Friday, 27 September 2002
New form of scumware [lurks]
Good lord, will it ever end? Apparently all those lame distros of p2p file sharing apps are bundling a new form of scumware which is being dubbed stealware. Slashdot has a story on it. Basically rather than replacing add banners, this replaces the affiliate referer links when you buy things. It does this so that the kazaa/morpheus lamers get the kick back money instead. Can it get any lamer than this? Obviously Amazon et all needs to ban these wankers from the affiliate schemes forthwith. Once again they think it's perfectly fine to install software which steals the hard work from web sites which generated revenue. Of course being P2P client vendors they had little in the way of morals to start with.
Wednesday, 25 September 2002
DEATH TO TUBE DRIVERS! [lurks]
Today I had my third and final interview for a job in Guildford. It was for 10AM in the morning. Now I should explain, I live in North London. Guildford is South West of London, a main line train journey away. So it's a fairly long journey involving a bus ride to a tube station, then by tube down to Waterloo and then a train. Only today was going to be different.
Today was tube strike day. It took me 2 hours to get a bus into London city, where upon the traffic seized entirely at around Tottenham Court Road. With no other option, I walked to the south bank of the Thames and crossed Waterloo bridge on foot. Against the massive tide of people coming the other way. It took me over 3 hours to get there.
And what's this all about? The tube drivers are rejecting a 3% inflation busting pay offer, taking them to £31000, they want more. More. That's right, they want more money than that. Now... Firefighters are calling to be paid £30K and that's fair enough, emergency service, danger money and all that. But tube drivers? I mean, have you peeked into the cab?
The sum total of the skill involved in driving a tube train is controlling a throttle handle type device which sets the train in motion and stops it when released. There's some buttons for doors, a passenger PA and an intercom from the 'controllers'. That's it. Basically when the light goes green, driver pushes handle forward until the train hits a red light. Then he stops until the light goes green. If he should arrive at a station, he opens the doors for a bit.
This is the incredibly taxing job that somehow is worth more money than bus drivers (wtf!), nurses, fightfighters, teachers and all sorts of other people that actually had to go to University to get some skillz and engage more than 4 brain cells to the job.
This has me fuming in anger. And that Red Ken bastard is saying that when the tube is handed to him and his American-import 'transport guru' boyfriend, he's going to sack all the management at London Underground. Apparently by allowing this strike to go ahead, they don't have London's best interests at heard according to Red Ken. Erm, actually they're saying that they don't have the money to pay more and quite frankly what they've offered should be enough - as it bloody well is!
Death to Ken. Death to tube drivers. Sack the fucking lot of them!. Hose down the guys selling the big issue out the front of the stations, give them a 5 minute crash course in tube driving (that's the advanced course) and set them off to work for bloody £20K a year.
This is what will happen when I am made King. I have the best ideas.
Today was tube strike day. It took me 2 hours to get a bus into London city, where upon the traffic seized entirely at around Tottenham Court Road. With no other option, I walked to the south bank of the Thames and crossed Waterloo bridge on foot. Against the massive tide of people coming the other way. It took me over 3 hours to get there.
And what's this all about? The tube drivers are rejecting a 3% inflation busting pay offer, taking them to £31000, they want more. More. That's right, they want more money than that. Now... Firefighters are calling to be paid £30K and that's fair enough, emergency service, danger money and all that. But tube drivers? I mean, have you peeked into the cab?
The sum total of the skill involved in driving a tube train is controlling a throttle handle type device which sets the train in motion and stops it when released. There's some buttons for doors, a passenger PA and an intercom from the 'controllers'. That's it. Basically when the light goes green, driver pushes handle forward until the train hits a red light. Then he stops until the light goes green. If he should arrive at a station, he opens the doors for a bit.
This is the incredibly taxing job that somehow is worth more money than bus drivers (wtf!), nurses, fightfighters, teachers and all sorts of other people that actually had to go to University to get some skillz and engage more than 4 brain cells to the job.
This has me fuming in anger. And that Red Ken bastard is saying that when the tube is handed to him and his American-import 'transport guru' boyfriend, he's going to sack all the management at London Underground. Apparently by allowing this strike to go ahead, they don't have London's best interests at heard according to Red Ken. Erm, actually they're saying that they don't have the money to pay more and quite frankly what they've offered should be enough - as it bloody well is!
Death to Ken. Death to tube drivers. Sack the fucking lot of them!. Hose down the guys selling the big issue out the front of the stations, give them a 5 minute crash course in tube driving (that's the advanced course) and set them off to work for bloody £20K a year.
This is what will happen when I am made King. I have the best ideas.
Monday, 23 September 2002
Google news [lurks]
This is interesting, Google has put up this new Google News site. It carries stories from the world's major news web sites and it lists how old they are. You can also obviously search through all these sites but I think it's most useful as a good news page covering pretty much everything in a timely manner.
Saturday, 21 September 2002
Gaming Goodness [spiny]
It just gets better.
