering 3.6 million, while the Nintendo DS has soared from 3.8 million to 7.1 million. By comparison, PlayStation 3 unit sales have risen from 0.4 million to 1.4 million and the Xbox 360 from 1.3 million to 2.3 million. Sony's PSP handheld showed a comparatively moderate increase from 2.2 million to 2.9 million.

All figures were provided by High Street retail chain The Game Group.

Michael Rawlinson, Managing Director of ELSPA, said: "There can be little doubt that video games are now one of the major forms of entertainment in the UK. Not only that, our industry is proving to be remarkably recession-proof when even major banks are failing.

"The reason is very simple - games can offer terrific value for money. I appreciate that it is only violent or controversial games that tend to garner tabloid headlines but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of games sold in this country are for all players of all ages - and that is why the Wii with games such as Wii Sports and Wii Fit are proving to be amongst the nation's enduring favourites."

Below - two typical XBox 360 gamers (Glenda and Roberta) joining the 2.3 million other users.

West Midlands police have developed a "ground breaking" internet-based game to teach students in the region how to stay safe.

The idea behind the game, available at the West Midlands Police website and which can be imported into networking sites such as Facebook, is to encourage groups of students to look after their friends during nights out.

Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said: "By using Facebook we hope to get a serious message across to this hard-to-reach group in a very fun way.

"We are constantly looking at different ways to communicate with our various communities and if social networking sites prove useful for this we would look to use them in the future too."

All very laudable - but to be fair I'm not sure how 'ground breaking' the game is in terms of rivaling new titles such as, say Crysis.

In the game you 'play' Rhiannon, a student who must find her friends on a night out.

If I was being unkind, I would say it ENCOURAGES binge drinking - with FOUR (count 'em) pints to collect for bonuses in the Pac-Man type game.

A number of ne'er do wells wearing balaclavas replace the 'ghosts', trying to catch you before you collect your chums.

At the risk of coming over a bit Al Murray Rhiannon is a GIRL. And she is drinking PINTS. It just shows what a state this country's come to!!!!

Below - a girl with a ladies' beer glass - as it should be (in the name of ALL THAT'S DECENT):

To view the game visit www.bestmates.org.uk.

The excellent new game from EA has run into controversy over the use of a copy protection device called SecuROM, which I blogged about on a previous occasion.

Basically PC buyers are only being allowed to install Spore three times.

So what, you might ask? Well for one thing when you normally buy a software title, you buy it in perpetuity, so you can install it as many times as you want.

You can also sell it second hand if you so wish. Clearly this issue has implications for sales so software manufacturers might want to find ways of halting it (and so, I would say, rob their customers of legitimately selling on their property).

But the issue of installations is also important - many people install and uninstall games frequently to free up hard drive space, just keeping the save games.

Why should a software company prevent this perfectly legitimate practice - I often wipe something I haven't played in a while, and hang on to the saves, only to fancy another bash later and put it back on again.

Perhaps these software restrictions are a step too far, and taking the capitalist ideal of trying to squeeze every last penny out of something to the point where they are annoying their own customers.

As to if this stops piracy - well, presumably hacked copies (which apparently were available before Spore was even released) get round this three installation rule anyway, rendering it somewhat pointless.

I don't know about you, but one of my bugbears is being called in the evening by people trying to sell something.

You pick up the phone, and then the technology kicks in, and there's a mysterious long pause.

This is because in the age of computerised phone systems, companies think it's more efficient (ie they can employ fewer people) to have microchips organise their calls - and if someone answers, they put it through to a human being to speak to you - assuming someone's available to do so.

So the Liberal Democrats are planning to win support by cold-calling 250,000 people on Wednesday night.

Nick Clegg has recorded a message which will be automatically played down the phone line to 'raise awareness' of the party.

And it's hi-tech - those taking the calls will be able to press their phone keyboard to choose which LibDem policy - on crime, education and so on - they want to hear more details about.

Just imagine - you're sitting there, spending a bit of time with your family after a hard day at work. The phone goes and it's Nick Clegg, saying 'press 5 to hear about Liberal Democrat education policy'.

Only the Lib Dems would try and gain support through a medium which is one of the most annoying - cold calling. Well done guys! Just sit back and wait for your position to rocket in the opinion polls.

