Monthly Archives: February 2006

General

Deliberate Windows Backdoors?

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Not that you want any more than Microsoft will no doubt leave, but I’ve just seem it reported on Slashdot that the UK Home Office is working with Microsoft about the possibility of putting in backdoors to the encryption systems in Windows Vista so that they can bypass it during criminal investigations, getting around the fact that people can conveniently “forget” the password and render any incriminating data lost.

It’s an obvious concern with all the terrorism investigations and the stuff that certain people probably have filling their hard drives but it’s incredibly pointless to encrypt the data and build in a backdoor so that it can be bypassed easily. The vast majority of people who use it will only have the innocent aim of protecting themselves from things like identity theft. It’s yet another draconian anti-terrorism measure; a thing that’s getting worryingly common. Like the news story says, they can let refusal to give the passwords count against them just life the refusal to answer a question does at the moment.

Besides, it’s not like this will solve anything. Criminals who want to keep their data safe can still encrypt individual files and OS X still has support for AES-128 encryption built-in. I doubt a serious cyberterrorist would be stupid enough to rely on nothing but the protection included with Windows anyway, and this is just a major security issue in case a hacker finds out the backdoor.

Games, General

Ban GTA…Again

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Another day, another group calling for GTA to be banned. This time it’s those wholesome folks at the Sex Workers Outreach Project USA calling for someone to halt the decline of the fabric of society.

I’m going to ignore the fact that it’s prostitutes worrying about their reputation being harmed by the role models in GTA, because there’s something else bothering me about the constant calls to ban or censor it, whether it’s from prostitutes, Haitians, Australians, or random politicians looking for column inches.

That concern is this – is there actually anyone in GTA who you’re not encouraged to kill? As a member of the perennially oppressed young, white, middle class male demographic I’ve seen plenty of missions that require the wanton slaughter of my ilk. I don’t recall ever being told to kill a hooker (in fact there are several missions where you have to help them), but the majority require you to kill some crass white stereotype.

For this reason I’m announcing my campaign to ban GTA on the basis that Rockstar hate and encourage the killing of white people. Whiteboys Against Nazi Killers (WANK) will not tolerate this kind of bigotry.

General

No Smoking

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Off topic it may be, but yay to our MPs for approving a total ban on smoking in public places in England. Now I get to go out at the weekends without me and my clothes stinking like an ashtray when I get home, and I don’t have to join in with the dirty habit whenever I go into a restaurant or bar. Other places have done it without a problem (Ireland and New York, for example) and it’s been a long time coming here. I’ll be glad when it finally happens.

Games, General, PlayStation

PAL Katamari Madness

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We Love Katamari

I made all the obvious jokes when it was announced that none other than EA was going to distribute We Love Katamari in the UK but noted that they could at least give it some exposure. Ha!

The release has been and gone, and although they did a much nicer job with the box art than the horrible “art” that the US version got (the US cover for Me and My Katamari is even worse), you wouldn’t have known it. The first mistake – I’m disregarding the fact that they release it here months after everywhere else – is that what was a $29.95 (£17) budget release in the US has come out here for £40. As good a game as it is, nobody who doesn’t already know about it will buy it for that much.

The other mistake is that it’s almost impossible to find. GAME aren’t usually credited with an overabundance of knowledge of games (I got hate mail last time I said that, but a couple of weeks ago when I asked about a PS2 component lead they tried to sell me a “super SCART” cable because it was “miles better”) and sure enough it seems that most branches got two copies in at absolute best. One person on the NTSC-uk forums got told by a GAME employee that it looked “shit”, which doesn’t do much to sell it to the customers.

Eynon’s shop got in quite a few because they have a lot of regulars who are interested in Japanese quirkiness and he’s sold most of them both to people who’ve wanted it for a while and even to “normal” people. Although there’s been essentially no advertising for it, it’s been running in the shop since it came out and a lot of people have shown interest when they’ve played or seen it, and I’ve seen more than one buy it on their recommendation.

Nonetheless it’s a depressing situation and surely means that this stuff will be even less likely to come out in Blighty, and that the hardcore who buy a lot of games will import instead, and so the British games industry will implode. We’re surely doomed.

Impressions

Connect360

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We Mac users have had the short end of the stick to a certain extent with the Xbox 360, since all that lovely Media Center functionality requires Windows XP or Windows Media Center. No more! The lovely folks at Nullriver who brought us PSPWare have just released the first version of Connect360, which lets you stream MP3s and JPGs from your iTunes and iPhoto libraries to the 360. That’s the same stuff that Windows XP can do, and hopefully future versions will add transcoding of AACs and maybe even video streaming.

I tried it out and it certainly seems to do everything that it promises. I booted up the 360 and it immediately found my iBook over the network, and I could look at all of my photos in their full HD glory on my TV. Music worked similarly well although like they say AACs, both protected and otherwise, don’t work yet. Now we just need it to stream video (I’d kill to be able to watch 720p H.264 on the 360) and we’ll be set.

It’s in beta at the moment so you can get it with free updates for life for $10. Not a bad deal…

General

Could the PS3 Kill Sony?

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I very much doubt it, but this article thinks it could and makes for interesting reading.

While I don’t think the article is going to turn out to be much more than conjecture, what really interested me is the information about Sony’s financial state. We all know that Microsoft has billions to burn and that Bill Gates lives in a solid gold house with a rocket car and that they can basically throw money at the 360 until it starts selling, but when Sony haven’t been doing too well recently and the PSP starting to struggle in the battle for hearts and minds, it remains to be seen how much of a loss they can actually afford.

Even if Blu-Ray is technically superior to HD-DVD it’s coming to market later, costs twice as much for first-generation players ($1,000 compared to $500), doesn’t have the DVD name, and the recent announcement that movies will retail for around $30 hasn’t been met with much rejoicing. Looks like the next few months and years will be intriguing ones for Sony fans.