Apple is hosting a preview of the new iPhone OS 3.0 early next week. As an iPod touch owner, I’m already familiar with the sting of selective upgrades (apparently I’m not allowed to have Google Maps Street View). Hopefully I won’t be deprived of the worthwhile upgrades to come.
It occurs to me however that as someone who types words into a computer that are then published to a (somewhat) public-facing website, I am obligated to offer up a set of features I hope to see included in 3.0, and to then assert my imagined authority by calling them “predictions” instead of “wild guesses I just extracted from where I keep my poop”. So here’s one thing I’d like to see in iPhone OS 3.0:
Voiceover.
“With Big Rubber Cocks”: a new game from the boffins at Cook’d and Bomb’d.
Robert Mugabe is reported to own long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.
The President of Zimbabwe apparently possesses tapes of some early episodes of the science fiction series that could be thirty or forty years old, according to The Sun.
The Sun wouldn’t make something like this up would they?
My fellow 2008 HBCA graduate Ari Crellin discusses his graduating film, The Human Prism for Channel 9.
“South Australian Film Sampler”, the collection of 16mm films which I cut down into a 60 minute presentation (58m34s to be precise), will be getting its one and only public screening tomorrow 12 noon in Palace cinema 7. It’ll be followed by a panel discussion with the project’s producer Mike Walsh, local eccentric personality Peter Goers, film director Mario Andreacchio, and others who are not me. I managed to avoid it thankfully. I can’t imagine I’d have much interesting to say other than “Do you like how I kept in as many instances of casual racism as I could?”
I’ll post something of a post-mortem shortly.
The classic Amiga game, Pinball Dreams, has made its way to the iPod touch and iPhone. Brilliant.
Tony Kelly is way not into cyber sex with dudes, he swears
So the NSW Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, has decided that MMOs are illegal in Australia. I put forward that the reason Mr. Kelly is so insistent on demonising games such as Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft is that he was recently busted having cyber sex with a Night Elf chick who turned out to be a dude. It’s the only scenario that makes any sense.
Actually there could be a couple of things going on here. The NSW MfP’s argument is that since these games don’t carry any classification, selling them is illegal. I looked it up in the OFLC database, and these games are indeed unclassified. The relevant industry association contends that since the games have no single-player component, classification is not required. These are the basic facts of the situation, and they’re undisputed.
The argument for not classifying these games (which I agree with) is that since all online interactions depend upon the unpredictable behaviour of other players, classifying a game based upon all possible activities in the game would be unfeasible. At the very least, all games which included unrestricted text chat could be held liable for the behaviour of filthy government ministers and their disgusting elf fetish. The model the ESRB in the US follows is that while the scripted, single-player components of games are rated, online interactions are not, for the mentioned reasons.
An optimistic assessment of this fiasco is that by calling for retailers to be reported for selling these items, the NSW Minister for Police is doing a sensible thing, essentially calling for reform of federal classification laws. This reform is desperately needed. Much as I’d like to think highly of our leaders (well not specifically my leaders - I’m a South Australian and this asshole is in New South Wales), I don’t find this plausible.
MMOs have been on sale in this country for a very long time now. Warcraft, the biggest game of the genre, went on sale here in late 2004. Warhammer Online went on sale late 2008, and that game runs servers in this country. I don’t think EA (or their local surrogates) would invest in that infrastructure without checking to see whether they were entering into a criminal enterprise.
No, what I think is going on here is misguided moralism. Game retailers are not breaking the law, and I expect any pending lawsuits to prove this. Well unless we get similarly misguided moralists as judges in those cases. So I guess we’re fucked. What I see going on here is the same reactionary nonsense that went on 30 years ago over Dungeons & Dragons. Misguided moralists pissed off not by a minor legal quibble, but by the general content of these games and the continued misconception that - like cartoons and comic books - “games are for kids”.
Gizmodo “editorial director” Brian Lam decides he can have it both ways. He’s just now recognising that feverish speculation over someone’s health is ghoulish. Welcome to the human race, asshole.
Running through my logs, I just found this post I made back in September. I was a miserable twat. It since turns out Genius is an excellent way to quickly generate a decent playlist on the go - no more dealing with On The Go, which is an even more frustrating experience on the iPod touch.
The fear of every writer is that they might one day become Lawrence Miles.
Via a special episode of Doctor Who Confidential, the BBC will be announcing the Eleventh Doctor at 3:35PM GMT. The Cook’d & Bomb’d crowd is worried it could be a freak with a strangely-shaped head.
Congratulations! 2008 was the Year of Linux on the Desktop. All it took was severely torturing what “Linux on the Desktop” means.
Raw footage of Richard Dawkins’ interview with Derren Brown, discussing amongst other things the technique of cold reading and how it is abused by some to bestow upon themselves the glamour of supernatural abilities. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
The Implied Truth about Stephen Conroy
The Dishonourable, Unqualified Stephen Conroy in a posting on a government website, which I refuse to call a blog you right-wing twit:
The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a ‘silver bullet’. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.
Emphasis mine. The point keeps getting raised by those in favour of the proposed censorship of the Internet that it will “protect the children”. Under this guise, (probably) well-meaning groups who actually are concerned over child welfare are dragged in to support the scheme. They don’t understand the details of the problem beyond “There’s kiddie porn out there!” and they do not understand the supposed solution to the problem being discussed here, so all they are is clueless mouthpieces for the government. They let themselves down, and they let down the people they’re trying to protect.
The proposed filter does not protect children, and the government knows it. They’ve known since February. It is $44 million spent to shore up Labor’s votes in the next election.
Besides the over-reaching ignorance on display here, the truly infuriating thing about the flawed argument being put forth is that it (deliberately, of course) lumps opponents of the scheme in with advocates of child pornography. It’s the classic ploy of an asshole: “You don’t…. hate children… do you?” Stephen Conroy, if it weren’t already clear, is an asshole. He is trading on deliberate falsehoods and manipulation. These are perhaps his only qualifications for being our federal Communications Minister. It seems to be a tradition to have the most clueless twits elected to be appointed to that office.
Since our esteemed asshole of a minister seems so fond of weaselly words, lets see where this can go. Let us assume that this isn’t just a cynical ploy to grab the votes of uneducated, paranoid parents around the country. Let us assume that the scheme will actually protect children. No more will any child (or adult) in this country have to worry about seeing material the government finds “objectionable”. Huzzah. Glory day.
Except someone somewhere is seeing this content. Someone has to maintain the secret blacklist. Presumably the final authority on this blacklist will be the Communications minister. I think it all becomes clear here. It isn’t that the Communications Minister is against the proliferation of child pornography in Australia (on the Internet). It’s that he wants it all for himself.
Stephen Conroy loves kiddie porn. The evidence is clear. There is no other logical excuse for his plan. After all, if he actually hated the stuff he’d be doing something constructive, instead of instituting the greatest abridgment of free speech in Australia’s history.
via.
The classic cartoon “Chow Hound”. It’s hard to imagine animators getting away with something this subversively brilliant in a kid’s cartoon these days. Or maybe these cartoons were never for “kids” in the sense we see today.