This video proves scientists aren't nerdy no-hopers with no idea of popular culture.

After all what could be better than a 'science rap'? I think the Anfield Rap, Joe Pesci's efforts and Vanilla Ice's 'Ninja Rap' have finally been surpassed.

This comes from scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Cern who are currently trying to restart the big bang, and as a side product, end all life (what better thing to make a cod-rap light hearted jingle about?).

After all with lyrics like: "Twenty seven kilometers, a tunnel underground, designed with a mind to send protons around.

"A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France, sixty nations contribute to scientific advance," how could it fail?

Edit - OK OK by popular demand I'll embed The Ice - Go Ninja, Go Ninja GO!!!!!!

Ubisoft emailed me yesterday with some long-awaited news - Far Cry 2 will be released on October 24.

And not just the game - some other announcements too - the special edition will come in a WOODEN (!) box, and also available in the tie-in product fest are a limited edition Far Cry 2 t-shirt," The Art of Far Cry" Art book, collector 50km² map and Making-of DVD.

I can't imagine many people wanting to see a 'making of' DVD, but all said and done, I'm looking forward to it.

I remember the first Far Cry - and it was what made me into a real 'tekkie'.

It killed my computer at the time. No computer game had ever done that before - most were capable of running in some form on lower grade rigs.

But Far Cry just froze solid and wouldn't do anything. So it inspired me to self-build my first ever state-of-the-art computer.

Hopefully the latest version will be more lower-end system friendly - after all it doesn't do to make half of your potential market unable to run your game.

And it also highlighted for me the dodgy nature of 'recommended' system suggestions on the back of the box - mine at the time should have been ok to run Far Cry - but it didn't even run it slowly - it didn't run it at all!

Below - Far Cry 2 - hopefully you won't be seeing it as a slideshow on your computer.

I watched the epically long King Kong for the first time on Saturday night on ITV1 and found one aspect to be incredibly annoying.

The film itself was better than I imagined it was going to be [notwithstanding the poorly executed and completely unbelievable CGI brontosaurus stampede section] but why on earth could ITV not time the ad breaks better?

Every time there was a big fight, or right in the middle of an orchestral crescendo in the soundtrack, and some times in the middle of dialogue, it just cut immediately to some important messages from Daz or Peugeot.

In the age of advanced editing computer technology and software, surely someone must have come up with a way of inserting ads at proper moments - a scene change or similar.

As it stands, the only possible reason for what happened on Saturday is that the breaks were inserted purely on a time basis - advertisements were going to be shown at 8.45pm come what may.

Come on ITV - sharpen up!

A REPORT released today claims installing high speed broadband in every UK home could cost an eye-watering £29 billion.

The figure comes in a study by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) - the Government's advisory group on broadband - on the costs of fibre-based next generation broadband in the UK.

One way to reduce costs by about a half would be to miss out the 30 per cent of homes who live in the more remote rural areas.

Superfast broadband will allow speeds of up to 100 Mbps (megabits per second), up to four times faster than current speeds.

Interesting - but I wonder whether there really is an urgent need - would users really notice an awful lot of difference?

The average user probably doesn't download massive files all that often, and online games seem to run as fast as offline most of the time.

The thing to also remember is, the speed of download often depends on the server and how oversubscribed it is.

Slow servers [no finger pointing here for obvious reasons ;)] mean that it doesn't matter if you've got the fastest turbo nutter broadband ever.

I often find a crucial patch or update downloads at snails pace because of popularity making the server slow to a crawl.

I see Electronic Arts has come under fire today for a stunt to promote their new game Mercenaries 2.

£20,000-worth of fuel was being given away free of charge at the Last Stop garage in Finsbury Park, north London, to promote the game Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

But by 7.30am a huge queue of 150 cars was causing traffic chaos in the area with security staff brought in to tackle unruly motorists annoyed at the delays.

People could fill up with up to £40 worth of fuel - Louise Marchant, from Electronic Arts, said the scenes of queuing mimicked aspects of the game.

She explained: "It's set in Venezuela, you play a mercenary and fuel is used as a currency." She denied the promotion was irresponsible, saying: "We've got security on hand."

