Category: Life

I donated $15CAD to OpenOffice today. I know its little – but I’m somewhat strained for cash, as I’m saving it all up to pay tuition.

These guys release a great, free, product. If you use it: donate. Microsoft asks $199 for their version of the productivity suite [Student Edition], and is [I find] an inferior product. OpenOffice has a much better Math Engine, as well as the ability to export to PDF and open/save in multiple non-native formats. Spend $200 with Microsoft? [$500 if you’re not a student] Or spend $20 with OpenOffice?

Next on my list is Azureus, the popular Bittorrent client that I use religiously.

PS. If you’re a chemistry student, either in IB [High School] or University, and using Microsoft Office, you must absolutely try the Math Engine included in OpenOffice. It will save you so. much. time writing those formulas!

Could some people understand video games any less? Apparently not Jack Thompson.

Thompson is threatning action against Rockstar for Vice City, wishing to remove the game from store shelves. His reasoning? Vice City contains sexual content.

After some investigation on the part of Jack Thompson’s cited sources, who couldn’t believe themselves how he manipulated their content into some monstrous design, it was determined that Jack Thompson misunderstood the following:

“At any rate, the rest of the mod scene was rather surprised when Patrick released it, so I don’t think anyone else even thought it was there. Although not many people (in the scene) are really shocked or surprised that Rockstar was working on it. Vice City had missions involving a porn studio with cutscenes showing people wearing less clothes than Hot Coffee while filming a porn, so to most who have been playing the series for a while, hot coffee seems like a natural progression. Especially considering all the other simulation flavored aspects they added to San Andreas.”

What does this mean for Take Two and Rockstar? Nothing – the ESRB were fully aware of those cutscenes when they gave the game the M Rating. The cutscenes themselves do not feature nudity, which is quite a testament to how lax Hot Coffee really was.

There is potential that the game is placed under review by the ESRB. But as is, I find that rather unlikely. I do believe that the ESRB will defend its decision to give the game an M rating, despite its questionable ruling with Hot Coffee.

UPDATE: Reply from Jack Thompson to Next-Gen on the issue:

“The problem for the ESRB, then, is worse. The modders themselves indicate that this “cutscene” rivals what is in the “Hot Coffee mod,” and in fact it does. Thus, the ESRB has put an AO rating on GTA:SA yet has put an M on a game whose content should have been known by them to include what is described. Kiss the ESRB good-bye.”

What does it say to me? Forget the content of this message – it means that Jack Thompson didn’t get his facts straight. This above email is a classic example from “Propaganda 101”: namely never admiting a mistake, and circumventing any errors at hand to make it seem like you’re in the right facing a [silently shifted] issue.

Ladies and Gentleman: Jack Thompson is nothing other than a non-existant cause looking for a reason within the video-gaming realm. He will stop at nothing in his quest, most probably because he is attracted to the attention he receives. The above example shows that he cares nothing of the facts, and would rather circumvent his errors with new fronts rather than face them. This is not a new allegation either – he’s been operating this way for years.

Original News Source

I just reformatted all the drives, and reinstalled Windows and Linux onto my machines. This is to make up for efficiency lost after months of game installing/uninstalling, incessant downloads, useless application installations, accumulation of random files, etc.

Only issues with Windows was with the new NVidia video drivers – they rendered any videos on screen with maximum contrast. As such, every movie was consisting of only primary colours. Installing older drivers (those included on the Battlefield2 CD) fixed the issue.

Only issue I can find with Fedora Core right now is the lack of audio. Still working on that one…

Furthermore, I’m trying to get a drive with which Linux/Windows can interact. Mainly so if I start Bittorrent downloads with one OS, I can complete it whilst I work with the other. There are a few possibilities – use FAT32/vfat. Small issue: The drive is bigger than the largest amount allowed under the filesystem; and I don’t feel like cutting down the drive into smaller partitions. The other, and more interesting possibility, is adding reiserfs support to Windows (and FC, if I choose to continue using it).

There’s a neat little project for adding native reiser support to Windows – rfsd. Its currently in active development, and the current pre-release requires you to go through some steps upon each reboot (easily accomplished with batch scripting). Interesting alternative.

Feeling bolstered by the Supreme Court’s indecision on June 27, the RIAA is ramping up is lawsuit campaign on behalf of its member companies. Today, it announced an additional 765 lawsuits against those trading music on the most popular P2P networks. The total number of lawsuits now totals 12,326 individuals – most of which are against Kazaa users.

Source: addict3d.org

Out of those 12,000+ individuals, its interesting to note that none of them have fought the RIAA in court. That means they, for the most part, settled. The average settlement is worth $3,000US. Simple math: that’s $36,978,000 ($3000*12326 sued) in pure profits for the RIAA. With a business model like that, I don’t think that they’ll quit too soon.

Australia outlaws ‘Grand Theft Auto’

Associated Press

SYDNEY, Australia – Australian officials effectively banned the computer game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” and ordered it removed from stores Friday because it contains hidden sex scenes that can be viewed with a special Internet download.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification said in a statement it had outlawed sales of the game by stripping it of its official classification after learning of the explicit content.

“Revocation of a classification means the computer game cannot be legally sold, hired, advertised or exhibited in Australia from the date the decision is made,” the statement said.

“Businesses that sell or hire computer games should remove existing stocks of this game from their shelves immediately,” said Des Clark, director of the government-funded classification board.

The game involves a main character seeking bloody vengeance on gang-filled streets, firing automatic weapons and picking up women along the way.

After downloading and installing a modification to the game – one of many “mods” available on Web sites maintained by video game enthusiasts – a new world opens up in which the girlfriends appear nude and engage in explicit sex acts, according to the modification’s author.

The classification board in October 2004 gave the game a MA15+ rating, meaning it could be sold only to people aged over age 15, and warned that it contained “medium level animated violence, medium level coarse language.”

On Friday, Clark advised parents to be on the alert for their children accessing the explicit scenes.

“Parents are strongly advised to exercise caution in allowing children continued access to the game,” he said – particularly if they have access to the Internet modification.

Two things wrong with this:
1. Does this mean that every R rated movie ought to be banned as well, because it contains some semblance of sex somewhere.
2. That last line… the word “children”… Why is it that the gaming industry is the only one that rates content from the perspective of children? This is an “M” rated game – it should never be in the hands of children to begin with. Just like an “R” rated movie never ought to be in the hands of children. To treat it as if it were in the possession of children is ridiculous.

Furthermore, and I shall never understand this: decapitating someone with a chainsaw is considered worse than sex? Oh dear. Finally: this content is not accessible in-game. If they ban GTA, they might as well ban all video games and movies out there, as one can always find a way to insert content that would turn otherwise innocent content (The Sims, Teletubbies) into some kind of sex orgy.