Played a lot of instagib CTF last night, it managed to keep me glued to my desk till 12:30. When you have to be up at 6:30, that must be good glue.Now, UT instagib ctf was never really my bag, just seemed like you could never get the flag & was a bit devoid of strategy compared to vanilla ctf. My preconception changed last night though, UT2k3's instagib CTF is a 'reet laff' as they say oop north. What clinches it are two things: map design, the map included in the UT 2k3 demo plays very well with iCTF and now the instagib shock rifle has a zoom on it. While you may think this will just hamper gameplay by the flag runner forever being sniped, the opposite is true. as the flag runner, you're also better able to defend youself while rushing back to your own base, you can fight back much more effectively and your team can cover the flag runner even though they're not near the enemy. The acid test really is number of caps. Most of the games I played last night had a winning score of just under 10 caps, with the looser not too far behind. Great gameplay.
I think they may have actually sorted the translocator this time too. What makes it less effective is that it leaves a bloody great trail as the disc flies. This allows you to spot a translocating pe0n, see where he will land and zap him as soon as he appears. I managed to shut out pratically all enemies who were trying to translocate accross to our base & gib em.
In other gaming goodness the NOLF2, demo has been released and is looking rather sexy. Bump & cube mapping everywhere, nice water effects & character models. Looks like the Jupiter incarnation of the lithtech engine is shaping up niceley. NOLF2 also retains the excellent LOL humour of the original. The added skill points & side quests in it make it a bit of a Deus Ex Lite too. You can expect a fine script, nice combination of gameplay elements to enhance the point & shoot FPS genre (which SOF2 failed to do) and a pretty engine to wrap it up in. This is a preorder puppy make no mistake.
Played a lot of instagib CTF last night, it managed to keep me glued to my desk till 12:30. When you have to be up at 6:30, that must be good glue.Now, UT instagib ctf was never really my bag, just seemed like you could never get the flag & was a bit devoid of strategy compared to vanilla ctf. My preconception changed last night though, UT2k3's instagib CTF is a 'reet laff' as they say oop north. What clinches it are two things: map design, the map included in the UT 2k3 demo plays very well with iCTF and now the instagib shock rifle has a zoom on it. While you may think this will just hamper gameplay by the flag runner forever being sniped, the opposite is true. as the flag runner, you're also better able to defend youself while rushing back to your own base, you can fight back much more effectively and your team can cover the flag runner even though they're not near the enemy. The acid test really is number of caps. Most of the games I played last night had a winning score of just under 10 caps, with the looser not too far behind. Great gameplay.
I think they may have actually sorted the translocator this time too. What makes it less effective is that it leaves a bloody great trail as the disc flies. This allows you to spot a translocating pe0n, see where he will land and zap him as soon as he appears. I managed to shut out pratically all enemies who were trying to translocate accross to our base & gib em.
In other gaming goodness the NOLF2, demo has been released and is looking rather sexy. Bump & cube mapping everywhere, nice water effects & character models. Looks like the Jupiter incarnation of the lithtech engine is shaping up niceley. NOLF2 also retains the excellent LOL humour of the original. The added skill points & side quests in it make it a bit of a Deus Ex Lite too. You can expect a fine script, nice combination of gameplay elements to enhance the point & shoot FPS genre (which SOF2 failed to do) and a pretty engine to wrap it up in. This is a preorder puppy make no mistake.
A DEGRADING SPECTACLE - IDIOTS AFLOAT [brit]
You may have been following the recent news concerning the return to the UK of two ships carrying plutonium mixed oxide fuel (known as MOX).
To cut a long story short, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) sold the stuff to the Japanese atomic energy crowd a few years back; for use in powering their nuke plants - 1 pellet of MOX can generate more energy than a tonne of coal.
The Japs however refused to accept it on the grounds that documentation provided by BNFL concerning the width of the individual MOX pellets had been false; 5 BNFL staff had basically cut corners and lied on the forms.
Fair enough, the Japs didn't want it - it was the wrong spec, so three years later it finally starts its 18,000 mile trek back to the UK.
I should point out that the MOX consignment is, whilst radioactive in nature, not radioactive in a 'argh! look! my fingers glow green!' sense; it hasn't been used as part of the nuclear energy process as the Japs didn't use it.
Three days ago, the two ships rounded the South Coast and headed up through the Irish Sea to their final destination; one of the UK's most secure nuclear fuel handling plants at Barrow-in-Furness.
The Green Lobby didn't miss a trick; conducting a 'peaceful protest afloat' to demonstrate their anger at the fact this voyage had taken place.
Fair enough I guess, but their reasoning (which the BBC has duly emblazoned across pretty much all coverage they've given this) is utterly pathetic.
They jumped on the post '911' terrorist bandwagon; claiming that the ships contained enough MOX to allow a terrorist organisation to create 50 nuclear bombs. They claim it was irresponsible and unwarranted to allow the ships to enter UK territorial waters; and that the whole thing was a 'Degrading Spectacle'.
Bollocks.
Clearly, nobody in Greenpeace has bothered to study the types of ships being used to transport the stuff. These are not, by a long shot, 'typical ships' - they are anything but. Specially constructed, well armed, fully redundant vessels capable of withstanding the most serious weather imaginable and of course, under the command of highly vetted and serious individuals.