Below - the scenes today in London:

Well it certainly had the desired effect in terms of publicity didn't it?

Below: petrol pump attendant Lizzie Jay-Hughes *must resist making the obvious sexist joke*.

Microsoft has announced big price cuts for the XBox 360 in the US, Japan and other areas.

But would you just guess, in Blighty prices will remain at their current level.

The cuts mean that the Xbox 360 Arcade will drop to $199 (£112), the standard Xbox 360 to $299 (£168) and the Xbox 360 Elite to $399 (£224).

This will take the Arcade even cheaper than the Nintendo Wii.

A quick look on Amazon shows that UK gamers will have to fork out £150 for the Arcade, £190 for the standard version, and £250 for the Elite.

Microsoft have also made the statement: "Pricing is handled on a region-by-region basis. We do not have a price drop in this region [theUK] to announce."

Thanks guys!

Below - an XBox 360. As this pictured one is from the UK it's inherently more valuable than rubbish foreign ones...

Just to add to the post below - the beta version is now available and can be downloaded from here.

Feel free to post any feedback.

Internet search engine giant google has announced through its blog that it is entering the market for internet browsers.

The new application is called 'Chrome' and will now no doubt challenge the biggies of Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Google claims that it will run applications, games and so on much better.

A key improvement is said to be that each tab will effectively run as a separate entity, preventing the whole application crashing if it decides it doesn't like a website, which is a current problem with IE and Firefox.

In fact this is one of the key improvements being touted for Internet Explorer 8, so I suppose google is stealing a march on Microsoft.

Google says it is making all the code open source and promises the emphasis will be on simplicity and speed.

We'll see how it turns out - but another player in this area can only be a good thing for surfers.

Below: first screenshots of Google Chrome (so not entirely dissimilar, at least visually, from what's out there, then).

I was interested to read the latest issue of Computing Which? recently which took a look at internet search engines and the information they keep.

The thrust of the article was about how to protect your own information from use or exploitation by third parties.

This doesn't just amount to keeping secret passwords and so on - but also, for some people, it is important that their habits aren't used by third parties for personal gain.

Some people don't want to be recognised when they log onto the net, and have 'targeted' advertising thrust at them as a result.

One thing which was surprising was how much information the search engines keep.

Google, for example allows third parties to see which ads people clicked on. Yahoo and msn go slightly further to allow advertisers to track ads you click on across various sites.

All keep a record of searches undertaken, with most allowing law enforcement officials access as necessary.

I don't suppose I personally have a major problem with any of the above, although keeping the search data would allow third parties to see exactly who you are, if for example they can utilise usernames you use on sites, search for your own name and so on.

So if the information gets leaked or into the wrong hands, then your bank accounts etc could be at risk.

Which? also posted a list of ten top tips to protect your information which I'll boil down here:

1: Delete cookies regularly from your browser.

2: If you have an account with google mail, yahoo mail or hotmail don't do searches while logged in to these accounts. Results will be directly linked to your account. Also don't search using your isp's home page - AOL released the data from 650,000 users in 2006 for a research project which was leaked, each used was identified by a number and the searches could be used to find out who they were.

3: Make sure any social networking sites you use have the privacy settings turned on.

4: Don't enter information such as your National Insurance number of mother's maiden name into searches.

5: Consider using anonymising software eg www.anonymiser.com

6: Don't use the same username for every website.

7: Never post phone numbers or email addresses in forums.

8: Check if you've got a static IP address.

9: Always read a site's privacy policy to find out what happens to the data.

10: For more information visit the information commissioner's office at www.ico.gov.uk

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.

Yes it's the real reason food prices are rocketing and it's not because of bio fuel!

But - it is the fault of idle Westerners - and it's also down to massively multiplayer online role playing games.

A recent report from Manchester University has revealed that more than half a million people in the developing world are now employed creating high level characters and selling them to people who can't be bothered to take the trouble to do it themselves.

So instead of going out and working on farms, young workers are earning more by being plugging into World of Warcraft for 12 hour shifts getting scantily clad female warriors up to level 72!

Below - female warrior, level 72, created by a former farmer, meanwhile bread cracks £2 a loaf

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?