The vessels were escorted through the Irish Sea by the Royal Navy, Maritime Police and surveillance was 24/7 - the destination? a specially built high security dock controlled by armed police and the British Atomic Energy Authority.
The irony here is that the MOX was unloaded onto a...train. A *train*; possibly (well statistically speaking) just under cars/lorries when it comes to serious fuckups transport wise. Did they complain about that bit of the equation? course not.
They might have a serious point, and sure nobody in their right mind would be happy with huge quantities of potentially devastating nuclear material being shopped around in a slapdash fashion; but BNFL have been doing this for 30 years, without incident.
So they were right; it was a degrading spectacle; degrading to all those 'greens' who actually bother to find out the facts before jumping on board anything with an engine and proving themselves the idiots afloat.
To cut a long story short, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) sold the stuff to the Japanese atomic energy crowd a few years back; for use in powering their nuke plants - 1 pellet of MOX can generate more energy than a tonne of coal.
The Japs however refused to accept it on the grounds that documentation provided by BNFL concerning the width of the individual MOX pellets had been false; 5 BNFL staff had basically cut corners and lied on the forms.
Fair enough, the Japs didn't want it - it was the wrong spec, so three years later it finally starts its 18,000 mile trek back to the UK.
I should point out that the MOX consignment is, whilst radioactive in nature, not radioactive in a 'argh! look! my fingers glow green!' sense; it hasn't been used as part of the nuclear energy process as the Japs didn't use it.
Three days ago, the two ships rounded the South Coast and headed up through the Irish Sea to their final destination; one of the UK's most secure nuclear fuel handling plants at Barrow-in-Furness.
The Green Lobby didn't miss a trick; conducting a 'peaceful protest afloat' to demonstrate their anger at the fact this voyage had taken place.
Fair enough I guess, but their reasoning (which the BBC has duly emblazoned across pretty much all coverage they've given this) is utterly pathetic.
They jumped on the post '911' terrorist bandwagon; claiming that the ships contained enough MOX to allow a terrorist organisation to create 50 nuclear bombs. They claim it was irresponsible and unwarranted to allow the ships to enter UK territorial waters; and that the whole thing was a 'Degrading Spectacle'.
Bollocks.
Clearly, nobody in Greenpeace has bothered to study the types of ships being used to transport the stuff. These are not, by a long shot, 'typical ships' - they are anything but. Specially constructed, well armed, fully redundant vessels capable of withstanding the most serious weather imaginable and of course, under the command of highly vetted and serious individuals.
The vessels were escorted through the Irish Sea by the Royal Navy, Maritime Police and surveillance was 24/7 - the destination? a specially built high security dock controlled by armed police and the British Atomic Energy Authority.
The irony here is that the MOX was unloaded onto a...train. A *train*; possibly (well statistically speaking) just under cars/lorries when it comes to serious fuckups transport wise. Did they complain about that bit of the equation? course not.
They might have a serious point, and sure nobody in their right mind would be happy with huge quantities of potentially devastating nuclear material being shopped around in a slapdash fashion; but BNFL have been doing this for 30 years, without incident.
So they were right; it was a degrading spectacle; degrading to all those 'greens' who actually bother to find out the facts before jumping on board anything with an engine and proving themselves the idiots afloat.
Wednesday, 18 September 2002
UT2003 impressions [lurks]
UT2003 demo is out, woot! So we downloaded it, nice how it's under 100MB so in no time Slim had hosted a server and a few of us (those that can be arsed) got in. It's faster than UT. It's fast and frantic as it should be. The weapons are really nothing amazing, much of them identical over UT. There's less spam and weapons generally need a few hits to take people out, so it's a little more skillful than it was before.
It's pretty to look at but it's also very confusing. I'm having difficulty seeing things correctly, not sure if it's a framerate issue or not. The provided maps, of which we've only tried Deathmatch so far, are bloody huge. Designed for loads of players. Great for public servers but a little less great for us trying a bit of a muck about.
So far there's a sense that it's fun but it's not groundbreaking and actually in some ways is pretty disappointing for a sequel. I guess we need to turn to CTF and the other weird game modes to see if there's any lasting playability there. Nothing wrong with having a mindless blaster game though for that 20 min quick blast on a public.
It strikes me we'll be more concerned with E&B today though, since this starts for real today. We'll try get up a UT2003 public server and check out CTF with a load of players before writing this off wholesale though.
It's pretty to look at but it's also very confusing. I'm having difficulty seeing things correctly, not sure if it's a framerate issue or not. The provided maps, of which we've only tried Deathmatch so far, are bloody huge. Designed for loads of players. Great for public servers but a little less great for us trying a bit of a muck about.
So far there's a sense that it's fun but it's not groundbreaking and actually in some ways is pretty disappointing for a sequel. I guess we need to turn to CTF and the other weird game modes to see if there's any lasting playability there. Nothing wrong with having a mindless blaster game though for that 20 min quick blast on a public.
It strikes me we'll be more concerned with E&B today though, since this starts for real today. We'll try get up a UT2003 public server and check out CTF with a load of players before writing this off wholesale though.
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